Ratcatcher

familiar. In the weeks and the months after Claire’s death it had lived with him constantly, on the good days a weight pressing down on his head and driving him into the ground, on the bad an internal parasite clawing and sucking the innards of his chest and his abdomen into a compact ball. Now it was a slash from a scalpel blade, so pure and shocking that it was cold rather than painful.

When he’d told Kendrick, the first thing Kendrick said was, ‘Shit. Jesus,’ and the second was, ‘How?’

Purkiss knew the answer. The memory stick in Seppo’s flat, the one he’d conveniently been allowed to find, the one with the password that even Abby couldn’t crack — there it was, you idiot, the giveaway — hadn’t been a memory stick at all, but a tracking device. Fallon had been on to Abby and her whereabouts from the moment Purkiss had given her the stick.

They got moving at once after that, Kendrick binding his own wounds with concentrated grimness, Purkiss pacing about helplessly, understanding how caged animals felt. Kendrick didn’t say it’s not your fault or anything like it. It wasn’t his style. When they were ready to set off he hefted the rifle — he’d insisted on taking it back from Purkiss — and said, very low and very precisely: ‘I tell you what, Purkiss. If you see this Fallon, you better kill him quickly. Because if I get my hands on him first, he’s mine.’

They used their goggles in the deeper parts of the forest now that there was no moonlight, and saw a startlingly wide variety of cowering and scampering shapes. As they walked Purkiss cast his mind back to his movements after he’d found the memory stick. Had he inadvertently revealed the location of anyone or anywhere else significant? He didn’t think so. Fallon would have tracked him to the nightclub, and perhaps that explained why Lyuba Ilkun had been able to summon her colleagues so quickly after he’d talked to her. They had already known he was there.

It still didn’t hang together. The surprise the man at Rodina Security, Dobrynin, had shown at the mention of Fallon’s background in the Service, as well as his involvement in the events planned for the following day, suggested Fallon wasn’t working with Kuznetsov’s group. But presumably Fallon had alerted the group to Purkiss and Kendrick’s presence on the farm after he’d grabbed Abby, and had either forced her to tell him where they were — he doubted it, it wasn’t the sort of thing Abby would do unless under extreme duress, something he didn’t want to think about — or, more likely, had seen the farm displayed on Google Earth on her computer and had put two and two together. Which suggested that he was in some way helping Kuznetsov. And where did the traitor among the three British agents come in? Was he — or, conceiveably, she — working with Fallon, as well as with Kuznetsov?

Damn it, they needed to get back to the city, and they were making maddeningly slow progress. Purkiss began heading up a slope towards the road again. Kendrick said, ‘We hitchhiking?’

‘If need be.’

‘Going to be difficult.’

Purkiss half turned and looked at Kendrick, at his bloodied legs and lank hair and stubble. Most of all at the rifle.

‘You reckon?’

Hitchhiking wasn’t in fact an option — with the gun it would be more like hijacking — but Purkiss wanted to get to the exposed higher ground of the road because he was more likely to get a phone signal there. After a few seconds he was rewarded with one bar’s worth. He checked the map facility, got the name of the road they were on and that of another one branching off half a kilometre ahead.

‘Klavan.’ She answered before the first ring had finished.

‘It’s me, Purkiss.’

‘John — ’

‘I’m in the middle of nowhere, out in the forest to the east of the city. Things are blowing up a bit. Fallon’s been in contact with me.’ At his side he sensed Kendrick’s warning growl. He held up a hand. ‘Where are you?’

‘Driving the routes the presidents are going to be taking tomorrow, trying again to work out where an attack might come from. There’s not much more we can do. For God’s sake, John, where did you run off to? What have you discovered?’

‘Are you with the others?’

‘No. On my own.’

‘Pick us up, and I’ll tell you everything. No more working behind your back, I promise.’

‘Us?’

‘I’m with a friend.’

After the briefest pause she said, ‘All right.’ She sounded fatigued.

He gave her the names of the two roads. ‘Stop when you get there if you don’t see us immediately. We’ll be among the trees. And Elle.’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t tell the other two.’

Kendrick was snarling as he put the phone away: ‘Fallon told you not to involve anybody else.’

‘It’s not the same as going to the police, or SIS at the embassy. She’ll be discreet.’

‘She could be the one. The traitor. You said so yourself.’

‘She’s the least likely. She’s our best hope of getting back to the city before dawn.’

‘I don’t fucking like it.’

‘I don’t pay you to like things.’

Half an hour, it had taken her. As they stepped out beside the car Purkiss had the now familiar feeling of tension between his shoulder blades as he waited for the shot to come from whomever she’d brought with her. It didn’t happen. He took the front passenger seat and Kendrick got in the back, hoisting his ragged leg up onto the upholstery.

‘Elle Klavan, this is Kendrick.’

Kendrick stared at her. Elle craned round to look at his leg.

‘Shot?’

‘Just a scratch,’ said Purkiss.

In the dull light from the dashboard her face was drawn, a tightness around the eyes that he hadn’t seen earlier. She took off, handling the car smoothly on the wet road, navigating the curves down through the forest with an ease that contrasted with her grip on the wheel.

‘Where are the others?’

‘Chris — oh, you might not know this yet. Rodina Security began shutting down soon after we left it. Literally shutting down, the office dismantled, the plaques removed. Chris has been following the removal vans. Last I heard from him was an hour ago. They’re out of town, heading south. He’s sticking with them.’

‘Red herring.’

‘Maybe. Richard’s back at the office, doing what he can with the background we’ve unearthed on Rodina — which isn’t much — and phoning the few contacts we have around the city, trying to get a new lead on Fallon.’ She looked over. ‘So tell me.’

Purkiss took a breath and gave it to her, how he’d got the address from the satnav, his and Kendrick’s investigation of the farm, Abby and the call from Fallon. She absorbed it in silence.

When he’d finished she said, ‘Lots that doesn’t add up.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘This barn.’

‘Yes. I’ve been thinking about it.’

‘And?’

‘It could be a hangar.’ He glanced round at Kendrick, who shrugged.

‘The thought had crossed my mind, yeah.’

Purkiss stared ahead at the rain that was starting to come harder against the windscreen. ‘So they’re planning to, what — fly a plane in and bomb the summit at the War Memorial? Crash into it like 9/11?’

‘They’d never get close,’ said Elle. ‘There’s a ten-kilometre no-fly zone radiating from the site, including over the sea. The airspace will be jam-packed with security. Any aircraft seriously violating the exclusion zone will be shot out of the sky, no questions asked.’