by Andy Maslen
She shuffled closer and embraced him though their facing positions made the gesture awkward for both of them.
“But you went to see Fariyah, didn’t you? That took guts, Gabriel, you know that, right? Lots of people just bottle it all up.”
He sniffed again, feeling that the spasm of grief had passed, for now.
“I did, you’re right. She helped me understand why Smudge kept appearing. In the end he sort of faded away. But I still hear his voice from time to time.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing. You said he was a friend. Friends never truly die. I believe that. I mean, yes, obviously, their bodies go. But they live on inside of us. Here.” She said, placing her flat palm over Gabriel’s heart.
He covered her hand with his own.
“Maybe you’re right. I just … He’s not really gone completely, and I wanted you to know. What you might be getting into if we’re, you know …”
“Together?” She smiled “You can say it, you know. It doesn’t mean we have to start shopping for furniture, or having a joint bank account.”
Gabriel drew in a deep breath and let it out in a huff. He felt better for having confessed to Eli. Had he really expected her to run screaming into the night, yelling that she was dating a lunatic? No. Of course not. He pictured Fariyah’s face, an ironic smile playing on her lips, as she asked him the same question.
“So, you’re OK with that?” he asked Eli. “Me being, you know, not completely mentally on point?”
“Of course I am, you fool. But I have to tell you, if you start trying to beat me up in your sleep again, I may have to retaliate properly.”
“Like you did with poor old Gaddesden?”
“Worse!”
Max
BARCELONA
Max paid the bill in cash. Nine hundred and fifty euros, including the service charge. The restaurant was the most expensive in Spain and the third-most expensive in the world. Its chef, renowned among the super-rich for his flair with food and equally fiery temper, had emerged from the kitchen twenty minutes earlier to greet the evening’s diners. He had complimented Max’s companion on her beauty and shaken Max’s hand. Max wondered whether he would have done so if he’d known how many men’s lives that hand had snuffed out.
On the drive along the coast road, back to his house overlooking the ocean, he remained silent, guiding the vintage Ferrari around the curves with a lover’s touch on its thin-rimmed, wooden steering wheel.
“What’s the matter, darling?” his young companion asked.
“Nothing. Please be quiet. I need to think.”
The woman clammed up as Max knew she would. He glanced sideways to see her fingering the new diamond necklace at her throat. He looked ahead, then down at the water. A long, silver streak glittered on the mirror-smooth surface all the way to the horizon, where it pointed at the moon.
Diamonds . By now Kuznitsa should have been enjoying the bounty of that field in Mozambique. And the pleasure of having an entire mineral-rich African country under its control. That it was not caused Max and his partners no small amount of anger. That the blame could be laid at the feet of a single man intensified that anger. That the man was still alive focused it onto a single, white-hot point. And Max could feel it, boring a hole through his skull and into his brain. The money and the power, those he could live without. He had plenty of other ways of increasing his stock if he so chose.
No. It was the – he hated even thinking the word – it was the shame . The tarnishing of his reputation. The trashing of his honour. Without them he was nothing. Lower than a suka – a prison bitch.
Beneath his fine silk Brioni suit and sparkling white handmade shirt by Turnbull & Asser, his back, chest, shoulders and arms were covered with ink that delineated his progress through the Russian prison system, the Russian army and the Russian Mafiya . Cats, an eight-pointed star, a hooded executioner (applied after he’d killed his own brother for breaking the criminal code), a Madonna and child, skulls, suns, ships, and a crucifix. He wore them with pride, and everyone who saw them knew him to be a man of power. But power, he knew, could be lost as well as gained. Respect, also. To be bested by this British agent? It could not be allowed to stand. People were already whispering. He heard them in his sleep. On waking. While shaving. And the whispers always went the same way.
Max is losing it.
Max isn’t the man he used to be.
Maybe it’s time to move against Max.
The old Max would never have allowed this to happen.
He ground his teeth together. Nor would the new Max.
Later, he stood on the terrace, leaning over the balcony and looking out at the ocean and the huge, silver moon, hanging there as if to mock him with its trail of diamonds across the water. The noise of the crickets singing at the moon made it hard to focus his thoughts on his next move. The air around him was scented with a lemony perfume. From the herbs he’d brushed against on his way out from the bedroom, he assumed.
He scrolled through his contacts and tapped the screen.
“Hello, Max,” the voice at the other end said.
“Hello, Nils. How’s business?”
“Busy. Am I about to get busier?”
“If you have time, yes.”
“For you, Max, always. Name?”
“Wolfe. First name, Gabriel.”
“Dossier.”
“All I have is a photo and a few details. He works for British intelligence. I’ll email it to you. Usual fee?”
“You know my rates, Max. Usual plus fifty percent for security people.”
“I’ll send you half in the morning. Tell me, if all we have is his name and a photo, how will you locate him?”
“Don’t worry about that. It’s all part of the service.”
Max was as good as his word. At 7.45 a.m. the following morning, Nils Kristersson checked his account at the Oslo branch of Nordea Bank Norge. and was pleased to see that his balance had swelled by $375,000 overnight. He showered, singing an old Norwegian folk song as he lathered his cropped blond hair, then dressed, sliding his six-foot frame into black jeans, a white shirt and a new black leather jacket before snapping on his stainless-steel Rolex.
Fifteen minutes later, he was sitting in his favourite cafe in the City Hall Square sipping a perfect black coffee and eating a toasted cheese and smoked ham sandwich. On the screen of his laptop, a brief profile of the man he had just been hired to kill.
While Kristersson was reading the profile of his latest target, Blacksmith and Gul were standing talking for the third time, in a different park, in a different part of London. Bright sunshine turned the leaves of the beech trees shading them translucent. Birds filled the air with all manner of trills and warbles that, under normal circumstances, Blacksmith would have enjoyed, ornithology being something of a passion with him.
“Under what name is he travelling?” Gul asked.
“I don’t know.”
“No matter. What does he look like?”
“Here.”
Blacksmith handed over a colour photo, printed from one he’d taken on his phone on the day Wolfe and his Jewish sidekick had visited the Iran desk. Gul scrutinised the photograph. Pursed his lips. Nodded.
“He is travelling alone?”
“No. With a partner. An Israeli. Ex-Mossad.”
He handed over a second photo.
Gul took and pocketed the sheet of paper. Then he looked hard into Blacksmith’s eyes.
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Why are you doing this? Why are you betraying your country?”
“It’s not my country.”
Gul smiled, though the expression didn’t reach his eyes.
“Very well. Why are you betraying the UK?”
“Because the UK betrays me through its support for Israel. I help you stop Wolfe, Darbandi finishes his work. Iran destroys Israel. I am happy.”
“As simple as that.”
“As simple as that.”
“Ver
y well. In fact, life is more complicated. But your help – if it proves useful – will bring us closer to achieving our aims. Do you have more information to share? The Islamic Republic of Iran is both loyal and generous to its allies.”
Blacksmith smiled.
“Let’s deal with Wolfe first.”
You Can't Judge a Book
TEHRAN
The receptionist at the Tehran Grand Hotel looked up from her leather-bound guest book as Gabriel and Eli approached the front desk. A burgundy-and-gold-uniformed porter stood a respectful few paces behind them with their luggage stacked neatly on a gold-coloured, wheeled trolley. The receptionist smiled, her full lips parting slightly to reveal large, even, white teeth.
“Welcome to the Tehran Grand Hotel, sir, madam,” she said in flawless, unaccented English. “Checking in?”
A gold pin on her left jacket lapel gave her name as Yelena and her title as Assistant Manager.
“Yes, that’s right,” Gabriel said, pushing a pair of round, tortoiseshell-framed glasses higher on the bridge of his nose.
“You are here on business?” Yelena asked.
“The Tehran International Book Fair. Our company has space on the British Council’s stand.”
“Very good. We have many guests attending the fair also. May I take your passports, please?”
Yelena disappeared through a door. After a few minutes, she returned their passports.
“Thank you, Mr Denning, Miss Arifakis. May I ask you to sign the guest book?”
After they’d added their details – all fictitious – to the leather-bound journal, Yelena bent to her computer and set about assigning rooms, activating keycards, explaining about the hotel’s Wi-Fi and the usual little details Gabriel felt were designed mainly to prevent guests getting what they really wanted, which was to their rooms.
The porter showed them to the lifts, then their rooms, which were adjoining, on the fifth floor. After an extravagant guided tour in which no facility, however insignificant, escaped his pointing finger and smiling explanation, Gabriel was able to tip him and close the door behind him.
“Fucking hell, I thought he’d never go!” Eli said, rolling her eyes. “I need a shower and something to eat. Want to join me?”
“In the shower or the restaurant?”
Eli started unbuttoning her blouse.
“What do you think?” she asked with a grin.
The book fair was scheduled to start in two days’ time. So the next morning, after a breakfast of coffee, eggs, and bread rolls flavoured with raisins and coloured a startling yellow by turmeric, Gabriel and Eli set off on foot for their scheduled rendezvous with a messenger sent by Julian Furnish.
“There’s a nice little place to go for a coffee and a cake. Kind of a tourist stop. Fereydoon Sandwich at the corner of Eshqyar and 4th Streets,” he’d said when they spoke on the phone before leaving England. “Be there at 9.30 a.m. the day after you arrive, and I’ll have one of my chaps drop you off your little cutlery set.”
Gabriel and Eli had dressed in light summer clothing, but even so, the heat in Tehran’s concrete and steel city centre was oppressive. They’d decided to walk. As they wandered along, they gazed up at the skyscrapers, mosques and occasional trees as if they were merely goggle-eyed tourists here to sell a few books and do a little sightseeing, and not stone killers tasked with assassinating the architect of the country’s nuclear weapons programme. The capacious black nylon laptop bag Gabriel was carrying quickly produced a patch of sweat against his right side.
From the hotel, their route took them along Sepand Alley, a narrow street lined with mobile phone shops and cafes, then into Qarani Street, Sanaēe Street and Shahid Motahari Street. With each turn, the businesses grew bigger and brasher. Banks dominated the start of their journey, only to be replaced with electronics shops, grocery stores and bookshops. After an hour, they reached the junction of Eshqyar and 4th Street
“There it is,” Gabriel said, pointing to a shabby-looking shopfront, above which signs blared out in garish orange, yellow, blue and brown Farsi script. Gabriel translated aloud.
“Fereydoon Sandwich – shish kebab, kofte, meat sandwich, lamb, chicken, falafel.”
He’d worried they might stand out, he in his blue-and-white-striped seersucker suit and Eli in a conservatively cut cotton trouser suit in a pale-beige, but the place seemed to be attracting as many westerners as locals. They took their place in the queue and, once inside, looked around for a table. A handful of white plastic tables stood along one wall, mismatched plastic lawn chairs shoved underneath them.
An enormously fat man wearing chef’s whites and a red-and-white chequered cap was running the show behind the counter. He called out to Gabriel, first in Farsi, then in English.
“Shema ak jedwel ma khewahad? ” – You want a table?
Gabriel resisted the urge to reply in Farsi. Instead, he spoke loudly, as Englishmen had been doing when talking to foreigners since time immemorial.
“Yes, please. For two?”
He held up two fingers as well.
The fat man waved stubby fingers at a table at the far end of the shop. He signed that they should seat themselves and someone would come to take their order. Gabriel placed his laptop bag out of sight under the table. While they waited, Gabriel leaned across to Eli.
“Hungry?”
“I am, actually. That hotel breakfast wasn’t up to much, was it?”
“Lamb sandwich OK?”
“Sure. And a coffee.”
A young guy with a slight beard came over to their table holding a pad. He smiled and stood waiting for their order.
Gabriel pointed at a garish colour photo of lamb koftes wrapped in flatbreads and signalled for two, receiving an enthusiastic nod from the waiter in return.
“And two coffees, please?” he said, loudly, in English.
Eli laughed, and when the waiter had departed she leaned across to Gabriel.
“My God, it’s harder for you to speak English than Farsi!”
The cafe was thrumming with conversations, shouting from behind the counter, the hiss of coffee machines and the sizzle of raw meat being slapped down onto hot metal. Gabriel inhaled deeply. The air was rich with spices, the aroma of grilling lamb and chicken and, perhaps owing to the large number of prosperous-looking Iranian businessmen, pungent aftershave.
Eli leaned across the table and murmured a question.
“Do you want to talk about Darbandi? It’s probably safer here than in our room. It’s bound to be bugged.”
Gabriel laughed as if she’d told a joke.
“Sure, why not?” he said with a smile. “I say, do it tomorrow. We’ll spend the morning at the fair, to show our faces, then we’ll hire a car, head out to Vareshabad and pick him up when he leaves the car park. Plan A: We follow him and ambush him on a quiet stretch of road. Dump the body and get back to the Grand to grab our things and head for the airport.”
Eli nodded.
“Agreed,” she said.
“How do we explain our presence in Vareshabad if we’re stopped?”
Eli shrugged, then smiled over Gabriel’s shoulder. He turned just as the waiter arrived bearing their order on a tray. They waited while he placed the hot sandwiches and coffees before them. Once he’d left their table, Eli took a bite of the lamb wrapped in flatbread.
Her eyes widened.
“Oh, God, that is delicious! Try yours.”
Gabriel took a bite. The lamb was so hot it was almost sizzling. The smell of the meat juices, combined with fried onion, green chilli and coriander made him smile, despite the topic of their conversation.
“Excellent. Pity their leaders couldn’t make sandwiches instead of nuclear bombs.”
They paused for a while, enjoying their food and taking sips of the strong, black coffee. Putting her sandwich down and wiping her lips on a paper napkin she plucked from a red-and-chrome dispenser, Eli spoke.
“We’ll just play the amateur archaeologist car
d. Coupled in your case with the dim Englishman card. We say we were sightseeing and got lost. We were looking for an archaeological site that’s mentioned in our book.”
It was thin, and they both knew it. At best, they’d end up being escorted back to the book fair with strict orders not to stray from the exhibition hall. At worst …
“Hi, you guys!” a man in his early twenties said, plonking himself down at their table.
He shrugged off his laptop bag – capacious, black, nylon – and pushed it under the table. He wore a pale-grey business suit over a white shirt, no tie, which seemed to be the fashion for businessmen in Tehran. His hair was cut into a fashionable style, slick with some kind of wet-look gel and combed back from his forehead.
“Hi!” Gabriel said, smiling broadly and re-seating the glasses on the bridge of his nose. “How are you?”
“I’m good, good. All ready for the fair?”
“Mm-hmm.”
The young man smiled.
“Great! I brought that contract you wanted. Here.”
He fished inside his jacket and extracted a white envelope with “Robert Denning, Copernicus Press” typed on the outside. Gabriel took the envelope and slid it into his inside pocket.
“Thanks. Was there anything else?”
“Nope. Listen, I’d love to stay and chat about books, but my boss needs me back at the office. Enjoy Tehran.”
Then he reached under the table for his bag, slung it over his shoulder and was gone. Gabriel finished his coffee and stood up. He grabbed the other bag, slipped the strap over his head, then went up to the counter to pay the bill.
As they walked back to the hotel, they resumed their earlier conversation. Moving among the morning crowds through Tehran’s bustling streets, it was easy to talk without being overheard. Gabriel and Eli were both taking pains to monitor their immediate and not-so-immediate surroundings. Keeping track of faces, making sure the same ones didn’t appear more than once. Checking number plates on cars. Occasionally doubling back and looking for pedestrians momentarily interested in shop windows or stooping to tie their shoelaces. Gabriel had discussed with Hugh Bennett the possibility of their being tracked by Iranian security. It seemed unlikely. But not out of the question.
