It was an inefficient means to murder somebody. As it happened, the fuel had caught alight, and Purkiss might well have been killed. But the tank might simply have run dry, rendering the snowmobile useless but hardly stranding Purkiss, because Montrose and Clement had been behind him and would have seen him come to a halt. Which meant that it had been more than a fuel leak. It had been a booby trap of some kind, designed to ensure that the fuel caught fire.
Not only had Vale’s suspicions about Wyatt been correct, it was clear that whatever secret Wyatt was harbouring, he was prepared to kill to protect it.
The call came at a little before three in the afternoon, an hour after Lenilko and his team had made the Martin Hughes connection. Already the city beyond the windows had receded into darkness.
Lenilko saw Anna pick up the phone and glance over her shoulder at him. He was already striding across to his office as she opened her mouth.
Behind his door, he picked up the phone.
‘Yes.’
‘There’s been a complication.’
Lenilko waited, holding his breath.
‘Somebody tried to kill the journalist, Farmer.’
Lenilko breathed out, trying to process what he’d heard.
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
The delay on the line gave Lenilko a moment to think. This was unexpected. This didn’t make any sense.
He listened to the Englishman’s clipped account. On the return journey from the field trip, the fuel tank of Farmer’s snowmobile had exploded. Farmer was unhurt, but it had been a close thing. A leak, it was assumed, but the mantra repeated itself through Lenilko’s mind. There are no coincidences.
He said, ‘We have an identification of sorts. Of Farmer.’
‘Yes?’
Lenilko told him of the Martin Hughes link.
The silence was so prolonged that Lenilko thought the connection via the satellite must have been cut off.
At last Wyatt said: ‘Yes. That must be where I remember him from. The Tallinn photograph.’
‘If an attempt has been made on his life at the station, he can’t be working with them.’
‘It appears that way, yes.’
‘Any further information?’ But Lenilko already suspected the answer.
‘No.’
‘You need to isolate him. Interrogate him on his own.’
Again, a pause. ‘I get the feeling he wants to do the same with me,’ said Wyatt.
Lenilko leaned back in his desk chair, stared at the ceiling. Wheels within wheels, turning in opposing directions. The larger picture was difficult, impossible, to discern.
Wyatt continued: ‘The others don’t trust him. Some of them, anyway. It’s interesting observing their reactions to him. And he seems to be drawing them out, somehow. Them as well as me.’
‘All right.’ Lenilko made his decision. ‘Forget what I said about isolating him. Watch him, and watch the others. Only move directly if the situation becomes urgent.’
‘Understood.’
Wyatt’s voice disappeared, and with it the station seemed to recede into the unbroachable distance.
Nine
Once again Purkiss checked his room for the traps he’d laid, for signs that someone had searched it. Once again he found nothing of note.
The relative comfort of his quarters now held nothing but menace. Wyatt would make a second attempt to kill him, of that there was no doubt. He might try a more straightforward approach next time, an ambush in the dead of night, or something as bizarre as poison in the toothpaste. He was working for Russian Intelligence, after all, an organisation which had been known to use radioactive material to assassinate its opponents abroad.
A direct confrontation with Wyatt wouldn’t be the wisest course of action at this point. Purkiss knew he could make the man talk, but because he knew nothing about what the man was doing at Yarkovsky Station, he’d have no way of knowing if what Wyatt told him was anywhere near the truth. First, he needed to find an angle, something to base his line of investigation on.
The others were the key. At least one of them knew about Wyatt’s agenda. Purkiss was sure of it. At least one, and probably more.
And Purkiss thought he knew where to begin.
They’d returned to the station from the outpost at six in the evening. It was now close to eight, the time when the evening meal traditionally took place. Purkiss headed back to the dining room, found everybody except Wyatt, Haglund and Medievsky there. The small woman, Oleksandra Budian, was moving about the kitchenette, ladling some kind of stew into bowls.
As when He’d first arrived the night before, every head turned Purkiss’s way. This time the unease was greater than the curiosity.
‘You okay, man?’ asked Avner.
‘Fine,’ said Purkiss. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve been through worse. At least there was nobody shooting at me. Had that before, as an embedded hack in Syria.’ He headed for the kitchenette. ‘It smells wonderful. Let me give you a hand.’
Budian gave a curt smile and instead of offering protests, passed him a second long-handled saucepan. Purkiss filled the bowls. The aroma was rich and heady, the meat generous.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
From the table, Avner piped up. ‘Mountain hare. A Saturday night treat. None of the dried or canned crap we usually get.’
‘You hunt them yourselves?’
‘Gunnar does. Guy could hit a playing card at a hundred yards in the dark. Bags five or six of the little bastards every week.’
Purkiss handed the bowls to Montrose and Keys, who’d come to collect them. He said, ‘Gunnar’s quite the jack of all trades.’
‘Hell, yeah.’ Avner sounded genuinely admiring. ‘He’s not here right now, as you can see, because he’s in his workshop trying to figure out exactly how you managed to fuck up his machine.’
At his shoulder, Purkiss saw Budian glance up sharply at him, as though gauging his reaction. Keys winced and turned away.
But Avner’s comment had broken the ice.
Purkiss said, ‘I’ve been a bit of a disruptive influence, haven’t I?’
He sat down between Clement and Montrose, both of them shuffling their chairs over to give him room. A litre bottle of vodka stood on the table, already drained below the neck. To Purkiss’s mild surprise, Clement reached for it and unscrewed the cap and poured a measure into each of the plastic tumblers that were arrayed haphazardly between the bowls and the plates piled with hunks of hot bread.
Avner raised his cup. ‘To not getting blown up by faulty snowmobiles.’
The tumblers were raised, and Purkiss risked a swig. The liquor scorched his throat. The lightening of the atmosphere was too valuable for him to risk it by seeming not to partake.
They set to their meal with the appetites of a group of people exposed to prolonged extreme cold. Purkiss savoured the dense pungency of the stew, feeling its vitality spread slow warmth through his system. The near miss on the snowmobile had sent his adrenal glands into overdrive, depleting his body’s reserves, and he needed the nourishment of protein and carbohydrate more than he’d realised.
As the food was consumed and the vodka flowed, the conversation began to settle into a comfortable pace. There was talk of the day’s work, the weather conditions, current affairs. For the first time, Purkiss heard Budian speak at length. She was, he reflected, the person at the station with whom he’d had the least interaction since his arrival. Her accent was denser than Medievsky’s, the guttural Russian vowels more pronounced.
Avner, directly opposite Purkiss, laid down his spoon and poked the peak of his cap back with a finger and said: ‘Okay. John. What’s your story? You’re going to be interviewing all of us, so… a little about yourself first. You married?’
‘No.’
‘But you’re shacked up, right?’
Purkiss thought of Hannah. Their relationship had begun in extreme circumstances last summer, after she’d saved his life when a car bomb had gone off in a south London street. The intensity of their first six weeks had been brought to an abrupt halt when Vale had dispatched Purkiss to a supposedly brief job in Copenhagen, one which had led on to a two-month stint in eastern France involving a complex sting operation. By the time Purkiss returned to England, Hannah, who worked for the Security Service, MI5, had herself become caught up in a painstakingly meticulous undercover project in Birmingham. They’d continued to see one another ever since, but their days and nights together had become the exception rather than the norm.
‘Kind of,’ said Purkiss.
‘Ah. Yeah. Like that.’ Avner tipped his tumbler at Purkiss. ‘I’m getting a sense of, don’t even go there.’ He laughed mirthlessly, took a drink.
Beside Avner, Budian leaned in swiftly and said, ‘You have done science reporting before?’
‘Not a lot,’ said Purkiss. ‘I was at the G8 climate change summit last year. But I was just relaying what the leaders discussed. This is my first time in the field, as it were.’
‘Are you enjoying it?’ Montrose hadn’t addressed Purkiss directly so far, and his voice was startling. Purkiss looked at him. He wasn’t drunk, not in the slightest.
Purkiss decided to play along. ‘Well, apart from the small matter of the exploding snowmobile… yes, I am. Very much.’ He looked at his watch. ‘In fact, if it’s not too late, I wonder if one or two of you would be prepared for me to interview you this evening. About your particular field of expertise.’
There were shrugs, nods. Purkiss glanced round the table.
‘Dr Keys? You first?’
Keys stared at Purkiss, as though he hadn’t been listening and had just caught the mention of his name. ‘What?’
‘Care to talk to me a little about your work here at the station?’
Keys looked at the others, as if soliciting help. Then he examined his nails, raised his eyebrows.
‘Why not.’