It might have been the sight of the approaching headlamps that panicked him, or just the fact that he couldn’t ride the Yamaha after all. The bald man thought the latter, since he didn’t see the bike’s brake light as it keeled over and skidded away from under Ibraham. Bike and rider separated in opposite directions in the path of the articulated truck that bore down on them.
The truck’s huge tyres shredded on the road in the attempt to avoid the inevitable. With a shriek of tearing metal the bike vanished under one of the wheels. The noise obliterated any sound that the Libyan might have made as the nearside wheel smashed against him. His body was flung spinning into the air. It arced over the earth bank and into the steep gully on the other side.
The bald man was back in the Sherpa and passing on the other side of the crash barrier even before the traumatised truck driver had climbed down from his cab.
The red and white crash helmet spun to the side of the road and bounced against the kerb. It rolled along for a short distance, met a buckled motorcycle wheel, and was finally still.
The night returned to silence.
*
Moscow
But in Section 4 of the Serbskiy Institute, the silence of the night was shattered. Running footsteps echoed up the long, dark stairwells, accompanied by anxious shouts and laboured breathing. Doors slammed and keys jangled in locks.
The residents of the wing moved restively in their sleep behind their locked doors. Some started wide awake.
The noises were the noises of alarm, of panic: rare emotions in that place. So what if some inmate needed urgent help, or hanged himself in his cell, or had his knuckles white around another’s throat? These people were politicals, dissidents, they had no rights, they’d ceased to exist. They were human oxen, nothing more.
Ogarkin, in dressing gown and slippers, was first at the door of the cell, followed closely by the haggard nurse who’d raised the alarm. This patient was different, and the nurse knew it.
The professor threw the door wide and stumbled into the room, where the nurse had left the light burning. What he saw stopped his feet and almost his heart as well.
‘Merciful God!’
Ogarkin fell to his knees by the bed. He remembered the down on the girl’s soft cheek and touched it gently. The flesh was warm.
Something hard dug into his knee; he shifted position and looked down by the bed. He picked up the palette knife that lay there and stared at its blade, crimson and sticky.
‘Impossible,’ he croaked. These things were blunt. He’d even thought to check this one himself in the shop.
He looked again, and wiped the blood on a sheet. He ran a finger along the edge of the blade. It wasn’t how it had been in the shop; now it was rough, like sandpaper, and a coarse sharpness had been honed along one side.
Then he remembered her in the courtyard; right alongside the wall; crouching by the step: the sandstone step.
A male nurse pushed in beside him and rapidly began to prepare two tourniquets.
‘Professor?’
Ogarkin looked around to see who’d spoken. It was one of the doctors. He’d already reached over Ogarkin and torn open Galina’s blouse; now he was waiting with his stethoscope. He lifted its end to make his point. Ogarkin realised that he was in the man’s way and stood up. He felt a sneeze coming on and realised that he’d come without tissues.
The doctor knelt down in his place. He put the stethoscope against Galina’s chest and listened. He was very still and so was Ogarkin, the sneeze conquered.
The doctor repositioned the stethoscope and listened again. Then he looked up at the professor.
PART THREE
33
Berkshire
The retreat house was as isolated and peaceful as Marie-Thérèse had promised. On his first afternoon Knight climbed the creaking stairs to the dusty attic room and scraped a hole in the grime of the dormer window. Peering through, he found that he could just make out the top of the convent roof beyond the trees to the east. In the fold of hills further on lay the village and somewhere beyond that his abandoned home. In the other direction, though he had no window from which to view them, the downs stretched to the next county. North, he knew, was woodland; to the south were farmland and the motorway.
In the last of the afternoon light he brooded by a half-open window in the library, surrounded by Thomas à Kempis, endless lives of the saints, and Don Camillo and Peppone as lighter fare. The sounds of the schoolgirls playing reached him across the frosty fields. Then a bell pealed and the laughter faded.
Sometime in the early evening he was startled by the honk of a car horn outside. He was in the small dormitory that he’d chosen for his bedroom. He crossed to the window in time to see the retreating tail lights of old Jod’s Mazda pickup. By the time he got downstairs its engine note had faded to nothing. He unbolted the kitchen door and took in the carrier bags that had been left on the step. One contained an assortment of rough clothes, the others were full of groceries. As he unpacked the bags he silently thanked Marie-Thérèse.
The passage of the days that followed was marked by a cycle of sounds that soon became familiar to him: the children’s laughter from over the hill and the peal of the school bell, clock chimes from the village when the wind was right, birdsong in the morning and the scratch of mice in the evening, the thump of hot water in the pipes throughout the house as the boiler followed its twice-daily routine, the tread of his own feet on the floorboards as he wandered from room to room.
He grew used to the crucifixes that guarded every doorway, perfect in the smallest detail as if their realism bore witness to the faith of the artisans who had moulded them. The images pressed themselves into his memory without any effort on his part; when he closed his eyes a random selection of them would appear for his inspection: a fingernail, folds of linen, the curve of a lip within its fringe of beard, a punctured ribcage, thorns, the knuckle of a slim toe.
He grew accustomed also to being watched over, wherever he was, by statues of the Virgin Mary, her hands extended in blessing or supplication, or by portraits of a Jesus whose bleeding heart shone in his chest as if the flesh and bone had been replaced by perspex.
In the dormitory he came upon a Latin missal, its gossamer pages plumped up by brittle crosses of palm leaf. A variety of childish hands had inscribed them with the dates of Palm Sundays long ago; he grouped the crosses on the bed and found that they spanned four generations. He discovered that some of the books in the library had names written on their flyleaves in matching handwriting, with dates that overlapped with those on the crosses. Missal and books together, he realised, recorded a part of the house’s history before it had passed into the convent’s ownership. Over several evenings he pursued the therapy of organising this material in an attempt to retrace a past that seemed, in its distance, easier to confront than his own.
As far as wider and more contemporary events were concerned, the house had neither television nor radio, nor newspapers landing on its doormat, nor any other message from the world outside. Marie-Thérèse kept her distance and old Jod never appeared again. Knight might have been living in a sealed time capsule, without even so much as a calendar to count the days; only as he was strapping on his wristwatch on the first Saturday did he notice that January had given way to February.
*
Only a mile away, the Range Rover drew into his drive again. Four men got out. Three stood by the vehicle while the fourth went to the front doorstep. He carried a flat briefcase which he set down at his feet and opened. It was filled with keys and lockpicks arranged in a purpose-made polystyrene bed. When the door swung open some minutes later, the other men joined him and all four entered Knight’s house.
*
In west London, Gaunt arrived at Eva’s with two men whom she didn’t recognise. She sat with him in the sitting room, wincing at the sounds of them moving through the rest of her home. They were shifting her furniture about and scuffling through cupboards and drawers.
There was no mention of a search warrant and she knew that there was no point in demanding one.
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ Gaunt told her. ‘They’re only taking a general look. I’ve told them not to be too enthusiastic. Unlike the people at Edmund’s place. Not that I expect to find much either here or there. I think he’s been far too clever for that. Don’t you? By the way, where do you think he’s gone?’
No answer.
‘Twice a year,’ he mused. ‘He always took time off twice a year. June and November-ish. Just a few days. Not his main holidays, just a few spare days. Leftovers. Or as if he was saving them all along. Odd.’
‘So what?’
‘Odder still, this time. No reason given. He just …’ Gaunt’s eyebrows rose questioningly. ‘Well, he just vanished. Not subtle this time.’ He produced a leather notebook from an inside pocket and slid a slim ballpoint from its spine. ‘You weren’t planning anything special today, were you?’ He set the notebook on the arm of the chair. ‘So we have plenty of time. I’d like to go back to the beginning. I’m sure you must know the sort of thing I’m looking for. Let’s begin with names – names of people or places he ever mentioned to you, whatever the context. There must be scores.’
She shook her head. ‘You really didn’t know Knight, did you? You really did not.’
*
On the evening of the second Sunday, Knight took the heavy mackintosh that was hanging on the back of the kitchen door and pulled it on over the old cardigan and shabby corduroys that he was wearing, and strode out across the fields to the chapel. At its porch door he stood listening for a moment. The chant of evensong reached his ears. He closed the door softly and walked down the side of the chapel to wait in the darkness.
When the small congregation emerged a quarter of an hour later, he moved where he could see the nuns as they stood to the side to gather their flock of schoolgirls together. Marie-Thérèse appeared at the edge of the group. The girls and the nuns started walking back to the main block of the convent and Marie-Thérèse fell behind, as he’d hoped she would. He followed quietly along the lane and was soon able to draw alongside her.
‘Surprising me again, Mr Knight?’
As the last of the cars reversed down from the chapel, she peered at him in the flicker of headlamps, taking in his heavily stubbled chin and shabby clothes. There’d been an old flat cap in the pocket of the mackintosh and he’d pulled it on.
‘You’d pass for a tramp,’ she told him. ‘One of the poor souls that come up here every day for a bite to eat.’
‘I can’t pay you yet for the food or the clothes. I’m low on cash. I could give you a cheque, but …’
‘Someone might be keeping an eye on your bank account?’
They walked on for another few yards in silence. He looked sideways at her before pursuing the request that had brought him to her.
‘I haven’t seen or heard the news since I came here. I’d like to do some catching up.’
‘You’d be welcome to use the television room in the main block anytime you like.’
He shook his head. ‘I’d be just as happy with a newspaper or two. The back issues for the last two weeks would be useful as well.’
‘The school takes most of the respectable dailies. You’ll have to take your chances on the back issues.’
‘Where do I find them?’
‘The sixth-form reading room. Go there any evening and you shouldn’t be disturbed. The girls go into dinner in a few minutes, then they have study time. You’d have the reading room to yourself from this time.’
They had drawn close to the main convent block. It was well lit and girls and nuns were scattered about the doorways and corridors. He stopped by a tree, at the edge of the darkness. She understood his reticence and came over to join him.
‘I’ll tell you how to get there.’
Five minutes later he watched from the darkness as the corridors emptied; through the arched refectory windows he saw the tide of heads bend in prayer, then disappear from his view as the girls seated themselves. A moment later the white caps of the serving staff began bobbing about the hall. Dinner was served. He made his way in the direction that Marie-Thérèse had indicated.
The grim events he found recorded in the headlines of the last week and a half were not what he expected. An assassination, yes; but not of any of the target figures he’d assumed.
Saudi prince assassinated
The prince in question, he discovered, was the Saudi with the chilling gaze who had seized his attention two weeks before: Saleem Ibn Abdul Aziz Al-Saud. He had turned out to be a victim and not the potential protagonist that, if anything, Knight would have been inclined to take him for.
His death had occurred on the day that Knight had come to the retreat house; Knight read with sadness of the other casualties that the bomb had claimed. But there was a political cost as well. The OPEC conference had been aborted. For Britain that was embarrassing enough in itself; he recalled Gaunt’s words about the prime minister’s reluctance to call it off. Worse, however, was the fact that Prince Ibn had been under British protection at the time of his murder. If the Soviets’ purpose in killing him on British soil was to drive Britain and Saudi Arabia apart, the strategy seemed to have worked. Within a day of the assassination the headlines showed how the Saudi government was reacting.
Saudi Arabia may sever diplomatic relations with Britain
The development that followed on from this came as no great surprise; in the knife-edge relationships that characterised the Middle East, there was always someone who was ready to exploit every situation.
Gadaffi claims Britain, USA and Saudi government behind Ibn’s death
At first sight, the accusation had all the hallmarks of the Libyan leader’s usual wild pronouncements. But on this occasion he seemed to have some grounds for what he was saying. Ibn, he claimed, had been at loggerheads with Fahd and Yamani over their oil strategy. Knight remembered the prince’s brooding presence in the newsreel footage; that he loathed Fahd and Yamani had been clear enough. Now Gadaffi seemed to be supplying the reason. Whether his revelation at this critical time was Soviet-prompted or not, it was certainly making a substantial contribution to the process of alienating Saudi Arabia from its Western allies.
The pattern of the Soviet strategy was making sense. Until, that is, the next development occurred. By then a week had passed since the assassination.
Killer of Saudi prince was Libyan; body found
The dead Libyan, a young man called Ibraham Abukhder, was reported to have known terrorist connections. He had died within hours of Ibn’s assassination but nothing had been released while the police and Special Branch checked who he was and the evidence that he was the likely assassin. There were plenty of eyewitness accounts of him bombing Ibn’s car, and the press were convinced that his action must have been sanctioned by Gadaffi. But in fact, as Knight read through the press reports, it became apparent that they were not initially based on any official statements. Official silence prevailed for two more days, despite questions in Parliament and the stir that the media was creating.
Finally, however, the Foreign Office had been obliged to end the speculation, confirming everything the press had said.
But it did more than that: it confirmed other reports that the media had been featuring. It was the biggest news of all and it had broken on the Saturday, just twenty-four hours ago and eleven days after the assassination:
Gadaffi and Prince Ibn planned to overthrow Saudi government
Knight set the papers down. If Ibn’s death was a Soviet action, things had gone badly wrong: Gadaffi was in the dock now, not the West. The Saudi Arabia–Britain–US axis would be stronger than ever after this. Either that, or Britain had fabricated the coup, the dead Libyan and God knows what else. Knight shook his head. He was going too far too fast.
He fetched a writing pad from a nearby desk and began to make notes. He stuck to the facts, if that was what they were, as the papers
had reported them: only the facts. Thinking would come later. But as for whether any of the events related in any way to Bill Clarke’s death or the attempt on his own life, that was a complication about which he still hadn’t the faintest idea.
When he’d done he tidied the newspapers away, cut out a few of the key articles and shuffled them together into his pocket.
There was one small cutting, however, that he set apart and left on the table. It wasn’t a news story. It was a classified advertisement, from the previous Tuesday’s Times. It occupied just one column inch.
NASSAU, BAHAMAS
Substantial investor/partner required
for 22–24 apartment development in prime location.
Exceptional profit potential.
Please call our UK offices:
Boyar Properties
01-862-0699
He studied the advertisement for a time before tucking it carefully away in an inside pocket of the mackintosh. Then he checked that the reading room was as he’d found it, turned out the light and made his way back through the darkened corridors of the convent block.
The building was silent, the girls by now being in one of their study sessions. He saw no one as he followed the lane over the fields and up to the retreat house.
He went straight upstairs to the small dormitory and the metal locker where he’d folded away his suit and the clothes in which he’d arrived. The cash that he’d had on him that day was on the top shelf, a neat stack of coins and a few folded notes. He scraped it together and went out to the wooden garage adjoining the house, where he’d left his car. He kept coins for parking meters in the ashtray; now he cleared them out and added them to his modest haul from the locker.
Half an hour later, his cap pulled well down and the mackintosh collar up, he had walked the two miles to the railway station. The roads were quiet and no one paid him any heed.
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