by Jeremy Duns
Chapter 56
Paul Dark ordered a Virgin Mary with an added dose of spices from the stewardess. She prepared the drink and passed it to him with a wide empty smile, then took the next passenger’s order.
Dark gulped down the contents of the glass, the fiery familiarity of the Tabasco making up for the lack of alcohol, and reflected on what he had discovered in Brussels. He had read through Manning’s file on the Selous Scouts three times before visiting the bathroom, tearing the papers into strips and flushing them down the toilet bowl. The file had only been a few pages long, but from the description of the regiment’s methods, capabilities and previous operations, Dark was sure that they had carried out the kidnapping, and that the creature he’d met in Haga Park had been their spotter. The head of the regiment was Major Roy Campbell-Fraser, and there was a separate file on him: he was ex-SAS and had served in Malaya. A ruthless sort of man, Dark thought, and one very capable of planning such a job. Presumably he planned to use Claire and Ben – or already was using them – to exert pressure on Charamba and his group, most likely in connection with the talks about to get under way in Rhodesia.
Dark’s first instinct had been to fly straight to Salisbury, because the file showed that the Selous Scouts had their headquarters just outside the city, in a place called Inkomo, and that seemed the most likely place for them to be holding Claire and Ben. But there hadn’t been any direct flights there from Brussels, and the hitch made him realise he hadn’t really thought it through. Even if he took several legs to get there, Rhodesia was well known to have some of the tightest customs controls on the continent. And if he managed to get through, what would he do then? He could hardly single-handedly storm a special forces base, especially as he was unarmed and had no way of knowing where to find weapons in Salisbury, let alone pay for them.
But Manning had told him that Matthew Charamba lived in a heavily guarded villa in Lusaka. That meant weaponry. And if Claire was his daughter, as he thought she must be, he would have some very good motivation to use that weaponry.
Chapter 57
Rachel Gold dropped the francs in the slot and dialled the number. An operator answered on the fifth ring.
‘Savage and Cooper, how may I help you?’
‘Hello, I’d like to speak to a manager, please. I have a terribly urgent complaint about my Phoenix policy.’
There was a slight pause on the line as the operator registered the phrase ‘terribly urgent’. In Service field terminology, it was DEFCON 1, and required informing Chief at once. The operator asked for her number and she read it out from the card next to the slot and hung up. Ninety seconds later the receiver chirruped back into life, and she picked up to hear Sandy’s voice.
‘Rachel, what the hell’s going on? Where are you? Do you have Dark?’
‘No. I’m with Thorpe in a call-box outside Brussels – we’re on the way to the Château. And we’re two men down.’ She rapidly explained the events of the previous few hours, leaving nothing out. She was expecting him to explode, but he didn’t speak for several seconds and when he did his voice was very quiet.
‘Am I to understand that you and the Head of Station are driving around the Belgian countryside with two corpses in the boot of his car?’
The coldness of his tone was more shocking than if he’d screamed abuse at her. She told him Thorpe had called in a favour with a long-term asset in Antwerp and that as soon as she and Proshin were safely ensconced in the Château he would see to the cremation of both bodies.
Harmigan went silent again. Then he asked whether Collins’ passport had still been on him when they’d searched his body.
She had been waiting for the question and reached into her jacket. ‘Yes. I have it here. Frederick Collins, an independent fabric salesman.’
‘Destroy it,’ said Harmigan. ‘Did Dark take any passports from Manning? I imagine he has a few stashed away.’
‘Manning says he didn’t, but it might be that Dark was carrying more than one.’
‘Yes, that’s quite possible.’ Harmigan let out a heavy sigh. ‘I do wish you’d called me earlier. He’ll almost certainly have left the country by now.’
I couldn’t call you earlier. I had to dispose of two bodies before I was arrested for aiding and abetting murder.
As if sensing her thoughts, Harmigan asked if there had been any sign of the Belgian authorities.
‘Nothing so far, and there was a nightclub open nearby that probably masked most of the noise. It might be a different picture come morning, though.’ She glanced down at her watch. It was approaching three o’clock. ‘Come daybreak, I mean.’
‘But nobody saw you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t think so?’ Now his anger was coming through openly and she could picture him seated at the desk in KH, the veins on his neck pulsing. She didn’t respond, as she knew from experience that doing so usually enraged him even more.
‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll call my contacts in the Sûreté and have a discreet word. What about Dark – any idea at all where he’s headed?’
‘From what Manning told me, it sounded like he’s on his way to Rhodesia. By the way, he’s shaved off the beard and dyed his hair blond, so the alert description needs to be altered.’
‘Fine. What makes you think Rhodesia?’
‘Well, Manning was still rather shaken up when I spoke to him, but he claimed Dark wanted to know about a black Rhodesian woman by the name of Hope Charamba. That must be the girlfriend’s real name.’
‘Did Dark tell Manning that?’
‘No, but why else would he be asking after her?’
‘Let’s not make any grand assumptions quite yet. It hasn’t got us too far.’
She ignored the rebuke. ‘Well, if she is his girlfriend it might be important – her father’s Matthew Charamba. He used to be one of the nationalist leaders there, but he’s currently out of favour and living in Zambia. Dark also reacted to a photograph of a white Rhodesian who works for one of their special forces outfits.’ She looked down at the note she had made for herself. ‘The Selous Scouts. A bloodthirsty lot that make the SAS look like the Boy Scouts, apparently. They capture guerrillas and turn them, sending them back into the bush to gather intelligence on their former comrades. I think this must all be related to these talks the South Africans have set up. Perhaps the Rhodesians took the daughter to pressure the father at the negotiating table, using black Africans as cover.’
‘Your pet theory,’ he said, and she remembered his objections to the idea during the COBRA meeting. ‘Do we know where this Charamba lives in Zambia? Dark might be headed there instead of Salisbury.’
‘Manning said Lusaka.’
‘All right. Christ, what a fiasco.’ She didn’t reply. ‘What about Proshin? Have you spoken to him?’
She considered mentioning the remarks he’d made in Manning’s flat, and decided not to. ‘Just a few niceties so far.’
‘Has he said why he wants to defect to us, or what he’s bringing with him?’
‘Not yet. I’ll ask him all that as soon as we get to the Château.’
‘No, don’t. Leave him there with Thorpe, please. You need to get back here at once.’
‘What?’ She could scarcely believe her ears. ‘Surely you don’t want Thorpe to interview Proshin? He has no knowledge of the man at all!’
‘He’s not to interview him either – just tell him to keep Proshin on ice for the time being. Leave Manning there, too. They can play Scrabble together, or whatever the Belgian equivalent is. Manning can head back to Brussels in a few days, and we can fly Proshin over here and question him until we know what he had for dinner eighteen months ago. But he isn’t our priority right now. Dark’s still out there, and I need all the help I can get to find him. I’ll see if we can lay on a flight for you. Don’t go away.’
The line suddenly went silent, and she took the opportunity to switch hands – the one holding the receiver was slick with sweat. Sh
e looked out at the car and Thorpe raised his hand to her. She raised hers back to indicate that all was well, but her throat was dry and her stomach had coiled in tight. She couldn’t see Proshin’s expression in the rear of the car, but she felt he had played some bizarre version of the old ‘pick a card, any card’ magic trick on her, and she imagined he was smiling smugly at having pulled it off.
It may be that your superiors try to persuade you it is better if I am not interviewed at all.
Four long minutes passed before Sandy came on the line again, his tone now brisk and businesslike. ‘Right, I’ve just spoken to Harry and he’s willing to play ball. There’s an airfield at the NATO base in Chièvres, about an hour and half from the Château. Be there at seven o’clock sharp. That’s in just over four hours, which gives you ample time to get to the Château, make sure Proshin’s tucked up safely with Thorpe and then to head back again. You can sleep on the flight.’
‘Why don’t I just bring Proshin with me? It’s not ideal, but I can at least conduct a preliminary interview with him on the plane—’
‘Rachel, just do as I fucking say for once!’
She drew the receiver from her ear for a moment to gather herself, the blood pulsing at her temples. When she replaced it he was speaking in a more conciliatory tone.
‘I’m sorry, but I’ve had enough of the second-guessing my decisions now. This entire operation has been jeopardised.’
The phrase ‘because of you’ hung in the air.
‘But you still love me, don’t you?’ She had meant it to sound like a flirtatious joke, but her voice caught on the sentiment and it came out as more of a whimper.
‘For Christ’s sake, pull yourself together,’ he hissed. ‘Not now. We have to behave like professionals and sort this out. So don’t interview Proshin, make it clear to Thorpe he’s not to, either – and then get on that plane at seven. Understood?’
Not now? Yes, now! she wanted to scream down the line at him. Especially now. But instead she simply said, ‘Understood,’ replaced the receiver, and walked back to the car.
Chapter 58
Rachel sat in the tiny observation room and stared through the one-way window at Alexander Proshin. He was seated in an armchair in the living room, looking down at his hands clasped together in front of him. Where was the anxiety he had shown in Manning’s flat, she wondered. Had it all been an act? But then she noticed that his feet were twitching, a couple of tremors every second. So he was still nervous, but just trying to keep it under control.
The Château was a flat overlooking the beach in Ostend. The nickname was ironic, as when the Service had bought it just after the war it had been the height of luxury, but it was now rather grim, with flyblown lampshades, a low ceiling and stains on the carpets. It was looked after by two officers who posed as a married couple, and the husband of the team, Sawkins, a six-foot-five officer who had trained with the SAS, was now standing outside the door of the living room with a machine-pistol by his side. His ‘wife’ was in the kitchen, washing up the remains of coffee and an omelette Rachel had devoured on arrival. In one of the bedrooms, Manning was already asleep.
The flat was nothing to look at, but it had been given a very careful makeover by the boffins. Dozens of miniature microphones had been placed in the walls and beneath items of furniture, giving a crisp sound to recordings. At the moment there were eight microphones within a five-foot radius of Proshin.
Rachel glanced at her watch. It was coming up to four, the fag-end of the morning. If she wanted to make the flight from Chièvres at seven, she should leave within the next hour.
But still she stood fixed to the spot. Something was very wrong, and no matter how she approached it, everything circled back to Sandy. He had repeatedly deflected her requests to go out in the field to find Dark. Admittedly, quite a lot had gone wrong since she had, but now that the shock of it had worn off she didn’t feel it could justifiably be laid at her door. Now Dark’s handler wanted to defect – a chance to salvage at least a small victory from the jaws of defeat – and yet Sandy had ordered her to fly back to London, not even bringing the man with her.
It was mystifying. Troublingly so. Leaving an asset of the magnitude of Proshin behind simply to have her analytical skills on tap didn’t make sense to her. Dark was heading for Africa now, and she didn’t see how she could help with that.
Might it be that he was simply being protective of her? Perhaps, she thought – he had warned her Dark might kill anyone who got in his way, and he had done just that, drowning Collins in a pool of dirty water barely an inch deep.
But this didn’t feel like protectiveness. It felt more like Sandy simply didn’t want her to interview Proshin. She remembered the instructions he had given her to pass on to Thorpe and corrected the thought: it looked like he didn’t want anyone to interview Proshin.
She was also perturbed by his reaction when she’d told him about the Selous Scouts, and how they looked to have been behind the kidnapping of Dark’s family. Her pet theory, he’d sneered. She thought back to the conversation they’d had in her office, when he’d asked about her false-flag remark only to dismiss it in similarly snide terms. What was it he’d said? ‘If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and carries Soviet weapons, it’s probably a Soviet-sponsored duck.’ She’d found it a little peculiar at the time, but now the entire exchange rang alarm bells. It hadn’t been her pet theory, merely a possibility that had occurred to her, and a standard consideration in such circumstances. His dismissal of it stank of protesting too much, and the duck joke felt forced. It looked like he had wanted to drive her away from the idea. Why? Had he known right from the start that the kidnappers were Rhodesian? If so, how – and why hadn’t he told her? And later, when he’d found out Dark was heading for Brussels, he hadn’t wanted the Belgians to intervene, claiming he had things ‘under control’ – what had that meant?
Most troubling of all was the prediction Proshin had made. He’d warned her that her superiors might try to dissuade her from interviewing him in Brussels, and Sandy had then done precisely that. She could think of no good reason not to interview such a potentially valuable defector straightaway – and she could think of one very bad one. It was an absurd idea: monstrous, unthinkable. He was Chief of the Service. But the idea had invaded her thoughts and now she found she couldn’t dislodge it and it played over and over in her head like the tattoo of a drum.
What if Edmund Innes had been right? What if Sandy was a Soviet agent?
It would explain why he was so determined Proshin shouldn’t be interviewed. She knew from the files that Dark had done something similar, delaying the interviewing of a KGB defector who knew about him until he could arrange for counter-measures to be put in place.
Well, there was only one way to find out, and if she was going to do it she had to do it now. She checked that the recorders were turning and left the observation room. She walked down a small corridor and came to the door leading to the living room. She told Sawkins that he and his ‘wife’ could now clock off for the night.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
She watched him walk towards the kitchen, then turned and faced the door. This was the point of no return. If she were wrong, she could kiss any idea of promotion goodbye. Indeed, whatever happened on the other side of the door, she was almost certainly kissing goodbye to her job, and to Sandy, too. But quiet desperation wasn’t going to cut it any more – she had to act.
She took a deep breath and opened the door. Proshin looked up in surprise as she entered and gave a laugh of seemingly genuine pleasure.
‘I am very relieved,’ he said. ‘I was starting to worry you might not keep your promise.’
She walked across the threadbare carpet to the corner of the room, where she took a folding wooden chair from beneath its dust covers. She carried it over to where Proshin was seated, unfolded it, and seated herself opposite him. She peered into his face, thinking of the hours she had spent studying him in London, the cigarett
es she had smoked down to the butts while trying to piece together the information they’d gathered on him. The grand spymaster, Paul Dark’s handler . . .
But now she was finally face to face with him, she was disappointed. He looked like any other middle-aged Russian official. Hair cropped very close at the back and sides, stocky and squat, wearing a poorly tailored blue serge suit. Five-o’clock shadow complemented his already greyish pallor. His eyes were perhaps the most interesting thing about him, she thought: they gave an impression of cool intelligence, but there was something perturbing flickering in them. He reminded her of a toad seated on a lily pad, and she tried to compose her face so as not to give away her visceral dislike. She had to find out why the hell Sandy had been so determined to stop anyone talking to this man.
‘Are we alone?’ Proshin said, breaking into her thoughts.
‘Yes. I’ve dismissed the housekeepers.’
‘What about your colleague?’ He tilted his head towards the large mirror on the wall, behind which the office was hidden.
‘There’s nobody in there.’
He stared at her intently and then leaned forward, his knees almost touching hers.
‘Can I trust you?’
His breath smelled strongly of garlic, and she leaned back in her chair fractionally. ‘I think the question here is more whether I can trust you,’ she said. ‘You called the embassy to announce that you wish to defect to us having just killed one of your colleagues in the home of a British citizen. So right from the start you’ve forced us to cover up a murder you’ve committed. Why shouldn’t we simply turn you over to the Belgian authorities? Or to the Soviet embassy?’
He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he smiled again. ‘I’m so glad Sandy Harmigan sent you here. I’m sure Mr Thorpe is perfectly competent, but I don’t think he would have been as appreciative of what I have to tell you.’
She bristled instinctively at both names being said aloud in a Russian accent, but of course he would know about them. She knew the names of senior intelligence officers in other agencies, and it was natural that someone of Proshin’s seniority in the GRU would know the name of their Chief and the Head of Station in a European capital. But it was disconcerting nevertheless. Coupled with his earlier warning, it felt eerily like he had been listening to her private conversations.