Luke Davies, beside her, had not talked much, had not dug for her life story, had not done the superior bit and had not been clever with her.
She’d thought – on the stretch beyond Poznan and hammering past the magnificence of the domed churches and the hideous concrete towers of apartments – hard, of a childhood image back in the village under the long range of hills. It was not part of her job description that she should shag Johnny Carrick, in the hope of keeping him on the road for undercover work.
And another thing she liked about Luke Davies was that he didn’t flinch when she went through the gears and stamped on the accelerator. Twice, she’d shivered as she’d come past a truck’s cab, then had to swerve hard because the big bastard coming at her wasn’t about to give way. More than twice she’d felt the rush of blood as she’d done the overtaking on a bend and across the brow of a hill. She was trained and categorized as an advanced-level driver, she had been on roads at home to speeds in excess of a hundred and forty miles per hour. He hadn’t gasped, gulped. He hadn’t reached for the dashboard to steady himself. It was as if, she thought, he reckoned her dependable, not just the bloody token in a man’s world – SCD10 was that, male territory. There was quite a lot about him that she liked.
He took her off the flyover, did navigation, dumped the maps and used his palm job for the final run-in. He didn’t have to call them. He took her right up to and alongside the minibus, which was in a car park beside a church and had a view of the front area of the glass and concrete edifice of the hotel.
He said quietly, ‘Great ride, thanks.’
She pulled a face. He had attractive hands, thin, sensitive fingers. His accent appealed. Not smart and not trying to be what he was not. She’d enjoyed it, the drive, and she’d seen his quality at the apartment of Reuven Weissberg when he’d talked them in.
He went to the minibus and the side door was dragged open. From behind him, she saw Christopher Lawson on the back seat. Heard Lawson, ‘Well, what did you learn?’
And heard Luke Davies, ‘Not enough to tell it all over the mobile.’
‘Wouldn’t have expected you to.’
‘I gained access.’
‘Did you, now?’
‘I spoke with Anna Weissberg. She was in a camp, freed from it. She had a child in the forest, and was already white-haired. She’s a powerhouse, not physically but there’s an extraordinary strength about her, difficult to describe it. I saw the photograph of her, and the painting.’
‘Describe the painting.’
Katie heard Luke Davies stutter in his answer. ‘Not easy … It’s dark, like the light doesn’t get there … pines and birches. Has depth, like infinity. I don’t know, a place of hate, a frightening place. She didn’t tell me where it was.’
‘Where else? Sobibor.’
Lawson threw back his head and his eyes were closed, but his lips moved as if he repeated the word, Sobibor, again and again.
Luke Davies said he was going to find a sandwich, and Katie Jennings said she was going to find a toilet, and the side door of the minibus was pulled shut on them. Was it like, in her mind, she’d kicked Johnny Carrick when he was down? Didn’t know, and wasn’t going to agonize over it.
*
Carrick sensed the new atmosphere grow in intensity. He was at the heart of it, knew it, but was not included.
Another anteroom, another deep, comfortable easy chair, another bedroom beyond a closed door. Josef Goldmann had come to the anteroom but had avoided Carrick’s glance and gone inside. There had been a murmur of voices from the bedroom, his Bossman’s and Reuven Weissberg’s, but they had talked Russian and he had not understood. On coming out, Goldmann had walked past him, then stolen a quick, secretive look at Carrick; it told Carrick that Josef Goldmann had made another concession … It was the look he had given, but with more sadness tingeing it, before they had gone to the warehouse, and before Carrick had been ordered to Reuven Weissberg’s car. Their eyes had met and Carrick had tried to hold his glance steady, but Josef Goldmann had scuttled out of the anteroom.
Without knocking, as if Carrick’s territory had no more importance than a damned corridor, Viktor had come in. Carrick had been on his feet. It was his bloody job to be on his feet as soon as there were footsteps outside the main door of the suite and as soon as the handle moved. He had stood and half blocked the way across the anteroom. Viktor had skirted him, all the time seeming to mock him with the sneer at his mouth, and gone through the inner door.
Carrick could not judge the extent of the crisis. Then Mikhail came, no warning. For a big man he moved well, without sound. First that Carrick knew of him was the door handle turning sharply. Carrick was half up, hands on the chair arms, pushing himself to his feet, and Mikhail had paused in front of him, then pushed him back down. Not a sneer but pure malevolence. The fist that pushed him held a street map of the city.
The new atmosphere corroded Carrick’s confidence. Where to put faith? There was no Transit round the corner with a half-dozen uniforms and the familiar Heckler & Koch machine pistols, magazine on and one in the breech. Once, voices were raised, could have been Mikhail’s and Viktor’s but he didn’t think the argument was between them. Sensed they attacked Reuven Weissberg.
Where to put faith? He thought his faith should lie with Reuven Weissberg. The inner door of the bedroom opened.
In Mikhail’s hand was a black box, the size of a fat paperback book. It had a dial on it, and a short, stubbed aerial protruded. Mikhail did not speak but went round the anteroom and aimed the aerial at every floor plug, held it close to them, and the telephone plug, then ran it across the television screen. He paused under the smoke detector set in the ceiling, reached up and held the thing there. There was a constant hum from the machine but no bleep. He walked close to Carrick, stood in front of him, then leaned forward with it. The machine was inches from Carrick’s chest and stomach. He knew what was expected of him, what he had to do. His fists unlocked and his fingers snaked forward. Maybe it was surprise he achieved. He snatched the machine, felt the blood rush, then thrust it right up against Mikhail’s jacket and over his crotch. He looked into Mikhail’s face and his gaze never meandered from Mikhail’s eyes. He gave him back the bug detector.
Now Carrick looked away, the gesture made. He should have been Mikhail’s friend or at least tolerated by him, but he had reinforced the enmity.
Reuven Weissberg was at the inner door and Viktor hovered at his shoulder. Carrick thought a grin was on Weissberg’s lips, as if the spectacle of rats fighting was better if the vermin were half starved.
‘Tonight we move out, go on.’ Then, as if it was an afterthought, ‘Do you know Warsaw, Johnny?’
‘I’ve never been to Warsaw before, sir.’
‘Then I will show it to you. Later we will go to the Stare Miasto, the Old City, and I will be your guide.’
‘I’ll enjoy that, sir. Thank you.’
Why? He didn’t know. Carrick couldn’t comprehend why the major player – level three in organized crime – wished to walk him round the streets of a city and do tourist junk with him. Why? Had no idea.
Chapter 13
14 April 2008
Carrick came out of the hotel. He carried his bag from the swing doors, and there was a siren in the air – might have been fire, ambulance or police answering an emergency, might have been for a politician’s convoy. He looked up. Had there not been that distant sound of a siren and had he not done that everyday thing of trying to identify where it came from and where it went, he wouldn’t have seen her.
She was sitting on a low wall. It ran along the front of a schoolyard, which was beside an ornate church façade, and kids were screaming and chasing behind her. She had a magazine on her lap but had glanced up from it. She was, perhaps, a hundred yards from him and they had visual contact but it was as though she looked right through him and focused on nothing. Two days ago, or three, it would have given him a lift to see Katie, would have raised his morale, sp
irits, motivation, whatever he ran on. But Johnny Carrick was a changed man, accepted that.
He saw Golf with her, and the young man who called himself Delta. There might have been others with Golf, Katie and the young man, but he was not certain if the group included others who lounged nearer the school gate.
The eye contact should have given him exhilaration … He went down into the depths of his professionalism. The instructors spoke of that: a guy could feel himself isolated, could think he was abandoned trash, but could survive if he clung to the creed of professionalism. Behind him, Viktor supervised the moving of Josef Goldmann’s quality luggage on to a porter’s trolley. Carrick went to Goldmann’s car, and a man was there, working on the bonnet paint. In front of that car was Reuven Weissberg’s. The man polished the paintwork with a soft duster, but not with enthusiasm; he made short savage movements, halted, then resumed, as if it was unimportant what the goddam car looked like. He wore the obligatory dress of faded jeans and a heavyweight leather jacket. His skull was covered with close-cropped hair and a snake tattoo was wrapped round his neck. He didn’t look at Carrick. Carrick dropped his bag, turned to Viktor, seemed to ask the question with his eyes, eyebrows: which vehicle was he to travel in when they moved on? As if in answer, Viktor zapped Josef Goldmann’s car doors. Couldn’t bloody Viktor speak? Silences, the lack of communication, should not have crushed Carrick as they did. He threw his bag into the boot.
So, he was going walking, would do the tourism bit, and he didn’t know why.
The siren was long gone. Carrick stared over the burnished roof, and the car park, through the wire fencing and across a street, and watched her as she sat on the low wall of the schoolyard.
It could still rule him, professionalism.
He stood aside from the boot, and Viktor supervised the stowing of Josef Goldmann’s bags. Carrick said, ‘I’m going to get some mints.’
Viktor didn’t answer.
Carrick said, ‘Going to get some mints from a kiosk.’
A small frown formed on Viktor’s forehead.
‘I’m not buying them in there.’ Carrick gestured towards the hotel’s swing doors. He was breaking a law of the trade he practised, was failing on due care, diligence. Needed to create the opportunity of a meeting but shouldn’t have started up on explanations: least said, best. Broke it. ‘Not paying the prices they want in there.’
A shrug, distaste. He didn’t know how much Viktor was paid for being the hood in Josef Goldmann’s shadow – might have been two hundred and fifty thousand euro a year, might have been more. Himself, he had been promised a new settlement, new terms of employment – not as part of the conspiracy of laundering – and the upgraded role of personal bodyguard: maybe a hundred thousand euro a year. Why would an employee of Josef Goldmann quibble over paying two euro for a tube of mints from a shop in a hotel lobby, and instead need to go down the street to a kiosk, or a small bar, and pay one euro for the same item? Convenience cost an extra euro, was that important? Explanations split open a legend. An instructor would have shuddered.
Tried to make a joke of it. ‘I suppose it’s sort of in the blood, not wasting money. Have to get the best deal …’
He walked away from the car, and from Viktor.
At the street corner, beyond the car park, he paused and waited for lights to change. It was an excuse for him to check both ways. He saw, coming up the pavement and with a good stride, that the big man – the bastard Golf who had ripped into him in the doorway, had humiliated him – closed on him … a bloody window of opportunity was presented. Didn’t see Katie with him, and was undecided if that mattered to him. He couldn’t look behind him, didn’t know what Viktor did, whether he was followed.
The lights changed.
Carrick crossed the street.
He was in a flow of people, anonymous. He passed the door to the library of the British Council and saw in the hallway a poster advertising the chance of rail travel from London to the Lake District. There was a shop ahead with a rack of newspapers outside it.
Mikhail came to the cars. ‘Where is he? Didn’t he come down?’
‘Gone to buy mints.’ Viktor’s response.
‘Why?’
‘Because the mints in the hotel are too expensive.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No.’
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘Round the corner to a shop or a kiosk.’
‘How much will he save?’
‘I can’t say. His bag’s in my car.’
The grimace played at Mikhail’s mouth, and his hand rested on Viktor’s sleeve. ‘If I’m correct, he won’t be needing a place in your car or mine. He’ll be in the fucking river without a boat.’
He pulled the street map from his pocket. He talked, jabbed with his finger at the creased paper, and Viktor listened, and did not interrupt but nodded approval of Mikhail’s planning. They had entered State Security the same year, they had worked in the city of Perm and in the same section of investigations into corporate fraud, and they had been together when recruited by Reuven Weissberg. They had done protection together and had killed together. They had been together, day in and day out, till the day Reuven Weissberg had moved to Berlin and Josef Goldmann had gone to London. The separation had not divided them. They were like brothers, and wounded by the intrusion of a stranger.
Viktor said, ‘If it’s there, we’ll find it.’
‘I believe it is.’
‘Find it, watch him go into the river – and see him sink.’
British Homing World boasted that it was ‘The World’s Premier Pigeon Racing Weekly’, and on an operation Bugsy was never without it – or, more likely, without a minimum of three copies. On any trip of more than a week, the magazines were read, reread, and his invaluable companion. Their worth to Bugsy was that they lessened the frustration brought on by failure.
For hours now, all day, he had watched the two cars but the opportunity he waited for wasn’t offered.
In the pocket of Bugsy’s anorak was the tag, but the chance to clamp it had not come.
He had been through the stock lines of birds for sale, and their price, and in his mind had checked the cost of ‘Quality farm cleaned: Tic Beans, Maple Peas, Oil Seed Rape and Whole Maize …’ Without the magazines, he would have raged.
But it was clear to him, and this conclusion could not be avoided, the chance of getting a tag into Reuven Weissberg’s car had not offered itself. The goon had been there all the hours that Bugsy had watched. The guy with the lump-hammer head and the tattoo round his throat hadn’t even gone for a piss. The car shone. Would have made the job a hell of a sight easier if the goon had gone walkabout – hadn’t … Maybe the job of putting a tag into the car wouldn’t happen and maybe it would mean risking a wire on the undercover. Needed to happen, something did, because they had driven as if the Furies chased them to get to Warsaw, hold the contact and the visuals, and the bloody old minibus had been a croaking wreck after what had been asked of it.
Bugsy had listened closely to the guv’nor’s briefing. He’d been on big operations, enough of them, but he’d sensed this to be on a scale of threat greater than he’d known before. The guv’nor had authorized him to try to place a tag, but it just wasn’t possible. He saw, from his vantage-point, the bags loaded into the cars, and that just lifted the weight of the failure.
So, again, they’d be careering on the seat of their pants, and it would be down to the driving skills of Adrian and Dennis – and they’d bitched like fuck at what had been asked of them, Berlin to Warsaw.
‘I don’t know how long we have. Spill it.’ Lawson was at his shoulder.
‘You’ve taken your bloody time.’
His man spun. Carrick had been pointing to a tube of mints in a cardboard box on a shelf behind the shop woman’s head. Didn’t finish. Lawson thought him like the familiar old rabbit in the headlights and reckoned the degeneration faster than he’d anticipated. ‘I’m here, we’re here.
What’s new?’ Did the calm and quiet bit, that of the man in charge.
‘Well, for a start, I damn near had my knee taken off with a drill.’ A rising voice, at the edge of hysteria. ‘Try that for starters.’
‘But you didn’t have it taken off so can we get to something of relevance?’
‘First, in that bloody place I’m quizzed, and the hoods aren’t believing me – how close were you?’
Not the time to make assessments as to whether a man was a potential coward or a potential hero. Clipper had always maintained that the true hero was frightened fit to piss his pants, and that the true coward would concoct an excuse and slip away to the shadows. He thought the man was brave enough for what was asked of him, and he said what might just encourage the bravery he needed from him. ‘Close enough, always close enough, and with firearms. You could say it’s just a matter of sliding a safety and you’e back with us – but then we’d have lost the big game. Don’t mind me, but can we hustle?’
Two kids had come into the shop, had pushed past Luke Davies, who stood just inside the door. The woman at the counter, arms folded, had been waiting for their discussion – in a language she hadn’t a word of – to be resolved. Lawson didn’t do ceremony, pushed his man aside and let the kids through.
‘I think – yes, I’m sure – the time is about right for me to know what the “big game” is.’
‘Dream on, starshine … You don’t get big pictures. You have a target, Reuven Weissberg, and you stay up adjacent to him. Consider pilchards in a tin. That near.’
Timebomb : A Thriller (9781468300093) Page 30