Viktor waved to the two men. Not big, not flamboyant, just a raised hand and a short wave.
He was gone.
Adrian trembled, had never before felt that shockwave in his gut, his limbs and his mind – as if he had lost control.
In the craft talk of his trade, the top men preached a mantra: If the next stage is to show out, you pull out. He and Dennis had gone through that stage and not known it. They had shown out.
Casual, the target had waved.
And the conventional wisdom said: We call it the heat stakes – one to ten. Ten is when you’re busted, have shown out. Go to gaol. They were busted. The dial needle had hit ‘ten’ and they had failed.
From the height of the target, Adrian had realized it was Viktor. Viktor was KGB-trained. The wave had been enough to show his contempt for them.
When they talked about ‘sterile areas’, ‘control’ and ‘housing’, the best men – and Adrian and Dennis would have reckoned themselves top of the tree – always exuded supreme levels of confidence. But a lecture session never finished without the final message: The desperate moment for any surveillance officer, far and away the worst, is when the target looks you in the eye and waves to you. Viktor had.
He thought himself a serious man, and Dennis, was unused to the taint of failure. He had to clasp his hands across his stomach, but it was inadequate – however tight he squeezed his fingers – to kill the shake.
Adrian whispered the question, ‘Did you see it?’
Dennis murmured in his ear, ‘I saw it. We screwed up.’
Stuttered: ‘Big-time.’
‘Doesn’t get any bigger. What to do?’
Adrian said, ‘We can’t go forward, not after that. I can’t get my head round it. Never happened to me before. Twenty years of this, more, and it’s the first time. I’d bollock a rookie who showed out as bad as that. He was laughing at us.’
‘Me too, first time – I feel a prat. They could be anywhere along the bank, and they’re alerted. You got a better definition, Adrian, of disaster?’
‘Could be anywhere, could be a quarter of a mile upstream, more. What to do? That’s the guv’nor’s shout. Have to tell him, come clean. He makes the decision. Say it up front. We don’t know where they are.’
‘And lose what they’re bringing across?’
‘Got better ideas?’
In front of them, where the target had been and where he had waved, gentle and mocking, was a solid wall of darkness. They did not know whether he had backed off by ten yards or a hundred. Right to assume that he carried a weapon, Mikhail too, and that Reuven Weissberg – top target – was armed. They had heard Shrinks talk his syndrome stuff on the agent and knew he, too, was tooled up. They heard only the river’s rush and the wind high above. They would back off, leave decision-taking to Mr Lawson, the guv’nor. Couldn’t blunder on. They left Deadeye down by the water and suggested he didn’t move … Adrian thought the wound was well shared, that Dennis would feel as bad as himself because a target had faced up to them and had waved.
Their professionalism demanded they said it, four square, to the guv’nor’s face. Neither would hide the catastrophe of a show-out and a failure to locate the prime target.
‘Come on,’ she said.
She led. Katie Jennings had pushed up her sweater, undone her blouse buttons, hitched up her bra and put his hands on her breasts. He didn’t do much for himself.
‘It’s all right, I don’t bite.’
She was astride him. He was against a fallen tree, had his back to it. She heaved up her hips, lowered her trousers and pushed her knickers down her thighs. Hadn’t done it like this since she was a kid, a couple of weeks before her sixteenth birthday. What was the bloody order of battle? She blinked, remembered what the guy had done all those years before because he’d known what he was at. She felt the cold air on her stomach and back, and on her thighs.
‘Don’t go all scared on me. You haven’t a worry, I’m up to date with taking them.’
It was a sort of madness. She was, in reality, a mature young woman. Katie Jennings did not make a habit of shagging around. Those who knew her well, in the Pimlico office, her neighbours, and especially her parents, would have been shocked to observe her baring her buttocks to the evening darkness, then heaving at the clothing covering Luke Davies’s body. It was the way the guy had done it when she was short of her sixteenth birthday; had worked then, didn’t seem wrong now. She had his coat open and his fleece unzipped, his shirt open and his vest up. Then she went to work on the belt and his trousers. She accepted it, the madness. She could put it down to stress, strain, trauma, had the excuses stacked high – but didn’t need them. She was tugging at his trousers. Rare excitement now gripped her. She could not have stopped herself and had no wish to.
‘Just enjoy it, like it’s a chauffeur ride.’
Under her the whiteness of his skin was made silver by the moonlight. Who cared about madness? Not Katie Jennings. A woman in a man’s world, she had been subject enough times to what was called harassment, or gender abuse, but she had never complained of being rated the token female. She thought his body quite thin, spare, rather pretty. He was supine … No, he wasn’t going to help her so she’d have to do the damn job herself. Hadn’t a word to say for himself but his eyes were big and longing and his breath came faster – came a bloody sight faster when she eased back, reached down and took him. The eyes were big, popping, and he was staring over her shoulder. Then he was pushing her back. For a moment, she tried to fight him, then gave up – quit.
She looked over his shoulder, followed his line of sight.
‘Fuck me,’ Katie Jennings mouthed.
It had been, for Tadeuz Komiski, the incredible moment.
He was the child.
He was in his seventh year. He was in the forest two days after the shooting at the camp, the explosions and the howl of the sirens.
He remembered what he had seen as if it had happened an hour before.
A young man down and propped against a fallen tree. A woman crouched over him. The young man’s skin white and exposed.
Two Christ killers on the ground among the trees.Filthy old clothes on both of them.
They were watching him, gazing up at him, and words spat from their mouths.
He had run to call his father. His father had spoken of a reward of two kilos of sugar for identifying where fugitives hid. He had come with the axe.
The curse had been made.
Much floated in his mind. They stared at him as they had then. Now he was a man and old, but once he had been a child. Visions came to him of his father’s swinging axe and of the young woman fighting back … He remembered the painful death of his father from the cancers, the long, sad silences of his mother before she had gone to her rest, the birth of a dead baby and the slipping away of his weakened wife. He remembered the loneliness of his life and the nightmare dreams … the life of the curse.
Remembered, also, that men had been in the forest, had seemed to search for him and watch him. He had followed them that day and when the dusk had come they were by the river.
The man covered his skin. The woman wriggled. They shouted at him.
He saw the priest. The priest had brought him a meat pie, had asked him to bring wood to the church house in the village. He heard the priest’s soft words: Was it when you were a child and living in this house that the guilt was born? You don’t have to answer me – but the only palliative for guilt is confession. All I can say, Tadeuz, is that if ever the chance is given you – it is unlikely – to right a wrong then take it, seize it. Each word of what the priest had said was clear in his mind.
Soldiers had hunted through the forest, and had offered the reward of a two-kilo bag of sugar for help in the capture of fleeing Jews, and again men hunted and were down at the Bug banks. He had betrayed a boy and a girl. It was to right a wrong that he went forward.
They cringed away from him.
When he was closer,
they stood. He saw now that they took defensive postures, that their arms were out and their fists clenched. He showed them his own hands, empty.
He said, ‘There are hunters in the forest. I can take you to them. It will right a wrong. You can hurt them and make vengeance.’
The girl hissed at the boy, ‘What is he? Some goddam pervert?’ He did not understand her language.
He said, ‘I will show you them, and lift the curse.’
He reached out his hand, and the girl was shrill: ‘What you reckon? Going to watch us and jerk off?’
He took the boy’s arm. He said, ‘The curse is my burden, help me … The hunters are here, I will lead you to them and you will destroy them. I beg you, come with me.’
He had hold of the boy’s sleeve. ‘A deranged lunatic, what else? Sorry and all that. I was up for it. Just get rid of him and let’s get the hell out.’ He tugged at the coat.
The boy spoke in German. ‘Where are they?’
‘Beside the river.’
‘Can you show me where they are?’
‘I will. It is to be free of the curse.’ The boy allowed him to pull at the coat and didn’t try to break away from him.
‘You’re not bloody going with him …’
‘He knows where they are. I am.’
The great weight, the burden of Tadeuz Komiski, seemed shed. He led them. He knew what he would do when the curse was cast off, and felt happy. He took them through the forest, away from where the old fences had been, the huts and the watchtowers, the burning pits and the chambers joined by the rubber piping to the truck’s engine, away from where the geese had been chased so they would scream louder. He glided among the trees, as he had when he was a child.
He had spoken to Mikhail. With Mikhail, he had found Josef Goldmann.
Together they talked. Where was the nearest international airport? Was there any indication of a cordon or roadblocks? Which passports were available to them? Which of the cars should they take? Would they tell Reuven Weissberg that they were fleeing into the night?
When Goldmann had wavered, Mikhail had gripped his shoulders. ‘We do not have a meeting, we do not set up a committee, we do not debate and discuss. We go. You’ve seen him when the fury’s alive. That anger burns. Would you tell him? I won’t. Viktor is clear. Viktor reports on men tracking along the river. Who, in darkness, comes covertly along the banks of the Bug? A farmer? A forester? A tourist? Surveillance officers from an intelligence agency? I think so. I think also that we have very little time.’
Viktor could not have faulted Mikhail.
He pushed Josef Goldmann, a violent shove. The man half fell but Mikhail caught him, then threw him on. Mikhail would not have told Reuven Weissberg that he was abandoned, nor would Viktor. He imagined, a brief thought, a tonguetied and terrified Josef Goldmann stammering out a message of treachery and the voice would have died before it had been blurted. They went.
They held Josef Goldmann between them, as if he was their prisoner. They hustled him away from the river. They took him because he was the banker. He had made the investments, he knew in which banks’ strong boxes the deeds of ownership were held, he had the account numbers in his head. Josef Goldmann had control of the millions of dollars, sterling and euros, hidden under layers of nominee names and code numbers, that would offer a comfortable future to Viktor and Mikhail. Without him they would be paupers. Paupers would have no protection, and paupers could not buy a roof.
They dragged Goldmann behind them, his feet scraping the forest floor. Viktor had no sense of wrongdoing, or of betrayal: he did not recognize such feelings. He had a sense, though, of anger. It had been Reuven Weissberg who had demanded the outsider walk alongside him, who had treated the outsider as a favoured toy, an indulged pet: he would have liked to hurt the toy, heard the pet squeal. He could not take out that frustrated anger on Josef Goldmann because the flabby, pasty-faced Jew knew the codes, the numbers and the banks.
Bugsy said, ‘It’s gone down the tube, Mr Lawson. Normally I’d not speak out, but I’m going to. It’s down the tube, Mr Lawson, because of you. There’s going to be shit in the fan, but I’m not prepared to take the rap for it, and I don’t reckon any of us is, or should. They were your decisions, Mr Lawson, and you’ll have to stand by them. They were the wrong decisions.’
Adrian and Dennis were at the edge of the group, had said their piece alternating the delivery of news that was awful, then inched back. In his career, Christopher Lawson had not experienced what was, almost, a moment of mutiny.
Shrinks said, ‘If you’d treated your agent with a modicum of sensitivity, Mr Lawson, this fiasco wouldn’t have been bred. You contaminated the man’s loyalties. In effect, to drive him deeper into their arms, you lost him. The result is plain as a pikestaff. We have only a vague idea of where this hideous weapon may be brought to. Your leadership, or lack of it, has engulfed us in abject failure. When we get back, when there’s the inquest, don’t expect me to respond to your usual bully-boy tactic. I’ll put the knife in and twist it.’
He could see their faces. They despised him. It was as if they had torn off badges and insignia, had thrown them into the mud and sought flight – sought, above all, to preserve reputations. What to do? It exercised him. Didn’t know. What option was available to him? To move along the bank of the Bug, only the moonlight to guide them, and hope for a visual sighting.
Dennis’s torchbeam caught them.
Well, it didn’t take an intelligence officer of Christopher Lawson’s experience to read the runes. Her coat was open, and in the V-neck of her pullover it was clear that the blouse buttons were fastened out of kilter. Davies’s fly was unzipped. He had little fight left in him.
The girl did the talking for them both. ‘Everyone here, except Deadeye. Does that mean you’ve no eyeball?’
He didn’t bluster. Didn’t refer with cutting sarcasm to the state of her dress or Davies’s. He nodded.
‘We’ve had an eyeball on the riverbank,’ she said, calm and no triumphalism. ‘It’s why we’ve been so damn long. It goes on for ever, the explanation … Enough for now, a deranged idiot, babbling, Luke says, about hunters and vengeance, took us down to the river edge. Sod his code-call, Johnny’s there and Target Two, Reuven Weissberg. We saw them and beetled back.’
He thought, but couldn’t have been certain in that frail light, that she grinned. He thanked her.
‘Well, is that what you’ve been waiting for? Our idiot buggered off but we can lead you.’
Did he allow relief to flicker on his face? He did not.
‘Right. Let’s be on the move,’ Lawson said.
‘They’ve gone, Johnny.’ Reuven Weissberg hunched down beside him.
‘Who has, sir?’
‘All of them, the bastards.’
‘Has Mr Goldmann gone, sir?’
‘All of them. I went to where he was, and where Mikhail was. They were gone.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I am betrayed, Johnny, as my grandmother was. It is a place of betrayal.’
‘Why would they do that, sir?’
‘It is a place for traitors, Johnny.’
And the light flashed.
Carrick started up. His feet slipped on the mud’s sheen. He found his balance. He stood.
It was downstream of them. Perhaps two hundred metres along the far bank from the point opposite. Four short flashes, then killed.
‘Do you have the torch, sir, or did they?’
‘Goldmann had the torch. The pig. He goes in concrete. First I strangle him, then the concrete. I—’
‘You have a lighter, sir.’
‘You think well, Johnny. Good.’
He felt the movements beside him, then heard the click. The lighter flame was shielded in Reuven Weissberg’s hands, and Carrick helped him protect it.
The darkness came again. It was behind them and in front of them, but the moonlight on the water was splitting the darkness. Carrick went back and scrambled up the b
ank to where the boat was. He threw the coil of rope into it. At the end of the rope was the device – he was proud of it – that he had fashioned in the last hour. It was a broken-off branch, two inches thick, and protruding from it was a slighter branch, which he had snapped six inches from the main stem. Inverted, the branch was lashed with string to the rope. He had made a hook. He saw the light again. It had moved so slowly, but had come along the far bank and upstream, had halved the distance to the point across the water from them. Reuven Weissberg had to protect the lighter flame, and the wind off the river guttered it.
Carrick took hold of the front of the boat. He heaved it free from where it had settled against birch trunks. He levered the boat down the steep bank, and lost control of it. It cannoned into his shins, and the pain ran rich. He arrested its slithering fall. He worked it down, short pace by short pace, towards the waterline. Took an age. In his ears was the rumble of the river, and its roar seemed louder to him now, keener. He brought the boat to the edge.
The back end had gone into the water. He held it there – had he not, it would have slid down and been taken.
‘You are with me, Johnny?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Will not betray me? Are not them? Traitors all.’ The words came with spittle on the breath.
‘Will not, sir.’
He saw the light again, four flashes. It was across the river from them. Now Reuven Weissberg called, but Carrick didn’t understand. Over the water’s roar, at this narrow point, came a croaked, feeble response, then a hacked cough, but from near enough for Carrick to hear it clearly. A second shout from Reuven Weissberg, an instruction. Carrick took the rope with the improvised hook he had made, gave it. Didn’t know whether the rope could be thrown far enough. He had the boat further into the water, clung to it, and saw Reuven Weissberg pirouette as he hurled the rope across the water towards the far trees and saw it snake out. Willed it … Another shout from the far bank, and the rope went taut. He tested it, and Reuven Weissberg did.
Timebomb : A Thriller (9781468300093) Page 46
