by Rennie Airth
‘And?’
‘Ah, there you are!’
The sommelier was back. Bela went through the rite of sniffing, tasting and then swirling the ruby liquid around his mouth before giving his approval for their glasses to be filled. Ryker kept his eyes shut. He was counting up to ten.
‘Where were we? Ah, yes, the rendezvous in Paris.’ Bela’s dark eyes shone. ‘Now you’re probably wondering where the memory stick had been all this time. The answer as far as we know was in a safe deposit box in a bank in Zurich. Charon apparently felt it was the best place to leave it until the hunt for whoever had stolen it had died down. But he was expecting to have it delivered to him in Paris.’
‘So he turned up, did he?’
‘As promised, but in his own inimitable fashion – which is to say not as expected – and the upshot was the Russians lost two of their operatives, a man and a woman, and never even caught sight of their target. Now they were seriously pissed, and we knew we had to do something – and fast.’
‘But why? You told me we’d fired him. How was it our responsibility?’
Though it hardly needed smoothing, Bela ran a hand over his hair. ‘As I remarked, you’re new to the firm, Ryker, and perhaps they failed to tell you when you joined that we’re not simply in the security business. Our brief, if I can put it this way, is a little wider than that. We call ourselves Safe Solutions, but our brochure doesn’t mention the other benefits we offer carefully vetted clients. “Extreme solutions”, I would call them, and the Russians have been among our most loyal customers in that respect. After all, they couldn’t go on dropping spoonfuls of polonium into the mouths of anyone who rubbed them the wrong way or decorating their doorknobs with a dose of nerve agent. Think of the scandal. Outsourcing – that was the answer, and Safe Solutions were there, ready to offer help when it was needed. And don’t look so shocked. I’ve seen your record. Unless I’m mistaken you’ve been involved in black ops before.’
Ryker shrugged.
‘The Russians were among our best customers, as I say, and best paymasters, too, and now they are threatening to pull the rug from under our feet if we don’t help sort out this problem for them. Reputation is all in this game, Ryker. Lose that, and very soon you’ll find yourself sitting in a house of cards. Word spreads quickly, and to make matters worse before this all kicked off, we lost another prime client in Asia, and the same person was responsible in both cases.’
‘You mean this guy Charon?’
‘The truth is the man was proving worse than the plague. We thought we were done with him after he was fired. We thought he’d disappeared for good and all, but the fucker always did have something up his sleeve and sure enough he’s come back from the dead as it were to stick it to us.’
Spittle had appeared on Bela’s lips. He wiped it off carefully with his napkin. Ryker reflected on what he’d heard.
‘So you want me to waste him?’
‘Christ, no!’ His host exploded. ‘Put that thought from your mind. The Russians don’t want him dead, not yet. They want their money back first, and they’ll take him apart one finger at a time and then move on to his other body parts if they have to; the same goes for Klepkin. Finding him is Moscow’s business: Charon is ours. We’ve reason to believe he’s also in London, and though it’s unlikely you’ll come across him, if you should happen to, just call it in.’
While he was speaking he had reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph.
‘Take a good look,’ he said, sliding the print across the table to Ryker. ‘Then give it back to me.’
Ryker studied the photo. ‘Not a bad-looking guy, but no special features I see. He could be anyone.’
‘That’s our Charon, a tabula rasa, and as if that weren’t enough he also has a gift for altering his appearance.’ Bela reclaimed the photograph and put it back in his pocket. ‘I’ve a crew waiting here ready to take him if and when he shows his face. I want to wrap him up like a Christmas turkey and hand him to the Russians. We could do with a feather in our caps right now.’
Bela sat back with a sigh. He needed a breather. The baldy with the bowel problem was studying his check, Ryker noticed. Whatever he saw there wasn’t making him any happier.
‘So what am I doing here?’ he asked.
‘Your job, nothing more.’ Bela roused himself. ‘I know you haven’t been fully briefed. I’ll give you the full picture now. But remember, you’re to do exactly what I say – don’t step outside the parameters you’ve been given. Don’t try to be a hero: that could prove fatal.’
He studied the other man’s expression.
‘You’re not happy, are you? Look, Ryker, I know you’re a tough guy. I’ve read your file: Marine Recon, two Silver Stars, I’m impressed. But you’re in a different sort of game now, one you’re not familiar with. These two guys we’ve been talking about, they’re killers. Keep clear of them – Charon in particular. I’ve known the man for years – he’s a charmer, and about as trustworthy as a rattlesnake. Before you can count to three, he’ll have you eating out of his hand. But be warned: he’s lethal. You never know when he’ll strike.’
He glanced up in time to see a pair of waiters heading towards their table, each carrying a plate. They deposited the platters in front of the men, removing the gleaming silver lids covering the food with a theatrical flourish. Bela acknowledged the performance with a wave of his hand.
‘And now, for heaven’s sake, relax, Ryker.’ His smile was benign. ‘We must enjoy the good things in life while we can. Eat, drink and be merry – isn’t that what the philosophers say?’
‘So I’ve heard.’
Ryker wondered how his host had come by the story he’d just related. Was it down to his old CIA ties? What bothered him more, though, was the suspicion that he’d just been played.
‘For tomorrow, we die.’
SIXTEEN
‘Suzume … ’
Kimura breathed the name. It meant ‘sparrow’ in his language and just for a moment she seemed close to him. He could sense her presence in the quiet of the empty restaurant and imagined he could hear her soft voice.
‘Beloved … ’
It was the word she had whispered in his ear when they made love, a miracle in itself, not only that such a word could be spoken to him, but that he could be loved by anyone, and particularly one such as she.
What had brought her back was the rich broth he was sipping, a spoonful at a time. It was the first proper meal he had eaten in days and the familiar flavours had carried with them a rush of memories, some sweet, some bitter beyond bearing.
He had come upon the restaurant by chance. Since quitting the church before daybreak, his wandering steps had taken him across a wide park into another area of the city, one less elegant and therefore less peopled by the rich, of a kind he was seeking where he might find a place to hide … and wait. He had paused twice: the first time at a bank where he had changed the different currencies he was carrying into sterling. Along with his book of maps – his London A–Z – his wallet was the only thing he had salvaged from the garments he had left behind after stripping the Arab woman of her clothes. His second stop had been at a shoe store where he had bought a pair of trainers to replace the ones he had been forced to abandon. Although the boots he had come across in the church had been a godsend at the time, he had soon found them clumsy, a weight on his feet, and was glad to be wearing proper footwear again.
Although the day had been long and for a time fruitless, it had brought him some encouragement at least. One threat to the goal he had set himself had been removed. Earlier that afternoon his eye had been caught by a headline as he walked by a newsagent’s shop: Harrods Murder: Japanese Held. According to the story in the paper – which he had slowly worked his way through, puzzled by many of the words, but finally making sense of the whole – the police had received reports from several witnesses that shortly before the body of a woman was discovered in the furniture department, a number of Japanese
had been observed charging through the crowded store apparently in pursuit of another man. Acting on ‘information received’, they had subsequently arrested four men staying in a rented Air BnB flat in a district called Clapham. Although there was no indication that they had been directly linked to the Harrods crime, Kimura was relieved to read that they had been found to have entered the country illegally using ‘false travel documents’ and would appear before a magistrate the following morning. It was clear that Leather-coat and his crew would be out of action for some time and even if no further charges were brought against them, they would very likely be deported.
He’d been surprised, though, to find there was no mention of his own violent act. The house he had broken into was only a few minutes’ walk from the store. Compelled to think of an explanation, in the end he had reasoned that if the police had not made it public, it wasn’t because they hadn’t connected it to the discovery of the body – Kimura was sure they had – but rather because they could make no sense of it.
As for the house itself, owing to his rash act he would have to keep clear of it, at least for a while. Yet it remained his only lead. Word of its link to the woman he sought had been passed to him by a former colleague, a man he had once counted as a friend, but one who, according to the iron rules they both lived by, should have killed him when he had the chance. Instead he had provided Kimura with this vital piece of information, along with a chilling message.
‘Move quickly, brother. If I can find you, so can others, and they are close.’
In flight from that moment on, he had crossed two continents, arriving in London, a city he had never visited before – and never thought to see – only to find that his pursuers were on his heels.
But with the house and its presumed occupant his only means of achieving his end, he would have to keep a watch on it somehow. Surely the woman would come hurrying back from wherever she was once she heard that her home had been broken into. It was the natural thing to do. But if she failed to appear, there was still the young girl to consider as a last resort. Who was she? Why was she there? These were questions to which he would have to find answers.
Luckily the police had no worthwhile description of him to circulate. The Arab woman’s clothes he had worn had covered him from head to foot. Neither the girl nor the man who had arrived later had seen his face. Depending on what the police learned from the men they had arrested, and it would not be much, they might not even know that he, too, was Japanese. But he couldn’t take that chance and he resolved that once he had found a place to stay he would keep out of sight as much as possible during daylight hours.
However, before he could put this resolve into action – he was still tramping the snow-choked streets, narrower and more crowded in this less fashionable area – his eye had been caught by a word in Japanese script and above it the same word in Western lettering: Rakuzen. It meant the joy of dining and although it was only a little after five o’clock and the place empty, he had gone into the restaurant and found a middle-aged woman of his race busy wiping the tables and laying them with chopsticks and cutlery. She had begun to explain in Japanese that they would not be open for another hour at least, but Kimura had cut her short. Prefacing his words with a respectful bow, he had appealed to her for help.
Chance had brought him to London – a city he had never visited before – and for the moment he was stranded there and in sore need of a place to stay for a few days; a room would suffice. Could she perhaps advise him on how to proceed? It was not a question of money: he could pay his way. But given that he had no luggage and had temporarily mislaid his passport, a hotel was out of the question.
Whether she had believed him, or whether she had simply been touched by the spectacle he presented – the clothes he wore, rough trousers, a stained sweater and a coat at least a size too big for him with missing buttons, looked like what they were, cast-offs – he was nevertheless a fellow countryman and she had asked him to wait while she consulted her husband. Presently an older man wearing an apron and wiping his hands on a dish rag had appeared from the kitchen. Polite greetings had been exchanged between the two, after which Kimura had repeated his request and the man had replied that a cousin of his who lived nearby had a room in his house that he occasionally rented out and might well be willing to offer this unexpected visitor a bed. He would enquire.
Unused to meeting with such consideration – the world he lived in had never been other than harsh and pitiless – Kimura had wondered at the couple’s behaviour, which seemed to come only from a desire to help. They had asked no questions; they had simply sought to ease whatever pain it was that weighed on him that they either saw in his eyes or simply guessed at.
And yet the sensation was not entirely new to him. He had known it once before, that other world where love ruled and kindness dwelt, but for such a brief time that now it seemed more like a dream; and like a dream for ever lost.
At the woman’s urging he had sat down at a table in a corner of the restaurant, and presently the man had returned with the news that his cousin had accepted Kimura as a tenant, and also with a bowl of the broth that Kimura was drinking now. He was preparing a beef teriyaki for him, the man had explained, but it would take a little while, and in the meantime perhaps their visitor would like to taste the soup in which it would be cooked.
What he could not have known, this caring man, was the effect his simple act of generosity had on the tattered figure sitting slumped at the table – overcome by exhaustion, Kimura was struggling to stay awake – who had straightened at his approach and then bowed his head in thanks as the bowl was placed in front of him. At the first sip of the broth – dashi it was called in his language – Kimura was flung back into the past (it happened in a moment) to a room steeped in the same rich aroma that filled his nostrils now, and to the sight of a young woman bent over the small stove where a saucepan stood, her smooth brow grooved in concentration, a spoon in her hand, as she slowly brought the savoury liquid in the pan to perfection.
Early on in their time together – so fleeting it was that just the thought of it now pierced him like a tanto blade – she had realized that he wanted to know how she created this miraculous broth that transformed each evening meal they shared into an experience that lingered at the back of the throat like a gift from the gods and was the prelude to what followed when they lay down together on the narrow bed and he held her slender body in his arms. And so she had showed him: first kombu, kelp seaweed, must be added to the water that was heating, then katsuobishi, shavings of fermented tuna. This was the basis of the dish, she explained, though other things could be put in to further enrich the taste – fermented soy beans, called miso, and koji, which he had learned was a fungus, and mirin, too, a rice wine milder than sake.
He had listened, fascinated as much by the solemn look in her deep brown eyes as by what she was telling him, as she explained that this was a taste superior to all others, not like the flavours common to all cooking, not salty or sugary, not bitter or sour: it was the best and most delicious of all tastes. And it had a name, a name that for Kimura during the short months they were together had come to embrace the whole of the small world they had made for themselves and which bore all the sweetness of life he had never known before, a name that fell from her lips like a blessing.
Umami.
SEVENTEEN
Addy checked the guest bedroom. Had she got everything she wanted? She’d never properly unpacked at Rose’s house, just taken a few things she would need out of her bags when she had left to stay with Molly. Both were lying open on the bed the way she had left them and she wondered if the cops had looked through them when they were here, but thought not. There’d have been no point.
Dave Malek had called her on her mobile just before she had left Molly’s house to meet Mike Ryker for a drink. He had told her the forensic squad was through with the house and she could go back any time to collect her stuff.
‘Did they find anything?’
she had asked. When she got there she had discovered traces of their presence on the wooden banisters going upstairs – a faint dusting of fingerprint powder.
‘Not that I know of,’ Malek had told her. ‘But we’ll need a set of your prints for matching purposes. I’ll come round tomorrow and get them. Or you could look in at Chelsea nick. It’s not far from where you’re staying. Just mention my name. They’ll do it there.’
Chelsea nick! Matching prints! Addy had felt like she was in the middle of one of those British cop shows she’d watched, and she enjoyed the little prickle of pleasure it gave her; she just wished it wasn’t anything to do with Rose’s continuing absence. There’d been no word from her all day.
‘I just don’t understand why she hasn’t called,’ she’d told Molly. ‘Even if she’s still stuck in Paris she must know I’ve arrived by now.’
The pub Mike had chosen for them to meet was close by, off King’s Road, the same as Carlyle Square, but further up the street near Sloane Square.
‘It’s only a ten-minute walk, but I’ll drop you there if you want.’ Molly had been like that all day, anxious to help, but Addy had declined the offer with thanks.
‘It’s stopped snowing,’ she said. According to the radio that they had listened to over breakfast the worst of it was over, though there would still be what the forecaster called occasional ‘flurries’. ‘I could do with the exercise.’