When he could speak, Kyril said, “You lose.”
“I lose,” Min admitted. The three vodkas joined the two from the previous round, and the one from the round before that. Plus the penalty shots for having lost both. Plus the beers he’d drunk in that pub near where he worked, though finer details, such as what the pub was called, and where he worked, had grown hazy. These guys, though—these guys. These guys were kind of crazy, but it was surprising how quickly barriers broke down when you got past the job descriptions. Like his own, which was to keep an eye on these guys without them knowing he was doing so.
It was possible he’d compromised that particular part of his mission.
“So tell me,” Kyril said, “When I did that thing with the key. When I—”
“Stuck it in the back of my neck, you bastard!”
Kyril laughed. “You thought it was a gun, yes?”
“Of course I thought it was a gun! You bastard!”
All three were laughing now. It was a picture, for sure: Min, convinced his last moments had come. That a Russian spy had a pistol screwed into his neck, and was about to pull the trigger.
Kyril stopped laughing long enough to say, “I couldn’t resist.”
“How long did you know I was there?”
“Always. I saw you on your bicycle.”
“Jesus,” Min shook his head. But he didn’t feel too low. Okay, so he’d messed up, but it hadn’t had serious consequences. Though he was pretty sure it would be best if nobody else got to hear about it. Specifically Lamb, he thought. And Louisa. And everybody else. But specifically them.
Piotr said, “Don’t feel too bad. We do security. We’re trained to spot faces in crowds.”
“Just like you are trained to do whatever it is you do in the … Department of Energy,” Kyril added. His broad smile supplied invisible quotation marks.
“Look,” Min began, but Piotr was waving a hand, as if seeing him off on a journey.
“Hey. Hey. Arkady Pashkin is an important man. You think we don’t know there will be … interest in him? Government interest? We’d be worried if there wasn’t. It would mean he was no longer important. And people who aren’t important don’t need people like us.”
“If my bosses found out I was here—”
“You mean,” Kyril said slyly, “if they found out you’d botched a shadowing job.”
Min said, “Well, I tracked you to your lair all right.”
“And now you’re finding out what happens to Department of Energy guys who get too nosy.”
They all roared again. Piotr refilled the glasses.
“To successful outcomes.”
Min was happy to drink to that. “Pravda,” he said, because it was the only Russian word he knew.
And everyone roared with laughter again, and another round had to be poured.
They were on the topmost floor, which was a self-contained flat. This was the kitchen, and there were at least two other rooms. The kitchen was clean, though the window was smeared with the usual city grime. The fridge was full, and not just with vodka. It held cartons of juice and bundles of vegetables, plus little wrapped packets from delis. This pair were used to being away from home, Min suspected, and knew how to take care of themselves in a foreign city without resorting to takeaways. He also suspected that if he drank much more he’d forget where he lived, let alone the ability to cycle there. Last thing he wanted was to finish up under a bus.
There was a noise from elsewhere, the front door opening and closing, and someone new wandered into the room. Min turned, but whoever it had been was already vanishing back into the hallway.
Piotr said, “One moment,” and left the kitchen.
Kyril poured more vodka.
“Who was that?” Min asked.
“Nobody. A friend.”
“Why doesn’t he join us?”
“He’s not that sort of friend.”
“Not a drinking man,” Min surmised. His glass flaunted itself in front of him. What had he just decided about alcohol? But it would be rude to leave a full glass, so he echoed whatever toast Kyril had proclaimed, and threw the vodka down his throat.
Piotr returned, and said something to Kyril that sounded to Min like a pile-up of consonants.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Kyril. “Nothing at all.”
Paranoia was back, if it had ever been away. Shirley Dander, all in black, fitted like a bathplug on the streets of Hoxton, but still felt out of place, as if her every step left a neon footprint.
Hardly night-time, really. Half past ten.
There was a pub she favoured, mostly because she had a contact there. She didn’t like to say ‘dealer’: dealer implied habit; habit implied problem; and Shirley didn’t have a problem, she had a lifestyle. One she had no intention of allowing to die the way her career had. That Slough House was a graveyard, she’d never been in doubt; that the earth was piled on quite so high, she’d just discovered. She’d done what Jackson Lamb had asked—done it well, without missing a beat—and all she’d earned was a back-to-your-desk. And from stories she’d heard, it was a miracle she’d been sent out at all. Slow horses came and slow horses went, and the passage between was spent tethered in their stalls. It was as if her mission had been one of calculated cruelty: give her a glimpse of the sunshine, then close the stable door.
Screw Lamb anyway, though. He wanted to make her life difficult, he’d find that was a two-way street.
The pub was crowded three deep at the bar. Didn’t matter. She wasn’t planning on staying. A familiar face raised a hand in greeting, but Shirley feigned abstraction and worried her way through to the toilets, which were round the far side: a sleazy corridor with a smeared mirror, and handbills pasted to the walls for open-mic poetry nights, local bands, the Stop the City rally, transgender cabarets. She didn’t have to wait long. Her contact sidled through from the bar, and precisely seventeen words later Shirley was leaving, three banknotes lighter, a comfortable weight nestling in her pocket.
Black jacket. Black jeans. She should have been invisible, but felt marked out. Memories of the previous night flashed from car windscreens: that kid she’d scared half to death, raiding DataLok. That was how easy it was to terrorise. You simply had to believe your cause was just; or failing that, simply not care about the people you were doing it to … When she turned, Shirley was convinced there’d be someone in her wake; a face from the pub; one of the wallhuggers whose eyes were always busy, but who never dared approach. Well, stuff them. Shirley was spoken for; and besides, she didn’t dance where she shopped. That’s what she was thinking when she looked back, but the street was empty, or seemed to be empty. Paranoia, that’s all. The comfortable weight in her pocket would take care of it.
All in black, she carried on her way.
“Alexander Popov,” said Catherine Standish.
Lamb regarded her thoughtfully. “Now, where’d you come across that name?” he asked.
She let him wonder.
“I sometimes worry you’re going over to the enemy.”
She looked askance. “Regent’s Park?”
“I meant GCHQ. You got me bugged, Standish?”
She said, “You’re sending River undercover—”
“Oh god, I might have guessed,” Lamb sighed.
“—into something you already know is a trap?”
“I only told him a couple of hours ago. Did he change his Facebook status already?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Did gramps not teach that kid anything except how to tell stories?” Raising his glass to his mouth again, his eyes remained fixed on the one he’d poured for Catherine. It sat like a challenge, or a carefully worded insult. “Besides, trap or not, he wouldn’t care. An op’s an op. He probably thinks all his Christmases just came at once.”