Dead Lions

by Mick Herron

  “Get you out of this shit.”

  Arms pulled River upright and his body screamed, but felt good at the same time—aching its way out of cramp.

  “Here.”

  A bottle was pressed to his lips, and water poured into his mouth. River coughed and bent forward; spat; threw up almost. Then blindly reached for the bottle, grabbed it, and greedily gulped down the rest of its contents.

  “Shit, man,” Griff Yates said. “You really are a fucking mess.”

  “I gamble, that’s all,” Marcus Longridge said.

  “You what?”

  “Gamble. Cards. Horses. You name it.”

  Louisa stared. “That’s it?”

  “Quite a big it, actually. Incompatible with efficient operational mode, apparently. Which is a joke. Ops can be the biggest gamble of all.”

  “So why didn’t they just boot you out?”

  “Tactical error. See, one of the HR bods decided I was suffering a form of addiction, and sat me down with a counsellor.”

  “And?”

  “He counselled.”

  “And?”

  Marcus said, “Well, I wouldn’t say it took, exactly. Not a hundred percent. That was a bookie just now, for instance.” He paused for a barrage of car-horns; an impromptu symphony likely to become the day’s soundtrack, as traffic found itself relegated to second-class status on the city’s streets. “But anyway, it turned out that once they’d given me a shrink, they couldn’t fire me. In case of legal hassle. So instead …”

  So instead, he’d joined the slow horses.

  Louisa glanced at the hotel, through whose big glass doors they’d be walking any moment. “Are you Taverner’s line into Slough House?”

  “Nope. Why would she want one?”

  “Catherine says she does.”

  “Can’t see why,” Marcus said. “We’re basically the Park’s outside lav. If she wants to know anything, can’t she just ask Lamb?”

  “Maybe she’d rather not.”

  “Fair enough. But I’m nobody’s snitch, Louisa.”

  “Okay.”

  “That mean you believe me?”

  “It means okay. And the gambling’s not a problem?”

  “We had a fortnight in Rome last year, me and Cassie and the kids. Paid for by my, ah, addiction.” He pushed his shades up again. “So fuck ’em.”

  It was the first time he’d mentioned his family in her hearing. She wondered if that was intended to win her confidence.

  He looked at his watch.

  “Okay,” Louisa said again, which this time meant he had a point: time was getting on. She led the way into the hotel lobby.

  Since they were partnered, it was probably as well he was in full possession of his nerve, she thought.

  But today was a babysit. It wasn’t like his ops experience would be needed.

  Catherine called River, got Number Unavailable; then Lamb, with the same result. Then studied paperwork. “All shoe and no footprint.” The more weight you carried, the deeper marks you made. But the early lives of these Upshott folk wouldn’t have left tracks in icing sugar.

  Stephen Butterfield had owned a publishing company, and a quick dip online showed him numbered among the chattering class’s great and good: always ready to weigh in on the issues of the day, on Radio 4, in The Observer. He’d served on a Parliamentary Commission on illiteracy; was a trustee of a charity supplying schoolbooks to developing countries. But go back, and his early life dissolved into mist. The same went for the others Roddy had backgrounded: light- to middleweight persons of substance; embedded in an establishment that invited them to its high tables, to sup with captains of industry and cabinet ministers. Control was about influence …

  With a start, she realised Ho was in her doorway. She had no idea how long he’d been standing there.

  He said, “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Kidding you? What do you mean?”

  He looked puzzled. “That you’re having a joke.”

  Catherine had the ability to make it clear she was taking a deep breath without actually taking one. She did this now. “What am I kidding you about, Roddy?”

  He told her.

  “It was meant to be a joke.”

  Some joke.

  “They never target the old houses. Once you know that, it’s kind of cool, actually.”

  Once you know that was the key phrase here.

  “And I can’t believe Tommy would’ve …”

  River ached all over, and couldn’t move as fast as he wanted—they were heading uphill. There was no signal in the dip.

  He said, “And this was because of Kelly?”

  Christ. He had the voice of a ninety-year-old.

  Yates stopped. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “I get it,” River said. “I just don’t care.”

  “She’s all I ever—”

  “Grow up.” She makes her own choices, he nearly said, but the thought of Kelly’s choices killed the words. He tried his mobile again, his hands taking fat-finger to a new level. No signal yet. An engine drifted into earshot and he looked up, half-expecting to see Kelly zipping through the blue in her flying bomb—but if that’s what she was in, she wouldn’t be buzzing over Upshott.

  She’d be in the air by now. He had to raise the alarm.

  There’s a plane going to fly into the Needle—our very own 9/11.

  On the same day a Russian oligarch with political ambitions would be on the seventy-seventh floor.

  Of course, if he was wrong, it would make crashing King’s Cross look like the pinnacle of his career.

  And if he was right, and didn’t sound the warning in time, he’d spend the rest of his life grieving for innumerable dead.

  “Come on.”

  “That’s the wrong way,” Griff told him.

  “No it isn’t.”

  The hangar. He had to get to the hangar; see if he was right about the fertiliser.

  Two steps more, and his phone buzzed in his hand. The signal was back.

  A jeep crested a hillock in front of them.

  When Pashkin emerged from the lift, he gave no indication that last night had ever happened; or at least not to him, not to her. He wore a different suit today. Gleaming white shirt, open at the neck. A flash of a silver cufflink. A hint of cologne. He carried a briefcase.

  “Ms. Guy,” he said. “Mr. Longridge.”

  The lobby echoed like a church.

  “The car should be outside.”

  And so it was. They sat in the same formation as the previous day, in similar slow-moving traffic. But what difference, Louisa wondered, would it make if they were ten minutes late? There was only Webb waiting. For a supposedly high-level summit, it was low key. She texted him anyway, to let him know they weren’t far off.

  At a junction on the edge of the City, the car rolled past three police vans: black, with shaded windows. Figures lurked inside; human shapes distorted by uniform and helmet, like American football players, absurdly padded up for a kickabout.

  Pashkin said, “Trouble is expected, then.”

  Louisa didn’t trust her voice in his presence.

  He said, “Your liberal values, they take a back seat when your banks and buildings are threatened.”

  Marcus said, “I’m not sure I have liberal values.”

  Pashkin looked at him, interested.

  “And besides. A few troublemakers get their heads broken, or thrown in a cell overnight. We’re hardly talking Tiananmen.”

  “Isn’t there a phrase for that? The thin end of the wedge?”

  The police vans were behind them now, but a hefty cop presence remained on the pavements. Most were wearing high-visibility jackets, not battle armour. Officer Friendly was the first face shown. Sergeant Rock stayed indoors until things got hairy.

  But these rallies had a habit of turning nasty, thought Louisa. It wasn’t just the banks the marchers were targeting. It was corporate greed in all its manifestations; all the vi
sible symbols of the rich getting richer, while others had their salaries cut, their debt increased, their jobs rationalised, their benefits slashed.

  Not her problem, though. Not today. She had her own battles to fight.

  Piotr spoke, and Pashkin replied, in a language thick as treacle. Maybe her face asked the question. Either way, Pashkin chose now to address her directly. “He says it is nearly over.”

  “Over?”

  “We’re nearly there.”

  She’d lost track. But here they were indeed, at the foot of the Needle; the car pulling into the root of its enormous shadow, then disappearing underneath it, to the car park below.

  Their plate was registered as belonging to a contractor; officially, their party was meeting with the one of the hotel’s kitchen supervisors in a utilities room below the building’s lobby.

  Their entry into the Needle itself would go unrecorded.

  James Webb had entered in the same way earlier. Up on the seventy-seventh now, he was considering placement. The tricky thing was, it wasn’t immediately clear which side of an oval table was the head. He tried the chair facing the window. All he could see was a lone plane scarring the blue. Some days you could sit here and be at the heart of a cloud. Right now, he was higher than parts of the sky.

  Though hadn’t yet flown as high as he intended to.

  “So, Mr. Pashkin. How can we make things easier for you?”

  That was the line he’d be taking. That Pashkin had nothing Webb wanted; all that mattered was that Pashkin’s path be made smooth. Later, debts would be called in; suggestions made as to how Pashkin might repay the kindness of foreigners. Even if no tangible favours were bestowed, simply meeting Webb rendered Pashkin compromised. But that was the lure of power. Ambition tended to the reckless, a seam Webb planned to mine.

  “I’m here to help. Officially, I don’t speak for HMG.” Modest cough. “But any requests you make will find a sympathetic hearing where it will do most good.”

  Cosmetic aid was what Pashkin would want. To be seen in the company of movers and shakers, and reckoned a force in the world. A photo op with the PM, drinks at Number 10, a little attention from the press. Once you were taken seriously, you were taken seriously. If Pashkin’s star rose in the west, it would cast light in the east.

  His phone buzzed. Marcus Longridge. They were in the garage. Webb listened, said, “Oh for Christ’s sake, he’s an honoured guest, not a security risk. Use your common sense.”

  After hanging up he rose, walked round the table, and tried the other side, so he was facing into the room, with the big view behind him.

  Yes, he decided. That was it. Leave the windows for Pashkin to gaze out of. Show him the sky was the limit, and wait for him to bite.

  He went to the lobby to wait for the lift.

  Behind him, in the far distance, the sun glinted off the wing of a tiny aeroplane, making it seem, for a moment, far larger than it was.

  “This Arkady Pashkin character?” said Ho.

  Catherine didn’t want to ask. “What about him?”

  “You read that feature? Supposed to be from the Telegraph?”

  “Supposed to be,” she repeated flatly.

  Ho said, “You look at it closely?”

  “I read it, Roddy. We all did.” She shuffled papers, moved a folder, found it. Not the actual newspaper, but a printout from the web. She waved it at him. “Telegraph. July seventh, last year. What’s your problem?”

  “It’s not my problem.” Ho plucked it from her hand. It ran to three pages, complete with photograph. “Here.” He stabbed the address box at the top of the page. “See that?”

  “Roddy. What are you on about?”

  “It looks like the Telegraph, sounds like the Telegraph, and you want to scrumple it up and eat it, it probably tastes like the Telegraph. But it’s not.” He held it in front of her. “You took it from the man’s own website. Did you even check the newspaper’s archive?”

  “It’s all over the web,” she said numbly.

  “Course it is. Because some dude’s posted it all over the web.

  But you know where it’s not? In the newspaper’s own archive.”

  “Roddy—”

  “I’m telling you, that thing’s fake. And you take it away, you know how much evidence there is for Arkady Pashkin even existing, let alone being some bigshot Russian oligarch?”

  He made a zero sign with finger and thumb.

  “Oh,” Catherine said.

  Ho said, “There’s references, true. He’s got Facebook presence, and a Wiki page, and he’s on lots of sites where you drop your marker in and everyone assumes you’re someone. But chase the mentions down, and they’re all referring to each other. The web’s stuffed full of straw men.” He coloured slightly: must have been excitement. “Pashkin’s one of them.”

  “But how …?” But she already knew how. The research on Pashkin had been done by Spider Webb: Regent’s Park’s Background section had been out of the picture, because of that damned audit. Odds on it had been Pashkin who’d approached Webb in the first place …

  She said, “This Needle summit. Whatever Pashkin’s up to, that’s what it’s about. I’ll pull the plug. Roddy—get over there.”

  “Me?”

  “Take Shirley.” He stared as if she’d slipped into another language. “Just do it, okay?” She reached for her phone, and even as she did so it rang. To Ho’s departing back she said, “And Roddy? Don’t ever say dude again,” and answered her call.

  “Catherine?” said River. “Call the Park. Possible Code September.”

  Miles away, somewhere between the two ends of this phonecall, Kelly Tropper guided the blue-and-white Cessna Skyhawk through a clear blue sky. Ahead of her lay swathes of nothingness—that was how it felt; that she was cleaving an absence, which healed itself the moment she’d passed. And if a painful truth sometimes threatened to intrude, that the scars in her wake were as enduring as they were invisible, she generally managed to tamp this knowledge down, and smother it under the conviction that nothing so central to the core of her being could be evil.

  She glanced at her companion, who’d agreed to accompany her mostly because he fancied her, and wondered if he knew she’d slept with Upshott’s newest resident the previous afternoon. It was possible he did. A village was porous when it came to private life. Either way, telling him would add to the frisson she already felt. Tomorrow, people would read about her in their newspapers. Read about her, picture her, and know she’d done something they were incapable of. Some, indeed, would remember watching her pass overhead.

  Another frisson. Her companion turned to her, curious.

  The ground was a memory, and Kelly Tropper was where she belonged: up in the brighter element, with a comrade in arms.

  Just the two of them, and their inflammatory cargo.

  As mid-morning bloomed, and only a few stray clouds, like the mildest twinges of conscience, ruffled central London’s skies, it became apparent that today would fulfil the forecasters’ promise, and be the warmest day of the year so far. A fact that few of the evening’s news reports would fail to mention.

  The mob was heading east, mob being what others declared it. But it was moving, was mobilised, so that’s what it was, a mob, if for the most part a highly organised one; marshalled by policemen, but arranged according to its own lights, and eager to indicate to gathering camera crews that it represented a spontaneous outburst of public anger rather than a cynical manipulation of public concern. A vociferous and placard-wielding contingent headed it up, marching in time to a troupe of drummers; their stencilled placards read STOP THE CITY and SMASH THE BANKS and HALT THE CUTS, or showed cartoons of top-hatted fat cats lighting cigars with fifty-pound notes. Bobbing above head-height here and there were rag-and-plaster effigies, like out-of-season guys looking for bonfires; they wore bowler hats and pinstripes and expressions of unsatiated greed. Stewards with loudhailers chirped at random intervals, and flitting about on the flanks w
ere diehards in donkey-jackets, peddling SOCIALIST WORKER. But for every dreadlocked, safety-pinned crusty in view there were half a dozen fresh-faced youths in summer casuals. It was a rainbow coalition of the pissed off, and their chanting grew in volume as the march progressed.

  The middle group was more placid, their placards handcrafted, and replete with knowing cultural references—DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING, AND BANK BAIL-OUTS? NO THANKS! Dancing in and out among the throng were children who’d been facepainted in Hyde Park, and now were cats or witches, dogs or wizards, their pink and green faces alive with astonishment. They ran about in giggling bunches, begging the mounted policemen for rides, while their parents enjoyed the nostalgic frisson of public dissent, the occasional self-mocking call and response of Maggie! Maggie! Maggie!—Out! Out! Out! underlining the degree to which this was a rally down memory lane. There was even communal, if self-conscious, singing; Bob Marley songs mostly—“One World” and “Exodus” and even a ragged “Redemption Song.” When a helicopter hovered overhead, this section burst into cheers, though no one knew why.

  And finally, dragging up the rear, came the seemingly less-committed, viewing the occasion not so much as an outlet for airing social outrage as an opportunity to stroll through a London cleared of traffic. They waved for the cameras, posed for tourists, chatted with police officers assigned to shepherding duties, and generally blew kisses to a watching world, but among this contingent—as among the others—marched some with masks in their pockets and larceny in their hearts, for banks are evil, and bankers self-serving bastards, and not a single soul-sucking money-magnet among them would mend their ways for the sake of a well-behaved procession. No: reformation required broken glass, and today would see plenty of it.

  Though even the anarchists didn’t yet know how much.

  The rally processed along Oxford Street, and up towards High Holborn.

  “Mr. Pashkin.”

  “Mr. Webb.”

  “Jim, please. Welcome to the Needle.” Fatuous, on both counts; nobody called Spider Jim and Pashkin had been here before. But the moment had passed, Pashkin putting his case on the floor to take Webb’s right hand in both of his: not the bear-hug he’d been expecting, but a solid citizen’s grasp all the same. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? A pastry?” The smell of both wafted from the kitchen.