CHAPTER ELEVEN
As tired as I was when I got back to London, I gratefully accepted when Ros invited me to dinner. Two airline meals, supplemented by the occasional greasy pirozhok bought from a street kiosk in Moscow hadn't been exactly satisfying, and besides, I wanted to hear what had happened to Connie. When I asked, though, Ros shook her head and said firmly, "Tell me about Moscow, first."
I glanced at her. She was checking her mirrors a little more than was necessary.
"Are we clean?" I asked.
I was rewarded with a withering look. "Of course we are. I did just scrape a pass in the counter-surveillance tests, you know, Lucas."
I sighed. You asked for that.
"Sorry." I told her everything as we drove. She nodded occasionally as if what I was saying had confirmed her own opinion. As we pulled up near my flat, she said quietly, "You know Maria Korachevskaya's dead?"
"I guessed," I admitted. I relieved her of the bag of shopping and started searching my pockets for my keys. "Where the hell … hallelujah." I unlocked the door. "Ros?"
She had been looking intently up and down the road; I frowned. "Ros, are you - "
"Hungry? Not really. But I'll help you." She flashed a quick smile that somehow didn't quite look sincere. "Why don't you have a shower; I'll be ready when you come down."
She was obviously on edge, I thought, but that was to be expected after the shock of Connie's unmasking. That must have dented even Ros's shield of imperturbability. Since I could still smell and taste Moscow's lead-flavoured pollution on my clothes and in my mouth I did as she suggested without demur.
She was as good as her word, and the meal was waiting when I came back. I ate hungrily, and Ros picked at hers as she told me everything that had happened during my absence. I was so stunned by the news of Harry's arrest and interrogation that she repeatedly had to prompt me to carry on eating.
"What in God's name were they thinking of?" I spluttered.
"You're talking about Richard Dalby," Ros said sourly. "Thinking doesn't come into it." She cut me a slice of strawberry tart and herself one half the size, and for a while we ate in silence.
"Is he all right now?" I finished the tart. "I mean, Dalby's not still - "
"Hardly."" Ros's lips twisted in disdain. "Last I heard, the idiot was still busy trying to untangle all the wool Connie pulled over his eyes." She pointed at my plate. "Do you want some more?" I shook my head. "Sure?"
"No, thanks. I'm full. Fed up in the very best sense." I smiled, but Ros didn't respond. She had lowered her head, and was staring at her clasped hands. "Ros?"
"Well if you've really finished eating …" she swallowed, and continued, "then there's something else."
As she told me about Connie's murder of Ben Kaplan, her voice seemed to take on an echoing quality, and my vision blurred. It was only when Ros gripped my wrist and deliberately dug her nails into it that I got the shock under control.
"Sorry … sorry." I shook my head; if there was one sin Ros Myers would never forgive, it was getting emotional. "She must have heard or – or found out … the call. I rang him." Because I couldn't reach you. I didn't say that because Ros's eyes were bleak enough. Her attitude to her subordinates was always brisk and distant, but that, I knew, disguised an intense loyalty and sense of responsibility towards them. I couldn't begin to imagine how she must have felt when she discovered Ben's body. "Shit. God, I should have thought - "
"Stop it. You shouldn't." Ros's voice was like iron. "Harry's right. He told me – no self-flagellation or feelings of guilt. That goes for you too."
If he told you that it's because you were showing signs of both. I watched as she got up and walked to the window, where she stood looking out into the street. And what about Jo? It was her friendship with Ben that had brought him into MI-5. She must be devastated. Perhaps I'd try and chat to her myself. I knew she'd never share her feelings with Ros. Too cold and unsympathetic.
Except, she isn't. Ros had gone to a lot of trouble to make this evening easier for me – first encouraged me to talk the Moscow tension out of my system, and then been thoughtful and patient enough to wait until I'd eaten my fill before she broke the most distressing piece of her news. Yet if I tried to thank her, it was a safe bet she'd bite my head off.
"Where is that microfilm?" she asked suddenly. I handed it over. Ros examined it carefully – not that there'd be much to see until we got it back to the Grid.
"Do you want to take it?" I asked.
She shook her head. "It's safer here with you. Bring it in on Monday. In the meantime, get some rest. And be careful. Stay alert. I don't want to lose anyone else. Looks habit-forming."
The attempt at her usual dry wit fell painfully short, and besides, I was distracted by her use of the word 'safer'. That was the third time Ros had given me the impression of being concerned about something that I hadn't noticed. I wanted to ask what was worrying her, but her face had taken on the shuttered expression that I had come to know would render any enquiry fruitless. "I'll keep an eye on it."
"You'd better." She picked up her car keys and mobile and then hesitated. "I'm glad you're back, Lucas." She examined her key ring with a fierce intensity. "With you and Harry hors de combat - " She trailed off and shrugged. "It got a bit thin on the ground."
Her awkwardness touched me. I smiled. "You're not half as bloody glad as I am, Ros." I accompanied her to the door, and risked a quick squeeze of her hand. "Watch yourself."
She rolled her eyes. "You watch that bloody microfilm. I don't think Connie's pulled her last stunt on us. I want to know what the sodding thing's hiding first thing on Monday." She turned, went swiftly down the path and vanished into the shadows.
oOoOoOo
Be careful what you wish for, I thought. When I arrived at Thames House on Monday neither Ros nor Harry was there. Jo told me they'd gone to see the Home Secretary. When I mentioned Ben, her face closed in a way that reminded me oddly of Ros, and she said curtly, "I'm fine, thanks," to my tentative offer to listen if she wanted to talk about what had happened. She even sounded like Ros. I raised my eyebrows enquiringly in Malcolm's direction, but he merely shook his head warningly.
OK. So maybe the Ice Maiden act's catching. I abandoned my attempt at pastoral care and settled down to acquaint myself with the machinations of my old friends in the FSB. ТИРЕСИЯС. I frowned. It was a long time since my teachers had bullied me into studying Greek mythology at school, but my reading had been pretty eclectic in prison; books had distracted me from the misery of my surroundings. Tiresias, the blind seer. I began to concentrate. After a while, I sat back with my eyes stinging from reading the tiny words, and my heart pounding from the impact of them.
I had been so engrossed that I hadn't realised that Harry and Ros had returned until I heard Ros's angry voice berating a junior officer about something. When I saw Harry behind his desk I got up and went straight in without bothering to knock.
We've got a very serious problem.
That, of course, was understating it by a long way. Only the most serious of threats – like a parallel Russian Sugarhorse operation, larger, better and more long-standing than ours – would have made Harry give the green light to the proposal from an icily furious Ros to snatch Connie James from our own counter-intelligence people so that we could find out what she no doubt already knew – what the hell the Russians were planning to do with it. I had the impression that, given the nod, Ros would willingly have clipped the electrodes on Connie herself, though I could have told her they wouldn't have worked. On the sharp-tongued but maternal, elderly woman who had worked with us - yes, possibly. Not on the vengeful, calculating and determined double-agent calmly facing down Ros's palpable hatred in the damp, dusty gloom of MI-5 safe-house Ottawa Bravo. I wasn't sure what moved her to frankness in the end – the shame I tried to make her feel, the brooding threat in Ros's rigid features or Harry's reluctant agreement to a deal. More likely than all of those, it was the desire to save her own skin, and it became clear that coming clean was the only way she'd succeed once she explained to us that the operation was an attack on London with a nuclear suitcase bomb. I felt physically sick at the potential consequences of that; even Ros turned pale. It was left to Harry to take the decisions – get Connie to the cache of information she'd stashed in London Bridge station that would identify the bomber and his target – and hustle us into movement.
Outside, he urged Ros down the street. Her hand was clamped like an eagle's talons on Connie's shoulder from where it would barely move for the next few hours. Harry followed them while I provided routine cover. Routine was shattered, along with the windows of several parked cars, when a squad of FSB officers opened fire. Ros instantly scuttled crab-like behind the line of vehicles, manhandling Connie with her. As bullets pinged off chassis and walls, showering everyone with glass and brick dust, she disappeared into a side alley.
"Split up!" I bellowed at Harry, as he dodged after them, trying to speak to Malcolm on his mobile at the same time. One of the closest Russians, a young woman, was firing from behind the shelter of a pram. I took two quick shots at her, and had the satisfaction of seeing her vanish temporarily behind an eruption of feathers from a bursting pillow. I sprinted after Harry.
"Get back to Thames House," I panted. "We'll never get this sorted unless you're on the Grid. We only have to get Connie across London." I glanced over my shoulder. "How hard can that be?"
Harry looked doubtful for a second. I wasn't surprised that he wasn't reassured by my airy assurance - it hadn't convinced me – but this was no time for an argument. He nodded.
"Watch the rooftops," he said. "They'll have numbers."
"Don't worry." I smiled tensely. I could hear sirens in the distance but I could distinguish running footsteps much closer. "I've got another route in mind. Go, Harry!" I asked him to phone Ros and tell her where to meet me, then he stepped decisively out into the crowds of office workers swarming along the main road, and I turned and melted back into the rabbit-warren of medieval alleys and lanes that make up the heart of the City of London.
oOoOoOo
That's why you hate me. Not because I'm a spy, but because you're looking in a mirror.
I just caught Connie's words as I skidded into the tiny courtyard where she and Ros were waiting for me. It looked as if I had arrived in the nick of time. The air was crackling with tension, and when Ros span round, I saw her eyes were blazing with anger and loathing. There was a cold glitter of triumph in Connie's. Whatever she had been saying, it had got right under Ros's skin.
"Did you lose the eyeball?" Ros snapped. When I nodded, she grabbed Connie's arm and shoved her roughly forward. "Move!"
It was halfway across Bishopsgate that I felt it; like being kicked in the side by an angry mule. For a second I staggered under the impact, and as I regained my balance I felt a stinging, burning sensation oozing its way across my skin.
Shit. I saw Ros glance back and forced myself to straighten. She wasn't armed, and I knew she wouldn't abandon Connie to save herself, not with a mushroom-shaped sword of Damocles hanging over the unknowing heads around us. At least I had a gun and a few bullets; without them they'd be sitting ducks. And we had to keep Connie alive for the next couple of hours. Just for a second, I deliberately allowed myself to recall the torture sessions I usually kept buried so deep. You've had worse. Move.
The escalator that descended to the main concourse of Liverpool Street station was a nightmare; I felt like one of those plastic ducks on fairground shooting ranges, just waiting to be plucked off by a well-aimed bullet. When I forced the lock on a door marked 'No Public Access' and jostled Ros and Connie through it, Ros looked at me incredulously.
"Lucas, you're a bloody claustrophobic!" she hissed sotto voce so that Connie couldn't hear.
"I'll be fine." I led them down the staircase, wincing as the steps jolted my wound.
"You have a map?" she asked sarcastically as we reached the now disused platform.
"No, I have a memory." I pulled out a heavy-duty torch I'd stolen from a car boot. "We were briefed on these disused tunnels once in training."
"Once?" Ros echoed sceptically.
"It was enough," I said. I'll give Ros her due. She made no further protest, just nodded acceptance and lifted my sweater to examine the bullet wound.
"How bad is it?"
"They missed all the important bits. I'll live." I eased myself down onto the rails and helped Connie.
She snorted. "Don't be so sure." With a snapped, "That one's live," she jumped easily down from the platform, seized the older woman's collar in a move of which the FSB would have approved, and without hesitation, marched her into the tunnel.
Both of us knew we probably only had a small window of time before the FSB caught up with us, so Ros, with scant regard for her age, forced Connie on as fast as she could move. She had made no further comment about my claustrophobia problem, and followed without hesitation every direction I gave her. I was beginning to feel a tiny glow of pride at her trust in me when a vintage Tube train loomed out of the darkness, blocking our way. Ros looked up at me with a sardonic expression wrinkling her face.
"Whose idea was this?"
A sense of humour is needed armour. "I forget," I retorted. Ros grunted, relieved me of my torch and led us through the carriages. We kept Connie sandwiched between us; Ros's distrust of her was total, and she was taking absolutely no chances. When we were clear of the train- impeded by nothing worse than an aggressive vagrant - we stopped to let Connie catch her breath. She flopped onto an abandoned cable spool, panting. I passed her a bottle of water after Ros shook her head impatiently at it.
"What's the time?" she snapped.
I told her as I used a dressing from my stolen First Aid box to stem the slow trickle of blood from my wound. Ros paced restlessly, glaring at Connie. I had never seen Ros so unable to contain her anger. It flared at Connie's every word, and when Connie suggested we should 'go deeper', I thought she might strike her. Instead, she yanked her to her feet.
"Rest's over - " she stopped as a loud, flat report reverberated off the curving walls. "What would you do if you were them?"
I gulped. "Send in a runner." She nodded, and pushed Connie into lurching motion. I checked my gun and ran after them, but the pain in my side was increasing steadily, and I had to stoop to try and lessen it, which slowed me down. At this speed the Russian would be on me within minutes.
Ros had been glancing back anxiously; now I waved her on. If I couldn't speed up, then the FSB had to be slowed down. For a second, as the pale gleam of Ros's hair faded into the shadows, I felt a jolt of claustrophobic panic at being alone, underground, in a metal tube with no visible horizon. I stamped on the feeling and silently blessed the unfortunate driver who – assuming it wasn't pulverised in a nuclear deflagration – was soon going to find his car boot stripped of its contents. A wire booby-trap catapulted our pursuer off his feet. Mindful of his colleagues still in hot pursuit, I forced myself to fire into his writhing body, and limped after Ros and Connie. Ros's eyes narrowed when she saw me gripping my side. I pointed them left.
"Service tunnel - third exit to the right. I'll draw them off to the platform."
She glanced at the blood seeping through the dressing onto my fingers.
"Take care." It was brusque, but for a second I thought I saw moisture in her eyes. Then she turned and ran.
The climb up the escalator took the last of my strength; each step caused a vicious stab of pain, and now I could clearly hear the clatter of footsteps and shouts in Russian echoing below me.
Just a few more yards. I staggered to the exit, only to find it barred by a pair of ancient gates. I shook them in enraged frustration, but although they obligingly shed the rust of years all over me, they didn't yield.
I looked back. The first FSB head appeared over the top step like a slightly tousled rising sun. It was followed by a second. I fired at one, but then my gun hammered the final nail into my coffin by jamming.
"Патронов нет у него." He's out of bullets. I leaned against the wall for support as the FSB officer advanced on me, gun extended. Blood loss must have been making me lightheaded. Instead of flashing back to the last time I had been captured by an FSB snatch squad, all my imagination could picture was Ros's disgusted expression and the tongue-lashing she'd give me for this.
I thought the ringing sound was in my ears until the Russian answered his mobile. When he lowered it, he looked ironically at me. "It's your lucky day. Change of orders. You come with us."
oOoOoOo
They told me the minimum in the car to London Bridge, while I prayed Ros had got there safely. When we found her opening Connie's locker, I think our relief was mutual, though hers was muted by the flabbergasted expression on her sweating, dirty face when she saw my FSB retinue. When I reassured her they were there to help, she muttered a scathing 'how nice' under her breath, but Ros being Ros, it didn't take her long to turn the situation to her advantage. I was amazed when Connie proposed that she should disarm the bomb, and expected Ros to spurn the suggestion immediately. Instead, she looked at the other woman with a combination of calculation and curiosity. Then she dispatched half the Russians to Grosvenor Square to retrieve the device and turned to me.
"We'll take it below. Minimise fallout. I'll take her. You stay here with the rest of them. Bring it down."
"Ros - " I protested, but she cut me short.
"No. Do as I say." She took Connie's elbow, and left me standing there, staring after her. I tried to make small talk with the other FSB officers, but the circumstances were hardly conducive, and when one spotted my prison tattoos coyly peeping out around the edges of my sweater, renewed suspicion caused the conversation, such as it was, to dry up altogether. For the first time in my life I was relieved to be handed an explosive device.
I carried it down into the tunnels, holding it level and perfectly still, the way my Aunt Josephine had taught me to do when she let her young nephew serve tea to her friends from the Women's Institute. Connie was standing against the wall, sipping from a bottle of gin; Ros, her arms tightly folded and her face set, was pacing to and fro a few yards away, as if she felt she couldn't trust herself if she remained within arms' reach of her.
I sank down against the wall, suddenly exhausted, as she started the disarming process, talking us through every step as if she were back lecturing Service trainees on bomb disposal procedures. She seemed indifferent to the little red figures twinkling menacingly on the countdown in front of her, but Ros never took her eyes from them. Only when Connie told us to leave did she help me to my feet. Then she inclined her head.
"Connie." I wasn't sure if it was a farewell, a condemnation or an expression of admiration. All three, I think. She took my arm in support as we turned.
Lucas! Both of us stopped. Who do you blame? When you wake at three in the morning with the nightmares, who do you blame for what happened to you?
I stared at her. I'd never put it into words before. "Harry. I blame Harry."
Then it's time you stopped. Harry wasn't to blame … it was me. Always me.
Her words shocked me so much that I don't think I could have moved had not Ros grabbed my sweater and pulled it - hard. "Leave - now!" With her half-dragging me, we stumbled down the tunnel and threw ourselves into an alcove behind the remaining half of an old metal door. The force of the explosion caused black dust laced with shards of metal and wood to swirl around us. In the darkness I could hear Ros coughing and spitting. I pulled my sweater up over my head and held it there until the air cleared.
"All right?" I croaked at last. Ros pushed her hair off her face.
"Yeah … fine," she said shakily. I held her for a moment while she muttered apologies and steadied herself. "Come on. You need to get seen to."
We returned above ground, both silently averting our eyes from the shattered remains of the bomb, the table on which it had lain, and, presumably, of Connie James. The FSB team was still loitering near the station entrance. The team leader met my eyes.
"Молодцы," he grunted, and nodded at me.
Well done. I nodded back, and they silently turned and left. Ros had been on the phone, quietly calling in the specialist Broken Arrow team to clear up, and check for radiation leakage. Now she looked at me, and something in her expression made a stupid lump tighten my throat.
"You all right?" Ros enquired. She sounded embarrassed even to be asking.
I went to say 'yes', but instead, shook my head. "I – erm - " the words caught. "I need to talk to Harry."
Without a word, she handed me her mobile and discreetly turned her back to give me privacy. I dialled the number. I heard the call connect, but then there was a strange whirring noise and what sounded like some kind of an engine. I frowned.
"Harry?" As I spoke, the phone went dead, and Ros turned to look at me.
"Has anyone made contact with him?" I asked.
She stared at me, and I watched the same chilling fear that was spreading through me cloud her eyes.
"Ros Myers?" She swung round to the man in full HazMat suit looming over her. "Where did it happen?"
I watched Ros gather herself. She held up her hand and rapped to me: "Call Malcolm." Then she began to brief the officer.
"Lucas." I heard Malcolm's voice, tense and anxious, in my ear. "Lucas, are you and Ros all right? Are you safe?"
I reassured him, and asked about Harry. Ros and the Broken Arrow officer seemed to be arguing, but it was like a silent film; all I could hear was what Malcolm was telling me.
"Where is he?" Ros demanded, when I ended the conversation and the officer, red in the face, and obviously on the losing end of the dispute, led his team below. "What did he say?"
As calmly as I could, I told her – that Harry had gone to meet Viktor Sarkisian, the FSB head of station in London. That no-one had been able to contact him since his departure. That he hadn't returned. I watched every drop of colour drain from her face. Her lips quivered, and for a moment I thought she was going to cry. Then her expression hardened.
"Rubber Rambo down there," she gestured in the wake of the Broken Arrow team, "says if there was leakage we may have been contaminated. And you need that injury seen to." She coughed and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. "Straight choice. Hospital or Harry?"
I remembered what she'd once said to me - That's no choice at all - and flinched, both at the pain in my side and the irony of the situation; the man whom, wrongly, I had held responsible for my ordeal in Russia for so long, now at the mercy of the Russians himself.
"Harry," I said firmly.
"Unanimous." She turned for the exit. "Whatever it takes?"
"Whatever." I stifled a groan as I tried to keep up with her. She looked back, but didn't slacken her pace.
"Taxi!" We climbed in, and Ros said crisply: "Milbank, please," as the driver, with one startled glance at our dishevelled condition, joined the queue at the traffic lights. A helicopter clattered low overhead, heading north as our cab veered south for the river and Thames House.
oOoOoOo
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