along with his then-inexplicable choice of Camese, the wife of Janus. Hopefully Charlie said: “Nothing more?”
Halliday frowned. “I told you it was encrypted.”
“On a scale of ten, extractions score around fifteen for potential disasters. I’m surprised you’re pissed off at being excluded.”
“Being kept out of one is acceptable. Being kept out of both is ominous. Now it’s your turn. What the fuck’s going on?”
“It’s your round,” reminded Charlie, offering his empty glass to gain thinking time. Throughout Halliday’s diatribe Charlie had been calculating how to escape from the man, his mind shifting with each and every unexpected revelation. Now he didn’t want to escape, just free himself from the Sinbad burden of having Halliday on his back.
“I’m waiting,” prompted Halliday, handing Charlie his refill.
“Looks as if you and I are cast adrift in the same boat,” opened Charlie. “I know a team was sent ahead of me. But I wasn’t told the reason. My orders were to come in separately, stay away from the embassy, and wait to be contacted. The only thing missing was the tattoo on my forehead reading ‘Fall Guy.’ I jumped ship in Amsterdam and-”
“It was you!”
Charlie nodded. “I got back to England that same night and latched on to a tourist group from Manchester.…” He gestured vaguely back in the direction from which they’d fled and, sticking to the golden rule of telling as few lies as possible, he said: “They were the group picked up outside the Rossiya.”
“That’s why you were there, waiting to see what happened?”
The alarm bell rang at his oversight. “Why were you there if you’re excluded?”
“I followed Preston from the embassy. He didn’t pick me up.”
It was simple enough to be true, conceded Charlie. But only just. “I saw Preston’s surveillance.”
“So would an FSB trainee, hanging about as Preston did instead of moving around. And the FSB all around the Rossiya were very definitely not trainees.”
“How many did you mark?”
“Three, positively. You?”
“Four,” lied Charlie, who hadn’t searched beyond Preston. As well as failing to locate Halliday from his hideaway corner.
“You think you were sent here to be the fall guy?” demanded Halliday. Self-protective as always, he nervously added: “Me too, possibly?”
“Why’d you think I got off the plane in Amsterdam?”
“But then came here anyway?” challenged Halliday.
Charlie hesitated, annoyed at another slip. “I couldn’t go straight back, could I? I needed to find out if I was right or not. Which was why I was watching the hotel: my trap for them.”
“They’re bastards!” exclaimed Halliday, his voice too loud, slurred by the vodka.
“That shouldn’t surprise you, either.”
“What are we going to do, Charlie?” It was more a plea than a question, the man’s mind as well as his speech rusting in alcohol.
“Beat them,” said Charlie, making a promise to himself.
“How!” It was still a whimpered plea.
“By you and I working together. Okay, you’re being excluded but you’re still on the inside, within the embassy. I’m on the outside not on their intended leash, so they can’t initiate whatever they intend. We’re beating them so far.”
“You want another drink?”
“No. I don’t think you do, either.”
“What can we do?”
“You stay as you are, trying to find out what’s happening inside. Get Jacobson’s new safe combination. I’ll stay on the outside, watching like today.”
Halliday nodded, in befuddled agreement. “I need to know where you are.”
“No, you don’t,” refused Charlie, who’d anticipated the demand. “Have you got a cell phone?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll call you, twice every day, ten in the morning, six at night.” It had to be four hours, closer to five, since he’d tried the botanical gardens’ number.
“You don’t trust me.”
“I’m not expecting you to trust me.”
“Which I don’t!” declared Halliday, with slurred belligerence.
“Why not?”
“You couldn’t have just walked off the Amsterdam plane.”
“Why not?”
“Jacobson was on it. The flight details to and from London were on the general file.”
“Blond-haired guy, very neat and together apart from the big mustache?”
“You know him,” accused Halliday, still belligerent.
“Does he have a gray-checked suit?” persisted Charlie.
“You
“Not until now,” said Charlie. “I remember him from the plane. And saw him yesterday, watching the hotel. But I’m not involved in whatever he’s doing.”
But he was going to be, Charlie knew.
“My mother’s making a surprise visit.”
“When?” asked Yvette.
“She’s arriving tomorrow,” said Andrei.
“Why with so little warning?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does she know about me? That we’re together?”
“I told them in my last letter that I’d met you but not that you’d moved in.”
“Do you want me to leave while she’s here? I could, if it would be better.”
“There’s another bedroom. Why should you?”
“Maybe it would be better if I weren’t here when she actually arrives: give you space to tell her.”
“I don’t understand why she didn’t warn me she was coming.”
“You’ll be able to ask her that, too, while I’m not here.”
18
Conflicting impressions and confusions swirled through Charlie’s mind like leaves in an autumn gale, constantly blown out of any order in which he tried to prioritize them, his uncertainties compounded by the distracting but essentially physical need to rid himself of David Halliday’s pursuit, which the man solemnly promised not to attempt but which Charlie knew he would. That focus eventually brought Halliday into the forefront of Charlie’s immediate reflection as he watched, from the concealment of a Metro station pillar, the MI6 officer carried away in the opposite direction from Charlie’s botanical gardens’ destination after thirty minutes of foot-aching, bite-chafing hopscotch between subway trains. Halliday’s vodka-clouded chase went beyond Charlie’s expectation: it was a warning, which again he scarcely needed, that he couldn’t trust Halliday further than an outstretched arm if the man thought there were better personal advantages from cheating him than keeping to their agreed arrangement. Which once more neither disconcerted nor angered Charlie, who would have abandoned Halliday with even less compunction if a better opportunity had presented itself.
But at that precise moment Charlie believed Halliday to be his asset, because he was the best-the only-self- preserving asset Halliday had in return. Just as he believed that, allowing a necessary margin of exaggeration,
