The hidden man am-2

by Charles Cumming

  McCreery wiped away an imaginary speck of dust from the surface of the table and said, ‘To all intents and purposes, yes.’

  For the last time, Ben took hold of the letter and began going through it, picking out the facts.

  ‘So it’s bullshit that Dad worked for British Intelligence for twenty years?’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘And he never went to Berlin?’

  ‘No, he was in Berlin, but declared, and only for eighteen months. That was immediately after he left your mother in the mid-1970s.’

  Ben flicked through three more pages until he found what he was looking for.

  ‘And what about this?’ He stabbed the letter with the end of his thumb. ‘Was he ever assigned to China?’

  ‘Never went there in his life.’ McCreery finished his whisky. ‘And Bone didn’t quit the Cousins in ’92, either. He was thrown out after the Kostov cock-up, turned to the drink and became a teacher. Humanities, if I’m not mistaken. Now there’s an irony.’ Taking the letter back from Ben, he added, ‘Just look at the way he phrases certain things as a means of disguising his guilt. It’s bloody amateur hour. Here, on the third page.’ McCreery quoted from the text. ‘ I never met Mischa, of course, but I know he was a sweet kid. Don’t you see, Ben? That’s a blatant bloody lie. The sheer nerve of the man. And what does he say later on? That he interrogated a Soviet soldier independently of Christopher and Mischa? Total cock and bull. The Soviet soldier was Mischa. How else do you think Bone knows so much about the Russian military?’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Ben said quickly. He felt compelled to add: ‘It’s not that I don’t believe you. I just want to get to the bottom of who killed Dad. That’s it. Everything else is irrelevant…’

  ‘… and I can understand that.’

  ‘But Bone’s not a sadist. He bears no grudge against me. Why pull me aside at the funeral and then write six pages of bullshit about Kostov and MI6? Why involve me at all?’

  ‘Alice,’ McCreery replied instantly.

  ‘Alice?’

  ‘Think about it. She works for a major newspaper. Bone’s hoping she’ll leak the story to the news desk and embarrass the Brits.’

  ‘But she would never do that.’ It was a statement that lacked conviction.

  ‘Bob’s not to know that, is he? This is not a benevolent individual we’re talking about. Bone and Masterson were two of the most unsavoury characters I’ve ever had the misfortune of coming into contact with in over thirty years of intelligence work.’

  Ben seized on the mistake.

  ‘Masterson is the mentor?’ he said. ‘The one who actually recruited Mischa?’

  ‘Oh dear.’ A pantomime of embarrassment played across McCreery’s face. He touched his mouth with his hand. ‘I shouldn’t have revealed his name. That was an error. I apologize.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Jock. I’m not going to tell anyone.’

  ‘Good. Good. Well, look, I must catch that train back to Guildford.’ McCreery was standing, fetching his stick. ‘In the meantime, if I could just hang on to the letter and take a longer look at it, that would be most helpful. We’ve already lost one and you can imagine that we don’t want this sort of thing lying around…’

  Ben hesitated. To refuse would seem odd. He made a mental note of Kostov’s aliases for the benefit of Alice’s contact in Customs and Excise and said, ‘Of course. Be my guest.’

  McCreery looked pleased. He pocketed the letter, saying, ‘Your other one’s bound to turn up.’

  ‘Sure it is.’

  ‘And look, I don’t need to tell you again that the fewer people that know about this, the better.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  Ben was also on his feet, watching McCreery pull a windcheater over his head. He had the sudden but irrefutable feeling that he was being palmed off. The mood of their conversation had changed markedly.

  ‘Have you spoken to Bone since you received it?’ McCreery asked.

  ‘No,’ Ben said, falling in behind him as they walked to the door. ‘He didn’t leave a number. Just a PO Box address in New Hampshire.’

  ‘I see.’

  It was as if McCreery was more than just late for a train. He seemed hurried, his job done. Out on the street they turned to one another.

  ‘Well it was super to see you, it really was.’ The charm in his eyes, all the warmth and friendliness engendered in the course of the afternoon, had evaporated. Now McCreery looked distant and removed.

  ‘Yeah, it was good to see you too, Jock.’

  ‘And good luck with your art,’ he said, employing a term that Ben detested. ‘Don’t worry, old boy, don’t worry,’ he called out, hobbling around the corner. ‘We’ll get to the bottom of this thing, you’ll see. It’s all just a question of time.’

  37

  ‘Something’s not right, brother. Something is not right.’

  Ben was pacing in the kitchen at Elgin Crescent, sections of Wednesday’s Guardian scattered across the floor.

  ‘The letter goes missing from my studio, your version never even shows up. Jock says it’s crap from start to finish, then insists I keep the contents to myself. Somebody, somewhere, knows something that we don’t. Somebody, somewhere is covering something up.’

  Seated calmly at the kitchen table, Mark smiled to himself and invited Ben to sit down.

  ‘I’d prefer standing,’ he said.

  ‘Fine. Then why don’t you begin at the beginning? Why don’t you just tell me what this Yank actually said.’

  It took Ben fifteen minutes to describe the contents of Bone’s letter in microscopic detail. He was flustered but remained concise. He told Mark about Mischa, he told him about Kostov. His brother listened carefully, but in the manner of a card player who knows he holds the ace.

  When he had finished, Ben said, ‘You don’t look like this is making any impact on you at all.’

  ‘I don’t?’

  ‘No. You don’t.’

  ‘Well, where did the letter come from?’ Mark asked. Ben looked at him.

  ‘That’s all you have to ask? That’s the one thing you want to know? Where it came from?’

  ‘Well it’s a start.’ Mark was aware that he sounded smug, that he was playing the old hand and professional spook, but it was fun watching Ben flounder around in a misconception.

  ‘You’re not interested in Sudoplatov?’ his brother asked. ‘You don’t want to know about Kalugin?’

  Mark tilted back in his chair. He put his hands behind his head and grinned again.

  ‘What the fuck is so funny?’

  Not for the first time, Mark weighed up the possibility of telling Ben about Blindside. Just to see the look on his face; just to put him in the picture.

  ‘Nothing’s funny,’ he said. ‘I promise you, nothing’s funny at all.’

  ‘Then why are you looking at me like I’m a fucking idiot?’

  ‘Because if Jock says the letter’s a crock of shit written by a drunk who got thrown out of the CIA then I’m inclined to believe him. If Mischa was an American failure, if Kostov actually died in 1997, then what the fuckare you getting so upset about?’

  ‘I’m not upset,’ Ben said.

  ‘Yes you are.’

  ‘I’m just annoyed.’

  ‘About what?’

  Mark wondered if some of the tension between them had been precipitated by the will. Ben had asked for his share of the money, but had done it grudgingly, as if the request put him in Mark’s debt. He noticed that he didn’t answer his question.

  ‘Look,’ Mark said, trying to make him feel better. ‘Did this Bone guy leave an address?’

  Ben’s reply was sarcastic.

  ‘No. This Bone guy did not leave an address. Just a PO Box number in New Hampshire.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Ben looked at him as if he had lost control of his senses.

  ‘ Exactly? ’

  Mark stood up. He had weighed up the odds. So what if Ben found
out about Kukushkin and Randall, about Tamarov and Tom? Where was the harm? An electric combination of vanity and common sense persuaded him to break cover. He drained the coffee he had been drinking, half a cup in a single gulp and said, ‘Is that locked?’

  Ben looked at the kitchen door leading out into the garden.

  ‘What, that? No. I go out there the whole time.’

  ‘Then let’s get some air. Let’s go outside for a chat.’

  The garden was colder than it looked, furniture damp to the touch and a settling of dew on the grass. Mark peered over neighbouring fences — both sides to check if they could be overheard — then returned to the terrace where he sat in a narrow wicker chair buckled by English weather. Ben remained on his feet and said, with undisguised derision, ‘Well this makes a nice change.’

  Mark was wondering where to begin. Somehow he had always known that he was going to tell Ben. It was just a question of the timing.

  ‘What are we doing out here, brother? It’s fucking freezing.’

  Mark leaned forward in the chair, little creaks and snaps. Then he looked away from the house, towards the south end of the garden and said, ‘We’re out here because I know the real reason why Dad was killed.’

  Ben took the news evenly, with no discernible movement beyond a slight creasing around the eyes.

  ‘Say that again?’

  ‘Sit down, Benjamin.’

  Mark only called him ‘Benjamin’ when things were serious. He had called him ‘Benjamin’ when the cancer was quickening and their mother had six weeks to live. Ben buttoned up his coat, settled on the edge of the garden table, and waited.

  ‘I’m not supposed to tell you this.’ Mark looked very serious, all the playfulness and swagger gone from his face. He seemed burdened by some terrible responsibility, an expression that managed to irritate his brother still further. ‘For the last couple of months I’ve been working for a man called Bob Randall. He’s an officer with MI5.’

  Ben found that he could not laugh.

  ‘ MI5? ’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that explains a lot.’ The lightness of this reply belied Ben’s total surprise; he experienced a jealous kick of sudden and unexpected resentment.

  ‘Seb and Tom Macklin have been under surveillance for almost a year. Tom has been laundering money for a Moscow crime syndicate run by a man called Viktor Kukushkin. He’s tricked everybody, maybe even Seb; nobody knows to what extent the boss is involved. For months, Tom’s been buying up real estate, fixing invoices, moving money around the clubs, dealing with a character called Vladimir Tamarov who’s Kukushkin’s number one over here. They’re running hookers in from eastern Europe, pushing class As, the whole lot.’

  Ben was shaking his head.

  ‘And Dad found out about this while he was working for Divisar?’

  ‘It looks that way.’ Mark glanced up at the house.

  It was as if the entire edifice of Elgin Crescent might be eavesdropping on their conversation. ‘That’s why we have to talk out here. I don’t want to come over all Harry Palmer, but there’s a very small chance your place is wired.’

  Now Ben laughed.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, dismissing the notion because it gave him a moment of power. ‘What do I have to do with it? Nobody bugs the home of a painter.’

  ‘Fine,’ Mark replied, and was forced to concede that he had perhaps overreacted. ‘Still, it’s better not to talk about anything sensitive when you’re inside the house.’

  ‘OK, James,’ Ben whispered, mocking Mark’s tone. He pursed out his lips and looked camp. ‘Are you licensed to kill, brother? Have you got gadgets and herpes?’

  Mark didn’t laugh.

  ‘Macklin has been redirecting some of the Kukushkin money into a secret offshore bank account in the Cayman Islands. Before Dad died he had several conversations with a banker out there called Timothy Lander.’

  ‘I’ve heard that name.’ Ben stood up and the backs of his legs felt damp beneath his clothes. ‘McCreery used it. Told me exactly the same thing.’

  ‘About Lander?’

  ‘About Lander.’

  ‘Well, there you go.’ Mark was glad that Ben at last looked appropriately respectful. ‘Five and Six are both trying to find the same guy. I reckon Lander queried what was going on, told Dad about it, and Macklin had him shot before he whiffed the gig to the Russians. Either that or he simply found out that Viktor and Tom were in bed together and threatened to go to the police.’

  ‘So the whole Kostov thing really is bullshit?’

  ‘Total bullshit. A red herring. Probably dreamed up by Kukushkin to throw us off the scent. That’s why 2I asked you where the letter came from. Kukushkin’s people in New York probably rented out the PO Box, got hold of Bone’s stationery, then faked the letter. That’s why there was no fixed address. The Russian mob’s full of former KGB and soldiers who did time in central Asia. They’d know all about what Western intelligence got up to out there during the Soviet invasion. It would have been easy to make something up, to take the names of dead men like Mischa and Kostov and re-invent their lives for a smokescreen. I bet Jockis running a trace on the PO Box right this minute, finding out who’s been renting it.’

  ‘So Jock knows about all this?’ Beneath his relaxed demeanour, Ben felt humbled by the realization that for weeks he had been a small, nearly irrelevant player in a drama of bewildering scale and complexity.

  ‘Not my end of it,’ Mark replied. ‘I have to keep that hush-hush. Far as I know, Five have just used the local cops in Moscow. The other day my controller said they were finally bringing in SIS to help trace Lander, but otherwise the Friends have been kept right out of it.’

  ‘Listen to you,’ Ben said. ‘Got all the lingo. The old man would be proud of you. Like looking in a mirror.’

  Ben had meant this only lightly, but Mark’s face hummed with pride. He said, ‘Thankyou,’ and reached out to hold Ben’s wrist. His touch was very warm and certain. ‘I’m doing this for him, brother,’ he said. ‘And for us. Got to try and help. Got to dismantle the whole Kukushkin thing. Want to make sure nothing like this can ever happen to anybody else.’

  ‘Well, I think that’s great.’ And Ben felt that he was twelve or thirteen years old again, looking on his older brother with a rapt and fascinated attention. He possessed little of Mark’s instinctive decency, his natural sense of right and wrong. A part of him dismissed this element of his brother’s personality as wrong-headed and idealistic; yet there was something to be envied in Mark’s secret life, a sense that he was honouring their father’s memory.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Mark asked.

  ‘Just that I hope you’re being careful. And that if you need any help I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘I appreciate it. Thank you.’

  ‘And you trust this guy Randall? You really think he knows what he’s doing?’

  ‘A hundred per cent.’

  A cold wind cut across the garden and Mark stood up out of the wicker chair, rolling his neck like a doll. Ben experienced another stab of frustrated envy, a craving to be involved.

  ‘Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help?’ he said.

  Mark looked at him and stepped down on to the grass. He was touched by Ben’s concern and already feeling the relief of having confessed his secret to the one person he could trust. Perhaps Ben’s presence would take the sting out of the job; perhaps Ben could act as a buffer for all the stress and concern.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing you could really do, mate.’

  ‘It’s just that I get so fucking bored all day up there in the studio. Maybe if I could just do something, even if it was only for Dad…’

  ‘Well, look,’ Mark began, recognizing the sentiment, ‘why don’t you come and meet the Russians sometime, make it look like there’s nothing going on? I’m going to a place with Tom on Friday, supposed to befriend one of them and get him on my side.’

  Be
n leaped on this.

  ‘Christ, yeah,’ he said. He had not expected such a big role. ‘Sure I’d do that if you thought it would help.’

  ‘It’ll make good cover.’ Mark was discovering a certain logic to the idea. ‘They’d never suspect anything if the two of us were out together.’

  But how would he square it with Randall and Quinn? Why, when he had been so at ease with the masquerade, had Mark suddenly called on Ben for support? He made light of his decision with a joke.

  ‘It’s actually a lap-dancing place in Finchley Road. You might enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Or find something out,’ Ben added quickly. ‘Maybe stumble on some useful information…’

  ‘Well, that’s right. The important thing is not to say anything to anyone, not to let on that you know. And don’t mention what we’ve talked about to Alice, and certainly not to Jock.’

  ‘Fuck Jock,’ Ben said, with authority.

  ‘Forget everything until we talk. I’ll give you the address of the place when I’ve got it. Until then keep your mouth shut. We’ll sort everything out tomorrow.’

  38

  It was a cold night and Ben walked at pace along Finchley Road, searching for the entrance to the club. He hoped to discover Macklin and Mark waiting for him in the foyer, or just pulling up in a cab, because what if somebody he knew — a friend, perhaps, maybe even a gallery owner — spotted him as he walked inside alone? How would that look? A married man of thirty-two using lap-dancers for kicks?

  Moving north into residential Hampstead, he noticed red rope cutting off a section of pavement and a chunky, stubbled bouncer breathing clouds of air into thick leather gloves. A blue neon sign hung over the door and two skinny office boys wearing chinos and polo necks had just mustered the courage to go inside.

  ‘Evening, sir.’

  The bouncer was built like a bag of cement. With a single, murderous flick of his eyes he analysed Ben’s shoes, trousers, jacket and tie, and then waved him past the rope. Ben moved towards a small booth inside the door and paid an entrance fee of fifteen pounds. The girl who took the money had a copy of OK magazine hidden beneath the counter.