White Hot Silence

by Henry Porter

  ‘Can you say from where in the city these communications originated?’

  ‘No, though it’s probable that the person was moving about and using a phone, or a tablet connected to the mobile phone network. That’s all we know.’

  ‘And on all four accounts?’

  ‘Limited activity on three, a lot on the fourth.’

  She read out the account number and said she would confirm by email. Samson hung up.

  Harland’s call went on for five more minutes. When he finished, Samson told him, ‘He’s definitely in Tallinn.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Harland. ‘My contact suggests a visit to the MS bar between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. any evening – that’s the Friends of the Forest bunch, Metsa Sõbrad. Crane is there every evening after dinner at one of the city’s restaurants. He’s known by his real name, Chumak. They didn’t know he was here, but got wind of something happening because of the number of unpleasant characters turning up in their capital city.’

  ‘Is Nyman on to this?’

  ‘KaPo are aware of his interest but, if I’m reading the situation correctly, they don’t know what he’s doing here and they’re pretty sure he doesn’t either. He’s way behind what you and young Naji have got. By the way, they are grateful for the dossier.’

  ‘So what’s the deal at the bar?’

  ‘Crane holds court there, receiving foreign visitors. Now they have the dossier, KaPo conclude that all these people are coming to finalise things. The anti-money-laundering regulations are pretty tight across Europe and they’ll have to have done their stuff on IDs, home addresses, company directors, etcetera. So maybe Crane needs to see them in person and check the paperwork before he makes the transfers.’

  Samson told him about the intense activity on one of the four bank accounts.

  ‘If you want to make yourself popular with KaPo,’ said Harland, ‘you’ll give them all the details.’

  Samson thought about this. ‘Maybe later. The important thing is that it seems like Crane has gone a long way in adapting and changing everything in the Misak dossier, and we know what that means for Anastasia.’

  The MS bar in Tallinn occupied a building on the inside of the old town wall, fifty metres away from one of the defensive towers that ringed the city. The bar did not announce itself, apart from a small illuminated cocktail menu by the door and a metal relief that showed figures emerging from a forest under which were the letters MS in an art nouveau script. Samson walked past the place at nine. The street was deserted and the bar appeared empty. He returned to the pick-up to watch. By 10.15, about thirty men had entered the bar, then a large rowdy group came along the street. He slid from the pick-up, walked across the damp cobbles and joined the back of the group. They were a mix of Estonian- and Russian-speakers, mostly in their thirties and very drunk. Samson latched on to one man, who was staggering, and took his right arm around his neck. By the time they had reached the desk where two bouncers were checking names, they were already firm friends. The drunk did the talking while Samson good-naturedly kept him upright. They were waved into a long, dark room with a bar on the far side staffed by three women with identical bobbed ice-blonde hair and waistcoats. A drinking game was in progress. The noise was deafening.

  He wasn’t going to risk being drawn into the game. He’d already attracted one or two glances, so he acted as affably drunk as his companion, steered him to the far end of the bar and gestured for a couple of beers. He deposited the drunk at a table and went to join a group who were not taking part in the game. If Samson had a talent, it was to reduce the weight of his presence in any given situation, whether in a bombed-out market place in Syria or a people-smugglers’ dive in Greece. He moved little. His expression became neutral, with no hint of attention or threat. He was just there, a face in the crowd: a nobody.

  He nursed his beer and watched. He had never seen Crane in the flesh but had a good idea of what he looked like from the few photos of him on social media, mostly at charity fundraisers. The man was always at the edge of the group and in the process of turning or moving out of the frame. He could merge into the background as well as Samson could. However, there was one clear photograph of him, which showed a man of average height in his mid-forties with sporty good looks and receding light brown hair, brushed forward. The corners of his eyes slanted down, and the eyes themselves were unequal in strength, the left eye overwhelming the right. Macy Harp’s assistant, Tina, had blocked one half of the photo with a piece of paper to show that Crane’s real personality could be seen in his left eye. The right side of his face, particularly the eye, projected trustworthiness and warmth, and there was a slight lift to his mouth that suggested humour. Cover all this and a distant and ruthless killer emerged. ‘One fellow you’d play golf with,’ said Macy, ‘the other would chuck you from the top floor.’

  The drinking game disintegrated and some of the men peeled off and began to show interest in Samson, trying to draw him into their conversations. A blond man wearing a tight suit and a thin tie approached him; he had a small MS tattoo on the back of his hand. Samson explained he spoke only German and English, badly. In good German, the man asked where Samson was from and which group he represented. He replied Chemnitz and that he was a member of a group founded in support of anti-migrant riots in the city a year before. The man studied him with a sly grin and said, ‘Aber du magst einen Araber oder einen Juden’ – but you look like an Arab or a Jew. Samson coolly told the man he should be careful whom he insulted. But the man wasn’t put off and dragged a friend over to discuss Samson’s race. This one breathed beer over him, smirked and said he resembled a fucking Roma pickpocket.

  Samson briefly considered breaking his nose with a palm strike and kneeing the other one in the groin. But at that moment he saw a disturbance in the centre of the room. It was if an invisible wave had parted the crowd. His two tormentors tried to see what was going on, and Samson grinned at them, exclaiming, ‘Ah, hier ist Herr Chumak!’ He pushed past them and started making for the space around Crane, but something stopped him. No one was approaching Crane: it was as though he had some kind of force field around him. Crane removed his tinted spectacles and Samson saw the face he’d got to know so well in the photographs, yet in an instant he grasped that the side of his face that had suggested qualities of reliability and candour to the trusting society of the West Coast had vanished and Crane’s entire face now expressed all that once lurked only in the shadows on his left. This was unambiguously the man who could order the murder and torture of anyone that stood in his way, who would, without a second thought, organise insurrection that focused hatred on millions of migrants, Arabs and Jews and who was responsible for the kidnap of Anastasia.

  The two thugs were prodding him aggressively from behind so there was nothing else for him to do but approach Crane. He grabbed his hand and, speaking in German, told him that he was indeed the saviour of Europe. Crane looked a little puzzled but smiled then turned away, to the others who were coming up to him. Samson wheeled to face the two men who were still pressing up against him and said through gritted teeth, ‘Fick nich micht, Jungs,’ which he hoped meant something like ‘Don’t screw with me, lads!’ then darted into the crowd to his right and began moving towards the heavy wooden door without turning his back on the room. The two men were still showing interest and he saw the fine brush of blond hair bobbing up to search for him in the throng that now surrounded Crane. He reached the door, which opened as more people came in, and glanced back to see his two pursuers moving towards him. He passed through the door, raised a friendly hand to the bouncers and left. Outside, he sprinted to the pick-up, got in and ducked down just before the two men exited the club and began scanning the street. They peered through the windows of a few cars on the other side of the street but seemed to lose heart. Then one spotted a man moving from the shadows of a buttress and walking away. They called out and began to chase him. He seemed unconcerned and didn’t quicken his pace. Samson straightened to see what was hap
pening. The two men reached their quarry, spun him round to confront him, but were stopped in their tracks as he held something up and thrust it beneath the chin of the suited blond man. A gun. Samson was baffled. Who else was watching the bar? He felt for the Zeiss binoculars in his backpack and trained them on the group. The man they had waylaid gestured for them to turn round and, as they did so, he struck them both with devastating accuracy on the back of the head. The blond man fell where he was standing; the shorter of the two stumbled, got up and sprawled over the cobblestones. His assailant moved to straddle him, the gun pointing at his head. He stood there for a few seconds to impress upon his victim that any resistance would result in more pain, possibly death, then calmly tucked the gun into his waistband and, without haste, continued on his way through the silent street.

  It was some minutes before the pair began to recover and haul themselves to their feet. The savage blow each had received had plainly drawn blood because both held their hands to the back of their heads. Samson watched to see if they would return to the bar and was relieved when they went in the opposite direction. The last thing he needed was anything that would spook Crane, but who the hell was meting out this violence? It certainly wasn’t MI6’s style, and it seemed unlikely that it would be an officer employed by KaPo.

  He was there for another hour and a half, during which time two more distinct groups of men arrived; he assumed they were delegations of some kind. The more he watched, the more he understood that Crane had probably completed his work and was finalising arrangements, perhaps raising a glass with groups that had come from all over the continent. As the bar began to empty, Samson slid over to the passenger seat to be completely in the shadows. At length, a white Porsche SUV pulled up and Crane exited the club. He lifted his binoculars and made a note of the number plate, black letters on a white background – 718 ALC.

  The car moved off and passed Samson. He got behind the wheel again and, after a few seconds, started the engine, moved from the parking space and turned round to follow the Porsche. From his use of the tram system that morning, he knew the Porsche would have to head north and leave via a gateway in the city wall to join the peripheral road. He moved unhurriedly to the gateway and saw the Porsche waiting at the lights on the slip road below him. He stayed there until the Porsche moved off, then followed, speeding through the junction on a red light. But the Porsche was moving too fast on the deserted road and he couldn’t keep up without being spotted. He lost it in the suburbs to the north of the old city. He circled the area for a while but saw nothing. He narrowed his search to a few streets of large Nordic-looking residences. Drifting past a building that stood out because of its clapboard and shutters, he saw two men struggling with the electronic door of an underground garage. Beyond them, in the garage, was a white Porsche. One part of his plan might just be in place.

  CHAPTER 26

  Anastasia woke up to feel the old woman prodding her with her stick. She was stiff and cold and it was hard to open her eyes. When she did open them she thought there must be something wrong with her vision because the room was swimming with slow-moving coloured lights. She blinked and blinked again then spotted Igor at the far end of the room setting down a lantern and realised the lights came from about twenty other lanterns, all rather crudely made and with the same delicate propeller mechanism driven by a candle’s heat. Realising that the lanterns must be his and were perhaps even made by him, she smiled and clapped. He was delighted and so was Olga, who proffered an old metal flask and jerked her chin up to tell Anastasia to drink. She took two mouthfuls of a thick dark liqueur, possibly made from plums or apricots. It was delicious and warmed her and made her head spin. She lay back on the pile of rugs and old curtains to watch the lights, which reminded her of a childhood experience at an aquarium. Igor came over to take a stool by Olga’s feet and she stroked his hair. She wished she could talk to them and find out why they were out in the middle of the forest living such a strange life on their own. Igor looked so happy at that moment and she wondered what would become of him when Olga was gone.

  The candles began to burn down and the lights stopped moving. Olga found a musty-smelling quilt, which Anastasia spread on the floor then wrapped around her to protect against draughts. The old woman disappeared to another room with Igor following. The last candle flickered and died and she was left in darkness, listening to the wind tearing through the pines at the back of the house. She slept.

  She became aware of someone shouting. The stream of angry Russian continued and then there was a gunshot. She sat bolt upright, untangled her legs from the quilt and felt for the gun. It had gone. The pockets of her jacket had been emptied and nothing but a few smaller shells were left. She stuffed them back in, put the jacket on and crab-walked towards the two windows at the front of the house. It was getting light but the sun had not yet risen. She edged to the side of the window and peeped out. Her heart was thumping. The shouting was coming from the old lady, although Anastasia couldn’t see her. She slipped to the second window and saw two men standing in front of a car. They were laughing, but she noted they also had their hands in the air. One she recognised from the compound. She went to the other side of the window and saw Olga, in a red patterned shawl and green baseball cap, standing squarely on the wooden terrace with the gun pointed at the men. Igor was nowhere to be seen. Her diatribe did not cease, which the men thought was a huge joke. The one Anastasia recognised looked as if he were about to corpse. The old lady took the short flight of steps down from the terrace to an area of wild dead grass and began to walk towards the men. She looked crazy but her step did not falter and the gun in her hand remained quite steady. She went a few paces then spread her feet, threw back her head and let out a cry that pierced the forest’s quiet like nothing Anastasia had heard before. It was the scream of a banshee and, if she’d heard it out in the woods, she would have been terrified. It seemed to go on, circling the trees for seconds, and some of the fairy-tale dread that Anastasia momentarily felt seemed to affect the two men. But the smirk soon returned to their faces and they continued mocking the old lady.

  With a throaty growl she now ordered them to do something – probably to get back into their car and return to wherever they’d come from. One shook his head and replied defiantly, at which Olga fired two shots, hitting both headlights without even bringing the gun up to aim. This accuracy was remarkable, but Anastasia was more surprised that Olga didn’t have to reload. Only then did it occur to her that the protrusion under the gun might be a magazine.

  The young woman in the photograph was back in action and handling the weapon with relish. The men, even though they were probably armed, now understood that she would be able to shoot them before they could use their weapons and began to back away to their car. Olga let off another shot that made the driver’s wing mirror explode. They scrambled into the car, started it and, not being able to turn on the track, which was almost completely overgrown, began to reverse erratically. Olga’s fun was not over yet. She fired three more times and brought the gun up for a final shot to shatter the windscreen.

  When she returned, looking wild and flushed, there was no question in Anastasia’s mind that the men had been there because of her. She realised she had to go, but she must first find out where the nearest civilisation was, a place where someone owned a phone. It was impossible to describe by gesture and she ended up drawing a picture of a row of houses and a man holding up a phone. It wasn’t much better than the drawings done by the refugee children in the camp at Lesbos. Olga, who had by now lost the exhilaration of battle, looked bored and shouted for Igor, who appeared from the kitchen and came over to tug at Anastasia’s jacket. She was being told to go. She made to take the gun but Olga raised it and said firmly, ‘Nyet!’ There wasn’t anything Anastasia could do and, besides, Olga made a good point by gesturing in the direction of the track that the men might return and she’d need protection. Anastasia took the rest of the shells from her jacket and held them out but then
withdrew her hand and made an eating motion – she would exchange bullets for food to take with her. The old lady nodded and said something to Igor, who returned to the kitchen, and very soon she was given a plastic bag containing bread, water in an old water bottle and a pot holding some of the previous evening’s soup, and ushered from the door.

  She made one last attempt to find the way to a village by showing her drawing to Igor, but he just smiled and shook his head uncomprehendingly. He led her a little way into the woods, to the path they’d used the day before, then took his leave regretfully. Her only choice now was to return to the road.

  In the seaside cottage, before his hosts were up, Samson made Naji coffee and found some bread in Harland’s freezer that he warmed in the oven. Naji then took up a position by the window; he said the wifi was best there. He looked up when Samson handed him the toast and jam. ‘It’s beautiful here.’

  ‘Very,’ said Samson, looking out on the pristine morning and the glassy sea. ‘I’d like to own one of those little boats down there – the blue one.’ Naji nodded. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Looking at groups he gives money. Is possible to divert money, maybe?’

  ‘Not even you can hack a bank, Naji.’

  Naji grinned. ‘Possible other way. I work on this today.’

  ‘You okay?’

  Naji nodded, now fully absorbed in what he was doing. A few minutes later he looked up. ‘Mr Hisami has a lot of emails overnight. If I open, he will know he is being watched. But this one he has read.’ He brought the laptop over to Samson and set it down. It was from another numeric email address. There was no message, just a black-and-white photograph of a woman in a dark shirt speaking into a microphone on the desk in front of her. In the foreground some men were seated, their heads turned to the woman, their backs to the camera. A digital clock on the wall above the woman’s head showed the time as 02.24. Along the bottom of what was evidently a video still, the time was shown as 2.28.53 and the date as 03.23.95. It was impossible to identify the woman or the men, but Samson knew that Hisami would understand what the scene meant, and he was almost certain that the woman in the photograph was Denis’s dead sister, Aysel. There was something so familiar about the way she wore her hair – she never lost the parting on the left side.