Which meant Purkiss himself was cut off.
Exposed.
A church loomed ahead of Purkiss. Tiny by Roman standards, it was nevertheless spectacularly striking, in that typical Italian way. In the north of the continent, where the iconography was darker, more primeval, such a church would have sported gargoyles leering from its walls.
Above the doors, an ornate Christ in bas-relief grimaced, the terrible torment of its expression enhanced by the sculpted gore that leaked from its widespread, transfixed hands.
Three
Purkiss spent the next three hours crossing the city following the most chaotic of routes, chaotic in the sense of random, unpredictable. When he noticed he’d been following an approximate figure-of-eight path, he changed it drastically to a diagonal zig-zag. When he found himself once again at one or other bank of the Tiber, he headed for the outer suburbs.
Absolute certainty was an impossibility in Purkiss’s line of work. But by eleven o’clock, with the crowds thinning on the piazzas and the residential streets darkening, he was as positive as he could be that he wasn’t under surveillance.
He felt the urge to dispose of his clothes, to scrub himself in a shower somewhere, in case some kind of monitoring device had been secreted about his clothing or even implanted in his skin. He felt the urge, and he resisted it, because that was where normal healthy paranoia segued into madness. He’d known agents who had succumbed to that degree of fear, a corroding force which eventually became paralysing.
In the last hour before midnight, Purkiss found a tiny hotel on an authentically cobbled street in the Ludovisi district. In the reception area, barely as big as a kitchenette in a studio flat, he asked the sleepy woman behind the desk for a room for the night.
He ascended the vertiginous stairs and inserted the old-fashioned key into the lock, stepped inside, and braced himself for the brilliant flash of light and noise which never came.
Get a grip, he told himself.
The room held a single bed with a sagging, too-soft mattress, a single chair, and a dresser with a telephone and portable television set. Purkiss drew the thin curtains across the window, finding them inadequate to the task of blotting out the light from the street lamp directly outside. He sat on the edge of the bed and took stock.
His single suitcase was back at his original hotel. All it held were a couple of changes of clothes and his toiletries. His passport, and his wallet, were in the pocket of the duffel jacket he was wearing. He had the briefcase with its prised-open locks and the most likely worthless scrap paper inside.
He needed to get back to Britain, but he didn’t know how vulnerable he’d be at the airports. He could take a train out of Italy, but the stations might be under surveillance.
His best bet was to hire a car.
He’d make his way back to London, and then… what? He had no contact details for Vale, apart from the phone number which now appeared defunct. Vale didn’t use an office, at least not one Purkiss was aware of. All their meetings had taken place outdoors, or in other public places.
He couldn’t very well walk into the MI6 building and ask after Vale, because Vale wasn’t officially Service any more.
No. He’d have to wait to be contacted, either by Vale himself or by somebody who knew him. And that cast Purkiss in a passive role, which he didn’t like.
Purkiss had spent the day tailing David Billson, and realised that as such he hadn’t kept up with the news. He looked for a remote control, couldn’t find one, and turned the small television set on manually, flicking through the channels until he found a 24-hour news channel in English.
He watched the grainy footage. The black smoke billowing towards the slate sky, the frantic activity as people scurried about in bright neon outfits. The aerial shots, taken from helicopters, of the shattered plane, half-submerged in the field in a crater of its own making.
Flight TA15. Turkish Airlines.
Purkiss cast his mind back to his last conversation with Vale, four days earlier. They’d been walking through St James’s Park — London’s parks were a favoured choice of Vale’s for their rendezvoux — and Vale had said: I’ll be out of the country for the next few days, but I’ll be contactable by phone, so feel free.
Purkiss watched the screen for a minute more. The German security service had received a telephone message six hours after flight TA15 had gone down, from a man identifying himself as a spokesman for the Islamic Caliphate in Asia. The ICA claimed responsibility for the destruction of the plane in the name of international jihad. More blows would be struck against the ICA’s enemies in the West. Et cetera.
Purkiss turned off the television. He looked at the phone beside it on the dresser.
Then he headed back downstairs, the damaged briefcase under his arm once more, and he asked the woman at the desk for change for a twenty-euro note.
Three blocks from the hotel, Purkiss found a public phone booth. It was one of a dying breed that still took coins rather than merely credit cards.
He punched in the international code for the United Kingdom, then the number he’d committed to memory.
She answered on the fifth distant ring, just as Purkiss was about to hang up. ‘Holley.’
‘Hannah,’ he said. ‘It’s John.’
There was only the briefest pause. ‘John? Hold on a moment.’ The faint noise he’d heard in the background faded, as she closed a door. ‘What’s up?’
Hannah Holley was an operative with the British Security Service, MI5. She and Purkiss had met in the summer of the previous year, when he’d been hunting a gunman known as the Jokerman. Purkiss and Hannah had become close during the investigation, and had developed a relationship of sorts. But it hadn’t survived, any more than the Jokerman had, and four months ago they’d parted company.
They’d done so by mutual assent. Hannah had, over a meal in a Soho restaurant, first proposed it, in the awkward way that even normally straightforward, confident people couldn’t avoid. Her career was vital to her, and she didn’t feel she had room for a man in her life at this stage in her progression.
Purkiss had experienced a disquieting sense of relief. He agreed, saying he understood fully, and that his own job made it difficult for him to pay a relationship the attention that was required to sustain it.
In reality, he didn’t understand why they were splitting up.
Purkiss hadn’t spoken to Hannah since then, though their separation hadn’t been acrimonious. It had been tacitly understood that they’d probably remain in contact from time to time.
‘I need a favour,’ he said.
Hannah called him back half an hour later, as a thin drizzle was starting to soak the pavement around him. Several people had passed him by while he waited, though thankfully nobody had tried to use the public phone.
‘Got it,’ she said. ‘His name isn’t there.’
Her tone sounded relieved, for Purkiss as well as for herself.
‘Read them out,’ Purkiss said.
‘All of them?’
‘Yes. Please.’
She’d obtained the passenger manifest for flight TA15. How, he didn’t know. But she was an up-and-coming MI5 asset, who’d earned a great deal of respect for the part she’d played in concluding the Jokerman operation, and she’d have plenty of favours to call in discreetly.
Hannah began to recite the names quickly. There were one hundred and forty-eight of them, Purkiss knew from the news report.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Say that one again.’
‘Terence McCall?’
‘No. The one before.’
‘Robert Edgar.’
‘That’s him,’ said Purkiss.