Grek’s pale brown eyes, so soft and conciliating, suddenly lost their innocence; it was merely a question of narrowing them, like a man sighting a target on a shooting range. Moments earlier, Gaddis had thrown the butt of his cigarette into the churning waters of the Thames. Grek now took out a cigarette of his own from a pristine silver case and lit it with a Zippo lighter.
‘I see that you are direct, Sam. A straight talker.’ He closed the Zippo. Click. ‘Fine. If that is how you like to do business, then let’s be frank with one another. Let’s do business. You have something that I want. Something that my government will pay a lot of money for. Would you be so kind as to pass it over?’
Des had watched Grek disappear towards the Embankment. He wondered if he should have followed him. But that was against Tanya’s instructions. She had told him to keep an eye on Holly’s apartment.
His phone rang. He saw Tanya’s number flash up on the screen.
‘Des? Where are you?’
‘I’m still in the car.’
‘You’re still in the what?’ He heard her swear against the sound of traffic. It wasn’t clear whether she was walking along a busy street or speaking from inside a vehicle. ‘Go after them. Follow the Russian. Something could happen to Sam. Did you see where they’ve gone?’
Des told her that POLARBEAR had been heading towards the river.
‘I’m in a cab,’ she said. ‘Half a mile away. I’ll be there in less than five minutes.’
Grek inhaled deeply on the cigarette and gazed at the passing traffic on the Embankment as if the noise of it was an encumbrance to his enjoyment of what was an otherwise pleasant London evening.
‘Do you have it in your possession?’ he said. ‘Do you have the tape?’
Gaddis held his nerve. He had two of the disks in his coat pocket. The other two, he knew, were safe. ‘You say it’s your government who are willing to pay for the tape?’ He did not dare smoke another cigarette of his own in case his hand shook as he lit it. ‘So you accept that you have been operating under the orders of Sergei Platov? You admit that Charlotte Berg, Calvin Somers, Benedict Meisner and Robert Wilkinson were killed with the approval, tacit or otherwise, of the Kremlin?’
A pretty girl jogged past them wearing a Comic Relief T-shirt and tracksuit trousers set off by a pair of bright pink legwarmers. She was oblivious to the city beneath the rhythm of an iPod. Grek stared after her and nodded in appreciation.
‘I am sorry,’ he said, turning back to Gaddis as though already bored by the direction that their conversation was taking. ‘I have no idea what it is that you are referring to. If these people, as you say, are dead, you have my condolences. It has nothing to do with my organization.’
‘How do you do that?’ Gaddis surprised himself by moving towards Grek.
‘How do I do what, please?’
‘How do you justify it to yourself?’ Grek still looked bored, though Gaddis was now only a few inches from his face. ‘Did you know anything about Charlotte? I knew her very well. She was my closest friend. She was a sister to Amy. She was a wife to Paul. Her husband hasn’t been able to work, to sleep, to do anything very much these past few weeks except to grieve for the one person who ever meant anything to him. You did that. You took away his only happiness.’
There was a tiny flicker of irritation, not remorse, at the edge of Grek’s pale brown eyes.
‘Did you know anything about Benedict Meisner?’ Gaddis was on a roll now, a distilled enmity boiling inside him. He watched the comet of Grek’s cigarette as he flicked it into the Thames. ‘Did you know that he had two teenage daughters, one of them anorexic? Did you know that? Did you know that he was an only child? His mother had moved to Berlin to be close to him. She was a widow. Her husband had been killed in a car accident. It was in the German papers. She was unable to identify her son’s body because of the gunshot wounds. You took away his face. You did that to a mother, to a woman of seventy-five. You forced her to see that and you shattered that family. Was it worth it?’
Grek raised his face to the sky and sniffed at the chill evening air as though he had no intention of responding.
‘What was it for?’ Gaddis wanted to grab Grek by the arms and to shake an answer out of him. ‘I just don’t see how you rationalize it, how you square it with your conscience.’ He took a step backwards and found that he was almost smiling. ‘I don’t believe that people have no conscience. I can’t believe that. Otherwise such people are just animals, no better than a vulture or a snake, no? They say that everybody has their reasons, but it’s a mystery to me why you would destroy lives as freely as you do. There are so many other choices available to you. Is it just the thrill of it, the sense of power? Or are you so loyal to your country, are you such a patriot, that it short-circuits your decency? Perhaps it’s about status. Enlighten me. I’d really like to know.’
‘You are an interesting man,’ Grek replied, because he was too self-assured ever to be drawn into such a game. ‘Tell me about yourself. How did you become involved in these things?’
Only then did Gaddis realize that Tanya had been right all along. The Russians really did know very little about him. He said: ‘You know exactly who I am,’ but only because he was so surprised by what he had heard.
‘Really, I don’t,’ said Grek. ‘You are a mystery to us.’
‘And yet you want to buy a tape from me, a tape that is worth a lot of money.’ Gaddis finally caved in to his desire for a cigarette and extracted one from the pocket of his coat. Grek immediately rolled the Zippo lighter across his hip and held out the flame. Gaddis snubbed it and struck a match of his own, cupping it steadily against the easterly wind.
‘We would like to buy that tape,’ Grek said.
‘Yes? What do you think it’s worth?’ Gaddis had taken himself beyond any further attempt to appeal to the Russian’s conscience; it was pointless. Better to conclude their ‘business’ as quickly as possible and to get back to Holly.
‘One hundred thousand pounds.’
Gaddis winced, remembering the typed note, the photographs of Min and Natasha, and he realized that Tanya had been right about Brennan as welclass="underline" the FSB and MI6 had joined forces against him. For a strange and terrifying moment, like a waking dream, he imagined that Grek was about to produce yet more pictures of his daughter, only this time in the nightmare of some terrible captivity. He knew in his bones that the Russian would stoop to such a thing as easily as he could hail a passing cab.
‘How did you arrive at that price?’ he asked.
‘We can arrive at any price you like.’
‘ Any price?’
Another jogger grunted by, a man in late middle age with a glowing face and a pot belly. Grek ignored him.
‘Does your British conscience tell you that you cannot accept money of this kind from the Russian government?’
Gaddis was grateful for the chance to strike back. ‘Why would my conscience tell me that? I would happily take as much money from the Russian government as I possibly can.’
Grek detected no irony. ‘So the sum offered to you for the protection of your child is not enough?’
If Gaddis had possessed any doubts about the wisdom of his plan, they were extinguished by this casual threat to Min. ‘No, it is not enough,’ he said, and spoke in Russian so that no idiosyncrasy of his reply would be lost in translation. ‘I want half a million pounds. A hundred thousand each to the families of Benedict Meisner, Robert Wilkinson and Calvin Somers. One hundred thousand pounds for Paul Berg. And one hundred thousand pounds for myself. You will also guarantee that no harm comes to my daughter, to Holly Levette, to Tanya Acocella or to my ex-wife. Do I make myself clear?’
‘These things can be very easily guaranteed.’
‘Don’t forget about my wedding.’
Tanya’s voice took both men by surprise. She had appeared from within the shadows of a tree, the sound of her approach obscured by the noise of the rush-hour traffic.