‘Vale.’
‘It’s me.’
‘Pay phone?’
‘Lost my own.’
He brought Vale up to date, leaving one detail until last. He’d wondered whether to reveal it at all, then decided.
‘At least one of the Service agents is working with Fallon.’ He explained. Vale listened in silence. After Purkiss had finished the silence continued to the point at which he wondered if the connection had been lost.
Vale said: ‘I’m pulling you out.’
‘No.’
‘You’re compromised beyond anything I could reasonably expect you to cope with.’
‘No.’
‘John. Listen to me. This has gone beyond tracking down Fallon. An operation involving numerous locals, some with military backgrounds, as well as not one but two or even more rogue Service personnel — it’s too big.’
‘So what do you propose?’
‘I’m going to make it official. Alert Century House.’
‘Fallon and his people will just go underground.’
‘If it means averting a disaster tomorrow — ’
‘By cancelling the summit? That’s the point, isn’t it? That’s what Fallon wants.’
‘We can’t know that.’
‘I’ve told you. The answer’s no.’
‘For God’s sake, John. This is bigger than you and Fallon.’
‘Nothing’s bigger than that.’ Purkiss touched the bar, about to cut off the call. He said: ‘And if you bring the Service on board anyway, I’ll certainly be dead. Whichever of the agents it is that’s helping Fallon will panic and get rid of me post-haste.’ He pressed down, listened to the dial tone, then hung up.
At a little after three thirty Purkiss found a tired-looking department store in the outer suburbs, where he replaced his torn and filthy clothes and bought a new smartphone. He’d memorised Klavan’s number and those of the other two agents and added them to the contact list, then went outside and stood part-way down an alley where he could watch the street. He phoned Abby.
‘Got a fix on that satnav address,’ she said. ‘It looks like some sort of farm. East of Tallinn, about fifty kilometres.’
East: that was approximately the direction the driver had been heading when Purkiss had followed him. Abby continued: ‘You can see it for yourself on Google Earth, though you’ll get a better view on my monitor.’
‘Okay, thanks.’
‘And that memory stick you gave me.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s proving really hard to crack. Sorry.’
‘I have absolute faith in you, Abby.’
He punched in Teague’s number. When the man answered he said, ‘It’s Purkiss. Are you with Elle?’
‘Yes. Where are — ’
‘I’m on the outskirts of town. Fallon’s people tried to run me off the road. I’ll explain later.’
‘Need us to pick you up?’
‘If you would.’ He gave the address. Teague rang off without comment. Purkiss pocketed his phone and stepped out into the sunlight.
He’d crossed a boundary, had never cut himself loose from Vale before. He wondered what the man would do. Vale would know there’d be no way of tracking Purkiss now, and wouldn’t waste time and whatever resources he had trying to do so. Instead, he might make good on his threat and alert Service headquarters and the Embassy. And then what? A police dragnet, which would uncover nothing that the months of extensive footwork by the Estonian intelligence services and SIS itself in preparation for the summit hadn’t already. Meanwhile, Rossiter and Teague and Klavan would be tipped off by the increased activity, and whichever of them was working with Fallon would either go to ground, as Purkiss had predicted, or would sit tighter than ever, not betraying themselves. Meanwhile the media would get hold of the story, no question. You couldn’t shut down a city without someone noticing. Panic would be stoked. And even if the summit went ahead regardless, the hysteria would be a propaganda coup for those who were opposed to the whole thing.
Vale knew this, which was why Purkiss was banking on his holding back. He’d be exasperated, furious even, but he might give Purkiss the breathing space to find a way in.
‘Sixteen hours left.’ Rossiter paced, terse choppy steps in a stereotyped route across the office carpet. ‘And nothing. No leads.’
Teague was perched languidly on the corner of a desk. Klavan stood, arms folded. Purkiss was the only one of them to have taken a chair.
He’d told them everything about his tracking of the car into the forest, the ambush and subsequent chase, and the death of the man over the edge. He left out the part about the satellite navigation unit. This time Rossiter hadn’t reacted with fury at his independent action.
‘I wouldn’t say
In the car on the way back, after Purkiss had finished his account, Klavan and Teague filled him in on what they had unearthed in the mean time. Klavan’s contact at the Ministry of Defence had told her that Abram Zhilin, the dead man from the toilet cubicle in the nightclub, had served in the same unit of the Scouts Battalion, part of the Estonian Maavagi or Ground Force, as Lyuba Ilkun. Ilkun and Zhilin hadn’t been exact contemporaries — he was six years older than her — but their time in the unit had overlapped by a year or so. Neither of them had been especially distinguished soldiers but neither had attracted negative attention, there were no disciplinary offences on record. Interestingly, both had left at the same time, five years earlier.
‘Of Ilkun there’s no subsequent trace until she turned up in the club,’ said Elle. ‘But Zhilin went to work for a private security firm here in the city. My contact found a reference request. Not an uncommon career move after the army. The firm still exists.’ She turned in her seat to face Purkiss. ‘Here’s where it gets interesting. The name of the firm is Rodina Security.
‘And Zhilin is — was — an ethnic Russian,’ said Teague. ‘Plenty of businesses target a minority clientele, of course. It’s just intriguing, given everything else.’
Elle: ‘Rodina Security handles routine work, according to the site. Bodyguard jobs, patrolling of private and corporate residences, countersurveillance.’
‘Any record of run-ins with the law?’ asked Purkiss.
‘We don’t know yet.’
At the office Purkiss remembered something and asked to use one of the computers. He called up the website he used to store photographs and downloaded the shots he’d taken of the man who had got out of the car along the coast road, the man he’d taken to be the one debriefing Lyuba Ilkun on Abby’s audio feed. The other three peered at the monitor. The resolution was poor but in one or two pictures the man’s face was clear: grim, set, the features of somebody with purpose.
‘Looks military,’ said Elle.
Rossiter: ‘And, dare I say it, Slavic.’
Elle switched places with Purkiss and emailed copies of the pictures to her contact at the Ministry of Defence. Rossiter stood looking down at the desk for a moment, then said: ‘All right. Are we agreed that for the moment our only lead, such as it is, is this security firm? Then we take a two-pronged approach. Two of us use every means at our disposal to find out what we can about the firm. History, personnel figures, finances, complaints, trouble with the police. The other two visit the firm’s offices and try to get an audience with somebody senior, on the pretext of wanting to hire them.’ He looked at them in turn, calmer, in charge once more. ‘Purkiss, you visit the offices. If the
