by Jeremy Duns
Another noise from the street. He would have to leave in a few seconds. But not yet. Part of his mind was screaming get out get out get out, but the professional instinct overrode it. In here, he had access to specialised information – to intelligence. Out there, he’d be blind again.
He strode to the filing cabinet and rifled his fingers through the section on Rhodesia. There were dozens of dossiers, and to save time he took them all out and splayed them across the floor, then kneeled down and started looking through them until he found the one with ‘Selous Scouts’ typed on the front panel. He glanced across at the attaché case, which he’d left by the door when he came into the flat. He decided to leave it. He needed to be fast on his feet. He picked up the Selous Scouts dossier and took the papers from it, then folded the bundle and stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket, next to the photograph.
He glanced around again. Was he forgetting anything? Yes. Money. He rushed back to Manning and searched his pockets. He had a couple of hundred francs in notes.
‘Is that it?’
Manning nodded. Dark looked around for a safe, but didn’t see one. Perhaps behind one of the paintings? But he could hear the taxi’s engine in the street – there was no time. He went to the door. Manning grunted, writhing in the chair.
‘For Christ’s sake, you can’t leave me like this, Paul!’
Dark closed the door behind him and ran down the staircase. As he came out onto the street he saw the taxi turning the corner nearest him. He started running in the other direction. Further up the street, a figure on the same side of the pavement was walking towards him, the soles of his shoes echoing against the cobblestones. He passed under a streetlamp and Dark caught a better look at him: a white man with a tan and fair, short hair, dressed in slacks and shirt sleeves, peering up at the street numbers. As if conscious of being watched, the man abruptly lowered his head and looked across at Dark. Their eyes locked, and Dark knew in his bones he was one of the Rhodesians, and that he’d come here to kill him. In the same instant, the man started running towards him.
Dark froze, suckered by having two pursuers suddenly appear either side of him. Behind him, he could hear the taxi slowing – had they seen him yet?
He had just two options: keep going in his current direction and meet the man rushing towards him, or turn and head towards the taxi. In a flash he decided the man was less of a threat than the car, because whoever was in the latter hadn’t spotted him yet – if they had, they’d have already speeded up to reach him, or he’d be hearing a car door slam by now. The decision made, he started running again, heading straight for the Rhodesian. In his peripheral vision, he registered a low doorway a few feet ahead of him and to his left, and he slowed as he neared it. A printed sign on the door read ‘ACCES/INGANG’.
He veered left and flung his weight against the door. The body of it shook for a moment, but then bounced back onto the hinge.
He glanced up at the street. The Rhodesian was now less than twenty feet away and he’d removed a gun from his jacket, its barrel catching the light from the streetlamp.
Dark threw himself at the door again as the shot rang out, and this time as his shoulder slammed into it the hinge gave and he stumbled into darkness, nearly losing his balance. A moment later he clasped his hands over his ears as the shrill screech of an alarm rang out.
Rachel searched the street for a white Sunbeam Rapier. After she’d threatened to cable London and have him sacked, the security officer at the embassy had given her the model and licence plate. She was about to find a phone box to call and ask again when she saw it parked opposite an African restaurant. Thorpe looked up in alarm as she rapped on the window.
‘I’m Rachel!’ she shouted at him as he wound it down. ‘From London. Sandy signalled I was coming?’ There was no response. ‘Phoenix!’ she called out. Thorpe nodded and opened the door. She bundled in.
‘Where’s Collins?’ she asked.
‘He went to Manning’s. My instructions were to wait for him here.’
‘When did he leave you?’
Thorpe looked down at his watch. ‘About ten minutes ago.’
Rachel stared at him. ‘How far away is Manning’s?’
Thorpe was about to tell her when the sound of an alarm broke through the air. Rachel jerked her head towards the street.
‘Shit.’
She opened the door and started running towards the sound. Thorpe watched her, stunned for a moment, then opened his door so he could follow her.
The alarm was ringing on a single high note, and Dark felt like it was tunnelling into his brain. He reached a hand out to right himself against the nearest wall and searched around, blinking rapidly so his eyelids moistened, improving his vision. He was in a tiny hallway and just ahead of him was a glimmer of light. As his eyes adjusted he saw it was reflective glass: another door.
He groped forward and grabbed at the handle. It, too, was locked. His pulse was pounding furiously now, panic rising as he realised he had nowhere to go and just seconds before the Rhodesian arrived. He threw his shoulder against the door’s upper window until the glass cracked and then shattered, shards crumpling in a shower over him. He braced himself and hurtled his entire body forward.
Once through he righted himself again. The temperature was a little cooler here. He saw a long marble-floored corridor with iron grilles running along the walls, a strip light flickering from the ceiling. It was a shopping arcade, closed for the night, the shops locked away, the shoppers all gone home, just him and a mad Rhodesian commando chasing him.
He edged around the door and flattened himself against the grille directly behind it, trying to calm his breathing. His entire body was now tensed, from the trapezoid muscles in his neck to a clenching in his abdomen. His hands were sweating as he glared at the door, waiting. He wiped them against his trousers and blinked away the droplets stinging his eyes. He strained his ears to catch the sound he knew was coming, but the peal of the alarm was near-deafening. He could sense something, though. Vibrations thudding beneath him. Footsteps.
Dark leaped on Weale as he came through the door, chopping at the back of his neck with his left forearm and punching down into his stomach at the same time, releasing all his pent-up rage and letting out a scream as he did. Weale groaned and keeled forward, his gun falling from his hand and clattering to the floor. Dark caught him by the neck with his forearm and took him in a chokehold, then moved his other hand up to cover his mouth and nostrils before pulling him down to the floor. He kept his grip steady, and time slowed as the sweat dripped down his throat and into the other man’s hair.
Then the moment passed, as the Rhodesian kicked out wildly and clawed at Dark’s forearm. Struggling to keep the chokehold, Dark clamped his fingers over the man’s nostrils with more force, both to inflict more pain and to make his breathing harder. When the man’s legs started jerking a little less insistently and Dark felt there were only a few seconds of life left in him, he pulled his hand away and threw him against the metal grille draped against the wall.
‘Where are they?’ he screamed, and the vibration pulsated in his eardrums. The Rhodesian had slumped back to the floor. Dark repeated the question but the man didn’t answer so he lashed out with his foot, catching the man on the jaw and sending him flying.
Dark realised he needed something to convince him, something greater than mere pain. He scoured the surrounding area for the gun, but most of the area was in shadow and he couldn’t see it. He turned to the Rhodesian again. He was breathing hard and his jaw was lolling to one side, dislocated. Trickles of blood ran down his neck. He looked a mess, two beats from death, but there was also a glint in his eye. It was defiance. The man was a professional, and he would rather die than give him anything. He grinned as Dark realised this, drooling pinkish red liquid.
Dark felt another surge of rage come over him, almost overpowering in its intensity. The thought of Gunnar and Helena, mown down like animals. His family taken from him, his Clair
e, his little boy . . .
And this bastard had been involved. Had perhaps even planned it.
Dark drew his leg back to kick him again, but as he did the alarm abruptly stopped. His eardrums pulsed, and as the ringing subsided he picked up new noises: the faint sound of traffic, the soft thump of the music from the discotheque, and something else beneath it all. A low, gravelly sound.
He looked around frantically, confused, and then he saw it. Just a couple of feet away, a small air-conditioning unit was attached to the wall. The alarm must have triggered a generator that had switched it on, but the machine was making a noise like it had something caught in its blades and it was also leaking, a shallow pool of water gathering on the floor beneath it.
Dark leaned down and grabbed the Rhodesian by the feet, then wheeled around and dragged him across the marble. The man let out a low groan. Dark reached the puddle. It was dirty, with greyish flotsam floating on the surface. He pulled the man forward until he was lying face down in it and then pushed his head into the water, hearing the crack of a bone as he did and continuing to exert pressure, forcing the man’s mouth and nose into the puddle until his movements slowed and his spine shuddered and squirmed and finally there was a muffled gagging sound from below and then just quiet and stillness.
Dark withdrew his hand, and an ache pulsed through his forearm. There was a new sound in the small space, and he looked around to locate it. Footsteps, a colliding mess of them. The door opened and Dark caught sight of two figures, a young woman with black hair and a man in a ruffled shirt, a face like a bloated fish, who he recognised from some distant time, some distant file.
Service.
They ran forward, and the woman leaned down to pick something off the floor. The gun. It had been lying there within his grasp all along and he hadn’t seen it. Dark got to his feet and started running from them, taking a turning into a long corridor of shops selling hats and carpets and televisions. He heard a shot being fired behind him but he hadn’t been hit and he kept running until he came to the main entrance and emerged onto a wide, tree-lined boulevard. His teeth were chattering and his whole body was shivering. He stood for a moment, catching his breath, then gathered himself together and started walking rapidly down the street.
The taxi driver parked the car outside 64 Rue de Stassart. As Proshin paid him, a sharp sound emanated from somewhere in the street.
‘Was that a shot?’
Cherneyev opened his door, loading a round into the chamber of his Browning as he did so.
‘I’ll handle this,’ he said.
The door of the house was ajar, and Cherneyev strode through the hallway, Proshin following a few feet behind. They climbed the staircase three steps at a time. Manning jumped when he saw them, his eyes now popping out of his skull with fear.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
Cherneyev ignored the question and raised the Browning.
‘Where is Dark?’ he said in English.
Manning looked like he might pass out, but managed to nod his head at the open door. Cherneyev was about to ask another question, but before he could a small hole opened up in the back of his skull, and a fraction of a second later the sound of the shot echoed through the room. He fell forward and crashed into the desk, making the typewriter jump and emit a high pinging sound that hung in the air. Then the body slid away and fell to the floor, the face buried into the parquet.
Proshin lowered his gun and turned to Manning.
‘I am sorry to disturb,’ Proshin said quietly.
Manning stared at him, dazed. Proshin walked over to Cherneyev and crouched down next to him. He pulled his jacket roughly from his torso, making Cherneyev’s head bounce against the floor, then reached into a pocket and turned it inside out. He leaned over and bit into it with his teeth, tearing the fabric. A small brown packet, no larger than a cigarette, fell onto the floor, and Proshin picked it up and stared at it. Then he placed it in his own pocket and went to the desk in the corner of the room. He picked up the telephone and, in bad French, asked the operator to connect him to the British embassy.
‘I am Paul Dark’s case officer,’ he said once the switchboard had answered. ‘I am at number 64 Rue de Stassart, and I wish to defect.’
Then he slumped into the chair behind the desk, leaning his head back as the sweat poured down his face. It was done, he thought. He had done it. His fate would be in the hands of the British now. He just had to hope he’d made the right decision.
Chapter 55
As Sebastian Thorpe speeded his Sunbeam through the outskirts of Brussels, Rachel focused on the corona of light around each passing streetlamp. They looked like small nooses, she thought.
The stench of death filled her nostrils, but she was thinking about the living, too. Less than two hours ago Paul Dark had been just a few feet away from her, his face contorted in a savage grimace in the half-light, a wild animal having just killed its prey. She had taken a hurried shot and followed him through the corridors of the arcade, but she’d been too far behind and had lost him. Downhearted, she’d trudged back to Thorpe, who she found staring down at the body of Collins in the same position she’d left him. ‘He’s dead,’ was all he had said, a stunned look on his face. She had felt she might panic then, but an unexpected sense of calm had come over her and she had known what to do, or thought she had.
They’d left Collins and trekked up to Manning’s flat, only to find more surprises in wait for them. Another body, this time a Russian, shot through the back of the skull. And seated behind the desk had been none other than Alexander Proshin, leading light of the GRU’s Second Chief Directorate, spy-runner . . . Paul Dark’s handler.
She hadn’t recognised him at first, slumped against the chair with his eyes dazed. But at Review Section, they’d found a couple of photographs taken by UCL staff – summer barbecues on campus, a picnic at the beach – in which he had been lurking in the background, and after a few moments she recognised him from them. She had leaned down to check she wasn’t mistaken.
‘You must interview me now,’ he had whispered.
His English was good – well, he’d spent fifteen years as an illegal in London – but his accent was still strong and he strangulated the words in the Russian way, so it had taken her a moment to understand what he was driving at.
‘Of course,’ she’d replied evenly. ‘But we need to get you to somewhere safe first, Mr Proshin.’
He’d smiled at her then, pleased that she knew his name. Then his eyes had flashed with desperation and fear. ‘But it must be here, you understand? Not in London.’
Her ears had pricked up at that. Defectors were usually a lot keener on getting safely to Britain and arranging the terms of their new lives there than the inconvenient business of revealing secrets about their former colleagues.
‘What’s the hurry?’ she’d asked.
‘My life is in danger. It must be here.’
She’d stared at him, puzzled by his insistence. ‘Why?’
‘London isn’t safe for me. It may be that your superiors try to persuade you it is better if I am not interviewed at all. Don’t allow it. You must interview me, and you must do it here – do you promise me this?’
She had nodded dully. Perhaps it was for the best, she’d thought. At least that way she wouldn’t have to face Sandy’s wrath quite yet. Proshin had looked at her like she was his saviour, but she felt a long way from that. Sandy had been right to hold her back in London searching through old files. That was all she was good for, and even there she wasn’t so sure. Would he ever forgive her for this? Professionally, perhaps. But personally? She doubted it.
She glanced in the rear-view mirror. Proshin was in the back seat, apparently lost in thought. Seated next to him, shivering under a blanket, was Manning, still looking shell-shocked. He had initially been reluctant to come back into the bosom of the ‘hatefully corrupt’ Service, as he’d kept referring to it, but after she had explained that a hunter-killer unit could soon b
e on its way from Moscow to find out what had happened to their two-man cell, the virtues of hiding out in a safe house until the coast was clear had come back to him and he’d allowed himself to be bundled in.
Thorpe took the turning onto the motorway leading out of the city, and the streetlamps gradually became sparser. She breathed a small sigh of relief: the chances of their being stopped by the police were now less likely. It didn’t bear thinking about what might happen if they were: as well as a Soviet agent in the back seat, the boot contained two corpses rolled up in a couple of Manning’s rugs. It had then taken her and Thorpe over an hour to get both bodies into the car, all the while anxious that at any moment they might be seen or interrupted by the authorities.
But they weren’t safe yet. She fiddled with the dial of the radio to see if there was anything on the news or the police scanners. There was nothing, and she left it tuned to a local rock station. Sandy rarely listened to anything but Haydn, and as a result of spending so much time in his company she had largely missed out on her own generation’s music. A mournful male voice was singing, and the lyric suddenly seemed like it was addressing her directly. It was an adaptation of Thoreau, she realised: ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ And women, she thought. Look at her: here she was in a car with Paul Dark’s handler and all she could think of was how her married lover would react. It was all she could ever think of. She knew in her heart of hearts that Celia was right – he would never leave her – and yet still she hung on. It was bloody pathetic.
Fields flitted past, and after a few minutes she spotted what she was looking for by the side of the road: a telephone booth. She told Thorpe to slow down and asked him to hand her all his loose change. It was time to face the music, and call home.