She took a breath. ‘So call them back.’
‘That would be one solution. Though I worry that their passage home might not be a smooth one. So many hold-ups occur these days. Major inconveniences.’
‘Things aren’t as bad as they were. You might find that their journey is untroubled.’
‘That would put everyone’s mind at rest. But I have to ask, what sort of premium would be charged for such a guarantee?’
It was good of him to offer, and saved her raising the question herself.
She said, ‘Well, Vassily, I always find it interesting to look at other people’s holiday snaps, don’t you? I wonder if you have any to share?’
Cantor said, ‘No way.’
He waited.
‘No way are you a spook.’
Reece Nesmith III said, ‘I never said I was.’
Cantor’s apartment looked like a movie set: the furniture matched; the bookshelves were colour-coded; artworks occupied shelves, and the kitchen area featured a marble countertop big enough to skate on. But mostly there was the view. London was huge, and from here you could see all of it: its towers and bridges, its ups and downs, its pains and its profits. You could see London’s edges from here. You could see where London ended.
And in a movie, Reece thought, this would be the lair of a villain who might be able to arrange just that.
And now Cantor was clicking his fingers, retrieving a memory. ‘But I know you. I do know you. You were hassling Bud.’
This was true. Bud Feathernet was the Channel Go news anchor, whom Reece had tracked via Twitter to a restaurant, and badgered in a booth; he’d told him about Andrey, how Andy had been murdered on the orders of Russia’s president. If that wasn’t a headline, what was? But there was a chasm Reece was unable to throw his story across. Andy had been the kind of journalist who ended up dead. Feathernet was the kind who’d end up hosting a chat show. And on the evening in question, he was the kind who’d had Reece thrown out of a restaurant.
‘He mentioned it at morning briefing. Some freak kicking off while he was trying to have dinner. Not the way to win friends and influence people.’
‘He wouldn’t listen.’
‘Course he wouldn’t. Look, if your boyfriend hadn’t been Russian, we might have had a story. And if he’d been your girlfriend. But frankly, my viewers wouldn’t give a shit. You’re an American, you’re gay, you’re a dwarf. Put it on YouTube.’ Cantor was on his feet, playing the height advantage for all it was worth. ‘Now, you told Claude you have a message from Diana Taverner.’
‘I think his name was Clifton.’
‘Yeah, because that’s what’s important, that we get the names of the staff right. That was a lie to get you in, I see that. And the only reason I haven’t kicked you back downstairs is, I want to know how you knew which name to drop. So talk.’
Reece said, ‘I’m not from Taverner. But I do have a message.’
He was getting into this. He’d spent weeks hammering on doors that wouldn’t open, telling his story to people who wouldn’t listen. The most attention he’d had was from Jackson Lamb, and even he hadn’t cared. People die. You should get used to that. But suddenly something was happening. He’d been handed a lever and told to pull it. It wouldn’t bring Andrey back, but would hurt those responsible for his death. That’s what Lamb had said, anyway.
‘He’s not going to be frightened of me,’ Reece had said.
‘No,’ Lamb agreed. ‘I mean, he might worry about tripping over you. But you’re hardly gunna have him quivering in his socks.’
‘So what am I supposed to be doing?’
‘Softening him up,’ Lamb had said.
‘What message?’ Cantor asked.
Reece said, ‘You had your man steal information from Regent’s Park. About a particular department of the Service. And you passed that information to Russian intelligence.’
‘Russian intelligence? Get out of here.’
‘Well, you probably pretended you didn’t know that’s who they were. But you certainly knew, when you handed the information over, where it would end up.’
‘Just supposing you weren’t talking nonsense. How do you know any of this?’
‘Oh, I hear stuff other people miss. You might have noticed, I keep my ears close to the ground.’
This with an internal middle-finger salute to Jackson Lamb.
Cantor had picked up an empty coffee mug and seemed to be weighing it in his hands. ‘Is this some weird kind of blackmail threat? Because Taverner isn’t going to make waves. I’m in the inner circle. You know how that works?’
Reece thought: stick to the script. Tell him what Lamb wants him to hear, and get out. It doesn’t matter whether he believes you. You’re simply sowing the seed.
He said, ‘Taverner ordered the Kazan hit.’
Cantor looked startled, but not so much he dropped the cup. ‘I know. I was at the after-party.’
‘This made people in Moscow very mad.’
‘Good.’
‘And now they’re using the information you gave them to take their revenge. They’ve been murdering the people in the file you passed on.’ Reece leaned on each word equally: ‘British Secret Service agents.’
Cantor had gone pale. ‘I don’t think so. I’d know about it if that was happening.’
‘Only if Taverner wanted you to know. And this is not something the Park wants in the headlines. But that doesn’t mean they won’t act on it.’
‘What does that mean – “act on it”?’
‘Join the dots. You’re responsible for the murders of several Park employees. You think the inner circle’s small enough they’ll let you get away with that?’
‘This is bullshit.’
‘Which bits? The part about you having your man steal that file? Or the bit where you handed it on to your Russian contacts?’
‘Okay. Time for you to go now.’
But Reece had one last shot to fire. ‘You know what’s funny?’
‘All of it,’ said Cantor. ‘It’s one long fantasy.’
‘No, what’s funny is, Taverner wants you toasted both sides. But that Russian crew leaving bodies everywhere? As far as they’re concerned, you’re their best mate. Better hope they reach you before the Park does.’
‘Fuck off.’
Before he reached the door, Reece said, ‘I wouldn’t stand too close to those windows. Regent’s Park hire some pretty sharp shooters.’
He was confident you’d need a tank to break that glass. But it wouldn’t hurt to have Cantor think there might be one nearby.
Diana remained where she was after ending her call, adding a cigarette butt to the cairn on an air vent’s flat top. The day was settling on its mood: sunny with grim intervals. Her own outlook was pretty much the inverse. It would give her no pleasure to call off the hunt for Moscow’s hit squad. Amnesty was too big a concession, even if their victims were ex-Slough House, too lowly for a Spook’s Chapel send-off. There should have been retribution. And if Lamb found out about the deal she’d just agreed there probably would be, even if disproportionate and wrongly directed.
But there was sunshine too. Cantor was hers now. If she’d thought she’d get away with it, she’d have let Vassily Rasnokov think she didn’t know who’d stolen the Slough House file, but that wouldn’t fly. If Rasnokov thought Diana incapable of discovering that much, he’d have been too busy pissing himself laughing to take her call. So there was no chance she could turn Cantor round and use him to feed Moscow a bullshit buffet. Instead, she had Cantor himself, because Rasnokov had holiday snaps all right – everyone took holiday snaps. Rasnokov had sound and vision of Cantor handing the stolen file to his Russian new-media exec pals, because Moscow Rules and London Rules shared this much in common: once you handed over secrets, you became the product. Cantor would have found out the hard way that you never feed a cat just once. You feed a cat, it owns you ever after.