Double Agent

by Tom Bradby

  ‘English Breakfast would be great,’ she said. She was looking at the wooden dresser, which was full of photographs of the children, but also of the four of them as a family and of Kate. The one at the end was his favourite, taken on the day of their graduation, overlooking the river. She’d been drunk and happy, carefree in a way she could scarcely remember. ‘I told you,’ he said, following the direction of her gaze. ‘Memories are all I have.’

  He withdrew to make tea. Kate tried to divorce herself from her emotionally loaded surroundings in order to make sense of what had just happened.

  Who had been watching Sergei? Why had they let her live?

  What in the hell was she going to do now? She moved to the window and looked out. The BMW was still there.

  Stuart returned with two mugs of steaming tea and a plate of biscuits. He’d made it strong for her, as she liked. ‘How are the kids?’ he asked, as he sat on the sofa opposite her.

  ‘They’re well. Gus was very thrilled about being made captain of cricket.’

  ‘I know. It’s going to break my heart, not being able to watch. You’ll have to send me some video.’ He smiled again, clearly keeping up a cheery façade at some cost. Kate was thinking about the men in the BMW downstairs. Were they waiting for back-up, for others to join them? Was the idea now to kill both her and Stuart here in this flat? Would that be a double problem solved? ‘How about Fi?’ Stuart asked.

  Kate tried to concentrate on the conversation. There was no point in alarming Stuart. ‘She’s difficult to reach still. She spends a lot of time with Jed, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. He’s a very nice young man.’

  ‘Despite the tattoos and piercings?’ He was smiling again. She gave him a weak grin in return. ‘I don’t mean to pry, but I assume you’re in some kind of trouble.’

  ‘I need to sleep,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll work out what to do.’

  ‘Of course. Just finish your tea. I’m afraid I only have one bedroom, but if you don’t mind, you can sleep next door . . .’

  ‘I’m grateful for anywhere to put my head down right now.’

  They sipped their tea during another long and surreal silence. ‘Just so I know . . . I mean, I don’t mind, but forewarned is forearmed and all that. Am I going to be in trouble?’ he asked.

  ‘I doubt it. Something just happened. I don’t know how, still less why. I need time and space to think before I work out what to do next.’

  ‘Of course. I understand. What are you doing here in the first place?’

  ‘I was meeting someone.’

  Stuart couldn’t hide his hurt at that. ‘I think I can guess who. What happened?’

  ‘I’m really sorry, I just need to rest.’ She put down her tea.

  He leapt to his feet. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course. I understand.’

  He showed her through to his bedroom next door, which had a small en-suite bathroom with a loo and shower. There were more photographs of the family on a bookshelf, and by the bed there was one of Kate alone, taken only a few years ago in the Italian Dolomites. Kate didn’t know what to say. This was not how she had imagined him living here. ‘Do you mind if I take a shower?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course. I’ll leave you to it . . . Anything else you want, just shout.’

  ‘If you need to go to work or—’

  ‘I don’t have a job to go to. I’ll be reading a book next door. I’ll leave you to sleep for as long as you want.’

  He retreated. Kate undressed, stepped into the shower and tried to shake off the sense of guilt she felt as she washed away the legacy of another man with her husband’s favourite mint shower gel and Australian shampoo.

  She dried herself and cleaned her teeth with his brush. She took the top off the Acqua di Parma aftershave and sniffed it. She’d given him his first bottle in a Christmas stocking almost a decade before and he’d stuck to it religiously ever since. That was Stuart, loyal to a fault. Except, as it turned out, in the one way that really mattered. Kate dried herself, put on a clean pair of knickers and a T-shirt, and sat on his bed. She took half a dose of zopiclone this time, since she wasn’t sure how long she should sleep.

  She pulled back the curtain and checked the street outside once more. The BMW was parked there, still, but the men inside did not appear to have been joined by anyone else. Who in hell were they?

  She lay down and tried to ignore the light streaming in through the thin yellow curtains and the sight of her own cheery face gazing down at her from the table beside the bed. Was it conceivable Stuart had put these pictures out after her phone call or did he really have this beside his bed all the time?

  Her thoughts led inexorably back to Sergei. She could think of no reason why they would kill him and let her live. What had he planned to tell her? What would she have found out? She thought of his final few words: If you pursue this, it may cost you more than your career. You must know that.

  There could be only two candidates for his murder, surely: either it was the GRU shutting down a renegade officer who’d had no motive but to assist the woman he’d always loved. (What was it he had told her? You think, after all these years, that your husband was the Russian’s state’s only asset at the heart of British Intelligence?) Or it was Mikhail, Igor and those close to them trying to protect their exit strategy.

  She turned it over and over in her mind. Was it Sergei they had been watching, or had they been tipped off that she was on her way and followed her from the moment she’d crossed the border?

  Kate flopped over, so that she was face down; the way she traditionally slept. She could smell her husband in the sheets and the sensation was comforting.

  They’d known she was coming. That was what she kept returning to. And they’d killed Sergei before he could give her a full account of Moscow’s men – or women – in London.

  But he might already have done so, in which case why not kill her, too?

  Because to murder her would cause them problems. There would be an international outcry: a British civil servant killed on a Russian train. Too much trouble, perhaps. Better to send her back confused and disoriented.

  They were protecting someone. They’d been tipped off she was coming and they’d closed down her source.

  That much seemed clear to her. Concentrate, she told herself, on the pieces you can see and understand, not the many parts of the jigsaw you can’t know and may never know.

  Kate shut her eyes. She tried to think of something else. She breathed in hard again and attempted to transport herself back to the carefree days of her life with Stuart. She turned from one image of him to the next: walking along Constantine Bay in Cornwall the summer before last; Stuart laughing his head off, roaring drunk, on the night the picture beside her had been taken in the Dolomites.

  After a while, she noticed the sheet beneath her was damp with tears.

  She pressed her face down harder, trying to clear her mind, as she waited and waited for sleep to come.

  In the end, the chemicals did the trick, but, as ever these days, not for long. When she awoke, the clock on the table beside her told her it was just after midday. Kate got up and pulled back the curtain to reveal shards of sunlight glinting off the rows of concrete tower blocks. It was bright. The BMW had disappeared. There was a white van further along, parked with its engine running. Perhaps they planned to kidnap her.

  She sat on the bed. She felt grim, but was gripped now with at least one clear thought: she had to get out of here, right away, by any means possible.

  She pulled on a pair of jeans and packed her dress into her bag. She brushed her teeth again and emerged to find Stuart reading his book next door. ‘Did you sleep?’ he asked.

  ‘A bit. Thank you.’

  ‘You looked like you needed it.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘Why not? I might actually drink it this time.’

  He went to the kitchen and returned with a sandwich as well as tea. ‘I figured yo
u’d probably need to eat.’

  She was ravenous, so she didn’t argue with him. He watched her eat in silence. She finished, and sipped her tea. She was aware his eyes had yet to leave her face. There was a hunger in them she’d not seen since the first days of their courtship. She tried to suppress the wave of pleasure it brought. And in that moment, she knew he would do absolutely anything she asked. ‘I understand if you don’t want to do this and I wouldn’t blame you. But could you drive me to the border?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Finland. In fact, St Petersburg, because I need to pick up my hire car.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be quicker or easier to fly or catch the train? I can come with you to help allay suspicion if that’s the issue, but it’s a very long—’

  ‘I’d rather go by road and I’m in no fit state to make the drive alone, as you can probably tell.’

  He looked at her for what felt like an age, his mind evidently turning over this strange twist of fate. ‘I’d do anything for you,’ he said. ‘Anything at all.’

  Kate went to the window and looked out once more. The van had moved off. She scanned the street outside carefully, sweeping one way, then the other. If they were still watching her – and they must be – she could not see how. ‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  22

  BEFORE THEY LEFT Moscow, Kate said she needed to go to a chemist. Stuart was resistant: if she really was in trouble, shouldn’t they leave straight away? But Kate was adamant and would not give a reason. In the end, he took it in mute silence and she half suspected he guessed why it was a matter of such urgency. She bought a bottle of water and swallowed the morning-after pill before she got back to the car. The only thing that worried her was that the last time she’d relied on this last resort against an unwanted pregnancy – ironically on that skiing holiday to the Dolomites when they’d supposedly been using condoms until they’d both got too drunk on the last night – she had bled profusely and for a long time. She’d also bought two large packets of sanitary towels.

  If Stuart had guessed at the truth, or something like it, it might have explained the long period of silence. It was as if he was nursing a hurt and trying to find a way to broach the subject. ‘It must have been quite some reason to take the risk of coming here,’ he said eventually.

  ‘I can’t really talk about it,’ she said. She glanced into the side mirror once more. The Volkswagen Golf she’d thought was tailing them had turned away at the last traffic lights and her suspicion had landed instead on a dark Volvo that appeared to be hanging back at a steady distance. ‘Tell me about your life in Moscow,’ she said.

  ‘That’s going to be a very short conversation.’ They’d reached the outskirts of the capital now and were driving north towards a portentous, brooding sky. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Are you still hunting for a job?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He shrugged. ‘I met my “handler” – if that’s what you’d call him – last week and I complained to him about my lot. He seemed quite sympathetic and promised to see what he could do. They’ve said they’re going to ask me to lecture new recruits on how Western bureaucracies work. I think it would be different if I was you. Then, I guess, they’d be looking to put me to use, but an awful lot of what a civil servant does is well known to them. My guy did seem quite interested in my read on the PM and Imogen and the current state of British politics, so maybe something will come of that.’

  ‘Do you have friends here?’

  ‘You mean a girlfriend?’

  ‘No. I was just—’

  ‘Well, the answer is no and no. I’ve mostly been feeling sorry for myself, I’ll admit. It’s been very depressing. I spend a lot of time in the local gym and that’s about the only thing that’s keeping me sane.’

  ‘You look fit,’ she said. It was true. She’d found it hard not to admire his bulging arm muscles when he’d been sitting in his T-shirt in the flat. ‘So what do you do all day?’

  ‘I get up. I have breakfast. I read the British newspapers online and congratulate myself on escaping the crazy crock of shit that is our politics before feeling unbearably homesick. I go to the gym for a couple of hours. I’m tight for money, so I come home for lunch . . . I watch TV in the evening, but I try to spend the afternoons reading a book. Otherwise . . .’

  ‘Haven’t they helped you at all? I mean socially or . . .’

  ‘Not really.’ He forced a smile. ‘It’s like I’ve fallen off the end of the earth. I’m not complaining. I’ve made my bed, so I have to lie in it. Those couple of nights I spent with Imogen are turning out to be just about the most expensive in history.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘I know there’s no way back. Somehow I have to make it work here. I need to find a life, friends, whatever. I’ve asked if there’s an SVR football team I can join. If not, there are a few other expat organizations I can maybe fall in with. It’s just . . . there’s a lot to let go of and I’m not there yet.’

  It started to rain, first with a few drops and then in great thumping balls of water. The Panda’s windscreen wipers struggled to keep up. Kate’s gaze was drawn relentlessly back to the side mirror, but the Volvo had disappeared from view and she could no longer be sure they actually had a tail. If anything, it confused her still further.

  ‘Was it worth waiting for,’ Stuart said, his gaze resolutely dead ahead, ‘your night with Sergei?’

  ‘Were your trysts with Imogen?’

  ‘No,’ he said emphatically. ‘Not that it will make any difference, but she wanted more. It was me who cut it off. I felt unbearably guilty, of course, but it was also just . . . second rate, mechanical, by comparison.’

  ‘Just for the record, it doesn’t make any difference.’

  He peered closer to the windscreen. It was misting up now so he put the fan on full. ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t need to, do I?’

  ‘And yet you’re here in my car. I guess I’m taking quite a risk driving you wherever it is you’re really headed. So it would be polite at least to try to indulge me with an honest—’

  ‘Sergei is dead.’

  She watched the colour drain from Stuart’s face. He tugged at the stubble on his chin, a sure sign he was nervous. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Jesus Christ, Kate.’

  ‘I didn’t come here to have sex with him. I came to ask him a question that only he would conceivably be able to give me an answer to. This morning, I found him with his throat cut.’

  ‘After you’d . . .’

  What was it with men? Kate thought. Why were they so obsessed with the act of sexual intercourse? ‘You mean after we’d had sex?’ He didn’t answer. ‘Yes, if you want to torture yourself with the truth, after we’d had sex. I didn’t intend it to happen. I didn’t especially want it to. But I’m lonely, too, and strung out, and bereft and confused. In the maelstrom of all that, I finished what I shouldn’t perhaps have started all those years ago. And, yes, also, the earth did move for me, not better or worse than making love to you, just different.’

  She saw the hurt in his eyes and wished instantly she’d held her tongue. ‘Is that what you wanted to hear?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then don’t ask a question if you don’t really want to know the answer.’

  There was another long silence. ‘I did want to know,’ he said. ‘Thank you for telling me the truth.’

  ‘So that you can torture yourself with it?’

  ‘Perhaps it will release me.’ He turned to her. ‘That picture of you by my bed wasn’t for show, Kate. I’ve never stopped loving you, not for a single second.’

  Regret flooded her now: for his betrayal, for their estrangement, for the life they’d had and the future that might have been, for the brutal honesty of her tongue. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I should have kept all that to myself.’

  ‘I think I had it coming.’

/>   ‘That doesn’t make it any better.’ She thought of the flat they’d just left and the window it had offered into his life here as it was and as it might be. The barren, hopeless bleakness of it chilled her.

  ‘Won’t they come after you once they’ve found the body?’ he asked. ‘Why haven’t they come already?’

  ‘It depends who you mean by “they”.’

  ‘Well . . . I don’t know – the police, the Mafia, the SVR, whoever was involved.’

  ‘The police certainly, I’d guess.’

  ‘Does that make me an accessory to murder?’

  She didn’t answer that. Sitting there now, Stuart’s crimes, which appeared to amount to a couple of nights of careless sex with Imogen Conrad, didn’t seem to match the punishment Kate was putting him through. Regardless of whether she made it out of the country or not, there was a reasonable chance he might be made to pay a very heavy price.

  Bleak as his current life in Moscow might be, it barely held a candle to the prospect of a long stretch in a Russian prison. “I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.’

  ‘Stop saying you’re sorry. I knew exactly the risk I was taking getting into this car with you. And I’d do it again, a hundred times over.’ He forced another smile. ‘Besides, I trust you. Aren’t you James Bond?’

  Kate tried to grin back at him, but doubted she managed more than an awkward grimace. They lapsed into silence after that, but they were only about three hours north of Moscow before the onset of heavy bleeding forced her to ask him to stop at a truck-stop diner.

  She disappeared into the filthy toilet, and by the time she emerged, he was sitting at a metal table by the window with two mugs of coffee and a sandwich each. ‘It’s going be a long night,’ he said. ‘I thought we could use this.’

  Kate slipped on to the tattered red plastic bench opposite him. The chrome and steel décor was supposed to conjure the image of an American roadside diner, but, like many imitations in modern Russia, it was way off. Kate sipped her coffee and stared out at the traffic thundering past. It was still raining heavily, the light gloomy and visibility limited.