by Clare Carson
He smirked, nodded his head when she jumped at the mention of water. She hesitated, her throat dry. Was she about to walk into a trap?
‘Please. Be my guest.’
She edged across the room, conscious of three men staring as she opened the door, pushed it shut behind her. There was no key in the lock. The room was white tiled, windowless but large. Toilet in one corner, bath and sink on the far side. She sat on the toilet, peed, the splash echoing around the room, let the penknife slip out from her arm into her hand, closed the blade, and jammed it down the side of her monkey boot. It dug into the flesh of her foot, but at least it was secure and not immediately visible. She stood, hoiked her pants and trousers.
‘Get a move on.’ Wolf; standing right outside.
She crossed to the sink, twisted the tap and washed her hands. She glanced at the bath. Full to the brim. She shook her hands, stepped over to the bath, stuck her finger in the water. Cold. East German political prisoner tells of cold water torture. Her brain whirred, unable to get any traction. She had to stay calm. Getagrip. The door handle moved down. Wolf swung in, grabbed her by the arm, twisted it behind her back, thrust her over the bath.
‘You know why that’s there?’
She didn’t reply.
‘I will show you then.’
He was spitting in her ear, his other hand on the back of her head, yanking her hair, ripping the roots. She shrieked. He tightened his hold, shoved her head forward. She waited for the force of water in her nose. It didn’t come. He released his grip on her hair, his hand now searching her coat pockets. Tissues, bus tickets, chucked on the floor. Thank fuck she’d hidden her penknife. He dragged her across the tiles, hurled her through the door, sent her skidding across the room. She smashed into the desk, sent a thermos flying. The Czech reached and caught the green metal tube, replaced it on the desk. She staggered to her feet, pain in her ribs, her shins, her head.
He gestured at the glass doors. ‘Come.’ He nudged the handle, pushed on the frame; the rank smell of the river blew in through the opening. She had no choice, and anyway, she wanted to take her bearings. In the night air, standing on a small balcony hanging over the Thames, alone with Reznik. Directly beneath, a narrow band of foreshore, glistening in the ambient light of the city. The tide had reached its high point and turned, the brown edge of the water slipping down the muddy bank. The golden crown of Tower Bridge’s north turret visible above the dark line of the wharves.
‘A lovely view, yes?’
‘Yes.’
The buzzing of a helicopter flying low along the river interrupted the conversation. She watched it heading east – City Airport perhaps.
‘You recognize this place?’ He pointed at the far shore. Rotherhithe; a jigsaw of wharves and wooden steps and greening jetties, a string of fairy lights waving in the breeze, the faint red glow of the Chinese lantern. She tried not to react. She had sensed she was being watched when she was standing on the deck of Karina’s barge. She was right; the balcony was diagonally opposite the Downside mooring; she had been picked up because she had been seen visiting Karina. But surely Reznik didn’t abduct all her guests. What was it about Sam that had roused the Czech’s suspicions? Perhaps he had clocked Tom visiting the Greenwitch, checked him out and discovered he was a journo, then spotted her with him. He could just be fishing – she was a young woman alone, easy to intimidate. Or was it possible, after all, that Karina was working with the Czech and had sent him a coded message across the water as soon as she had visited? She suspected not. She had given Karina her address and her abductors didn’t know it. Karina was unwitting bait.
He repeated his question. ‘You know this place?’
She shrugged.
He clicked his tongue impatiently.
‘Perhaps you need something to clear your head.’ He gripped her arm and shoved her back into the room.
‘Take a seat.’
She sat and he sat opposite. He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. Up close she could see his unyielding grey eyes through the lenses of his spectacles, his scarred, lashless eyelid intensifying the harshness of his gaze.
‘You know in my country at this moment, the people are rising,’ he said. ‘The writers, the intelligentsia, the students. It’s 1968 again, another Prague Spring. Freedom, that’s what they are demanding. Freedom. Down with the men in Moscow, the KGB, the puppet rulers, the secret police. Freedom. What do you make of that?’
‘As you said – interesting times.’ She hadn’t expected to be engaged in a debate about the crumbling Soviet Union. ‘Regimes change.’
‘Do you think these protestors will find the freedom they crave in the West?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? I think you do. I think you know that the freedom here is illusionary, that the politicians here are as likely to lie to you as over there, that the freedom to choose doesn’t mean much when you can’t afford to buy the goods on offer.’
He pressed his chin with his index finger.
‘But you are benefiting from that freedom,’ she said.
‘You think so?’
‘Well, you’ve bought all this.’ She nodded at the room, the view. ‘You told me you’ve got a whole portfolio of properties.’
‘Indeed, I have. But you know, it’s not so easy for me because, at the moment, I have to do everything through intermediaries. I have all sorts of middle men to help cover my tracks. And even the best of middle men don’t always live up to expectations.’ He laughed and nodded in the direction of the solicitor, who made a weird snuffling noise. Sam almost felt sorry for him.
‘What is that saying? If you want something doing... Of course, some people, some institutions, don’t care who you are, where you are coming from, so long as the cash is there. But there would be so many more possibilities, so many more opportunities if I could be sure my record was clear. All those assets the state will have to sell. Škoda. Omnipol. But for that, I need the help of a few old friends.’
Pierce, he meant of course. Was that the reason Reznik was after him? To clear his slate so he could deal more openly on the markets? Harry had warned her that now was a dangerous moment to be dealing with Eastern Bloc spooks, ex or otherwise.
‘I don’t see what any of that has got to do with me.’
‘I think some of these old friends, maybe they work for the British secret state.’
‘I don’t know anything about the British secret state.’
He gave her a hammed-up quizzical stare. ‘So you’ve never watched a James Bond film?’
She laughed. ‘Yes, but those are films. They aren’t... they’re not true.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Everybody knows that.’
‘The books were written by a spy.’
‘That doesn’t make them factual.’ She couldn’t see where this argument was going.
‘Secretly every British spy likes to think that he is James Bond. Don’t you agree?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What, you don’t know any British spies or you don’t know what they like to think?’
His eyes locked hers, scrutinizing her reactions. He didn’t know anything about her, he was testing her with his jokey conversation, trying to force a trip. She hid her thoughts somewhere inside her mind, retreated to the small triangle of dry sand at the back of the cave, kept her sight on the glittering sea creatures decorating the rocky walls. A bluebottle buzzed. He fiddled with a drawer in the desk, removed a rubber band, swirled it around his index finger, searched for the fly, took aim at the sliding doors, flicked. Direct hit. The band and fly plummeted to the floor, leaving an apricot splodge on the plate glass. He pushed himself back in his seat, locked his hands behind his head, smiled. His teeth were surprisingly jagged; they made her think of the pike she had found with Anna in the dried-up river at Blackstone.
‘In my country, the children of the security services are recruited before they leave school.’
‘I doubt that happens over here.’
‘Oh? You know something about the way the security services treat their children here?’
She stopped. Had he caught her out, or had he given something away? Did he have any solid information about her or was he revealing his suspicions, testing them? He was watching Karina because he knew she had a connection with Pierce. He had guessed Sam had a connection too; perhaps he had discovered that Pierce had a daughter and he had put two and two together and come up with the wrong answer. He thought she was Anna. The supposition unexpectedly cheered her; the idea that anybody could think she was related to Pierce felt like a compliment. He’d mistaken her for the daughter of a proper spy, able to play the mind games, outwit her opponent.
‘No, I don’t know anything about the way the security services treat their children,’ she said. ‘Just what I’ve read in books and heard in the news. I don’t think the secret state is quite as ruthless here as it is behind the Iron Curtain.’
‘Well, it is true the British like to wring their hands after they’ve killed somebody.’ He sounded irritated. ‘But I didn’t bring you here to discuss the merits of our different systems.’
‘So what am I doing here?’
He ignored her question. ‘Do you want a drink?’ He gestured at the flasks. ‘Tea, coffee, milk.’
She assessed the three thermos flasks sitting on the desk; it made her think of the three-card trick Jim had been taught by one of his mates from his days on the beat in London’s East End – could she identify the one thermos that didn’t contain any poison?
‘None of them are drugged.’ He smiled, pleased with himself for guessing her thoughts. ‘Of course, I can’t expect you to trust me on that. I’m happy to have whatever you have. Tea or coffee?’ She hadn’t had anything to drink all evening, she was thirsty. Perhaps she could risk it.
‘Coffee, please.’
‘You’re a coffee drinker. I thought English ladies liked their tea.’ He was mocking her in some way; she wasn’t exactly sure how or why. ‘Luckily I prefer coffee too.’ He unscrewed the lid of the thermos, poured the black liquid into the two cups.
‘Milk?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Black coffee. That is unusual. I don’t know so many English black coffee drinkers.’ He leered as he spoke, revealed his pike-like teeth, made her feel that he had somehow trapped her in his sharp jaw. ‘I’m afraid we have no sugar.’
‘I don’t take sugar.’
‘Good.’ He lifted the cup, took a mouthful, then another, placed his empty mug on the table. She reached for her cup, gulped the liquid down.
‘Now, perhaps you can tell me what you were doing visiting Karina Hersche on her lovely boat.’ He waved his hand at the river. ‘The Greenwitch.’
‘I’ve no idea what you are talking about.’
He whacked the table with a suddenness that made her jump, scattered the thermoses. ‘Don’t lie to me.’ She edged the chair back, felt resistance, turned and found her face smack against the brick wall of Wolf. She twisted back. The Czech was on his feet, leaning over the desk, his weight on his hands, his face up against hers, blasting her with his shotgun syllables. ‘Don’t be stupid. I thought you were smart, but maybe you’re not so smart after all. Maybe you’re a stupid girl who can’t see the shit she’s in, who can’t work out what Wolf enjoys doing with his tub of water.’
Her eyes were watering.
‘Now tell me – why were you visiting Karina Hersche?’
She tried to kill the fear coiling in her gut. She had to give him a fragment of truth.
‘I have a friend who is a journo. I went out for a drink with him the other night and he mentioned he was doing a story about the situation in Czechoslovakia, the resistance to the Soviet regime, so he’d been going around talking to Czech exiles in London and he said he’d visited this woman who lived on a houseboat, whose parents had fled in ’68. He said she was really interesting, but she’d asked him not to use her details in the piece. But when I went round to his place later, I saw a draft of the article, and it mentioned the name of her boat and said it was moored near Tower Bridge. I had an argument with him about it. He didn’t think it mattered because he hadn’t given her exact location. But there’s only one place to moor a houseboat near Tower Bridge. He can be really arrogant sometimes. He refused to budge. I went to warn her, and tell her what he was planning to do.’
He sat down, swung in his chair, balancing on the back legs, smiling mockingly.
‘Very inventive,’ he said. ‘I won’t bother to ask you for the name of your journalist friend, or what paper he works for. Wolf.’ He beckoned to his enforcer. She froze. He stuck his hands under her armpits, yanked her up from her seat. He was going to stick her head in the water. Half drown her. She couldn’t take it. This was stupid. She knew what Reznik was after – he wanted Pierce. She should let him have the information. Pierce could look after himself. Why was she defending him?
‘Take her away,’ the Czech said. ‘Give her a chance to come up with a better story. She’s a coffee drinker, after all. I have a soft spot for people who share my tastes.’
CHAPTER 25
London, October 1989
THE KEY CLUNKED in the lock. The room dark apart from the faint glow along the bottom of the window boards. A shout from the corridor made her freeze, the whiny voice of the solicitor.
‘You’re wanted.’
‘Yeah. OK. Coming.’
She waited. Wolf’s heavy footsteps diminishing. Silence. The enforcer had clumped away, returned along the corridor to Reznik. Now or never. She edged across the floor to the window, pushed the bottom of the board with her fingertips. It shifted an inch; loosely attached to the wooden frame. She squinted at the slither of light. The board stopped short on one side and she could see now that it was held in place by a batten nailed against the exterior frame. She wiggled her fingers down the side of her monkey boot, eased the Swiss Army knife out, pulled the blade, slid it in the gap between batten and brick wall and levered. The batten shifted with the pressure. Whoever had fixed the boarding over the glassless window hadn’t expected this room to be used as a cell. She yanked, street light flooding as the fixing loosened. She paused. If she pushed too hard and the batten and board fell off together, the whole lot would crash to the ground and bring Wolf back. She turned her attention to the board, pushed gently at the bottom corner, managed to ease it far enough away from the outside wall to slip her hand into the gap and around the edge. She pushed; the nails holding the batten creaked. She almost toppled with the momentum of her own force, regained her balance, and peered at the ground, a good fifteen feet below. But the sill was wide – and there was a drainpipe attached to the wall near the window with brackets at regular intervals. An old-fashioned solid lead drainpipe. She could climb down that, if she could reach it.
She waggled the plywood covering. It was still held in place by the second batten nailed more securely on the other side of the frame. She released her grip. The board swung, pivoting on its one point of attachment. She would have to exit backwards. She gripped the jamb, lifted herself on to the sill, twisted, edged to the far corner, stretched her right foot across the drainpipe, slid her foot down until her toe touched a bracket, swung one arm over, gripped the bracket above her head. Point of no return. She had to move quickly, no time for fear. She swung her left leg over and then her arm and half crawled, half slid down the drainpipe, ignoring the burning sensation in her hands and legs as her limbs scraped rusty metal. Her boots touched the ground. She glanced along the curving cobbled street. Derelict wharf buildings. Skips. Scaffolding. Nobody in sight. The river behind her. She turned left, heading west along the street, past a darkened pub. A shout behind, coming from above. Wolf. He’d already discovered she had escaped. Shit. The precariousness of her situation almost paralysed her. Getagrip. She dived down a narrow alley, engulfed by the shadows of its high walls, the smell of dank water filling her nostrils before she rea
ched the steep flight of steps to the Thames. She descended the slippery stones and lingered in the shadows, assessing her path. The tide was ebbing fast, revealing the grey foreshore, but the walls of the wharf on her right jutted beyond the river’s edge. Was the water shallow enough for her to escape this way? Behind her, the metal clank of the garage door opening, the Merc engine throbbing. If they were in the car, they wouldn’t see her down here. She made a dash for the wharf wall and headed out to its far boundary. The Thames lapped at her feet. She paddled, hand on the rough bricks, fearful in the darkness of straying too deep. She rounded the end of the derelict building and found, to her relief, a stretch of bank exposed on the far side.
She traipsed west, feet sinking in the wet mud. Up above, lights here and there in converted warehouses, Marvin Gaye drifting through an open window, laughter, glasses chinking. Down below, rats scurried around the tidemark of the city’s rubbish. Over a rotting jetty, past a huddle of barges stranded as the river retreated. She reached a deep gulley, a stream running into the Thames, its banks steep and muddy. A flight of steps ran alongside, ascending the embankment wall to a gate in a fence. She couldn’t go back or cross the gulley. She had to climb. Over the gate at the top, into the backyard of a pub, closed for the night. A dog snarled. She ran at the far fence, leaped, hauled herself up, legs scrabbling as the Alsatian lurched at her feet, dropped to the other side and darted across a bend in the road into a red-brick housing estate.
The headlights of a car swept around the corner. She dived behind an unkempt privet hedge. Close shave. The Merc sped past, tyres kissing wet cobbles. She ran again, heart pounding, leaving the estate, along the road, swerved into an alley. She stopped to take her bearings. The prow of a ghostly cruise ship cut across the far end of the narrow passage. St Katherine’s Dock. She had walked around here with Jim at the tail end of the seventies; they had been gobsmacked by the massive yachts and tanned men in white suits which, back then, had seemed like something dropped on London from Hollywood. These days the excesses of the hugely wealthy were a more common sight in the capital. She could cut across the quayside to Tower Bridge. If she could make it over Tower Bridge without being spotted she could walk along the south bank to Vauxhall. Was it safe to go home? Reznik didn’t have much information on her, she reckoned. He had assumed she was Pierce’s daughter. He didn’t know where she lived. If she managed to get back without being spotted, she was probably safe for a couple of days; time enough to work out her next move.