Louisa checked her phone. “Still no good,” she said. “And Webb’s bleeding out for all we know. I’ve got to find an outside line.”
He said, “Okay. I’ll keep going.”
“Shoot straight,” Louisa said.
Marcus continued down the neverending stairs, and Louisa went back into de Koenig’s.
“You were a Kremlin brain.”
“Yes. Until I became, instead, a Moscow cipher clerk. With just enough of the right sort of information to be granted entry into your Jerusalem.”
“You invented Popov, who we knew was a legend. So we thought the cicadas were a legend too, but they were real. Why’d you bring them to Upshott?”
“They had to be somewhere,” Katinsky said. “Once Moscow fell apart. Besides, they were sleepers, and where better to sleep?”
“They were agents of influence.”
“They were bright talented people, with access to people with access, and they reached right into the heart of the establishment. It would have made for an interesting game, if it hadn’t come to a premature end.”
“You mean if you hadn’t lost, you might have won,” River said. “Do they even know? About each other, I mean?”
Katinsky laughed. He laughed so hard he started to wheeze and had to put a hand up as if instructing River to stop right there, put everything on hold. It was the hand that held his iPhone. The other remained out of River’s view.
At length he said, “On the whole, I think not. Though they may have suspicions.”
River said, “All these years, and you decided to come back to life. There’s got to be a reason for that. You’re dying, aren’t you?”
“Liver cancer.”
“That’s one of the painful ones. Too bad.”
“Thank you. You liked the girl, didn’t you? Young Kelly Tropper. I mean, I know you screwed her, but it went beyond business, didn’t it? Spies screw girls when they’re called upon to do so, and young men screw girls when the opportunity presents. Which were you when you bedded her, Walker?”
“Did it bother you, sending her out to die?”
“Sending her? She’d say it was her own idea.”
“I’m sure she thought so. Are you really waiting for a call?”
“I might be. Or I might be waiting to make one.”
“It’s over, you know.”
“It was over a long time ago,” Katinsky said. “But that’s the thing about dying. It encourages you to tidy up.”
“To settle scores,” River said.
“I prefer to think of it as redressing a balance. You don’t think this is about ideology, do you?”
“Well, I don’t think it’s about a heist. Why Upshott?”
“You already asked.”
“You didn’t answer. Nothing you’ve done’s been accidental. You came here for a reason.”
The sun was trying to clear the belltower, and given time and patience, would succeed. It always had done before. Behind them, gravestones were soaking in warmth, but the bench remained in shadow. Katinsky gave the impression that this was where he belonged. For all his solidity, River half-expected him to evaporate once the sun’s rays touched him.
“Why do you think?”
No, River thought; it wasn’t his grandfather the man reminded him of. It was Jackson Lamb.
He said, “It’s England.”
“Oh come on. So is Birmingham. So is Crewe.”
“Picture postcard England. Medieval church, village pub, village green. You wanted to park your network at the heart of a vision of rural England.”
Like a grudging tutor, Katinsky nodded. “Maybe. What else?”
River said, “When you chose it, it had a military base. Most of the town existed just to serve it. There was nothing else here.”
“A small place with no proper existence … Why would the man who invented Alexander Popov choose such a place, I wonder?”
A passing wind crawled through the neatly-trimmed grass, shaking the spray of daffodils in a tin vase by a headstone. For no reason he could think of, River remembered the O.B., his grandfather, reaching with a twig to rescue a beetle from a burning log in his grate. And then the memory fizzed and vanished, the way the beetle itself had popped when the fire swallowed it. But the connection had been made. Here in the quiet churchyard, River recalled a distant conflagration.
“ZT/53235,” he said.
Katinsky said nothing. But his eyes answered yes.
“That’s where you’re from,” River said, and even as he spoke, Katinsky’s words, I prefer to think of it as redressing a balance, swam into his mind, and despite the encroaching sunshine it grew colder on their bench.
Louisa found a phone; called emergency services, but couldn’t get through—what the hell was going on? Through the window, traces of black smoke spread inkily across the sky. Way down below, London was burning.
She called Slough House and filled Catherine in.
“He was still alive when you left him?”
“He was breathing. I’m not a doctor.”
She was having second thoughts about having left Webb on his own. Or not even on his own: the other Russian was there too. Also in pain, though that was of less consequence to her.
“Where’s Pashkin now?”
“On his way down, I imagine. With Marcus in hot pursuit.”
“I hope he’s careful.”
“I hope he kills the bastard.”
“I hope the bastard doesn’t kill him first. Or the others.”
Roderick Ho and Shirley Dander were on the scene too.
“It’s chaos out there, Louisa. God knows when you’ll see reinforcements.”
“We need medics first.”
“I’ll get a chopper sent.”
“Oh, shit,” said Louisa.
The roof.
“ZT/53235,” said River. “That’s where you’re from.”
“No legend worth the name springs from virgin soil. I gave Popov my own past, yes.”
“So you … you must have been a child.”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it? But apparently I carry the memory within.” He grimaced. “It wasn’t a healthy town to be born in. Even before you burned it to the ground.”
“Your own government destroyed it,” River said. “Because they thought there was a spy there. But there wasn’t. There never was. The town was destroyed for no reason.”
“There are always reasons,” the Russian said. “The spy wasn’t real, but the evidence was. That’s how the mirror world works, Walker. Your service wasn’t able to plant a spy there because security was too tight. So it did the next best thing, and planted evidence to suggest a spy. So the government did what governments do, and destroyed the town. What your Service would now call a result. Back then, they called it a victory.”
“It was all a long time ago,” said River, as if that meant anything now, or ever had.
“I came from a place that epitomised the Soviet world in English eyes,” said Katinsky. “And it was destroyed by fire. So here I am, in a place that epitomises England to the rest of the world. Tell me. What happens next?”
River moved at exactly the moment Katinsky revealed what his right hand held, and River pulled back but not fast enough. Katinsky caught his elbow with the Taser, and the force of the voltage threw him onto the path.
Katinsky stood. “I told you Pashkin had various things I needed. Where do you think I got this from?” Bending, he zapped River again. Sparks burst and the world swam red and black. “A source of plastic explosives was another. Being a career criminal opens all sorts of doors. Knows no borders, you might say.”
“There was no bomb,” River managed to squeak.
“No. The plane was a decoy, for Pashkin’s benefit. The plastic’s still here. All around us.”