by David Laws
“Before!” Harry insisted. “I need to start writing now and we both know you’ve got a source on the inside, your very own double agent Mandelbaum. So, this is a two-way street, remember?”
His objections weren’t all a matter of tactics. He wanted to start writing the background so he was ready when Patronella blew the whistle – or whatever trigger caused the story to break. Perhaps she had always known he would insist. In the event she put up little resistance, insisting only on a change of venue, the meeting at Embankment Gardens becoming just a little too public.
Ensconced in a back room at the Cheshire Cheese pub in Fleet Street, they had a perfect cover: private briefings in the land of the scribbler. Their talk had gone on long into the evening. He’d started with a series of questions. He didn’t trust Hans Joachim’s story of the elusive mastermind and wanted the Establishment view: who precisely were the Kameraden; what did they want; how did they operate?
“They’re just the remnants of the old Stasi by another name,” she told him. “The diehards who wouldn’t fade away when the Berlin Wall came down. Men who would not recognise they were finished, who wouldn’t admit failure or that their time was up. True believers who could not face the reality that their beloved system was rotten, didn’t work and had been rejected by the people. That day, back in ’89 when the Wall toppled, was a dark moment for them. It was the loss of all their hopes and dreams. And all these years they’ve been keeping their delusions alive, holed up in their cave, scheming and conniving. Now they’re determined to rewind the clock to the old days, determined to keep the faith and willing to do anything to further their aims. And I do mean anything.”
“For instance…?”
“Infiltration. Undermining Brussels from within. Planting placemen in key positions within EU bureaucracy. Their best long-term hope for a Marxist revival. And now they’re desperate to stop the UK cutting loose.”
Harry was still sceptical. “And how do they imagine they’re going to achieve all that? Realistically, it’s not on, is it?”
“They think it is. They’re waiting for the next big crash. A slump, a crisis of capitalism, banks going bust, the economy nosediving, big corporations self-immolating, war, pestilence, who knows? Remember Macmillan’s mantra? Events, dear boy – political fortunes are determined by events. And the Ks are ready for when their day comes.”
“And what about this elusive leader, the shadow man?”
Wolf Steigel, the ultimate diehard, she told him, was the top man in an inner circle of three, plus a retinue of old hands. The two other key players were Kruger and Fischer – the latter their contacts man. Always on the move. Spent their time tracking down enemies. No one could finger them. Far too clever. They were expert at making people disappear. After all, they’d had enough experience from their time in power.
“But why Brexit?”
“They hate independence, want ever greater integration until the nation states disappear. They see the EC as an empire, and they want the UK kept inside the ring.”
“Then what about the minister?” Harry asked. Where did Tresham fit into this picture?
“He’s very clever,” she said, “ever the slippery one.” He had impeccable Tory credentials. Had thrown everyone with his trenchant right-wing views. Had addressed the 1922 Committee promising tougher crackdowns on crime, increased police numbers, conscription of labour, school reform, immigration restrictions, continued austerity… but there had been no sign of action for any of these promises. Just discussion documents, consultation processes, contingency plans.
Harry decided he’d had enough. He was itching to get back to Blackthorpe Grange, to reconnect with Erika and get down to some solid writing on his laptop. In his mind’s eye he saw not only the great breaking story to come, but a hugely successful book to follow.
First, however, he had to agree to play Pat’s game. A two- way street, she told him, bouncing his own quote back at him.
Chapter 29
Monday 18th March 2019; 11 days to go
Erika, focusing all on the bullseye, drew back her throwing arm. There was a rapid whoosh, followed by a sharp metallic vibration. Darts she could do without, so the set of kitchen knives she’d discovered in a shiny mahogany box in a downstairs cupboard, and which she had sharpened to perfection, now became the subject of her latest distraction.
She stooped to pick up another missile. Though she had perfected the throw, many of the knives hit the wire frame of the dartboard and dropped to the floor. Whenever she had a problem to resolve, Erika needed the adrenaline rush of activity to speed the mental process. Action was a vehicle for thought. So she’d purloined the dartboard from Scobie Johnson’s study and rigged it up in her eyrie in the loft. This way she could keep a lookout, think through a solution and purge her frustrations with useful throwing practice all at the same time.
Soon, she would have to go downstairs to prepare her son’s lunch – shepherd’s pie again, insisted upon like the true obsessive he was – but first she knew she had to make a decision. A big decision. Fischer had gone, leaving behind a set of instructions and the instruments for their accomplishment. He’d also left her in a state of bewilderment and perplexity.
This was the man who, when she’d first opened her front door to him, she’d instantly wanted to dispatch with her .38. She would have done so too, if the pistol had been in her belt. Just recompense for all his past betrayals.
But there was that other side: he’d rescued her from a life of torture and drudgery, given her a son, made her important, assigned her a unique role. She hated him and she loved him.
Clang! Another ricochet from the dartboard clattered to the floor while she acknowledged that her desire for revenge had surely faded. Despite all past disappointments she could not deny the strength of their bond.
Whoosh! A particularly sharp knife would stick nicely in the board and this was it, twanging with a satisfying vibration.
Of course there was Harry, and here she experienced a sharp shaft of guilt. Harry had looked after her when her life was on the floor, and continued loyally to extend the hand of a staunch friendship. Only the day before he had demonstrated this with another attempt to engage with Stefan. A farcical conversation, it turned out, about numbers, Harry clearly out of his depth. But then he tried a variation of the normal parental bribery: the offer of a new iPad in exchange for some social interaction by the boy. “Bring a schoolmate home for tea,” he had urged.
“Oh, God!” Stefan had replied. “Do I have to?”
“No swearing!” was Erika’s immediate reaction.
Her son: she had to act in his best interests. For both their sakes, she must cling to the belief, as espoused by Fischer, that seriously bad men who obstructed the public good should be the subject of swift and remorseless removal.
She picked up another fallen knife, weighing it in her hand, convincing herself that the subject of this, her very last action, truly deserved their fate. She couldn’t allow herself to doubt it; she had to be firm; this person was truly a malevolent figure trying the wreck the peace of Europe.
She wobbled a little, like one of her knives, telling herself the only real certainty was Stefan. She clung to that. Whatever else was real and true, her determination was still vital and strong.
She would do Fischer’s bidding for the sake of her son.
Chapter 30
Tuesday 19th March 2019; 10 days to go
Drizzle leaked from a dull sky as Harry, dressed in a yellow traffic vest reminiscent of a parking warden, complete with peaked cap and large spectacles, was on stake-out in the Farringdon Road. He nursed a plastic cup of cold coffee in one hand and a clipboard in the other. The question was: how best to keep watch in plain sight without looking like a spook? Busker, beggar, newspaper seller, pamphlet distributor, impatient pedestrian waiting for a pickup or workman digging a hole. He’d used the Big Is
sue trick in Cambridge and hadn’t fancied any of the others on that long list, so a traffic census was his current ruse.
At least the traffic was a constant, though bike messengers zoomed recklessly close across the pavements. Just my luck to get clobbered by a pizza delivery boy, he thought, ticking off several squares on his make-believe sheet as an articulated giant rumbled by, filling the street with a noxious aftermath of diesel fumes. If a copper stopped by to check, would the list survive scrutiny?
It was hard work looking busy without pause, and Harry knew he wasn’t the only deniable freelancer on Patronella’s list. You couldn’t call it a payroll; a barter-roll might be more accurate. This was when she told him he could do the ‘day shift’.
“And who’s the lucky night watchman?” he’d asked her.
“We have a van. Closed sides, no windows, spyholes and looks unoccupied.”
If the rain didn’t ease soon, he’d be campaigning for the spyhole van himself.
Why was he once again doorstepping the Fortress in Farringdon Road? Red Nina was thought to have a flat inside the building and rarely went out. She didn’t go to lunch or shop, Patronella explained, and didn’t visit anywhere in the evenings. She’d been seen in a corner shop twice, that was all, and on both occasions very early in the day.
Not much traffic at five in the morning, Harry had objected.
The whole object, Patronella emphasised, was to discover Nina’s method of contact. That’s when Harry turned sceptic. Surely it would be online, or the telephone, or a messenger – any member of staff or a visitor, either complicit or duped into believing it was all a journalistic or business exercise.
Patronella shook her head, convinced there was a regular system of contact, a physical handing over of documents. Nina’s instinct for secrecy, she said, made it unlikely she would trust electronics or another person.
Harry wiped raindrops from his chin and eyed the ugly building opposite with something approaching envy. It might have Crittall windows on the top floor, fire-stained brickwork below and the most decrepit interior he had ever seen, but at that moment it looked like a very acceptable respite from the weather. He was becoming familiar, even complacent, with the noises on the street – tyres, engines, shouts, brakes, slamming doors – but a hollow, echoing crack caught his attention. There was nothing to account for it within sight. It was some moments before he guessed the source: the back door of the Fortress had been opened and slammed shut.
He tucked the sodden clipboard beneath his arm and crossed the street to get closer to the alleyway leading to the rear of the building.
And suddenly, there she was: Red Nina, done up in a wide-brimmed khaki rain hat, a beige parka that had seen better days and jeans, emerging on to the street, turning away uphill and striding off towards Mount Pleasant and the big postal sorting office at the crossroads.
Was that her rendezvous point?
Harry shrugged off his yellow jacket, turned it inside out and pocketed the spectacles. Then he set out to tail her at a couple of hundred yards distant. At Clerkenwell Road he closed the gap, fearful he would lose her, either among the market stalls or inside the post building, but she turned left toward Rosebery Avenue. Several pedestrians and a line of nose-to-tail buses obscured his view. He couldn’t risk getting too close. It was wet, and the sound of his footsteps magnified in the damp of the street.
Then a sudden movement, a flash of the big rain hat and she was gone. He hurried to the spot where she had been and found himself looking at a tiny grocer’s shop, the sort that sold everything and nothing: newspapers, drink cans, sandwiches, tinned food and toothpaste. Scribbled adverts for prams and bikes blocked the light from the windows. At least she wouldn’t be able to see him from inside.
He looked at his watch, wondering why she needed a corner shop at 9.30 in the morning. He stood back and noticed a big black Jaguar idling nearby, engine running, heedless of the double yellow lines.
Another question: why would someone with access to a chauffeur-driven limo be calling at Mr Singh’s mini-market during normal shop hours?
Harry risked walking past the entrance to get a better look at the car, to see if he could spot the occupant. Perhaps the chauffeur had been sent on an errand? Fortunately, his interest was not too obvious; he could still pass for an idler, there were several on the street. A figure in a long black overcoat and fur collar came from behind, opened the car door and climbed inside. Harry risked a closer look.
That’s when he knew this was a defining moment. Without a doubt. No possibility of a mistake. Identity rock solid.
The face in the back seat belonged to the Right Honourable Christopher Tresham.
Harry made a decision. If necessary, he’d blow his cover, risk Red Nina spotting him. He knew she was still inside the shop, and he made straight for the door and stepped inside. It was a high-risk strategy, but if he was quick he might catch her in the act. He reasoned that she and Tresham wouldn’t have dared to meet openly. They could not risk being seen to talk, still less pass objects between them, and Harry had already guessed their method of exchange.
The place was tiny and smelled of curry powder. The gap between a big fridge on one side and the tin-stacked shelves on the other was sufficient only for one person to pass. The fridge vibrated noisily and the soap powders rattled in response. He sensed she was in the opposite aisle, lurking, waiting for the shop to empty of customers. He looked around, studying the place, looking for the most likely spot.
Then he grinned. The newspapers. They were in a rack, newsprint obscuring the dusty yellow wall paint behind the woodwork. If he could find it before she made the pickup, what a coup!
Backing his hunch, he ran his hand behind the stand. It wobbled slightly but yielded nothing. He ran his hand lower, then felt an object. Paper, probably wrapping paper, covering a thin parcel. He withdrew the package, dun brown and A4 in size, stuck together at the corners with parcel tape. He stuffed it immediately into the big inside pocket of the anorak.
Just then he glimpsed a movement at the end of the aisle. He grabbed a large container of milk and looked up brightly to see Nina heading his way. He grinned broadly. “Oh, hello, we meet again.”
She saw him and her scowl deepened. “You! What are you doing here?”
He raised an arm in the direction of the street. “Live just round the corner. Been browsing in the market but just remembered I need some milk. How have you been keeping?”
His jollity did not change her manner. Her gaze went to the paper stand.
“Lost something?” he inquired.
“What?”
“If it’s that brown parcel you’re looking for, the one with parcel tape all over it—”
“What do you know about it?”
“I saw it, she took it – already been collected.”
“Already collected?” Suspicion and incredulity suffused Nina’s face. It reminded him of school geography lessons when he’d studied a map of the Nile Delta. “Collected by who?”
“One of your assistants has already taken it.”
“What assistant? I saw no assistant here.”
“You know,” he said, posing nonchalance. “That one with the long ponytail… the one I talked to after that business in the pub… you remember?”
“She’s taken it?” Her tone had grown raucous.
He nodded. “Gone back to the office with it, I imagine…”
That ended the conversation. Nina sped out of the shop, Harry following at a distance. She didn’t look back. She was in a blind rage, hurrying back to the Fortress, fast-paced, almost breaking into a run. He could hear the clatter of her panicked footsteps. Several pedestrians turned to look; a dog walker hauled his pet close to the kerb when he saw her frantic approach. She hurried past black railings outside some flats and didn’t look when she crossed a side turning. Harry kept her in sight, wonder
ing if Patronella had other eyes on the subject as well as his own. Or perhaps there were observers belonging to those other shadowy people. The absurdity of this chase made him grin, and he narrowed the gap between them. He didn’t rate Ponytail’s career prospects during the course of the next few moments. He followed Nina down the alleyway to the rear of the Fortress. She was unheeding of anyone around her, panting and cursing as she hammered on the door. When it opened there was an explosion of temper, of rage, of distraught exclamation. So much so that the person on entry duty must have reeled back in shock and surprise, leaving the door ajar for several vital seconds.
Harry slipped in while they were distracted and moved rapidly out of sight, using a pillar to mask his presence.
Panic seemed to grip the whole building. Clearly, no one knew why Nina was upset, but they were rushing around trying to mollify her. He heard her screeching. “Liar! You were seen!”
While she conducted her staff inquisition on the ground floor, Harry speedily climbed the stairs to her office, intent on ransacking the filing cabinet. The room was unlocked. So were the cabinets, but first he tried her desk drawer. Several passports offered themselves up. He flicked through them. Different names, but the photo was the same on all of them. A plain-looking woman – a younger version of the person he had just robbed of her parcel.
Footsteps approached along the corridor outside. Harry grabbed a sheaf of papers and a file lying on the desktop, spotted a door, opened it and hurried through as silently as he could. It was some sort of private bathroom. There was a tiny sink, a loo and a shelf full of toiletries. One was an aerosol container marked Perfume Spray. As he snatched it down, another wobbled slightly but he barely noticed.
He heard the phone being lifted, a pause, then the familiar voice. “Someone’s stolen the package. The one you left. It’s gone! This is a disaster…” Another pause, then: “It’s gone, I tell you, gone! You’ll have to do something to cover us. Put out some sort of statement saying they’re fakes…”