by Mark Dawson
“I’m sorry,” he said to her.
“You’re sorry? For killing my father?”
“Yes. I’m not sorry for Mama. Her life was much better with him gone. But I’m sorry you lost your pabbi. I know what it’s like to grow up without one.”
Gudrún was listening, a look of pain mixed with sorrow on her face. Björn needed forgiveness from his sister, but he didn’t know how to ask for it.
“I was furious with you when Mama told me,” Gudrún said. “She said it was something I had to know at some point, and she decided sixteen was the right age. But she told me she was glad you did it. She told me she feared he would kill her one day. She said my father was a bad man, and you were a good one.”
Why hadn’t she ever told me that? Björn thought. They had never discussed that night, and over the next few years a cold distance had grown up between Björn and his mother. He felt that although she had covered for him, she could never forgive him. He found that hard to bear; he had wanted to get out of the house as soon as he could.
It was the reason he had left Iceland – to go and kill for another country.
Their mother remained an attractive woman and had married another rich man, this time a banker called Pétur. He had got himself in trouble during the financial crash, which had hit Iceland particularly hard, but he looked after Björn’s mother well, for which Björn was grateful. He was also a kind stepfather to Gudrún and had funded her education abroad at UCL.
“I’m not sure I’m such a good man,” said Björn.
“But do you see how I can’t just reject Finlay? I love him. I love you, and I can’t write you off, either.”
“It’s different,” said Björn.
“Is it?” said Gudrún.
Björn didn’t answer, so Olya did.
“Of course it is.” She looked at Björn. “He might be have done something wrong, but at least he’s trying to do something about it. Finlay’s not. He’s going the other way. The money, the power – it’s going to his head. And Jesse’s. They break the rules in the markets and now they think they can break the rules in the world outside. Like the rule that says you are not supposed to kill. I’ve seen what happens when people think they’re above the law. My country saw a lot of it. It’s not good.”
She reached over and took Gudrún’s hand. “You need to get out of there. Finlay is unstable. He’ll do it again. Or he’ll do something to you.”
Gudrún sat up straight and looked at her brother and her friend. “I understand what you’re saying, both of you, and I know you want to help me. But I don’t believe he’s hurt anybody. And he would never hurt me. He loves me. Maybe . . .”
“Maybe what?” Björn said.
Gudrún hesitated and shook her head. With a sinking feeling Björn knew she was thinking about spending the rest of her life with Finlay.
“You’ve spoken and I’ve listened,” she said. “Now can I go? Back to him. You said I could.”
Björn and Olya glanced at each other. Björn nodded; what else could he do?
“Thank you.” Gudrún got up to leave the table. She hesitated and kissed Björn quickly on the cheek. She gave Olya a rapid hug, and then she was gone.
“We tried,” said Olya.
“We tried.”
Izzie Jarvis watched the Icelandic girl leave the pub and stride rapidly down the narrow street in the direction of her boyfriend’s building.
She let her go. It was the big, fair-haired man she was interested in.
For the last three days she had been part of a team watching Finlay Karsh’s apartment from a newly constructed residential block a hundred yards away. They had an oblique angle into Karsh’s living area through the large windows. Karsh kept the blinds open most of the time, even at night, for the view. If he could see out, Izzie and her colleagues could see in.
Izzie had joined MI5 three years before as a graduate from Nottingham University, but, since June, she had been seconded to a shadowy department known simply as the Firm. They operated out of a series of nondescript office blocks and government buildings just a little further west on the opposite bank of the Thames. The Firm was divided into a series of fifteen Groups, each one serving its own particular purpose and, at least on paper, kept separate from the others. Izzie had been sent to Group Three, responsible for providing intelligence through watching and listening, data that their counterparts at Langley would rather crassly refer to as SIGINT and HUMINT.
Izzie wasn’t wild about the Firm. She had heard the rumours of the use to which her work was ultimately put, particularly with regard to Group Fifteen, the collection of agents sometimes referred to as ‘headhunters.’ She had always known that working for British intelligence would involve some compromises with what civilians considered acceptable behaviour, but the more she heard of Group Fifteen, the further outside these norms it seemed to be.
Gossip and asking questions in the Firm was discouraged. That was fine with her: she didn’t want to know the answers. But it was only a one-year secondment, and Izzie was ambitious. She was getting good field experience under her belt, assignments such as this current surveillance job.
She had recognised the Russian girl, Olya Delova, from the file – Jesse Brenner’s girlfriend. She couldn’t identify the big man. She had jotted down a description. Tall – six four, maybe six five – broad square shoulders; cropped fair hair, skin so fair he was almost white; she couldn’t see his eye colour; pale complexion; pointed chin; small ears with almost no lobes. Clothing: black jeans, blue denim shirt over a dark T-shirt, brown jacket, heavy black shoes. Erect posture, like a soldier; graceful movement for someone so big.
She had been impressed by the speed with which he had taken down Karsh’s protection, and after a quick check with her boss in Group Three, she had decided to follow him. This man was interesting.
A couple of minutes after Gudrún Sigjónsdóttir had left the pub, Olya and the man had appeared. Izzie was positioned deep in the shadows of a doorway fifty yards away, and she was sure she could not be seen from the well-lit street. She snapped the man with her smartphone, flash off, as he walked beneath a lamppost.
Then she followed behind the two figures as they headed towards Waterloo Station.
From the way the man had dealt with Karsh’s bodyguard and his butler, Izzie was expecting counter-surveillance moves, but the man either didn’t suspect or didn’t care that he was being followed.
The Russian woman and the big man boarded a Northern Line train, which for Izzie’s purposes was nicely crowded. The Russian woman got off at Embankment, no doubt heading west to her flat in South Kensington. The man stayed on as far as Archway.
Izzie had a tricky moment on the platform, where only a dozen or so people disembarked. Had the man been keeping an eye out, he would probably have spotted her, but he seemed deep in thought.
She trailed him out of the tube station a short distance south on Holloway Road, then along a side street until he came to a small terraced house. He fumbled for some keys and let himself in.
Izzie waited thirty seconds until a light came on, a window glowing on the second floor, and then called in the address.
It wouldn’t take long for the Firm’s analysts to identify the big man.
7
Number Five drove down the ramp beneath the red-brick and concrete office block and parked near the elevator. Global Logistics had only one of these, a dingy wooden box, and Number Five took it up to the third floor.
Global Logistics was a cover for Group Fifteen. As the elevator clanked its way upwards, Number Five felt the familiar tingle of anticipation. He had received a call only an hour earlier, summoning him to the office to see Control. Each Group within the Firm was led by a man or woman who bore that designation, and Captain Michael Pope filled the role in this building. A couple of hundred people worked for the Group, providing the infrastructure for a small, highly trained core of a dozen operatives who carried out its purpose: the deniable assassination of in
dividuals deemed to be a threat to the state. MI5 and MI6 had come out of the shadows over the last couple of decades, but the Group remained firmly hidden, not just from the public, but also from most of the government.
In the real world, some problems were too difficult to be solved by legal means. That had always been true in the past and would be in the future. It was these problems that the Group, and its agents like Number Five, could solve.
Five had been trained to kill, not least during his years in the SAS, and he was good at it. He believed in Queen and country, he believed in the law, and he also believed that the people he was tasked with killing were the bad guys, and that Britain was a safer and freer country with them gone.
His grandfather had fought in the Second World War, killing Germans and Italians in North Africa to defend his country. The world was more complicated these days, but it was still dangerous and Britain still needed defending. But the enemy no longer wore uniforms and drove around in tanks or flew airplanes. And to be effective, organisations like the Group had to operate under different rules.
The tasks that Five had been given over the last few years were varied. Some were easier to execute than others. They were all dangerous. The danger came mostly from the targets or the men protecting them. But it also came from the risk of being caught by the local law enforcement. Deniability meant Group agents were always on their own.
There was also burnout. When Five had first joined the Group, his mentor had been Number One, a man called John Milton who one day had decided he had had enough and quit. Or tried to quit. The resulting mess had torn the Group apart. Captain Pope’s predecessor as Control had been revealed as corrupt. He was a cunning toad of a man and he had gone to ground, taking some of his agents with him. Five had been Number Twelve then, but he had raced up the pecking order to assume his present position.
A short, burly woman wearing jeans and a sweatshirt was sitting outside Pope’s office. Number Eleven. Five did not know her name. She had been recruited from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, and already within her first couple of months working for the Group she was establishing a reputation for brutal effectiveness.
David Tanner, Pope’s private secretary, greeted Five and led the two agents into their boss’s office.
Captain Pope was smartly dressed in a grey suit, white shirt and a regimental tie. He looked and acted the part of a commanding officer, although his broken nose and cauliflower ears testified to the years carrying out the kind of orders he was now giving. The office had resembled a gentlemen’s club when his predecessor had occupied it, but Pope had changed things around: the furniture was functional, not opulent, and the old filing cabinets had been dumped in favour of a more technologically up-to-date setup.
“Good afternoon,” Pope said.
“Control,” Five said. Eleven dipped her head.
Pope got straight to business. “This is your target.” He handed each of them a file.
“Patrice Bertin. Ex–French Foreign Legion. Spent seven years as a mercenary, but now specialises in contract work. He is expensive and he has a one-hundred-percent success rate.”
Pope paused to let his agents skim the dossiers. Five was impressed by the list of targets, knowing that these would just be a small proportion of Bertin’s tally: an Italian Mafiosi, a Chechen warlord, an Uzbek chief of police, a Chinese businessman, a Lebanese arms dealer. Difficult, dangerous targets, the kind that would prompt a lethal response.
“His current target is this man: Finlay Karsh.” Pope handed them another file. “Karsh manages a hedge fund that specialises in troubled companies and countries – what the City euphemistically calls a ‘vulture fund’. In the last six months he’s built up a large interest in the shares of DarGold, a London-listed company with mining operations in Central Asia, in particular Dariastan. DarGold is almost bankrupt, but it is bidding for a mining licence in Dariastan. Are you with me?”
It was rhetorical. Five and Eleven both nodded.
Pope continued. “An Uzbek businessman named Ahmed Arbarov owns a rival mining company, which is also bidding for the mining rights. Arbarov was the favourite, but Karsh has found a way of putting pressure on the Dariastan government to sell the rights to DarGold. The announcement will be made in two weeks’ time.”
“How has he done that?” asked Five. Eleven, in the seat next to him, looked completely uninterested; all she needed was a name and an order. But Five had found that the more he knew about the background, the better able he was to deal with the unexpected.
“Dariastan is almost bankrupt itself, or is pretending to be. They’re rescheduling their debt with their banks. Karsh’s fund, Lochalsh Capital, has bought bonds issued by Dariastan and is holding up the debt renegotiation. No one knows it, but Karsh has agreed with the Dariastan government to let the rescheduling go ahead if DarGold is given the mineral rights.”
“And Arbarov doesn’t like that?”
“No. We think he’s got wind of what Karsh is up to. At any rate, he warned Karsh to back off, but Karsh took no notice. So Arbarov has decided to take action.”
“Bertin?”
“Precisely.”
“And why do we care?”
“DarGold are mostly interested in the gold deposits in the area. But there are also deposits of other minerals – rare earths, lithium and molybdenum – which are becoming vital strategic materials these days. DarGold will sell them to us if we need them. Arbarov will sell them to the Chinese.”
“So Bertin has two weeks to kill Karsh?” Eleven said.
“We think so.”
“And we need to protect him in the meantime?”
“We need to be proactive,” Pope said. “Take out Bertin before he gets to Karsh. He’s too good for us to allow him time to make his move.”
“Do we know where he is?” Five asked.
“No. We don’t even know whether he’s in country. But Bertin will have to do a recce before he acts. Group Three is watching Karsh’s flat in Southwark, and his office in Mayfair. When they spot him, you terminate him. This will be a close-quarters operation, probably in the street. We don’t want to take the chance that he shakes us off. We move right away.”
“Does Karsh know we are protecting him?”
“No. He’s recruited his own bodyguards, but they’re out of their depth.”
“And does Bertin know we are after him?”
Pope smiled. “No. That’s another reason for striking as soon as we make contact. Any questions?”
“None, sir,” said Five. This was the kind of mission he liked. A competent target, but one who was unprepared. Difficult, but the odds were in their favour. Eleven didn’t reply. She looked like she didn’t care who the target was or why: she just wanted to get out there and do the job. Five could see why she had been recruited, but he wasn’t looking forward to working with her.
“Good. Eleven, you take the office in Mayfair. Five, you take the apartment in Southwark. Now, get to it.”
8
Gudrún paced around her glass cage, twelve floors up from the bustling city. Finlay had left for his office in Mayfair at six-thirty. She hadn’t got up till ten. Now the whole day stretched ahead of her.
Finlay hadn’t said when he would be coming home. He had a lot of work to do in the office before they went up to Scotland in a couple of days. They were going up for the deer stalking; there were only a few days left before the stag season ended, and Finlay had not yet had the chance to shoot deer on his newly acquired estate. Jesse was going, too. The two of them would, of course, also work from there; Finlay had spent a small fortune installing satellite broadband. Gudrún was looking forward to the trip. She had been once before, in June, just after she had met Finlay. The open, sheep-grazed hills reminded her of Iceland. Once she was there, she would just walk and walk.
The truth was she had been bored ever since she had dropped out of the Slade, but with Olya around she could be bored with someone else. Olya was fun to hang out with. Bu
t now there was just her. For how long? Forever? Did she really want that?
Of course, there was Mackay. And the new bodyguard, Mr. Sturridge, who was ensconced in the kitchen. Ian Mackay managed to be both friendly and respectful at the same time, but both of them knew she wasn’t supposed to spend her days hanging out with him. He was cute, though. She shook her head. What was she thinking – that having an affair with the butler would solve all her problems?
She should never have quit her art classes. It had made sense to give it up; school was getting in the way of her travelling with Finlay. Maybe she should paint something now. Or in Scotland? That was it. She decided to buy some watercolours and paint hills, glens and the deep grey sea loch by Castle Rosnager. And sheep, plenty of sheep. Nothing clever, nothing original, just gentle watercolours like her grandfather had taught her when she was a girl. The kind of painting that would be laughed at if she showed it to the others at the Slade.
At least she had a plan. She set out from the flat, gathering Mr. Sturridge, who followed ten metres behind, and crossed the river on the Hungerford Bridge to Cass Art in Charing Cross Road, where she bought what she needed.
It wasted a couple of hours, but as she returned towards the apartment, loaded down with three carrier bags of art supplies, she paused in front of the National Theatre and sat on a bench overlooking the river. Mr. Sturridge found his own bench twenty metres away.
It was a grey October day, with low clouds scudding in from the west. The Thames swirled past: deep, powerful, angry. No one else was foolish enough to sit in the cold wind, but Gudrún found it invigorating. It reminded her of home; dark clouds whipping across Reykjavík from the North Atlantic.
What the hell was she doing?
It was a question she had been avoiding since the night before. Actually, since she and Olya had quit the Slade.
Olya had no real evidence that Finlay had killed Walsh. None. It was all her imagination, no doubt encouraged by her experience with Russian oligarchs, some of whom might indeed be real killers. Gudrún had met Olya’s father. He was a sweet and generous man, whom Olya called a “microgarch” rather than an oligarch, and who she insisted always avoided violence, unlike some of his friends.