Meaning Roger Barrowby, who was currently running a slide-rule over every decision taken in the Park, down to and including whether you wanted fries with that.
Spider Webb blinked twice. “By going via Slough House,” he said.
Taverner shook her head. Christ, she was losing it. That was why he was using the slow horses: they didn’t fall under Barrowby’s remit. Their outgoings were practically zero, if you didn’t count Lamb’s expenses. “Okay,” she said. He relaxed. “That doesn’t mean you can go.” She spared her desk drawer a brief glance: her cigarettes were in there. But last time anyone had smoked in the Park, it triggered a toxin alert. “The whole story,” she said. “And I mean all of it. Now.”
When Kyril had heard “hookahs,” what he’d thought he’d heard was “hookers,” and nothing about the subsequent thirty seconds had shaken that conviction: there’d been a change in the law, a Pole in a pub had told him, and now all the hookers on the Edgware Road were out on the pavements, instead of behind the windows of the Turkish restaurants. “Hubbly-jubbly!” the Pole had concluded. Kyril had nodded in agreement. For the purposes of his mission here he wasn’t supposed to understand English, but he spoke it well enough, and had a firm grasp of what “hubbly-jubbly” signified.
The joke was, there were dozens of hookers on the Edgware Road, and plenty more on the sidestreets, but the hookahs the Pole had meant were the Arabian Nights pipes that drew tobacco up through a hose. Kyril had never tried one before, and it turned out he liked it. So he’d gone back the following evening and tried it again; sitting out on the pavement under a plastic canopy; the streets dark, and traffic hissing past. He was making friends—that was okay: what The Man didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him—and chatting to these friends was what he was doing when the guy from this morning, Harper, cycled past.
Kyril made no sudden movements. Just kept on smoking the hookah, laughing out loud at a brand-new joke. Watching without watching, he saw Harper haul the bike off-road and disappear round the corner. That was all right. Didn’t matter if a man disappeared, so long as you knew where he was going to be, which in this case was as close by Kyril as he dared get. So Kyril dallied another ten full minutes before rising and making his excuses, and walking on to the little supermarket to load up on supplies, mostly bottles and cigarettes.
When Webb finished Taverner chewed her lower lip for a moment, before realising she was doing so. “Why the Needle?” she asked. “This is the secret service, or didn’t you get that memo? You couldn’t get more high profile if you arranged a meet in the Mall.”
“He’s not some lowlife I’m trying to turn. If Pashkin’s spotted in a lapdancing club, it’ll raise eyebrows. If he’s seen going into London’s newest piece of skyline flash, nobody’ll think twice. It’s his natural territory.”
She couldn’t argue with the logic. “And nobody else knows about this. The real story.”
“Just you and me.”
“And you’ve only told me because you’re on my carpet.”
He nodded along with her. “Because of the whole—”
“Deniability thing. So you said.” Taverner directed another penetrating gaze at her subordinate. “I sometimes worry you’re going over to the enemy,” she said.
He looked shocked. “MI6?”
“I meant Tearney.”
“Diana,” he lied. “That would never happen.”
“And you’ve told me everything.”
“Yes,” he lied.
“I want regular updates. Every tiny detail. Good or bad.”
“Of course,” he lied.
Once he’d gone, Taverner wrote an e-mail to Background, requesting a CV on Arkady Pashkin, then deleted it without sending. Last thing she wanted was any flags raised, and with Roger bloody Barrowby’s audit in full swing, she’d have to explain in triplicate why she was interested. So, falling back on the first-dater’s method, she Googled him instead, and came up with well under a thousand hits: he flew low for a player. First up was a year-old article from the Telegraph, citing his achievements. It carried a photo too, revealing Pashkin to resemble a less benign Tom Conti, a conjunction which pressed a number of Taverner’s buttons. With the blinds still down, she allowed herself a moment of reverie: shag, marry or push off a cliff?
Hell, the man was a billionaire. All three. In that order.
It was late. She logged off, and sat pondering. It was always possible Webb would come back with the goods, and while the chances of Pashkin ending up both in Five’s debt and in the Big Seat in the Kremlin were vanishingly small, that was how the job was played. You had to back outsiders, because insiders were spoken for. Though it wasn’t always clear by whom.
Damn it, she thought. Let him go ahead. If it fell apart she’d nail him to the debris, then float him out to sea for gulls to feed on. Delusions of grandeur, she’d say. That’s what came of press attention.
And don’t think Ingrid Tearney wouldn’t grasp the import of that.
Before leaving she pulled the blinds up, so those on the hub could admire her empty office. Nothing to hide, she thought. Nothing to hide.
Nothing at all to hide.
Some days, it just comes together.
Min Harper hadn’t broken records cycling west; it was a recce, that was all, just to get a taste for the area. The road was busy off Marble Arch, and he’d slowed, looking for somewhere to chain the bike, and that’s when he saw him, Kyril, the one who’d pretended not to speak English. Sitting outside a restaurant under one of those plastic tent arrangements, pulling on a hookah and laughing with the locals as if he did this every night of his life. Just like that, it all came together.
He hopped off the bike, wheeled it round a corner where he locked it to a lamppost, then squashed his high-vis vest into the pannier. Back on the main road, shielded from Kyril by a wall of traffic, he went into a 7-Eleven whose magazine rack barricaded the front window. He browsed this intently until Kyril rose, cracked a last joke with his buddies, then ambled along to the mini-mart on the next corner. As soon as he was inside Min crossed the road and sheltered in a shop doorway, studied the cards pinned there: Cleaning Work Offered, Man with a Van, English Lessons. He pretended to jot down numbers. When Kyril reappeared with a carrier bag in each hand, Min waited until he was a good hundred yards away before following, cutting his way through the crowds thronging the pavement, the Russian’s bulk an easy target. Min could taste beer on his breath. Could feel pressure building on his bladder, come to that. But what he mostly felt was the thrill of the chase—it would be so easy to stop one of these people, this approaching blonde for instance, and say I work for the security services. See that guy? I’m following him. But the blonde walked past without a glance, and Kyril disappeared.
Min blinked, and forced himself not to break into a run. Calm regular pace, same as before. Kyril must have stepped into another shop, or a bar; maybe there was a concealed alley ahead. The danger was, Min would end up in front of him. No, the danger was, he’d lost him—
But there was no danger. That was what he had to remember. There was no danger because nobody knew where he was or what he was doing. Only Min would know, as he got back on his bike and slunk across the city to Louisa’s, only Min would know he’d messed up a tail job, the kind a rookie could pull off without breaking a sweat.
Some days it all fell apart.
Except, except, not today, because there he was again, that beautiful bulky Russian, stepping from an alcove where he’d stopped to examine a menu … Min only realised his heart had been racing because it now climbed down to normal.