Vagabond

by Seymour, Gerald

  He was in the lobby. Matthew Bentinick had gone to bed, and the young Czech had left to walk Gaby Davies to the hotel where she and the asset were staying. Her job, for what was left of the evening, was to rip detail from him. Later, Karol Pilar would be back and would stay until the small hours. They might again go out for a walk together.

  It was agony for Danny to think of the French town, the tang of the sea, the tinkling of halyards against the yachts’ masts and the girl. He had not known how to compromise.

  In Honfleur, the clients always began the bonding process. Little groups would form in a couple of restaurants, wine would be ordered, and there was a determination to put aside catastrophe. On the Tuesday evening, they would agree that the worst was over. There was an expectation that things could only get better. They’d swap edited life stories: health, grandchildren and other holidays. As the evening wore on and tongues loosened, they’d discuss the guide. Respect for the historian, with reservations about his communication skills – and the driver.

  ‘He’s an oddball.’

  ‘Lives somewhere over here.’

  ‘Knows his stuff backwards. We’re just here for a flavour of it, but he seems to live it.’

  ‘There’s a past, has to be. A past he’s locked into. Poor beggar. The past doesn’t allow escape.’

  They’d be friends by the end. Most would swap addresses and they’d have the guides’ email links. They’d know nothing of the driver, Danny Curnow, and would go to bed remembering it was an early start in the morning.

  ‘I’m Dusty. I doubt you’ve heard of me.’

  She stood in her doorway and the light from inside was thrown into his face. The geraniums in the windowbox were an exquisite scarlet. ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘I know you, though. You’re Hanne. I know you through your pictures. I’m a friend – we go back a long way – of Danny Curnow. I know your pictures because where we live he has the room next to mine and it’s full of your work.’

  Dusty thought her a lovely woman. They had told him at the gallery where she lived so he’d had his meal, seen the clients back to the hotel, then gone to the house. She had a robe wrapped around her.

  She allowed herself to smile and shrug. ‘They tell me each time he is in, and what he has bought. It is supposed to be secret. He chooses well and badly.’

  ‘They’re on the walls of his room.’

  ‘He would not give up on something. I don’t know what is “something”. I took second place to it.’

  ‘It’s what he did before, and me.’

  ‘Dusty, why did you come?’

  ‘Miss, not sure it’s any of my business, but it was about a chance of breaking free.’

  ‘I am not a therapist for the complaint of whatever it was that he did before. I was in second, maybe in third or fourth place to it. I am sorry, Dusty.’

  ‘He comes here every week.’

  ‘He watches me and follows me. I am not supposed to know.’ She chuckled, rich and soft. ‘He is behind me. I can set my watch. On a Sunday and on a Tuesday. One day, I tell myself, I will stop and I will turn round and I will walk back. You want to know what I would do, Dusty, when I came close to him?’

  ‘What would you do, miss?’

  ‘I might kiss him, and I might take him by the hand, and I might lead him here, and I might cook for him, as I used to, and I might pour wine for him, and I might . . .’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘And I might again be second.’

  ‘Where is home, miss?’

  She tilted her head to look towards the clouds and the gaps where small stars were. ‘There are islands and there are fish, eagles, whales and snowstorms. In the winter it is dark all night and all day. It is very far away.’

  ‘One day, miss, will you ever stop and turn?’

  She didn’t answer but he saw the pain in her eyes and how it creased her mouth.

  ‘He was called back, miss. A man came for him. He was taken again to do what he did in the past. He was good at it, and it half beat the life out of him. It’s why you didn’t see him tonight.’

  ‘I wondered if he was bored with the game.’

  ‘He’s been taken again to do what he used to do. It damn near broke him. Not your problem, miss, and maybe I shouldn’t have bothered you.’

  ‘We were good together at the start – and I could believe I had softened him, until we came to the line. The red line, not to be crossed, of commitment. Thank you, Dusty.’

  She stepped back into the room behind the door. He thanked her for her time and spun on his heel. He didn’t want to linger and see the tears. As he walked away he heard the door close behind him. He wondered where the islands were. His own life was uncomplicated and comfortable, his relationship with Christine warm and happy. He thought the man he loved was tortured. He supposed that so many were who had been in that place and done things there . . .

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Kevin said.

  ‘My ma does great cocoa,’ Pearse said.

  ‘And mine makes a great pie.’

  ‘The best pie.’

  They had to talk nonsense because it kept some of the cold out. A wind rustled the leaves above them and the rain was heavy. Kevin kept in his mind the face of Malachy Riordan. Without Malachy in his life he would have been an ordinary shite, nothing special. Since he was a kid he had craved to be noted and chosen, able to walk taller than others – except Pearse . . .

  The door opened across the field, over the hedge and past the parked cars. They were pissed, the men, warm and smart, the women. He saw Eamonn O’Kane, couldn’t miss him because he did a job with an umbrella and sheltered the women as they scurried to the cars. There was music, louder, from inside, and shrieks of laughter. He wondered why so many had come to celebrate with the mother and father of a policeman – and all of them Catholics. The cars made a queue down the track from the garden and the noise of the cattle-grid bars was constant. The stream went down the lane and through the light from Mrs Halloran’s bungalow.

  Now the parents hugged their son and kissed his wife. They stayed in the porch and a dog yapped at their heels. The son and his wife ran to their car.

  The track was clear.

  ‘You ready?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘You want me to . . . ?’

  ‘No.’

  His fingers – numb with cold – were on the wires, held poised by the terminals. Pearse would do the watching for him. Pearse told him when the car started, when it moved and when it was close to the grid. He heard the rattle of the bars and used his will to hold the wires steady. He had them beside the terminals.

  ‘Go for it.’

  He made the contact. He could imagine the pulse that flashed from the battery and down the cable, under the ground, then up to the surface in the hedge and into the maroon that was the charge to fire the detonator. His head tilted up. He saw the VW Golf caught in the gate light. It paused, rolled a few feet and then it was gone. He barely saw it go through the light from the Halloran house.

  Kevin could have cried. Pearse swore. The door of the house had closed.

  Kevin said they’d have to get it. Pearse said that Malachy Riordan would likely half kill them if they left it to rot in the field. And Kevin said they had to get it because his prints would be over it – he couldn’t have worn gloves because his fingers were bolloxed with cold. And Pearse said, with defiance, that it wasn’t their fault, they’d done what they’d been told to. Kevin said that the man might come down his drive, under his umbrella, to run the dog before shutting up the house. Pearse said they’d wait before they went to get it. Kevin said that he had pictured the flash exploding out of the hedge, the car swivelling round it, the fireball taking hold. He’d seen it too many times. Pearse said Malachy Riordan would kill them if they left evidence in the hedge. Their voices were choked, as if tears weren’t far away.

  The quiet fell on them, but for the rain and the wind, and they waited.

  The car pulled in. The
driver leaned across Malachy Riordan and opened the door. Nothing was said.

  He could have spoken out: ‘When my business is done I’ll come looking for you. I’ll find you and fuckin’ break you.’

  The driver could have replied: ‘Don’t come looking for me because there might be a roadblock, with cops, and you’d shit yourself.’

  No thanks and no good wishes. He took his bag, straightened up and kicked the door shut with his heel. By the time he was on the paving, he heard the car accelerating away.

  The hotel building was monstrous. A wall of glass towered ahead of him. He saw clusters of men and women at tables. He thought he saw her. The glass made the image indistinct and there was a swell of smart women and men in suits, who swirled about the foyer and in front of the wide reception desk. She stood and glanced at her wrist, checked the time and gazed out. She seemed nervous, ill at ease. He hated the place. So many tables and so many people. He couldn’t read what was safe and what stank of risk. Throughout the last stage of the journey he had turned in his mind the dangers of where he was. He couldn’t judge the men and women here. She fitted what he had been told. He reached into his inner pocket and took out his wallet. The photograph was where any man kept his sweetheart’s picture. There was no doubt that it was her.

  He went forward a few paces and a porter came towards him, a decent-looking kid in a flunkey’s uniform. He asked for a sheet of paper and a pencil. The porter found them for him. He wrote on the paper, and folded it. He took a ten-euro note from the wallet, gave it and the sheet of paper to the porter, then pointed out the woman with the golden hair. He was thanked. Had the porter a street map? No problem. He was given the map, large scale, city centre, and told where they were. He asked a last question; the boy giggled and pointed at the map. He was gone. He didn’t look back at the girl, but was satisfied to see the porter go through the big doors with the note in his hand. It was a precaution, and his freedom depended on suspicion. He stepped out into the darkness, heading for the city’s heart.

  ‘You have to tell me. This is fast becoming ridiculous, Ralph.’

  ‘I can’t tell you what I don’t know.’

  ‘When you meet, what weapons will be test-fired?’

  ‘It’s not decided yet.’

  They were in her bedroom. He had been in bed when she’d phoned him. With a rasp in her voice, she’d told him to dress, then come down the corridor. She had laid on coffee. He had dressed, as instructed, and she had tried, at first, to sugar it. She had been pleasant and – she reckoned – businesslike.

  Her reward was vagueness.

  ‘You’re telling me you don’t know when you’ll meet your contact – it’s Simonov? You don’t know?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You’ve been here a night and a full day and you don’t know? The girl’s in place. We reckon Riordan should have hit the city by now. You’re the middle man, the facilitator, but you don’t know when there’ll be a meeting? Level with me, Ralph.’

  ‘I haven’t been told and that’s the truth.’

  He wore his helpless look, usually a winner. She was close to believing him. ‘What about the location?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  He wasn’t meeting her eyes. He had given her chapter and verse on the Irish girl and had had the wit to gossip with her: she was Queen’s, a graduate, lived at the bottom of the Malone road. They had shown each other their passports. Gaby would be able to furnish Thames House with enough details by midnight for the computers to spit out her identity, the accounts where the cash was held and the bank address. All good, except the core of what she needed. She remembered the face of the man with Matthew Bentinick. She had thought it unforgiving, merciless. Ralph Exton was hers and had been since she’d trailed to that provincial police station and lugged Bentinick’s file bag into the interview room.

  ‘I’m trying to help, Ralph. I’ve played fair with you over the years. Everything I’ve done for you has been based on honesty. It’s no time for you to play fast and loose with me.’

  ‘Would I do that, Gaby?’

  ‘This Simonov, it’s the old thing, “the devil in the detail”: where’s the detail? When do you meet, where do you meet, what do you fire? I can move on – where is he coming from in your life, how are you hooked to him and—’

  ‘I’ve always given you everything I’ve known, Gaby, kept nothing back. The weapons may not turn up. What if they don’t? Riordan a killer. What’ll he do to me? That drill was right in my face. I don’t know how much more I can take. Don’t you believe me? After all I’ve done . . . I’m a little cog in the wheel, and I get frightened.’ His head was in his hands.

  She was out of her chair. God’s truth, what was he? An asset or a colleague? Her hand was on his shoulder. ‘We’ll do all we can, Ralph. Your security is hugely important to us, a main priority. Anyway, the detail. We’ll try again in the morning.’

  She helped him up and took him to the door. His head was still down and he was breathing fast. She took him along the corridor and he gave her his key-card. She let him in and helped him on to the bed. She closed the door quietly after her.

  Not bad. He rubbed his arm over his face. Not bad at all. He had both of them, a level of fear and a level of allegiance. Attached to each was the name of Timofey Simonov, his friend.

  He heard, below and at the back of the house, the door, then the dogs stampeding up the stairs. It was the brigadier’s task to take them out late at night, sometimes into the woods at the back of the property and sometimes on the pavements. If they went into the little park opposite, dedicated to the memory of Anna Politkovskaya – troublemaker – who had been assassinated in Moscow, and if the dogs crapped on the grass he would leave it. The Weimaraners appeared, and the brigadier came a few minutes after them with a tray of hot milk and biscuits.

  Timofey said he had spoken to his friend. The brigadier would collect him from Prague, bring him to Karlovy Vary for the night and take him back on Thursday morning. He had told his friend that they would meet in the new forest that had grown over the old base, Milovice, on the following evening, Friday. They would do business where he had been a junior officer, and the brigadier had been in a position of authority. He made the pilgrimage regularly, and it was a good place to be. Few, he believed, knew the routes to the hangars as well as he did. Some were frightened of it. To Timofey Simonov it was as familiar as an old home, which it had been.

  Happy days, after a fashion. As a member of GRU staff, Timofey had lived on the base in a dormitory for essential staff. The generals who conducted exercises from the underground command bunker had known his name and loved to banter with a bright, committed young man, for whom no job was too great, no shift too long. Exemplary work always left his desk for theirs. And around him there had been the entrenched power of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Great days bordering on magical. The long lines of tanks heading towards the live firing ranges, the power and thunder of their engines, the belch of diesel smoke . . . The deafening noise when the fighter bombers came onto the runways, raced for speed, then lifted off. He was Military Intelligence so he was privileged to stand with the senior officers on a viewing platform and watch the tanks manoeuvring. He could go to the control tower when the aircraft were scrambled in a mock emergency. In the command bunker, at the great table where the maps were spread and the counters moved to designate red and blue forces, his opinion was sought: ‘What is their speed of reaction, Timofey?’; ‘If they push into Poland, having breached the German lines, is that a feint or the main thrust?’; ‘Their armoured crews, Timofey, how much battle preparation have they had?’; ‘I leave on the train for Moscow the day after tomorrow, Timofey, and would like to have with me a crate of good champagne, if possible.’ He had known all of the answers – could quote statistics and intelligence debriefs with brevity and clarity, and could produce champagne, perfume or silk, whatever. He had loved Milovice. It was not mentioned there that his father was a gulag security officer,
that his mother treated criminals for typhoid, TB and knife wounds in a gulag hospital. Everybody who had any degree of influence or importance knew him on the base, as he walked, jogged or drove around it in his assigned open-top jeep. He had thought himself a part of the great power that was Milovice.

  It had first shocked but now disgusted him that in all of the many visits he had made to the old base he had never met another Russian. Why not? There were no monuments either, or veterans’ reunions. Timofey went there and took the brigadier with him.

  He drank his milk. Tomorrow evening he would be with his friend, and they would laugh till they cried. It was always good to be with a friend. He had reason to be grateful to Ralph Exton.

  That night, in the room that had become a shrine, Rosie Bentinick had lit the candle. It had been a long, busy day. The cat slept on the bed and the dog’s head lay across her ankles. She spoke aloud, telling the stories she thought would be of interest, as the cat purred and the dog snored. It was hardest for Rosie when she looked at the pillows on the bed: empty. She couldn’t escape the photograph on the dressing-table: the excitement of the children and the contentment of her daughter. It was a painful ritual and it would be her husband’s turn tomorrow. They couldn’t move on. The day after tomorrow, Thursday, they would visit, she and her husband. They always did on that evening, never missed.

  A tale was told. A summer evening recalled . . . Karol Pilar had walked at the speed of the target. He had been led away from the main streets, the lights of the bars and fast-food places, and was among old buildings and narrow lanes. They were dark. Several times, without lighting he had lost sight of his target – the man’s shoes must have been rubber-soled because they were silent on the paving.