The Outsiders (12 page)

She thought him close to the edge of a psychological collapse. They did courses for the younger officers at Box – where they worked – on the control of agents. They were taught that anyone coming in off the street and offering themselves as a source of information was likely to be governed by MICE. Natan spoke fast and seldom looked into her eyes. It was hard for her to read and evaluate him, but she reckoned he lacked the imagination to concoct the story. She believed him.

The lecturers said that agents fitted into one of four groups. With Natan, there had been no mention of Money: the kid had pulled out a wallet and flashed his Russian government-issue ID card; behind it she had seen a thick layer of banknotes, high-value US dollars and euros. He had not asked her for payment. After money came Ideology: a Russian diplomat might approach an American intelligence officer in a gym; he might see the Kremlin crowd as a mirror image of old Communist days. That didn’t figure with what the kid said.

The one they loved at Box was Compromise: they liked to find a Chinese who was shagging on the side and could be turned to avoid going home in ignominy, or a Provo who’d helped himself to money earmarked for the widows of martyrs. That had no connection with Natan, which left Ego. It seemed to her that respect had been denied him, an insult had been offered, damaging his pride.
Ego
, Caro Watson thought.

The blow to Natan seemed as raw as the scrape on his elbow.

She would have killed for fresh coffee, committed serial murder for a gin. Caro Watson, aged twenty-nine, lived in the daytime on caffeine and in the evenings on gin and tonic. The two had helped her ward off the pack of black dogs that had trailed her since Damian Fenby’s death.

She had the biography of a boy who lived for his screen, the patter of the keys and the excitement of breaking through fire-walls and demolishing defences. He could have made a fair fist of entering some of the more secret corners in the building where she worked. She felt no gratitude for what he had given her, but she valued it.

She had learned, while the spools turned in the micro-machine in her handbag, about the Major, the warrant officer and the master sergeant. Did he have pictures of them? No. She had heard the rambling, inconclusive life stories of the three men – the boy had picked up the detail from overheard conversations. Their names were Petar Alexander Borsonov, Grigoriy and Ruslan. Distinguishing marks? The question had provoked a giggle, high-pitched and childlike. He had told her that each man’s right index finger had been amputated at the lower joint. She learned what brought in the money, where the prime contracts lay, at what level in the state they were protected, the killings they had done. It was extraordinary, but Caro Watson believed she understood how a man of great power, with his most trusted aides, would talk openly in front of this kid. He would have been on the other side of a room, or through an open door, at a desk or with a laptop, on a plane or in the front of a car beside the driver. They would have talked in his hearing in the verbal shorthand, half code, men used when engaged in conspiracies. They would not have noticed him – as she didn’t notice her mother’s cat sitting on a window ledge.

They had not
noticed
him, or seen the loathing he felt for them. They hadn’t realised they had failed to show the respect the kid thought he was worth. If ever Caro Watson was tasked to do a lecture on the motivations of agents she would hammer
ego
at the recruits.

Her phone bleeped.

They would have calculated the time she needed to wind up.

One brief attack: ‘An act of treachery justified by a bit of roughing up? Am I supposed to accept that?’

‘He believed me to be a thief.’

‘Betrayal because you were slapped around.’

‘All of it is true.’

‘What if you’re just some low-life attention-seeker?’

‘You have my life in your hand. They would kill me as they killed your friend. Is that enough?’

‘Say it again.’

‘It was Budapest. The man they kicked, like the shop dummy, was British – an intelligence officer. They laughed about it in the lay-by. It was about the sale of weapons.’

She nodded. He told her their schedule, their destinations. She showed no particular interest in that information but her heart pounded. She took a mobile phone out of her bag and passed it him across the table. He switched it on and went to the directory. There was one entry: Echo Zulu. His head lifted and he looked hard at her, then tapped the keys to call the number. There was a ring tone deep in her bag. She gazed back at him, challenge in her eyes, and he ended the call.

‘Are you going to kill him?’ Natan asked. ‘Good if you did.’

She said, ‘We have an issue with him.’

‘He is well protected. He has a good roof.’

‘Protection is never comprehensive. The best roofs leak.’

‘When do I see you again?’

‘You go from here to their home,’ she murmured. ‘Then you travel again. You have more details of destinations. You’re going to Africa?’

‘When we move again, first it is to the west of Africa.’

‘I’ll be there.’ Now she let a hand drop on his wrist. She had been at a private school in the south-west of England – she had sung in the choir, played lacrosse for the second team, and was useful at tennis. She let her fingers linger on the kid’s emaciated arm because he was useful to her and she sought to strengthen him, let him believe he was wanted, had joined a new team . . . Bullshit, of course.

It might have been the last thing he asked her, but Caro Watson pre-empted it: ‘You’ll stay in, stay close to him. That way, Natan, you can do the most damage. If you’re careful you’ll be safe. One day, Natan, we may discuss with you the possibility of asylum, a new identity. Not now. Later.’

‘You’ll kill him?’

No answer, but a thin smile, then a movement of her eyes that might encourage or might not. Caro believed that the half-day she had spent in the air and in Constanta had about doubled what she had learned of counter-intelligence work in nine years’ faithful service. She switched off the tape-recorder, scraped her chair back and stood. His face betrayed him: he was scared witless. Well, he had cause to be, didn’t he?

There was a brusque nod and she went out through the door. She walked briskly. She had only limited experience with agents, but already she felt contaminated by them.

They were already at the pavement when the Major saw Natan, his Gecko. He was running. He was late and the two cars had waited for him at the pick-up point.

It was suggested by Ruslan, the master sergeant, that the kid might have been with a whore and had had to run, but that had fallen flat because the Major knew the kid wouldn’t dare set foot inside a brothel.

He reached them. The run had put some colour into his face, and there were sweat stains under his arms. He looked vacant, as if he was half dead or drugged. Where had he been?

The Gecko said he’d been in a shop and lost track of the time.

What had he bought? Nothing.

Why had he wasted time there and not bought anything? The kid shrugged, looked away and went to the escort car where he had ridden on the journey into the city.

The door of their car was slammed.

‘Crazy little bastard,’ the Major said.

‘An idiot,’ the warrant officer chimed.

‘An arsehole,’ the master sergeant put in, and they were gone. They had been waiting for less than five minutes. It had been a good day: business had been done and arrangements were in place for future transactions. Normally the Major would have said he was aware of moments when the fragility of his security bubble was exposed. He would have claimed, and few would have denied it, that he had a nose for danger. It was how he had survived since leaving State Security in the cull of ’92. Many had not, and now drove taxis, guarded the children of oligarchs or worked for the proliferating private detective agencies. He had done well, and huge wealth backed his fine opinion of himself. At that moment, as the limousine sped him towards the airport, he felt no cloud settling on him, no atmosphere of risk.

They were going home. There were signals to be written for the Gecko to send on the encrypted systems he used. It would be good to be at home and walk his dogs, maybe take a gun into the woods and see what they put up.

He smelt no danger.

Probably Jonno risked his life. Posie had found the rotting wooden ladder on its side behind the garage. The cat had been in flight from him. He had determination – something about finishing what he’d started. They hadn’t finished cleaning the conservatory. Going up the ladder was asking for trouble, but Posie had found a hose and there was a tap on the kitchen’s outside wall. The pipe had holes, which spurted water, but the pressure was good enough. The clogged gutters hadn’t been cleared of that autumn’s leaves so he was using the hose to flush out the debris and the downpipes. There was muck on his skin and in his hair. Jonno had never done anything like this at home, and he didn’t think Posie had messed about with water since she’d been a child in a paddling pool.

He’d done a good job and he was grinning when the hose slipped out of his hand. The water fountained and drenched him. He heard Posie’s laughing as the water cascaded over his ears – he hadn’t heard her laugh like that since he had floated the idea of the holiday. He caught the end of the hose. He was hot and filthy so he let the water play on his body, then looked behind him because she was still laughing.

Posie stood with her bare legs a little apart, her shorts high on her thighs. Her blouse was wet from the holes in the hose. She looked up at him and held her arms out sideways.

He stood above her on the ladder and soaked her as she laughed. Then he came down. She quietened as he came close to her, and gazed into his face. They were alone in a garden that had been allowed to riot, so that it formed a wall around them. The sun and the water had stripped away the inhibitions he’d have shown in any other place, at any other time. She let him spray her as she took off her clothes. He kept the hose steady while she fumbled with the blouse buttons and the zip of the shorts. Then she took the hose from him and sprayed him as he took off his T-shirt, then scrambled out of his jeans and the trainers. He reached for her and held her close. She pressed herself to him. She was shivering.

‘We’re being watched,’ she said, in a small choked voice.

‘
What?
Who?’

‘I don’t know. But we’re being watched.’

Jonno felt chilled. The moment had passed. He looked into the shrubs, then up the mountain and into the trees. He saw nothing.

‘You know when you’re being watched. You can feel it.’

She bent to grab her sodden clothing and skipped inside through the kitchen door. Jonno looked around him and listened hard. He heard a crow caw and saw gulls high up, but no one who had spied on them. He swore softly, then picked up his own clothes. He turned off the tap and left the hose to dribble.

‘She knew,’ Alex whispered.

‘He didn’t,’ Marko answered.

‘She did. He was going to fuck her – would have done if she hadn’t known.’

‘She has no flesh on her. The bones would hurt.’

They walked away from the high wall with the razor wire. Marko murmured, ‘I think you’re wrong. That town where they made the wine, across the river . . . ‘

‘Ilok, across the bridge from Novi Sad.’

‘The women there were thin, Croat bitches. Their bones showed but—’

‘How did she know?’

Marko shrugged. They walked across the lawn at the side of the big villa. Both men remembered their entry into Ilok, and the women who had taken refuge in the Catholic church just outside the town. They remembered, too, how emaciated they had been, how many there were and how often they had done it. They had continued until each of them, Marko, Alex and the others, had ached. What they had done to the women, who were taken out of the church, had had a purpose: it had defiled them, broken them, and crushed their men. If either Marko or Alex had returned to Novi Sad and been seen there, they would have been arrested by the new government in Belgrade and sent to court, then gaol. Their wives would go there in the morning, and the children. They would not. The two men would remain at the Villa del Aguila and protect the Tractor, Pavel Ivanov. It had been many years since they had killed men, fought street battles and taken women from churches but neither man had forgotten those days. They had heard the voices, the young guy’s and the girl’s. They knew that the old man had gone to Britain for surgery and that the bungalow would be occupied . . . It would have been good to see them fuck.

Caro Watson sent encrypted texts:
I believe what he’s told me. Go for the Echo in MICE. It’s about disrespect. He’s inside the crime group but they don’t see him.

She sat on the back seat with the minders in the front.

He works for Petar Alexander Borsonov, who was State Security, an Afghan veteran and now freelance organised crime mingled with work for ‘influential persons’. Known familiarly as the Major. Two associates and minders are former military NCOs, Grigoriy and Ruslan.