Before he got on board Samson received a call from Ivan at Cedar telling him that Peter Nyman urgently wanted to be in touch. He explained to Anastasia that he needed to return the call to find out what Nyman wanted before they left. ‘They’re going to track the phone you use to call back,’ said one of the bodyguards and handed him her phone. ‘Try this.’
The number rang: an American dial tone. Nyman was in the States. ‘How can I help, Peter?’ said Samson.
‘Denis Hisami is dead, and we think that should be an end to the matter.’
‘Who am I to argue with that? If you think the matter is over, that’s fine.’
‘The British government is working to resolve certain aspects of this affair and we do not need your interference now.’
Samson grinned at the phone. ‘It’s not my interference you have to worry about. Maybe you should look east, and, by the way, I literally have no plans other than a weekend in the Blue Ridge Mountains.’
‘When are you returning to the Washington area?’
‘Sometime next week.’
‘That hardly seems likely.’
‘Whatever you say,’ said Samson.
‘We take a rounded picture of the events of the past two weeks. But the Americans are very angry indeed and I cannot guarantee they will be as understanding. Your life is at stake.’
‘Are you threatening me, Peter?’
‘No, you’re putting your own life at risk. You need to come in. Clear the air. If you have your country’s best interests at heart, you’ll do as I ask. We can arrange a place. Number Ten wants certain assurances and those need to be given today.’
‘I’m afraid that’s just not possible.’ Samson hung up and handed the phone back to the bodyguard. ‘They’re worried as hell, but I don’t think they have any idea what’s going to happen.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Anastasia.
Chapter 35
Sunset on Potomac
They sailed south on a warm westerly breeze generated by a massive storm system in the south. Naji was allowed to steer for fifteen minutes and Anastasia captured it on a phone. ‘Not bad,’ she said out of the corner of her mouth to Samson. ‘A few years ago he was an unaccompanied minor, caged in a refugee camp in Lesbos because he kept on breaking out. Now he’s steering a multimillion-dollar yacht down the Potomac. Seems like he was right to escape.’
She hadn’t said much since the meeting with Reid, which she believed had gone badly. ‘Did you notice his hand was shaking?’ she said. ‘His right hand has a tremor and he had to hold on to it with his left. Ulrike saw it too, but do you know what? I think he’s much more frightened of Daus than he is of us or anything we might do.’
‘He may calculate that the only way for him to end that fear is to help us,’ said Samson. ‘But I guess he has to be absolutely certain she’s going to be destroyed. He has to see the stake through her heart, or at least know it’s poised above her.’
‘He has the power to finish us with one call,’ said Anastasia. ‘He’s the only person outside our group who knows that something may happen in Congress on Monday. If he tells her, we’re finished.’
She went below with Denis’s laptop, refusing all offers of help and saying she needed to go through the files and begin to distill Denis’s work into something she could present. She had to be completely on top of the information, know every detail inside out and have the connections imprinted on her brain so that she could answer questions fired at her by hostile members of Congress.
In the early evening, Samson suggested she came on deck for some air.
‘What’s up?’ he said.
‘Can’t say,’ she replied, and took the bottle of beer that he offered. ‘It’s not what you expect,’ she added.
Naji, who had been helping her below, joined them. They looked across the water to an enormous facility on the Virginia side of the Potomac. ‘That’s Quantico,’ Daphne called out from the cockpit. ‘Where I did my time.’ It figured that Zillah had an ex-fed as skipper.
‘The files are devastating.’ Anastasia looked down at her beer. ‘There are just so many people that Daus has suborned and entrapped. And the data! I never got this part of it before, but she’s accumulated tens of millions of people’s personal details, and she uses it to push the line that’s advantageous to her friends in Russia. Honestly, I’m surprised there’s anything resembling democracy in this country or the UK. It’s baffling that those guys’ – she flung her hand at Quantico – ‘are letting it happen.’
‘Maybe they’re not,’ said Samson. ‘They may have been helping all along,’ he continued. ‘The CIA saved my life in Tallinn. No doubt about it.’
Naji got up from the cabin roof and went to talk to the crew.
‘Has he read all the stuff?’
‘No, he didn’t know what was input from the American end. That went straight to Denis.’
‘So you’re the only person who knows what’s in it.’
She nodded.
‘We have to give it to the FBI if we go ahead on Monday. Sorry, I had to do a deal.’
She looked irritated. ‘Was that strictly necessary?’
He waited a moment. ‘How else was I going to get Reiner to make Stepurin put in a call to say he’d killed Denis? Stepurin made that call late last night. So Daus believes her man murdered him. And that’s important for her sense of being in control of things on Monday.’
A cooler breeze from the bay, bringing the smell of the ocean. The sky and water turned a dark mauve. The sails were dropped; Ariel II was now pointing straight into the wind, and the engine was started.
They looked across the river in silence. Presently, he turned
