Timebomb : A Thriller (9781468300093)

by Seymour, Gerald

  Were they good, were they expert, those who followed him? Were they the best, or just those who had been available and dragged out of the duty pool? They were on a wide terrace and the rain had slackened, but the wind still blew in thumping gusts against the brick walls topped by the walkway platform. In the half-light, a young man flew a kite. Reuven Weissberg paused and studied him, then looked for the kite, high in the growing dark of the clouds, and he found it. Carrick’s sleeve was tugged and it was pointed out to him. He had to strain his eyes to see it. The kite was a scarlet speck, and the young man gave it more line. Carrick estimated, loose and without a vestige of proof, that the line might have stretched a quarter of a mile or more. The kite speck was over the river … the goddam river.

  He assumed that, at the end of the game, Reuven Weissberg would lead him towards the river – where better? – and by then the darkness would have gathered tighter on them. Mikhail and Viktor would sidle from the shadows and whisper in the big player’s ear. Carrick would not know what they said. Would not know whether he had won or lost. He could see, from the elevation of the platform on the old walls, big branches going down the river and the swans, small and bright in the closing dusk, kept to the gentler eddies in bays at the far bank. Shadows lengthened on the near grassed areas, their side of the Vistula river. Maybe he would be in a cone of shadow, and unable to sprint, run, get up on to his damn toes and flee because he wouldn’t know what was said.

  Who could save him?

  Carrick bit his lip. He had lost sight of the scarlet speck. Again, he followed. Would Reuven Weissberg save him? If the tail was seen, showed out, if the whisper in the ear was of a tail confirmed, would Reuven Weissberg help him? No damn chance. He could look into Weissberg’s face, study the eyes and their depth, the expression at the mouth, and learn nothing.

  Had to believe in Reuven Weissberg. They had turned away from the kite-flier and the view of the river, and walked back into the Stare Miasto and were among narrow alleyways. In front of them was a low arch. Without warning, Reuven Weissberg stopped and Carrick cannoned into him. He wondered if Weissberg sought to remember which way he should go, right or left or under the arch, which route should he be led on.

  It was rare for Carrick to speak without reason but he was badly stressed. He said, and tried hard to lose the quaver, ‘It’s very beautiful, sir. It’s a fascinating piece of history.’

  Reuven Weissberg, almost startled, looked at Carrick, took a fold of Carrick’s cheek in his fingers and squeezed the flesh. ‘It is not old, not from history. It is a fraud. All of it was destroyed in the war, every building that was here, the year after the ghetto uprising. It was rebuilt, stone for stone and brick for brick. It is a sham. Nothing is as it seems.’

  For Adrian and Dennis, there had been confusion. It had not lasted. Dennis was ahead, and Adrian trailed his colleague. From Adrian’s view there was a shallow arch across the road. The earpiece he wore had been moulded for him and fitted exactly. The days of cables trailing under his collar were long gone. The earpiece had the double function of receiver and transmitter, but he – and Dennis – preferred the wrist microphone attached to the cuff of the anorak and the discipline of raising the hand across the mouth to mask the movement of the lips when talking. He wasn’t a bloody ventriloquist and needed to move his lips when speaking for clarity. They were encrypted.

  ‘To A One. Are you reckoning this is a choke-point? D One, out.’

  The answer came back into his ear, soft and murmured: ‘To D One. I’m reckoning it’s a choke-point. Can’t see any other reason for this bloody caper. You got one? A One, out.’

  ‘To A One. You still have an eyeball? D One, out.’

  ‘To D One. Target Two going under the arch with November – yes, still have an eyeball. A One, out.’

  Adrian lit a cigarette, which brought his hands over his mouth, and a tourist couple, might have been Germans, smiled warmly at him. A cigarette was the best reason to have a hand in front of the mouth when he transmitted.

  ‘To A One. Assuming it’s a choke-point routine, don’t have another answer. Think you should leap-frog? D One, out.’

  ‘To D One. Going for a leap-frog. Yes, I’ll buy it as a choke-point. A One out.’

  He didn’t throw away his cigarette. Adrian hated them, had a printed sticker on the front door at home that said, ‘No Smoking’, but he kept it in his hand. To have thrown it down on to the clean-swept cobbles would have attracted attention, the great sin of his trade. He had ground to cover, to catch up on, and that made a difficulty in itself. Nobody noticed a man who sauntered and had time. Everybody remembered a man who hurried. He was able to dump the cigarette in a litter bin and felt better for getting shot of the damn thing. He went after the target and into what was reckoned a choke-point.

  In Adrian’s world of surveillance there were three stages that were common practice. They had seen the men get into the two cars, with attention focused on the target’s, and that was the ‘lift’. A journey had started. When it reached its end, that had the name ‘housing’. Mid-journey, between start and end, was known to him, and the guys and girls he worked with, as the ‘control’. But was not, quite, control. Was not ‘control’ because, right now, Adrian was going – fast – up to do a leap-frog, and pass Dennis to take over the eyeball of the target. In doing so he would have to funnel himself through a choke-point. ‘Choke-point’ was when a target led the way through a narrow entrance, or across a bridge, or into a subway, and the surveillance had to follow or lose out on the eyeball, and the entrance, bridge or subway was under close observation. Not likely that he or Adrian would show out at the first choke-point, but there would be a second and third.

  But they had to follow where they were led. Couldn’t pack it in, just call it quits, because then the target was lost.

  He was coming up close behind Dennis and passed him in the shadow of the arch. Fag in the mouth, hand up with the lighter, he strode past Dennis, saw his colleague’s little gesture, so slight, of a hand over the hip pocket and one extended finger pointing right. He did as he was directed, swung to the right, and the alleyway was darker. He didn’t look left. If this was a choke-point it was most likely where the guys were, the Russians. Had become passably familiar with the Russians these last few days, since the bridge and the Wannsee lakes in Berlin, but he didn’t look for them … He kept on going and then he saw the shoulders of the target and November.

  He lit his cigarette again. It had been burning well enough, but he needed his fist up again and over his lips. Adrian said, ‘To D One. OK, I have the eyeball. It’s not right to have a chit-chat, but we’ve a problem. A One, out.’

  ‘To A One. Only one problem? Spill it. D One, out.’

  ‘To D One. Bloody funny, yeah, yeah. Problem is, we’re doing caravan and trailer, and we should be doing the box. A One, out.’

  ‘To A One. Hear you. Leave it with me. D One, out.’

  Saw a bin, and dumped his cigarette. Caravans and trailers were towed along. ‘Caravans and trailers’ was the old way of doing foot surveillance when resources were short and the perceived wisdom was to follow a joker along the street, keep back, have a newspaper ready and a packet of fags, let the joker lead. That technique of surveillance was now considered flawed because of what he had just been obliged to do, shift himself and hurry to do the leap-frog past Dennis. How many times, he liked to demand of recruits, was a guy ever seen running down a street or up a pavement? Wasn’t that guy always remembered if he was seen? New thinking, modern practice – which he and Dennis taught on the courses – was to use the box formation, and that slotted, in the exercises they laid on for the rookies, for the ‘control’ stage. When the box was formed there was no need for an eyeball; the target walked on a street and the box was far ahead and far behind him, in the next street to the right and the next to the left. The box was brilliant, but Adrian didn’t have it.

  He swore.

  It had to be a second choke-point.


  The target had stopped at the top of a steep flight of steps. Adrian had that good peripheral vision, was using it, and didn’t see a way right or left. The steps dropped a level, went down to a little closed-in park. What he saw, what he noticed most, were the fine street-lamps – could have been the Warsaw equivalent of Victoriana, like they had in Holmes films for Baker Street – and they must just have been switched on as the gloom grew. Decision time.

  In his lectures to rookies, Adrian liked to speak of the ‘heat stakes’. It was one of his favourite patter lines, and always drew grim smiles from his class. The heat stakes went from one to ten, and ten was when the surveillance officer was busted, like he went to gaol. They were going down the steps, the target guy and November. Put crudely, simply, Adrian and Dennis were expensive pieces of kit. It was not a lightly taken decision to deploy them. They hit the street, as increments of VBX, when matters were serious, and nothing that Adrian had worked on before had seemed more serious than the briefing on a ‘dirty bomb’. He would tell the rookies, the recruits, with an old man’s confidence and experience, ‘If the next stage is to show out, we pull out.’ Easy enough said at a training session. He knew the consequences, potential, of losing his target, and it sort of hammered in his mind like a bad nightmare that he would have to call in on the encrypted net and report. Would have to live with it. He went back to some old basic ones – bent and untied his shoelace, then knotted it again, and they were at the bottom of the steps. He saw them veer left at the bottom, under the furthest light. He turned his back to the steps, lit another cigarette.

  ‘To D One. I’m sure it’s a choke-point. Don’t feel I can follow. Leg it, pick them up – good luck. That’s two of them, but there’ll be a third. A One, out.’

  ‘To A One. Getting there. D One, out.’

  Then there was the crackle in Adrian’s ear, and silence. He walked back up the alley and looked into the darkened window of a little gallery, old prints in faded frames, counted to fifty and it seemed an age, then drifted back to the head of the steps. He went down slowly. He thought, and it came to him like the blow of a pickaxe handle, that he had never before handled a matter of this importance. Couldn’t remember, not on anything he’d experienced, feeling frightened at the enormity of it.

  He let it wait, knew his colleague would be suffering, until he had the eyeball. They came towards him.

  It was ‘dry-cleaning’ in reverse. Dennis had done that often enough. Dry-cleaning was when they did choke-points to ascertain whether an agent had a tail. The agent used a prearranged route and specific locations were watched, but the tables had been turned. He hadn’t seen the Russians. Knew them well enough from the last several days, and would have recognized them if they’d been obvious. Because he hadn’t seen them it didn’t mean to Dennis that they didn’t employ choke-points. He was a man with few delusions.

  It would have been a delusion to believe that former KGB-trained officers were in any degree inferior to himself in the trade of surveillance. He thought he’d done well to pick them up, Reuven Weissberg and the agent, but he was not a man to let complacency intrude on his concentration. He could sense the strain on the agent, and the stress that had built in him. There was no talk between them. The level-three mafiya man was a half-pace ahead of the agent, November, and seemed to have no conversation, just drifted along the street and didn’t look into the closed shops and restaurant fronts where the last of the day’s customers were drifting away. To safeguard the agent, best thing would have been to back off, but backing off lost the trail and the trail led – Mr Lawson had said – to a dirty bomb. He had the agent’s survival in his hand, could only protect him with professionalism. Bloody hell – and a hell of a number of people’s survival.

  He had a handkerchief up to his nose, blew, and spoke. ‘To Control. I need the girl, whatever we’re calling her, sorry and that. I need her. Have to have her. Me and him, it isn’t enough. D One, out.’

  In his ear, ‘To D One. Will happen. She is C for Charlie, C One. Where to? Control, out.’

  They went past him. He was doing a window bit, using reflections. It was why Dennis – and his colleague, Adrian – liked to work with Lawson, the guv’nor. Old ways used, tried and tested ways. He stayed very still, kept all his muscles tight, locked his gaze on the window. First the mafiya target, then the agent. Would have liked, no messing, to spin, reach out a hand, grip the poor sod’s arm and whisper a sweet-nothing of comfort in his ear … and they were gone. The reflection gave him the route they took at the end of that street. He had his handkerchief up.

  ‘To Control. Get C One to the old wall, the Barbakan end. It’s where they’re headed. Just hammer at her that it’s about choke-points. D One, out.’

  ‘To D One. Will do.’ The pause lingered. ‘Up and running, C One is getting there. Control, out.’

  He couldn’t say whether that narrow street was the third choke-point, or whether it would be up by the walls and the barbican gate. He glanced, as any visitor would have, at his little street map. Yes, Dennis respected men trained to KGB standards. Had done a trip to Moscow two years before. The rage now was for the use of the electronic dead-letter box, the EDLB in jargon-speak. It was thought of as a star performer. An EDLB was built into a ‘rock’ of shaped reinforced plastic and left in a park, with leaves and earth, even dog turds, to half cover it, and the idea was for the turned guy, the man recruited by VBX, to drive up and park within twenty metres of it, and squirt from his little handheld piece of gear. Maybe he did that every Wednesday. Maybe the embassy man, from VBX, drove by every Friday, and used his laptop, hidden on his knee, to suck in what was transmitted to the ‘rock’.

  Dennis had been sent two years back to do the old-fashioned clearance check and give the all-clear that the ‘rock’ wasn’t compromised. It had taken him two weeks to come up with an answer, two weeks of frozen bollocks on a Wednesday and a Friday – and not a decent meal on any evening or wine to wash it down on the expenses VBX would meet – and four random tails on the agent going to work in the ministry and coming away. His answer was clear, given in person to the station chief at the embassy. What had he seen? Three times he had seen a man in a car use the same lighter, one of those metal Zippo jobs, and twice he had seen a woman who was once blonde and the next time a brunette but she’d had on the same damn boots with the little metal buckle for decoration.

  He told what he had seen to the station chief, and was listened to, and gave his opinion that the FSB, successor to the KGB, had the bodies identified and the ‘rock’ under surveillance, and he’d known that he was only the bloody messenger who brought unwelcome news: all he could offer, of course, was his opinion, and he’d flown home. About a month later, could have been five weeks, it was in his paper stretched out over the breakfast table. A Russian was in custody, faced a charge of treason, and the station chief’s deputy and one of the staffer kids was identified and accused of espionage while under diplomatic cover. Mr Lawson, the guv’nor, would have believed him.

  Yes, Dennis had a high regard for the quality of KGB-trained operatives. Hadn’t seen them, which didn’t mean they weren’t there on the ground.

  He walked slowly. The guv’nor would have believed him, but might have said the stakes were too high to call off the operation. Never could tell with the guv’nor, but at least Dennis would have been believed.

  Dennis went the far way round the alleys and across the square, then doubled back and tried to estimate where the mafiya man and the agent would be, and whether a minimal part of a box was in place, but held out few hopes for it. A box – if it was in London, run by Thames House and the target was a bloody jihadist – would have involved two cars and a motorcycle, a dozen on the ground sealing the target inside the box. His pace quickened, didn’t want to go faster but couldn’t help himself, and his stride lengthened. It was his hatred of a situation when he didn’t have an eyeball and neither did Adrian.

  He passed a wedding party, in their best gear, men in suits a
nd the girls in smart frocks. They had taken over a little square and there was a raised flowerbed in which the ground was covered with wood chips, the pruned rosebushes were not yet in bud, but the party had brought bouquets and laid them on the chips. With the flowers were brightly wrapped packages. New lives starting, hope and optimism, bloody good news.

  The squawk came into his ear. ‘To Control. I have an eyeball, on the wall, west from the barbican. C One, out.’

  He gasped. Felt his knees weaken, turn to jelly. He thought it a good voice in his ear, authoritative and without bullshit. Should have been enjoying it – adrenaline and the chase, that crap – and was not. Just felt raw relief that they had, again, an eyeball. But couldn’t say for how long the game would be played out.

  The dog alerted him. It came from its place by the lit stove and bounded to the closed door. It lifted its head, hackles erect, and its bark deafened him. Then its paws, claws out, raked the door. The barking died and was replaced by a soft, menacing growl that came from deep in its throat.

  He listened.

  When he heard the car, which the dog had heard a half-minute before, Tadeuz Komiski started up from his chair. He had not eaten that day, or the one before. He swayed on his feet and had to lean on the table to steady himself. The dusk had come early that evening, brought on by the raincloud over the forest, and he had no light on in his home. Nor had he drunk any coffee or tea, only water. A car approached. He sensed it made slow progress and was driven carefully because the ruts in the track were deep and rain-filled. It would have tried to find a route at the track’s sides.

  Lights hit the window beside the bolted and locked door, and the dog renewed its frantic barking.

  He groped forward, keeping to the shadows beyond the throw of the car’s headlights, and reached the window. The car edged forward, swerving. The lights dipped and bucked. He made his way back across the room to the table and lifted his broken shotgun. He checked and, from the lights spearing inside, could see that both barrels were loaded. He snapped the gun shut. He held it loosely and went forward to take his position against the wall beside the window.