White Hot Silence

by Henry Porter

  He muttered something in Russian, yet she could tell that he was thinking about this. She put out a hand and touched his forehead – he was perspiring and his hair was damp from sitting by the fire in the hunting hat. She stroked his temple. ‘This is not right for people who respect each other,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I want you.’ He let out a sigh before managing to say, ‘And I know you want me.’

  ‘But not like this, when you’ve had too much to drink.’

  ‘I saw it in your eyes. You want me.’

  ‘That’s smart of you, Kirill. When I saw you first, I thought – this is a shrewd man, an observant man, a man of learning.’

  He nodded and she kept stroking his head and speaking to him in a soft voice about his intelligence and manly virtues. Once or twice she overdid it and his face jerked up to search her eyes for insincerity, but she reassured him that she meant what she was saying, although she had to admit to him that she found it odd to be expressing such feelings in these circumstances, and in due course he relaxed.

  She noticed his breathing change. ‘Why don’t you get more comfortable and lie down with me,’ she said, shifting to one side. She encouraged him to lift his legs on to the narrow bed, then she lay, exactly as she had with Zhao on the boat, but this time she did not sleep. She waited without moving and, soon enough, Kirill rolled on to his back and began to snore gently, his arm occasionally flopping across her stomach.

  CHAPTER 22

  Samson turned on a phone when he landed at Helsinki and found an email from Naji Touma, which stated simply, ‘I’m in.’ He called him immediately but got his voicemail. Then he texted saying, ‘Let’s speak as soon as possible,’ and got the reply: ‘In observatory – we talk later.’

  There was also a message from Macy Harp telling him to call him on a new number.

  ‘I’d prefer to have this conversation face to face,’ said Harp. ‘Where are you, exactly?’

  Samson told him that he was about to pass through Customs at Helsinki airport.

  ‘Well, don’t. There’s a welcoming party. Nyman has been tracking you.’

  ‘How do you know they’re in Helsinki?’

  ‘You have a friend. She left a message with Ivan at the restaurant to be in touch with me.’ Jo! That was smart of her. Nyman must have realised early that Samson hadn’t boarded the London flight and got hold of his itinerary by means of a standard request to the Department of Homeland Security.

  ‘And you’re using a new number,’ said Samson.

  ‘Yes, they’re all over us like bloody maggots.’

  ‘Are they protecting Crane?’

  ‘Hard to say,’ said Harp. ‘Could be that they’re watching what’s going on. On the other hand, some pretty shady characters have risen in the British establishment. Might be that they’re on his side. But that’s not the point – what are you up to, Samson? Why are you in Finland? Tulliver sent me a message to say you’d told Hisami to get lost. Can’t blame you, but where does that leave you?’

  ‘If Hisami won’t help free Anastasia, the only option is to take Crane. We know he’s in Estonia. I’m crossing to Tallinn tonight.’

  ‘Who’s going to help you in this lunatic scheme?’

  ‘Things are at the planning stage,’ said Samson, now noticing a very large party of tourists, suntanned and still wearing holiday gear, enter the baggage hall and assemble around the carousel for a flight from Tenerife. He moved to join the crowd and started looking for a non-existent suitcase. ‘I’ll need money,’ he continued. ‘So can you put fifty k into my account? And I’ll top it up with money from my deposit account. If we get her out, we’ll charge it all to Hisami.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but Zillah told me she’s having difficulty extracting money from him.’

  ‘It’s a cash-flow problem.’

  ‘Hope you’re right. Look, there’s an old friend of mine in Tallinn. He has a German wife, who I believe runs a restaurant, so you’ll have plenty to talk about. He was in SIS with me during the eighties and nineties. He’s in his late sixties now, but very sound. Did some work for us recently. I’ll send you the coordinates and fill him in.’

  The baggage from Tenerife had nearly all been collected but the tourists all remained in a group. ‘Okay,’ said Samson absently. ‘I’ll be glad to have that contact. And send the money soonest.’

  He hung up and sidled over to a short, elderly woman with a large suitcase and numerous bits of hand luggage. He offered her a hand and, as the party moved off en masse towards Customs, insisted on wheeling her suitcase beside her. He also relieved her of some of her hand luggage, including a wide-brimmed straw hat, which he placed on his head to make her laugh. None of this escaped the notice of two young Finnish customs officers, who moved quickly to separate him from his new friend and took him to a small office for a search, which is exactly what he’d anticipated. They were polite enough, looked at his passport and the stub of his JFK boarding pass and asked why he had been waiting at the carousel when he had nothing apart from his backpack. Was he picking up someone else’s bags? They had seen him on the phone while at the carousel, and he seemed to be waiting for the Tenerife flight. Had he arranged to collect a package from the Canary Islands? And why had he been so keen to merge with the party of tourists as they exited?

  He answered no to the first two questions and seemed suddenly embarrassed about the last. They searched him meticulously, asking him to take off his shoes and most of his clothes, and decanted his rucksack, remarking on the number of phones he carried with him, and he told them he was in the kind of business that needed a lot of numbers. What was that business? they asked. He replied that he was a professional gambler. What kind of gambling? Only horses, he replied. Tell me about your last big win, said one. And Samson told them about a horse named Pearl’s Legend – a seasoned steeplechaser and a great trier – which had won at Huntingdon by twenty lengths, at odds of four to one. ‘That’s four hundred per cent profit,’ he said to the older of the two customs officers, who asked how to spell the relevant names and looked up the race on the Web. He nodded when he found it and showed it to his companion. They bought the story – as well they should. It was indeed Samson’s last big win.

  While he dressed and returned his possessions to the backpack, they asked him why he had been acting so suspiciously. Eventually, he let them extract the fact that he was being met by a woman he didn’t want to see. There had never been anything between them, he added, but he was desperate to avoid her while he was in Finland for this short time to see some harness racing. She had a drink problem and she imagined things, said Samson, now more than embarrassed. He asked if they could possibly show him a way he could leave without being noticed. The customs officers exchanged looks and grinned. They led him up a flight of stairs to a door, which opened with a security tag, and showed him into Departures.

  There was an escalator that led down to the arrivals hall and, as he passed it, he caught a glimpse of Peter Nyman, dressed in a charcoal-grey Loden coat and a trilby, consulting with two men and his usual sidekick, Sonia Fell, whom Samson had not seen since Macedonia. Nyman was gesturing impatiently to them. Samson was gone before they could look up, and he hurried through the exit to the back door of a bus that had just let off some passengers. His luck held and the bus went straight to the port, having circled to collect a few passengers at Arrivals. From low down in his seat, he glanced through the rain-streaked window and spotted Nyman on the phone.

  He just made the last boat across the Gulf of Finland that evening and went with a beer and a couple of sandwiches to a sheltered spot on the port side of the highest open deck, away from the drunks and the noise from the cabaret and karaoke bars. The crossing was rough and, apart from a few passengers who shot from the bars to retch over the side, he was alone. He loved the sea and thought of Venice emerging from the gloom as Anastasia steered the Maria Redan the last few miles, insisting all the while that Greeks were the world’s most natural sailors. He
smiled.

  He spotted the lights of Tallinn to the south and it wasn’t long after that he found his phone had a signal. He called Naji, who answered on the second ring.

  ‘What’ve you got?’ he said, without using Naji’s name.

  ‘Everything, I believe, but only you will understand it. There is money. Companies. Groups where money goes. It means little to me.’

  ‘You have access to all his emails?’

  ‘Plus deleted emails and attachments. Plus sent emails and drafts. Everything, but it was hard. This is a dedicated server – not shared with other parties. Very hard to get into it.’

  ‘Can you send me some of it, my friend?’

  There was a pause. ‘How secure are you? I think you should see this yourself on my laptop. Where are you?’

  ‘Let me call you back on another number.’

  They both jumped phones. ‘I’m about to arrive in Tallinn,’ continued Samson.

  ‘Good, then I will come to you,’ said Naji. ‘My sister will drive me. It is only four hours from Riga. We have a car!’

  ‘A car – that’s fantastic.’ It was a big deal for a refugee family which, three years before, had nothing. ‘I hope you’re keeping off the roads,’ said Samson.

  Naji laughed. ‘You are remembering the policeman’s car when I was running from everyone. I am still expert driver!’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Samson, laughing. ‘I’ll text you when I know where I’m going to be.’

  Samson was among the last to leave the ferry and decided to walk the half-mile to the old city because he needed the exercise and also because he wanted to make sure he hadn’t been picked up in the ferry terminal. He passed through the city walls by a squat round tower and followed an utterly still cobbled street to St Olaf’s Church, opposite which he located the small hotel he’d booked from the ferry. He paid for two nights in cash and gave the receptionist a Hungarian ID card in the name of Norbert Soltesz, which had lain tucked in his wallet, lightly glued to the reverse of a British Automobile Association membership card.

  By the time he had slung his bag on to the bed and washed his face his phone had vibrated twice with the same message. ‘Macy said you’d like a nightcap. Bar Viktor close to your hotel. Table on the right.’

  A dozen determined young drinkers and a quartet of pool players populated the large, gloomy basement. Music by Keith Jarrett was on in the background. As Samson looked round, a tall man, a little stooped and with weather-beaten skin, rose and offered his hand. ‘Robert Harland – Macy’s chum.’

  Samson took off his jacket, hung it on the back of the chair and ordered a beer from the waitress. ‘How’d you know where I’d be?’

  My wife spotted you at the terminal and saw that you had decided to walk. It wasn’t hard to work out that you were going to the nearest hotel in the old town. Any further and you would have taken a cab. Besides, I wanted to know if you were followed from the boat. And, no, Mr Samson – you weren’t.’ He raised his glass. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘It’s Paul, but Macy’s taken to calling me by my second name.’

  He acknowledged this and set down his glass. ‘My wife, Ulrike, and I are Estonian citizens. We have both renounced the citizenship of our countries and we have made our home here. We have a sailing boat, a place in the sticks and have picnics with the Estonian elite, so what we don’t need is someone screwing that up for us. Understood? Good.’

  ‘Weren’t you the guy in …’

  ‘In Berlin, yes. I hear it’s become an object lesson in SIS training of what not to do, the emphasis now being on obedience and lines of authority. But the operation was a success and we got everyone out. The Office always forgets that part.’ His eyes smiled.

  ‘You know why I’m here?’

  ‘Macy told me all he knows. Is there any update as to the victim’s location? I know you were hoping for some more information on that.’ Samson shook his head. ‘And there’s no movement from her husband on meeting the demands – in fact, you don’t even know what they are?’

  ‘There’s a complete ledger of transfers from the company throughout this year, detailing where the money is destined for. I haven’t seen it but, obviously, it’s one of the things tied to her kidnap. There’s also the money itself – a lot of it. Maybe over two hundred million US. The accounts are being accessed from Tallinn. I believe Crane is here.’

  Harland leaned into Samson’s face and aimed his words at the wall. ‘And your plan, which is at least as crazy as anything I cooked up behind the Iron Curtain, is to snatch him and exchange him for Hisami’s wife, who happens to be your former girlfriend and great love. Is that right?’

  ‘I see Macy did tell you everything. Hisami hired me because I’m good at my job, so it’s not what it seems.’

  ‘Yes, he said that, too, but you are the first to know that these things require planning and back-up. You’re going to need people. And Zillah Dee’s outfit won’t supply them, not for something as illegal and dangerous as this. You need somewhere to hold him if, indeed, you manage to seize him, and then you have to contact the kidnappers and propose the exchange. I imagine you have no means of doing that. They simply phone you or Hisami – is that right?’ Samson shrugged. ‘And then there is the puzzling interest of our former colleagues who tried to nab you at Helsinki, presumably because they knew you were on your way here. I remember the lugubrious Nyman well. Is he now an apostle for the far right?’

  ‘I can’t answer any of that. But I can tell you that they filmed Anastasia by the side of an open grave last night. That’s the only thing that matters.’

  ‘My hunch,’ continued Harland, ‘is that the Office is waiting for something to happen and they are interested to watch it.’ He put on his glasses, took out an old Nokia phone and started working the button keyboard with his index finger. ‘This is my address – it’s not far from here. Come to the house whenever you need to. Better than the phone.’ He winced and suddenly lurched to his feet. ‘My back gives me jip when it’s damp. Walking helps. Let’s take a stroll, if you’re not too tired.’

  They left the bar and moved through the shadows of St Olaf’s, then walked towards the centre of the town through a wet mist that haloed the lights. ‘It’s a beautiful place,’ said Harland, still moving gingerly. ‘We’ve been very happy here.’ A couple passed, one wheeling a bike. Both raised a hand and said, ‘Hi!’

  ‘And you know everyone?’

  ‘Neighbours,’ he said. ‘I helped put some security in place for the government. They don’t want to lose their democracy again. They’re good people. I like them a lot.’

  Harland had stopped and was looking up at an ancient building with Gothic windows. Samson turned to him. ‘Can you help me find Crane? I think it may be Anastasia’s only chance.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ He laid a hand on Samson’s shoulder. ‘If there are expenses, I take it you and Macy are good for them?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before.’ He pointed down a narrow street. ‘This is my turning. Come round tomorrow. It’s the pretty green house set back from the road with a tree in the garden. You can’t miss it.’

  ‘So you can find Crane?’ said Samson, knowing that he was probably pushing too hard.

  A trace of irritation flickered in the old spy’s face. ‘I said I’ll try for you. I’ll do my best – all right!’ Then he walked stiffly away.

  CHAPTER 23

  She waited, staring at the door because she was certain she had not heard the sound of the lock turning after he entered. About an hour later, she rolled away from him and on to her stomach so that she could let one foot drop to the ground then the other and push up from the bed causing as little disturbance as possible. Not even the wire stretched on the bedframe protested. She had kept her trainers on because of the cold and, though they made one tiny squeak on the wooden floor, she moved silently the rest of the way to the door, grasped the handle and pulled it open on to the dark passageway. Sh
e stepped out and listened before pulling the door to, rather than closing it. Then she slipped down the passage that led into the largest room in the dacha, where she had been given soup on her arrival. The building creaked a little and, outside, the rain pounded on the tin roof of an extension and drainpipes gushed water, but there was no sound inside the building.

  At every step she stopped and listened. There were bound to be men on guard – there were so many of them. She had noticed a one-storey building inside the compound, a little distance from the dacha, and during her two evenings outside with Kirill by the fire she had seen lights on and a door being opened. Maybe that was where most of them slept. Kirill maintained his distance from the men, so there seemed a possibility that there were no guards in the main building, but she was sure there’d be someone on the gate. For the moment, she had no realistic thought of escape. She would recce the place and look for opportunities – that was all. And she hadn’t ruled out returning to her room and to Kirill’s side.

  There was a very dim light in what she guessed was a kitchen. She crossed the main room and saw that it came from the display panel of a freezer. The light was enough to see by and she made out a pile of groceries just dumped on a sideboard. She took what came to hand and stuffed some items in her pockets, not knowing what they were. This would be an explanation if she were caught; she would say she had been driven by hunger to raid the kitchen. To take one of the knives in the drawer below the work surface would destroy that alibi, so she left them. But she did pick up a long oven lighter and pulled its trigger to see if the flame worked. This, she could use.

  She kept exploring, growing more confident that she was the only person awake in the building. The place was cluttered with hunting paraphernalia and possessed the musty smell of somewhere that hadn’t been occupied for a long time before Kirill’s men arrived. There were shelves of books and crockery, a few paintings and one or two framed photographs of men with slaughtered deer and boar. Kirill was not among them.