by Robin Duval
They might have stayed like this for some time, but he was worried that Wilson might not have come alone. Others would surely follow to find out what was happening. His concern for Agnete meantime seemed to have a positively therapeutic effect. Her shock had absorbed his own and left him with a welcome clarity of purpose. He rolled up his anorak and eased it under her head and stood up.
The landscape was empty. No movement, no lights on the horizon, not even a yacht at anchor. He dragged Wilson’s body into the broch, as far inside as his strength allowed, and covered it in stones; if they were lucky, it might not be discovered for weeks. He tied the knife to the leather belt to make a slingshot out of it, and tossed it from the edge of the granite cliffs into the darkest, furthest, deepest waters beyond.
By the time he had returned, Agnete was on her feet. Neither spoke. They walked together back to the walled cemetery and the parked car, and drove away south, towards England.
Chapter 22
The worst part of the journey was the beginning. In such a bleak, empty landscape, they could not risk giving themselves away by using the car’s headlights. It would have been difficult enough driving quickly in the day-time. At night, even with a full moon, Bryn could barely make out the edges of the road. And only by pressing his face, like a small child, against the windscreen.
For a long time there were no other vehicles on the road. Until they came to the most hazardous stretch, where the route wound through tumbled boulders and precipitous bends. Agnete was aware of the oncoming car before Bryn. She threw a hand at the steering wheel and he swerved immediately into the single passing place. All he saw at first was an orange glow intermittently lighting up the distant hillside. Then the glow resolved into a Ford Galaxy travelling at a speed far greater than the road was ever intended to allow. As the headlights swept towards them, Agnete caught his head in both hands and drew him down to an embrace so sudden and desperate that the ravaged muscles of his neck screamed in protest.
‘That was nice,’ he rasped through the pain.
When he eventually raised his head back above the windowsill, the MPV had disappeared from the car’s mirrors.
‘Drive now, please’ she said. ‘Headlights on. As fast as you can. Please.’
She said nothing further for nearly two hours. But as they were nearing Inverness she began to glance back as though at any moment she expected pursuers to materialise behind them. He pulled into an all night filling station and she jumped out of the car and ran into the public rest rooms, with his rucksack clutched tightly to her smock. He had forgotten how much dried, hard blood there would be on her.
He filled up and paid and was ready to go when she reappeared. She looked even more like Annie Hall than that day in Stanford. She had dug his spare jeans and a sweat shirt out of the rucksack and tucked her hair away under the velvet slouch hat. A little of her confidence seemed to be returning. She had bought a road map at the petrol station and was studying it as they pulled away.
‘I don’t want you to go the normal route.’
‘OK.’
The ligature had left his vocal cords so bruised he could barely speak.
‘Go down Loch Ness to the coast. No one will expect that.’
‘It will take forever.’
‘Let them fly on down the A9. We have time.’
And so they worked their way past Fort William and down the west side of Loch Lomond, across the Clyde beyond Glasgow, through Ayrshire and Nithsdale, until they crossed the border at Gretna Green and found themselves approaching Carlisle around mid-morning. She instructed him to pull up outside a clothing store in the town where (disappointingly for Bryn) she proposed to buy herself some more conventional apparel…
‘Have you ever seen a red squirrel?’ she said, as she re-emerged.
‘No.’
‘Well we’re going to see some now.’
She had made a real effort to return to normality. She was wearing a sleeveless cotton sundress of a simple whiteness that set off the honey-coloured glow of her skin. She wore no makeup apart from a trace of eye-liner. She had managed also to rinse through her hair and a few damp strands of it clung to her cheeks and shoulders. There was still a febrile intensity; but she was making the best show she could of reclaiming her usual, businesslike persona.
‘The manageress was helpful. There’s a farm a few miles further on which will suit us fine. Relatives of hers. She’s already telephoned ahead.’
They turned off the main highway south of Carlisle and drove through several villages of square little houses and square stonesurrounded windows. The lanes became narrower and more winding and the trees crowded together in a progressively darker canopy. At the bottom of a hill, where floodwater from a recent storm was streaming across the tarmac, she directed him up a stony track towards a white building set alone against a ridge of elm trees, and almost invisible from below.
It was one of those medieval hall houses that have been standing on the same spot for a thousand years, serving at different times as a refuge for animals, a grain store, a family home, or all three functions at the same time. The small square windows of the region were outlined in black stone. Black and white stones alternated up the four sides of the building, glistening from the recent cloudburst. In front of the house, running sharply downhill towards the road, was a long, close-mown lawn, bordered with rhododendron bushes. A pair of mistle thrushes stood blot upright in the middle of the grass, monitoring the newcomers’ arrival. A spotted flycatcher was making sharp little sorties from a telephone wire. Bryn could not imagine a more secret or private or welcome place.
The owner was an economically distressed gentleman, public school educated naturally, hoping to eke out a living from his small pig farm by entertaining – not too frequently – passing tourists. The Carlisle shop manageress was his cousin.
There was no special frontier between owner, wife and guests. Agnete and Bryn’s bedroom lay on the same long corridor as theirs. Their shaggy, friendly dogs roamed freely, even in the bathrooms and dining room. The hospitable routine was explained: guests were expected to share a sherry or a glass of madeira in the sitting room before dinner, with coffee and (if they felt like it) a round or two of bridge afterwards. They would, however, have their own, separate, dining room.
Bryn badly needed to sleep. Agnete, who had been able to drift off on the long journey south from Inverness, left him to it. She needed some air, she said. He wondered vaguely why she also needed his rucksack for a walk in the woods, but he was too tired to care. His main concern was the Christmas-wrapped parcel, which he’d carefully stowed in an art deco tallboy in the corner of the room.
He did not wake till she returned to the room in the late afternoon. She was standing by the closed door, the rucksack dangling lightly from her hand, watching him. Her eyes were bright and hectic. He wondered how long she’d been there.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Recovered, I think.’
She sat on the bed and ran her fingers over the bruises on his throat.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘A little.’
He lied. The skin was still tender and any neck movement a punishment. Sleep, though, seemed to have restored his voice.
‘We need to talk.’
‘Not yet.’
She kissed him on the lips, a slow, open kiss that left little doubt of her intentions. He raised his hands to restrain her but she placed them deliberately upon her breasts and slipped the cotton dress away from beneath them.
‘Don’t move.’
It was not wise and not the time. But she was in a strange, dangerous mood and he rapidly lost command. She brought her knees up on either side of his chest and settled in upon him; and rose and sank until he could bear it no longer and caught her up in his arms and turned her into the sheets for a final fierce homecoming.
Much later, after the pains briefly banished by ardour had seeped back, and he opened his eyes, he found her gazing unblinkingly at
him as if contemplating something she could not quite comprehend.
‘We need to talk,’ he said again.
‘Do we?’
‘We do.’
Somewhere deep within the house, a school handbell was ringing. It was much later than he had thought.
When they descended twenty minutes later, showered and sleek, the owner and his wife – George and Caroline – had already made some headway with the decanters. Agnete was not accustomed to the strange, sweet, fortified wines of the British upper classes; but George, quite unfazed, produced a half-bottle of amber-coloured Aalborg akvavit and poured her a mighty slug. The portions continued to be of such generosity that Bryn began to wonder how their hosts could ever make a profit. But that, perhaps, was not altogether the point of the exercise.
They were hugely interested in both their guests; but especially Agnete. Bryn learned more about her, her family and background than all the conversations they’d ever had together. George and Caroline were delighted to discover that Agnete’s father had been a senior Danish diplomat and that her mother was a Hambro – a titled Danish family with connections to British banking (George had been at school with one of its British sons). Such was their enthusiasm that Agnete was obliged to go upstairs to retrieve her passport – because ‘I always keep a picture of my parents with it’ – while Bryn made small talk about the state of further education in the western states of America.
‘Here,’ she said when she returned, unfolding an A4 sized photograph.
‘Min Far og Mor. My Father and Mother. On this day Papa was wearing the Order of Dannebrog for services to the State. A special honour.’
The photograph was passed around and arrived finally with Bryn. A tall man wearing a brilliant white and silver star on his left breast and a slim, blonde woman in a stunning, figure-hugging gown.
All it required to complete the picture was their two British friends standing alongside in white tie and ball dress.
‘So this is why you know Marcus,’ he said quietly. ‘I always wondered.’
‘What do you mean, Bryn?’
He could see she was startled.
‘Well it’s just that I’ve seen the photo before – or a very similar one – on a side table in Marcus’s house in Hampstead. Do your parents know about you and Marcus? Does Fiona? How silly of me… of course she does.’
No one was speaking. George had turned away to refill his sherry copita and Caroline was studying the garden lawn through the French windows.
‘Yes they are all friends still. However, my parents are divorced now.’
She folded the picture back into the passport and left the room.
The three of them talked together – about pig farming mostly and the iniquities of the Min of Ag (as George called it) – until it was impossible to defer dinner further. Caroline ushered Bryn through to a small parlour where a table was laid for two.
‘I hope she’ll be down soon. Shall I ring the bell again?’
‘I’m sure she’ll be down.’
The house routine was that guests helped themselves from a side table where three courses had been set in line. A bottle of Argentinian Malbec had been opened and a silver pouring spigot inserted into the neck to prevent red wine stains on the fresh white linen table cloth.
George and Caroline retired to the kitchen to eat their own separate dinner. The arrangements left no necessity for them to wait on their guests – a bridge too far, Bryn suspected.
He had already finished an excellent cold bowl of gazpacho, with garnishes and ice-cubes, when Agnete returned. She had been crying.
He was confounded and full of remorse. Something jealous and suspicious had spiked through and taken him by surprise and he would have given anything at that moment to have been able to pull it back. By coming back downstairs again, she had also – rightly – taken the higher ground. He did not deserve her.
He brought her a bowl of the soup and filled her glass with the red wine. She ate in silence.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘And confused. But mostly very sorry. The last thing I wanted was to upset you.’
‘Not your fault.’
There was a mini sound system in the corner of the room and he went over to see if he could make it work. A CD of quiet cocktail jazz was in the machine so he pressed a button and let it play.
‘I haven’t been honest with you, Bryn.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You know I love you.’
It was more than he could deal with.
‘I have to tell you.’
He waited for her to compose herself. There were many questions he needed to ask. He feared the answers.
‘Where shall I start?’
‘At the beginning?’
‘Or the end?’
‘Scotland?’
‘Not Scotland, Bryn. Not yet.’
‘The beginning then.’
She paused again as if preparing for an ordeal. She was still shaken by Lochinver and perhaps less resilient than he imagined.
‘This is not necessary, sweetheart.’
But she persisted. She poured more wine into her glass, on an afterthought did the same for Bryn; and began.
‘Your cousin is a great man. But he is not the person you think he is.’
‘I know he is not working for MI6.’
‘He hasn’t been working for Six for a long time. Longer than they know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He has been in Udell Strange’s pay since before I became his assistant.’
She gave him a moment or two for this to sink in.
‘Marcus has been playing a tricky, dangerous game. He’s on no one’s side. He told me in Lochinver. His plan was always to steal the isotope himself. But not for altruistic reasons. For the money, Bryn.’
Some light was beginning to dawn.
‘And I was the patsy?’
‘Oh… I think so.’
‘I had to do the dirty work so that Strange would not suspect him.’
‘Not entirely.’
She was reluctant to continue.
They had moved to the second course of their meal before she felt ready to pick up the story a second time.
‘You see, Bryn, the whole business in San Francisco was an elaborate double-cross. Strange knew all about you – Marcus had told him. He had persuaded Strange – or thought he had – that he needed a safer delivery arrangement than the old cocaine route. Something that the Feds and the Israelis could not penetrate. Something that did not involve criminals. Clean, and below everyone’s radar; and with total deniability so far as Strange was concerned.
‘He told Strange that he knew someone who had the right credentials. Someone idealistic – who could be persuaded to ‘liberate’ the isotope from the arms traders, courier it to London, and deliver it to Marcus in the belief that Marcus would destroy it. Someone unlikely to ask difficult questions. But resourceful enough to cope with emergencies. And controllable.’
She sighed.
‘Which is where I came in. Strange of course didn’t believe such a person existed or could be relied upon. So – against Marcus’s advice that he never be seen with you – he insisted upon a discreet meeting where he could check you out for himself. That was Bayreuth. He concluded you fitted the bill perfectly. Or so Marcus and I thought. The second of the double-crosses was that Strange – without telling Marcus – decided to make your mission a completely fake dry-run.’
She did not need to tell him any more. Bryn could work it out for himself. Strange’s teasing questions in Bayreuth about Marion, for instance, when he would have already known the whole story through Dan, his co-conspirator. Maybe Dan had also confirmed the crucial mix of ingenuousness and ingenuity that were apparently his qualifications for courier duties.
And the disappearance of his Harrods bag and the wiping of the iPhone. A belt and braces exercise no doubt to make sure he was ‘clean’ and could not be connected with Strange. It might h
ave been Agnete herself – in the corner of the restaurant, talking into Strange’s earpiece – who had warned him about the little photographer; and arranged for his removal.
She seemed to be near tears again. He guessed there was worse to come.
‘So. The whole business of stealing the isotope and smuggling it out of the country was a charade. I was always meant to succeed.’
She nodded mutely.
He supposed it was quite clever in a way. His task had to be difficult but not so difficult that he would fail. It was obvious now, looking back, that all the turning points – the Boy Scout tests of his ingenuity – had been arranged by Marcus, all of them playing to a lifelong knowledge of him. Right down to the use of Ricky Gaunt’s house. As like as not someone else’s house altogether, with a few props added. How predictable he’d become in his middle age. Marcus must have been planning it for months. Years even.
Agnete read his thoughts.
‘It was very hard for Marcus to get the balance between setting problems difficult enough for you not to suspect a con – and making sure you would succeed. He never under-estimated you.’
It was kind of her to say so.
‘What was Marcus’s plan if I failed? That must have been on the cards.’
‘I would have had to go in and help you. But I didn’t. You did very well.’
‘Thank you.’
What a pantomime. The secret messages and clandestine meetings, the pursuing black Porsche in San Mateo, even the compliant officials at the airport. A secret service training exercise – except that no one had told the recruit.
No longer a training exercise now, however.
They left the meal unfinished and returned to their room.
Sometime around three, when Agnete was soundly asleep, he slipped out of bed, went over to the art deco wardrobe in the corner of the room and took out the parcel he had hidden there, carried it to the bathroom and closed the door behind him. Once again he removed the Christmas wrapping, and eased away the lead cladding to expose the amber jar within. The liquid isotope was viscous and slow-moving, as if it had a stubborn mind of its own. It was the genuine article beyond doubt. The certainty of it chilled him to the marrow.