Something was going on over there, and Shirley had no idea what, but at last she was involved.
A gulp of air. Another spurt of speed. No sign of Ho, but that was okay. If you couldn’t get Windows to start, Ho was your man. The rest of the time, he took up space.
Her head buzzing like her haircut, on she ran.
At the entrance to the same park, Roderick Ho gripped the railings and prayed for something. He wasn’t sure what. Just something that would make his lungs forgive him. They felt like he’d been gargling fire.
Behind him, a car rumbled to a halt. “You all right, mate?”
He turned, and here was his miracle. A black cab. A great big beautiful black cab, open for business.
Falling onto the back seat, he managed to gasp, “The Needle.”
“Right you are.”
Away he went.
River blinked.
Soldier Two swung at Griff Yates again, and in a moment so smooth it looked choreographed, Yates seized his arm, twisted his wrist, relieved him of his gun and put him on the ground. The blood masking Yates’s face painted him a demon. For a moment, River thought he was going to shoot, but instead he turned it on Soldier One. “Drop it!” he screamed. “Now.”
The soldier was just a boy—they were both boys. The gun trembled in his hands. River plucked it free.
Then said to Yates, “You too.”
“This bastard smashed my face in!”
“Griff? Give me the gun.”
Griff gave him the gun.
River said, “I’m with MI5.”
This time they listened.
The building had come to life over the past few hours, but on Molly Doran’s floor there was only the gurgling of plumbing, as hot water negotiated clumsy bends in monkey-puzzled piping. The sleek and glossy surfaces of Regent’s Park masked the elderly exoskeleton on which it had been hoisted, and like a spanking new estate erected on a burial ground, it sometimes felt the tremblings of unlaid ghosts.
Or so Molly put it.
“You’re on your own a lot, aren’t you?” said Lamb.
They had worn out the possibilities of new discovery. Everything they knew about Nikolai Katinsky, about Alexander Popov, could fit on a sheet of paper. A set of interconnecting lies, thought Lamb, like one of those visual puzzles; the outline of a vase, or two people talking. The truth lay in the line itself: it was neither. It was pencil marks on a page, designed to fool.
“What now?” Molly asked.
“I need to think,” he said. “I’m going home.”
“Home?”
“I mean Slough House.”
She raised an eyebrow. Cracks had appeared in her make-up. “If it’s quiet you want, I can find you a corner.”
“Not a corner I’m after. It’s a fresh pair of ears,” Lamb said distractedly.
“As you wish.” She smiled, but it was a bitter thing. “Someone special waiting over there?”
Lamb stood. The stool creaked its thanks. He looked down at Molly: her overpainted face, her round body; the absences below her knees. “So,” he said. “You been all right then?”
“What, these past fifteen years?”
“Yeah.” He tapped a foot against her nearest wheel. “Since ending up in that gizmo.”
“This gizmo,” she said, “has outlasted most other relationships I’ve had.”
“It’s got a vibrate setting?”
She laughed. “God, Jackson. Use that line upstairs, they’ll prosecute.” And she put her head to one side. “I don’t blame you, you know.”
“Good,” he said.
“For my legs.”
“I don’t blame me either.”
“But you stayed away.”
“Yeah, well. New set of wheels, I figured you’d want some private time.”
She said, “Go away now, Jackson. And do me one favour?”
He waited.
“Only come back when you need something. Even if it’s another fifteen years.”
“You take care, Molly.”
In the lift, he tucked cigarette in mouth in readiness for the great outdoors. He was already counting the moments.
River said to Griff, “Why’d you come looking for me?”
They sat in the back of the jeep; the soldiers up front. He’d returned both their guns. This was borderline risky—there was a chance the kids would shoot them and bury them somewhere quiet—but once they’d clocked his Service card, they’d slipped into cooperative mode. One was on his radio now. The hangar would soon be crawling with military.
Yates’s face was grim. His handkerchief was a butcher’s mess, but he’d only succeeded in smearing blood across his features. “I said, man, I’m sorry I—”
“Not what I’m asking. Why, specifically, did you come looking for me?”
Yates said, “Tommy Moult …”
“What about him?”
“I saw him up the village. He asked if you’d got back all right. Made me worried you’d been, you know. Hurt.”
Blown up, he meant.
“Shit,” River said. “It was his idea, wasn’t it? Leading me onto the range? And leaving me there?”
“Jonny—”
“Wasn’t it?”
“He might have suggested it.”
The jeep had no doors. It wouldn’t have been a second’s work to tip the bastard out.
“Tommy Moult, man,” Yates said. “He knows everything happens in Upshott. You think he just sells apples from his bike, but he knows everyone. Everything.”
River had worked that out already. He said, “He made sure I was there. And saw what I saw. Made sure I’d be freed in time to do something about it.”
“What you on about?”
“Where was he? This morning?”
“Church end.” Yates rubbed his cheek. “You really a secret agent?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why Kelly—”
“No,” said River. “She did that because she wanted to. Deal with it.”
The jeep cornered, braked sharply, and they were at the flying club, with its toytown airstrip, and empty hangar.
River hit the ground running.
Roger Barrowby had gone white, which gladdened Diana Taverner’s heart. Her morning was new-made. Ingrid Tearney was out of the country; as Chair of Limitations, Barrowby could claim First Desk, but it looked like the only snap decision he’d be making was which direction to throw up in. The arch comments were history. He should have stayed in bed.
She said, “Roger, you’ve got four seconds.”
“The Home Secretary—”
“Has final say, but she’ll base that on our best info. Which you now have. Three seconds.”
“An agent in the field? That’s all it comes down to?”
“Yes, Roger. Like in wartime.”
“Jesus, Diana, if we make the wrong call—”
“Two seconds.”
“—what’s left of our careers will be spent sorting the post.”
“That’s what keeps life interesting on the hub, Roger. One second.”
He threw his hands up. Taverner had never seen this cliché happen before. “I don’t know, Diana—you’ve got half a message on a mobile from a slow horse out in the sticks. He didn’t even cite his protocols.”
“Roger—you do know what Code September means?”
“I know it’s not an official designation,” he said peevishly.
“I’ve run out of numbers. Whether this is real or not, keep it from the Home Sec any longer, and you’re in serious dereliction of duty.”
You’re—she enjoyed that syllable.
“Diana …”
“Roger.”
“What do I do?”
“Only one thing you can do,” she said, and told him what that was.
They’d been talking for ten minutes, but nothing meaningful had been said. Arkady Pashkin was sticking to Big Picture topics: what was going on with the Euro, which way Germany would lean next time one of the partners needed bailing out, how much money Russia’s World Cup bid cost. Spider Webb had the air of a dinner party host waiting for a guest to shut up about their children.