be what you want to hear right now, but it’s only by extreme good fortune that you are still alive.’
Gaddis laughed. ‘And do I have you to credit for that, Tanya? Should I be writing MI6 a thank you letter?’
She shook her head in frustration and looked at him as if he was being unnecessarily confrontational.
‘Who’s Peter?’ he asked her.
‘Special Branch,’ she replied, because she wanted to be as honest as the circumstances would allow.
Of course, Gaddis thought. Not a private sector spook hired by Crane to protect Neame, but a first line of defence for the most illustrious spy in the history of MI6. ‘And he was happy to co-operate in Crane’s decision to go public? Why didn’t he come running and tell you lot what was going on?’
‘Divided loyalties, I suppose. You know as well as anybody that Edward Crane can be a very persuasive man.’ It was a mean-spirited remark, but Gaddis accepted it without objection. ‘Perhaps he offered to cut Peter in on the profits. Perhaps Peter came to believe that ATTILA’s story deserved to be told. Who knows?’
He lay back on the pillow. His head throbbed and he asked Tanya to pass him the water. He drank from the bottle, setting it on the bedside table. It was strange, but she was beautiful to him again. He remembered their conversation at dinner, the way that she had looked at him, and felt a fool for having believed in her.
‘We need to talk about the morning,’ she said. ‘In a few hours we’ll be checking out. The airport is one place they might be looking for you.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘You say the person that you shot was Russian. The police may assume he was working with an accomplice. They’ll be looking for a third man, for the person who left the crime scene. That somebody would probably try to leave Berlin as soon as possible.’
‘Then why are we going?’ he asked.
‘Because they won’t suspect us.’
‘Us?’
‘We’ll be together. We’ll be arm in arm.’
He sat up and hit the master switch on the panel of lights beside the bed. The room blazed. ‘There’s no way I'm doing that.’
‘It’s the best way, believe me. The simplest strategy. Just a couple coming back from a romantic break in Berlin. A lone man would draw more attention. You’ll just have to trust me, Sam. It’s the only way.’
Chapter 30
They left the hotel at six. Further news had emerged about the shootings at Reichenberger Strasse. According to German television, Meisner’s assailant was still alive and had been taken into intensive care, where he was in a stable condition. This was scant consolation to Gaddis and did nothing to lift his mood of despair. He may no longer have been responsible for taking a man’s life, but the horror that he had witnessed at Meisner’s apartment was still as vivid and as shocking to him as the mutilation of a child.
‘We need to be careful,’ Tanya told him as Des drove them out to the airport. ‘If you see someone you know at any point, either in the terminal or on the plane, and if you can’t avoid them, act normally.’ She seemed oblivious to Gaddis’s state of mind, thinking only of the security of the operation. ‘If you feel the need to explain who I am, introduce me as your girlfriend. My name is Josephine. We’ve been staying in Berlin since Tuesday.’
Gaddis shook his head and gazed out of the window in disbelief.
‘Sam, this is important.’ She turned in her seat to face him. ‘You need to concentrate. You need to pull yourself together. I know that you have misgivings about me. But we need to get this thing done. It’s the only way for you to get home with no questions asked.’
‘Have we enjoyed ourselves?’ he asked. A tone of macabre humour coloured the question. ‘Has it been fun spending time together? Do you think our relationship might lead to something more serious?’
Des glanced across and caught Tanya’s eye.
‘This isn’t helpful, Sam.’ Tanya had barely slept. She was dressed in a smart blue suit and had the organizing, nervous energy of a woman with a lot on her mind. As soon as they landed in London, she was under orders to head directly to Vauxhall Cross for an emergency meeting with Brennan, who was ‘incensed’ that she had broken cover. ‘As I said last night, posing as a couple is the most sensible strategy.’
‘Of course.’ Gaddis made no attempt to disguise the contempt in his voice. ‘Your complicated love life.’
They checked in at seven. In the security area, Gaddis was obliged to remove his boots and a leather belt from his jeans, but was glad to have something to occupy his hands as he queued in front of the scanner; it was the standing around, the waiting, which made him despondent and anxious. For the next fifteen minutes they loitered in a bookshop, flicking through paperbacks and guides to Berlin. Tanya occasionally attempted to engage Gaddis in polite conversation, but he knew that it was solely for cover and his replies were monosyllables of indifference. Forty minutes before they were due to take off, they made their way in silence along a series of strip-lit corridors to passport control.
‘I’ll do the talking,’ Tanya said, settling into the queue, but when the time came to approach the booth, their respective passports barely merited a glance from the customs official. At this early hour, they were simply waved through with a stifled yawn.
Gaddis slept most of the way back but the brief rest did nothing to lighten his mood. Landing in London, the wretchedness of Friday’s events settled on him again. He thought continually of Charlotte and of the obliterated skull of Benedict Meisner. There was a driver waiting for them in Arrivals, another Des wearing a pair of jeans and a nylon anorak, holding a sign which said ‘JOSEPHINE WARNER’ in bold, handwritten capital letters. Gaddis saw it and felt a lurch of anger: the double-life was all around him. He longed to be free of it, to be in Barcelona with Min or away in Paris with Holly, to go back to the life he had known before Charlotte’s death.
‘You’re going to go home,’ Tanya told him when they had made their way to the car park at Gatwick and settled in the back seat of a bottle-green Vauxhall Astra. ‘There’s no need to come with us, no reason to fear for your safety. As far as we are aware, nobody else has been looking at your Internet traffic, nobody else has been listening to your phone calls. The man in the apartment was obviously waiting for Meisner. He was the next link in the chain after Charlotte and Somers. For some reason, the Russians don’t know about you. You should feel very grateful for that.’
‘Well, I guess that’s one advantage of having MI6 snooping around in your dustbins,’ Gaddis replied. It was a damp, featureless morning in England, no blue in the sky. ‘They can at least reassure you that they’re the only organization committing a flagrant breach of your privacy.’
Tanya had grown accustomed to his fractious moods. She was sympathetic to them, but knew that she had a duty to toe the party line.
‘Look, Sam, I’m trying to tell you that this has worked out very well for you. You can go back to your life. You can live normally. It will be like none of it ever happened.’
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized the mistake. Gaddis turned on her.
‘I think Charlotte being murdered happened, Tanya.’
‘I know. That’s not what I meant, I’m sorry-’
‘Calvin Somers’s death happened.’
She reached to touch his arm. ‘Sam-’
‘Last night, an innocent man lost his life because sixteen years ago he was dumb enough to go into business with MI6. Benedict Meisner’s assassination happened. How am I supposed to forget that? In what way can I go back to a “normal life”?’
Tanya tried a different approach. ‘What I’m telling you is that you have to forget about it.’ She was under no illusions that things were going to be easy. ‘Just as you have to forget about the book. That’s the deal we’re making. That’s the only choice you’ve got.’
Gaddis knew that there was no point in arguing with her. She was on her way to see the great and the good of MI6, men with sufficient influence to have his involvement in the shooting erased from the record. That was their speciality, after all — the rewriting of history. Tanya had promised that MI6 would ‘strike a deal with the Germans’. In return, all Gaddis had to do was stop digging around Edward Crane.
