SEVERANCE KILL (2 page)

TWO

The branches flailed at him, competing with the squalls of rain that managed to slip between the trees. Calvary ignored them. His breath sawed and his thighs burned. The pounding his feet were taking from the knotty, stony floor of the woods would raise blisters. A year earlier, six months, there would have been none of this after only eight miles. He’d been letting himself slide.

The forest lay on a ridge to the northeast of the city, a swathe of ancient woodland within walking distance of the flat where Calvary lived, alone. The soil under his feet was said to be riddled with bodies, victims of the East End gangs. Calvary couldn’t say he felt at home in the forest, quite; but he didn’t feel like an interloper there either.

His watch, a sports model, said it was five in the afternoon. The flight was at six tomorrow morning. Plenty of time to force himself through another few circuits, scald himself in the shower, exhaust himself before dropping into a sodden slumber. Do anything but think.

He drove himself deep into the gloom.

*

Llewellyn had turned the tablet computer round to show Calvary.

‘Sir Ivor Gaines.’

They were at a corner table in a tiny restaurant a few miles into the Berkshire countryside, west of the city. Calvary had never been there before but he assumed it was one used regularly by the Chapel for meetings such as this one. He assumed it had discreet, well-compensated staff and bug-free walls.

One other table was occupied, by a young couple who were so engrossed in each other they barely spoke. Llewellyn himself had said little while he’d driven. Calvary had kept completely silent, staring out the window.

‘Age seventy-three. Former FCO, retired seven years ago. Career diplomat. Served in Hong Kong and Indonesia, and closer to home in Vienna, Prague and Berlin.’

Llewellyn had ordered his usual Scotch and soda. He took a hearty swig. Despite himself, Calvary glanced down at the image on the screen. The picture was a sharp one, taken with a decent camera.  Its subject seemed unaware he was being snapped. He looked younger than his years, small and molish and with sparse hair combed over his pate in the manner of a middle-aged rather than an elderly man. To Calvary he resembled an older Philip Larkin.

Calvary drew a breath, grappled his feelings – towards Llewellyn, towards the situation he was in – until they were secured, then stowed them. Forced himself to concentrate.

He said, ‘Spook?’

‘You’d think, wouldn’t you? Diplomat of his generation, posted to those particular fields. But no, surprisingly SIS never managed to recruit him. They tried, of course. Several times. He was never interested.’ Llewellyn sipped some more whisky. ‘Bit of a lefty, apparently.’

‘That’s odd, in a diplomat.’

‘It’s more common than you might realise. People spend time in the host culture, interacting with the other side, sometimes they go native.’ He raised his eyebrows as the food arrived. ‘You really ought to eat something.’

Calvary ignored him. ‘How left wing was he?’

Llewellyn jabbed his fork at Calvary in delight. ‘Exactly. You’ve got it.’ For a moment he seemed to be congratulating himself silently. ‘So left wing that, during his time in Berlin in the late seventies, Gaines was suspected of liaising with the KGB. Nothing too drastic, a few low-level documents that got leaked. And nothing that could be pinned on him. They tried the usual traps – feeding him false information to see if it made it across to the other side – but he was too good to fall for those. And he was a bloody good diplomat, so they were disinclined to sack him. They decided to keep him in place and watch what happened.’

Llewellyn gave his lamb shank some attention, then went on. ‘He was in Prague nearly a decade later, just before the fall of the Wall. Ten more years of unblemished service as far as we know. Then, one of SIS’s most highly placed agents within the StB, the Czechoslovakian secret police, fell under a train. Murdered, of course. Again, there was no proof, but he’d been an old friend and colleague of Gaines’s.’

Llewellyn was becoming more animated now, starting to talk before finishing a mouthful. Calvary moved his chair back, pointedly, but Llewellyn didn’t seem to notice. Not for the first time the man’s curved face, the prominent chin and the peak of hair, made Calvary think of Punch.

‘Here’s the clincher. An old StB officer admitted last year that Gaines was the one who’d tipped them off about our agent. The StB chappie refused to go on the record, mentioned it out of the blue in a conversation with an SIS man in Prague who used him as an occasional source of information. But it caused quite a fuss, as you might imagine. Two days later the old StB fellow was dead. Heart attack.’ He lifted his shoulders, meaning:
draw your own conclusions
.

‘Gaines is living in Prague now. Loved it so much he retired there.’

‘Not Moscow.’

‘Good God, no.’ Llewellyn chortled. ‘Very few of those secret flagwavers for Mother Russia could actually stand living in the bloody place. Kim Philby did, but that was hardly by choice. Also, Gaines married a Czech woman, so he had ties there. She died.’ He signalled for another Scotch.

Calvary said: ‘You want me to hit him.’

Llewellyn’s eyes twinkled.

Calvary breathed deeply though his nose. ‘Why go after him now? More than twenty years later? Even in the light of the new information this StB man provided?’

‘Justice? The notion that it applies to everybody, regardless of age or of how long has passed in between?’ Llewellyn was watching him in amusement, toying with him.

Calvary didn’t bother answering. The Chapel had never been interested in justice or any such higher concept. Killing Gaines would have to address some issue to do with
realpolitik
, or they wouldn’t be involved, and Calvary and Llewellyn wouldn’t be sitting here.

Llewellyn let it go. ‘Fair enough. Our Sir Ivor hasn’t stuck to tending roses in his retirement. He’s become something of an advocate for the current Russian regime. All under the guise of cementing friendship between Moscow and the West. We need to stand together against the global terrorist threat. Blah blah. But the after-dinner talks he gives, the articles he writes for local newspapers, are all fawningly pro-Kremlin.’

‘Even so. He’s hardly a huge threat to British interests, surely. Or even any threat.’

‘True.’ Llewellyn tapped the screen of the computer. ‘But I’ll show you why it matters.’ He turned the tablet towards Calvary again.

This time he recognised the face. Not just the face, but the actual picture. There had been a few days, the year before last, when it had been inescapable. Every broadsheet, every tabloid, every TV screen had given it prominence. The narrow, wolfish face, the hair receded to a widow’s peak, the eyes those of both hunter and hunted.

Peter, or Pyotr, Grechko. Defector from the
Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti
, the KGB, in the dying months of the Cold War. Invited back into the Kremlin fold in 2000, an invitation which he very publicly turned down. Stabbed to death with a stiletto on the Albert Bridge two years ago.

‘The final straw.’ Llewellyn’s voice had gone quiet. ‘It’s time we sent the Kremlin a message.’

*

Calvary had been among the first to check in and board, and managed to secure himself a window seat. His sole piece of luggage, a holdall, stowed under the seat in front of him, he stared out at the runway while the plane began its reluctant turn, the rain blurring the orange light.

He’d wanted to go the previous evening, straight after the meeting with Llewellyn, but he’d needed a night’s sleep. Even when the jobs didn’t involve intense physical exertion as this one had, he felt utterly drained afterwards, unable to function for a day or two. He felt clean, clearheaded, after the run the previous afternoon.

Less than twelve hours, and he’d be free. Assuming Llewellyn was telling the truth.

*

He’d first met Dafydd Llewellyn on a summer’s day nearly five years earlier. Six weeks after…
it
had happened.

Calvary had stepped off the plane, a civilian jet from Turkey that had taken him on the second leg of his journey home, and in the customs channel he’d been intercepted smoothly by two men whom, absurdly, he’d for instant taken to be plainclothes military police. They sat him in a box of a room which smelled of the disinfectant that had been used to clear away the stink of fear-induced sweat.

After a couple of minutes the small man came in, his grin bisecting his long face. He offered Calvary coffee. His voice was beautifully modulated, the tongue lingering on the Ls and prolonging the consonants at the ends of the words.

Llewellyn came straight to the point. ‘Mr Calvary, I would like to offer you a job.’

A talent spotter in the Army – Calvary didn’t know if it was somebody in his own regiment, and Llewellyn wasn’t saying – had apparently noticed Calvary and forwarded his name to Llewellyn. Llewellyn was fully aware of what had happened six weeks earlier, and why Calvary was leaving the Army. Calvary found the fact that he still wanted to hire him, and for this particular type of work, supremely ironic.

So Calvary had come to work for the Chapel. He had never met anybody else from the Chapel but Llewellyn. He had no idea if it had offices anywhere, whether it was a subdivision of SIS or an entirely separate agency.

He knew precisely three things about the Chapel. Its existence was unknown to all but a handful of senior people in government, perhaps less than a handful. It paid on a commission basis, and very generously.

And its sole remit was the permanent elimination of enemies of the State.

*

‘We know who did it. Know, beyond the shade of a doubt, who killed Grechko. But there’s nothing we can do about it. The Kremlin refuses to let us extradite the bugger, and that’s that.’

Llewellyn had finished his lamb and was starting on a crème brulee.

‘But enough’s enough. It was murder, and it was done so blatantly that it could only have been meant to cock a snook at us. Grechko was British, and he was murdered on British soil. We need to let them know we won’t let this one go.’

‘Gaines isn’t Russian, though. And he’s in Prague.’

Llewellyn flipped a hand. ‘The match doesn’t have to be exact. There are no high-profile Brits in Moscow who’ve recently taken Russian citizenship and are agitating against the brutalities of the British state. That’s because we don’t arrest our captains of industry or murder our journalists.’

Calvary let that pass without comment.

Llewellyn went on. ‘So: A known Cold War traitor, now a vocal fanboy for the Kremlin regime, gets hit. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. But it mustn’t look like an accident either. They need to know that we know they understand exactly what it is. An assassination.’

Calvary had agreed to a glass of tap water. He drained it, steadily, watching Llewellyn over the rim.

Llewellyn laid down his spoon with a sigh and leant back.

‘Now. Let’s talk about you, Martin.’

‘There’s nothing to say.’

‘Oh, but there is. Plenty.’ He dabbed his lips. ‘Six jobs, you’ve done. You’re baulking earlier than most.’

‘What?’

‘Baulking. Everybody does, sooner or later. Unless they’re complete psychopaths, but we try not to hire those. Try to screen them out at the beginning.’

Calvary waited.

‘Oh, Martin, come on. Killing people isn’t a long-term career option. Not for a normal person. You had your reasons for taking on this work, and I know what they were, but you’ve reached the point – as I say, the point everyone reaches eventually – where you can’t go on. It isn’t a wobble, it isn’t something you can grit your teeth and get over. You said something like that back there on the street. No. You want out, for good.’ He hunched forward suddenly. Calvary saw something gristly stuck between his incisors. ‘He pleaded, did he? On behalf of his wife? His children?’

Hating Llewellyn as he’d never believed he could hate anybody, Calvary said: ‘I don’t have to say anything to you about my reasons.’

‘No, you certainly don’t.’ The gentleness was back, slipping in like silk. ‘Look, it’s a rotten situation you’re in. I do appreciate that. You’re a superb operative, one we can’t let go without getting our money’s worth. But you’re almost out. One more job, and you will be. And it’s the most significant job of all, the most useful to your country. Not that I expect you to care about that, but it’s the truth.’

‘If I don’t –’

‘If you don’t’ – the steel cut through the silk – ‘if you refuse, or agree and then go renegade, Scotland Yard will be sent the photos the Chapel has of you leaving Abubakar Al-Haroun’s flat. They’ll find him there in all his stiffening glory, and your spoor will be all around for their lab rats to snuffle up. And you’ll be subject to one of the biggest manhunts of the decade. If,
when
, they catch you, you won’t be able to take refuge in the defence that you were just following the Chapel’s orders, because we don’t exist.
I
don’t exist. You and I never met. You’ll be locked up in maximum security for the rest of your life, for your own protection because you’ll be the target of a
fatwa
, having assassinated one of the most valuable recruiters Islamist terrorism had in Western Europe.’