next exit ramp, leaving the Autobahn. This wasn’t the way to Berlin.
For a moment Konstantin thought that perhaps they had decided to do it the Russian way, drive him somewhere remote then finish him, cleaning up the problem he posed. He licked his lips.
The driver pulled over to the side of the road.
It was a remote spot, far enough away for his body not to be found quickly. Remote enough the local wildlife might take care of that problem altogether.
There was little in the way of passing traffic. No one would accidentally see anything from the side of the road.
It was a good place to kill a man.
The driver leaned forward, opening the glove box.
Konstantin was suddenly aware of his breathing. It was hard. A regular push in, out, in, out. He looked at his options. There wasn’t a lot he could do. He couldn’t very well fight from the back seat of an SUV with six other slabs of solid muscle surrounding him. Well, he could, but he wouldn’t win. He wasn’t Superman. He couldn’t run. The back doors would be child-locked to prevent him from opening them from the inside. So, he did the only thing he could do: nothing.
The driver pulled a padded envelope from the glove box. It didn’t look bulky enough, or heavy enough in his hand, to contain a service revolver, and they wouldn’t have risked a close-combat weapon like a Korshun knife or a SARO machete. He turned in his seat and looked straight at Konstantin. “We’ve got a message for the old man from Control,” the driver said in a coarse Manchester accent. “This is it, all debts paid in full. He’s kept up his end of the bargain, but this is the end of the road. You’re cut off, as of now. You understand?”
He handed Konstantin the envelope.
It contained a passport with his picture on it in the name of John Smith, just about as English as names came, and a plane ticket from Frankfurt Main back to Heathrow, leaving in six hours. There was also a billfold with about 300 Euros in it.
“You get yourself caught, you’re on your own.”
“How are you going to explain this?” Konstantin said, meaning the plane ticket. “They’re expecting me in Berlin.”
“Yours is not to reason why, soldier. Yours is to get your ass home. End of story.”
He nodded. He knew enough not to ask operational details. No doubt the real wall of muscle was arriving right about now at the BKA building and the man and woman were scratching their heads, wondering who the hell they’d just turned him over to if it wasn’t the good guys. Or maybe only one of them was scratching his head. The woman had said she wanted to believe him. Maybe that had been enough to convince her to make the call? Had the simple act of telling the truth set this entire chain of events into action like the first domino going over?
One thing Six could do was paperwork. This crew would have presented every necessary piece of paper, with every i dotted and every t crossed. In and out, no one any the wiser until the real prisoner transport team arrived, hence the thirty minutes of driving rather than taking him straight to Frankfurt Main or the military airport at Wiesbaden. Six didn’t want the Germans knowing it was Her Majesty who’d sprung their suspected papal assassin. It wasn’t exactly good form for a monarch to be getting her royal hands dirty like that, even if she didn’t know what was actually being done in her name.
Konstantin pocketed the passport and the ticket.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t thank me, mate. I’m only doing what I’m told. Thank the old man for calling in every favor he had with every man, woman and child from here to Timbuktu. Without him you’d be rotting away in Berlin for the rest of your natural, pal.”
He broke one of the smaller Euro notes at a kiosk, buying a phone card.
It took him the best part of an hour to find a working pay phone.
He called in to Nonesuch.
Lethe answered on the first ring. It took a moment for the line to connect and then both of them were talking without the other hearing. Then the line opened. Konstantin started again, “I am on the evening flight from Frankfurt Main to Heathrow. When I land I am going to call again. By then I want you to have found Miles Devere for me.”
He hung up before Lethe could get a word in.
It was an uneventful flight, both on the ground and in the air. A lot could happen in nine days it seemed, including people forgetting a face, or half-recognizing it and not being sure where from, even when it was a face they had seen day after day on the news reels and in the press. He wasn’t a film star and he wasn’t a pro ball player. What that meant was when they looked at him a few people did a weird sort of double-take, then shook their heads as though dismissing him. They had recognized him on some subliminal level, just like any other famous person, but they had filed him as just that, a famous person. Logic told them he had to be one, and who was he to argue with logic?
The fact of the matter was that the BKA were hardly about to announce to the world that they’d lost him. Airports, train stations and bus terminals would be swarming with agents on the ground looking for him-but they weren’t looking for John Smith.
As it was, he landed in London refreshed from the flight and disembarked the plane. On the way along the metal passage back toward the gate, he asked one of the ground crew where the nearest pay phone was and made the call to Lethe.
“Welcome home, Koni,” Lethe said, even before the phone had started to ring in his ear. “We were worried about you.”
“Touching, I am sure. You have the address for me?”
“The old man told me to tell you he wants you here for a debriefing first thing.”
“Second thing. First thing I have a promise to keep.”
“Whatever you say, man, I’m just passing on the message. Second thing it is.”
“The address?”
“He’s in England. He entered the country the day after the assassination.”
“England isn’t small. Where in England?”
“I just want you to appreciate my brilliance for a moment, Koni. I found him for you, just like you asked. But think about it, if I say he’s in London, that means he’s one of seven and a half million people spread over thirty-two different boroughs. That’s a lot of people and a hell of a lot of streets. That’s your needle in a haystack right there.”
“Where is he?”
“Well, out of all those millions of buildings, I found the one he’s in. That’s how good I am at what I do, Koni. He has a place in the heart of London, Clippers Quay, off Taeping Street. You can take the DLR to Mudchute and walk from there in a couple of minutes. Most of the houses are built around the old Graving Dock. There are four apartments in the block. The penthouse is his. You can’t miss it.”
“A graving dock? Isn’t that appropriate,” Konstantin said.
“It doesn’t mean they used to bury people there, Koni,” Lethe said in his ear. The phone line started to beep, but he talked over them.
“Well it does now.”
Konstantin hung up and went to keep a promise.
He left the train and walked quickly down the stairs that ran between the up and down escalator. He was the only person left on the train by the time it reached the Isle of Dogs. This part of the city was called Little Manhattan because of the mini-skyscrapers that had been built all along the riverside development of Canary Wharf. The Devere Holdings building was in there amid all of the merchant banks and import/export offices. Mudchute rather matched its name. Despite its nearness to the skyscrapers, it was like something out of the ’50s and owed its curious name to the fact that when it was being built the country was suffering from football factories, and its hooligans were the fear of Europe; otherwise, it would have been called Millwall Park, after the football team.
He followed the road around. Twenty years ago this part of London would have been full of kids kicking tin
