A Darker Place

by Jack Higgins

  “As you should,” said Gregorovich. “Now into the commanding officer’s office. I need to discuss Paris with you.”

  HE DIDN’T EVEN take his coat off, but did remove his hat as he sat behind the desk and opened a briefcase and took out some documents. “There is a copy for each of you, including you, Comrade,” he said to Kurbsky. “Lieutenant Ivanov will be in charge.”

  Kurbsky said, “So the ceremony? Is it afternoon or evening?”

  “Seven o’clock at the Élysée Palace. There will be other honorees-scientists, academics, fifteen in all. It’ll be an exclusive affair, government officials, a few ministers. A buffet will be served.”

  He sounded as if he didn’t approve. “I know how it goes,” Kurbsky said. “The worst excesses of decadent capitalism. Great-looking women in gorgeous frocks, champagne, mountains of caviar. They know how to seduce us Russians.”

  His minders were struggling not to laugh, and Gregorovich was not amused. “Kurbsky, you have a sacred duty to the Motherland to serve her at all times.”

  “But I do, I assure you, Major.”

  “Back to business. You will fly by private plane next Tuesday afternoon and land at Charles de Gaulle Airport. In view of the importance of the affair to our reputation, you will stay at the Ritz Hotel.”

  The young men perked up considerably. Kurbsky said, “My goodness, Major, are you sure we can afford it?”

  “Such levity does not become you.”

  “My apologies. The ambassador will be there, I presume.”

  “No, he’s needed at an important meeting in Brussels.”

  “How interesting. I didn’t realize we were now in the European Union.”

  “That is not amusing. You book into the Ritz immediately. This is to guarantee your presence the next day. As I’ve already made clear, the ceremony is at seven. You return to Moscow in the jet at ten o’clock Thursday morning from Charles de Gaulle.”

  “Well, there you go, lads,” Kurbsky said. “No chance even to get laid.”

  “Your kind of frivolity does not amuse me, Kurbsky.” Gregorovich closed his briefcase and put his hat on. “The Motherland has treated you well. I would suggest you remember that.”

  “Oh, I will, I will,” Kurbsky assured him.

  Gregorovich got up. “Good morning. I can’t wait to get back to Moscow and sanity.” He opened the door and paused. “I don’t like you, Kurbsky. I never approved. They spoil you too much. But what goes around comes around. You should remember that.”

  He went out. Ivanov and his friends looked troubled. Kurbsky stood up. “Don’t worry, lads, he’s been a desk man all his career. Guys like that hate real soldiers for obvious reasons. Anyway, I’m going for a run. I don’t know what you lot are going to do, but if you want to keep up with me, you’ll have to get your running shoes on.”

  He left them there, ran through the hall and out across the car park, where he saw Gregorovich leaving in his limousine, went down the terrace steps, and ran toward the orchards and the woods in the distance.

  AT HOLLAND PARK, Katya Zorin finished demonstrating her reconstruction of Alexander Kurbsky to the full crew, including Ferguson and the Salters.

  “You’ve got to admit, it’s brilliant,” Harry said. “Absolute genius. I’ve known a lot of villains over the years who’d have paid you a fortune to have given them a workover like that,” he told Katya.

  “I’m for it completely,” Ferguson said. “Is everyone agreed?” They all nodded. “Good, now his identity. I’ll give it to the MI6 Office Five forgery department. A French father, an English mother, born here. Parents dead, and so on and so on. He’ll need documentation from the Royal Marsden and insertion into their system. London University, English degree. Journalist. Maybe a war correspondent in the Balkans, something like that. Passport filled with all the right stamps. Henri Duval-that name sound about right?”

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Monica said. “You should have been a writer yourself.”

  “Leave it to that nice lady at Office Five,” Dillon urged him. “So can we get down to how we lift him?”

  Ferguson said, “ A fast flight out, I’d say. Nothing official. If Parry and Lacey do it, it’s got to be out of the way somewhere. Certainly no airport in the Paris area. There are plenty of small airfields in Brittany that deal with business clients. I’ll speak to Squadron Leader Lacey and put it in his hands.”

  “And who goes to Paris?” Dillon asked.

  “You and Billy.”

  Billy smiled coldly. “That suits me fine.”

  At that moment, Monica’s phone rang. It was Kurbsky. “I haven’t got long. Listen carefully. I fly down to Charles de Gaulle on Tuesday, arriving in the evening. The Ministry has decided to splash out, so I’ll be at the Ritz with my three minders. The ceremony is at seven on Wednesday evening. We fly back from Charles de Gaulle at ten on Thursday morning.”

  His voice echoed over the speakers. Roper said, “We’ve got that. We’ll work out how to snatch you and tell you next time you call.”

  “Have you come up with a way of guaranteeing my anonymity?”

  “Absolutely. Katya Zorin has come up with a most ingenious suggestion. It will make you into a totally different person-one that no one would recognize as Alexander Kurbsky. You must trust us on this.”

  “All right. But I must go now. My minders are looking for me.”

  Ferguson said, “The Ritz, by God. He should surely be able to give them the slip from there.”

  “I would say so,” Dillon told him.

  Katya said, “I’ll be on my way,” and left.

  Ferguson said, “There is one other matter, now that Katya’s gone, so sit down again for a minute. The six of us make a nice tight crew, but it’s starting to go at the edges. First Katya and Svetlana. Now I’m going to have to include Lacey and Parry.”

  “Yes, Charles, but come off it. Those guys have supported us for years. We’ve been to the war zones with him: They brought Billy back from Hazar, shot to pieces. If you can’t trust them, who can you?”

  “All right, I accept that, but what I’m working my way up to saying is that I haven’t informed the Prime Minister.”

  “Jesus,” Billy said.

  “Is that legal?” Harry put in.

  “Since when have we ever been legal?” Dillon told him. “So what exactly are you getting at, Charles?”

  “If we tell the Prime Minister, we have to tell Blake Johnson.”

  “The man who was in Kosovo with my brother?” Monica said.

  “He does for President Cazalet what I do for the Prime Minister. We usually do things in tandem.”

  “I see,” she said. “Does that give you a problem?”

  “I don’t know, that’s why I mention it. I’d appreciate your opinions, so just think about it. We’ll leave it at that for the moment.”

  KURBSKY HAD MADE his call from an old ruined chapel in the wood beyond the orchard. It had a distant view of the house to one side of the track, and he’d been able to keep an eye out for the three young men as they approached, searching for him.

  “Where is the bastard?” Kokonin was saying.

  “He’s playing with us, I’m sure of it,” Ivanov told him.

  Kurbsky let them pass and vanish into the wood and lit a cigarette. So the enterprise was afoot. It struck Kurbsky as ironic that Ferguson and company were going to such trouble to extract him and to protect his identity when his own people were aware of everything-his new identity, where he was living.

  But that, of course, would depend on him. What if he kept his identity completely to himself? Thanks to the mobile phone, the greatest invention of all time in some ways, he could receive encrypted calls from people who did not know where he was. He could also make calls that could not be traced.

  So he, who had been a prisoner of his own people, was now in a strange way free to do what his people wanted or to refuse. It was absolutely beautiful, and then he remembered Tania at Station Gor
ky and realized that his thoughts of freedom had only been an illusion.

  There were voices down below on the track, and he emerged from the ruins and ran down the hill and confronted them. “Were you looking for someone?”

  They seemed put out, then Ivanov laughed. “Damn you, you’ve been playing with us again.”

  “Well, there isn’t much else to do round here, but there’s Paris to look forward to. Great chambermaids at the Ritz. You never know, you could get lucky.”

  They smiled at that, but Ivanov said, “Chance would be a fine thing. One of us has always got to be on guard in your suite.”

  Kurbsky, who had expected such a thing, said amiably, “And how are you going to manage that?”

  “I have to work out a rota,” Ivanov said.

  “Well, that’s okay. It means that when one of you is busy watching me, the other two can play.” He grinned. “I’m starving. Lunchtime, lads, so race me back.” He ran away from them very fast.

  THE ONE TIME he was assured of total privacy was when he stayed in the house, using the bar facilities or the gymnasium and swimming pool or the extensive library, which included computers. Luzhkov had provided him with codes offering access to classified GRU information, and after lunch he sat down, brought up a screen, and accessed the British Security Services.

  There was plenty of history there-the traitors who had worked for the KGB, for instance: Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and many, many more than the general public in Britain had probably ever known about. One thing wasn’t there, though-nowhere in the files was there any mention of General Charles Ferguson and his organization. The security force known in the trade as the Prime Minister’s private army simply did not exist.

  He tried another approach, accessing individuals, and struck it lucky. The George Cross Database came up with Major Giles Roper. It was all there, the George Cross and Military Cross, his service in Ireland, the Portland Hotel bomb, the final explosion that had left him in a wheelchair. Apparently, he now worked in the computer industry.

  “Computer industry, my arse,” Kurbsky said softly. “But what a man.”

  But that was all he could find on Ferguson and his crew. For want of something better to do, he tapped in “Monica” and reviewed her life. Her photo was excellent, and he smiled. A remarkable lady, and he liked her.

  Finally, he typed in “Svetlana,” something he had never done, and was amazed at the wealth of information. There was an early photo from the Moscow days of her and Kurbsky and Tania, his father in KGB uniform. A few lines on these early days and much more about her defection and London marriage. A list of her London stage appearances. A photo of Kelly, a mention that her companion was now the artist Katya Zorin, and then a whole page on her famous nephew.

  Kurbsky clicked into “Katya Zorin” and discovered her life in theater and art. There was a photo of her and Svetlana, obviously taken recently. He smiled, touched, and switched off.

  LACEY AND PARRY appeared at Holland Park and found Roper. “The boss has filled us in. Dillon and Billy are going to snatch somebody important in Paris Wednesday night and spirit him away,” Lacey said.

  “One Henri Duval, according to the passport,” Parry added, “though if you believe that, you’d believe anything.”

  “Absolute top priority,” Lacey said.

  “As big as it gets.” Roper drank a little scotch and lit a cigarette.

  “Well, if you say that, I really do believe it,” Lacey said. “So let’s look at France.”

  Roper brought it up on a screen, focusing on Paris. “It can’t be Charles de Gaulle or any of the small airfields operating in the Paris area.”

  “Look, aren’t you being a bit overcautious?” Parry asked. “A quick in-and-out. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Total anonymity. Ferguson wants this man swallowed whole. It must be as if he’s never been.”

  “It’s not a kidnapping, is it?” Lacey asked.

  “Absolutely not. He wants to disappear into the depths of France -that way, his own people might think he was still in France, simply hidden away somewhere.”

  “So Dillon and Billy pick him up by car and whisk him off somewhere,” Lacey said. “Overnight to another part of the country, where we’ll be waiting at some suitable airfield to fly out to the UK.”

  Roper enlarged the map. “What about Brittany?”

  “Lots of places we could use there, fly out across the Channel Islands, Isle of Wight, straight up to Farley Field. Long way to go, Brittany.”

  “Not if you went by rail. There’s a line all the way down to Brest marked on the map.”

  “And Brest is a hell of a long way,” Parry said.

  “I’m not suggesting you go all the way. The line goes through Rennes, for example. That’s not far from Saint-Malo, the Channel Islands, Jersey. I’ll bring up flying facilities for that area.”

  There were several. Lacey and Parry murmured together and finally made a choice. “ Saint-Denis. There’s an excellent flying club there. They have a tarmac runway to attract business travel, so jets can get in.” Lacey nodded. “We could do that. We could drop Dillon and Billy at Charles de Gaulle Wednesday morning, then fly down to Saint-Denis and overnight.”

  “Now for the train.”

  Roper tapped his requirements in and sat back. “There you are. Overnight for Brest, departing midnight. Apartments available, first class, can seat four.”

  “Well, there you are,” Lacey told him.

  “What plane will you use?” Roper asked.

  Lacey looked at Parry. “What do you think?”

  “Gulfstream’s too flashy. Let’s go for the sober look. The old Chieftain turboprop. Plenty of legroom, great seats.”

  “I agree.” Lacey turned to Roper. “A done deal. You take care of your end, we’ll fix up Charles de Gaulle and Saint-Denis, and we’re in business.”

  Parry added, “Could it get rough in Paris for Sean and Billy?”

  “Let’s put it this way. They’re up against people who will do everything in their power to stop them.”

  “Duval must be very important.”

  “When you recognize him, remember to forget you’ve seen him.”

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, Dillon and Monica accompanied Svetlana on a day out by invitation. They went in an old Ford station wagon, Katya driving, the weather brooding.

  “The time of year, my dears,” Svetlana said. “But I wanted you to see Holly End. It meant a great deal to Alexander when he was here. He used to go down for the weekends with Kelly all the time. Katya loves to paint there.”

  “When the weather is right,” Katya told them.

  They went through the city to Greenwich, following the river. Monica said, “ London seems never-ending.”

  “It all changes quite soon now,” Katya said, and she was right, for beyond Gravesend, with the rain that had threatened starting to pour, they moved into a bleak landscape of fields and marshland edged by mudflats swallowed up by the waters of the Thames estuary.

  Way beyond, half glimpsed through the mist and rain, ships moved out to sea. Katya said, “Look, way over there on the horizon is something you seldom see these days. A lightship, permanently moored on chains.”

  “So strange, this place, and so close to the city,” Dillon said. There were reeds now higher than a man, the road a raised causeway, and they came to a village of a dozen old-fashioned seaside wood bungalows, mostly painted green, with corrugated iron roofs. It looked totally desolate, not a soul in sight.

  “Who on earth lives here?” Monica asked.

  “No one, my dear,” Svetlana told her. “They are holiday homes for rent. People get their supplies from Gravesend or perhaps Rochester.”

  “And you must remember to fill up with petrol there, too,” Katya said.

  “But who on earth would want to holiday here?” Monica laughed.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Dillon said. “It takes all sorts. Dickens wrote about Gravesend and Rochester, as I recall.”
/>   “Bird-watchers come here all the time,” Katya said. “For people who like that sort of thing, it’s a paradise. In the old days, very ancient times, there were Saxons here, then outlaws of one kind and another hiding in the marshes. Closer to our own times, certainly in the time Dickens knew it, there were smugglers.”

  They came to a track on the right, turned along it, and arrived at a five-barred gate bearing a painted sign: “Holly End.” They entered a large farmyard, surfaced with shingle, fronting a barn and a two-story farmhouse that was surprisingly large. It had a slate roof and shuttered windows.

  Katya turned off the engine, got out, found a key, and opened the blue painted front door. “I’m only here to check the place,” she said. “But come in, by all means. There’s a pub at All Hallows, quarter of a mile away. We’ll lunch there.”

  Dillon helped Svetlana out, gave her his arm, and they went inside. The hall was dark, and there was a smell of damp. “Four bedrooms upstairs,” Katya said. “Sitting room to the left, kitchen to the right, and bathroom directly ahead. It’s an ugly bitch of a place during the winter, and everything’s covered, so there’s not much to see.”

  She went upstairs, and Dillon and Svetlana went into the sitting room. The furniture had all been covered by old-fashioned gray drapes. “Like shrouds, aren’t they? One could imagine a corpse on each chair,” Svetlana said.

  Dillon laughed. “It’s being so cheerful keeps you going, I can see that.” He helped her across to the kitchen, which was normal enough, though old-fashioned, and she sat at one of four chairs at a large wooden table. “And Kurbsky loved this place?”

  “Always, even in weather like this. It was the marsh he liked, plowing through the reeds, he and Kelly with shotguns looking for wildfowl.”

  They could hear Katya’s steps upstairs through the ceiling. Monica said, “A dead world. It makes me uneasy. Those people who came here in the past must have had little choice in the matter. Refugees, outlaws.”

  “I think that’s what Alexander adored about it. Perhaps the feeling that he resembled in some way all those people who had gone before,” Svetlana said.