It wasn’t going well. Carrick drove the children to school, drove Esther Goldmann to shops and parties, watched the security of the house, and spent most days in a basement ready room, watching security screens and waiting to be called upstairs. Most hours of most days he sat with Grigori and most hours of most days the heavier honcho, Viktor, was closer to the family and up close to the Bossman — and Simon Rawlings had the Bossman’s trust, drove him, and never talked about him. Simon Rawlings was a model of a limpet shelclass="underline" closed down and gave nothing, didn’t even do small-talk about his employer.
‘Haven’t had a night off in a fortnight, about damn time.’
‘Not going down the pub to get bladdered, Sarge?’ Carrick grinned because he knew the response.
‘Cheeky sod. When did I last have a drink? Eh, tell me.’
‘Have to say it, not while I’ve been here — haven’t seen you.’
‘Not since I walked in the door here, not one. That’s three years, five months and two weeks. Go down my pub, but no alcohol. Get pissed up, chuck this lot away, you’ve got to be joking.’
‘You have a good evening. You going to call by, late?’
‘Maybe, depends whether I’ve a promise … That’s a joke, Johnny. Most likely I’ll call by.’
Carrick understood the pecking order and, also, that nothing could be done to alter precedence. The family, the Bossman in particular, depended on Simon Rawlings because of the man’s bloody dedication and reliability. He was always there for them, their doormat. And he doubted that Simon Rawlings knew, or cared to know, the first basics of cleaning, washing and rinsing money. ‘Have a good evening, then …’
He watched Rawlings take his coat and go out through the ready-room door. Grigori looked up from the TV home-improvements show and waved a languid hand. Carrick checked his watch. He went to the hooks, took down the Mercedes’ keys. Time to get the kids from school.
He was the most disliked man in the building. With the exception of two people — his director general and his personal assistant — he had no friends, no soul-mates, no confidants inside the massive edifice beside the river. Every weekday morning upwards of two thousand people streamed through the main gates and out again every evening, and more came for night shifts and more for weekend work. Other than Francis Pettigrew and Lucy, none of them knew him well or even had a slightly complimentary word for him. The dislike ran like a virus through all floors of VBX, from heads of department and heads of section, via heads of desks, and down to chauffeurs and analysts, typists and human-resources clerks, archivists, security guards and canteen staff. The dislike was based on his keen rudeness, his refusal to gild lilies when most would have applied a brush of sensitivity, his short-fuse impatience, and a boorish refusal to accept diminished standards. Those who knew his domestic situation best gossiped that his wife treated him as an unwelcome stranger in the marital home and that the only child of the union now lived on the other side of the world. They also said that he cared not a ha’penny damn for their feelings.
Christopher Lawson was sixty-one, had been an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service for thirty-eight years — never had and never would answer to ‘Chris’, would ignore any man or woman who addressed him with a comrade’s familiarity. But somehow, aloof, awkward and prickly, he survived. His most recent ultimatum had been accepted; his seniors had caved in the face of his demand. His most frequent heresy was ignored. Other men and women of similar decades of experience had issued ultimatums on where in the building they would work and where not, in what fields they were prepared to operate and what they would refuse: they had been politely given their premature pensions and had their swipe cards summarily removed. Other men and women who had voiced the ultimate heresy — that the ‘war against terror’ was being lost, was unwinnable, that the tectonic plates of global power had shifted irreversibly — had been labelled defeatist and had gone by the end of the next Friday.
His survival was based on his success as an intelligence-gatherer. Without it, Christopher Lawson would have been put out to grass years ago, like the rest of them. The director general had told him, ‘The vultures may hover above but I’m not letting them get to your bones, Christopher. I’m not losing you. About as far from Arab matters as I can shunt you is Non-Proliferation. You’ll do the Russian section there. I remind you, but I’m not hopeful you’ll remember it, that blood on the carpet leaves a permanent stain. I value you, and by doing so I expose myself — I urge you not to abuse my support.’ And his personal assistant, Lucy, had said: ‘I don’t care what people say about you, Mr Lawson. I’m staying put and not asking for a transfer. I’m running your office, at your desk, and the legs of my chair are set in concrete.’ And he hadn’t even thought to thank either of them.
He was, to be sure, a much disliked man. He was also a man who had respect, however grudging. Respect came from success. Success came from his ability to isolate and identify seemingly trivial items of information, then ruthlessly focus upon them. It was not a talent that could be taught by the Service’s instructors and was in rare supply. Christopher Lawson was blessed with it, knew it, and was arrogantly dismissive of colleagues lacking his nose. It was on his screen that the detail of calls from and to the Russian town of Sarov arrived.
It had been a quiet week. He had gutted a couple of papers on arms reduction, and Lucy had worked on the improvement of his computer files … Then he had read the word ‘Sarov’. He knew where the town was, what work was done there, what name the town had had in Soviet times … Papers were flung aside, the filing abandoned. The scent of a trail was established, and his eyes gleamed.
Chapter 2
He was aware of more phone calls than usual coming to the house.
Flowers were delivered that afternoon, a massive bouquet that filled Carrick’s arms when he took them from the van driver. An hour after the flowers, another van had brought a dress from the shop in the High Street that Mrs Goldmann patronized. Both had come to the main door so Carrick had escorted the housekeeper, Irena, up from the basement, had done the checks through the spyhole, opened the door and signed the dockets with a scrawl.
And he was aware of greater activity upstairs in the reception rooms, had heard an unfamiliar pace in the movement there of Josef Goldmann.
Carrick had sensed the changed mood and had heard phones when he had gone up the front stairs — the formal rooms used when they entertained were on the ground floor and off the hallway, but the family’s rooms where they ate, watched the TV and lived their lives were on the first floor, bedrooms above. Under the roof and reached by narrow back stairs were the cramped attic rooms where the Russian minders and the housekeeper slept. It was unspoken but understood that Carrick was not permitted up the stairs unless by invitation or unless he was accompanied. The housekeeper was with him and he trailed behind her, first with the bouquet, then with the dress box.
An atmosphere of urgency penetrated the house. He couldn’t isolate it, or make sense of it … A problem for Johnny Carrick, one that went with the job, was to lead two lives — to act like a civilian, and to retain the suspicion and prying wariness of a police officer … Something was different, strange, as it had not been before.
When he had brought up Mrs Goldmann’s flowers, had hovered behind the housekeeper, had heard the lady of the house exclaim with extravagant delight, had watched her rip open the little accompanying envelope, had listened as she had read out a note of gratitude for the generosity of her donation from the organizing committee of a charity raising funds for Chernobyl children, he had seen through an opened inner door that Viktor spoke on a mobile and that Josef Goldmann was close enough to him to take in both sides of a conversation. On the way back down the stairs he had heard two telephones ring. Returning with the dress in the box, through that same inner door, Carrick had seen Josef Goldmann and Viktor in deep whispered conversation. Then his view had been masked by the lady holding a cocktail frock across her body and twirling in circles. Her eyes had met his, a flash of the briefest flirtation, and he had mouthed silently, as if it were expected of him, ‘It’s very fine, ma’am, very suitable.’