And she had not said goodbye, hadn’t said she loved him and respected him above every man she had ever known, although those things were in her mind when the commotion had started out in the corridor and she’d stupidly gone out to see what was happening. She recoiled, her hands covering her face, her mind flooding with regret and guilt and shock. She looked again at his face, swamped by shock and an odd disbelief. Never for one moment had it occurred to her that she would lose him.
When Samson got out of the elevator, having handed Naji over to the Bird so they could go back to the hotel they were currently working in, he was met by Special Agent Reiner. It was past one in the morning and Anastasia was still in the room with Denis’s body, which had yet to be removed to the morgue. She had said she needed this time with him and the hospital authorities didn’t press the matter.
Reiner and Samson went to the room where she slept. ‘We need to know all about this man – everything you have on him.’
Samson looked at him with disbelief. ‘Is that so? Seems to me you used Denis as bait to catch him. You withdrew the officers when his wife returned from Europe and waited, sure they would try to kill him. That was pretty risky behaviour – you put other people’s lives in danger.’
Reiner mumbled a demurral that included the phrase ‘national security’, but it didn’t add up to much.
‘You were here all the time. Your agents in the garage were following Anastasia until they saw me hurling rocks at them. You set her up. She could easily have been killed.’
Reiner ignored this. ‘There’s a question of evidence about this individual.’
‘Toombs knows all about him. Why do you need me?’
‘Things are difficult, as you know.’
‘They’ve shut him down and he’s forbidden to cooperate with the Bureau. And from what I hear, you’re overstepping the mark by carrying out this operation.’
‘It’s a criminal justice matter. We were intercepting an assassin.’ He smiled, and went on: ‘What do you want?’
‘Time,’ said Samson. ‘About sixty hours.’
‘Go on.’
‘Denis’s death will be announced tomorrow morning by his office on the West Coast and they will state that he died from an underlying heart condition, which is the truth. This was how Stepurin planned to make it look. I don’t know what was in that vial, but I guess it’s something that interferes with the rhythm of the heart and causes cardiac arrest. We want the people who are paying Stepurin to believe that he succeeded in killing Denis without being detected. And for that you need Stepurin to make a call tonight.’
‘Why?’ said Reiner.
‘We need them to think they’ve won, that with the elimination of Denis Hisami and Robert Harland the threat no longer exists.’
‘And what does that serve the American people?’ asked Reiner. ‘Because that’s my job.’
‘A job you are being prevented from doing. High-level penetration in the US and the UK by the same network is deemed to be just too damaging to both governments, and you were taken off the case.’ He leaned forward and spoke confidentially. ‘I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, but we do kind of recognise each other. What I’m asking you is to give us sixty hours and we’ll try and break this thing open. Then the people who have blocked a legitimate investigation on behalf of the American people can go fuck themselves, because you will have to act on the knowledge that’s in the public domain. Look, you’re on our side. I know that!’
‘How do you propose we persuade Stepurin to make that call?’ asked Reiner.
‘Keep him out of the criminal justice system and put him on ice, which isn’t so hard because he is, after all, a Russian spy. Tell him that if he makes that call, there could be a deal – maybe a swap – and he can go back to Russia or Cyprus, wherever the hell he’s based. That’s credible – he knows the last thing the Russian government wants is for him to be questioned in an open court. He has to make the call tonight, and to the right number. Not some fucking number he pulls out of the air.’ He took his phone out and gave him Gaspar’s cellphone number.
Reiner thought about it. ‘Okay, what are you going to do in these sixty hours?’
‘Draw them out in the open, but it will take a lot of luck, and it all hangs on Anastasia. As you can see, she’s extremely upset. I’m not sure she’ll be up to it.’
‘You know her well – what’s your bet?’
Samson got up, went to the basin and poured himself a glass of water. ‘She’s been through a lot, and everything she’s suffered has been caused by the woman whose name neither of us has mentioned. Mila Daus.’ He watched for a reaction, but there was none. Samson was convinced Reiner knew the name but he wasn’t going there. ‘I think she’ll be up for it. I know she will, but we need the weekend.’
‘And what happens if she isn’t?’
‘Nothing! We’ll go back to pretending that Russia hasn’t got its people at the top of the American and British governments. And all those bit players who feed information into an enormous human eavesdropping operation will be free to continue to betray their country, whether they are doing it consciously or not.’
