by Mick Herron
“It’s after midnight.”
“Thanks,” Lamb said. “My watch is fast. And when you’ve done that, do a background on Arkady Pashkin, which is spelt exactly like I’ve just said it.” He paused. “Is there a reason you’re still here?”
Catherine said, “That’s good work. Well done, Roddy.”
Ho left.
She said, “Would it kill you to tell him well done?”
“If he doesn’t do his job, he’s just taking up space.”
“He found this.” Catherine waved the printout. “And another thing—‘chink of light’?”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Christ, I’m getting old,” said Lamb. “Don’t ever tell him, but that was unintentional.”
She went out to the tiny kitchen, and put the kettle on. When she returned, he’d pushed his chair back and was staring at the ceiling, an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Catherine waited. At length, he spoke.
“What do you make of it?”
It appeared to be a genuine question.
She said, “I presume we’re ruling out coincidence.”
“Well, it’s not like Upshott had a sale on. And like Ho said, there’s no other reason to move there.”
“So an entire sleeper network just descended on a Cotswold village and, what, took it over?”
“Sounds like the Twilight Zone, doesn’t it?”
“To what end? It’s basically a retirement village.”
He didn’t reply.
The kettle boiled, and she went back out and made tea. Came back with two mugs, and put Lamb’s on his desk. He made no response.
She said: “It’s not even a dormitory town. No direct rail link to London, or anywhere else. It’s got a church, a shop and a few mail-order outlets. There’s a pottery. A pub. Stop me when it starts sounding like a target.”
“The base was still there when they moved in.”
“Which suggests that if their presence had anything to do with the base they’d have left by now. Or done whatever they meant to do while it was still operational. And who buys a house to carry out a covert op, for heaven’s sake? Half of them took out mortgages. That’s how Ho found them.”
Lamb said, “No, please, keep talking. I find silence oppressive.” Without shifting his gaze from the ceiling, he began fumbling for his lighter.
She said, “If you light that, I’m opening a window. It already stinks in here.”
Lamb removed the cigarette from his mouth and held it above his head. He rolled it between his fingers. She could hear him thinking.
He said, “Seventeen of them.”
“Seventeen families. Or some of them are families. Do you think the kids know?”
“How many we talking about?”
Catherine checked the printout. “About a dozen. Most of them well into their twenties, but at least five still have strong ties to the village. River says—” Lamb jerked upright and she paused, her thread broken. “What?”
“Why are we assuming they know about each other?”
She said, “Ah … Because they’ve all been there twenty years?”
“Yeah. It must come up at dinner parties all the time.” His voice rose a key. “Did I ever mention that Sebastian and I spy for the Kremlin? More Chablis?” He resumed his search for his lighter. “Sleepers operate solo. They don’t have handlers, just a call-code. Do this. Over and out. Years can go by in-between, and they have no contact with anyone else.”
His face had assumed its bullfrog expression. He found the lighter and lit his cigarette but did so on auto-pilot. He didn’t even comment when Catherine crossed the room, raised the blind, and opened the window. Dark night air rushed in, eager to explore this brand new space.
He said, “Think about it. The Wall comes down. The USSR breaks up. Whatever the network was for, at this point it’s tits up. So maybe the mastermind running it, who we’re assuming’s the same guy who dreamed up Alexander Popov, decided to mothball it. But instead of calling them home, he sends them out to the sticks instead. Why not?”
Catherine jumped onto his train of thought. “They’ve spent years burrowing into English society. They’ve all got jobs, all successful in their own fields, and then they’re instructed to move out into the countryside, like countless other middle-class successes. Maybe they’re not sleeping any more. Maybe they’ve become who they’ve been pretending to be.”
“Living normal lives,” said Lamb.
“So I was right. It is a retirement village.”
“Though it seems someone plans to wake them up.”
“Either way,” said Catherine, “it might be an idea to let River know.”
Moult opened the fridge and from its freezer compartment produced a bottle so frosted River couldn’t read its label. Finding glasses on a shelf, he set them on the workbench. Then he uncapped the bottle, filled each glass, and handed one to River.
“That’s it?” River said.
“You expected a slice of lemon?”
“We’ve walked seven miles across pitch-black moorland, and your top secret is, you know where there’s free booze?”
“It was barely two miles,” Moult pointed out. “And there’s a quarter moon.”
On the moor, they’d had to drop to the ground when a jeep passed, carving out chunks of the night, small parts of which glittered—insects, darting about like aerial shards of glass, and reflecting the security patrol’s headlights. Not long afterwards, they’d come through the fence, but not the same way Griff Yates had led River in; instead, they’d emerged onto a stretch of tarmac along which they’d been trekking for over a minute before River registered what it was: not a road but a landing strip. And then the building up ahead took shape, and it was the hangar where the flying club kept their aeroplane. Next to it was a smaller construction, the clubhouse itself, which turned out to be not much more than a garage with added amenities—the fridge Moult was raiding; a few chairs; an old desk cluttered with paperwork; a stack of cardboard boxes, half-covered by a plastic sheet. Light came from a bare overhead bulb. The key to all this treasure had been on a ledge above the door, which would have been the first place River looked, had Tommy Moult not already known it was there.
Tommy Moult, who was now looking at his empty glass as if trying to puzzle out how it had got that way.
River said, “I’m guessing you’re not actually a full member of the club?”
“It’s not a club as such,” Tommy said. “Not with rules and membership lists.”
“So that would be a no.”
He shrugged. “If they wanted their door locked, they’d keep the key where it couldn’t be found.”
There were photos magneted to the fridge. One was of Kelly in flying gear: jumpsuit, helmet, broad smile. Others, alongside bills and newspaper clippings, showed Kelly’s friends: Damian Butterfield, Jez Bradley, Celia and Dave Morden; others River couldn’t put names to. An older man standing by the neat aircraft that was the flying club’s pride and joy looked very much the pilot in pressed trousers and silver-buttoned blazer. His white hair was immaculately tended; his shoes shined to perfection.
“That’s Ray Hadley, is it?”
“Aye,” Tommy said.
“How’d he afford his own plane?”
“Maybe he won the lottery.”
Hadley was the club’s founder, if a club that wasn’t a club could have a founder. Through his encouragement Kelly and Co had taken flying lessons; because of him, their lives had come to centre around this garage and the hangar next door.
In one of their first conversations River had asked Kelly how they managed to afford it all, and slight puzzlement had flitted across her face as she’d explained that their parents had paid. “It’s not much more expensive than riding lessons,” she’d said.
Above the desk was a calendar, the month’s days marked off in small square boxes. Several had been X’ed out with thick red marker pen. Last Saturday, River noted, and the Tuesday before that. And t
omorrow. Underneath it, holiday postcards had been blu-tacked to the wall: beaches and sunsets. All a long way away.
His mobile vibrated in his pocket.
“I’ll be outside,” he told Tommy, which was where he checked the incoming number before answering.
It was Catherine Standish, not Lamb.
“This is going to sound odd,” she promised.
Catherine gone, Lamb closed his window, pulled down his blind and poured a glass from the Talisker kept, true to cliché, in his desk drawer. As he drank, his gaze slipped out of focus. Anyone watching might have thought he was slipping into a booze-fuelled nap, but Lamb asleep was more restless than this—Lamb asleep made sudden panicky movements, and sometimes swore in tongues. This Lamb was still and silent, though his lips shone. This Lamb was impersonating a boulder.
At length, this Lamb spoke aloud: “Why Upshott?”
If Catherine had been there, she’d have said, Why not? It had to be somewhere.
“And if it was anywhere else, I’d be asking why there?” Lamb replied. But it wasn’t anywhere else. It was Upshott.
And whoever had decided that that’s where it should be had Kremlin brains in a Kremlin head. Which meant they didn’t choose breakfast without weighing up the consequences. Which meant there was a reason for it being Upshott which didn’t involve a map and a pin.
Eyes closed, Lamb summoned up the Ordnance Survey map he’d studied once a day since River Cartwright had become an agent in place. Upshott was a small village among larger towns, none of which had any strategic significance; they simply nestled in the heart of the British countryside, attracting tourists and photographers. They were towns where you bought antiques and expensive sweaters. Places to go to when you were sick of cities. And if you wanted an image of England, they were the places you thought of, once you’d used up Buck House and Big Ben and the Mother of Parliaments.
Or at least, he amended, they were the places a Kremlin brain in a Kremlin head might think of when thinking of England.
Now Lamb stirred, and sat up. He poured another scotch and drank it; the two actions twin halves of a single seamless gesture. Then he pawed at his collar with a meaty hand, to confirm he already wore his coat.
It was late, but he was still up. And in Lamb’s world, if he was still up, there was small reason why any other bugger should be sleeping.
Needing a Russian brain to pick, he left Slough House and headed west.
River said, “You what?”
Catherine repeated herself. “Half the names you’ve mentioned, Butterfield, Hadley, Tropper, Mor—”
“Tropper?”
Catherine paused. “Any special reason for singling him out?”
“… No. Who else?”
She read them out; Butterfield, Hadley, Tropper, Morden, Barnett, Salmon, Wingfield, James: the rest … seventeen names, most of which River had encountered. Wingfield—he’d met a Wingfield at St Johnno’s. She was in her eighties; one of those old ladies who seem half bird: bright of eye and sharp of beak. Used to be something at the Beeb.
“River?”
“Still here.”
“We thought Mr. B was in Upshott to meet a contact. It could have been any one of them, River. It looks like the cicada network exists, all right. And is right there, right now.”
“There a Tommy Moult on that list? M – O – U – L – T.”
He could hear the printout shimmy in her hands. “No,” she said. “No Moult.”
“No, I didn’t think there would be,” River said. “Okay. How’s Louisa?”
“The same. It’s this summit thing tomorrow. Your old friend Spider Webb and his Russians. Except …”
“Except what?”
“Lamb came up with background on the woman who ran Min over. It looks like the Dogs might have been hasty, writing it up as an accident.”
“Jesus,” he said. “Louisa know?”
“No.”
“Keep an eye on her, Catherine. She already thinks Min was murdered. If she gets proof …”
“I will. How do you know she thinks that?”
“Because I would,” he said. “Okay. I’ll watch my step. But so far, I’ve got to tell you, Upshott appears to be what it looks like on the map. A small piece of nowhere in some pretty countryside.”
“Roddy’s still digging. I’ll get back to you.”
River stood a while longer in the dark. Kelly, he thought. Kelly Tropper—maybe her father, yes, former big-shot lawyer in the capital; maybe he was the kind of long-term burrower the old-style Kremlin might have put in play. But his daughter had barely been born when the Wall came down. There was no reason to suspect she might be part of the network. What were the chances that this little nowhere was nurturing a new generation of Cold War warriors, and what would they be fighting for if it did? The resurrection of the Soviet Union?
Through the window, he watched Tommy Moult pour more vodka, then take something from his pocket and put it in his mouth. He used the alcohol to wash it down. He still wore his red cap, and the hair that poked from it seemed comical. His skin was tight across his jaw, and bristled with white stubble. The gleam in his eyes was lively enough, but there was an air of weariness about him. The cap struck a jaunty note at odds with everything else.
Turning, River faced the hangar. The big doors giving onto the landing strip were padlocked, but there was an unsecured side entrance. He stepped inside, listening hard, but the only sounds were those of an empty structure, and when he swept the interior with his pocket torch’s beam, nothing scuttled from its reach. The plane loomed in the shadows. A Cessna Skyhawk—he’d not been this close to it before, but had seen it ploughing the skies above Upshott, where it seemed a child’s toy. It wasn’t that much more substantial now: about half as tall as River himself, and maybe three times that long. It was single-engined, with space for four passengers; white with blue piping. When he laid a hand on its wing it was cold to the touch, but promised warmth; the warmth of coiled potential. He hadn’t really registered until now that Kelly flew. Had known it as a fact, but not felt it. Now he did.
The rest of the structure was mostly clear floorspace, everything else being stacked against the walls. A flatbed trolley’s handle reared up like a hobbyhorse. Whatever it held was draped in canvas. This was secured to the trolley with clothesline, and River had to fiddle with a knot, torch in mouth, before he could peel it free. Having done that, it took him a moment to work out what it was that was stacked there, three sacks deep. He put a hand to it. Like the plane it was cold, but warm with the same coiled potential.
What felt like a pair of darts struck him on the neck.
A flash of light ignited River’s brain, and the world turned to smoke.
The Wentworth Academy of the English Language was quiet, no lights showing from its third-floor offices above the stationer’s off High Holborn. This suited Lamb. He’d prefer to find Nikolai Katinsky asleep. Being woken at this hour would stir memories, and render him amenable to questioning.
The door, like Slough House’s, was black and heavy and weathered, but where the latter hadn’t been opened in years, this saw daily use. No groaning from the tumblers as Lamb slipped a pick into its keyhole; no squealing from the hinges as he eased it open. Once inside he waited a full minute, accustoming himself to the dark and the building’s breathing before tackling the staircase.
It was often observed of Lamb that he could move quietly when he wanted. Min Harper had suggested that this was only true on his home ground, because Lamb knew every creak and wobble of Slough House, having doctored the noisier stairs himself. But Harper was dead, so what did he know? Lamb went up without a sound, and paused at the Academy’s door barely long enough to squint through its frosted window, or so it appeared, though the pause proved long enough for him to gain entry. He closed the door behind him as silently as he’d opened it.
Again, he stood a moment, waiting for the atmospheric disturbance his entrance had made to settle, but it was wast
ed caution. There was nobody there. The door to the next office hung ajar, and there’d be nobody in there either. The only living thing was Lamb himself. Slivers of streetlight broke through blinds, and as his eyes adjusted he could make out the shape, under the desk, of the still-folded camp bed; its thin mattress folded round its metal frame like a diagram of an unlikely yoga position.
Lamb carried no torch. Torchlight in a darkened building screams burglary. Instead, he switched the anglepoise on, flooding the desk with cold yellow lamplight and puddling the rest of the room. Everything looked as it had on his previous visit. Same bookshelves holding the same thick catalogues; same paperwork littering the desk. He opened drawers and scuffled through papers. Most were bills, but a letter lay among them, handwritten, peeping from a coyly curling flap. A love letter, of all things; not even an explicit one, but expressing regret at parting. It seemed that Nikolai had seen fit to end an affair. Neither the fact that he had done so, nor that he had embarked upon an affair in the first place, surprised Lamb. What he did find curious was that Katinsky had left the letter in what amounted to plain view. All it took was for someone to break in and rifle his desk. Katinsky had never been a player—a cipher clerk, one among many; barely known to Regent’s Park before his defection—but still, Service life should have taught him Moscow Rules, and Moscow Rules should never be forgotten.
He replaced the letter. Examined a desk diary. No appointments had been noted for today. The remainder of the year was empty too: a string of blank days stretching ahead. Lamb flipped back and found annotations: brief reminders, initials, times and places. He put it down. In the small adjoining office was a filing cabinet which held clothing; in a mug on a shelf, a razor and toothbrush. A shirt hung on the back of the door. In a corner, a blue coolbox held tubs of olives and houmous, slices of ham and a chunk of mouldy bread. In a cupboard he found a stash of empty pill bottles, none with prescription labels. ‘Xemoflavin,’ one read. He dropped it in a pocket, then surveyed the tiny room once more. Katinsky lived here all right. He just wasn’t here now.