The Hidden Man
The Hidden Man
Charles Cumming
Perfect for fans of John le Carré, a gripping and suspenseful spy thriller from ‘the master of the modern spy thriller’ (Mail on Sunday)Mark and Benjamin Keen have not seen their father, Christopher, for more than twenty years.Hoping for a reconciliation, Christopher reappears, but he has only just begun to shed light on his life in the secret service when he is murdered in cold blood by an unidentified assassin.Was his death connected to his MI6 past? Did Christopher uncover a dangerous conspiracy involving his elder son? And what were his links to Moscow, Afghanistan and the Russian mafia in London?To discover the truth – and avenge their father’s death – the brothers are drawn into the legacy of his life as a spy.And inheritance can be deadly…
CHARLES CUMMING
The Hidden Man
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by Michael Joseph, Penguin Books, in 2003
Copyright © Charles Cumming 2003
Charles Cumming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007487226
Ebook Edition © 2013 ISBN: 9780007487233
Version: 2018-02-16
Contents
Title Page (#ueef07445-12c3-5aef-b073-92ba962320d8)
Copyright (#uffe3f22d-63ad-515d-9894-7dc117cd05fa)
Dedication (#ue9856297-36ab-56ad-bfaf-6cd711b5f223)
Winter (#u634a23d3-1f67-5f55-b075-8b887bd999ed)
Chapter 1 (#u644d169d-90bb-5eba-ade2-e37358c6c744)
Autumn (#uf8f32287-67fe-5118-b66b-97034e9f7779)
Chapter 2 (#u9f04921d-7bca-5033-82cd-38736260b6b5)
Chapter 3 (#u115d94c2-f294-5965-8193-427b8943d91f)
Chapter 4 (#u522b77ef-67ad-5035-a192-958be615eaef)
Chapter 5 (#uc8a3c832-4984-54b6-b85b-d1916c461c10)
Chapter 6 (#uae5f2044-9269-5fba-bbf5-f1931f479931)
Chapter 7 (#u2273cf57-fec3-551d-bf33-926899f26eff)
Chapter 8 (#uc7a4dc18-1635-5c18-b5cf-31f5ad274caf)
Chapter 9 (#ud7f4b1a9-e71f-5e4e-8d40-9b0614862bbf)
Chapter 10 (#ua2b490f1-3add-5032-849c-eaae7346b2d4)
Chapter 11 (#u665a9486-8a98-598c-b31e-f362a96fc7b0)
Chapter 12 (#u5975c07d-cea0-5c6e-b8e1-0af151e1e0dd)
Chapter 13 (#u9f965afe-57e5-57f9-bc1b-5f87143d5668)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Spring (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Charles Cumming (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
for my father
WINTER
1
The Russian is sitting alone on the driver’s side of a rented Mercedes Benz. The key in the ignition has been turned a single click, just enough to power the radio, and it is snowing outside, wet flakes of soft ice falling like ash in the darkness. A song comes on, an old Sinatra tune the man has not heard in many years: Frank singing live to a room full of screaming Americans, hanging off his every note. Sometimes it feels as if his whole life has been lived inside parked cars listening to the radio: sudden movements on side streets; a light snuffing out in a bedroom four floors up; moments of snatched sleep. Cars that smelled of imported cigarettes and the sweat of tired, unwashed men.
A young couple turn the corner into the street ahead of him, walking arm in arm with a jaunty, light-hearted step. Drunk, most probably, coming towards the car and laughing up at the falling snow. They are delighted by it, letting the flakes melt in the palms of upturned hands, embracing one another as it settles in their hair and on their clothes. Like so many London girls, he thinks the woman is worryingly thin: legs like saplings in high-heeled shoes. He fears that she may topple over on the wet pavement and, if she hurts herself, he will have to get out of the car to help her. Then there will be two witnesses who have seen his face.
The song ends and fades into an advertisement narrated in slang and dialect, words he cannot make out. English is no longer clear to him; somehow, in recent years, the language has changed, it has moved away. The couple skip past the Mercedes and he watches them disappear down the street using the mirror on the passenger side. An old technique. No need even to turn his head.
Now he reaches down to switch off the radio and everything is once again silent. Just a very faint impression of traffic in the distance, the city’s constant hum. Then, as an extension of the same movement, the Russian turns the catch on the glove box with his left hand, holds it as the casing falls open, and takes out the gun.
This no longer feels like an act of vengeance. It has been too long for that. It is simply a deep need within himself to attain some level of peace, to sew up the wound of his grief. In this sense his need to go through with it is almost like a lust: he has no control over himself, no way now of turning back.
From the back seat of the car he takes a woollen hat and a pair of leather gloves, items purchased at a shop in Hammersmith three days earlier. They are flimsy, but warm enough to cope with the timid British winter. Then he checks the street one last time and steps out of the car.
The flat is on the fourth floor of a large apartment building at the north-eastern end of the street. His legs are stiff and tired as he crosses the road, sore in the knees from waiting so long and tight along the sciatic nerve of his left thigh. Snow falls on to the shoulders of his coat; it flutters into his cheeks like puffs of dandelion. As he is climbing the steps of the building, a woman comes out and, for the first time, the Russian feels a sense of concern. Instinctively, he looks to the ground, taking a bunch of keys from his pocket with the ease and routine of a resident. The woman, mid-forties and slight, is hurried by the snow, muttering under her breath as she springs the catch on an umbrella. The noise of this is like birds breaking for the sky. The two do not look at one another directly, though he knows from experience that this may not be enough to absolve him, that the stranger may have seen his shoes, his trousers, perhaps even caught a glimpse of his face when it first appeared at the door. For an instant he thinks about turning back, but the possibility evaporates in the heat of his obligation. The force of revenge, the lust, carries him through the street door and into the lobby, where a clock on the wall tells him that it is twenty past one.
He has been here before, twice, to premeditate the act, to scout the building for exits, and to get a sense of its layout and design. So he knows that there is a white plastic timer switch inside the front door that will illuminate the stairwell for approximately two minutes, and an old, wrought-iron caged lift on the right-hand side of the lobby, with a staircase leading down to a locked basement and up to seven floors of apartments.
All of his experience has told him to take the stairs, to leave an option should anything go wrong. But he is older now, the fitness ripped from his legs, and has decided to ride the lift to the fifth floor and to walk down a single flight to the fourth as a way of preserving his strength.
The lift is waiting. He slides back the gate and steps inside, pushing a red ceramic button marked 5. The cabin ticks as it passes each floor, slices of red carpet and banister visible through the metal grilles of the lift shaft. The ageing wheels of the elevator mechanism twist through grease and oil, pulling him up through the building. At the third floor the lights go out on the stairs, sooner than he had anticipated, but a single pearl bulb inside the cabin provides him with enough light to reach into his coat, pull out the gun and place it in the right-hand pocket of his overcoat.
Now he squints outside, passing level 4, eyes moving quickly left and right to detect any sign of movement. Nothing. The lift continues to climb, halting ten seconds later on the fifth floor with nothing more than a slight jolting bump, like a sprung dancefloor. He notices a fresh piece of chewing gum wedged between the roof and the left panel of the cabin. He would like some gum now, something to take the dryness from the inside of his mouth.
Why does he feel nothing? Why, when he is just minutes away from an act that he has envisaged with total clarity and rapture for nearly twenty years, why then has his mind given way to everything but a very basic sense of process and technique? He is trying to convince himself that a moment of catharsis is imminent, but as he pulls back the cabin’s metal grille, pushes open the heavy door of the lift with his left hand, reaches into the pocket of his overcoat to release the safety catch on the gun, he is little more than a machine. It is like every other criminal act in his long, corrupted life. Tonight has no special resonance, not yet any sense of joy.
In one of the flats at the end of the corridor, the Russian can hear voices on a television, teenagers shouting at one another, then a screech of tyres. A late-night American film. The volume must have been turned up high, because he is able to pick out the noises and his hearing is not what it was. He holds the door of the lift as it swings slowly back on its hinge and then heads for the stairwell, taking each step slowly, keeping his heart rate down. It is very dark and he has to hold on to the banister with a gloved hand, the leather sticking on bumps of dried polish as it slides down the wood. A car sounds its born on the street just as he reaches the fourth floor.
Simultaneously he feels the first burst of adrenalin, not what it was in his youth, but a quickening nevertheless, lightening his arms and chest He knows that his heart is beating faster now and has to check his pace moving down the corridor, deliberately slowing as he approaches the door of Apartment 462. Twenty feet away the Russian stops and takes out the set of lock-picks. He sees light glint dully on the metal surface of the keys and finds its source – a fire exit sign at the end of the corridor, bold white lettering within an illuminated green case. Then he pinches the main key between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and moves towards the door.
With his head pressed to the pale wood, cold against his ears, the Russian listens. No sound inside. Then, way below, there are voices, at least two people, their footsteps clattering on the marble floor of the lobby. Immediately he moves away from the door and walks back to the edge of the stairwell, waiting for the lift to jolt free of the fifth floor and ride back to ground level. But they are walking: when he peers over the banister he can see two heads that stop at the first floor. He assumes – although he can neither see nor hear – that the couple go to an apartment to the right of the staircase, and waits a full minute for silence to re-engulf the building before returning to the door.
Perhaps the distraction has hurried him, for the Russian listens only briefly now before sliding the key, with extraordinary slowness, into the lock. A perfect fit. He pushes open the door, just enough to fit through, and winces as it scrapes on linoleum. Immediately there is the smell of good, fresh coffee; the flat is thick with it. His eyes adjust to the total absence of light in the tiny hall. He knows from a plan of the apartment that the bedroom is beyond the closed door on the other side of the living room. The kitchen is directly ahead of him and it is empty. A Post-it note has been stuck on the frame of the door, and he can just make out the scrawl:
Call Taploe re: M.
The yellow paper moves very slightly as, in these first few seconds, he stands quite still, listening for any indication that the Englishman may be awake.
It is only now that he hears the music. Was it playing as he came in? He has been holding the gun in his right hand all this time and his grip now tightens around the butt. Classical music, a piano, very slow and melancholy. The kind of music a man might listen to if he were having trouble getting to sleep.
With his heel the Russian pushes the front door until it is resting against the frame. Then, without needing to look back, he feels for the latch with his hand and closes it very slowly. He waits for the lock to engage and moves one step forward towards the door of the living room, the gun now up and level. If he is awake, so be it. Let him see me coming.
But there is no other noise or movement as he walks into the sitting room, just the music fractionally louder now and the bathroom door ahead of him, leaking light into a narrow passage. Everything in the sitting room is visible because of it and, out of habit, he takes it all in: the two paperback books lying on the carpet; the empty tumbler on a small three-legged antique table; a framed photograph of a young man and woman on their wedding day hanging unevenly near by. The room of an untidy, chaotic mind, devoid of a woman’s touch.
Another two steps and he is across the room, moving as lightly as he can, cheap deck shoes noiseless against the worn carpet. Still he feels no sense of exhilaration, no impending release for his grief: only a specialist’s expertise, an absolute focus on the job in hand. Moving silently between the books on the floor, his eyes fix on the space ahead of him: the narrow, well-lit corridor, the bedroom door to his left. On this he trains the gun, stopping now, his mind a spin of instinct and calculation. For years he has imagined killing the Englishman in his bed, watching him cower and writhe in a corner. It has been planned that way. But he is suddenly uncertain of making that last move into the room, of opening the door into a place where his opponent may hold the upper hand.
The decision is made for him. He hears a single heavy footstep, then the sound of a light switch being pressed and the rattle of the bedroom door handle as it drops through forty-five degrees. Instinctively, the Russian takes two steps backwards, hurried now, stripped of control. Light flares briefly into the passage and he blinks rapidly as he looks up, the pale face etched with shock.
The intruder had words to say, a speech prepared, but the first shot punctures the left side of his victim’s chest, spinning him to the ground. Blood and tissue and bone shower against the walls and floor of the corridor, one colour in the pale bathroom light. But he is still conscious, his blue cotton pyjamas blackened and viscous with blood.
In his own language, the Russian says, ‘Do you know who I am?’
And the Englishman, propped up by a pale thick arm, shakes his head as the colour drains from his eyes.
Again, in Russian: ‘Do you know who I am? Do you know why I have come?’
But he sees that he is passing out: his neck is suddenly loose and falling. In the moments before the second shot the Russian tries quickly to summon a sense of fulfilment, a closure to the act. He looks directly into a dying man’s eyes and tries to feel something beyond the basic violence of what he has done.
The effort is hopeless, and as the second bullet rips into his chest, he is already turning, experiencing little more than the basic fear of being discovered. He just wants to be out of this place, to be away from London. And then he will go to the grave in Samarkand and tell Mischa what he has done.
AUTUMN
2
‘Don’t move. Hold it right there.’
The girl stopped immediately, her hand on the nape of her neck.
‘Now look up at me.’
Her eyes met his.
‘Without twisting your head.’
She moved her chin back towards the mattress.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Is that comfortable?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re warm enough?’
‘Yes, Ben, yes.’
He leaned forward, out of sight now. She heard the itch and whisper of the brush as it moved across the canvas. He said, ‘Sorry, Jenny, I interrupted you.’
‘That’s OK.’ She coughed and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘You said you were six when it happened? When your father walked out?’
Ben took a long drag on his cigarette and said, ‘Six, yes.’
‘And your brother?’
‘Mark was eight.’
‘And you haven’t seen your father since?’
‘No.’
Outside on the street, three floors down, a distant child was imitating the sound of a diving aeroplane.
‘Why did he leave?’
When Ben did not answer immediately, Jenny thought that she might have offended him. That could happen sometimes, with sudden intimacy. When a model is lying naked in an artist’s studio with only a thin white sheet for company, conversation tends towards the candid.
‘My father was offered a position in the Foreign Office, in 1976,’ he said finally. The voice betrayed a controlled resentment, the glimpse, perhaps, of a quick temper. ‘The idea of it went to his head. The work meant more to him than his family did. So he took off.’
Jenny managed a compassionate smile, although there was nothing in her own experience to compare with the concept of a parent abandoning his own child. The thought appalled her. Ben continued to paint, his face very still and concentrated.
‘That must have been awful,’ she said, just to fill the silence. The remark sounded like a platitude and she regretted it. ‘I mean, it’s difficult to recover from something like that. You must find it so hard to trust anyone.’
Ben looked up.
‘Well, you have to be careful with that one, don’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Blaming everything on the past, Jenny. We’re the therapy generation. An explanation for every antisocial act in our damaged adolescence. Make a mistake and you can always write it off against a shitty childhood.’
She smiled. She liked the way he said things like that, the smile that suddenly cracked across his face.
‘Is that what you believe?’ she asked.
‘Not exactly.’ He stubbed out the cigarette. He was trying to capture the play of light on her body, the darkening hollows of skin. ‘It’s what my brother thinks.’
‘Mark?’
Ben nodded. ‘He’s a lot more forgiving than I am. Actually works with my father now. Doesn’t see it as a problem at all.’
‘He works with him?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘Freak coincidence.’ Ben blew hard on the canvas to free it of dust. He didn’t feel much like opening up and telling Jenny all about big brother’s dream job; running a top London nightclub and flying business class around the world. She was a student, just twenty-one, and would only want to know if he could get her into Libra for free or source her some cheap CDs. ‘Mark and my dad go on business trips together,’ he said vaguely. ‘Have dinners, that kind of thing.’
‘And you don’t mind?’
Ben rubbed his neck.
‘Nothing to do with me.’
‘Come on.’ She rolled over and drew her knees up tight against her chest. A very faint tremor of cellulite appeared on her upper thigh. ‘Yesterday, you told me you guys were close. Hasn’t it affected your relationship?’
Ben decided to kill the subject.
‘Are you bored, Jenny?’ he asked. ‘How come you’ve moved position?’
She sensed his annoyance, but pressed on, using her body as a decoy. With her legs in the air, cycling for balance as she leaned over the bed, she began looking for a cigarette.
‘I just need a break,’ she said. ‘Come on. Don’t be so mysterious. Tell me.’
He was looking at the naked base of her spine.
‘Tell you what?’
‘About your brother. About the way you feel about him.’
‘The way I feel about him.’ Ben repeated the phrase quietly under his breath.
‘Yes.’ She was sitting up again now, still without a cigarette. ‘Tell me how this thing between Mark and your father has affected you.’
‘This thing?’
He was picking at words, escaping her. She knew that he was being clever and shrugged her shoulders in an exaggerated gesture of mock surrender. ‘Just tell me if you’re still as close as you were before.’
‘Closer,’ he lied, and looked her right in the eye.
‘Good.’
Then he paused, adding, ‘I’m just angry with him.’
She seized on this like a piece of gossip.
‘Angry? About what?’
‘For forgiving our father so quickly. For welcoming him back into his life.’ Ben found that he was sweating and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. ‘Mark gives the appearance of being streetwise and cool, but the truth is he’s a diplomat, the guy who smooths things over. He hates confrontation or ill-feeling of any kind. So Dad comes back after an absence of twenty-five years and his attitude is conciliatory. Anything for a quiet life. For some reason, Mark needs to keep everything on an even keel or he gets unsettled.’
‘Maybe that’s how he’s learned to deal with hardship in the past,’ Jenny suggested confidently, and Ben tried to remember if the girls he had known when he was twenty-one had been half as self-assured and insightful as she was.
‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘And you?’ she asked.
‘I’m just the opposite. I don’t want simple answers to complicated questions. I don’t want to welcome Dad back with open arms and say it didn’t matter that he ruined my mother’s life. Mark thinks this is stubborn, that I’m locked in the past. He thinks I should let bygones be bygones.’
‘Well, you have to deal with it in your own way.’
‘That’s what I keep telling him.’
Out on the road, the child was making the noise of a machine gun, a sound like a flooded engine swooping up and down the street. Ben’s eyes twitched in annoyance and he stood up to close the window. Jenny renewed her search for a cigarette, rummaging around in a handbag amongst old tissues and bottles of scent. When a pair of sunglasses spilled out on to the wooden floor, he said, ‘Have one of mine,’ and threw her a packet from his shirt pocket.
Ben was slightly annoyed, as if she was not seeing his point of view, and went through with an idea. Walking across the studio from the window, he withdrew a scrapbook from the drawer of a cupboard and handed it to her, flicking to the second page before returning to his easel.
‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘Read the cutting.’
A wedding announcement from The Times had been pasted on the open page.
The marriage took place on 10 April between Mr Benjamin Graham Keen, youngest son of the late Mrs Carolyn Buchanan, and Alice Lucy McEwan, only daughter of Mr Michael McEwan of Halstead, Essex, and Mrs Susan Mitchell, of Hampstead, London. Mr Mark Keen was best man.
‘This is about you and your wife,’ Jenny said.
‘Yes, but you notice the omission?’ There was a small note of childish rebellion in Ben’s voice that surprised her. He didn’t seem like the type to hold a grudge.
‘No.’
‘There’s no mention of my father.’
‘You just left him out?’
‘We just left him out.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of what he’s done. Because he’s nobody.’ The words were unconvincing, like something Ben had learned by heart many years before. ‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the day my father walked out on Mum was the day he ceased to exist.’
3
Ian Boyle stood in the vast, air-conditioned barn of Terminal One Arrivals, waiting for the plane. He was cold and tired and wished he was on his way home. Arsenal were playing Champions League at Highbury against a team of third-rate Austrians: there’d be goals and a hatful of chances, one of those easy nights in Europe when you can just sit back and watch the visitors unravel. He’d wanted to have a shower before kick-off, to cook up a curry and sink a couple of pints down the pub. Now it would be a race to get home after the rush-hour M4 trudge, and no time to chat to his daughter or deal with the piles of post.
Two young boys – five and eight, Ian guessed – swarmed past him and ducked into a branch of Sunglass Hut, shrieking with energy and excitement. A woman with a voice not dissimilar to his ex-wife’s made a prerecorded security announcement on the public address system, pointless and unheard in the din of the hall. Ian wondered if there were other spooks near by, angels from fifty services waiting for their man in the stark white light of Heathrow. His own people, working other assignments, would most probably have holed up in Immigration, getting a kick out of the two-way mirrors at Passport Control. But Ian had spent four years working Customs and Excise and was anxious to avoid spending time with old colleagues; a lot of them had grown smug and set in their ways, drunk on the secret power of strip search and eviction. He’d go through only when the plane had touched down, not a moment before, and watch Keen as he came into the hall. It was just that he couldn’t stand the looks they gave him, those fat grins over weak cups of tea, the suggestion of pity in their trained, expressionless eyes. When Ian had left for the Service in 1993, he could tell that a lot of his colleagues were pleased. They thought it was a step down; Ian was just about the only one who felt he was moving up.
Finding a seat opposite a branch of Body Shop, he looked up and checked the flickering arrivals screen for perhaps the ninth or tenth time. The BA flight from Moscow was still delayed by an hour and a half – no extension, thank Christ, but still another twenty-five minutes out of London. Fucking Moscow air-traffic control. Every time they put him on Libra it was the same old story: ice on the runway at Sheremetjevo and the locals too pissed to fix it. He rang Graham outside in the car, told him the bad news, and settled back in his chair with a collapsing sigh. A family of Africans in some kind of traditional dress walked past him weeping, two of them pressing handkerchiefs to their eyes as they pushed trolleys piled six feet high with luggage and bags. Ian couldn’t tell if they were happy or sad. He lit a cigarette and opened the Standard.
4
Christopher Keen had taken the call personally in his private office. It was a routine enquiry, of the sort he handled every day, from a businessman calling himself Bob Randall with ‘a minor difficulty in the former Soviet Union’.
‘I’ve been informed,’ Randall explained, ‘that Russia is your area of expertise.’
Keen did not ask who had recommended him for the job. That was simply the way the business worked: by reputation, by word of mouth. Neither did he enquire about the nature of the problem. That was simply common sense when speaking on an open line. Instead, he said, ‘Yes. I worked in the Eastern Bloc for many years.’
‘Good.’ Randall’s voice was nasal and bureaucratically flat. He suggested a meeting in forty-eight hours at a location on the Shepherd’s Bush Road.
‘It’s a Café Rouge, in the French-style. On the corner of Batoum Gardens.’ Randall spelt out ‘Batoum’ very slowly, saying ‘B for Bertie’ and ‘A for Apple’ in a way that tested Keen’s patience. ‘There are tables there which can’t be seen from the street. We’re not likely to be spotted. Would that be suitable for you, or do you have a specific procedure that you like to follow?’
Keen made a note of the date in his desk diary and smiled: first-time buyers were often like this, jumpy and prone to melodrama, wanting codewords and gadgets and chalk marks on walls.
‘There is no specific procedure,’ he said. ‘I can find the café.’
‘Good. But how will I recognize you?’
As he asked the question, Bob Randall was sitting in Thames House staring at a JPEG of Keen taken in western Afghanistan in 1983, but it was necessary cover.
‘I’m tall,’ Keen said, switching the phone to his other ear. ‘I’ll be wearing a dark blue suit, most probably. My experience is that in circumstances such as these two people who have never met before very quickly come to recognize one another. Call it one of the riddles of the trade.’
‘Of course,’ Randall replied. ‘Of course. And when shall we say? Perhaps six o’clock?’
‘Fine,’ Keen said. He was already hanging up. ‘Six o’clock.’
Two days later, the businessman calling himself Bob Randall arrived at the café on Shepherd’s Bush Road half an hour early and picked out a secluded table, his back facing the busy street. At 17.55, he took a call from Ian Boyle, informing him in a jumble of code and double-speak that the BA flight from Moscow had eventually landed some ninety-five minutes late. The subject had used a public telephone box – not a mobile – after clearing Passport Control, and was now picking up his luggage in the hall. The call had been made to a west London number that was already being traced.
‘Understood,’ he told him. ‘And was there any sign of Duchev?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Well keep on it, please. And brief Paul Quinn. I’m going to be walking the dog for the next two hours. Contact me again at eight.’
And at that moment he saw Christopher Keen coming into the café, indeed wearing a dark blue suit, a striking man possessed of a languid self-confidence. Demonstrably public school, he thought, and felt the old prejudice kick in like a habit. The photograph at Thames House had not done justice to Keen’s well-preserved good looks, nor to his travelled, evidently disdainful manner. The two men made eye contact and Randall gave a thin smile, his moustache lifting slightly to reveal stained yellow teeth.
Keen sensed immediately that there was something unconvincing about his prospective client. The suit was off the peg, and the shirt, bought as white but now greyed by repeated launderings, looked cheap and untailored. This was not a businessman, with ‘minor difficulties in the former Soviet Union’, far less someone who could afford to employ the services of Divisar Corporate Intelligence.
‘Mr Randall,’ he said, with a handshake that deliberately crushed his knuckles. Keen looked quickly at the ground and registered his shoes. Grey – possibly fake – patent leather, tasselled and scuffed. Further evidence. ‘How can I help?’
‘I’m very pleased to meet you.’ Randall was trying to release his hand. ‘Let me start by getting you a drink.’
‘That would be very kind, thank you.’
‘Did you find the café OK?’
‘Easily.’
Keen placed a black Psion Organiser and a mobile telephone on the table in front of him and sat down. Freeing the trapped vents of his suit jacket, he looked out of the window and tried to ascertain if he was being watched. It was an instinct, no more than that, but something was out of place. A crowd of office workers had gathered at a table on the other side of the window and an elderly man with a limp was walking into the café alone. The traffic heading north towards Shepherd’s Bush Green had been slowed by a van double-parked outside a mini-supermarket. Its rear doors were flung open and two young Asian men were unloading boxes from the back.
‘It’s part of a chain, I believe,’ Randall said.
‘What’s that?’
‘The café. Part of a chain.’
‘I know.’
A waitress came and took their order for two beers. Keen wondered if he would have to stay long.
‘So, I very much appreciate your meeting me at such short notice.’ The businessman had a laboured, slightly self-satisfied way of strangling words, an accent located somewhere near Bracknell. ‘Had you far to come?’
‘Not at all. I had a meeting in Chelsea. Caught a fast black.’
Randall’s eyes dropped out of character, as if Keen had made a racist remark. ‘Excuse me?’
‘A fast black,’ he explained. ‘A taxi.’
‘Oh.’ In the uneasy silence that followed, the waitress returned and poured lager into his glass.
‘So, how long have you worked in your particular field?’
‘About seven or eight years.’
‘And in Russia before that?’
‘Among other places, yes.’ Keen thanked the waitress with a patrician smile and picked up his glass. ‘I take it you’ve been there?’
‘Not exactly, no.’
‘And yet you told me on the telephone that you have a problem in the former Soviet Union. Tell me, Mr Randall, what is it that you think I can do for you?’
Leaning back in his seat, Randall nodded and swallowed a mouthful of lager. He blinked repeatedly and a small amount of foam evaporated into his moustache. After a momentary pause he said, ‘Forgive me. It was necessary to employ a little subterfuge to prevent your employers becoming suspicious. My name is not Bob Randall, as perhaps you may have guessed. It is Stephen Taploe. I work across the river from your former Friends.’
Keen folded his arms and muttered, ‘You don’t say,’ as Taploe pushed his tongue into the side of his cheek, his feet moving involuntarily under the table. ‘And you think that I can help you with something …’
‘Well, it’s a good deal more complicated than that,’ he said. ‘To come straight to the point, Mr Keen, this has become something of a family matter.’
5
‘It’s possible, Jenny, that one day you’ll walk into a public art gallery and look at nothing at all. A total absence. Something with no texture, no shape, no solidity. No materials will have been used up in its construction, not even light or sound. Just a room full of nothing. That will be the exhibit, the gimmick, the thing you’re encouraged to look at and talk about over cranberry juice at Soho House. Emptiness. Actually, the opposite of art.’
Jenny was glad that Ben wasn’t talking about his father any more. She preferred it when his mood was less anxious and abrasive. It was another side to him, more relaxed and quick-witted; she wondered if it was even flirtatious. But Ben looked like the faithful type: he was only thirty-two, after all, and there were pictures of his wife all over the studio walls, nudes and portraits of a quality that had persuaded her to sit for him in the first place.
‘Have you lived here long?’ she asked, and began gathering up her clothes. Ben was cleaning his brushes at the sink, wrapping the bristles in a rubber band and covering any exposed paint with small wraps of cling film.
‘Since we got engaged,’ he said. ‘About three years.’
‘It’s such a great house.’ Jenny’s stomach flattened out as she stretched into a thick woollen polo neck, her head disappearing in the struggle to find sleeves.
‘Alice’s father bought it cheap in the late seventies. Thought it would make a good investment.’
The head popped out, like somebody breaking free of a straitjacket.
‘Well he thought right,’ she said, shaking out her hair. ‘And it’s useful for you to be able to work from home.’
‘It is,’ Ben said. ‘It is. It’s a great space. I’m very lucky.’
‘A lot of artists have to rent studios.’
‘I know that.’
She was oblivious to it, but talking about the house always made Ben feel edgy. Three storeys of prime Notting Hill real estate and not a brick of it his. When Carolyn, his mother, had died seven years before, she had left her two sons a few hundred pounds and a small flat in Clapham that they rented out to unreliable tenants. Alice’s father, by contrast, was wealthy: on top of her basic salary as a journalist she had access to a substantial trust, and the house was bought in her name.
‘So what are you cooking for your brother?’
Ben was glad of the change of subject. Turning round, he said: ‘Something Thai, maybe a green curry.’
‘Oh. Bit of a dab hand in the kitchen, are we?’
‘Well, not bad. I find it relaxing after a day in the studio. And Alice can’t boil an egg. So it’s either that or we eat out every night.’
‘What about Mark? What about your brother? Can he cook?’
Ben laughed, as if she had asked a stupid question.
‘Mark doesn’t know one end of a kitchen from the other. Anyway, he’s always out at night, with clients or away at the club. Spends a lot of his time travelling overseas. He doesn’t get much chance to be at home.’
‘Really?’ Jenny was putting on her shoes. ‘What time’s he due back?’
She’s interested, he thought. They always are. They see photos of Mark in the hall and they want a chance to meet him.
‘I’m not sure. He just called on the phone from Heathrow.’
‘Right.’
From her reaction, it was clear that Jenny would not have time to stay. Picking up her bag, she soon made for the stairs and it remained only to pay her. Ben had thirty pounds in his wallet, six five-pound notes, which he pressed into her hand. They were walking towards the front door when he heard the scratch of a key in the lock. The door opened and Alice walked in, talking rapidly into her mobile phone. She did a double-take when she saw Ben standing at the foot of the staircase beside a tall, slightly flushed pretty girl and he raised his eyebrows as a way of saying ‘hello’. Jenny took a step back inside.
‘That’s not the point,’ Alice was saying. Her voice was raised to a pitch just below outright aggression. ‘I told her she’d have a chance to read through the piece. To check it. That was a promise I made.’ Jenny found herself standing awkwardly between them, like an actor waiting to go onstage. ‘So if you go ahead and print it, her whole family, who I’ve known since I was six fucking years old, are going to go …’
Ben smiled uneasily and felt the dread of the phone call’s aftermath, another work crisis the dutiful husband would have to resolve. ‘Thanks, then,’ Jenny whispered to him, moving towards the door. ‘Same time tomorrow?’
‘Same time,’ he said.
‘About midday?’
‘Midday.’
‘Your wife’s lovely,’ she mouthed, standing below him on the threshold. ‘Really pretty.’
Ben merely nodded and watched as Jenny turned towards Ladbroke Grove. Only when she was out of sight did he close the door.
‘But that’s exactly what I’m saying, Andy.’ Alice had kicked off her shoes and was now stretched out on the sofa. A great part of her lived for arguments of this kind, for the adrenalin surge of conflict. ‘If the article appears as it is …’ She pulled the phone away from her ear. ‘Fuck, I got cut off.’
‘What happened?’
Ben came over and sat beside her. Her cheek as he kissed it was cold and smelled of moisturizer and cigarettes.
‘You remember that piece I wrote about my friend from school, the girl who was arrested for drug smuggling?’ Alice was redialling Andy’s number as she spoke. Ben vaguely remembered the story. ‘It was supposed to be a feature but the news desk got hold of it. Now they’ve gone and made the girl out to be some kind of wild child who should have known better, exactly what I promised Jane we wouldn’t do.’ She stared at the read-out on her mobile phone. ‘Great. And now Andy’s switched his phone off.’
‘Her name is Jane?’ The observation was a non sequitur, but Alice didn’t seem to notice.
‘She came to me because she knew the press would be on to her sooner or later. She thought she could trust me to tell her side of the story. I’m the only journalist her family knows.’
‘And now it’s been taken out of your hands?’
He was trying to appear interested, trying to say the right things, but he knew that Alice was most probably lying to him. She would have leaked the story to the news desk in the hope of winning their approval. Alice was ambitious to move from features into news; the more scoops she could push their way, the better would be her chances of promotion.
‘That’s right. Which explains why Andy isn’t returning my calls.’
‘And how did Andy get hold of the story?’
Her answer here would prove interesting. Would she confess to showing the interview to a news reporter, or claim that it was taken from her desk? Each time there was a crisis of this kind, Alice inevitably found someone else to blame.
‘I just mentioned it to a colleague over lunch,’ she said, as if this small detail did not in itself imply a breach of trust. ‘Next thing I know, the news editor is demanding that I hand over the interview so that he can farm it for quotes.’
Ben noticed that she had stopped trying to reach Andy’s mobile phone.
‘So why didn’t you just refuse?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t you just tell him you’d made a deal with the girl?’
‘It doesn’t work like that.’
Of course it doesn’t. ‘Why not?’ he said.
‘Look, if you’re just going to be difficult about this we might as well –’
‘Why am I being difficult? I’m just trying to find out –’
‘Did you pick up my dry cleaning for the party?’
The inevitable change of subject.
‘Did I what?’
‘Did you pick up my dry cleaning for the party?’
‘Alice, I’m not your fucking PA. I’ve been busy in the studio all day. If I have time, I’ll get it tomorrow.’
‘Great.’ And she was on her feet, sighing. ‘Too busy doing what? To walk five hundred metres to the main road?’
‘No. Too busy working.’
‘Working?’
‘Is that where we’re going with this?’ Ben pointed towards the attic. ‘Painting isn’t work? There’s no such thing as a busy day when you’re an artist?’
Alice took off her earrings and put them on a table.
‘Was that her?’ she asked, trying a different tack. ‘The one at the bottom of the stairs?’
‘Jenny? Yes, when you came in. Of course it was.’
‘And is she nice?’
‘Nice?’
‘Do you get on with her?’
A pause.
‘We get on fine, yes. She just lies down and I start painting. It’s not really about “getting on”.’
‘What is it about then?’
‘So you’re now picking a fight with me about a model?’
Alice turned her back on him.
‘It’s just that I thought you were painting older people nowadays. Isn’t that the idea for the new show?’
‘No. Why would you think that? It’s just nudes. Age doesn’t come into it.’
‘So you still hire a girl purely on the basis of looks?’
Ben stood up from the sofa and decided to get away. He would go back upstairs to the studio, put on a record and wait until Alice had calmed down.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘you’ve had a bad day at work. Somebody fucked you over. Try not to take it out on everyone else.’ Alice stubbed out her cigarette and said nothing. ‘Why don’t we start again later? Mark’s arriving in less than an hour. Have a bath and chill out.’
‘Don’t tell me to “chill out”. Just give me a straight answer to my question.’
Ben had to stop and turn.
‘To what question?’
And Alice reacted as if he were deliberately concealing something.
‘Fine,’ she said, and pointedly looked at her watch. ‘What time does the dry cleaner close?’
‘How the fuck should I know?’
‘Well, I’m just wondering what I’m going to wear to this party tomorrow night, now that you haven’t picked up my dress.’
‘So go and get it. You’re a big girl.’
‘Well, I don’t have much choice, do I?’
And Ben was halfway upstairs, heading back to the studio, when he heard the front door slam behind him.
6
Stephen Taploe called the waitress over with an impatient wave of his hand and asked for the bill. It had become necessary to conduct the rest of the conversation outside the café, because there were now three men standing idly behind Keen’s chair, sucking on bottles of Mexican lager. The bill came to a little under nine pounds and Taploe put the receipt carefully in his wallet. He was very exact when it came to filing for expenses.
The two men crossed the road and turned towards Brook Green, a steady head-on wind blowing dried leaves and litter along the pavement. Choosing his moment with care, Taploe said, ‘What do you know about a man called Sebastian Roth?’
The question took Keen by surprise. His first thought was that someone inside Divisar had breached client confidentiality.
‘Why don’t you tell me what you know about a man called Sebastian Roth and I’ll see if I can be of any assistance?’ he said. ‘Sort of fill in the blanks.’
Taploe had anticipated that Keen would be evasive; it bought him time.
‘I know what any person can read in the papers. Roth is thirty-six years old, an entrepreneur, very well connected with the present Labour government, the only son of a Tory peer. He went to Eton, where he was neither particularly successful nor popular and dropped out of Oxford after less than a year. After a stint in the City, he opened the original Libra nightclub about six months before Ministry of Sound and at least a year before Cream first took off in Liverpool. Those three are still the nightclubs of choice for the younger generation, though it’s mostly compact discs now, isn’t it? That’s how they make their money.’ Keen remained silent. ‘Judging from the photographs in certain magazines – Tatler, Harpers & Queen and so on – Roth looks to have a new girlfriend on his arm every week, although we think he’s something of a loner. Very little contact with his family, no relationship at all with either of his two siblings. Libra is his passion, extending the brand, controlling the business. Roth spends a lot of time overseas, collects art, and has recently finished conversion on a house in Pimlico valued at over two million pounds. I also happen to know that one of his representatives came to your company some months ago asking for assistance.’
Keen slowed his pace.
‘You know that I can’t discuss that,’ he said.
‘Then allow me discuss it for you.’ It was all going very well for Stephen Taploe, the one-upmanship, the gradual trap. He flattened down his moustache and coughed lightly. ‘Roth has a lawyer friend, an individual by the name of Thomas Macklin. Helped him build the Libra empire, the Paris and New York sites, the merchandising arm in particular. I believe you’ve made his acquaintance?’
‘Go on.’ The hard soles of Keen’s brogues clipped on the pavement as they turned left into Sterndale Road.
‘In the past four months, Macklin has made eight separate trips to Russia. On three of these journeys he took internal flights from St Petersburg to Moscow, where he remained for several days.’
‘May I ask why he was being followed?’
To encourage a greater openness in Keen, Taploe opted to be as candid as the situation would allow.
‘He wasn’t being followed, exactly. At least, not at first. But on Macklin’s third visit to the Russian capital he was observed by local law enforcement officials talking to a known member of the Kukushkin crime syndicate under observation in a separate case. Nothing unusual there, you might think, but the meetings then occurred again, on trips four, five and six. Each time with the same man, albeit in a different location.’
‘What was the contact’s name?’
‘Malere,’ Taploe replied. ‘Kristin Malere. A Lithuanian, originally out of Vilnius. Anyway, as you may or may not be aware, my organization has been developing increasingly strong links with the organized crime division of Russian Internal Affairs. Because Macklin is a British citizen, these meetings were brought to our attention and my team began looking into it.’
‘On the basis of a few meetings with a low-level Baltic hoodlum?’
Taploe sniffed. He did not enjoy having his judgment brought into question by anyone, least of all a disdainful MI6 toff eight years in the private sector.
‘Ordinarily, of course, this would not have aroused our suspicion.’ He wanted Keen to know his place, to feel like an outsider. ‘After all, Mr Macklin was only representing the interests of his employer. As you will be aware, it is often necessary in the present climate to climb into bed with what I like to call some of the unsavoury characters on the Russian landscape.’
Keen looked at his watch.
‘Now, we have reason to believe that Viktor Kukushkin is presently trying to consolidate his position in the UK,’ Taploe said firmly. He wasn’t going to be rushed. ‘Simply as a precaution, we put Watchers from my team on Macklin when he returned home. So imagine our surprise when, just days after arriving back from one of his trips to Russia, he met one of Kukushkin’s London representatives at a hotel in Sussex Gardens. Another unsavoury character by the name of Juris Duchev.’ The corners of Keen’s mouth twitched. ‘These meetings started to happen at other hotels in the Greater London area on a fairly regular basis. On at least four occasions we suspect Macklin left with cash sums in excess of eighty thousand pounds. To my knowledge he also banked two six-figure dollar sums in a legitimate, Cypriot-registered shell company named Pentagon Investments.’
Taploe took a long, deep breath, as if the effort of summing up the Libra case with such clarity and precision had left him briefly exhausted. He was on the point of elaborating further when a squat, thick-set man wearing a pin-striped suit emerged from a nearby house and turned towards them. He was well within earshot and Taploe immediately assumed cover.
‘So you’ll be away all weekend?’ he said quickly. ‘Why don’t you leave me your number and I’ll try to get hold of you then.’
The switch, a very basic precaution, was also second nature to Keen. Given that many of Divisar’s employees were drawn from the secret world, the company operated on much the same basis as the intelligence services. If, for example, Keen happened to be discussing an operation at headquarters and was interrupted by another member of staff entering the room, he would quickly drop into small talk until that person had left the area. There were pockets of expertise within the company, and very little crossover due to the requirements of secrecy; many employees were strangers to one another. Nevertheless, he felt that Taploe had overplayed it, and enjoyed delaying his response for as long as possible.
‘Or you could just call my mobile,’ he replied slowly. ‘Do you have the number?’ His voice was deliberately bored. ‘It’s printed on my card.’
The man was now thirty metres behind them, standing beside a two-door BMW. Keen heard the double sonics of central locking and registered amber hazard lights flaring briefly in the back window of a nearby van. Then he heard the driver’s door clunk shut as the man climbed inside.
It was safe to continue.
‘The answer to your question, Mr Taploe, is that I cannot tell you very much.’ Keen sounded assured, imperial. ‘I have neither seen nor spoken to Thomas Macklin in over two months. Whom he chooses to hold meetings with in Moscow, London or Timbuktu is his business, not mine. Ditto any strange bank accounts. Obviously you suspect money laundering …’
‘Obviously,’ Taploe said quickly. ‘The thing is, we can’t make an arrest until we know the source of the cash. Macklin could realistically claim that he had no knowledge of handling dirty money, or say that he was acting as a lawyer for Viktor Kukushkin and planned to use the funds to buy real estate. But we’d be interested in what you could tell us about your early contact with Libra.’
Keen noted the use of the plural pronoun: making it a point of honour, a duty to the old firm. However, rather than answer immediately, he asked a question of his own.
‘How did you find me?’
Taploe was looking down Augustine Road towards Brook Green. He rubbed his cheek.
‘Your name was recognized when it came up during preliminary research into Divisar.’
Keen sounded a sarcastic note.
‘So – what? – you found out I was in the Office, thought it was your lucky day and ran me as a trace request through the ND? Is that how it still works over there?’
Taploe hesitated. ‘Something like that.’
‘Was there anything Recorded Against?’ Keen asked, employing the Service euphemism. ‘I’d love to know.’
Taploe ignored the question.
‘Why don’t we just talk about your initial contact with Libra?’
Keen sighed, loathing the dryness of bureaucracy.
‘Very well. This is what I know, although I can’t think why it will be of any use to you. Thomas Macklin approached Divisar about six months ago. I’d have to check the file to be more precise. He was sharp and efficient and he came as Roth’s representative, which is often the way in our business. If push comes to shove, those boys want as much distance between us and them as they can manage. It was a simple job, of the sort I do all the time. Libra were interested in setting up operations in Russia and Macklin had a lot of very sensible questions that needed answering. Due diligence on real estate and freeholders. Wanted to know how to go about recruiting staff, finding suppliers, who Libra’s competitors would be and so forth. I remember he was slightly obsessive about the tax and licensing position. Above all, he needed to know about the roof. What palms needed to be crossed and how much silver.’ To amuse himself, Keen added, ‘You know what a roof is, don’t you, Mr Taploe?’
‘I’ve been working organized crime for two years,’ he replied. ‘Of course I know about the roof.’ It irritated Taploe that Keen was not as concerned by his line of questioning as he might have been; but then that was the birthright of the upper classes, the lizard-thick skin of the FCO. ‘So did Divisar put Libra in touch with the appropriate organizations?’ he asked.
‘That’s not how it works. Kukushkin would have come to them. He’s one of the new-style mobsters, the avtoritet. Less regard for tradition than the older vors and a lot more unpredictable when it comes to things like chopping people’s fingers off. But, yes, I pointed them in the right direction, told Macklin who the main players were. Divisar did what we were paid to do.’
Taploe listened to this and decided that it was time to play his trump card.
‘And how long was it before you realized that your eldest son was a senior executive at Libra?’
Keen had known that the question was coming; Taploe had been deliberately withholding it as a tactic to arouse his suspicion. Nevertheless, he felt squeezed by it, cornered into obfuscation. His immediate response was defensive.
‘Now what does that have to do with anything?’
Taploe stopped walking and turned to face him. Keen was a good six inches taller and considerably better built, with narrow blue eyes that he used as tools of concealment, to frighten and charm in equal measure. Taploe tried as best he could to look through them.
‘Perhaps you could just answer the question,’ he said. ‘We have no wish to pry into your personal life. It is simply our understanding that since Libra’s first approach you have been able to form some sort of a relationship with your eldest son after … how should I put it? … an absence of almost thirty years.’
‘You’re clearly very well informed.’
‘Not as well informed as I’d like to be. Did you know that Mark was working at Libra when Divisar took them on as clients?’
Keen waited. He could feel frustration, even anger, beginning to undermine his better judgment. All that residual guilt over Carolyn and the boys rising up in him like a sickness.
‘As I recall,’ he said firmly, ‘there were two preliminary meetings between Macklin and one of my colleagues before I was brought on board. During that time, Mark found out that I worked for the company and telephoned me with a view to getting together.’
‘And what was your reaction?’
‘Is that relevant? I wasn’t aware that I was talking to a psychiatrist.’
Taploe had pushed too far. He was annoyed with himself and felt the heat of unease flush through his cheeks. He would have to back down, if only for the sake of the pitch.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s not my business. I am simply interested in Mark’s role in all of this.’
‘Then at last we have something in common.’
‘I can tell you that there’s no evidence to suggest your son knows what Macklin is up to,’ Taploe offered. ‘He didn’t accompany him to Russia on his last two visits, nor has he been seen with any of Kukushkin’s representatives in either Moscow or London.’
‘So why am I here this evening?’ Keen asked. ‘What on earth do you need me for?’
It was a question to which he already knew the answer. Taploe was simply priming himself.
‘Just an act of kindness,’ he said quietly, ‘a favour, for want of a better description.’
‘A favour.’ Keen paused and then repeated the word under his breath, killing its implications, the nuance. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘What is it about people in our business that they can never say exactly what they mean?’
7
The dummy London cab that had tailed Mark’s taxi from Heathrow stopped a hundred and fifty metres down Elgin Crescent, engine idling. They had made good time from Terminal One, almost slipstreaming the taxi in the outer M4 lane denied to cars.
‘So this is where the brother lives?’ Graham asked.
Ian Boyle cleared his throat and said, ‘Yeah, house up on the left.’
They saw Mark Keen step out of the taxi, pay the driver and make his way towards the front door carrying a large overnight holdall and several plastic bags. He was broadly built and did not appear to struggle with the weight.
‘Nice fucking place,’ Graham muttered, tilting his head to one side to get a better look at the house. ‘What does the brother do for a living? Stockbroker? Investment banker? Dot com millionaire?’
‘None of the above.’ Ian dialled a number in Euston Tower on his mobile phone and held it up to his ear. ‘Our Benjamin’s an artist. Farts around all day in oils and charcoal, struggling with the impossibility of the authentic artistic act.’
‘I thought that sort of behaviour was out of fashion?’
The number wasn’t answering and Ian hung up.
‘Not so,’ he said.
‘What does the wife do?’ Graham was new on the Kukushkin case and still a bit sketchy on details. He looked upon Ian as a mentor, an older hand he wanted to learn from and impress.
‘Journalist,’ Ian said. ‘Writes about canapés and boy bands for the Evening Standard. One of your gorgeous, pouting, twenty-something hackettes, arse so firm you could crack an egg on it. Drive up and we might get a look at her.’
Graham flicked on the headlights, moved back out into the road and took the cab past the house. They saw Alice open the front door and fling her arms around Mark’s neck, her smile a flash in the darkness.
‘Fuckin’ hell,’ Graham muttered. ‘Wouldn’t mind one of them in my Christmas stocking.’ He pulled up another fifty metres further along the street and peered back over his shoulder. ‘How long they been married?’
‘Couple of years; three, maybe. Daddy was decent enough to throw eighty grand at the wedding. Nice of him, wouldn’t you say?’
‘All things considered.’ Graham couldn’t keep his eyes off her. ‘Does the gaffer have ears in there?’ he asked.
‘Not yet. Only at Mark’s place. And the lawyer, Macklin. We don’t reckon young Benjamin’s involved.’
‘Right.’
‘So what time’s Michael taking over?’ Ian scratched his armpit. ‘I wanna get the Arsenal score, find a pub with ITV.’
‘Search me,’ Graham replied. ‘Search me. The way I heard it, I thought we was on all night.’
8
A man of sixty looks back on his working life and feels, what? A sense of regret at opportunities lost? Shame over badly handled investments, businesses that might have turned sour, a colleague treated with contempt by the board after forty years’ loyal service to the firm? Keen simply did not know. He had lived his life in a separate world of deliberate masquerade, a state servant with carte blanche for deceit. Waiting for Mark in his son’s favourite, if overpriced, Chinese restaurant at the south end of Queensway, Keen had the odd, even amusing sensation that most of his professional life had been comprised of social occasions: Foreign Office dinners, embassy cocktail parties, glasses of stewed tea and mugs of instant coffee shared with journalists, traitors, disgruntled civil servants, ideologues and bankrupts, the long list of contacts and informants that make up a spy’s acquaintance. Indeed it occurred to him – over his second glass of surprisingly decent Sancerre – that he was a scholar of the long, boozy lunch, of lulling strangers into mistaken beliefs, of plying dining companions with drink and sympathy and then sucking them dry of secrets. It was his talent, after all, the knack they had spotted at Oxford, and the reason now, more than thirty years later, that Keen could charge Divisar £450 a day for his old-style flair and expertise. But to use those skills on his own son? To do that, if he looked at it for too long, would seem horrific. But Christopher Keen never looked at anything for too long.
Mark was late by half an hour, a mirror image of Keen’s own father at thirty-five, coming into the restaurant at a brisk walk mouthing, ‘Sorry, Dad,’ from fifty feet. Keen thought he looked tired and preoccupied, but that might have been his paranoia over Taploe.
The Service would like your assistance in clearing up Libra’s position, in revealing the exact nature of their relationship with Kukushkin. We just need you to pick your son’s brains, find out what he knows.
‘Where the hell have you been?’
He said it without anger, because Mark looked genuinely contrite.
‘I’m really, really sorry.’ He placed a hand on his father’s shoulder. ‘Meetings. All morning. Fucked electrics at the club and a tabloid hack giving me gyp.’
He was wearing a dark blue corduroy suit and, for want of something better to say, Keen remarked on it.
‘Bespoke?’ he asked.
‘Thought you might notice that.’ It was a shared passion between them, the luxury of fine clothes. Mark sat down and flapped a napkin into his lap. ‘This here is a Doug Hayward original in navy corduroy, a sympathetic cloth flexible enough to accommodate today’s retro styling.’ He was beginning to relax. ‘The jacket has high lapels, as you can see, with long double vents and three buttons at the front. Furthermore, if I stood up you’d notice an immaculately tailored flat-fronted trouser with straight legs that flare just above the tongue of the shoe.’
‘Indeed,’ Keen said. ‘Indeed,’ and enjoyed Mark’s charm. He poured both of them a glass of Sancerre and ordered another bottle from the waiter. ‘What’s in the bag?’
Mark said, ‘Oh yes,’ and leaned over to retrieve two bottles of vodka from a duty-free bag he had carried into the restaurant. Three litres of Youri Dolgoruki, his father’s favourite brand.
‘Present for you,’ he said. ‘Picked them up in Moscow three days ago. Know how you prefer the real thing.’
‘That was immensely kind of you.’ Keen put the bottles on the floor beside his chair and wondered if they would clink in his briefcase. ‘You shouldn’t have bought me anything at all.’
‘For all the birthdays I missed,’ Mark replied lightly, as if the observation held no resonance. Then he opened his menu.
Keen had noticed this about Mark before: the way he gave presents to people at Libra and Divisar, little surprises to lighten their day. The cynic in him had decided that this was an unconscious way of keeping colleagues onside, of buying their trust and loyalty. It was the same with his memory: months after meeting them, Mark could recall the names of personal assistants who had brought him cups of coffee during fifteen-minute meetings in downtown Moscow.
‘How do you do that?’ he asked.
‘Eh?’
Mark was staring at him and Keen realized he had been thinking aloud.
‘Sorry, I was just mulling something over. Your ability to remember names. I was thinking about it while you were late.’
Mark clumped the menu shut.
‘Trick I was taught by Seb,’ he said frankly, and put his jacket on the back of the chair. ‘Remember someone’s name and it makes them feel special. Tack on a fact or two about their lives and they’ll practically offer themselves up. It’s all vanity, isn’t it, Dad? We all want to feel cherished. Bloke comes to work to fix the sound system and I remember he’s got a ten-year-old kid who supports West Ham, he’s gonna be touched that I brought it up. Good business, isn’t it? How to win friends and influence people.’
Keen nodded and could only agree. At a table near by, a decent-looking woman in a reasonable suit was eating lunch with her husband and giving him the occasional eye. Mutton dressed as lamb, Keen thought, and wished she were ten years younger.
‘Will you order for me?’ Mark said. ‘My brain’s gone numb.’
Lacquer-black walls and a low oppressive ceiling patterned with dimmed halogen bulbs lent the interior of the restaurant the atmosphere of a mediocre seventies nightclub. Mark was always impressed by his father’s knowledge of the more obscure dishes on a menu – in this case, preserved pork knuckle, fragrant yam duck, a soup of mustard leaf with salted egg and sliced beef. He even ordered them in an accent that sounded authentically Chinese.
‘You spend time in Beijing?’ he asked. ‘In Shanghai, Hong Kong?’
‘Not really.’ Keen refilled Mark’s glass with the new bottle. ‘A fortnight in Taiwan in the seventies. Overnight stop in Kowloon harbour a few years ago. Rather a lovely ketch, if I recall, French owner. Otherwise just homogeneous Chinese restaurants the world over. Anxious-looking fish in outsized tanks, ducks flying anticlockwise around the walls.’
Mark listened intently. He was good at that. Keen wondered if he had an image, in technicolour, of his father calmly going about the Queen’s business, standing on the prow of a luxury yacht wearing a battered Panama hat.
‘Why does everyone insist on calling it “Beijing” nowadays?’ he asked. ‘You don’t say “Roma”, do you? You don’t talk about “Milano” or “München”?’
‘It’s just the fashion,’ Mark replied.
‘Ah yes, the fashion.’ Keen sighed and let his eyes drift towards the ceiling. He enjoyed playing the fuddy-duddy with Mark, assumed that it was a part of his paternal role. ‘I sometimes think that everything these days is about fashion, about not doing or saying the wrong thing. Common sense has gone right out of the window.’
‘I guess.’
A smooth-skinned waiter, working in tandem with a pretty Chinese girl wearing a sky-blue silk dress, ferried plates of dim sum and steamed rice to their table. They were on to their third bottle of wine – a characterless Ribera del Duero – by the time Keen got round to Taploe’s business.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he said. ‘I had a call from Thomas Macklin while you were away.’
‘Oh yeah? Tom? What did he want?’
‘Just a couple of routine questions. Divisar business. Tell me about him. How do you two get on?’
Mark was swallowing a mouthful of prawn satay and for some time was able only to nod and raise his eyebrows in response.
‘Why do you want to know?’ he asked eventually, wiping a napkin over his bottom lip.
‘He intrigued me. As you can imagine, we get a lot of lawyers coming into the firm. He’s still relatively young, highly competent, somebody whom I imagine would be an asset to Libra.’
‘Tom’s all right. A bit flash, bit lippy. Good lawyer, though.’
‘Does your work dovetail?’
Mark could not hear the question over the noise of the restaurant and he cocked his head to one side to encourage his father to repeat it. Keen leaned in.
‘I said, does your work dovetail? How much of him do you see, apart from when you’re both abroad together?’
‘I was out with him last night, matter of fact. Tom’s a big drinker, likes to whip out the company credit card. If there’s a new secretary in the office he’s always the one who asks her out. Champagne and oysters, loves all that shit. Never has any luck with the birds, mind, but you’ll have a good time if you tag along.’
Whenever Mark discussed Libra business, his voice unconsciously dropped into a mannered sub-Cockney that cloaked its true origins in private education. His work accent, his music industry drawl, deliberately shaved off consonants and slackened vowels. It was an affectation that irritated Keen, though he had never mentioned it.
‘And what happens when you go on these trips?’ he asked, pouring himself a glass of water. The woman with whom he had briefly flirted rose from her table and managed a final seductive glance. Keen ignored her. ‘You must get sick of the sight of one another.’
‘Not necessarily.’ Mark was using a pair of chopsticks to pick up a pork dumpling. He held it in the air for some time, like a jeweller examining a gem for flaws. ‘I like the company, to be honest.’ He popped the food into his mouth and began chewing it vigorously, smiling as he ate.
All of this was of interest to Keen. Is Viktor Kukushkin’s syndicate providing Libra with protection in Russia, or is there a larger conspiracy evolving here in London? Taploe had almost whispered his requests, eyes glued to Keen’s lapel. Mark could prove vital in giving us a clear picture of Roth’s and Macklin’s activities. We’d like to know everything you can find out. But Mark did not appear unsettled by the line of questioning: on the contrary, he seemed comfortable and relaxed, just chatting and enjoying his lunch.
‘Good, these, aren’t they?’ he said, and picked up another dumpling.
‘Yes,’ Keen nodded. ‘I must say I was impressed by all of your people. Sebastian, of course, though we met only briefly. The two marketing girls as well. And that Frenchman you brought in last time, Philippe d’Erlanger.’
‘Philippe, yeah. He’s Belgian, actually.’
Keen acknowledged the mistake.
‘But Macklin stood out. Very bright, very capable. During our initial meetings he impressed me a great deal. I acted only as a conduit, as you know, so I have no idea how he’s behaved latterly. But he was very well informed, seemed to know his stuff. A bit pushy, clearly, not necessarily someone one would want to buy a used car from. Do you trust him?’
‘No,’ Mark replied, swallowing. ‘But I wouldn’t have thought he trusts me either.’
‘Now why do you say that?’
‘Best policy, isn’t it? Rule of thumb. Never trust the people at the top. Don’t put yourself in a position where you have to rely on anyone. That way you won’t be too disappointed when they fuck you over.’
Keen’s eyes narrowed. He wondered if the sentiment had its origins in Mark’s childhood.
‘Do you think he’s capable of that?’
But he had pushed too hard.
‘Why are you so interested in Tom?’ Mark asked. ‘Have Divisar had trouble with him? Has he not been paying our bills?’
‘No, no. I’m just fascinated by the way your partnership works. He obviously has the ear of Roth, so where does that leave you?’
‘Well, I’m not a lawyer, am I? That’s not my area of expertise. So the relationship he has with Seb is different from the one he has with me. More personal, if you like. Those two share a lot of secrets which nobody else is privy to.’
Perhaps there was something here for Taploe.
‘What kind of secrets?’ Keen asked.
‘Well, they wouldn’t be secrets if I knew, would they? Financial stuff, I guess; plans for the future. That sort of thing.’
‘I see.’ Mark looked vaguely bored, but Keen was anxious to probe further. ‘Just while we’re on the subject,’ he said, ‘were there any developments on your trip that I should know about? The position on the roof, for example?’
‘No. Tom’s handling it. He deals with those boys.’
‘So you’ve had no contact with the gangs?’
‘I wouldn’t say no contact.’ The waitress picked up two plates from the table, smiled at Mark and walked off. ‘They’re everywhere out there. Hotel foyers, restaurants, sitting in their shiny four-by-fours on Novy Arbat. You can hardly move without bumping into some wanker in a cheap leather jacket who thinks he’s Chechnya’s answer to Al Pacino. Mack’s all for it, of course, loves hanging out with them. Acts like he’s landed a walk-on part in The Sopranos. But they’re not for me. Far as I’m concerned, the mafia makes a living out of other people’s misery and that’s not a good reason to go drinking with them.’
Keen registered this last remark: at SIS he had been trained to be wary of the man who declares his innocence unprompted. It was usually the case that those who made a frequent expression of their moral outrage were most often the ones who turned out to be unscrupulous.
‘Surely Macklin’s just doing his job, just trying to get the best deal for Libra?’ he suggested. ‘I would have thought it was important to keep them onside.’
Mark smirked.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘He keeps them onside, all right.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Whenever we’re in Moscow, Tom makes sure to get a hooker up to his suite. Her twin sister as well, if he’s feeling perky. He’d like to call that “keeping them onside”. That way he could run it through expenses.’
Keen frowned.
‘He’s got sucked into that, has he?’
‘Well, let’s face it, no one else is going to sleep with him.’
Keen duly grinned but the conversation appeared to have exhausted itself. As he had both hoped and expected, there had been nothing of any content to unsettle him, nothing he would feel obliged to reveal to Taploe. He felt an odd, protective urge to tell Mark that his flat was most probably wired, that the grass skirts had eyes and ears in the homes of every one of the senior employees at Libra. Yet he was bound by an older loyalty, barred even from advising caution. He placed his chopsticks to one side, put his napkin on the table, and was quiet.
‘You look worried about something.’
Mark had also finished eating.
‘I do?’
‘Yeah.’
Keen frowned and said, ‘No, I’m fine. Just digesting.’
‘Is it Ben?’
The question took him by surprise, if only because, for once in Mark’s company, Keen had not been thinking about Ben. It was a rare occasion on which the two failed to discuss the possibility of reconciliation. Their last two meetings, for example, had descended into an awkward row about Ben’s stubborn refusal to put the past behind him. Mark had been sympathetic to his father’s position, but his first loyalty was to his brother.
‘Have you thought any more about that?’ If this was an opportunity to reopen the subject, then Keen would grasp it.
‘Not much,’ Mark said.
‘I see.’
‘But you’re still eager to make amends, to tell him how sorry you are?’
‘Something like that.’ Keen wondered if Mark had a plan, but his manner seemed dismissive and offhand. ‘Have you seen him lately?’
‘Matter of fact, I have.’ Mark finished off the last of the wine. ‘Had dinner with him the night I got back. Brother cooked up a green curry and spent most of the evening arguing with Alice.’
‘That seems to happen a lot.’
‘All the time lately.’
‘Are they unhappy?’
Mark breathed in deeply and puffed out his cheeks.
‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Sometimes I wonder what he sees in her, beyond the looks, the lifestyle.’
‘Yes, you’ve said that before. But Alice was very helpful to Ben when your mother died, wasn’t she? Isn’t that the case?’
‘That was the case.’ Mark paused briefly. He was reluctant to betray Ben’s confidence, but the wine had got the better of him. ‘But there’s more to it than that,’ he said.
‘Expand.’
A waiter placed two steaming napkins on a plate in front of them. Mark turned his hands heavily through the cloth and then wiped his mouth.
‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘They’ve been together a long time. Brother helped to get her career started and Alice supported him when he wanted to get into painting. Far as I can tell they have great sex, you know, so that helps when things turn nasty. And besides, a part of me reckons they love all the arguments, that they feed off the aggro and tension.’
Keen leaned back in his chair.
‘Interesting,’ he said, with apparent empathy. ‘So you don’t suppose he’s any closer to the idea of meeting up?’ He was aware that the question was cack-handed, yet determined to make an approach. ‘You don’t think he’d be amenable to, say, a drink or perhaps dinner?’
Mark laughed and stared at the ceiling.
‘Is that what this is about?’ he said. ‘You want to have this conversation every time we meet up?’
‘Until he’s prepared to forgive and forget, yes.’
Keen had not intended to sound angry, but his words had a remarkable effect. Mark, ever the conciliator, resolved to calm his father down.
‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘You just have to understand that Ben is stubborn, that he’s very set in his ways. For him to agree even to talk to you would mean a betrayal of Mum. That’s how he feels about things. We’ve spoken about this. In his mind, it’s either you or her.’
Keen managed to look appropriately dismayed, but he had been taken with a sharp, persuasive idea. Earlier in the day, he had collected a signet ring from a jeweller in Paddington who had reset the bloodstone. The box was in his briefcase. He could use this as a lever, something to play on Mark’s sense of decency.
‘I had your photograph framed,’ he said.
‘My photograph?’
‘Of Ben’s wedding. It’s hanging in the flat.’ Two weeks earlier, Mark had given him a photograph of Ben’s wedding day, taken moments after he had first emerged from the church with Alice at his side. Keen had had the picture enlarged and framed and it now hung in the sitting room of his London flat. ‘I thought that I might give you something in return.’
‘Oh yeah?’
Keen was quickly into the briefcase, leaning down beside his chair. The box was covered in a thin mock-velvet cover and he handed it to Mark.
‘Are we getting married?’
‘Just open it. Have a look.’
‘What is this?’
Keen was improvising.
‘Call it a present. Of a family nature. More accurately described as an heirloom.’
Inside, Mark found the gold-banded signet ring, set with an engraved bloodstone.
‘This is for me?’
‘I’ve wanted you to have it for some time. It was your grandfather’s.’
Mark was oblivious to any deception. Prising the ring from its box he began turning it in his fingers. A small smudge of grease formed on the gold and he wiped it away with his napkin.
‘This is really kind of you,’ he said, finding that he was actually blushing. ‘You sure about this, Dad?’
‘Of course I’m sure. Why don’t you put it on?’ Mark looked briefly around the restaurant, as if conscious of being watched. Then he placed the ring on the fourth finger of his left hand and held it up for inspection.
‘That’s where it’s supposed to go, right? The “pinky”? Is that what it’s called?’
‘I believe so.’ Keen cleared his throat. ‘I don’t suppose they’re really the fashion these days among the nightclub classes, but you can always give it a go.’
‘I’m really touched. Thank you.’
And now he played the ace.
‘I wonder how Ben would feel if I were to do the same for him.’
From the direction of the kitchen there was the sound of a plate smashing on stone. Silence briefly engulfed the restaurant before conversations resumed.
‘I’m not following you.’ Mark looked slightly worried.
‘There are two signet rings in the family,’ Keen explained. ‘One belonged to your grandfather, the other to his brother. As you may know, Bobby died without producing any children. I’ve always thought his ring should be passed on …’
‘So you thought you’d wait twenty-five years and get me to do it for you?’
Keen acknowledged the slight with just a tilt of his head. He was determined that the plan should succeed.
‘Point taken,’ he said. ‘But would you be prepared to have a word with your brother, to perhaps sound him out?’
Mark ground his chair a foot back from the table.
‘Haven’t we just had this discussion?’
‘It’s just that I feel we’ve never really given Benjamin a chance to come forward, to give his side of the story.’
‘To come forward?’
Keen pushed his glass to one side, as if making a clear channel through which any request could not realistically be turned down.
‘I apologize,’ he said. ‘I’m obviously not making myself clear. Call it a symptom of my frustration. You have always presented Ben’s reluctance to talk to me as a fait accompli. The idea that he might change his mind has simply never been tabled. Well, I propose that we should give it a shot, ask him straight out what exactly it is that he’s afraid of.’
‘Brother’s not afraid of anything. I’ve told you that …’
‘Then let’s at least clear the air. I would rather have the opportunity of being castigated face-to-face than endure this rather childish stand off.’
‘Well, you see, that’s just the problem. Ben doesn’t really care what you think.’
Mark’s candour had the effect of silencing his father. Like a man who has suffered a losing hand at poker, he fell back in his chair, as if conscious of the hopelessness of his position. It was the first time that Mark had ever observed any trace of defeat in his father’s face. And it worked.
‘Look, I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.
‘Would you really?’ Keen’s eyes lit up with hope. ‘I think it would be in everyone’s best interests. Imagine if we could all just get along, make a fresh start. You, me, Benjamin, Alice. I’d like to get to know her, too.’
‘I’m sure you would,’ Mark muttered.
‘I mean, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could get this thing knocked on the head by Christmas?’
Mark was simply amazed by his attitude. It was as if his father had an assumed right of access, an inherent belief that the past should be ignored in the interests of his own peace of mind. Nevertheless, he felt a duty at least to make an effort.
‘Leave it to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to him and see what I can do.’
And that was enough to satisfy Keen. His work done, he closed the briefcase, cleaned his hands with the napkin and within moments had asked for the bill.
9
Stephen Taploe moved gradually along the aisles, filling his trolley with foods. It was a nothing moment. Once a week, he ventured to the Clapham Junction branch of Asda and bought enough provisions to last him for exactly seven days. Taploe was frugal, although, as a single man earning £41,500 a year, he did not have to be. Armed with reward points and a fistful of vouchers, he would attempt to check out for less than twenty-five pounds, but it was difficult with London prices and sometimes he would treat himself to an extra bottle of mediumdry white wine, or a tub of ice cream in his favourite flavour, vanilla. Taploe lived alone and had, on average, eight meals to cater for each week: two lunches (Saturday and Sunday), as well as six evenings at home. On Thursdays he was always sure to join his colleagues at a tapas bar in Victoria that was popular with D-Branch personnel: promotion, he assumed, would come quicker if he could develop and sustain relationships with senior management outside of office hours.
The supermarket was noticeably less salubrious than the branch of Marks and Spencer’s in nearby St John’s Road, and lacked the international range and flair of products available at Sainsbury’s. Nevertheless, Taploe preferred Asda, largely because it was cheaper and closer to home. He eschewed fancy microwave meals, preferring to cook from scratch; indeed, he would derive a certain satisfaction from making a single item last for several days. He could, for example, let a medium-sized battery chicken suffice for three meals: roasted first, then curried, and finally cold. Every week he bought a packet of six Porkinson’s sausages (two meals), three fillets of salmon (one of which he would habitually freeze) and a ribeye steak with oven chips for Sunday lunch. He ignored the aisles given over to juices and did not buy food in tins. For something sweet, Taploe allowed himself ice cream, a single packet of Penguins and a punnet of Elsanta strawberries.
It was a Friday evening, the pre-weekend crowd, and thankfully there were precious few children screaming at the hips of single mothers. Week after week Taploe watched them bumping trolleys into shelves and walls, spilling bottles of Sunny Delight in egg-yolk pools on the floor. But he could move with comparative ease tonight, through fruit and veg to wines, and would be home within ten or fifteen minutes, depending on the queue at the tills.
Just before seven thirty his mobile rang.
‘Mr Taploe?’
It was Katy, a low-level researcher less than six months out of college with a degree in media studies from Exeter University. He liked the fact that she sounded nervous on the phone and made a point of calling him ‘Mr Taploe’.
‘Yes, what is it?’
‘Well, I’ve been looking into Juris Duchev as you instructed, sir, and I’ve been advised by Paul Quinn to contact you directly with some information that I think you might find of interest.’
Taploe was standing beside a bored shelf-stacker. He moved towards the tills.
‘Go on.’
‘I’ve spoken to Interpol, sir, and they suspect that Duchev has been involved in at least two recent incidents still under investigation by the relevant lawenforcement authorities in those areas. The first was in Monaco three years ago, the shooting of a French investment banker with links to the Kukushkin organization. He was shot in his car waiting at traffic lights on the lower of the connecting roads between Monaco and Nice. The second took place in a Moscow suburb back in 1995.’ Katy breathed in quickly. It sounded as though she was searching through notes. ‘Again, that was a motorcyclist with a passenger riding pillion shooting directly into a vehicle. We suspect that if there’s razborka – the Russian term for the settling of a mafia dispute – then Juris Duchev is the individual who would carry it out on the mainland on behalf of the Kukushkin syndicate.’
Taploe didn’t say ‘Thank you’ or ‘Well done’, simply: ‘Is there any record of arrest?’
‘None, sir. Not on the files. And nothing from RIA.’
‘So your point is?’
It was the bully in him, the small man.
‘Well, what we didn’t know, sir, is that Duchev has a UK right of residence. It just came up. At the moment, he can come and go as he pleases.’
Taploe reached the end of Aisle 14 and stopped.
‘I see.’ The news irritated him, though he maintained a level tone of voice. ‘Well, thank you for passing on that information. I’ll come in to see you after the weekend and we can discuss it further.’
‘Very well. Thank you, sir.’
‘And Katy?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘I know full well what razborka is. There was no need to enlighten me.’
‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’
‘Goodbye.’
As he replaced the phone in his pocket, the back wheel of Taploe’s trolley caught on a sticky ball of waxed paper. He had to bend down to free it and missed a slot in the queue. Duchev, he thought. We let men like that live here, let them enter and leave at will. The British, in the name of decency and fair play, wave their enemies through the gates without so much as a glance. Tends to make my job harder, he mused, pushing towards the tills.
10
From: alicelucy1212@aol.com
To: mkeen@clublibra.net
Subject: Ben drink
Mark sweetheart
Very very busy here. On deadline. Yes, we talked about it last night. Basically he’s still very pissed off, obstinate, the usual thing, but I get the impression it’s not totally a lost cause. I mean how long can he keep going like this?
It’s like he’s making a point not just to his father, but to you, to me, to anybody he comes across. And of course to your mum. You know what B’s like when he makes his mind up.
If you think it’s a good idea then I would give it a try but I’m not sure how much luck you’ll have. I didn’t push it last night. I don’t want him to think I’m turning against him, and I didn’t say anything about you asking me, of course.
We’ve already arranged to meet in the Scarsdale pub at the back of the cinema on Ken High St – the place you came to before we went to the Doves concert. Can you be there by maybe half-past seven? There might be some people from work so be warned.
Lovely to see you the other night. Thanks for the vodka – weird bottle!
lol
Als
x
From: Mark Keen
To: alicelucy1212@aol.com
Subject: Re: Ben drink
That sounds good. I’ll be there at 7.30 at the latest. Don’t mention anything to him about it, OK? I don’t want him to feel like we’re setting a trap or something.
Thanks for this Alice – I appreciate it a lot.
Mark
Mark hit ‘Send’ and wondered if this was a good idea; he doubted whether Alice would be able to keep their arrangement a secret. Sometimes, in fact, he couldn’t even remember why he was doing his father the favour.
11
Taploe waited for Keen in the downstairs seating area of a Baker Street coffee shop. American-owned, the chain was populated by a preppy clientele drinking foam-laden lattes at Internet terminals. Bewildered by the range of drinks on offer, it had taken Taploe more than three minutes to explain to the South African girl working behind the counter that he simply wanted a black coffee, nothing more, nothing less.
‘You want an espresso, then?’
‘No. Just a black coffee. A normal black coffee. In a mug.’
‘Do you want me to make it a double? That’s longer.’
‘No. I find espresso too strong. Look –’
He scanned the menu board for the appropriate description. Latte. Mocha. Espresso. Ristretto. Mochaccino. Cappuccino. Iced Mochachino Latte …
‘It must be Americano,’ he said eventually. ‘That looks the closest.’
‘Americano!’ the girl shouted to her colleague and, given that there were four or five people queueing up behind him, Taploe felt that he could not now change his order.
‘Is that a shot of espresso with plenty of boiling water?’ he asked.
‘That’s right, sir,’ she said, pointing to the counter on her left. ‘Your order’ll be ready in a few minutes. Can I help anyone please?’
Taploe had found a small round table at the rear of the basement where any conversation would be drowned out by the tapping of computer keyboards, the quack and beep of the World Wide Web. Twenty or thirty people, mostly students, were crowding up the seating area.
Taploe sensed Keen before he saw him, a sudden intimation of good taste and disdain moving through the room. He was wearing a long, dark overcoat and carrying a small white cup of espresso in his right hand. Taploe was reminded of a Tory grandee.
‘Christopher,’ he said.
‘Stephen.’ Taploe’s view of his joe was already coloured by the basic antipathy that existed between the organizations to which both men had dedicated the bulk of their working lives. But the sense Keen gave off of living in an infallible bubble of privilege added a particular hostility to his contempt.
‘Did you find the place all right?’ he asked.
‘No problem at all. But it’s bloody cold outside. They say it might snow.’
‘Well, thank you for agreeing to the meeting at such short notice.’ Taploe sipped at his coffee but found that it was still too hot to drink. ‘I hope we didn’t put you out.’
‘Not at all. I have a dinner engagement in the West End at nine o’clock. The timing was rather convenient.’
Slowly, Taploe drew the tips of his fingers across the wooden surface of the table. It was an unconscious manifestation of his anxiety, and he was irritated with himself for showing it.
‘Can I get you anything from upstairs?’
Taploe could not think why he had asked the question. Keen simply lowered his eyes and indicated his espresso with a downward nod of the head.
‘Oh yes, of course.’
There was an embarrassed silence that Taploe eventually broke.
‘This shouldn’t take long,’ he said. ‘It was just to find out about your enquiries.’
Keen could see a Japanese student poring over notes held in a loose-leaf folder to the right of his chair. If Taploe considered this a secure environment in which to talk, he would take that on trust, but keep his remarks general to the point of being obtuse. Christian names. No specifics. Operational shorthands.
‘My view is very straightforward,’ he said. ‘If the lawyer is involved to any extent with the Russian organization then my son knows nothing about it. That would indicate to me that this is something that is happening only at the very highest level within the company. That is to say, only Thomas and perhaps Sebastian know anything about it.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Body language. A certain openness about the way he answered my questions. No obvious nerves. As our American friends might put it, Mark is out of the loop.’
By his expression, Taploe seemed unconvinced.
‘What did he say about the lawyer?’ he asked.
‘Nothing that you won’t already know. Bit of a chancer, man about town. Taste for what certain people regard as the finer things in life. Champagne, oysters, bliads.’
Keen assumed correctly that Taploe would recognize the Russian slang for prostitute.
‘Is that right?’ He pursed out his lips. ‘To what extent is he involved in that when he’s in Russia?’
‘Happens mostly in Moscow, by the sound of it. You know the form. They hang around the hotel lobbies and mezzanine floors, looking for businessmen with a wedding ring …’
Taploe essayed an exaggerated frown, as if the moral implications of Macklin’s behaviour had briefly overwhelmed him. He looked visibly disappointed.
‘And is Mark involved with them as well?’
‘Good God, no.’
Keen’s reply was abrupt and Taploe wondered if he might have offended him. He found himself saying ‘Of course, sorry,’ and then again resented his own awkwardness. A clatter of schoolgirls came down into the basement bearing tall beakers of coffee. One had a lit cigarette in her hand and was smoking it without skill, like someone sucking on the end of a pencil.
‘Is that an area you’re investigating?’ Keen asked. ‘Women being trafficked from eastern Europe, Russia and so on?’
Taploe’s eyes flicked across to the Japanese student who was still engrossed in his notes. Next to him, about three feet away, sat a vast man in his late thirties – surely American – dressed head to toe in Reebok sportswear. He was slowly typing an email using only the index finger of his left hand.
‘It’s certainly a possibility,’ he said, and swallowed a long intake of still-hot coffee. The roof of his mouth throbbed. ‘Did Mark add anything else in connection to that?’
‘Only that Thomas fools around with them in his hotel room. Perhaps he gets a discount.’
Taploe did not smile.
‘The impression I was given,’ Keen continued, ‘is that our lawyer friend is somewhat overwhelmed by the glamour of the way things work over there, the influence those boys wield. Unchecked power and unlimited violence. Excessive privilege for the select few. Free access to money, girls, narcotics, fast cars, restaurants; he’s in thrall to it all. The adrenalin, you see? Nothing like it over here, back in the old country.’
‘Yes,’ was all that Taploe managed to say, though everything that Keen was telling him fitted the emerging profile of Thomas Macklin. London surveillance had revealed nothing out of the ordinary: an on–off girlfriend (a receptionist in the City), the occasional escort, no tendency to gamble, a mild, recreational cocaine habit. He had an enthusiasm for lap-dancing and expensive clothes, few close friends, and a tendency to become aggressive when drunk. Macklin paid his bills regularly, but at any one time his major credit card – Visa – was never less than two or three thousand pounds in the red. He had sufficient funds in other bank accounts to pay the debt off, but for some reason failed to do so; Paul Quinn, Taploe’s closest associate on the case, had put this down to little more than negligence. There was nothing unusual about Macklin’s phone records, either at work, from home or on his mobile, save for the fact that he always called his Kukushkin contact in London from public telephone boxes, from which the calls were harder to trace. That, at the very least, hinted at a degree of concealment. The Internet, thus far, had revealed little that Quinn and Taploe did not already know: Macklin used email frequently, but only to stay in touch with developments within Libra worldwide. There had been nothing of any consequence to the ongoing investigation in the analysis of his Internet traffic, only incidents that coloured the psychological profile.
‘And Mark? That sort of lifestyle doesn’t appeal to him?’ Taploe asked.
Keen swallowed his espresso in a single controlled gulp.
‘I’ve told you,’ he said. ‘He’s more sensible, more down to earth. Like his father.’
Taploe did not acknowledge the joke. He thought that this would help him to make up some ground.
‘But you’ve spent a lot of time in that part of the world,’ he said, deciding to take a risk. ‘You can understand why Thomas might be tempted by the high life?’
Keen looked at him very quickly. His eyes appeared to blacken at the implication.
‘Thomas is a very different animal, Stephen, I can assure you. The lawyer’s a barrow boy, a bright entrepreneur out for whatever he can get. His sort usually run into trouble.’
A braver part of Taploe wanted to embarrass Keen into an explanation of the term ‘barrow boy’, but he let it go.
‘And the boss?’ he said. ‘How does Sebastian fit into the picture? How does he benefit from the Russian organization?’
Keen shifted slowly in his chair.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s absolutely no point in asking me about Roth.’ The use of his surname was a slip. ‘I should have thought that these were the sort of questions to which you might already have answers. As I told you at our previous meeting, my organization doesn’t tend to meet the chaps at the top of the tree. They send their underlings, their lawyers. Mr Ro –’ This time he checked himself. ‘Sebastian is a man about whom I know very little. I take it as read that he is greedy. I take it as read that he is unscrupulous. So many of us are, Stephen. But why would he be stupid enough to get involved with the Thieves? He must understand the power they exert in Russia? He’d be in over his head, could very quickly lose control of all his investments. It simply doesn’t make sense.’
‘And did Divisar warn him about that?’
‘Of course we did. Unfortunately, Thomas ignored our advice to get a Russian partner on board whose contacts would have facilitated the company’s expansion. Nor were they interested in franchising the name to local entrepreneurs. I advised them to become active in establishing relationships with senior government officials in the Ministry of Interior, men who might have offered them protection from organized crime, even if that meant paying off government bureaucrats instead. But Sebastian wanted total control. Apparently that was how he had built up the company and that was how he knew how to operate.’
The schoolgirls, gathered in a chattering huddle around one of the larger sofas, began giggling at a photograph in a magazine. Taploe looked across at them, absorbing Keen’s remarks and then running them through his mind like a filter. Eventually he said, ‘Does your son trust Thomas?’
Keen did not know how to answer the question beyond a simple, one-word response.
‘No.’
‘But they’re friends? They rely on each other.’
‘If that is your impression, then yes,’ he replied unhelpfully. He recalled asking Mark a similar question in the Chinese restaurant.
‘But what’s your impression?’ Taploe had begun to feel hemmed in by the crowded basement, the black coffee working through him to a flushed sweat. It was not even a question to which he required an answer, but he had been flustered from the moment he walked into the coffee house.
‘My impression?’ Keen ran the dark blue silk of his tie between the thumb and index finger of his left hand, smoothing it before letting it come to rest on the soft folds of his cream shirt. ‘My impression is merely common sense. That they may rely on one another, but that there is a world of difference between reliance and trust. If there wasn’t, after all, men like you and me would be out of a job. Loyalty within the world of business is a fiction. When push comes to shove, Thomas will no more look after my son’s interests than he would cut off his own hand.’
‘And vice versa?’
Keen moved forward.
‘You appear to be labouring under a misconception. Mark may have made several trips with Thomas, but they spent a lot of that time apart. What he gets up to in my son’s absence remains a mystery. You seem to think they’re some sort of double act, Libra’s answer to Morecambe and Wise.’
Taploe frowned, angered that Keen had mentioned the company by name.
‘You can understand that he’s our best lead,’ he said.
‘Well, what about the French chap?’ Keen asked. ‘If you want someone on the inside, why don’t you run him?’
‘French chap?’ Taploe said.
‘Philippe, I think his name is.’
‘D’Erlanger? He’s Belgian,’ Taploe corrected. ‘Anyway, he left the company to run a restaurant.’
‘Well, I was merely trying to help.’
‘Of course.’
‘So call Mark yourself,’ Keen suggested. ‘It’s obviously the next step.’ He felt no ordinary moral reason why he should not hand his son over to MI5. He was anxious to leave for dinner, and Mark would at least be able to help with the investigation. ‘To be honest, I’ve become bored playing the middleman,’ he said. ‘There’s something rather demeaning about it.’
12
Why had he bothered coming?
The pub in Edwardes Square stank generally of sweat and spilled pints, and specifically of stale sick in the area where Ben was sitting. He was halfway through a pint of Guinness, talking to an earnest financial journalist from the Evening Standard who wanted to know how he found the motivation to get up every morning and paint in his studio and, ‘Wasn’t there a temptation when you’re working from home just to fuck off and spend the whole afternoon in the cinema?’
‘Sometimes,’ Ben told him.
‘Well, I really admire you, man,’ he said. ‘No, I really do.’
Alice was at the bar, surrounded by five drooling male colleagues making wisecracks and pulling rank. She had phoned at the last moment and all but demanded that Ben join her for a drink. Come on. We never see each other. You never want to meet my friends. He had been forced to abandon work on the picture of Jenny, but now that he was here Alice was scarcely giving him the time of day. Ben was thinking about leaving as soon as he had finished his pint and going back to work in the studio.
‘So how much do you charge for a portrait?’ the journalist was asking.
‘What’s that?’ Ben had heard the question, but wanted to suggest with his eyes that he thought it was none of his business.
‘I said how much do you –’
‘It depends.’
‘Oh, right. What on, man? I mean, how do you rate it? By the hour?’
The conversation went on like this for fifteen minutes. But can you make any real money as a painter? Don’t you get bored and lonely? Ben couldn’t get away. The constant opening and closing of the street door fed muffled traffic noise into the pub. Ben found himself explaining why he hated the cocktail-party circuit of art exhibitions and gallery openings, all that air-kissing and people with too much money buying paintings just to match a sofa. The journalist was laughing, agreeing with everything Ben said, even offering to buy him a pint and introduce him to a City financier who was collecting art and ‘really knew what was right and wrong’.
‘You know, man. Not shark tanks and elephant shit. Paintings. He really likes oils and watercolours. Give me your number and I’ll text you his details.’
That was when Mark walked into the pub.
He was stopped by Alice almost immediately among the jam of bodies at the bar. She squealed and put her arms around his waist, looking over in Ben’s direction. Was this more than coincidence? Ben was so pleased to see him that he dismissed the thought immediately. He stood up, said, ‘Back in a moment,’ and walked towards the bar.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘Hello, brother. Had a meeting next door. Just popped in for a pint.’
‘Isn’t it amazing?’ Alice was saying, putting her hand on Mark’s back. ‘Of all the places.’
There were introductions, rounds of drinks. For half an hour they talked at the bar, Mark telling stories about Libra and Moscow, Alice involving everybody in the conversation and making sure to laugh at the news editor’s jokes. A frustrating evening became suddenly enjoyable for Ben, the easy slip of Guinness and close family. And as Alice’s colleagues left the pub one by one, it was easy for Mark to pull him away into a private huddle and to deal with the task in hand.
‘Listen,’ he said, putting a grip on Ben’s arm. ‘It’s good we’ve run into each other. I need to have a chat with you about something. Something important.’
Ben was smoking and pointed to the fourth finger of Mark’s right hand with his cigarette.
‘Is it about that?’ he asked.
Mark looked down.
‘What? The ring?’
‘The ring.’
A bad start.
‘Not exactly, no.’
‘Something else, then?’ Ben said, and sat down at a free table.
Mark was slow to follow, as if assembling his thoughts. He was always apprehensive when it came to talking to Ben. Coupled with a desire to protect and assist his younger brother existed an older insecurity, rooted in childhood squabbles and fights, a feeling that Ben could outsmart him. At Libra, Mark was super-efficient, the man Roth relied on to charm and cajole, an executive ten years in the business and never a foot put wrong. But when it came to Ben those talents were compromised by sheer familiarity. He hooked his suit jacket on the back of a beer-stained tartan chair and wondered how he was ever going to bring him round.
‘You OK?’ Ben asked.
‘Oh, sure.’
Mark must have looked tired and distracted, some sort of apology already evident in his eyes, because right away Ben said, ‘It’s about Christopher, isn’t it?’
And Mark nodded, hunching forward with an awkward smile.
‘’Fraid so,’ he said. ‘’Fraid so. Had lunch with him last week, before I went back to Moscow. That was when he gave me the signet ring. It belonged to …’
Ben immediately raised his hand and a column of ash fell free of the cigarette, drifting in scatters towards the carpet.
‘Forget it,’ he said. His attitude was not aggressive or unfeeling, merely a relaxed, clear assessment of his position. ‘I don’t care where it came from, why he gave it to you or which one of the Keen great-great-grandfathers wore it during the Crimean War. That stuff is between you and him. I don’t want any part of it.’
At the bar a soft drinks gun coughed.
‘Fair do’s,’ Mark muttered. ‘Fair do’s. I just wanted to let you know, so there was no big mystery or anything.’
‘Well, I appreciate it.’
There was hefty silence. Mark instinctively felt that the timing was all wrong; both of them a little drunk, Alice only ten feet away and their father on the other side of London. Why had he agreed to do Keen’s dirty work? What was in it for him?
‘But it’s connected to what I wanted to talk about,’ he said.
‘What’s connected to what you wanted to talk about?’
‘The ring. The dinner,’ Mark replied.
‘Oh. Right.’
Ben actually looked quite bored.
‘The other night, when I came round for dinner and you and Alice were going at it …’
This seemed to galvanize Ben briefly. He looked up and gave a quick response.
‘Yeah, I’m sorry about that. Alice has been a bit stressed lately. Both of us, in fact. Work stuff, marriage. We haven’t been getting on and it’s just been one argument after another …’
‘No, that’s not what I mean.’
Ben cocked his head to one side. They were talking at cross-purposes.
‘What then?’
‘Look, why don’t I just spell it out?’ Mark moved uneasily in his chair. It was like breaking bad news, waiting for the right moment. ‘I think things have changed between me and you, brother. Not as easy as they were. You follow?’
Ben shook his head. On the way to the pub Mark had sketched out the basics of a speech in his mind, but he was moving on to it too quickly.
‘It’s like this. The last six months, however long it’s been since Dad and I started meeting up, it’s as if you’ve gone into yourself, moved away.’
To illustrate his point, Mark spread his arms outwards like a cross and nearly knocked half a pint of cider out of the hand of a passing customer. Across the pub, a man was slamming his fist against the hard plastic casing of a fruit machine, spitting the single word ‘Fuck’.
‘It’s just that we’ve never really chatted about any of it.’ Mark was rubbing his jaw, words coming out before he had time to contemplate their impact. ‘It’s just been swept under the carpet. I’m abroad a lot, you’re with Alice, it’s not easy finding the time. But we need to clear the air. Your opinion matters to me. Now talk to me about what’s going on.’
Ben looked completely taken aback.
‘Where’s this coming from?’ he said.
‘It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Just seeing you tonight made me want to talk about it.’
Ben’s hand went up to his forehead, almost pulling the skin back from his eyes. He looked bloodshot and tense.
‘So OK, we’ll talk about it.’ He tipped his face up to the light and exhaled in a gasp. ‘It’s like this.’ Mark was listening very carefully. ‘I don’t allow myself to think about him. There are hard certainties in my life. There’s you. There’s Alice. I have my painting and my good friends. That’s how things stay under control. That’s how I manage to get by.’
The answer was so characteristic of his brother that Mark felt there was almost no point in going on. When Ben got an idea into his head it was impossible to change his mind. Only a basic desire not to let his father down led him to say, ‘Is that good for you?’
‘Is what good for me?’
‘Thinking about things in that way? Breaking them down?’
‘It’s just how I’ve learned to cope.’ Across the room, somebody had paid fifty pence to hear a bad cover version of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ on the jukebox. The song was forced and loud and Ben had to speak up. ‘And now that Alice and I are married I have to deal with that. She needs my support. I want to look after her, to make things right. You know all this. Why the fuck are you bringing it up now? Let’s get back to the bar and relax.’
Yeah, let’s, Mark thought, and hated what he was doing. He genuinely believed that the stand off between his brother and Keen was unhealthy, a running sore in the family, yet there was nothing, surely, that could be done about it. He was manipulating Ben for his father’s benefit, pure and simple. They had set a trap for him, pushing Ben towards something that he wanted no part of. And where was Alice? Laughing at the bar, oblivious to what was going on, facilitating her career while Mark was risking everything. Why didn’t she come over, why didn’t she think of someone else for a change? He felt heavy with sweat and drink. A woman at the bar was hanging her arm around the neck of a fat, bald Irishman mouthing the lyrics ‘How does it feel?’ over and over again.
‘What does Alice think about it?’ Mark found himself asking. ‘What does she reckon you should do?’
‘We haven’t talked about it much,’ Ben replied. ‘Why? Has she said anything?’
And suddenly Mark had a chance to force the issue. He remembered that Keen had asked an almost identical question as they were leaving the restaurant in Queensway.
‘What’s Alice’s view?’ his father had said. ‘Does she think Ben’s right about this? Right not to want to meet me?’
Mark had hesitated briefly, but the wine at lunch had led him to betray a confidence.
‘She’s just got used to the idea. Ever since she’s known Ben, she’s known about you and your situation. And if you want my honest opinion I reckon she thinks Ben’s being narrow-minded. In fact, she’s told me as much.’
If Mark could have retracted that statement, he would have done so in an instant. Keen’s eyes had lit up.
‘You could use that,’ he said, and the inference was appalling.
‘Use that? What do you mean?’
‘Tell Ben that you and Alice are in agreement. Tell him that it’s time he reconsidered. It’s the truth, isn’t it?’
‘… Mark?’
Ben was trying to attract his attention.
‘Yeah. Sorry. I wandered off.’
‘I asked you a question. I said, has Alice said anything about this?’
‘Well, maybe you should ask her.’ Mark had not intended to sound mysterious.
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Does she know about this? Does she know that we’re having this conversation?’
And at that moment Alice looked over, sensing the note-change in the tenor of her husband’s voice. Ben saw the set-up instantly.
‘Jesus. You’re not here by coincidence, are you?’
Mark wasn’t sure whether Ben was touched or angry; his face was momentarily unreadable. As a consequence he did not bother to lie in response. Shaking his head and even smiling at the stupidity of Keen’s plan, Mark said, ‘I’m not here by coincidence, no.’
And Ben was out of the pub in seconds.
13
Ben knew that it was not a good idea for a man of thirty-two to walk out of a crowded London pub after telling his older brother to fuck off. Not in Kensington and Chelsea, at any rate. And not in front of half a dozen of his wife’s colleagues, most of whom would now be on their mobile phones telling anyone from the Standard not fortunate enough to have been there in person just exactly what happened in the lounge bar of the Scarsdale at 8.28 p.m.
Mark had followed him outside, and Ben had heard Alice calling his name as he turned on to Kensington High Street, but they had both decided to let him go and were probably still waiting back in the pub. There was no sense, after all, in going after Ben when the red mist descended. They both would have known that from long experience.
He walked in the direction of Hyde Park, turning back on himself at the gates to Kensington Palace and returning along the opposite side of the street. Alice tried calling him on his mobile phone but he switched it off. It took about ten minutes for Ben to calm down and another five for embarrassment to set in. So much of his anger, he knew, was just a pose, a melodramatized statement of his long-term refusal to change. Whatever arrangement, whatever trap had been set by Alice and Mark, angered him only because he had been kept out of the loop, treated like a child by his wife and brother, and finally cornered in a place from which there was no realistic escape. It had occurred to him many times that he was clinging to old ideas simply because they shielded him from facing harder choices; in a very dangerous sense, Ben was defined by an attitude towards his father which he had formed as a teenager. To abandon that principled stand would mean the dismantling of an entire way of thinking. How would people react to him? How would he square it with what had happened to Mum? Ben wished to honour her memory, and yet that was the easy position. Far more difficult, surely, to do what Mark had done, to let bygones be bygones and to open himself up to chance.
He was heading back to the pub via a street at the western end of Edwardes Square when he heard a voice behind him.
‘Ben?’
He turned and saw that Mark was following him. He looked shattered. With the club opening in Moscow, he was probably only sleeping five hours a night and this was the last thing he needed.
‘Look, I’m sorry. It’s my fault. Don’t blame Alice. I asked her to help me out and she was just being loyal.’
Ben said nothing.
‘I’m sorry if I took you by surprise. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. We just …’ Mark stalled on the words. He had obviously rehearsed something and was determined to get it right. ‘All I was trying to say was this. More and more I’ve been thinking about the future, you know? Where are we gonna be ten years down the line? You and Alice have kids, Dad’s their grandfather, but because of all this shit that’s thirty years in the past his name can’t be mentioned at the dinner table. Meanwhile, he and I are getting on better than ever, but we’re still having to creep around behind your back. How long’s it gonna last?’
‘So you want me to meet him just so that you can have a better time of it when you’re fifty-five?’
Ben regretted saying that, but for the sake of fraternal pride did not want to concede too early.
‘I’m just saying that you should think about giving him a chance. Not tonight. Tonight is fucked into a hat. But soon, Ben, soon. Otherwise, he’s just going to be this barrier between us, a bridge we can’t cross.’
Ben smirked and looked up at the night sky.
‘I knew this was going to happen,’ he said. ‘Something like tonight.’
‘It was inevitable,’ Mark said.
‘Yes it was. And you know why? Because he’s talked you into it. You’re too soft on him, brother. You always want to do what’s right so that no one gets upset. Well, I’m upset. I got very upset in there. I embarrassed myself, I embarrassed you and I embarrassed my wife in front of everybody she works for. How does that feel?’
Mark did not respond. It looked as if he wanted to, but was holding back for fear of making things worse.
‘You want my truthful opinion?’ Ben was not surprised to feel that there was still resentment inside him. Most of it was a desire not to lose face, and he knew that he was prepared to make a later concession. ‘I think the relationship Dad has with you gives him what he wants – an opportunity to absolve himself of guilt.’ From his jacket pocket he took out a packet of cigarettes and watched his brother’s face for a register of annoyance. ‘Now he wants to complete that process, supposedly to convince me of his worth as a father. But that’s not motivated by a genuine concern for my welfare, or Alice’s, or anyone else. It’s just a selfish desire to convince himself of his blamelessness in respect of the past. He’s a spy, for Christ’s sake. All his relationships are games, little intrigues and power struggles. Look how he’s manipulated you. For most of his adult life Christopher Keen has been making a living out of an ability to convince people that he is something other than the person he appears to be. Think about it, Mark. If he could do it to Mum when they were married, if he could to it to us when we were kids, what’s to stop him doing it now?’
‘Thanks,’ Mark said, his face tightening. ‘You think I’m that much of a mug?’
Ben didn’t answer. He started walking towards the metal fence that ran along the western edge of the square. He had to move between parked cars.
‘You’ve got him all wrong,’ Mark said, following behind. ‘He’s not some puppet-master pulling the strings. Don’t you think people change? Don’t you think it’s possible that he might want to say sorry?’
Ben stopped and turned.
‘Has he said sorry to you?’
Mark could not give the answer he needed to without lying.
‘That’s not his style,’ he said, fudging it. They were now standing together on the pavement. ‘Dad just wants to make his peace. It’s that simple.’
‘Well, maybe he does,’ Ben conceded. ‘Maybe he does. And he can make it somewhere else.’
There were lights on in several of the houses on Edwardes Square, oil paintings and chintz and Peter Sissons reading the news. Ben saw a man enter a yellow-wallpapered drawing room wearing bottle-green corduroy trousers and a bright red sweater. The man was carrying a tray of food and talking to someone in another room.
‘You don’t believe that,’ Mark said.
‘Don’t I?’ Ben stared hard into his eyes. ‘He’s doing what I always thought he’d do. Crawling back, mid-life crisis, wanting us both to pat him on the head and tell him everything’s OK. Well, it’s not OK. He doesn’t meet me, he doesn’t meet Alice. End of story.’
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Charles Cumming
Perfect for fans of John le Carré, a gripping and suspenseful spy thriller from ‘the master of the modern spy thriller’ (Mail on Sunday)Mark and Benjamin Keen have not seen their father, Christopher, for more than twenty years.Hoping for a reconciliation, Christopher reappears, but he has only just begun to shed light on his life in the secret service when he is murdered in cold blood by an unidentified assassin.Was his death connected to his MI6 past? Did Christopher uncover a dangerous conspiracy involving his elder son? And what were his links to Moscow, Afghanistan and the Russian mafia in London?To discover the truth – and avenge their father’s death – the brothers are drawn into the legacy of his life as a spy.And inheritance can be deadly…
CHARLES CUMMING
The Hidden Man
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by Michael Joseph, Penguin Books, in 2003
Copyright © Charles Cumming 2003
Charles Cumming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007487226
Ebook Edition © 2013 ISBN: 9780007487233
Version: 2018-02-16
Contents
Title Page (#ueef07445-12c3-5aef-b073-92ba962320d8)
Copyright (#uffe3f22d-63ad-515d-9894-7dc117cd05fa)
Dedication (#ue9856297-36ab-56ad-bfaf-6cd711b5f223)
Winter (#u634a23d3-1f67-5f55-b075-8b887bd999ed)
Chapter 1 (#u644d169d-90bb-5eba-ade2-e37358c6c744)
Autumn (#uf8f32287-67fe-5118-b66b-97034e9f7779)
Chapter 2 (#u9f04921d-7bca-5033-82cd-38736260b6b5)
Chapter 3 (#u115d94c2-f294-5965-8193-427b8943d91f)
Chapter 4 (#u522b77ef-67ad-5035-a192-958be615eaef)
Chapter 5 (#uc8a3c832-4984-54b6-b85b-d1916c461c10)
Chapter 6 (#uae5f2044-9269-5fba-bbf5-f1931f479931)
Chapter 7 (#u2273cf57-fec3-551d-bf33-926899f26eff)
Chapter 8 (#uc7a4dc18-1635-5c18-b5cf-31f5ad274caf)
Chapter 9 (#ud7f4b1a9-e71f-5e4e-8d40-9b0614862bbf)
Chapter 10 (#ua2b490f1-3add-5032-849c-eaae7346b2d4)
Chapter 11 (#u665a9486-8a98-598c-b31e-f362a96fc7b0)
Chapter 12 (#u5975c07d-cea0-5c6e-b8e1-0af151e1e0dd)
Chapter 13 (#u9f965afe-57e5-57f9-bc1b-5f87143d5668)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Spring (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Charles Cumming (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
for my father
WINTER
1
The Russian is sitting alone on the driver’s side of a rented Mercedes Benz. The key in the ignition has been turned a single click, just enough to power the radio, and it is snowing outside, wet flakes of soft ice falling like ash in the darkness. A song comes on, an old Sinatra tune the man has not heard in many years: Frank singing live to a room full of screaming Americans, hanging off his every note. Sometimes it feels as if his whole life has been lived inside parked cars listening to the radio: sudden movements on side streets; a light snuffing out in a bedroom four floors up; moments of snatched sleep. Cars that smelled of imported cigarettes and the sweat of tired, unwashed men.
A young couple turn the corner into the street ahead of him, walking arm in arm with a jaunty, light-hearted step. Drunk, most probably, coming towards the car and laughing up at the falling snow. They are delighted by it, letting the flakes melt in the palms of upturned hands, embracing one another as it settles in their hair and on their clothes. Like so many London girls, he thinks the woman is worryingly thin: legs like saplings in high-heeled shoes. He fears that she may topple over on the wet pavement and, if she hurts herself, he will have to get out of the car to help her. Then there will be two witnesses who have seen his face.
The song ends and fades into an advertisement narrated in slang and dialect, words he cannot make out. English is no longer clear to him; somehow, in recent years, the language has changed, it has moved away. The couple skip past the Mercedes and he watches them disappear down the street using the mirror on the passenger side. An old technique. No need even to turn his head.
Now he reaches down to switch off the radio and everything is once again silent. Just a very faint impression of traffic in the distance, the city’s constant hum. Then, as an extension of the same movement, the Russian turns the catch on the glove box with his left hand, holds it as the casing falls open, and takes out the gun.
This no longer feels like an act of vengeance. It has been too long for that. It is simply a deep need within himself to attain some level of peace, to sew up the wound of his grief. In this sense his need to go through with it is almost like a lust: he has no control over himself, no way now of turning back.
From the back seat of the car he takes a woollen hat and a pair of leather gloves, items purchased at a shop in Hammersmith three days earlier. They are flimsy, but warm enough to cope with the timid British winter. Then he checks the street one last time and steps out of the car.
The flat is on the fourth floor of a large apartment building at the north-eastern end of the street. His legs are stiff and tired as he crosses the road, sore in the knees from waiting so long and tight along the sciatic nerve of his left thigh. Snow falls on to the shoulders of his coat; it flutters into his cheeks like puffs of dandelion. As he is climbing the steps of the building, a woman comes out and, for the first time, the Russian feels a sense of concern. Instinctively, he looks to the ground, taking a bunch of keys from his pocket with the ease and routine of a resident. The woman, mid-forties and slight, is hurried by the snow, muttering under her breath as she springs the catch on an umbrella. The noise of this is like birds breaking for the sky. The two do not look at one another directly, though he knows from experience that this may not be enough to absolve him, that the stranger may have seen his shoes, his trousers, perhaps even caught a glimpse of his face when it first appeared at the door. For an instant he thinks about turning back, but the possibility evaporates in the heat of his obligation. The force of revenge, the lust, carries him through the street door and into the lobby, where a clock on the wall tells him that it is twenty past one.
He has been here before, twice, to premeditate the act, to scout the building for exits, and to get a sense of its layout and design. So he knows that there is a white plastic timer switch inside the front door that will illuminate the stairwell for approximately two minutes, and an old, wrought-iron caged lift on the right-hand side of the lobby, with a staircase leading down to a locked basement and up to seven floors of apartments.
All of his experience has told him to take the stairs, to leave an option should anything go wrong. But he is older now, the fitness ripped from his legs, and has decided to ride the lift to the fifth floor and to walk down a single flight to the fourth as a way of preserving his strength.
The lift is waiting. He slides back the gate and steps inside, pushing a red ceramic button marked 5. The cabin ticks as it passes each floor, slices of red carpet and banister visible through the metal grilles of the lift shaft. The ageing wheels of the elevator mechanism twist through grease and oil, pulling him up through the building. At the third floor the lights go out on the stairs, sooner than he had anticipated, but a single pearl bulb inside the cabin provides him with enough light to reach into his coat, pull out the gun and place it in the right-hand pocket of his overcoat.
Now he squints outside, passing level 4, eyes moving quickly left and right to detect any sign of movement. Nothing. The lift continues to climb, halting ten seconds later on the fifth floor with nothing more than a slight jolting bump, like a sprung dancefloor. He notices a fresh piece of chewing gum wedged between the roof and the left panel of the cabin. He would like some gum now, something to take the dryness from the inside of his mouth.
Why does he feel nothing? Why, when he is just minutes away from an act that he has envisaged with total clarity and rapture for nearly twenty years, why then has his mind given way to everything but a very basic sense of process and technique? He is trying to convince himself that a moment of catharsis is imminent, but as he pulls back the cabin’s metal grille, pushes open the heavy door of the lift with his left hand, reaches into the pocket of his overcoat to release the safety catch on the gun, he is little more than a machine. It is like every other criminal act in his long, corrupted life. Tonight has no special resonance, not yet any sense of joy.
In one of the flats at the end of the corridor, the Russian can hear voices on a television, teenagers shouting at one another, then a screech of tyres. A late-night American film. The volume must have been turned up high, because he is able to pick out the noises and his hearing is not what it was. He holds the door of the lift as it swings slowly back on its hinge and then heads for the stairwell, taking each step slowly, keeping his heart rate down. It is very dark and he has to hold on to the banister with a gloved hand, the leather sticking on bumps of dried polish as it slides down the wood. A car sounds its born on the street just as he reaches the fourth floor.
Simultaneously he feels the first burst of adrenalin, not what it was in his youth, but a quickening nevertheless, lightening his arms and chest He knows that his heart is beating faster now and has to check his pace moving down the corridor, deliberately slowing as he approaches the door of Apartment 462. Twenty feet away the Russian stops and takes out the set of lock-picks. He sees light glint dully on the metal surface of the keys and finds its source – a fire exit sign at the end of the corridor, bold white lettering within an illuminated green case. Then he pinches the main key between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and moves towards the door.
With his head pressed to the pale wood, cold against his ears, the Russian listens. No sound inside. Then, way below, there are voices, at least two people, their footsteps clattering on the marble floor of the lobby. Immediately he moves away from the door and walks back to the edge of the stairwell, waiting for the lift to jolt free of the fifth floor and ride back to ground level. But they are walking: when he peers over the banister he can see two heads that stop at the first floor. He assumes – although he can neither see nor hear – that the couple go to an apartment to the right of the staircase, and waits a full minute for silence to re-engulf the building before returning to the door.
Perhaps the distraction has hurried him, for the Russian listens only briefly now before sliding the key, with extraordinary slowness, into the lock. A perfect fit. He pushes open the door, just enough to fit through, and winces as it scrapes on linoleum. Immediately there is the smell of good, fresh coffee; the flat is thick with it. His eyes adjust to the total absence of light in the tiny hall. He knows from a plan of the apartment that the bedroom is beyond the closed door on the other side of the living room. The kitchen is directly ahead of him and it is empty. A Post-it note has been stuck on the frame of the door, and he can just make out the scrawl:
Call Taploe re: M.
The yellow paper moves very slightly as, in these first few seconds, he stands quite still, listening for any indication that the Englishman may be awake.
It is only now that he hears the music. Was it playing as he came in? He has been holding the gun in his right hand all this time and his grip now tightens around the butt. Classical music, a piano, very slow and melancholy. The kind of music a man might listen to if he were having trouble getting to sleep.
With his heel the Russian pushes the front door until it is resting against the frame. Then, without needing to look back, he feels for the latch with his hand and closes it very slowly. He waits for the lock to engage and moves one step forward towards the door of the living room, the gun now up and level. If he is awake, so be it. Let him see me coming.
But there is no other noise or movement as he walks into the sitting room, just the music fractionally louder now and the bathroom door ahead of him, leaking light into a narrow passage. Everything in the sitting room is visible because of it and, out of habit, he takes it all in: the two paperback books lying on the carpet; the empty tumbler on a small three-legged antique table; a framed photograph of a young man and woman on their wedding day hanging unevenly near by. The room of an untidy, chaotic mind, devoid of a woman’s touch.
Another two steps and he is across the room, moving as lightly as he can, cheap deck shoes noiseless against the worn carpet. Still he feels no sense of exhilaration, no impending release for his grief: only a specialist’s expertise, an absolute focus on the job in hand. Moving silently between the books on the floor, his eyes fix on the space ahead of him: the narrow, well-lit corridor, the bedroom door to his left. On this he trains the gun, stopping now, his mind a spin of instinct and calculation. For years he has imagined killing the Englishman in his bed, watching him cower and writhe in a corner. It has been planned that way. But he is suddenly uncertain of making that last move into the room, of opening the door into a place where his opponent may hold the upper hand.
The decision is made for him. He hears a single heavy footstep, then the sound of a light switch being pressed and the rattle of the bedroom door handle as it drops through forty-five degrees. Instinctively, the Russian takes two steps backwards, hurried now, stripped of control. Light flares briefly into the passage and he blinks rapidly as he looks up, the pale face etched with shock.
The intruder had words to say, a speech prepared, but the first shot punctures the left side of his victim’s chest, spinning him to the ground. Blood and tissue and bone shower against the walls and floor of the corridor, one colour in the pale bathroom light. But he is still conscious, his blue cotton pyjamas blackened and viscous with blood.
In his own language, the Russian says, ‘Do you know who I am?’
And the Englishman, propped up by a pale thick arm, shakes his head as the colour drains from his eyes.
Again, in Russian: ‘Do you know who I am? Do you know why I have come?’
But he sees that he is passing out: his neck is suddenly loose and falling. In the moments before the second shot the Russian tries quickly to summon a sense of fulfilment, a closure to the act. He looks directly into a dying man’s eyes and tries to feel something beyond the basic violence of what he has done.
The effort is hopeless, and as the second bullet rips into his chest, he is already turning, experiencing little more than the basic fear of being discovered. He just wants to be out of this place, to be away from London. And then he will go to the grave in Samarkand and tell Mischa what he has done.
AUTUMN
2
‘Don’t move. Hold it right there.’
The girl stopped immediately, her hand on the nape of her neck.
‘Now look up at me.’
Her eyes met his.
‘Without twisting your head.’
She moved her chin back towards the mattress.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Is that comfortable?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re warm enough?’
‘Yes, Ben, yes.’
He leaned forward, out of sight now. She heard the itch and whisper of the brush as it moved across the canvas. He said, ‘Sorry, Jenny, I interrupted you.’
‘That’s OK.’ She coughed and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘You said you were six when it happened? When your father walked out?’
Ben took a long drag on his cigarette and said, ‘Six, yes.’
‘And your brother?’
‘Mark was eight.’
‘And you haven’t seen your father since?’
‘No.’
Outside on the street, three floors down, a distant child was imitating the sound of a diving aeroplane.
‘Why did he leave?’
When Ben did not answer immediately, Jenny thought that she might have offended him. That could happen sometimes, with sudden intimacy. When a model is lying naked in an artist’s studio with only a thin white sheet for company, conversation tends towards the candid.
‘My father was offered a position in the Foreign Office, in 1976,’ he said finally. The voice betrayed a controlled resentment, the glimpse, perhaps, of a quick temper. ‘The idea of it went to his head. The work meant more to him than his family did. So he took off.’
Jenny managed a compassionate smile, although there was nothing in her own experience to compare with the concept of a parent abandoning his own child. The thought appalled her. Ben continued to paint, his face very still and concentrated.
‘That must have been awful,’ she said, just to fill the silence. The remark sounded like a platitude and she regretted it. ‘I mean, it’s difficult to recover from something like that. You must find it so hard to trust anyone.’
Ben looked up.
‘Well, you have to be careful with that one, don’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Blaming everything on the past, Jenny. We’re the therapy generation. An explanation for every antisocial act in our damaged adolescence. Make a mistake and you can always write it off against a shitty childhood.’
She smiled. She liked the way he said things like that, the smile that suddenly cracked across his face.
‘Is that what you believe?’ she asked.
‘Not exactly.’ He stubbed out the cigarette. He was trying to capture the play of light on her body, the darkening hollows of skin. ‘It’s what my brother thinks.’
‘Mark?’
Ben nodded. ‘He’s a lot more forgiving than I am. Actually works with my father now. Doesn’t see it as a problem at all.’
‘He works with him?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘Freak coincidence.’ Ben blew hard on the canvas to free it of dust. He didn’t feel much like opening up and telling Jenny all about big brother’s dream job; running a top London nightclub and flying business class around the world. She was a student, just twenty-one, and would only want to know if he could get her into Libra for free or source her some cheap CDs. ‘Mark and my dad go on business trips together,’ he said vaguely. ‘Have dinners, that kind of thing.’
‘And you don’t mind?’
Ben rubbed his neck.
‘Nothing to do with me.’
‘Come on.’ She rolled over and drew her knees up tight against her chest. A very faint tremor of cellulite appeared on her upper thigh. ‘Yesterday, you told me you guys were close. Hasn’t it affected your relationship?’
Ben decided to kill the subject.
‘Are you bored, Jenny?’ he asked. ‘How come you’ve moved position?’
She sensed his annoyance, but pressed on, using her body as a decoy. With her legs in the air, cycling for balance as she leaned over the bed, she began looking for a cigarette.
‘I just need a break,’ she said. ‘Come on. Don’t be so mysterious. Tell me.’
He was looking at the naked base of her spine.
‘Tell you what?’
‘About your brother. About the way you feel about him.’
‘The way I feel about him.’ Ben repeated the phrase quietly under his breath.
‘Yes.’ She was sitting up again now, still without a cigarette. ‘Tell me how this thing between Mark and your father has affected you.’
‘This thing?’
He was picking at words, escaping her. She knew that he was being clever and shrugged her shoulders in an exaggerated gesture of mock surrender. ‘Just tell me if you’re still as close as you were before.’
‘Closer,’ he lied, and looked her right in the eye.
‘Good.’
Then he paused, adding, ‘I’m just angry with him.’
She seized on this like a piece of gossip.
‘Angry? About what?’
‘For forgiving our father so quickly. For welcoming him back into his life.’ Ben found that he was sweating and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. ‘Mark gives the appearance of being streetwise and cool, but the truth is he’s a diplomat, the guy who smooths things over. He hates confrontation or ill-feeling of any kind. So Dad comes back after an absence of twenty-five years and his attitude is conciliatory. Anything for a quiet life. For some reason, Mark needs to keep everything on an even keel or he gets unsettled.’
‘Maybe that’s how he’s learned to deal with hardship in the past,’ Jenny suggested confidently, and Ben tried to remember if the girls he had known when he was twenty-one had been half as self-assured and insightful as she was.
‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘And you?’ she asked.
‘I’m just the opposite. I don’t want simple answers to complicated questions. I don’t want to welcome Dad back with open arms and say it didn’t matter that he ruined my mother’s life. Mark thinks this is stubborn, that I’m locked in the past. He thinks I should let bygones be bygones.’
‘Well, you have to deal with it in your own way.’
‘That’s what I keep telling him.’
Out on the road, the child was making the noise of a machine gun, a sound like a flooded engine swooping up and down the street. Ben’s eyes twitched in annoyance and he stood up to close the window. Jenny renewed her search for a cigarette, rummaging around in a handbag amongst old tissues and bottles of scent. When a pair of sunglasses spilled out on to the wooden floor, he said, ‘Have one of mine,’ and threw her a packet from his shirt pocket.
Ben was slightly annoyed, as if she was not seeing his point of view, and went through with an idea. Walking across the studio from the window, he withdrew a scrapbook from the drawer of a cupboard and handed it to her, flicking to the second page before returning to his easel.
‘What’s this?’ she asked.
‘Read the cutting.’
A wedding announcement from The Times had been pasted on the open page.
The marriage took place on 10 April between Mr Benjamin Graham Keen, youngest son of the late Mrs Carolyn Buchanan, and Alice Lucy McEwan, only daughter of Mr Michael McEwan of Halstead, Essex, and Mrs Susan Mitchell, of Hampstead, London. Mr Mark Keen was best man.
‘This is about you and your wife,’ Jenny said.
‘Yes, but you notice the omission?’ There was a small note of childish rebellion in Ben’s voice that surprised her. He didn’t seem like the type to hold a grudge.
‘No.’
‘There’s no mention of my father.’
‘You just left him out?’
‘We just left him out.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of what he’s done. Because he’s nobody.’ The words were unconvincing, like something Ben had learned by heart many years before. ‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the day my father walked out on Mum was the day he ceased to exist.’
3
Ian Boyle stood in the vast, air-conditioned barn of Terminal One Arrivals, waiting for the plane. He was cold and tired and wished he was on his way home. Arsenal were playing Champions League at Highbury against a team of third-rate Austrians: there’d be goals and a hatful of chances, one of those easy nights in Europe when you can just sit back and watch the visitors unravel. He’d wanted to have a shower before kick-off, to cook up a curry and sink a couple of pints down the pub. Now it would be a race to get home after the rush-hour M4 trudge, and no time to chat to his daughter or deal with the piles of post.
Two young boys – five and eight, Ian guessed – swarmed past him and ducked into a branch of Sunglass Hut, shrieking with energy and excitement. A woman with a voice not dissimilar to his ex-wife’s made a prerecorded security announcement on the public address system, pointless and unheard in the din of the hall. Ian wondered if there were other spooks near by, angels from fifty services waiting for their man in the stark white light of Heathrow. His own people, working other assignments, would most probably have holed up in Immigration, getting a kick out of the two-way mirrors at Passport Control. But Ian had spent four years working Customs and Excise and was anxious to avoid spending time with old colleagues; a lot of them had grown smug and set in their ways, drunk on the secret power of strip search and eviction. He’d go through only when the plane had touched down, not a moment before, and watch Keen as he came into the hall. It was just that he couldn’t stand the looks they gave him, those fat grins over weak cups of tea, the suggestion of pity in their trained, expressionless eyes. When Ian had left for the Service in 1993, he could tell that a lot of his colleagues were pleased. They thought it was a step down; Ian was just about the only one who felt he was moving up.
Finding a seat opposite a branch of Body Shop, he looked up and checked the flickering arrivals screen for perhaps the ninth or tenth time. The BA flight from Moscow was still delayed by an hour and a half – no extension, thank Christ, but still another twenty-five minutes out of London. Fucking Moscow air-traffic control. Every time they put him on Libra it was the same old story: ice on the runway at Sheremetjevo and the locals too pissed to fix it. He rang Graham outside in the car, told him the bad news, and settled back in his chair with a collapsing sigh. A family of Africans in some kind of traditional dress walked past him weeping, two of them pressing handkerchiefs to their eyes as they pushed trolleys piled six feet high with luggage and bags. Ian couldn’t tell if they were happy or sad. He lit a cigarette and opened the Standard.
4
Christopher Keen had taken the call personally in his private office. It was a routine enquiry, of the sort he handled every day, from a businessman calling himself Bob Randall with ‘a minor difficulty in the former Soviet Union’.
‘I’ve been informed,’ Randall explained, ‘that Russia is your area of expertise.’
Keen did not ask who had recommended him for the job. That was simply the way the business worked: by reputation, by word of mouth. Neither did he enquire about the nature of the problem. That was simply common sense when speaking on an open line. Instead, he said, ‘Yes. I worked in the Eastern Bloc for many years.’
‘Good.’ Randall’s voice was nasal and bureaucratically flat. He suggested a meeting in forty-eight hours at a location on the Shepherd’s Bush Road.
‘It’s a Café Rouge, in the French-style. On the corner of Batoum Gardens.’ Randall spelt out ‘Batoum’ very slowly, saying ‘B for Bertie’ and ‘A for Apple’ in a way that tested Keen’s patience. ‘There are tables there which can’t be seen from the street. We’re not likely to be spotted. Would that be suitable for you, or do you have a specific procedure that you like to follow?’
Keen made a note of the date in his desk diary and smiled: first-time buyers were often like this, jumpy and prone to melodrama, wanting codewords and gadgets and chalk marks on walls.
‘There is no specific procedure,’ he said. ‘I can find the café.’
‘Good. But how will I recognize you?’
As he asked the question, Bob Randall was sitting in Thames House staring at a JPEG of Keen taken in western Afghanistan in 1983, but it was necessary cover.
‘I’m tall,’ Keen said, switching the phone to his other ear. ‘I’ll be wearing a dark blue suit, most probably. My experience is that in circumstances such as these two people who have never met before very quickly come to recognize one another. Call it one of the riddles of the trade.’
‘Of course,’ Randall replied. ‘Of course. And when shall we say? Perhaps six o’clock?’
‘Fine,’ Keen said. He was already hanging up. ‘Six o’clock.’
Two days later, the businessman calling himself Bob Randall arrived at the café on Shepherd’s Bush Road half an hour early and picked out a secluded table, his back facing the busy street. At 17.55, he took a call from Ian Boyle, informing him in a jumble of code and double-speak that the BA flight from Moscow had eventually landed some ninety-five minutes late. The subject had used a public telephone box – not a mobile – after clearing Passport Control, and was now picking up his luggage in the hall. The call had been made to a west London number that was already being traced.
‘Understood,’ he told him. ‘And was there any sign of Duchev?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Well keep on it, please. And brief Paul Quinn. I’m going to be walking the dog for the next two hours. Contact me again at eight.’
And at that moment he saw Christopher Keen coming into the café, indeed wearing a dark blue suit, a striking man possessed of a languid self-confidence. Demonstrably public school, he thought, and felt the old prejudice kick in like a habit. The photograph at Thames House had not done justice to Keen’s well-preserved good looks, nor to his travelled, evidently disdainful manner. The two men made eye contact and Randall gave a thin smile, his moustache lifting slightly to reveal stained yellow teeth.
Keen sensed immediately that there was something unconvincing about his prospective client. The suit was off the peg, and the shirt, bought as white but now greyed by repeated launderings, looked cheap and untailored. This was not a businessman, with ‘minor difficulties in the former Soviet Union’, far less someone who could afford to employ the services of Divisar Corporate Intelligence.
‘Mr Randall,’ he said, with a handshake that deliberately crushed his knuckles. Keen looked quickly at the ground and registered his shoes. Grey – possibly fake – patent leather, tasselled and scuffed. Further evidence. ‘How can I help?’
‘I’m very pleased to meet you.’ Randall was trying to release his hand. ‘Let me start by getting you a drink.’
‘That would be very kind, thank you.’
‘Did you find the café OK?’
‘Easily.’
Keen placed a black Psion Organiser and a mobile telephone on the table in front of him and sat down. Freeing the trapped vents of his suit jacket, he looked out of the window and tried to ascertain if he was being watched. It was an instinct, no more than that, but something was out of place. A crowd of office workers had gathered at a table on the other side of the window and an elderly man with a limp was walking into the café alone. The traffic heading north towards Shepherd’s Bush Green had been slowed by a van double-parked outside a mini-supermarket. Its rear doors were flung open and two young Asian men were unloading boxes from the back.
‘It’s part of a chain, I believe,’ Randall said.
‘What’s that?’
‘The café. Part of a chain.’
‘I know.’
A waitress came and took their order for two beers. Keen wondered if he would have to stay long.
‘So, I very much appreciate your meeting me at such short notice.’ The businessman had a laboured, slightly self-satisfied way of strangling words, an accent located somewhere near Bracknell. ‘Had you far to come?’
‘Not at all. I had a meeting in Chelsea. Caught a fast black.’
Randall’s eyes dropped out of character, as if Keen had made a racist remark. ‘Excuse me?’
‘A fast black,’ he explained. ‘A taxi.’
‘Oh.’ In the uneasy silence that followed, the waitress returned and poured lager into his glass.
‘So, how long have you worked in your particular field?’
‘About seven or eight years.’
‘And in Russia before that?’
‘Among other places, yes.’ Keen thanked the waitress with a patrician smile and picked up his glass. ‘I take it you’ve been there?’
‘Not exactly, no.’
‘And yet you told me on the telephone that you have a problem in the former Soviet Union. Tell me, Mr Randall, what is it that you think I can do for you?’
Leaning back in his seat, Randall nodded and swallowed a mouthful of lager. He blinked repeatedly and a small amount of foam evaporated into his moustache. After a momentary pause he said, ‘Forgive me. It was necessary to employ a little subterfuge to prevent your employers becoming suspicious. My name is not Bob Randall, as perhaps you may have guessed. It is Stephen Taploe. I work across the river from your former Friends.’
Keen folded his arms and muttered, ‘You don’t say,’ as Taploe pushed his tongue into the side of his cheek, his feet moving involuntarily under the table. ‘And you think that I can help you with something …’
‘Well, it’s a good deal more complicated than that,’ he said. ‘To come straight to the point, Mr Keen, this has become something of a family matter.’
5
‘It’s possible, Jenny, that one day you’ll walk into a public art gallery and look at nothing at all. A total absence. Something with no texture, no shape, no solidity. No materials will have been used up in its construction, not even light or sound. Just a room full of nothing. That will be the exhibit, the gimmick, the thing you’re encouraged to look at and talk about over cranberry juice at Soho House. Emptiness. Actually, the opposite of art.’
Jenny was glad that Ben wasn’t talking about his father any more. She preferred it when his mood was less anxious and abrasive. It was another side to him, more relaxed and quick-witted; she wondered if it was even flirtatious. But Ben looked like the faithful type: he was only thirty-two, after all, and there were pictures of his wife all over the studio walls, nudes and portraits of a quality that had persuaded her to sit for him in the first place.
‘Have you lived here long?’ she asked, and began gathering up her clothes. Ben was cleaning his brushes at the sink, wrapping the bristles in a rubber band and covering any exposed paint with small wraps of cling film.
‘Since we got engaged,’ he said. ‘About three years.’
‘It’s such a great house.’ Jenny’s stomach flattened out as she stretched into a thick woollen polo neck, her head disappearing in the struggle to find sleeves.
‘Alice’s father bought it cheap in the late seventies. Thought it would make a good investment.’
The head popped out, like somebody breaking free of a straitjacket.
‘Well he thought right,’ she said, shaking out her hair. ‘And it’s useful for you to be able to work from home.’
‘It is,’ Ben said. ‘It is. It’s a great space. I’m very lucky.’
‘A lot of artists have to rent studios.’
‘I know that.’
She was oblivious to it, but talking about the house always made Ben feel edgy. Three storeys of prime Notting Hill real estate and not a brick of it his. When Carolyn, his mother, had died seven years before, she had left her two sons a few hundred pounds and a small flat in Clapham that they rented out to unreliable tenants. Alice’s father, by contrast, was wealthy: on top of her basic salary as a journalist she had access to a substantial trust, and the house was bought in her name.
‘So what are you cooking for your brother?’
Ben was glad of the change of subject. Turning round, he said: ‘Something Thai, maybe a green curry.’
‘Oh. Bit of a dab hand in the kitchen, are we?’
‘Well, not bad. I find it relaxing after a day in the studio. And Alice can’t boil an egg. So it’s either that or we eat out every night.’
‘What about Mark? What about your brother? Can he cook?’
Ben laughed, as if she had asked a stupid question.
‘Mark doesn’t know one end of a kitchen from the other. Anyway, he’s always out at night, with clients or away at the club. Spends a lot of his time travelling overseas. He doesn’t get much chance to be at home.’
‘Really?’ Jenny was putting on her shoes. ‘What time’s he due back?’
She’s interested, he thought. They always are. They see photos of Mark in the hall and they want a chance to meet him.
‘I’m not sure. He just called on the phone from Heathrow.’
‘Right.’
From her reaction, it was clear that Jenny would not have time to stay. Picking up her bag, she soon made for the stairs and it remained only to pay her. Ben had thirty pounds in his wallet, six five-pound notes, which he pressed into her hand. They were walking towards the front door when he heard the scratch of a key in the lock. The door opened and Alice walked in, talking rapidly into her mobile phone. She did a double-take when she saw Ben standing at the foot of the staircase beside a tall, slightly flushed pretty girl and he raised his eyebrows as a way of saying ‘hello’. Jenny took a step back inside.
‘That’s not the point,’ Alice was saying. Her voice was raised to a pitch just below outright aggression. ‘I told her she’d have a chance to read through the piece. To check it. That was a promise I made.’ Jenny found herself standing awkwardly between them, like an actor waiting to go onstage. ‘So if you go ahead and print it, her whole family, who I’ve known since I was six fucking years old, are going to go …’
Ben smiled uneasily and felt the dread of the phone call’s aftermath, another work crisis the dutiful husband would have to resolve. ‘Thanks, then,’ Jenny whispered to him, moving towards the door. ‘Same time tomorrow?’
‘Same time,’ he said.
‘About midday?’
‘Midday.’
‘Your wife’s lovely,’ she mouthed, standing below him on the threshold. ‘Really pretty.’
Ben merely nodded and watched as Jenny turned towards Ladbroke Grove. Only when she was out of sight did he close the door.
‘But that’s exactly what I’m saying, Andy.’ Alice had kicked off her shoes and was now stretched out on the sofa. A great part of her lived for arguments of this kind, for the adrenalin surge of conflict. ‘If the article appears as it is …’ She pulled the phone away from her ear. ‘Fuck, I got cut off.’
‘What happened?’
Ben came over and sat beside her. Her cheek as he kissed it was cold and smelled of moisturizer and cigarettes.
‘You remember that piece I wrote about my friend from school, the girl who was arrested for drug smuggling?’ Alice was redialling Andy’s number as she spoke. Ben vaguely remembered the story. ‘It was supposed to be a feature but the news desk got hold of it. Now they’ve gone and made the girl out to be some kind of wild child who should have known better, exactly what I promised Jane we wouldn’t do.’ She stared at the read-out on her mobile phone. ‘Great. And now Andy’s switched his phone off.’
‘Her name is Jane?’ The observation was a non sequitur, but Alice didn’t seem to notice.
‘She came to me because she knew the press would be on to her sooner or later. She thought she could trust me to tell her side of the story. I’m the only journalist her family knows.’
‘And now it’s been taken out of your hands?’
He was trying to appear interested, trying to say the right things, but he knew that Alice was most probably lying to him. She would have leaked the story to the news desk in the hope of winning their approval. Alice was ambitious to move from features into news; the more scoops she could push their way, the better would be her chances of promotion.
‘That’s right. Which explains why Andy isn’t returning my calls.’
‘And how did Andy get hold of the story?’
Her answer here would prove interesting. Would she confess to showing the interview to a news reporter, or claim that it was taken from her desk? Each time there was a crisis of this kind, Alice inevitably found someone else to blame.
‘I just mentioned it to a colleague over lunch,’ she said, as if this small detail did not in itself imply a breach of trust. ‘Next thing I know, the news editor is demanding that I hand over the interview so that he can farm it for quotes.’
Ben noticed that she had stopped trying to reach Andy’s mobile phone.
‘So why didn’t you just refuse?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t you just tell him you’d made a deal with the girl?’
‘It doesn’t work like that.’
Of course it doesn’t. ‘Why not?’ he said.
‘Look, if you’re just going to be difficult about this we might as well –’
‘Why am I being difficult? I’m just trying to find out –’
‘Did you pick up my dry cleaning for the party?’
The inevitable change of subject.
‘Did I what?’
‘Did you pick up my dry cleaning for the party?’
‘Alice, I’m not your fucking PA. I’ve been busy in the studio all day. If I have time, I’ll get it tomorrow.’
‘Great.’ And she was on her feet, sighing. ‘Too busy doing what? To walk five hundred metres to the main road?’
‘No. Too busy working.’
‘Working?’
‘Is that where we’re going with this?’ Ben pointed towards the attic. ‘Painting isn’t work? There’s no such thing as a busy day when you’re an artist?’
Alice took off her earrings and put them on a table.
‘Was that her?’ she asked, trying a different tack. ‘The one at the bottom of the stairs?’
‘Jenny? Yes, when you came in. Of course it was.’
‘And is she nice?’
‘Nice?’
‘Do you get on with her?’
A pause.
‘We get on fine, yes. She just lies down and I start painting. It’s not really about “getting on”.’
‘What is it about then?’
‘So you’re now picking a fight with me about a model?’
Alice turned her back on him.
‘It’s just that I thought you were painting older people nowadays. Isn’t that the idea for the new show?’
‘No. Why would you think that? It’s just nudes. Age doesn’t come into it.’
‘So you still hire a girl purely on the basis of looks?’
Ben stood up from the sofa and decided to get away. He would go back upstairs to the studio, put on a record and wait until Alice had calmed down.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘you’ve had a bad day at work. Somebody fucked you over. Try not to take it out on everyone else.’ Alice stubbed out her cigarette and said nothing. ‘Why don’t we start again later? Mark’s arriving in less than an hour. Have a bath and chill out.’
‘Don’t tell me to “chill out”. Just give me a straight answer to my question.’
Ben had to stop and turn.
‘To what question?’
And Alice reacted as if he were deliberately concealing something.
‘Fine,’ she said, and pointedly looked at her watch. ‘What time does the dry cleaner close?’
‘How the fuck should I know?’
‘Well, I’m just wondering what I’m going to wear to this party tomorrow night, now that you haven’t picked up my dress.’
‘So go and get it. You’re a big girl.’
‘Well, I don’t have much choice, do I?’
And Ben was halfway upstairs, heading back to the studio, when he heard the front door slam behind him.
6
Stephen Taploe called the waitress over with an impatient wave of his hand and asked for the bill. It had become necessary to conduct the rest of the conversation outside the café, because there were now three men standing idly behind Keen’s chair, sucking on bottles of Mexican lager. The bill came to a little under nine pounds and Taploe put the receipt carefully in his wallet. He was very exact when it came to filing for expenses.
The two men crossed the road and turned towards Brook Green, a steady head-on wind blowing dried leaves and litter along the pavement. Choosing his moment with care, Taploe said, ‘What do you know about a man called Sebastian Roth?’
The question took Keen by surprise. His first thought was that someone inside Divisar had breached client confidentiality.
‘Why don’t you tell me what you know about a man called Sebastian Roth and I’ll see if I can be of any assistance?’ he said. ‘Sort of fill in the blanks.’
Taploe had anticipated that Keen would be evasive; it bought him time.
‘I know what any person can read in the papers. Roth is thirty-six years old, an entrepreneur, very well connected with the present Labour government, the only son of a Tory peer. He went to Eton, where he was neither particularly successful nor popular and dropped out of Oxford after less than a year. After a stint in the City, he opened the original Libra nightclub about six months before Ministry of Sound and at least a year before Cream first took off in Liverpool. Those three are still the nightclubs of choice for the younger generation, though it’s mostly compact discs now, isn’t it? That’s how they make their money.’ Keen remained silent. ‘Judging from the photographs in certain magazines – Tatler, Harpers & Queen and so on – Roth looks to have a new girlfriend on his arm every week, although we think he’s something of a loner. Very little contact with his family, no relationship at all with either of his two siblings. Libra is his passion, extending the brand, controlling the business. Roth spends a lot of time overseas, collects art, and has recently finished conversion on a house in Pimlico valued at over two million pounds. I also happen to know that one of his representatives came to your company some months ago asking for assistance.’
Keen slowed his pace.
‘You know that I can’t discuss that,’ he said.
‘Then allow me discuss it for you.’ It was all going very well for Stephen Taploe, the one-upmanship, the gradual trap. He flattened down his moustache and coughed lightly. ‘Roth has a lawyer friend, an individual by the name of Thomas Macklin. Helped him build the Libra empire, the Paris and New York sites, the merchandising arm in particular. I believe you’ve made his acquaintance?’
‘Go on.’ The hard soles of Keen’s brogues clipped on the pavement as they turned left into Sterndale Road.
‘In the past four months, Macklin has made eight separate trips to Russia. On three of these journeys he took internal flights from St Petersburg to Moscow, where he remained for several days.’
‘May I ask why he was being followed?’
To encourage a greater openness in Keen, Taploe opted to be as candid as the situation would allow.
‘He wasn’t being followed, exactly. At least, not at first. But on Macklin’s third visit to the Russian capital he was observed by local law enforcement officials talking to a known member of the Kukushkin crime syndicate under observation in a separate case. Nothing unusual there, you might think, but the meetings then occurred again, on trips four, five and six. Each time with the same man, albeit in a different location.’
‘What was the contact’s name?’
‘Malere,’ Taploe replied. ‘Kristin Malere. A Lithuanian, originally out of Vilnius. Anyway, as you may or may not be aware, my organization has been developing increasingly strong links with the organized crime division of Russian Internal Affairs. Because Macklin is a British citizen, these meetings were brought to our attention and my team began looking into it.’
‘On the basis of a few meetings with a low-level Baltic hoodlum?’
Taploe sniffed. He did not enjoy having his judgment brought into question by anyone, least of all a disdainful MI6 toff eight years in the private sector.
‘Ordinarily, of course, this would not have aroused our suspicion.’ He wanted Keen to know his place, to feel like an outsider. ‘After all, Mr Macklin was only representing the interests of his employer. As you will be aware, it is often necessary in the present climate to climb into bed with what I like to call some of the unsavoury characters on the Russian landscape.’
Keen looked at his watch.
‘Now, we have reason to believe that Viktor Kukushkin is presently trying to consolidate his position in the UK,’ Taploe said firmly. He wasn’t going to be rushed. ‘Simply as a precaution, we put Watchers from my team on Macklin when he returned home. So imagine our surprise when, just days after arriving back from one of his trips to Russia, he met one of Kukushkin’s London representatives at a hotel in Sussex Gardens. Another unsavoury character by the name of Juris Duchev.’ The corners of Keen’s mouth twitched. ‘These meetings started to happen at other hotels in the Greater London area on a fairly regular basis. On at least four occasions we suspect Macklin left with cash sums in excess of eighty thousand pounds. To my knowledge he also banked two six-figure dollar sums in a legitimate, Cypriot-registered shell company named Pentagon Investments.’
Taploe took a long, deep breath, as if the effort of summing up the Libra case with such clarity and precision had left him briefly exhausted. He was on the point of elaborating further when a squat, thick-set man wearing a pin-striped suit emerged from a nearby house and turned towards them. He was well within earshot and Taploe immediately assumed cover.
‘So you’ll be away all weekend?’ he said quickly. ‘Why don’t you leave me your number and I’ll try to get hold of you then.’
The switch, a very basic precaution, was also second nature to Keen. Given that many of Divisar’s employees were drawn from the secret world, the company operated on much the same basis as the intelligence services. If, for example, Keen happened to be discussing an operation at headquarters and was interrupted by another member of staff entering the room, he would quickly drop into small talk until that person had left the area. There were pockets of expertise within the company, and very little crossover due to the requirements of secrecy; many employees were strangers to one another. Nevertheless, he felt that Taploe had overplayed it, and enjoyed delaying his response for as long as possible.
‘Or you could just call my mobile,’ he replied slowly. ‘Do you have the number?’ His voice was deliberately bored. ‘It’s printed on my card.’
The man was now thirty metres behind them, standing beside a two-door BMW. Keen heard the double sonics of central locking and registered amber hazard lights flaring briefly in the back window of a nearby van. Then he heard the driver’s door clunk shut as the man climbed inside.
It was safe to continue.
‘The answer to your question, Mr Taploe, is that I cannot tell you very much.’ Keen sounded assured, imperial. ‘I have neither seen nor spoken to Thomas Macklin in over two months. Whom he chooses to hold meetings with in Moscow, London or Timbuktu is his business, not mine. Ditto any strange bank accounts. Obviously you suspect money laundering …’
‘Obviously,’ Taploe said quickly. ‘The thing is, we can’t make an arrest until we know the source of the cash. Macklin could realistically claim that he had no knowledge of handling dirty money, or say that he was acting as a lawyer for Viktor Kukushkin and planned to use the funds to buy real estate. But we’d be interested in what you could tell us about your early contact with Libra.’
Keen noted the use of the plural pronoun: making it a point of honour, a duty to the old firm. However, rather than answer immediately, he asked a question of his own.
‘How did you find me?’
Taploe was looking down Augustine Road towards Brook Green. He rubbed his cheek.
‘Your name was recognized when it came up during preliminary research into Divisar.’
Keen sounded a sarcastic note.
‘So – what? – you found out I was in the Office, thought it was your lucky day and ran me as a trace request through the ND? Is that how it still works over there?’
Taploe hesitated. ‘Something like that.’
‘Was there anything Recorded Against?’ Keen asked, employing the Service euphemism. ‘I’d love to know.’
Taploe ignored the question.
‘Why don’t we just talk about your initial contact with Libra?’
Keen sighed, loathing the dryness of bureaucracy.
‘Very well. This is what I know, although I can’t think why it will be of any use to you. Thomas Macklin approached Divisar about six months ago. I’d have to check the file to be more precise. He was sharp and efficient and he came as Roth’s representative, which is often the way in our business. If push comes to shove, those boys want as much distance between us and them as they can manage. It was a simple job, of the sort I do all the time. Libra were interested in setting up operations in Russia and Macklin had a lot of very sensible questions that needed answering. Due diligence on real estate and freeholders. Wanted to know how to go about recruiting staff, finding suppliers, who Libra’s competitors would be and so forth. I remember he was slightly obsessive about the tax and licensing position. Above all, he needed to know about the roof. What palms needed to be crossed and how much silver.’ To amuse himself, Keen added, ‘You know what a roof is, don’t you, Mr Taploe?’
‘I’ve been working organized crime for two years,’ he replied. ‘Of course I know about the roof.’ It irritated Taploe that Keen was not as concerned by his line of questioning as he might have been; but then that was the birthright of the upper classes, the lizard-thick skin of the FCO. ‘So did Divisar put Libra in touch with the appropriate organizations?’ he asked.
‘That’s not how it works. Kukushkin would have come to them. He’s one of the new-style mobsters, the avtoritet. Less regard for tradition than the older vors and a lot more unpredictable when it comes to things like chopping people’s fingers off. But, yes, I pointed them in the right direction, told Macklin who the main players were. Divisar did what we were paid to do.’
Taploe listened to this and decided that it was time to play his trump card.
‘And how long was it before you realized that your eldest son was a senior executive at Libra?’
Keen had known that the question was coming; Taploe had been deliberately withholding it as a tactic to arouse his suspicion. Nevertheless, he felt squeezed by it, cornered into obfuscation. His immediate response was defensive.
‘Now what does that have to do with anything?’
Taploe stopped walking and turned to face him. Keen was a good six inches taller and considerably better built, with narrow blue eyes that he used as tools of concealment, to frighten and charm in equal measure. Taploe tried as best he could to look through them.
‘Perhaps you could just answer the question,’ he said. ‘We have no wish to pry into your personal life. It is simply our understanding that since Libra’s first approach you have been able to form some sort of a relationship with your eldest son after … how should I put it? … an absence of almost thirty years.’
‘You’re clearly very well informed.’
‘Not as well informed as I’d like to be. Did you know that Mark was working at Libra when Divisar took them on as clients?’
Keen waited. He could feel frustration, even anger, beginning to undermine his better judgment. All that residual guilt over Carolyn and the boys rising up in him like a sickness.
‘As I recall,’ he said firmly, ‘there were two preliminary meetings between Macklin and one of my colleagues before I was brought on board. During that time, Mark found out that I worked for the company and telephoned me with a view to getting together.’
‘And what was your reaction?’
‘Is that relevant? I wasn’t aware that I was talking to a psychiatrist.’
Taploe had pushed too far. He was annoyed with himself and felt the heat of unease flush through his cheeks. He would have to back down, if only for the sake of the pitch.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s not my business. I am simply interested in Mark’s role in all of this.’
‘Then at last we have something in common.’
‘I can tell you that there’s no evidence to suggest your son knows what Macklin is up to,’ Taploe offered. ‘He didn’t accompany him to Russia on his last two visits, nor has he been seen with any of Kukushkin’s representatives in either Moscow or London.’
‘So why am I here this evening?’ Keen asked. ‘What on earth do you need me for?’
It was a question to which he already knew the answer. Taploe was simply priming himself.
‘Just an act of kindness,’ he said quietly, ‘a favour, for want of a better description.’
‘A favour.’ Keen paused and then repeated the word under his breath, killing its implications, the nuance. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘What is it about people in our business that they can never say exactly what they mean?’
7
The dummy London cab that had tailed Mark’s taxi from Heathrow stopped a hundred and fifty metres down Elgin Crescent, engine idling. They had made good time from Terminal One, almost slipstreaming the taxi in the outer M4 lane denied to cars.
‘So this is where the brother lives?’ Graham asked.
Ian Boyle cleared his throat and said, ‘Yeah, house up on the left.’
They saw Mark Keen step out of the taxi, pay the driver and make his way towards the front door carrying a large overnight holdall and several plastic bags. He was broadly built and did not appear to struggle with the weight.
‘Nice fucking place,’ Graham muttered, tilting his head to one side to get a better look at the house. ‘What does the brother do for a living? Stockbroker? Investment banker? Dot com millionaire?’
‘None of the above.’ Ian dialled a number in Euston Tower on his mobile phone and held it up to his ear. ‘Our Benjamin’s an artist. Farts around all day in oils and charcoal, struggling with the impossibility of the authentic artistic act.’
‘I thought that sort of behaviour was out of fashion?’
The number wasn’t answering and Ian hung up.
‘Not so,’ he said.
‘What does the wife do?’ Graham was new on the Kukushkin case and still a bit sketchy on details. He looked upon Ian as a mentor, an older hand he wanted to learn from and impress.
‘Journalist,’ Ian said. ‘Writes about canapés and boy bands for the Evening Standard. One of your gorgeous, pouting, twenty-something hackettes, arse so firm you could crack an egg on it. Drive up and we might get a look at her.’
Graham flicked on the headlights, moved back out into the road and took the cab past the house. They saw Alice open the front door and fling her arms around Mark’s neck, her smile a flash in the darkness.
‘Fuckin’ hell,’ Graham muttered. ‘Wouldn’t mind one of them in my Christmas stocking.’ He pulled up another fifty metres further along the street and peered back over his shoulder. ‘How long they been married?’
‘Couple of years; three, maybe. Daddy was decent enough to throw eighty grand at the wedding. Nice of him, wouldn’t you say?’
‘All things considered.’ Graham couldn’t keep his eyes off her. ‘Does the gaffer have ears in there?’ he asked.
‘Not yet. Only at Mark’s place. And the lawyer, Macklin. We don’t reckon young Benjamin’s involved.’
‘Right.’
‘So what time’s Michael taking over?’ Ian scratched his armpit. ‘I wanna get the Arsenal score, find a pub with ITV.’
‘Search me,’ Graham replied. ‘Search me. The way I heard it, I thought we was on all night.’
8
A man of sixty looks back on his working life and feels, what? A sense of regret at opportunities lost? Shame over badly handled investments, businesses that might have turned sour, a colleague treated with contempt by the board after forty years’ loyal service to the firm? Keen simply did not know. He had lived his life in a separate world of deliberate masquerade, a state servant with carte blanche for deceit. Waiting for Mark in his son’s favourite, if overpriced, Chinese restaurant at the south end of Queensway, Keen had the odd, even amusing sensation that most of his professional life had been comprised of social occasions: Foreign Office dinners, embassy cocktail parties, glasses of stewed tea and mugs of instant coffee shared with journalists, traitors, disgruntled civil servants, ideologues and bankrupts, the long list of contacts and informants that make up a spy’s acquaintance. Indeed it occurred to him – over his second glass of surprisingly decent Sancerre – that he was a scholar of the long, boozy lunch, of lulling strangers into mistaken beliefs, of plying dining companions with drink and sympathy and then sucking them dry of secrets. It was his talent, after all, the knack they had spotted at Oxford, and the reason now, more than thirty years later, that Keen could charge Divisar £450 a day for his old-style flair and expertise. But to use those skills on his own son? To do that, if he looked at it for too long, would seem horrific. But Christopher Keen never looked at anything for too long.
Mark was late by half an hour, a mirror image of Keen’s own father at thirty-five, coming into the restaurant at a brisk walk mouthing, ‘Sorry, Dad,’ from fifty feet. Keen thought he looked tired and preoccupied, but that might have been his paranoia over Taploe.
The Service would like your assistance in clearing up Libra’s position, in revealing the exact nature of their relationship with Kukushkin. We just need you to pick your son’s brains, find out what he knows.
‘Where the hell have you been?’
He said it without anger, because Mark looked genuinely contrite.
‘I’m really, really sorry.’ He placed a hand on his father’s shoulder. ‘Meetings. All morning. Fucked electrics at the club and a tabloid hack giving me gyp.’
He was wearing a dark blue corduroy suit and, for want of something better to say, Keen remarked on it.
‘Bespoke?’ he asked.
‘Thought you might notice that.’ It was a shared passion between them, the luxury of fine clothes. Mark sat down and flapped a napkin into his lap. ‘This here is a Doug Hayward original in navy corduroy, a sympathetic cloth flexible enough to accommodate today’s retro styling.’ He was beginning to relax. ‘The jacket has high lapels, as you can see, with long double vents and three buttons at the front. Furthermore, if I stood up you’d notice an immaculately tailored flat-fronted trouser with straight legs that flare just above the tongue of the shoe.’
‘Indeed,’ Keen said. ‘Indeed,’ and enjoyed Mark’s charm. He poured both of them a glass of Sancerre and ordered another bottle from the waiter. ‘What’s in the bag?’
Mark said, ‘Oh yes,’ and leaned over to retrieve two bottles of vodka from a duty-free bag he had carried into the restaurant. Three litres of Youri Dolgoruki, his father’s favourite brand.
‘Present for you,’ he said. ‘Picked them up in Moscow three days ago. Know how you prefer the real thing.’
‘That was immensely kind of you.’ Keen put the bottles on the floor beside his chair and wondered if they would clink in his briefcase. ‘You shouldn’t have bought me anything at all.’
‘For all the birthdays I missed,’ Mark replied lightly, as if the observation held no resonance. Then he opened his menu.
Keen had noticed this about Mark before: the way he gave presents to people at Libra and Divisar, little surprises to lighten their day. The cynic in him had decided that this was an unconscious way of keeping colleagues onside, of buying their trust and loyalty. It was the same with his memory: months after meeting them, Mark could recall the names of personal assistants who had brought him cups of coffee during fifteen-minute meetings in downtown Moscow.
‘How do you do that?’ he asked.
‘Eh?’
Mark was staring at him and Keen realized he had been thinking aloud.
‘Sorry, I was just mulling something over. Your ability to remember names. I was thinking about it while you were late.’
Mark clumped the menu shut.
‘Trick I was taught by Seb,’ he said frankly, and put his jacket on the back of the chair. ‘Remember someone’s name and it makes them feel special. Tack on a fact or two about their lives and they’ll practically offer themselves up. It’s all vanity, isn’t it, Dad? We all want to feel cherished. Bloke comes to work to fix the sound system and I remember he’s got a ten-year-old kid who supports West Ham, he’s gonna be touched that I brought it up. Good business, isn’t it? How to win friends and influence people.’
Keen nodded and could only agree. At a table near by, a decent-looking woman in a reasonable suit was eating lunch with her husband and giving him the occasional eye. Mutton dressed as lamb, Keen thought, and wished she were ten years younger.
‘Will you order for me?’ Mark said. ‘My brain’s gone numb.’
Lacquer-black walls and a low oppressive ceiling patterned with dimmed halogen bulbs lent the interior of the restaurant the atmosphere of a mediocre seventies nightclub. Mark was always impressed by his father’s knowledge of the more obscure dishes on a menu – in this case, preserved pork knuckle, fragrant yam duck, a soup of mustard leaf with salted egg and sliced beef. He even ordered them in an accent that sounded authentically Chinese.
‘You spend time in Beijing?’ he asked. ‘In Shanghai, Hong Kong?’
‘Not really.’ Keen refilled Mark’s glass with the new bottle. ‘A fortnight in Taiwan in the seventies. Overnight stop in Kowloon harbour a few years ago. Rather a lovely ketch, if I recall, French owner. Otherwise just homogeneous Chinese restaurants the world over. Anxious-looking fish in outsized tanks, ducks flying anticlockwise around the walls.’
Mark listened intently. He was good at that. Keen wondered if he had an image, in technicolour, of his father calmly going about the Queen’s business, standing on the prow of a luxury yacht wearing a battered Panama hat.
‘Why does everyone insist on calling it “Beijing” nowadays?’ he asked. ‘You don’t say “Roma”, do you? You don’t talk about “Milano” or “München”?’
‘It’s just the fashion,’ Mark replied.
‘Ah yes, the fashion.’ Keen sighed and let his eyes drift towards the ceiling. He enjoyed playing the fuddy-duddy with Mark, assumed that it was a part of his paternal role. ‘I sometimes think that everything these days is about fashion, about not doing or saying the wrong thing. Common sense has gone right out of the window.’
‘I guess.’
A smooth-skinned waiter, working in tandem with a pretty Chinese girl wearing a sky-blue silk dress, ferried plates of dim sum and steamed rice to their table. They were on to their third bottle of wine – a characterless Ribera del Duero – by the time Keen got round to Taploe’s business.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he said. ‘I had a call from Thomas Macklin while you were away.’
‘Oh yeah? Tom? What did he want?’
‘Just a couple of routine questions. Divisar business. Tell me about him. How do you two get on?’
Mark was swallowing a mouthful of prawn satay and for some time was able only to nod and raise his eyebrows in response.
‘Why do you want to know?’ he asked eventually, wiping a napkin over his bottom lip.
‘He intrigued me. As you can imagine, we get a lot of lawyers coming into the firm. He’s still relatively young, highly competent, somebody whom I imagine would be an asset to Libra.’
‘Tom’s all right. A bit flash, bit lippy. Good lawyer, though.’
‘Does your work dovetail?’
Mark could not hear the question over the noise of the restaurant and he cocked his head to one side to encourage his father to repeat it. Keen leaned in.
‘I said, does your work dovetail? How much of him do you see, apart from when you’re both abroad together?’
‘I was out with him last night, matter of fact. Tom’s a big drinker, likes to whip out the company credit card. If there’s a new secretary in the office he’s always the one who asks her out. Champagne and oysters, loves all that shit. Never has any luck with the birds, mind, but you’ll have a good time if you tag along.’
Whenever Mark discussed Libra business, his voice unconsciously dropped into a mannered sub-Cockney that cloaked its true origins in private education. His work accent, his music industry drawl, deliberately shaved off consonants and slackened vowels. It was an affectation that irritated Keen, though he had never mentioned it.
‘And what happens when you go on these trips?’ he asked, pouring himself a glass of water. The woman with whom he had briefly flirted rose from her table and managed a final seductive glance. Keen ignored her. ‘You must get sick of the sight of one another.’
‘Not necessarily.’ Mark was using a pair of chopsticks to pick up a pork dumpling. He held it in the air for some time, like a jeweller examining a gem for flaws. ‘I like the company, to be honest.’ He popped the food into his mouth and began chewing it vigorously, smiling as he ate.
All of this was of interest to Keen. Is Viktor Kukushkin’s syndicate providing Libra with protection in Russia, or is there a larger conspiracy evolving here in London? Taploe had almost whispered his requests, eyes glued to Keen’s lapel. Mark could prove vital in giving us a clear picture of Roth’s and Macklin’s activities. We’d like to know everything you can find out. But Mark did not appear unsettled by the line of questioning: on the contrary, he seemed comfortable and relaxed, just chatting and enjoying his lunch.
‘Good, these, aren’t they?’ he said, and picked up another dumpling.
‘Yes,’ Keen nodded. ‘I must say I was impressed by all of your people. Sebastian, of course, though we met only briefly. The two marketing girls as well. And that Frenchman you brought in last time, Philippe d’Erlanger.’
‘Philippe, yeah. He’s Belgian, actually.’
Keen acknowledged the mistake.
‘But Macklin stood out. Very bright, very capable. During our initial meetings he impressed me a great deal. I acted only as a conduit, as you know, so I have no idea how he’s behaved latterly. But he was very well informed, seemed to know his stuff. A bit pushy, clearly, not necessarily someone one would want to buy a used car from. Do you trust him?’
‘No,’ Mark replied, swallowing. ‘But I wouldn’t have thought he trusts me either.’
‘Now why do you say that?’
‘Best policy, isn’t it? Rule of thumb. Never trust the people at the top. Don’t put yourself in a position where you have to rely on anyone. That way you won’t be too disappointed when they fuck you over.’
Keen’s eyes narrowed. He wondered if the sentiment had its origins in Mark’s childhood.
‘Do you think he’s capable of that?’
But he had pushed too hard.
‘Why are you so interested in Tom?’ Mark asked. ‘Have Divisar had trouble with him? Has he not been paying our bills?’
‘No, no. I’m just fascinated by the way your partnership works. He obviously has the ear of Roth, so where does that leave you?’
‘Well, I’m not a lawyer, am I? That’s not my area of expertise. So the relationship he has with Seb is different from the one he has with me. More personal, if you like. Those two share a lot of secrets which nobody else is privy to.’
Perhaps there was something here for Taploe.
‘What kind of secrets?’ Keen asked.
‘Well, they wouldn’t be secrets if I knew, would they? Financial stuff, I guess; plans for the future. That sort of thing.’
‘I see.’ Mark looked vaguely bored, but Keen was anxious to probe further. ‘Just while we’re on the subject,’ he said, ‘were there any developments on your trip that I should know about? The position on the roof, for example?’
‘No. Tom’s handling it. He deals with those boys.’
‘So you’ve had no contact with the gangs?’
‘I wouldn’t say no contact.’ The waitress picked up two plates from the table, smiled at Mark and walked off. ‘They’re everywhere out there. Hotel foyers, restaurants, sitting in their shiny four-by-fours on Novy Arbat. You can hardly move without bumping into some wanker in a cheap leather jacket who thinks he’s Chechnya’s answer to Al Pacino. Mack’s all for it, of course, loves hanging out with them. Acts like he’s landed a walk-on part in The Sopranos. But they’re not for me. Far as I’m concerned, the mafia makes a living out of other people’s misery and that’s not a good reason to go drinking with them.’
Keen registered this last remark: at SIS he had been trained to be wary of the man who declares his innocence unprompted. It was usually the case that those who made a frequent expression of their moral outrage were most often the ones who turned out to be unscrupulous.
‘Surely Macklin’s just doing his job, just trying to get the best deal for Libra?’ he suggested. ‘I would have thought it was important to keep them onside.’
Mark smirked.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘He keeps them onside, all right.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Whenever we’re in Moscow, Tom makes sure to get a hooker up to his suite. Her twin sister as well, if he’s feeling perky. He’d like to call that “keeping them onside”. That way he could run it through expenses.’
Keen frowned.
‘He’s got sucked into that, has he?’
‘Well, let’s face it, no one else is going to sleep with him.’
Keen duly grinned but the conversation appeared to have exhausted itself. As he had both hoped and expected, there had been nothing of any content to unsettle him, nothing he would feel obliged to reveal to Taploe. He felt an odd, protective urge to tell Mark that his flat was most probably wired, that the grass skirts had eyes and ears in the homes of every one of the senior employees at Libra. Yet he was bound by an older loyalty, barred even from advising caution. He placed his chopsticks to one side, put his napkin on the table, and was quiet.
‘You look worried about something.’
Mark had also finished eating.
‘I do?’
‘Yeah.’
Keen frowned and said, ‘No, I’m fine. Just digesting.’
‘Is it Ben?’
The question took him by surprise, if only because, for once in Mark’s company, Keen had not been thinking about Ben. It was a rare occasion on which the two failed to discuss the possibility of reconciliation. Their last two meetings, for example, had descended into an awkward row about Ben’s stubborn refusal to put the past behind him. Mark had been sympathetic to his father’s position, but his first loyalty was to his brother.
‘Have you thought any more about that?’ If this was an opportunity to reopen the subject, then Keen would grasp it.
‘Not much,’ Mark said.
‘I see.’
‘But you’re still eager to make amends, to tell him how sorry you are?’
‘Something like that.’ Keen wondered if Mark had a plan, but his manner seemed dismissive and offhand. ‘Have you seen him lately?’
‘Matter of fact, I have.’ Mark finished off the last of the wine. ‘Had dinner with him the night I got back. Brother cooked up a green curry and spent most of the evening arguing with Alice.’
‘That seems to happen a lot.’
‘All the time lately.’
‘Are they unhappy?’
Mark breathed in deeply and puffed out his cheeks.
‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Sometimes I wonder what he sees in her, beyond the looks, the lifestyle.’
‘Yes, you’ve said that before. But Alice was very helpful to Ben when your mother died, wasn’t she? Isn’t that the case?’
‘That was the case.’ Mark paused briefly. He was reluctant to betray Ben’s confidence, but the wine had got the better of him. ‘But there’s more to it than that,’ he said.
‘Expand.’
A waiter placed two steaming napkins on a plate in front of them. Mark turned his hands heavily through the cloth and then wiped his mouth.
‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘They’ve been together a long time. Brother helped to get her career started and Alice supported him when he wanted to get into painting. Far as I can tell they have great sex, you know, so that helps when things turn nasty. And besides, a part of me reckons they love all the arguments, that they feed off the aggro and tension.’
Keen leaned back in his chair.
‘Interesting,’ he said, with apparent empathy. ‘So you don’t suppose he’s any closer to the idea of meeting up?’ He was aware that the question was cack-handed, yet determined to make an approach. ‘You don’t think he’d be amenable to, say, a drink or perhaps dinner?’
Mark laughed and stared at the ceiling.
‘Is that what this is about?’ he said. ‘You want to have this conversation every time we meet up?’
‘Until he’s prepared to forgive and forget, yes.’
Keen had not intended to sound angry, but his words had a remarkable effect. Mark, ever the conciliator, resolved to calm his father down.
‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘You just have to understand that Ben is stubborn, that he’s very set in his ways. For him to agree even to talk to you would mean a betrayal of Mum. That’s how he feels about things. We’ve spoken about this. In his mind, it’s either you or her.’
Keen managed to look appropriately dismayed, but he had been taken with a sharp, persuasive idea. Earlier in the day, he had collected a signet ring from a jeweller in Paddington who had reset the bloodstone. The box was in his briefcase. He could use this as a lever, something to play on Mark’s sense of decency.
‘I had your photograph framed,’ he said.
‘My photograph?’
‘Of Ben’s wedding. It’s hanging in the flat.’ Two weeks earlier, Mark had given him a photograph of Ben’s wedding day, taken moments after he had first emerged from the church with Alice at his side. Keen had had the picture enlarged and framed and it now hung in the sitting room of his London flat. ‘I thought that I might give you something in return.’
‘Oh yeah?’
Keen was quickly into the briefcase, leaning down beside his chair. The box was covered in a thin mock-velvet cover and he handed it to Mark.
‘Are we getting married?’
‘Just open it. Have a look.’
‘What is this?’
Keen was improvising.
‘Call it a present. Of a family nature. More accurately described as an heirloom.’
Inside, Mark found the gold-banded signet ring, set with an engraved bloodstone.
‘This is for me?’
‘I’ve wanted you to have it for some time. It was your grandfather’s.’
Mark was oblivious to any deception. Prising the ring from its box he began turning it in his fingers. A small smudge of grease formed on the gold and he wiped it away with his napkin.
‘This is really kind of you,’ he said, finding that he was actually blushing. ‘You sure about this, Dad?’
‘Of course I’m sure. Why don’t you put it on?’ Mark looked briefly around the restaurant, as if conscious of being watched. Then he placed the ring on the fourth finger of his left hand and held it up for inspection.
‘That’s where it’s supposed to go, right? The “pinky”? Is that what it’s called?’
‘I believe so.’ Keen cleared his throat. ‘I don’t suppose they’re really the fashion these days among the nightclub classes, but you can always give it a go.’
‘I’m really touched. Thank you.’
And now he played the ace.
‘I wonder how Ben would feel if I were to do the same for him.’
From the direction of the kitchen there was the sound of a plate smashing on stone. Silence briefly engulfed the restaurant before conversations resumed.
‘I’m not following you.’ Mark looked slightly worried.
‘There are two signet rings in the family,’ Keen explained. ‘One belonged to your grandfather, the other to his brother. As you may know, Bobby died without producing any children. I’ve always thought his ring should be passed on …’
‘So you thought you’d wait twenty-five years and get me to do it for you?’
Keen acknowledged the slight with just a tilt of his head. He was determined that the plan should succeed.
‘Point taken,’ he said. ‘But would you be prepared to have a word with your brother, to perhaps sound him out?’
Mark ground his chair a foot back from the table.
‘Haven’t we just had this discussion?’
‘It’s just that I feel we’ve never really given Benjamin a chance to come forward, to give his side of the story.’
‘To come forward?’
Keen pushed his glass to one side, as if making a clear channel through which any request could not realistically be turned down.
‘I apologize,’ he said. ‘I’m obviously not making myself clear. Call it a symptom of my frustration. You have always presented Ben’s reluctance to talk to me as a fait accompli. The idea that he might change his mind has simply never been tabled. Well, I propose that we should give it a shot, ask him straight out what exactly it is that he’s afraid of.’
‘Brother’s not afraid of anything. I’ve told you that …’
‘Then let’s at least clear the air. I would rather have the opportunity of being castigated face-to-face than endure this rather childish stand off.’
‘Well, you see, that’s just the problem. Ben doesn’t really care what you think.’
Mark’s candour had the effect of silencing his father. Like a man who has suffered a losing hand at poker, he fell back in his chair, as if conscious of the hopelessness of his position. It was the first time that Mark had ever observed any trace of defeat in his father’s face. And it worked.
‘Look, I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.
‘Would you really?’ Keen’s eyes lit up with hope. ‘I think it would be in everyone’s best interests. Imagine if we could all just get along, make a fresh start. You, me, Benjamin, Alice. I’d like to get to know her, too.’
‘I’m sure you would,’ Mark muttered.
‘I mean, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could get this thing knocked on the head by Christmas?’
Mark was simply amazed by his attitude. It was as if his father had an assumed right of access, an inherent belief that the past should be ignored in the interests of his own peace of mind. Nevertheless, he felt a duty at least to make an effort.
‘Leave it to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to him and see what I can do.’
And that was enough to satisfy Keen. His work done, he closed the briefcase, cleaned his hands with the napkin and within moments had asked for the bill.
9
Stephen Taploe moved gradually along the aisles, filling his trolley with foods. It was a nothing moment. Once a week, he ventured to the Clapham Junction branch of Asda and bought enough provisions to last him for exactly seven days. Taploe was frugal, although, as a single man earning £41,500 a year, he did not have to be. Armed with reward points and a fistful of vouchers, he would attempt to check out for less than twenty-five pounds, but it was difficult with London prices and sometimes he would treat himself to an extra bottle of mediumdry white wine, or a tub of ice cream in his favourite flavour, vanilla. Taploe lived alone and had, on average, eight meals to cater for each week: two lunches (Saturday and Sunday), as well as six evenings at home. On Thursdays he was always sure to join his colleagues at a tapas bar in Victoria that was popular with D-Branch personnel: promotion, he assumed, would come quicker if he could develop and sustain relationships with senior management outside of office hours.
The supermarket was noticeably less salubrious than the branch of Marks and Spencer’s in nearby St John’s Road, and lacked the international range and flair of products available at Sainsbury’s. Nevertheless, Taploe preferred Asda, largely because it was cheaper and closer to home. He eschewed fancy microwave meals, preferring to cook from scratch; indeed, he would derive a certain satisfaction from making a single item last for several days. He could, for example, let a medium-sized battery chicken suffice for three meals: roasted first, then curried, and finally cold. Every week he bought a packet of six Porkinson’s sausages (two meals), three fillets of salmon (one of which he would habitually freeze) and a ribeye steak with oven chips for Sunday lunch. He ignored the aisles given over to juices and did not buy food in tins. For something sweet, Taploe allowed himself ice cream, a single packet of Penguins and a punnet of Elsanta strawberries.
It was a Friday evening, the pre-weekend crowd, and thankfully there were precious few children screaming at the hips of single mothers. Week after week Taploe watched them bumping trolleys into shelves and walls, spilling bottles of Sunny Delight in egg-yolk pools on the floor. But he could move with comparative ease tonight, through fruit and veg to wines, and would be home within ten or fifteen minutes, depending on the queue at the tills.
Just before seven thirty his mobile rang.
‘Mr Taploe?’
It was Katy, a low-level researcher less than six months out of college with a degree in media studies from Exeter University. He liked the fact that she sounded nervous on the phone and made a point of calling him ‘Mr Taploe’.
‘Yes, what is it?’
‘Well, I’ve been looking into Juris Duchev as you instructed, sir, and I’ve been advised by Paul Quinn to contact you directly with some information that I think you might find of interest.’
Taploe was standing beside a bored shelf-stacker. He moved towards the tills.
‘Go on.’
‘I’ve spoken to Interpol, sir, and they suspect that Duchev has been involved in at least two recent incidents still under investigation by the relevant lawenforcement authorities in those areas. The first was in Monaco three years ago, the shooting of a French investment banker with links to the Kukushkin organization. He was shot in his car waiting at traffic lights on the lower of the connecting roads between Monaco and Nice. The second took place in a Moscow suburb back in 1995.’ Katy breathed in quickly. It sounded as though she was searching through notes. ‘Again, that was a motorcyclist with a passenger riding pillion shooting directly into a vehicle. We suspect that if there’s razborka – the Russian term for the settling of a mafia dispute – then Juris Duchev is the individual who would carry it out on the mainland on behalf of the Kukushkin syndicate.’
Taploe didn’t say ‘Thank you’ or ‘Well done’, simply: ‘Is there any record of arrest?’
‘None, sir. Not on the files. And nothing from RIA.’
‘So your point is?’
It was the bully in him, the small man.
‘Well, what we didn’t know, sir, is that Duchev has a UK right of residence. It just came up. At the moment, he can come and go as he pleases.’
Taploe reached the end of Aisle 14 and stopped.
‘I see.’ The news irritated him, though he maintained a level tone of voice. ‘Well, thank you for passing on that information. I’ll come in to see you after the weekend and we can discuss it further.’
‘Very well. Thank you, sir.’
‘And Katy?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘I know full well what razborka is. There was no need to enlighten me.’
‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’
‘Goodbye.’
As he replaced the phone in his pocket, the back wheel of Taploe’s trolley caught on a sticky ball of waxed paper. He had to bend down to free it and missed a slot in the queue. Duchev, he thought. We let men like that live here, let them enter and leave at will. The British, in the name of decency and fair play, wave their enemies through the gates without so much as a glance. Tends to make my job harder, he mused, pushing towards the tills.
10
From: alicelucy1212@aol.com
To: mkeen@clublibra.net
Subject: Ben drink
Mark sweetheart
Very very busy here. On deadline. Yes, we talked about it last night. Basically he’s still very pissed off, obstinate, the usual thing, but I get the impression it’s not totally a lost cause. I mean how long can he keep going like this?
It’s like he’s making a point not just to his father, but to you, to me, to anybody he comes across. And of course to your mum. You know what B’s like when he makes his mind up.
If you think it’s a good idea then I would give it a try but I’m not sure how much luck you’ll have. I didn’t push it last night. I don’t want him to think I’m turning against him, and I didn’t say anything about you asking me, of course.
We’ve already arranged to meet in the Scarsdale pub at the back of the cinema on Ken High St – the place you came to before we went to the Doves concert. Can you be there by maybe half-past seven? There might be some people from work so be warned.
Lovely to see you the other night. Thanks for the vodka – weird bottle!
lol
Als
x
From: Mark Keen
To: alicelucy1212@aol.com
Subject: Re: Ben drink
That sounds good. I’ll be there at 7.30 at the latest. Don’t mention anything to him about it, OK? I don’t want him to feel like we’re setting a trap or something.
Thanks for this Alice – I appreciate it a lot.
Mark
Mark hit ‘Send’ and wondered if this was a good idea; he doubted whether Alice would be able to keep their arrangement a secret. Sometimes, in fact, he couldn’t even remember why he was doing his father the favour.
11
Taploe waited for Keen in the downstairs seating area of a Baker Street coffee shop. American-owned, the chain was populated by a preppy clientele drinking foam-laden lattes at Internet terminals. Bewildered by the range of drinks on offer, it had taken Taploe more than three minutes to explain to the South African girl working behind the counter that he simply wanted a black coffee, nothing more, nothing less.
‘You want an espresso, then?’
‘No. Just a black coffee. A normal black coffee. In a mug.’
‘Do you want me to make it a double? That’s longer.’
‘No. I find espresso too strong. Look –’
He scanned the menu board for the appropriate description. Latte. Mocha. Espresso. Ristretto. Mochaccino. Cappuccino. Iced Mochachino Latte …
‘It must be Americano,’ he said eventually. ‘That looks the closest.’
‘Americano!’ the girl shouted to her colleague and, given that there were four or five people queueing up behind him, Taploe felt that he could not now change his order.
‘Is that a shot of espresso with plenty of boiling water?’ he asked.
‘That’s right, sir,’ she said, pointing to the counter on her left. ‘Your order’ll be ready in a few minutes. Can I help anyone please?’
Taploe had found a small round table at the rear of the basement where any conversation would be drowned out by the tapping of computer keyboards, the quack and beep of the World Wide Web. Twenty or thirty people, mostly students, were crowding up the seating area.
Taploe sensed Keen before he saw him, a sudden intimation of good taste and disdain moving through the room. He was wearing a long, dark overcoat and carrying a small white cup of espresso in his right hand. Taploe was reminded of a Tory grandee.
‘Christopher,’ he said.
‘Stephen.’ Taploe’s view of his joe was already coloured by the basic antipathy that existed between the organizations to which both men had dedicated the bulk of their working lives. But the sense Keen gave off of living in an infallible bubble of privilege added a particular hostility to his contempt.
‘Did you find the place all right?’ he asked.
‘No problem at all. But it’s bloody cold outside. They say it might snow.’
‘Well, thank you for agreeing to the meeting at such short notice.’ Taploe sipped at his coffee but found that it was still too hot to drink. ‘I hope we didn’t put you out.’
‘Not at all. I have a dinner engagement in the West End at nine o’clock. The timing was rather convenient.’
Slowly, Taploe drew the tips of his fingers across the wooden surface of the table. It was an unconscious manifestation of his anxiety, and he was irritated with himself for showing it.
‘Can I get you anything from upstairs?’
Taploe could not think why he had asked the question. Keen simply lowered his eyes and indicated his espresso with a downward nod of the head.
‘Oh yes, of course.’
There was an embarrassed silence that Taploe eventually broke.
‘This shouldn’t take long,’ he said. ‘It was just to find out about your enquiries.’
Keen could see a Japanese student poring over notes held in a loose-leaf folder to the right of his chair. If Taploe considered this a secure environment in which to talk, he would take that on trust, but keep his remarks general to the point of being obtuse. Christian names. No specifics. Operational shorthands.
‘My view is very straightforward,’ he said. ‘If the lawyer is involved to any extent with the Russian organization then my son knows nothing about it. That would indicate to me that this is something that is happening only at the very highest level within the company. That is to say, only Thomas and perhaps Sebastian know anything about it.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Body language. A certain openness about the way he answered my questions. No obvious nerves. As our American friends might put it, Mark is out of the loop.’
By his expression, Taploe seemed unconvinced.
‘What did he say about the lawyer?’ he asked.
‘Nothing that you won’t already know. Bit of a chancer, man about town. Taste for what certain people regard as the finer things in life. Champagne, oysters, bliads.’
Keen assumed correctly that Taploe would recognize the Russian slang for prostitute.
‘Is that right?’ He pursed out his lips. ‘To what extent is he involved in that when he’s in Russia?’
‘Happens mostly in Moscow, by the sound of it. You know the form. They hang around the hotel lobbies and mezzanine floors, looking for businessmen with a wedding ring …’
Taploe essayed an exaggerated frown, as if the moral implications of Macklin’s behaviour had briefly overwhelmed him. He looked visibly disappointed.
‘And is Mark involved with them as well?’
‘Good God, no.’
Keen’s reply was abrupt and Taploe wondered if he might have offended him. He found himself saying ‘Of course, sorry,’ and then again resented his own awkwardness. A clatter of schoolgirls came down into the basement bearing tall beakers of coffee. One had a lit cigarette in her hand and was smoking it without skill, like someone sucking on the end of a pencil.
‘Is that an area you’re investigating?’ Keen asked. ‘Women being trafficked from eastern Europe, Russia and so on?’
Taploe’s eyes flicked across to the Japanese student who was still engrossed in his notes. Next to him, about three feet away, sat a vast man in his late thirties – surely American – dressed head to toe in Reebok sportswear. He was slowly typing an email using only the index finger of his left hand.
‘It’s certainly a possibility,’ he said, and swallowed a long intake of still-hot coffee. The roof of his mouth throbbed. ‘Did Mark add anything else in connection to that?’
‘Only that Thomas fools around with them in his hotel room. Perhaps he gets a discount.’
Taploe did not smile.
‘The impression I was given,’ Keen continued, ‘is that our lawyer friend is somewhat overwhelmed by the glamour of the way things work over there, the influence those boys wield. Unchecked power and unlimited violence. Excessive privilege for the select few. Free access to money, girls, narcotics, fast cars, restaurants; he’s in thrall to it all. The adrenalin, you see? Nothing like it over here, back in the old country.’
‘Yes,’ was all that Taploe managed to say, though everything that Keen was telling him fitted the emerging profile of Thomas Macklin. London surveillance had revealed nothing out of the ordinary: an on–off girlfriend (a receptionist in the City), the occasional escort, no tendency to gamble, a mild, recreational cocaine habit. He had an enthusiasm for lap-dancing and expensive clothes, few close friends, and a tendency to become aggressive when drunk. Macklin paid his bills regularly, but at any one time his major credit card – Visa – was never less than two or three thousand pounds in the red. He had sufficient funds in other bank accounts to pay the debt off, but for some reason failed to do so; Paul Quinn, Taploe’s closest associate on the case, had put this down to little more than negligence. There was nothing unusual about Macklin’s phone records, either at work, from home or on his mobile, save for the fact that he always called his Kukushkin contact in London from public telephone boxes, from which the calls were harder to trace. That, at the very least, hinted at a degree of concealment. The Internet, thus far, had revealed little that Quinn and Taploe did not already know: Macklin used email frequently, but only to stay in touch with developments within Libra worldwide. There had been nothing of any consequence to the ongoing investigation in the analysis of his Internet traffic, only incidents that coloured the psychological profile.
‘And Mark? That sort of lifestyle doesn’t appeal to him?’ Taploe asked.
Keen swallowed his espresso in a single controlled gulp.
‘I’ve told you,’ he said. ‘He’s more sensible, more down to earth. Like his father.’
Taploe did not acknowledge the joke. He thought that this would help him to make up some ground.
‘But you’ve spent a lot of time in that part of the world,’ he said, deciding to take a risk. ‘You can understand why Thomas might be tempted by the high life?’
Keen looked at him very quickly. His eyes appeared to blacken at the implication.
‘Thomas is a very different animal, Stephen, I can assure you. The lawyer’s a barrow boy, a bright entrepreneur out for whatever he can get. His sort usually run into trouble.’
A braver part of Taploe wanted to embarrass Keen into an explanation of the term ‘barrow boy’, but he let it go.
‘And the boss?’ he said. ‘How does Sebastian fit into the picture? How does he benefit from the Russian organization?’
Keen shifted slowly in his chair.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s absolutely no point in asking me about Roth.’ The use of his surname was a slip. ‘I should have thought that these were the sort of questions to which you might already have answers. As I told you at our previous meeting, my organization doesn’t tend to meet the chaps at the top of the tree. They send their underlings, their lawyers. Mr Ro –’ This time he checked himself. ‘Sebastian is a man about whom I know very little. I take it as read that he is greedy. I take it as read that he is unscrupulous. So many of us are, Stephen. But why would he be stupid enough to get involved with the Thieves? He must understand the power they exert in Russia? He’d be in over his head, could very quickly lose control of all his investments. It simply doesn’t make sense.’
‘And did Divisar warn him about that?’
‘Of course we did. Unfortunately, Thomas ignored our advice to get a Russian partner on board whose contacts would have facilitated the company’s expansion. Nor were they interested in franchising the name to local entrepreneurs. I advised them to become active in establishing relationships with senior government officials in the Ministry of Interior, men who might have offered them protection from organized crime, even if that meant paying off government bureaucrats instead. But Sebastian wanted total control. Apparently that was how he had built up the company and that was how he knew how to operate.’
The schoolgirls, gathered in a chattering huddle around one of the larger sofas, began giggling at a photograph in a magazine. Taploe looked across at them, absorbing Keen’s remarks and then running them through his mind like a filter. Eventually he said, ‘Does your son trust Thomas?’
Keen did not know how to answer the question beyond a simple, one-word response.
‘No.’
‘But they’re friends? They rely on each other.’
‘If that is your impression, then yes,’ he replied unhelpfully. He recalled asking Mark a similar question in the Chinese restaurant.
‘But what’s your impression?’ Taploe had begun to feel hemmed in by the crowded basement, the black coffee working through him to a flushed sweat. It was not even a question to which he required an answer, but he had been flustered from the moment he walked into the coffee house.
‘My impression?’ Keen ran the dark blue silk of his tie between the thumb and index finger of his left hand, smoothing it before letting it come to rest on the soft folds of his cream shirt. ‘My impression is merely common sense. That they may rely on one another, but that there is a world of difference between reliance and trust. If there wasn’t, after all, men like you and me would be out of a job. Loyalty within the world of business is a fiction. When push comes to shove, Thomas will no more look after my son’s interests than he would cut off his own hand.’
‘And vice versa?’
Keen moved forward.
‘You appear to be labouring under a misconception. Mark may have made several trips with Thomas, but they spent a lot of that time apart. What he gets up to in my son’s absence remains a mystery. You seem to think they’re some sort of double act, Libra’s answer to Morecambe and Wise.’
Taploe frowned, angered that Keen had mentioned the company by name.
‘You can understand that he’s our best lead,’ he said.
‘Well, what about the French chap?’ Keen asked. ‘If you want someone on the inside, why don’t you run him?’
‘French chap?’ Taploe said.
‘Philippe, I think his name is.’
‘D’Erlanger? He’s Belgian,’ Taploe corrected. ‘Anyway, he left the company to run a restaurant.’
‘Well, I was merely trying to help.’
‘Of course.’
‘So call Mark yourself,’ Keen suggested. ‘It’s obviously the next step.’ He felt no ordinary moral reason why he should not hand his son over to MI5. He was anxious to leave for dinner, and Mark would at least be able to help with the investigation. ‘To be honest, I’ve become bored playing the middleman,’ he said. ‘There’s something rather demeaning about it.’
12
Why had he bothered coming?
The pub in Edwardes Square stank generally of sweat and spilled pints, and specifically of stale sick in the area where Ben was sitting. He was halfway through a pint of Guinness, talking to an earnest financial journalist from the Evening Standard who wanted to know how he found the motivation to get up every morning and paint in his studio and, ‘Wasn’t there a temptation when you’re working from home just to fuck off and spend the whole afternoon in the cinema?’
‘Sometimes,’ Ben told him.
‘Well, I really admire you, man,’ he said. ‘No, I really do.’
Alice was at the bar, surrounded by five drooling male colleagues making wisecracks and pulling rank. She had phoned at the last moment and all but demanded that Ben join her for a drink. Come on. We never see each other. You never want to meet my friends. He had been forced to abandon work on the picture of Jenny, but now that he was here Alice was scarcely giving him the time of day. Ben was thinking about leaving as soon as he had finished his pint and going back to work in the studio.
‘So how much do you charge for a portrait?’ the journalist was asking.
‘What’s that?’ Ben had heard the question, but wanted to suggest with his eyes that he thought it was none of his business.
‘I said how much do you –’
‘It depends.’
‘Oh, right. What on, man? I mean, how do you rate it? By the hour?’
The conversation went on like this for fifteen minutes. But can you make any real money as a painter? Don’t you get bored and lonely? Ben couldn’t get away. The constant opening and closing of the street door fed muffled traffic noise into the pub. Ben found himself explaining why he hated the cocktail-party circuit of art exhibitions and gallery openings, all that air-kissing and people with too much money buying paintings just to match a sofa. The journalist was laughing, agreeing with everything Ben said, even offering to buy him a pint and introduce him to a City financier who was collecting art and ‘really knew what was right and wrong’.
‘You know, man. Not shark tanks and elephant shit. Paintings. He really likes oils and watercolours. Give me your number and I’ll text you his details.’
That was when Mark walked into the pub.
He was stopped by Alice almost immediately among the jam of bodies at the bar. She squealed and put her arms around his waist, looking over in Ben’s direction. Was this more than coincidence? Ben was so pleased to see him that he dismissed the thought immediately. He stood up, said, ‘Back in a moment,’ and walked towards the bar.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘Hello, brother. Had a meeting next door. Just popped in for a pint.’
‘Isn’t it amazing?’ Alice was saying, putting her hand on Mark’s back. ‘Of all the places.’
There were introductions, rounds of drinks. For half an hour they talked at the bar, Mark telling stories about Libra and Moscow, Alice involving everybody in the conversation and making sure to laugh at the news editor’s jokes. A frustrating evening became suddenly enjoyable for Ben, the easy slip of Guinness and close family. And as Alice’s colleagues left the pub one by one, it was easy for Mark to pull him away into a private huddle and to deal with the task in hand.
‘Listen,’ he said, putting a grip on Ben’s arm. ‘It’s good we’ve run into each other. I need to have a chat with you about something. Something important.’
Ben was smoking and pointed to the fourth finger of Mark’s right hand with his cigarette.
‘Is it about that?’ he asked.
Mark looked down.
‘What? The ring?’
‘The ring.’
A bad start.
‘Not exactly, no.’
‘Something else, then?’ Ben said, and sat down at a free table.
Mark was slow to follow, as if assembling his thoughts. He was always apprehensive when it came to talking to Ben. Coupled with a desire to protect and assist his younger brother existed an older insecurity, rooted in childhood squabbles and fights, a feeling that Ben could outsmart him. At Libra, Mark was super-efficient, the man Roth relied on to charm and cajole, an executive ten years in the business and never a foot put wrong. But when it came to Ben those talents were compromised by sheer familiarity. He hooked his suit jacket on the back of a beer-stained tartan chair and wondered how he was ever going to bring him round.
‘You OK?’ Ben asked.
‘Oh, sure.’
Mark must have looked tired and distracted, some sort of apology already evident in his eyes, because right away Ben said, ‘It’s about Christopher, isn’t it?’
And Mark nodded, hunching forward with an awkward smile.
‘’Fraid so,’ he said. ‘’Fraid so. Had lunch with him last week, before I went back to Moscow. That was when he gave me the signet ring. It belonged to …’
Ben immediately raised his hand and a column of ash fell free of the cigarette, drifting in scatters towards the carpet.
‘Forget it,’ he said. His attitude was not aggressive or unfeeling, merely a relaxed, clear assessment of his position. ‘I don’t care where it came from, why he gave it to you or which one of the Keen great-great-grandfathers wore it during the Crimean War. That stuff is between you and him. I don’t want any part of it.’
At the bar a soft drinks gun coughed.
‘Fair do’s,’ Mark muttered. ‘Fair do’s. I just wanted to let you know, so there was no big mystery or anything.’
‘Well, I appreciate it.’
There was hefty silence. Mark instinctively felt that the timing was all wrong; both of them a little drunk, Alice only ten feet away and their father on the other side of London. Why had he agreed to do Keen’s dirty work? What was in it for him?
‘But it’s connected to what I wanted to talk about,’ he said.
‘What’s connected to what you wanted to talk about?’
‘The ring. The dinner,’ Mark replied.
‘Oh. Right.’
Ben actually looked quite bored.
‘The other night, when I came round for dinner and you and Alice were going at it …’
This seemed to galvanize Ben briefly. He looked up and gave a quick response.
‘Yeah, I’m sorry about that. Alice has been a bit stressed lately. Both of us, in fact. Work stuff, marriage. We haven’t been getting on and it’s just been one argument after another …’
‘No, that’s not what I mean.’
Ben cocked his head to one side. They were talking at cross-purposes.
‘What then?’
‘Look, why don’t I just spell it out?’ Mark moved uneasily in his chair. It was like breaking bad news, waiting for the right moment. ‘I think things have changed between me and you, brother. Not as easy as they were. You follow?’
Ben shook his head. On the way to the pub Mark had sketched out the basics of a speech in his mind, but he was moving on to it too quickly.
‘It’s like this. The last six months, however long it’s been since Dad and I started meeting up, it’s as if you’ve gone into yourself, moved away.’
To illustrate his point, Mark spread his arms outwards like a cross and nearly knocked half a pint of cider out of the hand of a passing customer. Across the pub, a man was slamming his fist against the hard plastic casing of a fruit machine, spitting the single word ‘Fuck’.
‘It’s just that we’ve never really chatted about any of it.’ Mark was rubbing his jaw, words coming out before he had time to contemplate their impact. ‘It’s just been swept under the carpet. I’m abroad a lot, you’re with Alice, it’s not easy finding the time. But we need to clear the air. Your opinion matters to me. Now talk to me about what’s going on.’
Ben looked completely taken aback.
‘Where’s this coming from?’ he said.
‘It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Just seeing you tonight made me want to talk about it.’
Ben’s hand went up to his forehead, almost pulling the skin back from his eyes. He looked bloodshot and tense.
‘So OK, we’ll talk about it.’ He tipped his face up to the light and exhaled in a gasp. ‘It’s like this.’ Mark was listening very carefully. ‘I don’t allow myself to think about him. There are hard certainties in my life. There’s you. There’s Alice. I have my painting and my good friends. That’s how things stay under control. That’s how I manage to get by.’
The answer was so characteristic of his brother that Mark felt there was almost no point in going on. When Ben got an idea into his head it was impossible to change his mind. Only a basic desire not to let his father down led him to say, ‘Is that good for you?’
‘Is what good for me?’
‘Thinking about things in that way? Breaking them down?’
‘It’s just how I’ve learned to cope.’ Across the room, somebody had paid fifty pence to hear a bad cover version of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ on the jukebox. The song was forced and loud and Ben had to speak up. ‘And now that Alice and I are married I have to deal with that. She needs my support. I want to look after her, to make things right. You know all this. Why the fuck are you bringing it up now? Let’s get back to the bar and relax.’
Yeah, let’s, Mark thought, and hated what he was doing. He genuinely believed that the stand off between his brother and Keen was unhealthy, a running sore in the family, yet there was nothing, surely, that could be done about it. He was manipulating Ben for his father’s benefit, pure and simple. They had set a trap for him, pushing Ben towards something that he wanted no part of. And where was Alice? Laughing at the bar, oblivious to what was going on, facilitating her career while Mark was risking everything. Why didn’t she come over, why didn’t she think of someone else for a change? He felt heavy with sweat and drink. A woman at the bar was hanging her arm around the neck of a fat, bald Irishman mouthing the lyrics ‘How does it feel?’ over and over again.
‘What does Alice think about it?’ Mark found himself asking. ‘What does she reckon you should do?’
‘We haven’t talked about it much,’ Ben replied. ‘Why? Has she said anything?’
And suddenly Mark had a chance to force the issue. He remembered that Keen had asked an almost identical question as they were leaving the restaurant in Queensway.
‘What’s Alice’s view?’ his father had said. ‘Does she think Ben’s right about this? Right not to want to meet me?’
Mark had hesitated briefly, but the wine at lunch had led him to betray a confidence.
‘She’s just got used to the idea. Ever since she’s known Ben, she’s known about you and your situation. And if you want my honest opinion I reckon she thinks Ben’s being narrow-minded. In fact, she’s told me as much.’
If Mark could have retracted that statement, he would have done so in an instant. Keen’s eyes had lit up.
‘You could use that,’ he said, and the inference was appalling.
‘Use that? What do you mean?’
‘Tell Ben that you and Alice are in agreement. Tell him that it’s time he reconsidered. It’s the truth, isn’t it?’
‘… Mark?’
Ben was trying to attract his attention.
‘Yeah. Sorry. I wandered off.’
‘I asked you a question. I said, has Alice said anything about this?’
‘Well, maybe you should ask her.’ Mark had not intended to sound mysterious.
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Does she know about this? Does she know that we’re having this conversation?’
And at that moment Alice looked over, sensing the note-change in the tenor of her husband’s voice. Ben saw the set-up instantly.
‘Jesus. You’re not here by coincidence, are you?’
Mark wasn’t sure whether Ben was touched or angry; his face was momentarily unreadable. As a consequence he did not bother to lie in response. Shaking his head and even smiling at the stupidity of Keen’s plan, Mark said, ‘I’m not here by coincidence, no.’
And Ben was out of the pub in seconds.
13
Ben knew that it was not a good idea for a man of thirty-two to walk out of a crowded London pub after telling his older brother to fuck off. Not in Kensington and Chelsea, at any rate. And not in front of half a dozen of his wife’s colleagues, most of whom would now be on their mobile phones telling anyone from the Standard not fortunate enough to have been there in person just exactly what happened in the lounge bar of the Scarsdale at 8.28 p.m.
Mark had followed him outside, and Ben had heard Alice calling his name as he turned on to Kensington High Street, but they had both decided to let him go and were probably still waiting back in the pub. There was no sense, after all, in going after Ben when the red mist descended. They both would have known that from long experience.
He walked in the direction of Hyde Park, turning back on himself at the gates to Kensington Palace and returning along the opposite side of the street. Alice tried calling him on his mobile phone but he switched it off. It took about ten minutes for Ben to calm down and another five for embarrassment to set in. So much of his anger, he knew, was just a pose, a melodramatized statement of his long-term refusal to change. Whatever arrangement, whatever trap had been set by Alice and Mark, angered him only because he had been kept out of the loop, treated like a child by his wife and brother, and finally cornered in a place from which there was no realistic escape. It had occurred to him many times that he was clinging to old ideas simply because they shielded him from facing harder choices; in a very dangerous sense, Ben was defined by an attitude towards his father which he had formed as a teenager. To abandon that principled stand would mean the dismantling of an entire way of thinking. How would people react to him? How would he square it with what had happened to Mum? Ben wished to honour her memory, and yet that was the easy position. Far more difficult, surely, to do what Mark had done, to let bygones be bygones and to open himself up to chance.
He was heading back to the pub via a street at the western end of Edwardes Square when he heard a voice behind him.
‘Ben?’
He turned and saw that Mark was following him. He looked shattered. With the club opening in Moscow, he was probably only sleeping five hours a night and this was the last thing he needed.
‘Look, I’m sorry. It’s my fault. Don’t blame Alice. I asked her to help me out and she was just being loyal.’
Ben said nothing.
‘I’m sorry if I took you by surprise. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. We just …’ Mark stalled on the words. He had obviously rehearsed something and was determined to get it right. ‘All I was trying to say was this. More and more I’ve been thinking about the future, you know? Where are we gonna be ten years down the line? You and Alice have kids, Dad’s their grandfather, but because of all this shit that’s thirty years in the past his name can’t be mentioned at the dinner table. Meanwhile, he and I are getting on better than ever, but we’re still having to creep around behind your back. How long’s it gonna last?’
‘So you want me to meet him just so that you can have a better time of it when you’re fifty-five?’
Ben regretted saying that, but for the sake of fraternal pride did not want to concede too early.
‘I’m just saying that you should think about giving him a chance. Not tonight. Tonight is fucked into a hat. But soon, Ben, soon. Otherwise, he’s just going to be this barrier between us, a bridge we can’t cross.’
Ben smirked and looked up at the night sky.
‘I knew this was going to happen,’ he said. ‘Something like tonight.’
‘It was inevitable,’ Mark said.
‘Yes it was. And you know why? Because he’s talked you into it. You’re too soft on him, brother. You always want to do what’s right so that no one gets upset. Well, I’m upset. I got very upset in there. I embarrassed myself, I embarrassed you and I embarrassed my wife in front of everybody she works for. How does that feel?’
Mark did not respond. It looked as if he wanted to, but was holding back for fear of making things worse.
‘You want my truthful opinion?’ Ben was not surprised to feel that there was still resentment inside him. Most of it was a desire not to lose face, and he knew that he was prepared to make a later concession. ‘I think the relationship Dad has with you gives him what he wants – an opportunity to absolve himself of guilt.’ From his jacket pocket he took out a packet of cigarettes and watched his brother’s face for a register of annoyance. ‘Now he wants to complete that process, supposedly to convince me of his worth as a father. But that’s not motivated by a genuine concern for my welfare, or Alice’s, or anyone else. It’s just a selfish desire to convince himself of his blamelessness in respect of the past. He’s a spy, for Christ’s sake. All his relationships are games, little intrigues and power struggles. Look how he’s manipulated you. For most of his adult life Christopher Keen has been making a living out of an ability to convince people that he is something other than the person he appears to be. Think about it, Mark. If he could do it to Mum when they were married, if he could to it to us when we were kids, what’s to stop him doing it now?’
‘Thanks,’ Mark said, his face tightening. ‘You think I’m that much of a mug?’
Ben didn’t answer. He started walking towards the metal fence that ran along the western edge of the square. He had to move between parked cars.
‘You’ve got him all wrong,’ Mark said, following behind. ‘He’s not some puppet-master pulling the strings. Don’t you think people change? Don’t you think it’s possible that he might want to say sorry?’
Ben stopped and turned.
‘Has he said sorry to you?’
Mark could not give the answer he needed to without lying.
‘That’s not his style,’ he said, fudging it. They were now standing together on the pavement. ‘Dad just wants to make his peace. It’s that simple.’
‘Well, maybe he does,’ Ben conceded. ‘Maybe he does. And he can make it somewhere else.’
There were lights on in several of the houses on Edwardes Square, oil paintings and chintz and Peter Sissons reading the news. Ben saw a man enter a yellow-wallpapered drawing room wearing bottle-green corduroy trousers and a bright red sweater. The man was carrying a tray of food and talking to someone in another room.
‘You don’t believe that,’ Mark said.
‘Don’t I?’ Ben stared hard into his eyes. ‘He’s doing what I always thought he’d do. Crawling back, mid-life crisis, wanting us both to pat him on the head and tell him everything’s OK. Well, it’s not OK. He doesn’t meet me, he doesn’t meet Alice. End of story.’
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Charles Cumming
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Шпионские детективы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Perfect for fans of John le Carré, a gripping and suspenseful spy thriller from ‘the master of the modern spy thriller’ (Mail on Sunday)Mark and Benjamin Keen have not seen their father, Christopher, for more than twenty years.Hoping for a reconciliation, Christopher reappears, but he has only just begun to shed light on his life in the secret service when he is murdered in cold blood by an unidentified assassin.Was his death connected to his MI6 past? Did Christopher uncover a dangerous conspiracy involving his elder son? And what were his links to Moscow, Afghanistan and the Russian mafia in London?To discover the truth – and avenge their father’s death – the brothers are drawn into the legacy of his life as a spy.And inheritance can be deadly…