‘Agreed,’ said Salih.
‘Whoever’s paying you has money to burn,’ said Merkulov.
‘Money is no object,’ said Salih.
‘Why does he want Yokely and Button so badly?’ said Merkulov. He finished his cigar and flicked the butt into the canal. It spun through the air in a shower of sparks, then plopped into the water.
‘I don’t care why people hire me,’ said Salih. ‘All I care is that they pay. You’re the same. Money is our only master. Nothing else matters.’
Merkulov nodded. ‘They take revenge seriously, the Arabs,’ he said.
Salih smiled. ‘I did not say my client was an Arab.’
‘No, I assumed . . .’
Salih cut him short. ‘The American. Do you know where he is?’
Ahead, a man in a black nylon bomber jacket was walking an aggressive Dobermann. He yanked on the dog’s chain and swore as he walked past them. His head was shaven and a tattoo of a cobweb ran across his neck. He glared at Salih and Merkulov, as if he blamed them for his dog’s misbehaviour.
‘I am working on it,’ said Merkulov, ‘but he is difficult to track. He is able to move between countries without leaving any record of his passing.’
‘That is why I pay you so much,’ said Salih. ‘If it was easy, I’d phone Directory Enquiries.’
‘I know where he isn’t,’ said Merkulov. ‘He isn’t in the Ukraine or anywhere in the former Soviet bloc. And my contacts across Asia are sure he isn’t there.’
‘That still leaves a big chunk of the world, Viktor.’
‘As I said, I’m working on it. Have you a deadline on this?’
‘Generally my clients would rather I fulfilled my obligations sooner rather than later,’ said Salih. ‘How could we get a number for him?’
‘Let me think about it,’ said the Russian. ‘Is it possible that he is in regular contact with Button?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Salih. ‘She’s SOCA and he’s American black operations. I doubt they would do much together.’
‘They must have done something for your client to want them both dead.’
‘Just because he wants them both taken care of doesn’t mean they’re connected,’ said Salih.
‘You don’t know?’
‘I didn’t ask,’ said Salih.
‘It might be an idea to call him,’ said Merkulov. ‘Find out if there’s a connection.’ He gestured at the pocket into which Salih had put the envelope. ‘It might even be that Yokely is one of the numbers on that list. If we think he is in regular contact with her, we’d have a better chance of finding him.’
Salih stopped walking and put his hands into his pockets. The man with the Dobermann disappeared around a bend in the canal. Salih looked over his shoulder. There was no one on the path behind them.
‘Is that man over there one of yours?’ said Salih, with a nod across the canal. The knife dropped from his sleeve as he brought his hand out of his coat pocket and slid easily into Salih’s open palm. He grabbed Merkulov’s hair with his left hand and pulled back the man’s head to expose the throat.
Merkulov began to shout, but the knife slashed through his windpipe, reducing the sound to a watery gurgle. Arterial blood spurted in an arc from the Russian’s neck as Salih pushed him into the canal. The body slapped into the water, Merkulov’s legs thrashed for a few seconds, then stilled. Salih took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the knife clean, then dropped it into the depths.
He took one final look around, then walked away along the towpath. Part of him wished he’d been able to confront the Russian, to tell him that he knew he’d betrayed him and see the despair in the man’s eyes before he’d taken his life, but he was nothing if not professional. Only amateurs gave in to the urge to explain to their victims. Only amateurs made their killings personal. Merkulov had betrayed Salih, so Salih had killed him. It had been inconvenient, but it hadn’t been personal. The Russian wasn’t the only intelligence source in London. Salih knew of three others, and he would have no problem in finding someone to get him the information he needed. He whistled softly as he walked, then smiled. It was the tune the jazz band had been playing. He took his mobile phone from his pocket and removed the Sim card. He broke it in half and tossed it into the canal.
Shepherd sat down at his computer, went on-line and booked a return flight from Belfast to Birmingham with British Midland for the next day. He didn’t want Button to know he was leaving Belfast so he picked up one of his spare mobiles with a pay-as-you-go Sim card and went into the garden to phone Martin O’Brien. He had served with the Irish Rangers, Ireland’s equivalent of the SAS, then set up his own VIP protection company. Shepherd had known him for more than twelve years and there were few men he trusted more.
Shepherd’s luck was in because O’Brien was in the UK and agreed to meet him at Birmingham airport. Shepherd told him what he needed and O’Brien agreed to help, no questions asked.
As Shepherd ended the call, he saw Elaine Carter at her bedroom window. She was wearing pink pyjamas and waved. He waved back. Then she blew him a kiss. Shepherd grinned and returned it.
Salih lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling blankly. He clasped his hands together and steepled his fingers. He had spent the best part of the night pacing round the hotel room, trying to marshal his thoughts, and soon it would be time for his morning prayers. He didn’t want to pray just yet because he had still to plan his course of action. He had been successful in the past because he never took risks. Everything he did was planned in advance, and for every action he took there was a fallback position in case something went wrong.
The Russian had been trying to set him up, of that Salih was sure. He had known Merkulov for more than five years and in all that time the Russian had never once asked for details of a client. Such details were unnecessary. Merkulov supplied information and it made no difference who was paying for that information. That the Russian had been asking questions about Salih’s client had set alarm bells ringing, but when Merkulov had suggested Salih phone his client, he had known without a shadow of doubt that he had been betrayed. He had felt no remorse about killing Merkulov. If their positions had been reversed, the Russian would just as quickly have killed him.
Merkulov had betrayed Salih, which meant that someone knew Salih was in England and that he was being paid to kill Richard Yokely and Charlotte Button. The question was, who had Merkulov betrayed him to? Not the police, surely, because they would have arrested the Russian and charged him with conspiracy to murder. Perhaps it was the security services, MI5 or MI6. Or the American.
The Russian had wanted Salih to phone his client, which suggested that whoever turned him had access to phone-monitoring technology. Again, that pointed to the security services, or Yokely. Now that he had destroyed the Sim card, they couldn’t track his phone or identify its position. He had already fitted a new Sim card from a shop in Edgware Road.
Salih ran through everything that Merkulov had known about him. He had known his name, and several aliases he had used in the past. He had known the pay-as-you-go phone number Salih had been using. And he had known who Salih’s targets were. It wasn’t much. Merkulov didn’t know what passport Salih was travelling on or where he was staying. He didn’t know what car he was driving or where he planned to go.
There had been no one watching them at the canal, Salih was sure. If there had been, they would surely have tried to prevent him killing Merkulov. After Salih had left the canal he had walked to Warwick Avenue Tube station, caught a Bakerloo Line train to the Circle Line, and had spent two hours going round it. He hadn’t been followed, he was sure. No one knew where he was, and without the phone they had no idea where he would go next. That suggested the security services weren’t on his case, because if they had turned the Russian they would almost certainly have had a surveillance team in place. That left the American.
The big question, though, was when the Russian had been turned. Yokely would certainly have access to mobile-phone tracking capabilities, so he would know exactly where Salih had been. Salih had used the mobile in his hotel, so as soon as he had left the Underground he had checked out, having first wiped the room clean of all fingerprints. Then he had registered at the Hilton close to Paddington station, a large, impersonal hotel frequented mainly by business travellers.