He had no idea if a SIM card would be damaged by stomach acids, but assumed it might be, so he asked for the plastic wrap. He’d have to remove it from his phone and swallow it at the last minute, since he needed to keep his phone on standby in case Fallon rang again.
Two a.m. The safe house was in the Old Town. The rendezvous point, Kiek in de Kok, was ten minutes’ drive away. Even though they planned to get there early, there was still an agony of time to kill.
Kendrick did a rapid strip and reassembly of the rifle again. He said, ‘Can’t stand this. I’m going for a walk.’ He stood and pulled on his jacket.
Elle raised her eyebrows, looked at Purkiss. Purkiss said, ‘He’s always like this before a job. Best we let him walk off some steam or he’ll be unbearable to be around.’ To Kendrick he said, ‘Go easy.’ His eyes flashed a warning. Kendrick nodded distractedly and banged out of the flat.
‘A bit worked up,’ said Elle.
‘He’ll be fine.’
Purkiss hoped he would be, that he didn’t overdo it. Since leaving the Army Kendrick had developed a tendency to enhance his natural edginess with amphetamines at times when added alertness was needed. When he’d first discovered this, Purkiss had been alarmed, but Kendrick wasn’t to be told, and the extra stamina he derived from the stimulants did, Purkiss had to admit, seem to give him an advantage.
Purkiss and Elle sat in silence for several minutes, listening to the distant nighttime sounds, the flat’s creaks and echoes.
‘She’s a close friend.’ Her glance was questioning even though the words came out as a statement.
‘Abby. Yes. Salt of the earth.’
He’d known Abby three years, encountering her first on a web forum where he was seeking technical advice, back in the early days of his work with Vale when he was still doing his own searches and becoming frustratingly aware that his skills as a computer geek weren’t up to par. After she proved helpful with more than one of his enquiries, he suggested they meet to discuss possible employment options. He discovered that she worked freelance for the Metropolitan Police, among other organisations. Eventually she came to take on jobs exclusively for him. The rates he paid made this worthwhile. Despite their close association he knew very little about her. She’d mentioned parents back in Lancashire, but that was about all.
‘And Kendrick. There’s a rapport there. The kind we develop with other Service colleagues, if we’re lucky.’
‘Yes.’ She'd sounded wistful. He was about to say that Abby and Kendrick were the closest thing he had to friends, but the suddenness of the realisation brought him up short.
To change the subject he said, ‘Teague being the traitor. That’s got to be difficult for you.’
She shrugged. ‘To be honest, I wasn’t convinced he wasn’t, even when I told you otherwise. What bothers me more is Rossiter. Seeing him there, stabbed, bleeding… he can be a difficult sod to work for, but my God, he didn’t deserve that.’
‘He’ll be all right. They’ll put a drain in his chest for a couple of days.’
She shifted closer, her legs tucked under her on the sofa, and put a shy hand on his arm. ‘He thanked you, but I haven’t yet. So, thanks.’
Purkiss looked at her eyes, dark in the pale, drawn face. At her mouth, her throat. Through the layers of fatigue he felt a stirring.
Somehow she was closer still. He leant his face in and kissed her forehead, then her mouth. Her lips yielded at first, then responded, pressing back. His hands slid round across her back and up to her hair, drawing her head towards him. Her own arms came up and her hands grabbed at his back, his shoulders, and he broke the kiss to pull at her sweater and drag it off in a cascade of hair which she shook out of her face. Then his hands were on her breasts through her thin blouse and hers clasped his face. She said, ‘Wait,’ rose and tugged on his arm.
He half followed, half propelled her towards the door of the solitary bedroom. Once inside he kicked the door shut and they were clawing at each other’s clothes, tumbling and rolling on the cold bedspread, enveloped in each other’s heat in a raging joy that was so complete it made time cease for hours.
She lay naked against his side, her breast pressed against his chest, her hair pushing up under his chin every time he breathed in. Purkiss watched the ceiling, letting the night vision work its way into his retinas.
He hadn’t been expecting it, wondered if she had. The nearness of death no doubt had something to do with it, the need to respond by engaging in the most life-affirming act of all. There had been other women, since Claire, including one with whom he’d become very close until she’d come up against the impenetrable bedrock of his grief. Usually the women ended it, saddened by his distance.
The evenness of her breathing made him wonder if she’d fallen asleep. He said, ‘We should get ready.’
‘No. Not… all that, out there, yet. Not for a few minutes. Let’s be normal for a while.’ She shifted against him, easing herself. ‘Ask me something normal.’
‘All right.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Elle. Not the commonest name nowadays.’
‘A long story. Well, not long so much as dull.’
‘Try me.’
‘First week at university. I was registering for a class. I was asked for my name, and for some reason instead of Louise Klavan — Louise, that’s my name — I said “L. Klavan”. The woman wrote down “Elle”. It sort of stuck.’
‘I prefer Louise.’
‘That’s too bad.’ She pinched his arm. ‘Your middle name. Rutherford. I noticed it when I did the background search on you. What’s that all about? It wasn’t your mother’s maiden name.’
‘My father was an amateur scientist. He wanted me to pursue a career in physics. Like Ernest Rutherford.’
‘You must have been a great disappointment to him.’ He felt her smile against his shoulder.
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
After a pause she said, ‘Now comes the part where I ask you how, or why, you came to join the Service.’
‘And where I give you the usual reasons. A young man’s restlessness and desire for adventure. A bookish intellectual’s wish to serve abstract ideals of freedom and justice. Or the self-indulgence of an immature existentialist who lacks the imagination to seek out normal ways to live a worthwhile life, and chooses a life of danger as a tragic gesture against the void.’
She sat up and drew the covers around herself and stared at him, still smiling, genuine interest in her eyes. ‘I don’t believe any of those apply to you. But clearly you’ve considered them.’
‘Everyone in this job asks themselves sooner or later why the hell they chose it, as you well know.’ He shrugged, feeling suddenly self-conscious. ‘You know what I read at university.’
‘Philosophy, English literature and history, in which you achieved a first,’ she recited. ‘So… I’m guessing it was the history that motivated you? You saw yourself as an agent of history, destined to carry it forward. I’m not being facetious, by the way.’
‘Don’t worry, I didn’t think you were. But you’re exactly wrong, one hundred and eighty degrees out. There are no grand sweeping narratives in history, other than the ones we construct. Something happens and then another something happens, and then another, and in retrospect we impose a contrived causal link between them, so it seems like one progressed inevitably from the last.’
She said nothing, absorbing it. Purkiss sat up, warming to his theme.
‘Take tomorrow, or later today, rather. The presidents are meeting, and if all goes according to plan, they’ll seal an agreement which will make it less likely that their two countries, Russia and Estonia, and by extension Russia and the NATO powers, will go to war. But there are thousands of other potential triggers, manmade and otherwise, that could lead to such a war. Yet in a year’s time, ten years’ time, if we haven’t gone to war then the historians will attribute this achievement directly to today’s meeting. Baselessly so.’
‘But if the meeting is sabotaged, if the Russian president is assassinated… the chance of war is dramatically increased.’
‘Exactly. Chances, probabilities — that’s all we can deal in. Not certainties. It’s what Hume taught me. That’s why I chose the Service.’ He sat back against the pillows again. ‘You can’t make the world a better place. But you can help reduce the probability of awful things happening, not awful things in principle but individual things. And if
