Ratcatcher

by Tim Stevens

  Purkiss ran, diving into the crowd and not caring that he was treading on feet and elbowing chests, somebody yelling in his ear hey, man, don’t panic, they’ll notice you. She was there inside the entrance, Elle Klavan, with another man, and they were holding up ID of some sort while one of the bar staff stood nearby frowning in bewilderment. Purkiss stopped short. She shouted in Estonian and he turned. The bartender he’d first spoken to when he arrived got him in a bear hug from behind. Purkiss kicked and struggled, but not too hard. Elle Klavan and the other man came forward, handguns drawn. Purkiss shouted in Russian ‘Enough,’ and the man released him. He raised his hands and let them turn and bundle him out the door, Klavan shouting instructions he couldn’t understand over her shoulder.

  *

  She pulled up in a mews off the main street. The Turkish restaurant next door was closed and a few people milled on the streets, on their way to or from bars. They took the stairs to the first floor. Through an unmarked door a small office suite greeted him. The main open-plan section brimmed with computer equipment, less chaotically arranged than in Abby’s basement.

  ‘Living Tallinn,’ she said drily.

  She’d forced her way between the rows of taxis and parked right outside the club, swinging into the driver’s seat. The man with her had opened the rear door and pushed Purkiss’s head down as he clambered in, purely because that was what television had taught people to expect from police officers arresting a criminal, and got in beside him.

  ‘Chris Teague,’ said the man. He was late thirties, big through the shoulders like a former rugby player who’d kept in shape, fair hair short, mouth wry.

  ‘John Purkiss.’

  ‘We know.’ Of course they did; they were SIS, and Klavan would have scoured their databases till she’d matched his face.

  ‘You were quick.’ She’d said fifteen minutes but it had been closer to ten.

  ‘I happen to live round the corner. Stroke of luck.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Impersonating a police officer. That’s a first for us, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Teague cheerfully.

  Turning her head to address Purkiss she said, ‘I expect you’re wondering why we did it.’

  ‘Because you want to know what I’m doing here.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He remembered the missed call from Vale earlier and said, ‘Hang on a moment,’ and put the phone to his ear, aware of the stinging of the laceration across his neck. The message was brief. Vale had established that Klavan was not working out of the embassy.

  As if by unspoken consent they said no more on the journey. At one point a police car shot past, siren going. Clearly the body had been found in the toilet cubicle. Purkiss wondered how easy witnesses would find it to identify Klavan and Teague, given the darkness in the club. He himself was another matter: the bartender had got a good look at his face.

  Another man was waiting in the office and stood as they entered. He was compact, several inches shorter than either Purkiss or Teague and perhaps in his late forties. Unlike his colleagues he was dressed in a suit, though the jacket was slung over the back of a chair and his sleeves were pushed up.

  ‘Mr Purkiss. Richard Rossiter.’

  There was an aura about him, a sense of tightly bound anger. Up close his pale eyes were like taut meniscuses barely holding back a flood of rage. He didn’t offer his hand, just studied Purkiss’s face before waving abruptly at a chair. Purkiss sat. Teague brought him a cup of water from a cooler in the corner and he gulped it. The others took seats themselves.

  Rossiter said: ‘No preamble. You, I assume, have worked out who we are. A Service cell, unofficial and operating covertly, without Embassy support. We of course know who you are. John Purkiss, Service until four years ago. We know why you left – rather, what had happened that might have prompted you to leave. You’ve left no trail since then, none that we can discern.’

  There were two possibilities, Purkiss had decided. One was that they were who they said they were, and were unconnected to Fallon and looking for him themselves. The other was that they were working with Fallon, that the rescue from the nightclub had been part of a ruse. Either way, there was little point withholding his reasons for being in the city.

  He glanced at Klavan, who was leaning forward, elbows resting on her knees, watching him levelly; at Teague, who sat back with his arms spread across the back of his chair and his ankle propped on his knee, expansive as Rossiter was shut in and controlled.

  ‘I’m here on personal business,’ he said. ‘Donal Fallon was photographed in Tallinn yesterday morning. He was released early from gaol, amnestied, and he’s gone to ground.’

  In Klavan’s case it was the slightest hint of an exhalation, in Teague’s a tilting back of the head. Rossiter blinked, once. Each of them, professionals though they were, betrayed their surprise. Now that was interesting, he thought.

  Rossiter said: ‘Personal business.’

  ‘Yes. You know why I want Fallon.’

  ‘You’re not Service.’

  ‘No. As you mentioned, I’ve left.’ He took out his phone and brought up the photo of Fallon, watching their faces as they handed it round.

  ‘Who took this picture?’ It was Teague, sounding amicably interested.

  ‘A contact of mine. I’ve kept some links going since I left.’

  ‘Seppo,’ said Klavan. ‘And he wasn’t there when you went to his flat.’

  ‘Correct. Though I did find him later. In the deep freeze, with his neck broken.’ Purkiss took the phone back and pocketed it. ‘Now. Your turn’.

  Rossiter’s face worked. In a moment he said: ‘We’re here because of the summit. The Service’s Embassy presence has been stepped up, of course, but there was felt to be a need for additional covert work, given the significance of the event.’ He looked as if he wanted to stand and pace but was compressing himself into his seat. ‘And perhaps your reasons for being here and ours aren’t unconnected.’

  ‘No.’

  Another pause, then: ‘So. In less than thirty-one hours’ time, the Russian President is going to meet his Estonian counterpart here in the city in an historic gesture of reconciliation. We have to assume Fallon plans to scupper that.’

  *

  Coffee had been passed round. Rossiter stood at the flip chart like an incongruously fierce facilitator at a corporate away day.

  ‘The Russian president arrives ten p.m. tomorrow at a private airfield, the whereabouts of which are unknown. There’s a formal banquet with his Estonian opposite number, then an overnight stay at the official residence in Kadriorg. A working breakfast, then at seven a.m. both parties and their entourages set off to the Soviet War Memorial on the coast road. The handshake and the speeches are to take place there at eight.’

  He moved over to a laminated map on the wall. ‘The route is demarcated in red. Needless to say, we’ve gone over it countless times, looking for vantage points that might conceal a sniper. As have the local security forces. There’s very little to find. A sniper would have to be armed with something more powerful than an ordinary rifle, in any case, because the cars are armour plated.’

  ‘What about at the War Memorial itself?’ said Purkiss.

  ‘Again, not many places for a man with a gun to hide, and those there are will be heavily guarded. The crowds – and they’ll be huge – will be kept well back, with sniffer dogs deployed in case anyone’s planning to try the suicide bomb thing.’ He paused for a beat. ‘We’re assuming Fallon plans to scupper the meeting. He might try to do that by other means – a terrorist outrage elsewhere in the city, for instance – but he’ll know how much is riding on this summit, that it will go ahead anyway in defiance of any attempts to stop it, so we don’t think that’s a likely scenario.’

  ‘The airfield where the Russian president’s arriving?’

  ‘As I said –’ an edge crept into Rossiter’s voice – ‘it’s a secret. But even if Fallon or anyone el
se has somehow found out where it is, the security there is likely to be impenetrable. The same goes for the banquet and the overnight accommodation.’

  Elle took over. It was clear to Purkiss this discussion was one they’d had before. ‘We’re not going to work out how the attempt’s going to be made, not with the information we’ve got at present. We’d be better served focusing on the lead we do now have, Fallon, and finding him before the event.’

  Rossiter had come closer and stood looking down at Purkiss, hands folded before him as if he were anchoring them down. ‘We work together on this. I’m not asking you to accept my command, but anything either you or we learn is shared. Are we agreed?’

  Purkiss rocked his head from side to side. ‘Possibly. Depends if I think it’s worth sharing.’

  Rossiter watched him, lips thinned whitely. ‘If you’re trying to get a rise out of me, Mr Purkiss, it’s not going to work. I know you think you have the upper hand because you’ve given us the Fallon connection. Yes, it’s an essential piece of intelligence. But we have the resources, the local connections, that you need. So be nice.’

  It lasted barely a second, the quiver of tension between them. Then Purkiss said, ‘Tell me how you got on to Seppo, how you found his flat.’

  Twelve

  ‘You need to speak to this woman, find out what she’s not telling us.’

  The Jacobin’s voice was steady, grip on the handset loose.

  ‘I have spoken to her already. She’s hiding nothing.’

  ‘This man she was sleeping with, this Fallon. Purkiss is desperate to find him and won’t say why. He’s got to be important in some way. We have to find out what the woman told him.’

  ‘She told him nothing. She’s rock solid, loyal beyond question.’ Kuznetsov sounded offended.

  ‘Kuznetsov, I don’t think you really appreciate the seriousness of this. This man worked his way into the affections of clearly the weakest link in your outfit, then disappeared. Until we find him, we have to assume he has knowledge that could compromise us.’

  ‘You speak to me like this, you impugn the character of one of my people. Yet you yourself keep this man Purkiss alive. You allow him access to your circle.’

  ‘For your information, he’s the best chance we have at the moment of finding this Fallon. I’m working on him, trying to persuade him to tell me why Fallon’s of importance to him.’ There was a tap at the door and the Jacobin opened it and held up a hand – one minute – and closed it again. ‘We’re going to have to bring the woman in. You need to make her aware of this, prepare her for interrogation.’

  ‘No torture.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They spoke for another minute before ringing off. The Jacobin stood gazing through the window at the night, then went to find the others.

  *

  Purkiss had argued that there wasn’t time to rest, but he’d been trying to persuade himself as much as them. In the end he lost the battle. Teague gave him the once over, applying antiseptic to the laceration from the garrotte. They had worked out a plan for the following morning, and it was agreed that Purkiss would crash out at the flat which Klavan and Teague shared. Rossiter was apparently staying behind at the base. Apart from individual offices off the central open-plan area, all of which were soundproofed, Purkiss noticed, there was a tiny bedroom and bathroom as well as a kitchenette.

  In the car on the way back out of the Old Town Purkiss sat in the back again, with Klavan driving and Teague in the front passenger seat this time.

  Purkiss said: ‘Am I going to have a problem with your boss?’

  ‘Rossiter?’ Teague lifted a shoulder. ‘No. He doesn’t like you, mainly because he doesn’t trust you. To him you’re a rogue agent just like Fallon, even if your motives are more sympathetic. You have to admit, he has a point.’

  Purkiss had told them Seppo was an old friend and colleague of his who’d sent him the photo of Fallon but then hadn’t been contactable when he’d tried to ring him. He’d told them everything, essentially, apart from saying anything about Vale or Abby, and had admitted his bafflement at the signs of Fallon’s presence in Seppo’s flat.

  ‘You think Seppo was setting you up? Luring you to the city?’ Klavan asked.

  ‘Possibly. But it doesn’t explain how he ended up dead in the freezer, unless someone else sent the photo using his phone to lure me over here.’

  For their part, Klavan and Rossiter had been taking coffee outside a café across from the Russian embassy on Pikk Street the previous morning when they’d noticed the small man, who turned out to be Seppo, taking photos apparently of the embassy building with his phone, trying to be surreptitious about it. Their curiosity piqued, they had spent the better part of the morning following him, and tracked him to his flat on the Toompea. They returned to the office to run a check on the address. Later, after she’d finished her day’s routine work, Klavan went back to the flat, expecting Seppo to be at home, in which case she would have found a pretext to enter the flat and nose around. Instead she found Purkiss there.

  ‘Your face was vaguely familiar, and became more so when I discovered you were English. I didn’t spot you tagging me back to the office, though. That was good tradecraft.’

  Purkiss didn’t mention the memory stick he’d found at the back of Seppo’s drawer. He supposed they had the equipment and possibly even the skills to override its password protection, but he decided this was something he’d keep to himself for the time being.

  The coloured lights of stationary police vehicles daubed the streets around the nightclub. Klavan’s and Teague’s flat was two blocks away. They parked in the basement and took the lift. Inside it was comfortably furnished, a home rather than merely a place to sleep.

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘We set up a year ago when the date for the summit became known,’said Klavan. She handed him a mug of tea and although caffeine wasn’t what he needed now he took it gratefully, declining the offer of something to eat.

  Teague threw a sheet and blanket on the couch. It was half-past two. They agreed on a seven a.m. start and Klavan and Teague disappeared. To separate rooms, Purkiss noted wryly.

  He lay in the dark, feeling sleep and fatigue take gradual control. Rossiter didn’t trust him. Nor, clearly, did the other two. That was fine, because he didn’t trust any of them either.

  His last thought before numbness overwhelmed him was of Claire, leaning on her elbows, supporting her frowning brow with her fingers and peering into a monitor, trying to solve some conundrum. He thought: If you were here to help me now…

  But of course that wouldn’t make sense.

  *

  Beside him his wife slept deeply, untroubled. Venedikt squinted at the bedside clock: two-thirty. He needed sleep for what was to come, but knew he wouldn’t get it by forcing himself. Instead he rose, went into the living room, and turned on the television to a Russian-language twenty-four-hour news channel.

  … will arrive in Tallinn tomorrow evening for a formal banquet...

  … first official visit by a Russian premier since independence...

  … historic signing of a friendship agreement...

  The channel took great pride in what it called its political neutrality. Venedikt thought this a euphemism for cowardice, treacherousness even. Five years earlier he had been in the crowd protesting against the removal of the Bronze Soldier, the statue celebrating those like his grandfather who had fallen defending Estonia. Under cover of darkness the statue had been uprooted from its proud place in Tonismagi in the city centre and dumped in the wasteland of the Defence Forces Cemetery on the outskirts, along with the desecrated remains of Soviet heroes who were buried beneath it. Venedikt and his compatriots had vented their fury tirelessly, for two nights, during which one of their number had been shot dead, murdered, by the police. When he’d tried to explain to his son afterwards the importance of what had happened, the boy had shrugged and made to run outside. That had earned him a bea
ting.

  The ravaging of the statue was as nothing compared to what was planned for the day after tomorrow. The government had never admitted any intentional symbolism in the moving of the statue out of the city, even though nobody, not even those in favour of the act, had any illusions about why it was being done. But on October the thirteenth the Russian president was going to stand with his Estonian counterpart, the lickspittle of America and the West, and shake his hand, grinning, while behind them the memorial spire to the fallen of Mother Russia, not just those who died in the Great Patriotic War but all the others as well, was exploited for sickening political ends. The Estonian thinking was clear: not only are we going to extort apologies and craven concessions from you, we are going to do so in the shadow of one of your most treasured icons. Venedikt was not an especially imaginative man but he couldn’t fail to see the metaphorical significance of the limp handshake in front of the proud spire, the suggestion of emasculation it brought to mind.

  There was nothing symbolic in what Venedikt and his people were going to do. Nothing ambiguous at all.

  He switched off the television and went to stare out of the window. It was far too early for daybreak, but the night seemed to have shed some of its darkness, as though conceding grudgingly that its allotted time was passing once more. Two dawns left, and on the second the sun would rise on a very different city. A different world.

  The day had been a perfect one and had ended perfectly, with the news about the Englishman. He couldn’t believe their luck. Nothing like this had even been considered when they’d first made their plans all those months earlier, yet the opportunity had fallen into their laps. Occurrences like this almost made Venedikt question his rejection of religious faith.