Simpson turned slightly pinker. ‘It was necessary. You don’t have any idea of the bigger picture.’
‘Of course I don’t,’ Richter snapped, ‘because you didn’t fucking well tell me, did you? And you didn’t even give me a weapon.’
‘No,’ Simpson admitted curtly. ‘And I’ll take that Browning now, thank you,’ he added, pointing to the pistol on the table beside Richter and holding out his hand.
‘No fucking chance.’ Richter snatched up the weapon and aimed it at the floor, just in front of Simpson. ‘You want this pistol, you come over here and try to take it off me.’
‘Disarm him,’ Simpson snapped at Dekker.
The SAS officer shook his head. ‘I’ve fulfilled my brief and I’m not getting involved in your domestic, thanks very much. This is your mess, Simpson, so you clean it up.’
For a few seconds, Simpson alternated his gaze between Richter and Dekker, then it settled on Dekker. ‘I’ll be talking to your superior as soon as I get back,’ he snarled.
‘Help yourself,’ Dekker said. ‘He’s not a great fan of your secret squirrel outfit, so he’ll probably tell you to go screw yourself. I’ll even give you his phone number, if you want.’
Simpson stood in silence for another few moments, then again studied the wounded man pinned to the floor.
‘You broke his arm,’ he remarked flatly. ‘And what you’ve done to his hand with that flick knife is just plain sadistic. That’s overkill and unnecessary violence.’
‘What do you mean “unnecessary violence”?’ Richter replied, then leant forward and kicked Stanway sharply in the thigh. ‘This bastard came here to kill me, so what should I have done? Made him a coffee and then helped him point his pistol at me? I don’t fuck about in this kind of situation, Simpson — anyone who points a gun at me can face the consequences. And he can still talk, can’t he, which I presume was the point of this whole bloody charade?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? You were trying to flush some rodent out of the woodwork. You had a traitor somewhere within British intelligence but you didn’t know exactly where. So you spread some story about me, or whoever I was supposed to be, so that he would come after me just to shut me up.’ He kicked Stanway again, and the wounded man moaned in pain. ‘I presume that was the point of all the fannying about with the sealed packet of papers, and my debriefing in Russian with the Chuckle Brothers downstairs.’
For a long moment Simpson didn’t reply. ‘That’s a remarkably accurate assessment,’ he said at last, eyeing Richter appraisingly. ‘You’re not what I expected. When we recruited you, I assumed you’d just do what you were told.’
‘I do follow orders, when they make sense, but this whole set-up stank from day one. I’ve told you before that I trust you about as far as I can spit a rat.’
‘Good,’ Simpson nodded, ‘very good. I have a feeling you might have a future in my organization, after all.’
‘You can dream on. I’ll be handing in my resignation as soon as I get back to London. I’ll go off and sell insurance or something. At least I wouldn’t have to spend all my time watching my back and trying to work out what the hell’s really going on, as opposed to what other people tell me is going on. And, most of the time nobody’ll be trying to kill me.’
Simpson smiled for the first time since entering the hotel room. ‘Your resignation might not be accepted,’ he said, ‘because I seriously think I might be able to use your talents. Anyway, we’ll talk about that later. Now, who exactly is this man?’ He bent forward to look more closely at the injured man on the floor.
‘His name’s Gerald Stanway,’ Richter said, ‘and he lives in South Kensington, in London.’
Simpson looked surprised. ‘You know him?’
Richter shook his head. ‘Of course I don’t know him. I simply checked his pockets once I’d sort of immobilized him.’
Dekker smiled at Richter’s choice of verb.
Richter picked up a wallet from the bedside table and tossed it to Simpson. ‘I found that in his jacket pocket.’
Simpson flicked rapidly through the contents, before sliding it into his own pocket. He bent over to lift up Stanway’s head by the hair, staring at the man’s flushed and pain-racked face for a few seconds.
Then Simpson shook his head. ‘Never seen him before in my life.’
‘I have, though,’ Richter explained. ‘He came into the hotel bar earlier today, while I was trying to think up convincing lies for your two blokes about my work at the SVR headquarters in Moscow. He spoke fluent French to the barman, read a French newspaper, had a drink, and then buggered off. I presume that was his idea of reconnaissance: to eyeball me and check out any possible opposition. That’s before he came back tonight to make sure I’d never collect my pension.’
‘OK,’ Simpson rubbed his hands together briskly, ‘it looks to me as if we’ve got the result we wanted. Stanway here presumably works for SIS, or maybe GCHQ — but we’ll soon find out which. I’ll make a couple of calls to sort out a compliant Frog doctor who’ll patch him up enough so that he can travel, then we’ll freight him back to London and put the screws on him.’
‘I think if you just stepped on his broken arm right now, he’d probably tell you anything you need to know,’ Richter suggested. ‘I’ll do it myself, if you like.’
Simpson shook his head. ‘I’m sure you’d enjoy it, but I don’t know what questions to ask. The interrogation will have to be done by someone from SIS, and we won’t necessarily have to resort to physical persuasion. We have an interesting selection of chemical compounds that can loosen any tongue.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘There won’t be any afterwards. The days when former traitors could live out their days in genteel retirement are long gone. Mr Stanway will either die after a short and tragic illness, or he’ll be involved in a motor accident. Either way, he’s dead as of right now. He just hasn’t stopped breathing yet.’
Simpson’s cool and matter-of-fact tone sent a chill up Richter’s back, and in that moment he realized that he would never, ever, underestimate this man.
‘So what about me?’ Richter asked.
‘Your part of this job is over. Get yourself back to London, back to the office, and then we’ll talk further. Make sure you bring those briefing papers with you. I know the Victor manual isn’t exactly top secret, but I don’t want to leave a paper trail over here in case the Frogs start getting interested in what’s going on. I suggest you lose the Browning before you try to cross the Channel, because if you get caught carrying it, I won’t feel any particular inclination to haul you out of the slammer.’ Simpson glanced at the SAS man. ‘You, too, Dekker, you can head for home as well. Thanks for your help.’
‘I didn’t actually do anything,’ Dekker pointed out. ‘Richter here did it all by himself.’
‘Whatever,’ Simpson said, pulling a mobile phone out of his pocket. But, before he could dial a number, the phone suddenly rang. The conversation between Simpson and the caller lasted less than three minutes. What unnerved Richter was that Simpson switched his gaze directly towards him about half a minute after they’d started talking, and his eyes didn’t leave him until the call finally ended.
‘What?’ Richter demanded.
‘You’ll be keeping the Browning, Richter,’ Simpson declared, ‘at least for the moment. I’ll see you get a couple of spare magazines and a box of 9-millimetre ammunition, too. Everything’s changed, and right now you’re the only asset I’ve got here that I can use. And this time,’ he added, ‘it’s for real, so I expect you to do exactly what I tell you.’
Chapter Seventeen