“A line of C4 and a short fuse seems more fitting,” Frost said. “Okay, better get this over with. Let’s go find Lethe.”
As it was, they didn’t need to go far. Jude Lethe stood beside half of the butler’s corpse looking down at it. He heard them approach and looked up. “The cameras,” he said, as though that explained everything. It did in a way. The old man took it to mean he had seen the assassin shoot Maxwell on one of his many screens down there in the basement and he’d locked down the nerve center of Nonesuch. No second thoughts, no heroice’d followed the protocols to the letter, even if it meant leaving the old man in harm’s reach. Sir Charles nodded.
He looked down at his friend.
“Mister Lethe, would you be so kind as to reset the shield doors. Frost, Maxwell was one of ours. I would count it a personal favor if you would take care of things.”
Frost nodded. He seemed about to say something. It was rare that Ronan Frost didn’t simply speak his mind.
“What is it?” the old man asked.
“I saw the screens in the control room,” he licked his lips. “Konstantin, Orla. They’re ours too. And has Noah checked in? This is a mess.” The understatement of the year.
“There’s nothing to be done,” the old man said. It sounded harsh in his own ears even as he said it. Frost didn’t so much as flinch. He accepted the judgment like the professional soldier he was.
“I’m not finished looking,” Lethe said. “I found someone in the crowd who was filming the Pope’s blessing on his cell phone. The angle’s right, with a bit of luck he caught everything on film. The only problem is I’ve got no idea who he is and have only actually seen the back of his head.”
“That’s a bit of a problem,” Frost said, but the possibility that someone had caught the truth of the assassination on their cell phone seemed to energize him. “But it’s not insurmountable. Koblenz is a small enough city. Get the plod to go door to door with a photograph of the back of the guy’s head. You know the deaclass="underline" Is this you? Is this you? Is this you? It has to be someone.”
There was nothing to say that that particular someone even came from Koblenz, but it was a straw worth clutching at. He could see that in Frost’s face. No man left behind.
“The police won’t go door to door. They took thousands of statements at the scene. If he had seen anything, the BKA will already know, and most likely, if they know he was filming, they will have confiscated his cell phone as potential evidence.”
“They might not have looked at the film yet,” Frost said.
“Or they might have seen it and deleted it already,” Sir Charles said. He knew all too well how some of these profile investigations went. They had evidence, witnesses, and a prime suspect that the British Government would already have disowned. A Russian defector with paramilitary experience? They couldn’t have asked for a better assassin. They wouldn’t be looking for the knife in the hands of the supposedly most loyal guardsmen in the world. It didn’t sit with their investigative mindset, and why would it? They all saw Konstantin do it. Or at least thought they did.
“It’s worth a try. It has to be,” Frost pushed. “What about the guardsmen themselves?” He looked at Lethe. “Any of them see what happened?”
“If they did, I’d expect another corpse to turn up any minute now, wouldn’t you?” Lethe asked.
Frost nodded. “But will another dead body be enough to barter Koni’s freedom?” Frost and the old man locked gazes. Sir Charles was the first to look away. “I want to go out there,” Frost said. “I’m no use sitting on my hands here. Hell, if it comes right down to it, Noah and I can go in there and bust him out of that damned German prison cell. It’d only need the two of us to bring him home. Then the three of us can go get Orla.”
He made it sound so simple.
It wasn’t.
It was a geopolitical minefield.
The suits at Vauxhall Cross might deny Konstantin, but that didn’t mean the Germans would necessarily believe their denials. It came down to whether they believed he was British or Russian, which side he was currently working for and which government they wanted to hang out to dry. Deals could be made, perhaps. The only fly in the ointment was the fact that the public needed to see someone suffer.
“That won’t be necessary,” Sir Charles told him. “You take care of Maxwell, I will make the call. If there is anything that can be done, it will be done. But I am making no promises. Understood?”
“This is becoming rather a bad habit, Charles,” Control’s reedy voice said over the telephone. “I don’t suppose I need to remind you about the hour, or point out that civilized people are abed?”
“I’m not going to apologize,” the old man said. “You know what is happening. Those are my people out there.”
“And that’s a damned shame, but there’s nothing I can do about it. And even if there was, these midnight calls are hardly endearing, old boy.”
“How long have we worked together?”
“Longer, I am sure, than either of us would like to admit.”
“And how many times have I asked you for help, Quentin?”
“Oh, is that the card your playing? The ‘I’ve been a good and faithful servant all these years and you owe me’? I thought better of you.”
“You’re the second person to say that to me tonight. The first one is dead. Regrettably, she killed Maxwell.”
“Are you telling me Nonesuch was breeched?”
“That’s exactly what I am telling you.”
“Have you been compromised, Charles? Tell me the truth. There’s nothing to be gained by protecting your pride.” Quentin Carruther’s tone shifted, his affected tones suddenly more urgent, all hint of playfulness stripped from his words.
“The situation was contained, this time.”
“Are you sure?”
“I killed the intruder myself, Quentin. Her blood is still all over my clothes, and her corpse is in my bed. I couldn’t be much surer.”
“Well that’s something, at least.”
“I want him out of there, Quentin,” the old man said, shifting the subject back to Konstantin Khavin.
“There’s nothing I can do, Charles. I don’t run you boys anymore, not that I ever did, really. You’ve had far too long a leash for too long a time. This is the new world order, my friend, and there’s a new sheriff in town. Talk to him, talk to the Chief. If anyone can pull diplomatic strings it’s him. My hands are decidedly stringless. But don’t hold your breath. Your boy knew the risks when he signed up. Her Majesty is hardly about to claim responsibility for the papal assassin, now is she?”
“He didn’t do it and you know full well that he didn’t.”
“Neither here nor there, though, is it? The camera never lies. If he was innocent, the picture proving it would have been all over the tabloids by now. As it is they’re calling for his head as though he were John the Baptist.”
“I want him out of there, Quentin.”
“And I want Pretty Boy Floyd to come massage my aching feet. I suspect both of us are going to be disappointed, don’t you?”
“Someone in the crowd filmed it,” the old man said, trying a different tack.
“I am sure they did, but again, it doesn’t help us. Your boy wasn’t supposed to be there. He was operating without German consent. He assaulted the Israeli ambassador’s men in Berlin. There is photographic evidence of him breaking and entering into a dead man’s apartment, and enough to suggest he might be linked to the whole sorry affair. They want him, old boy, and there is sweet Fanny Anne that I can say or do that will change their minds. He was careless. He got caught.”
“So you’re saying he should have let the Pope die?”
“I don’t know whether you noticed, but His Holiness died. So yes, as far as Her Majesty is concerned, Khavin’s involvement in this debacle is nothing short of embarrassing. She could come out publicly and say, ‘Yes, we sent an agent to try to protect the Holy Father, but that agent failed.’ It doesn’t look good for a monarch to admit fallibility. Then there are the questions of why we didn’t turn everything over to the German authorities the moment he suspected something was going to happen on their soil. Things are fractious enough even sixty years on. To say that there is still bad blood between our countries is something of an understatement.