“Finn died two years ago,” Anna said. She would give him no room to feel sorry for her, if that was his approach.
“Finn was found in the back seat of a Jeep Cherokee outside the British embassy in Berlin,” Logan recapped. “He was respectfully delivered there. I think that’s the right word. It was a friend then, or friends. Everything about the way he was found suggests that. But who? Who brought him there at considerable risk to themselves? We don’t believe it was the killer, naturally.”
Anna was there again, on the Autobahn on that dull, cloudy October night, with the car barrelling along at speed, the junction arc lamps flashing on her face and Finn’s as she cradled him in her arms in those last hours of his life. It was Mikhail who was driving. It was Mikhail who had found Finn, and then in turn found her so she could say good-bye to Finn for the last time.
“You were in Germany then, Anna,” Marcie said, breaking into her thoughts.
So they knew that much, she thought. “I was in the south,” she said. “In Bavaria.”
The past unravelled. She had found Finn’s secret house in Tegernsee, down near the border with Switzerland. Finn had given Willy instructions to find it, if he ever disappeared, and Willy had given the instructions to her when Finn didn’t return. There, in the small pink house that Finn had kept a secret even from her, she had read through all Finn’s notes, found the microfiches that proved what the British intelligence service had denied. And Mikhail had found her there. He had taken her away, moments before the house had been encircled by security forces.
How did Burt, Marcie, and Logan know she’d been in Germany? It had been too risky to deny it. Perhaps it was a guess on their part, and now she’d provided the information.
“But you saw Finn?” Logan said gently. “Before he died,” he added with uncompromising directness.
“No,” she replied. “Finn was killed in Paris. I don’t know how he got to Berlin. The last time I saw Finn was two weeks before he was killed in Paris.”
“But he wasn’t actually killed in Paris, was he?” Logan corrected her. “That was where the killer administered the nerve agent, yes. But Finn wasn’t found in the rental car in the Paris car park where the nerve agent was discovered later. It didn’t kill him in that car. He moved on after he’d been hit with it, sickening and, as we know now, dying. Somehow he ended up, after his death, in Berlin. In a different car.” Logan leaned slightly towards her. “But there are three days between those two events. Forensics established that Finn died about four hours before his body was found outside the British embassy in Berlin. So that’s three, nearly four days after he came into contact with the nerve agent. Four days of what? Who was with him? What did he do?”
“He didn’t call me,” she said. “That’s why Willy gave me the instructions to find the house in Bavaria. We knew he must be in trouble, or he would have called. The instructions Finn left with Willy were only to be opened in an emergency.”
“So,” Marcie said in a funereal tone of sadness, “someone took his dying body to Germany.”
“Unless he drove there himself,” she said.
“Why would he drive to the British embassy in Berlin?” Logan said. “Surely he’d have gone to the embassy in Paris?”
“I don’t know,” Anna replied. “I’m as in the dark as you are.”
“Let’s say someone drove him to Berlin,” Marcie said lightly, as if this were a sudden, bright idea. “Why? You were in Germany. Okay, you were in the south. But why would his helper take him to Germany—unless it was to reunite him with you?”
“You think it was Mikhail,” Anna said.
“I’m as in the dark as you are,” Marcie replied, and smiled at Anna.
“Let’s say it was Mikhail who drove,” Logan pressed her. “He would go to Germany to reunite Finn with you. Or let’s say Finn drove himself to Germany for the same reason. You see, what I’m feeling is that Germany is not a coincidence. You were in Germany, and that’s where Finn died. Maybe you drove him yourself to Berlin.”
“Why wouldn’t I say so if I had?”
“Because you were not alone,” Marcie said. “It wasn’t just you who took Finn to Berlin. You drove Finn to the embassy with Mikhail.”
“And now,” Logan concluded, “you want to protect Mikhail.”
“It’s a good story,” Anna replied, “but it’s not what happened.”
“You were with him,” Logan stated, and leaned in closely towards her. “You were with Mikhail the night Finn died.”
She saw the keenness behind the blue eyes, the certainty, whether actual or contrived, she didn’t know.
“It was both of you who delivered Finn’s body,” Logan said, quietly now. “That’s the obvious conclusion. I’m right aren’t I?”
“No, Logan, you’re not right.” She looked at him levelly until he looked away.
“What were you doing in that time?” Marcie said, changing tack. “In those four days?”
“I was in the house in Tegernsee. I was collecting Finn’s research, trying to find a clue to where he might be. He’d disappeared two weeks before.”
“But you weren’t at the house in Tegernsee when German security forces broke into it,” Logan said. “And that was around twelve hours before Finn’s body arrived in Berlin. What were you doing in those twelve hours?”
So they’d known she was there; Anna was relieved she had told them the truth.
“I’d gone back to France. With all of Finn’s evidence,” she said.
“Where in France?”
“To the place where Burt found me three months ago. Willy’s hut on the beach.”
Logan sat in silence, so that her words refused to dissipate from the moment. There was a tense stillness in the room.
“Who do you think delivered Finn’s body, then?” Logan finally asked her. He said it with an aghast expression in his voice that suggested outrage that anyone could doubt the obvious, let alone expect him to believe them.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Who do you think? What do your instincts tell you?”
She didn’t reply immediately. He waited again until she saw she would lose nothing by replying and much by stalling.
“Mikhail was the best source the British—the West—had in Russia,” she said. “They squandered him in an attempt to be friends with Putin. But that doesn’t make Mikhail any less important. Mikhail is evidently a great man of power in Moscow. So surely you can’t think that Mikhail, who is this great man of power, and is no doubt watched by Putin’s private security service, would do such a thing? Drive Finn’s body half way across Germany? It’s madness. And surely you can’t think that Mikhail, who spent so much effort to avoid detection for nearly six years, would fetch up with Finn’s body outside a well-guarded embassy in Berlin? Let me ask you something, Logan. Can you see that?”
And Logan admitted he couldn’t. That behaviour didn’t fit his idea of what any double agent, on any side, would do for a fellow human being. But then Logan withdrew a piece of paper from the pocket of his jacket and passed it over to her.
“If you weren’t there that night, in the car with Finn,” he said, “you won’t have read this.”
She read it. It was short. “You betrayed him in life,” it said. “Honour him in death.”
She felt herself drawing on her deepest reserves of calm. Her face was unchanged, her body relaxed, but her mind raced back to that night, back to Finn dying, and Mikhail laying the note on his corpse.
“Not your handwriting,” Logan said. “Recognise it?”
She didn’t.
“Was it addressed to anyone?” she asked Logan.
“Yes.”
They looked at each other, neither willing to give an inch to the other.
But Logan eventually smiled, his own reserves of patience apparently infinite. “It was addressed to Adrian. You know Adrian, of course.”
“I’m afraid so. Finn introduced us,” Anna said. “He was Finn’s recruiter, Finn’s handler, Finn’s father substitute—until he first let Finn down and then went on to threaten him and me.”
“Finn is attacked with a nerve agent smeared on the steering wheel of his car. In Paris,” Logan went on. “Nearly four days later he’s found dead in Berlin, delivered by someone who is clearly a friend and is clearly angry at
