‘You’re sure?’
‘I am certain. He bumped into me.’
Grek watched as Gaddis turned south and came directly towards them. For an instant, he thought that he was going to approach the car. Instead, he crossed Royal Hospital Road and walked towards a red letterbox just a few feet from the Mercedes. He posted the envelope through the slot, then continued south, heading in the direction of the river. Grek, who had been close enough to touch Gaddis as he passed the Mercedes, realized that he, too, had seen the man before. Several weeks earlier. He was the unidentified male who had left Charlotte Berg’s residence on the night that he had broken into her office. Approximately six feet tall, about eighty kilos, wearing a corduroy jacket with a leather satchel slung over the shoulder.
‘That is Sam,’ said Grek. ‘He posted the tape. Call Kepitsa and tell him to send somebody to break into the box. I will follow him.’
Stieleke nodded.
‘Stay here, Karl. Stay with the vehicle and keep an eye on the girl. When I call you, when I tell you that Sam has been brought under control, you go in to Holly and you finish the job. Understood?’
‘Understood.’
Des was watching them. He, too, had seen POLARBEAR coming out of the building and had privately admonished him for lighting a cigarette with a ‘fucking Swan Vesta’ so that ‘Dolph can get a really good look at your face’. Then he wondered why POLARBEAR was posting a package into the neat red letterbox on the south side of Royal Hospital Road.
‘I hope that’s not what I think it is,’ he muttered to himself, pulling out his mobile phone. ‘They’ll just nick it, you twat, they’ll just nick it.’
He dialled Tanya’s number but she wasn’t answering. Des left a message.
‘POLARBEAR has left the building. He’s also just posted a package on Royal Hospital Road. Think it might be your tape. Give me a call, will you? I reckon things are about to get busy round here.’
Sure enough, a moment after Des had hung up, he saw Alexander Grek stepping out of the Mercedes and buttoning up his overcoat. Des re-dialled Tanya’s number, but she was still not answering. He left a second message.
‘Like I said, things have just got busy round here. Foot surveillance. One of the FSB boys just went south after our man. POLARBEAR is heading for the river.’
Gaddis was leaning on a stone balustrade, looking out across the Thames at the distant outline of the Japanese Peace Pagoda in Battersea Park, when he heard a voice behind him.
‘Excuse me, sir.’
It was a deep, languid voice, with a certain music in it, a certain charm.
‘Yes?’
He turned to find that a well-dressed man of about thirty-five had crossed the road from the south end of Tite Street. He was wearing a light brown overcoat and a pair of expensive leather brogues. Oligarch chic, Charlotte would have called it, but Gaddis didn’t feel like laughing.
‘It is Sam, yes?’
‘Do we know each other?’
Gaddis had been waiting for this. He had known that they would come.
‘We do, we do,’ said Grek, extending a hand which Gaddis reluctantly shook. ‘My name is Alexander Grek. We met at the Russian Embassy in July, no? You came to our fundraiser for small businesses.’
The lie had the odd effect of emboldening Gaddis. He was almost insulted by it.
‘Is that the best you can do?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘A fundraiser? A party at the Russian Embassy? With all that you know, after everything you’ve seen, you think I’m going to fall for that?’
Grek’s pale brown eyes, so soft and conciliating, suddenly lost their innocence; it was merely a question of narrowing them, like a man sighting a target on a shooting range. Moments earlier, Gaddis had thrown the butt of his cigarette into the churning waters of the Thames. Grek now took out a cigarette of his own from a pristine silver case and lit it with a Zippo lighter.
‘I see that you are direct, Sam. A straight talker.’ He closed the Zippo. Click. ‘Fine. If that is how you like to do business, then let’s be frank with one another. Let’s do business. You have something that I want. Something that my government will pay a lot of money for. Would you be so kind as to pass it over?’
Des had watched Grek disappear towards the Embankment. He wondered if he should have followed him. But that was against Tanya’s instructions. She had told him to keep an eye on Holly’s apartment.
His phone rang. He saw Tanya’s number flash up on the screen.
‘Des? Where are you?’
‘I’m still in the car.’
‘You’re still in the what?’ He heard her swear against the sound of traffic. It wasn’t clear whether she was walking along a busy street or speaking from inside a vehicle. ‘Go after them. Follow the Russian. Something could happen to Sam. Did you see where they’ve gone?’
Des told her that POLARBEAR had been heading towards the river.
‘I’m in a cab,’ she said. ‘Half a mile away. I’ll be there in less than five minutes.’
Grek inhaled deeply on the cigarette and gazed at the passing traffic on the Embankment as if the noise of it was an encumbrance to his enjoyment of what was an otherwise pleasant London evening.
‘Do you have it in your possession?’ he said. ‘Do you have the tape?’
Gaddis held his nerve. He had two of the disks in his coat pocket. The other two, he knew, were safe. ‘You say it’s your government who are willing to pay for the tape?’ He did not dare smoke another cigarette of his own in case his hand shook as he lit it. ‘So you accept that you have been operating under the orders of Sergei Platov? You admit that Charlotte Berg, Calvin Somers, Benedict Meisner and Robert Wilkinson were killed with the approval, tacit or otherwise, of the Kremlin?’
A pretty girl jogged past them wearing a Comic Relief T-shirt and tracksuit trousers set off by a pair of bright pink legwarmers. She was oblivious to the city beneath the rhythm of an iPod. Grek stared after her and nodded in appreciation.
‘I am sorry,’ he said, turning back to Gaddis as though already bored by the direction that their conversation was taking. ‘I have no idea what it is that you are referring to. If these people, as you say, are dead, you have my condolences. It has nothing to do with my organization.’
‘How do you do that?’ Gaddis surprised himself by moving towards Grek.
‘How do I do what, please?’
‘How do you justify it to yourself?’ Grek still looked bored, though Gaddis was now only a few inches from his face. ‘Did you know anything about Charlotte? I knew her very well. She was my closest friend. She was a sister to Amy. She was a wife to Paul. Her husband hasn’t been able to work, to sleep, to do anything very much these past few weeks except to grieve for the one person who ever meant anything to him. You did that. You took away his only happiness.’
There was a tiny flicker of irritation, not remorse, at the edge of Grek’s pale brown eyes.
‘Did you know anything about Benedict Meisner?’ Gaddis was on a roll now, a distilled enmity boiling inside him. He watched the comet of Grek’s cigarette as he flicked it into the Thames. ‘Did you know that he had two teenage daughters, one of them anorexic? Did you know that? Did you know that he was an only child? His mother had moved to Berlin to be close to him. She was a widow. Her husband had been killed in a car accident. It was in the German papers. She was unable to identify her son’s body because of the gunshot wounds. You took away his face. You did that to a mother, to a woman of seventy-five. You forced her to see that and you shattered that family. Was it worth it?’
Grek raised his face to the sky and sniffed at the chill evening air as though he had no intention of responding.
‘What was it for?’ Gaddis wanted to grab Grek by the arms and to shake an answer out of him. ‘I just don’t see how you rationalize it, how you square it with your conscience.’ He took a step backwards and found that he was almost smiling. ‘I don’t believe that people have no conscience. I can’t believe that. Otherwise such people are just animals, no better than a vulture or a snake, no? They say that everybody has their reasons, but it’s a mystery
