Slow Horses (34 page)

‘A legend,’ Ho said.

‘With at least three back-ups.’

‘Back-ups?’

Catherine said: ‘Like a reference on a CV. At least two contact numbers, or addresses, where if anyone comes checking, they’ll find confirmation you’re who you say you are.’

‘And how’s that work when you’re off the books?’

‘You go freelance.’

They thought about it.

‘It’s getting expensive.’

‘Slush fund,’ Louisa said.

‘That’s all tight as hell since the Miro Weiss business.’

Which was when a quarter of a billion pounds, slated for reconstruction work in Iraq, had gone walkabout.

‘Okay, how’d you do it on the cheap?’

‘Friends.’

‘Nobody’s got friends that good,’ Ho objected.

‘Not in your world,’ Louisa agreed. ‘But there must be people owe Taverner a favour. And I mean, what are we talking? You get a phone call from some little England nut, asking if you can vouch for whatever Black was calling himself? Takes two minutes to say yes.’

Catherine said, ‘No. You need a dedicated phone line, and you need to be in character when it rings, 24/7. On the books, this stuff is handled via the Queens. The system tells them, when they get a caller, who they’re supposed to be.’

Min reminded himself that Catherine Standish had been Charles Partner’s Girl Friday. Partner had been before Min’s time, but he was pretty much a legend himself.

He said, ‘Well—’ but got no further.

‘Oh fuck,’ Catherine said.

The first time any of them had heard her say that.

‘I think I know what they did.’

Curly said, ‘Thought we were heading out of the city.’

‘I’m trying.’

He didn’t seem to be. They’d passed another mosque, unless they were going in circles, and it was the same one.

‘How big’s this fucking place anyway?’

‘London?’ Larry said. ‘Pretty big.’

Curly glanced across, but he wasn’t taking the piss. He looked like he was hanging on by his fingernails, frankly.

Like someone a policeman would stop, to check he wasn’t going to stroke out at the wheel.

‘Thought you were following the signs.’

‘I thought you were pointing them out to me.’

‘Is there a map anywhere?’ Then answered his own question, pulling open the glovebox, finding nothing but hire-agreement papers and a couple of manuals.

‘There’s that,’ Larry said.

‘What?’

‘That.’ He pointed.

The penny dropped.

Curly said, ‘Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.’

Letting himself through the door, River paused. A dim glow from the third floor reached him like a ghostly presence, but he heard nothing. Which might mean he was alone. Or that anyone else in the building was being very quiet.

Well, he could hang by the back door wondering. Or go up and find out.

He took the first set of stairs slowly, part wary, part weary. His body was feeling the hours it had put in: surges of adrenalin; shocking sights. It took it out of you.
It’s not whether you can cope with the things that happen.
The O.B.’s words.
It’s whether you cope afterwards, once they’ve happened. Once they’re over.

But this wasn’t over. And he experienced another rush at the thought of what Taverner had done to him.

The second flight came easier; by the time he was on the third he was almost hoping there’d be someone here—one of the cleaners; one of the Dogs. A few hours ago, he’d gone quietly. This time he wouldn’t.

But there was nobody there but Jed Moody, cold and dead on the landing.

Passing him, River went up to Lamb’s office. A shoebox sat on the desk, as Lamb had promised. River did as instructed, then carried the box downstairs.

Back on Moody’s landing, he knelt by the body. He supposed he ought to care that the man was dead, but what he mostly felt was the strangeness of it; that Moody, like River, had been a counter in a boardgame played by other people. Only for Moody, the game was over. Snakes and ladders were one thing. A staircase was deadlier.

He’d had a gun, though, and needn’t have been the one removed from the board. If he’d been prepared to use it, maybe River would be crouching next to a dead Min Harper or Louisa Guy, and Moody would have been in the wind, Lamb’s flight fund in his pocket.

But Moody hadn’t wanted to shoot them, so maybe there was loyalty between slow horses after all. They weren’t friends, or hadn’t been friendly, before this long night started. But Moody hadn’t been able to bring himself to shoot them.

Shoot another one, anyway. Though shooting Sid had been an accident.

For one reason or the other, River allowed Moody another second’s peace.

Then he stripped the corpse.

‘Legends never die,’ Catherine said. ‘They wouldn’t be legends otherwise. When a joe’s deep cover, long-term, they get the works. Passport, birth certificate, everything. Credit cards, library cards, all the stuff you fill your wallet with.’

‘Sure.’

‘We know that.’

‘And it costs.’

Ho rolled his eyes. He’d been involved in more conversation this morning than the past two months, and it was already sounding familiar. ‘We established that. Your point?’

‘They do it on the cheap.’

‘Thank you, superbrain. So they what, picked up some knock-off ID down the market? Maybe Oxfam—’

‘Shut up, Ho.’

‘Yeah, shut up, Ho. How do you mean on the cheap, Catherine?’

She said, ‘They use one that already exists. Did Black ever go undercover?’

This was more like it. Now they had guidance.

‘Turn left in one hundred yards.’

Larry said, ‘She’s that posh bird.’

‘They’re all posh birds.’

‘You know the one I mean.’

‘You know something? I don’t. I really don’t. And I really don’t care.’

It was five, which meant they’d been lost for an hour, and there was no noise from the boot. Curly wondered if the Paki had fallen asleep, or died: from a heart attack or something. Like cheating the hangman. He wondered what difference it would make if they had to do it with him already dead, and decided: not so much. Moe had been dead, and taking his head off had been a serious business. The world would sit up and take notice, either way.

He laughed, a sudden sharp bark that startled Larry, who veered and nearly clipped a car on the verge … Little things mattered. Clip a car, trigger an alarm, get stopped by a policeman up the road: step out of the vehicle, sir, and what’s that on the back seat?

And what’s that banging from the boot?

But Larry recovered, and there was no sideswipe, no alarm.

‘What’s so funny?’

Curly had forgotten. But the insight remained; that it only took a moment for things to unravel. One mistake could spoil everything.

So forget the deadline. Find somewhere safe, and just do it.

Do it, film it, fade away.

Ho pulled Black’s personnel files, which had been downgraded since he quit, but remained live—in direct opposition to Black’s current status, though Ho didn’t say this aloud. He hadn’t liked Black, but still: they were all slow horses, which seemed to count for something this morning.

‘Is it really that simple to check our records?’

‘Can you see ours that easily?’

‘No,’ he replied to the first question, and ‘Yes’ to the second. If it was that easy, anyone could do it. But for Ho himself, yes, it was a piece of cake.

‘I thought they switched the settings regularly.’

‘They do.’

But since Ho had hacked the security settings rather than the database itself, and left himself a trapdoor, it didn’t matter how often they changed the codes. It was like they fitted new locks every month, but left the door hanging open.

He said: ‘Alan Black. Here we go. He worked embassy surveillance mostly.’

‘Cushy gig.’

‘Any undercover?’

‘Give me a sec!’

‘Sorry.’

‘Take your time.’

‘It’s just, we got the impression you were hot shit.’

Ho glanced up from his laptop to find three pairs of eyes sharing a joke. He said, ‘Yeah, well. Kind of fuck off, all right?’

But it felt sort of cool, all the same. Almost as if they’d called him Clint.

Catherine said, ‘As long as you’re there. How did he end up in Slough House?’

Ho said, ‘He shagged the Venezuelan ambassador’s wife.’

‘It says that?’

‘It jazzes up the language a bit.’

Catherine thought back to Alan Black, who’d lasted six months at Slough House. She didn’t have too clear a memory of him, beyond his slow-burn frustration at having been dead-ended, but that was true of all of them, except maybe Struan Loy. And herself, of course. He’d been overweight, average height, average looks—average personality, really. She couldn’t picture him as a successful adulterer. On the other hand, he hadn’t actually jacked it in; he’d been recruited by Taverner for her deep-cover op. So he’d obviously had something going for him.

Not that it had worked out happily in the end.

‘Okay, here it is.’ Ho looked up. ‘He was holding paper on the name Dermot Radcliffe. Full-dress cover.’

‘If he was working surveillance, why’d he need false ID?’

‘Surveillance can be up close and personal,’ Catherine said.

‘Yeah, tell that to the Venezuelan ambassador.’

Catherine ignored that. ‘And working the embassy crowd, you’d be expected to have papers. You’re on foreign soil, after all.’

‘Best not to use your own name when you’re on the job.’

‘Are you two going to giggle about this all morning?’

‘Sorry.’

Ho said, ‘Okay, we have plastic. We have an account number.’

‘But are they still live?’

Catherine said, ‘Like I say, legends don’t die. They don’t get wiped off the books. If he had any nous, he’d have kept the plastic and all the rest when he left the Park. As a failsafe.’

‘In case he ever needed to be somebody else, you mean.’

‘Or needed to remember what it was like being him,’ Catherine said.

‘Let’s check out Mr Radcliffe’s credit rating, shall we?’ Ho said, his fingers busy on his keyboard.

Hassan?

The voice sliced through the dark.

Hassan!

He knew whose it was. He just didn’t believe it.

Open your eyes, darling.

He didn’t want to.

Hassan was emptying out. The open mic slot in his head had closed down; its spotlight faded to grey. In its place was darkness, and engine noise, and the vibrations of this metal coffin he’d been folded into.

Hassan—open your eyes!

He wasn’t sure he could. Choices were made by other people. Hassan Ahmed no longer had will or ability, and was growing smaller by the minute. Soon there’d be nothing of him left. It would be a relief.

But like it or not, he was being dragged back into the light.

Hassan! Open your eyes! Now!

He didn’t. He couldn’t. He resisted.

But from deep in his darkness, he wondered:
Why is Joanna Lumley talking to me?

Chapter 17

There was something different about Catherine Standish. This was what Louisa Guy decided as she watched Ho swing through the virtual jungle, a Second Life Tarzan. There was something different about all of them, probably, but it was Catherine who’d assumed the leader’s role. She’d been the Slough House ghost; shifting papers, tutting about mess, always there but virtually absent. A recovering alcoholic, because this was somehow common knowledge. Something about her spoke of loss; of an element missing. A blown bulb. But it had never before occurred to Louisa to wonder what Catherine must have been like at full wattage. She’d been Charles Partner’s PA, hadn’t she? Christ, that made her Miss Moneypenny.

Louisa should keep her mind on the job, though. Lamb thought they were useless. If they were, Hassan would die. If they weren’t, he might die anyway. The odds weren’t good.

But watching Ho, Louisa realized that he wasn’t useless, anyway; that he might be a dick, but he knew his way round a keyboard. And as he pilfered information from the ether, then peered up at the three of them through the thick black frames of his glasses, it occurred to Louisa Guy that she wouldn’t want him turning his hacker’s gaze on to the private corners of her own life and career.

Though of course, he probably already had.

Regent’s Park—the building—was lit up: blue spotlights at ground level cast huge ovals across its façade, drawing attention to the fact that important stuff took place inside. Once upon a time, not many people knew what that was. These days, you could download job application forms from a website adorned with its picture.

Jackson Lamb parked the stolen SUV half on the pavement outside, and waited.

It didn’t take long. The vehicle was surrounded inside quarter of a minute.

‘Could you step out of the car, please, sir?’

There were no weapons in evidence. There didn’t need to be.

‘Sir?’

Lamb wound the window down. He was looking at a youngish man who evidently knew his way around a gym: taut muscles under a charcoal grey suit. A white cord coiled from his left ear to the suit’s lapel.

‘Step out of the car, sir,’ he repeated.

‘Fetch your boss, sonny,’ Lamb said pleasantly, and wound the window back up.

‘He hired a car,’ Ho said.

‘You have got to be kidding.’

‘Straight up. Triple-D Car Hire. Leeds address.’

‘He’s in the field? And he
hired a car
?’

Catherine said, ‘No. It makes sense.’

It was a measure of their changing relationship that they waited for her thoughts.

‘He’s in the field, sure. But let’s not forget, this wasn’t an op with a future. The boy was going to be rescued. Black didn’t have to worry about covering his tracks.’

‘So hiring a car was the simplest thing to do.’

‘Quite.’

‘Anyone got a phone?’ Ho asked.

‘Lamb made us trash them.’

‘There’s a payphone by the loos,’ Catherine said. ‘What’s the number?’

She scribbled it down as he read it off the screen; was heading for the phone a moment later.

‘It’s barely dawn. A car hire place’ll be open?’