Illegal Action (24 page)

58

A
dead squirrel lay flattened on the gravel at the top of the drive, still bleeding. “There’s been a car along here recently,” said Rodrigues, looking in the mirror at Michael in the back seat.

They were approaching the house that loomed at the end of the double row of lime trees, and a tense silence filled the car. Decay in all around I see, thought Michael as they neared, for though the building was an architectural jewel, it was a damaged one—he noted the missing tiles on the roof and the nest which rooks had made on top of one chimney. There was something spooky about the untended beauty of the place.

Michael broke the silence. “Stop here,” he said abruptly, well short of the terminating semicircle of gravel, where they could see two large black limousines parked. Rodrigues grunted and pulled over. As they got out of the car, both he and Maloney unbuttoned the holsters of their side arms.

The day was unseasonably cold, but the wind had died and a stillness hung like mist in the air. No birds sang, no cars hummed in the distance. They walked silently on the grass at the edge of the gravel drive, aware that the lime-tree avenue gave them little cover as they approached the house. Michael was very conscious of being in charge. This was his operation. But what was the best way to proceed? Ring the doorbell and ask for Miss Falconer? Find their own way in? There must be an open window somewhere.

The answer came when the large front door creaked open and a short dark man came out, moving lithely, almost cockily down the steps. Michael recognised Brunovsky at once. He felt relief—if Brunovsky were still here, then Liz must be as well. And there was no sign that the oligarch was in any danger. Far from it—he was waiting for someone, and a moment later a tall, powerfully built figure in a leather jacket came out, supporting an older man, who looked ill.

What’s going on? wondered Michael. Who was this sick man and why was he being helped to the car? Where the hell was Jerry Simmons?

He knew they had to make a move. “Don’t let them drive away,” he instructed Rodrigues. It was then that they were spotted: as the tall man bundled the invalid into the Mercedes, he straightened up and pointed towards them, speaking urgently to Brunovsky.

“Let’s go!” shouted Michael, and Maloney and Rodrigues began to run. By the car, the man in the leather jacket hesitated. For a moment Michael thought he would run for it.

“Garda!” shouted Maloney. Then “Police!”

The man turned to face them and raised his hands in surrender. It was Brunovsky who kept moving, sprinting towards the side of the house.

“Stop,” shouted Maloney, but the Russian kept running. You idiot, thought Michael; didn’t he understand it was the Garda? Michael was also running now, only a few yards behind the Irish policemen, and as he reached the car he decided to leave Brunovsky to it; he would be easy to find in the grounds later on. Right now his priority was Liz, and he stopped and turned to Maloney. “Leave him,” he said, gesturing in the direction of the fleeing Russian. “Come with me.”

They ran up the steps and into the house, where they stopped in the cavernous entrance hall and listened. Silence. Then, very faintly, they heard a slow thumping noise towards the rear of the building. Michael turned to Maloney and put a finger to his lips. “Wait here,” he whispered, “and don’t let anyone leave the house.”

Michael moved cautiously along the corridor until he reached an open door. He peered into a sumptuous but faded drawing room, with a view of gardens and, in the distance, a large oval lake. There was a woman in the corner, struggling with one of the French windows. She was trying to open it, he realised, and when she saw him standing in the doorway, she turned back and pushed hard against the lock.

“Where is Jane Falconer?” he demanded, just as the lock gave way and the French window flew open. Instinctively, Michael stepped forward into the room. “Wait,” he said, fearing the woman was about to run outside. “Don’t move.”

She cast a look back at him, openly scornful, and he took two quick steps towards her. This must be Greta. He still expected her to run for it, and was taken by surprise when she suddenly reached into her bag. The next thing he knew she was holding a gun. She said, with the precision of a foreign speaker, “Do not get involved.”

She’s going to get away, was his initial reaction before he had time to be afraid. “Put it down,” he said self-consciously, wondering where the line had come from. A movie? A thriller? He was amazed how calm he felt. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “Maloney!” he suddenly shouted. And as he took another step towards her, watching for her to drop the gun, he wondered quite irrationally what Anna would think of him now.

It was the last thought he ever had. Greta fired twice, though only the first shot was needed—it hit Michael two inches above his left eye, and killed him instantly.

Maloney recognised the noise from the practice range, though he wanted it to be something else—a car backfiring, a balloon popped by a child; anything other than a gunshot. He was halfway down the hall when he heard it. Lord Jesus, he thought, then said it to himself, like a mantra, “Lord Jesus.”

He was reaching for his holster as he approached the doorway and he stopped momentarily to be sure he had his gun in his hand before he went into the room. He had never, in thirty-seven years on the force, drawn a weapon in anger, and he was relieved to see that his hand was steady. Still, he felt slightly foolish, as his initial panic gave way to doubt—probably he would find nothing more than some people embarrassed by the accidental bang they’d caused.

As he crossed the threshold of the room, his mind registered the body on the floor, crumpled and lying on its back. He realised it was the young lad from London, his eyes staring vacantly towards the high ceiling, a small black hole above one brow. But Maloney took this in only fleetingly, for in the background there was another figure, a woman, dressed smartly.

He would not normally have seen a female as a threat, but he saw the expression on this woman’s face, an expression neither of panic nor shock but of determination. She was holding a pistol by her side and something—he was never able to say what—told him in unequivocal terms that she was going to shoot him dead. He held his arm out to its full length, and just as he saw her weapon start to swing up, he squeezed the trigger of his own gun.

The noise and kick of the explosion surprised him, so much that he almost fell backwards. Recovering, he saw the woman drop the pistol, and his eyes watched with perverse fascination as it landed on its metal butt, bounced on the large Oriental rug, freakishly bounced again, then was suddenly smothered by the body of the woman as she collapsed on to the floor.

The first thought that came into his head—though he was to tell no one this, not even his wife—was: that wasn’t so hard. But then he fell to his knees, literally knocked down by the realisation of what he had done. Lord Jesus.

59

I vow to thee my country—all earthly things above—

Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love…

The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,

The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

A
s they sang the hymn Liz noticed the brown-haired girl in the second row of pews. She was crying silently, tears streaming down her face. A university friend of Michael Fane’s? Perhaps even a girlfriend. More likely an ex-girlfriend, since she wasn’t sitting with members of the family—Geoffrey Fane, his former wife and an elderly woman Liz assumed must be a grandmother—in the front pew. The new French husband of the former Mrs. Fane had thought it politic not to make an appearance. So, less forgivably, had Brian Ackers.

They were in the Chapel of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, located inconspicuously off the long nave of St. Paul’s Cathedral, separated by beautiful brass and iron grill doors. It was a small haven in a vast public space, though occasionally noise drifted through from the cathedral, which even on a weekday morning was streaming with tourists.

The chapel seemed to Liz a strange choice for a service for someone as young as Michael. A choice made presumably by Geoffrey Fane, whose CMG, given to him fairly recently for his counter-terrorist work, would have entitled him to have his son’s memorial service there. “Call Me God” as the award was known frivolously, given for significant service to the state in the foreign arena. Both the honour and the chapel represented an Establishment Michael Fane would never make his mark on. Liz felt uneasy at the unstated implication that they were mourning the death of a future English leader, when she knew all too well that Michael Fane had not been making the grade. Maybe if he’d lived he would have done well. Certainly his last act had been brave, though also headstrong.

There were two readings—the first from Leviticus given by a school friend of Michael’s, who read in a low sonorous voice, like a much older man. Then the girl Liz had spotted crying got up and came forward. She read from Ecclesiastes—“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth”—starting so jerkily that for a moment Liz feared that her emotions would overwhelm her. But the girl seemed to take hold of herself and read simply and movingly to the end of the verse: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher…all is vanity.”

An image flashed before her, of Michael’s body lying on the drawing-room floor. The woman she knew as Greta also lay dead nearby. Liz had been freed just seconds before, by an Irish policeman who’d been holding a gun, ready to fire.

How easily it could have gone another way. Instead of attending this memorial service Liz would be sitting in her office in Thames House, trying to stay patient with Michael Fane’s countless suggestions, becoming mildly amused when Peggy proved less successful in controlling her own irritation with the man. Man? He’d been a boy, really, Liz thought now with sudden sadness.

“If onlys” continued to play a game in her head. If only Brian had agreed to her coming out of the Brunovsky house, though that was not the sole cause of these might-have-beens. If only she had seen through Brunovsky himself, sensed from his carefree, sometimes madcap behaviour that he knew he wasn’t in any danger at all. She supposed, too, that her scepticism about a plot had blinded her to Greta, with hindsight clearly not what she pretended to be. They’d been looking for an Illegal, though frankly there had never been any real reason to suspect there was one—and certainly not in Brunovsky’s circle.

She stopped the “if only” game. That way led to recrimination and guilt, neither of which would change anything now, least of all the death of Michael Fane. Liz had long ago learnt that if you did your best, that was all you could do—that, and try to learn from your mistakes. A cliché, perhaps, but no less true for it.

You had to hand it to Brunovsky, she thought, as a speaker walked slowly towards the lectern, set in front of the modest altar. The oligarch had managed to flee Ballymurtagh in the most dramatic way—escaping in the same helicopter that had brought Morozov there. Interviewed by the Garda later that evening, the shocked pilot explained how the Russian had come sprinting across the lawn behind the house and jumped straight into the helicopter’s passenger seat. When the pilot had protested, this new passenger had stuck a derringer to his head and ordered him to start the engine.

One hour later they had set down in a park on the southern outskirts of Dublin, not far from the Martello tower of Joyce and
Ulysses
fame. Backed by the pistol, Brunovsky had ordered him to take off on his own. As he’d hovered briefly 400 feet up, the pilot had last seen the Russian getting into a large black car waiting at the edge of the park.

It could not have been planned—Liz was certain that Brunovsky had expected to return to England with her, establishing an unbreakable alibi for the kidnapping of Morozov—but there must have been a fallback. He’d have been helped, possibly, by the Russian Embassy in Dublin. Or perhaps by some sympathisers—that seemed unlikely, but then so had the idea of an Illegal until Greta had proved otherwise.

In any case, the oligarch had disappeared without trace. No one resembling his description had gone through any of Ireland’s thirty-six airports, despite intensive scrutiny from both the Republic and the Northern Ireland aviation authorities. A search of maritime passenger lists had proved equally barren. Was it possible that the Russian had remained in Ireland, waiting for the situation to calm down before making his move?

Then, four days ago, the MI6 station in Moscow had reported a sighting of Brunovsky, admittedly from a not altogether reliable source. He had been spotted in an expensive restaurant, lunching with a senior official from the state oil company. He had seemed carefree, relaxed.

As for “Greta,” she now lay in an unmarked grave in County Cork—the same Russian Embassy had shown no interest in helping to identify the dead woman, about whom the only thing to be said with certainty was that she was
not
Greta Darnshof.

The eulogy was being given by one of Michael’s old schoolmasters, and as he spoke, Liz realised that the man hadn’t really known Michael very well—his praise of Michael’s promise was unspecific, and he didn’t seem to have kept in touch once Michael moved on from university. There was an ineffable pathos about it all.

But then, as the schoolmaster went on to recount Michael’s love for cricket, Liz thought, just how well does anyone know another person? She contemplated the strange, rich cast of characters she had come across in this latest and oddest assignment of her career. She thought of the Brunovsky retinue, and their irregular array of secrets. She doubted she would ever see Monica again, unless it was to catch a glimpse of her shopping on New Bond Street in an Hermès scarf, or rushing to lunch at San Lorenzo. She would soon have another rich man in tow.

Mrs. Warburton, the housekeeper, and the cook, Mrs. Grimby, would probably have forgotten about Liz already, and right now Jerry Simmons would have other things on his mind—like the interview with the brigadier about his future employment. Peggy had told her that Harry Forbes was back in New York; long may he stay there, thought Liz.

And Dimitri, of course, who had been held by the Garda for two days, then quietly expelled, along with Svetlana, the planted carer for Miss Cottingham. It would have been difficult to prove either was going to kidnap Morozov, and it had been Greta who had the gun. Henry Pennington had had some explaining to do to his colleagues in the Irish Foreign Affairs Department, but at least his worst nightmare had been avoided and the prime minister’s trip to Moscow was going ahead as planned. Morozov had recovered in twenty-four hours from the huge dose of Rohypnol and was back in London, no doubt with reinforced protection.

The schoolmaster finished his eulogy, and the clergyman moved forward for the concluding prayer. Next to Liz, Peggy Kinsolving knelt down on her kneeler, head bowed and hands firmly clasped, while Liz, a non-believer, merely bowed her head as a mark of respect. How young Peggy was, and seemingly such an open book. Yet there were indications of a developing resolve and a mental toughness that held promise for the future. You grew close to people in the shared responsibility of this sort of work. But it was an intimacy forged by a common goal, not by the sense that getting to know each other was a be all and end all.

Except. She cast a discreet sideways glance at Charles Wetherby, who like Liz had not kneeled but merely bowed his head. Even with him, a close familiar presence at work, there were whole areas of his life she had never even glimpsed. She’d never met his wife, or his sons; she wondered if she’d find him the same man when he was with his family. Now, she wasn’t even sure for how long he would be back in Thames House.

Yet increasingly she was aware—and there was no point in fighting it—that she cared for him deeply, and quite independently of work. Did he feel the same? She simply didn’t know, and in the circumstances—he was again her boss now, his wife was still terminally ill—Liz couldn’t see how she was going to find out any time soon.

They sang a final, familiar hymn, then slowly made their way out of the pews and into the cathedral nave. As she and Wetherby came to the entrance of St. Paul’s, Geoffrey Fane was there, standing on the steps outside, greeting the departing mourners. They queued briefly, then Liz found herself shaking his hand.

“Thank you for coming,” said Fane. And then, “It has been very unpleasant for you.”

“We’ll miss him,” said Liz, and Fane nodded gratefully. The slightest quiver of his lip belied his cool façade.

Wetherby had tactfully moved on.

Fane said, “I can’t help thinking that if only I had told you that Morozov had been turned by the Germans, the whole disaster could have been avoided. You might have seen it was Morozov they were after.”

The possible truth of this was undeniable, but Liz shrugged. “I should have suspected Brunovsky. He never seemed worried enough for a man supposed to be in danger.”

Fane shook his head. “Not at all. You did very well, with the sketchy information you had.” It was clear he was determined to blame only himself.

Fane’s thoughts moved on. “You know,” he said wistfully, “Michael and I didn’t have much of a relationship. My fault, I’m afraid—I suppose I let my quarrels with his mother infect things. But the last time I saw him, he asked if we could have lunch.”

“I’m sure you would have become close.”

He smiled wryly. “That’s just another vanished opportunity I’m going to have to live with.”

He looked with resignation at Liz, then turned towards the mourners behind her, who were ready to offer their own condolences. As Liz moved down the steps on to the pavement courtyard, now soaked in the midday sun, she saw Wetherby waiting for her patiently.