Mikhail looked down at his paper as an elderly couple walked by, arm in arm. This was what he lived for. The jolt of adrenaline. The anticipation of action. The sudden release after days of careful surveillance. This was his purpose in life. It was what they had been trained to do. He was better at it than at anything else.
“Aleksandrov has gone into the Lord Nelson,” Nataliya said. “I’ll wait outside.”
“Geggel is here,” he reported. “If they’re meeting there, he’ll come this way. Stand by.”
Mikhail took a sip of his lukewarm coffee and replaced it on the bench next to him. He held the paper up, flipping the pages, and, as he did, he saw Geggel. Mikhail looked down, glancing up just as the man went by. It would have been possible for Mikhail to reach out and take the sleeve of his overcoat if he had so chosen. It was definitely him. They had been given a photograph of the old SIS spook and there was no question that it was the same man: six feet tall, mousey hair, old acne scars on his cheeks, heavy black spectacles.
Mikhail took another sip of his coffee, shuffling around in his seat just a little so that he could observe Geggel as he proceeded to the north. He waited until he was at the junction with East Street before he collected the coffee and stood up. He dumped the cup in the bin, folded the newspaper and stooped to pick up the plain leather bag that he had placed next to the bench.
“I’m on the move,” he said into the microphone.
He followed Geggel northwest as he climbed East Street. He reached a pub—the Lord Nelson—and stopped outside the entrance. Mikhail paused alongside a van with two kayaks strapped to its roof, conscious that he wouldn’t be able to wait for long if he wanted to avoid being made as a potential tail. Mikhail and Nataliya had not lasted as denied area agents for as long as they had without being careful. Their normal operating procedure would call for them to abandon a mission if they received even the slightest hint that they might have been compromised, but the orders that Vincent Beck had passed on from the Center had been different. They had authorisation to take greater risks than would otherwise have been the case.
Dealing with Aleksandrov was important enough to justify risking their exposure.
Geggel opened the door to the pub and went inside.
Mikhail updated Nataliya and followed.
5
Geggel made his way into the pub. It was an old building, with plenty of character. The bar was to his left, complete with rows of pumps carrying the idiosyncratic badges of the ales from the local Adnams brewery: Ghost Ship and Old Ale. Metal tankards and glass pint pots were hung from hooks on the ceiling, and the two members of staff—a man and a woman—passed around each other with difficulty in the cramped space. There was a door to the kitchen and the day’s menu was written out on blackboards that were screwed to the wall. Drinkers conversed at the bar and diners had taken all of the chairs around the pub’s few tables.
Aleksandrov was waiting at the bar. He acknowledged Geggel and waited for him to come over.
“Pyotr,” Geggel said.
“Leonard. Thank you for coming.”
“It’s been a while.”
“You still like ale?
“Of course.”
“Go and get a table. I’ll bring one over and we can talk.”
Geggel slid between the clutch of drinkers waiting to be served at the bar and crossed the saloon to a table that had just been vacated. He took a seat against the wall so that he could look into the room—old habits died hard—and waited for Aleksandrov to come over with their beers. The Russian set the glasses down on the table and dropped into the other chair.
They touched glasses and then drank. The ale was hoppy and not unpleasant.
“How are you?” Aleksandrov said once they had finished their first sips.
“Can’t complain. You?”
Aleksandrov sat down. “I am very well, thank you. How is retirement?”
“Truthfully? A little boring. I miss our work.”
Aleksandrov laughed. “As do I,” he said. “I miss my country, too. But I will never be able to return.”
Geggel’s heart sank; had he come all this way to suffer one of Aleksandrov’s rants? The Russian had been prone to black moods and had made it his habit to regale Geggel with wistful tales of the glory days of the Rodina and what he had sacrificed for British intelligence whenever they met. Geggel had eventually concluded that Aleksandrov believed MI6 were obliged to provide him with a sympathetic ear to listen to his complaints. Their meetings had quickly become tiresome and Geggel had not looked forward to them. But he had blanked out those memories after he had received Aleksandrov’s cryptic telephone call. He had been too excited to allow the past to dampen his enthusiasm.
“I wasn’t expecting to hear from you,” he said, trying to move the conversation along.
“I was not expecting that I would have to call.” Aleksandrov took another long swig of his beer. “You are wondering why I did not speak to your replacement?”
“Not really,” Geggel said. “I know you didn’t get on with her.”
“She is a baby,” he grumbled. “She does not take me seriously. She does not know the work that we did together.”
“How could she? She was still in school.”
“Precisely,” the Russian said, slapping both hands on the table. “That is precisely it. How old is she? Thirty?”
“I don’t know.”
“She has no experience. She does not value the intelligence that I provided. The risks I took, the price I paid—she has no idea. All I am to her is an old spook. Washed up and irrelevant, sent to this place to be forgotten until I die.”
Geggel knew he needed to wrestle Aleksandrov back to whatever it was that he wanted to talk about, or he would lose half an hour to a sullen tirade.
“Well, Pyotr,” he said, “I’m here. I came when you asked and I’m listening. What can I help you with?”
The Russian’s mood changed as at the flick of a switch. “No, Leonard, it is the other way around.” His lips turned up in a self-satisfied smirk. “It is I who can help you.”
The pub was busy. Mikhail had found a space at the bar where he could watch Aleksandrov and Geggel. He had hoped he might be able to hear them, but the noise in the room—the sound of conversations competing with the commentary from the football that was showing on the room’s single television—made that impossible. The two men leaned across the table, their faces just a few inches from each other, Aleksandrov punctuating the conversation with excited stabs of his hand. He reached into the briefcase that he had brought with him, took out a piece of paper, laid it on the table and then drilled his finger against it. Mikhail clenched his jaw with frustration. He had orders to find out what they might discuss, and now they were going to have to find that out with a much less elegant solution.
“You want a drink?”
He turned around. The publican was looking at him.
“I’m sorry,” Mikhail said with a smile.
“You want to watch, you’ll need to buy something.”
It took Mikhail a moment to realise that the man meant the television and not the clandestine discussion that was taking place at the table.
“Pint of bitter,” he said.
“Which one?”
There were half a dozen pumps, each advertising a different beer. Mikhail picked one at random, gave the man a ten-pound note, collected his change and then sipped at the warm, flat beer. It was not to his taste at all. He kept watching, observing, looking for anything that might be helpful, but it was no use.