Timebomb : A Thriller (9781468300093)

by Seymour, Gerald

  The weariness was back in him, and his view of the palace blurred. Lawson said, and kept his voice even, ‘You know nothing. You’re a wet-behind-the-ears boy – probably should’ve found a niche at Work and Pensions. Go away, lose yourself.’

  ‘I’ll see you damned because you have no care for an agent’s welfare. Lose an agent through negligence and bad practice and say, “Let’s go get a beer.” Your callousness has no place in a modern world.’

  His name was called softly. Lawson turned, looked back, and Deadeye was half out of the minibus, pointing towards the steps leading down from the square to the Vistula river. Didn’t know, did he, whether a trap was sprung or whether an agent walked free? Would find out soon, and age crawled through Lawson’s body as he walked to the low wall above the long flight of steps.

  He stood in shadow, where he had been led to. Beside Carrick was Viktor. There were street-lamps that glowed dimly but they were far separated. Their light didn’t enter the shadow, but a little of their power reached the dark flow of the river. Mikhail whispered in Reuven Weissberg’s ear.

  He had no table-lamp to throw through a window. He didn’t know, now, how far away back-up was. Right and left, the walkway was empty, and the rain had come on heavier. Carrick saw the motion of the water, and its strength, seemed to feel its cold. He stood stock still, and knew his life depended on what Reuven Weissberg was told and how he reacted. All others were beyond reach. They might throw him in alive, might stab a knife into his back, then heave him on to the low parapet. Mikhail backed away, and there was not enough light for Carrick to read his face.

  Reuven Weissberg came towards him, took the back of Carrick’s head tight in his fingers. He kissed him, first on the left cheek, then on the right. Carrick heard, guttural and accented, ‘I do not apologize to you.’

  He did the dumb act. ‘I don’t know that there’s anything for which you should apologize, sir.’

  ‘It was necessary to take that time and walk through the Old Town.’

  ‘If you say so, sir.’

  ‘It was necessary for Mikhail and Viktor. I have to listen to them because they have been with me since I was no more than a kid. They wanted it. If you had not been what you say you are – I believed you but they were not certain – if you had been an agent of the police or an intelligence agency that targeted me, you would have been followed, to see where I took you, to keep track of me and of you. They are very expert, Viktor and Mikhail, and they did not find a tail on you … but I do not apologize.’

  Carrick said quietly, ‘There would not have been a tail because I am not an agent.’

  He was hugged. Now exhaustion caught him, and he wobbled on his feet. He was led towards the cars. Josef Goldmann and the polisher waited in one, but Mikhail opened the door of the other – for Carrick.

  Carrick thought it the right time for him to stand tall, and said, ‘My man was not shot, sir. You were.’

  In the car, in the front passenger seat, with Mikhail driving, they went across the wide, high bridge that spanned the Vistula river, going east. Mikhail leaned across him and tapped the glove compartment in front of Carrick. He dropped the flap and saw what had been placed there for him. He lifted out a Makharov pistol and with it two magazines of ammunition. Further back he found a pancake holster.

  They went fast, and new confusions burdened him.

  Chapter 15

  15 April 2008

  ‘A teacher said I was old before my time, had the body of a child and the mind of a man – do you understand that, Johnny?’

  He wasn’t expected to reply, and did not. Carrick sat beside Mikhail in the front, and Reuven Weissberg’s voice was soft behind him, but clear.

  ‘My father was dead and my mother had gone to do strip-tease in the East at the oil-exploration sites, so I do not think it was remarkable that my mind was old, and I lived with my grandmother. There was no place in my life to be a child, to have such a luxury. My grandmother had fought and she taught me what was necessary. You fight to survive. It was what she told me. She knew … And I was a Jew. I doubt you could understand what it was, is, to be a Jew in yesterday’s or today’s Russia.’

  Carrick stared ahead into the night, and the headlights showed the road in front of him. Villages, little towns, fields and forests slipped by and were gone.

  ‘We had nothing. No saved money, no possessions of value. My grandmother was a cleaner in a ministry building in Perm. She was a Jew and they would not give her regular work, and she had the worst jobs – lavatories and waiting areas for the public where filth came in off the street – and at the end of each month she did not know whether she would work for the next four weeks or not work. I looked at her and saw what it was to be a Jew. She said to me, and it was repeated every morning and every evening, that I must fight to live. It was like I was in the Kama river that flows in Perm and was sinking and the water was in my nostrils and I must struggle and kick and thrash if I am not to sink. That is what it was to be a Jew in Perm. I fought and I survived, and I was a Jew. I could only do business. Business was survival.’

  He thought of them as people who meet in a hotel bar, who talk for an evening then separate and go to their rooms and will be gone their different ways by the early morning and will not meet again – but they talk. He remembered himself as a kid, at school and bored, probably messing about, and a teacher had read a poem that had caught his mind. Afterwards he had found the anthology and learned it. The American writer Henry Longfellow:

  Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing;

  Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;

  So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,

  Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.

  Little from classroom days had stayed with him, but those few lines had.

  ‘I did business at school. I am twelve or thirteen years old, I am condemned as a “disruptive influence” and as a “malcontent”, and several times I am beaten by teachers, but more often I am sent home. Each time I was sent home my grandmother returned me to school. She lectured me on how to survive, and I did, and I played at business. To survive is to fight. To fight you must look into the eyes of an opponent and show him you have no comprehension of defeat, no fear of pain, supreme determination. The enemy may be bigger, more muscles, have more friends, but you must find and exploit his weakness – she told me. I did. If a teacher punished me, I went to his house. In the night I broke the teacher’s windows and built a fire at his door, and I would hear his wife scream and his children cry, and in the morning he would smile at me and be polite. If the leader of a gang of kids objected that I tried to take money from those he protected, I fought him. Boots, fists, teeth, nails, I used them. Always I won. When I won – I standing and the other not – his allies, his kids came to me. I grew. I did roofs in the school, and was paid. Children brought me money – stole it from their parents – and for the money they had my protection. I made money and the only other Jew I knew of was Josef Goldmann, and he cared for my money.’

  In the darkness, with the motion of the car lulling him, Carrick thought himself exposed to a great truth. He lived a lie, and he believed Reuven Weissberg lived a lie – but a greater one.

  ‘If you are in business, Johnny, you must always expand, grow bigger. You cannot stand still. I had an empire in Perm, in the district where my grandmother lived, and it was a battlefield while I built my roofs, and took traders from under other roofs. She would treat me when I had fought and was hurt, would bandage me, clean the cuts, and could stitch slashes because she had those skills. I never had to come back to her and tell her of failure. She would have despised me if I had not fought and won. Then I was conscripted. There, I was thrashed, beaten, and I was far from my grandmother, but I never cried out. I did good business in the army, buying and selling, and each week I posted the money back to Josef Goldmann, who was excused the military because his feet had fallen arches. There
were great warehouse stores of equipment for selling, and narcotics for buying and trading. That was business, and it prospered. I did well. Even senior officers came to me because I could get for them anything they wanted. I had control of a market. I came back to Perm. You find it interesting, Johnny, my story?’

  The lie they shared was about loneliness, isolation and an absence of trust. He could have asked where they were going, and what business took them at hammering pace on the road to the East, but Carrick did not. For himself, he understood what it was to feel the pang of loneliness, the pain of being isolated and the desolation of living without the possibility of having a friend in whom trust was placed.

  ‘From the army, coming home, I had to re-establish authority in Perm. It was a fight, but I succeeded. Everything I did to regain my business position I talked of first with my grandmother. I had the control of the open market in Perm, which was remarkable for a Jew, and Mikhail and Viktor had joined me. Then the city of Perm had no more for me. One day I was there, and one day I was gone, and my grandmother came with me, and Josef Goldmann, Mikhail and Viktor. It was the same in Moscow. There were powerful business groups in the capital city. I did what I had done before, fought. Then, the rivals in business came and offered accommodation, compromise, because they had no stomach for war. I told you, Johnny, in business you cannot stand still, lean against a wall and let the world pass. You must run – run faster, run a greater distance. Moscow to Berlin. Roofs and deals, more roofs and more deals. Running and never stopping. Do you understand what I say to you, Johnny?’

  What he understood was his growing fondness for the man sitting in the car behind him, talking in the quiet voice – showing his own loneliness and isolation, and starting to give that precious thing, trust. And, in his blurred mind, he valued the man’s confidences.

  The city prided itself on the title ‘Gateway to the World’. It boasted the most advanced container port ever built. Hamburg, in northern Germany, was sited on the Elbe river, sixty-five land miles from the estuary spilling into the North Sea. From its docks flotillas of cargo vessels sail on journeys to all points of the globe.

  The Crow had flown from Belgrade to Munich, then taken a taxi to the railway station there, paid cash for a ticket to Cologne and taken the night train to Hamburg. Dawn was breaking. A low mist slowed the morning light, and the rain spotted his shoulders, but he walked well, not furtively. Instructions and directions had been given to him, and a schedule, and he followed them exactly. They took him away from the Hauptbahnhof, and across an empty square where the first flower-sellers and traders in fresh fruit and vegetables were setting up their stalls and erecting canopies to catch the rain. He went on to Steinstrasse, then took the left turning as instructed.

  There was little traffic that early and he was able to hear the call to prayer, the first of the day. He saw the minaret of the mosque, topping chimneys and the roofs of office blocks. The tower was a beacon for him. He thought for a moment of those who had been in that mosque, had worshipped there, and flown the aircraft into the Twin Towers and into the Pentagon building, of their commitment to their faith and their cause. He was humbled by them, but dismissed it. The world had moved on, and a new war had developed. Many had died and many more had been taken to gaols and torture rooms. He followed a route given him. His focus was on the memorized instructions and directions. He came to a door.

  The Crow pressed the third from the top of seven buttons.

  He heard a guttural cough, then the request that a stranger identify himself.

  The Crow gave the word he had been told to use, in Arabic, spoke it to the microphone hidden by the grille.

  He heard the lock click open.

  The Crow climbed three flights of stairs.

  He stood on a landing and waited until a door was opened and he was admitted.

  The Crow was asked, hesitantly, by an older man, if he had had a good journey.

  He said it had been satisfactory and ducked his head in appreciation at the courtesy of the question.

  The Crow was told of the arrangements in place, confirmed by this hawaldar, for the transfer of a bond valued at one million American dollars to a bank in Leipzig, and the coded number that would release it for transfer to accounts in Greek Cyprus specified by Oleg Yashkin and Igor Molenkov, both Russian citizens. Then it was confirmed to him that a further sum of ten million American dollars was now available for payment to the Russian citizen Reuven Weissberg, and it was understood that such payment would be overseen by another Russian citizen, Josef Goldmann.

  He confirmed, of course, that payment for purchase and sale depended on safe delivery and verification of the capabilities of the item under negotiation.

  The Crow added that such necessary verification would be carried out by a qualified expert.

  They shook hands, then hugged, kissed briefly, and he was on his way out into the morning mist that rose from the Binnenalster lake, the Oberhafen canal and the Elbe waterway.

  *

  He was exhausted, had not slept. With a swaying, shambling step, Sak walked from the Hauptbahnhof. The British passport in the inside pocket, against his chest – it had been shown on the Brussels-to-Cologne leg of the journey – was in the name of Steven Arthur King. The previous evening, he had left the St Pancras terminus on a Eurostar connection to Brussels and had used a Pakistan-issued passport giving his identity as Siddique Ahmed Khatab. He saw stalls of bright flowers, fine fruit and the best vegetables, and the rain dripped from the striped awnings protecting them.

  He could have caught a direct flight from Birmingham International to Hamburg-Ohlsdorf, but that had been forbidden by those who had planned his journey. Sak had taken the last train of the evening from London, then sat alone and fearful in the Brussels station to wait for the night connection to Hamburg. The great station had been darkened while the hours had eased past. Under the one pool of lights was a cluster of seats and he and other nightbird travellers had waited there. He didn’t understand fully why he had not been permitted to fly. The lit area seemed to him an oasis of safety. He had joined a few students and a few grandparents and had sat up through the rest of the night in a carriage with dimmed lights and hard seats.

  In the dawn, with rain running ribbons down the window, the night train had brought him to Hamburg.

  The worst part of the whole journey, he would have said if asked, was the walk from the train door along the platform, up the long flight of steps, and the length of the bridge over the tracks towards the dull light of morning, the stalls and the taxi rank. What caused the fear was the halting memory of boasts made. The boasts had been of his importance in the structure of the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in the Thames Valley, and had tripped easily off his tongue in the garden of a villa on the outskirts of Quetta. He had been listened to with respect in that garden, and the enormity of the betrayal he had suffered had seemed irresistible in the telling. Walking the last few strides towards the light and the traffic roar, seeing the spread of the square in front of him, Sak realized his liberty was now in the hands of others: those he had met in Quetta, those who had spoken his name in communications, those who had put forward his name, those who had staked out the pavement between the school and his home, the young woman – not robed but in hipster jeans, a T-shirt and a Puffa anorak, with lipstick on her mouth and highlights in her hair – who had given him the tickets, had accosted him by the machine that measured blood pressure, and those he had not yet met. So many knew his name and had decided on his journey.

  The fear made him shiver until he was out of the railway station and into the heart of the square, but he was not felled from behind and there was no gun barrel against his neck and no handcuffs on his wrists. He began, then, to control the trembling.

  As he had been told to, Sak took a bus to the west of the city, up the Elbe estuary, and in his mind was the address of the car-rental company he must get to. With the shivering not eradicated but lessened, self-esteem returni
ng slowly, the old arrogance and bitterness coming back to roost within him, he could not imagine how an operation of such sophistication, of such extraordinarily detailed planning, could be obstructed or by whom.

  Mikhail came off the highway, did the half-circle on the roundabout, then braked abruptly. A lorry slewed away from behind them, and there was a fanfare of a horn’s protest. Mikhail, as if it were his privilege on a roundabout to change his mind, swung the wheel and went round again.

  Carrick play-acted the game, used the passenger side mirror and the central mirror.

  It was the old and familiar one of checking for a tail – as old and familiar as doing shop-window reflections. Nothing crossed Carrick’s face, no sardonic amusement at the manoeuvre. He wore the Makharov in the pancake on his belt. It was loaded now and he had checked the mechanism. The safety was depressed and the weapon could not be fired without that lever being moved … but he carried an illegal firearm and it was loaded with illegal ammunition. He seemed not to care over what line he had strayed.

  That line was well whitened or double-yellowed. It would not have been tolerated for a police undercover, for any SCD10 man or woman, to step so far out of legality. He had not carried a firearm since his army days, and the anniversary was coming up soon – next month – the fifth, since the improvised explosive device, the bastard IED, had been detonated alongside his wheels. But Johnny Carrick was crossing many lines, all the colours of the rainbow: he liked the man.

  ‘Maybe he will buy you, Johnny.’ It was said with a hint of humour, but that was bogus.

  ‘I didn’t know I’d been put up for sale, Mr Goldmann.’

  Now sadness in the voice, as if something precious had been lost. ‘He can buy what he wants, Johnny, anything.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Goldmann.’

  ‘You know what is worst about being with him, Johnny?’

  ‘I don’t I’m afraid, Mr Goldmann.’