A Spy's Life (22 page)

They stopped while Cyril St George caught his breath.

‘Guns!’ he said with contempt. ‘I find a lot of guns in here. They throw them in the river after they done their shooting and they ’spect them to stay put. But the tide brings them to me and I take ’em straight to the police. It’s not just guns I find down here. Saint George knows where to look, see, and he finds rings and jewellery and very many ancient artefacts. And I see bodies. The suicides and murder victims all come past my bank.’

Harland could barely take this in. His shoulder was burning and it required all his concentration to stand still in the water without crying out. They set off again, tacking slowly towards a pontoon which was moored about a hundred feet ahead of them. The water was getting deeper and Harland felt the combined strength of the outgoing tide and the flow of the river. The tugging and sucking at his legs took him back to the East River and he wondered whether this time the water would win. Twenty feet from the pontoon the old man stopped.

‘You’re on your own now, son. It’ll go over my waders if I carry on. I’ll wait down here until the coast is clear, then take the steps.’

Harland edged round the old man and went ahead, struggling to control himself. He was certain that at any moment he would put his foot down and find nothing and be swept away. Such was his fear that he had difficulty in committing himself to each step, but the old man urged him on until he was within a few yards of the pontoon. He made out a metal ladder fixed to the end but saw that the pontoon was rising and falling with the swell of the river. He realised he would have to time his launch so as to catch the bottom rung before it rose out of reach. He watched the pontoon and tried to accustom himself to its motion, all the while hearing the sounds of the water reverberating in its huge buoyancy tanks. As the ladder reached the zenith of its climb, he dived forward praying that he’d meet it on its way down. A few desperate strokes and he caught the rung with his good hand just as his legs were being dragged under the pontoon. The whole structure reared upwards with the next wave, pulling him out of the water like a bottle cork. A few seconds later and he had clambered up the ladder and was sprawling on the deck of the pontoon.

‘Go on my son,’ came the voice behind him.

Now the only thought in Harland’s mind was for Tomas. He ran the length of the pontoon, climbed the gangway to the bank and scaled the padlocked gates at the end. He couldn’t see any movement around the obelisk, but a police car was slewed across the carriageway on the far side of the road. Its blue light was flashing and both doors were open. Only when he reached Cleopatra’s Needle did he see the bodies of the two policemen lying in the road. A car had just pulled up behind their vehicle and the driver was standing in the road speaking into his mobile. Harland shouted that there was another badly injured person on his side of the road, then leapt over the steps. Tomas was where he had left him. He knelt down and felt for the pulse again. He’d been right. There
was
something. A flicker of life.

He ripped off his own shirt, bunched some of the material together and held it against the neck wound with his right hand. At that point he realised that he himself had bled profusely. While he pressed the bandage home, he felt his own back with his free hand and located a shallow gouge aross his shoulder blade to the upper arm. He returned his fingers to Tomas’s wrist, willing the pulse to continue.

They operated on Tomas for six hours, extracting a bullet from his stomach without much difficulty and patching the wound where a second had passed clean through his shoulder. But the greater proportion of that time was spent on a delicate procedure to remove a bullet lodged in his brain stem, the area at the base of the brain which leads to the spinal cord. The shot had been deflected off a metal clasp on Tomas’s jacket and passed through his throat into his brain.

While Harland was being treated one of the surgeons came to see him to explain what they were doing. She said it was touch and go because Tomas had lost a lot of blood. At this Harland suddenly jerked up from the bed he was lying on. He’d remembered his own blood group which he had inherited from his father. Rhesus-null was one of the rarest in the world and the point about it – as he had discovered before his cancer operation – was that it clashed with O negative, which was used as a match-all in emergency operations. He told the woman that this might be a possibility. She looked at him strangely, then phoned through to the operating theatre.

As Christmas Day dawned, Tomas was placed in intensive care. The surgeon returned together with a distinguished-looking man in his fifties, who the nurses had informed Harland was Philip Smith-Canon, a leading neurosurgeon. The specialist introduced himself and asked Harland if he’d like some coffee in a nearby office.

‘So I gather from the blood group of the patient that you’re next of kin.’

Harland shook his head.

‘I will be tracing his mother in the Czech Republic. It would be better if you regard her as his next of kin.’

Smith-Canon looked puzzled, but decided to ignore it.

‘I ask because there are likely to be some difficult decisions to take over the next ten days or so. The patient is in an extremely serious condition and even if he survives the immediate threat to his life from this bullet and pulmonary infections, he is likely to face severe disability.’

‘What do you mean exactly?’

‘If you were to press me, I’d say it’s probable that he will suffer total paralysis and lose the ability to communicate. I’m sorry to be so blunt but I cannot hide that the prognosis is very poor. This kind of injury is the equivalent of a brainstem stroke or a serious tumour in that region of the brain. Whatever the etiology, that is to say the cause, we can predict the outcome with a relatively small margin of error. He’s still at considerable risk, of course, but he’s young and strong which may mean he’ll live to regain consciousness.’

His voice softened. ‘Mr Harland, he will wake to experience quadriplegia, mutism and facial paralysis, which may include the ability to blink. This is only half of it. There’ll be numerous smaller symptoms, respiratory problems, altered breathing patterns, involuntary movements of the face, incontinence of bladder and bowel. You understand what I’m saying? We’re talking about a state of extreme privation, fear and discomfort. But inside he will be aware of what’s going on and able to think normally.’

‘There’s never any chance of better recovery than that?’

‘Not in my experience. The trauma suffered in his brain stem was very considerable and although he may not experience all the symptoms I describe, essentially my prognosis is right.’

‘I see. But you knew this when you were operating to remove the bullet.’

‘Not until we were well into the operation. But you have put your finger on something we must talk about and that’s the question of resuscitation. There may be occasions over the next week or so when we will be faced with the decision of whether or not to continue to treat him. Often in these cases the patient is susceptible to pneumonia. That may be regarded – with the proper management – as a way out.’ He paused and drank some coffee. Then he looked at Harland with genuine sympathy. ‘I believe you to be his father, Mr Harland. I won’t hazard at the reasons for your wish to hide this fact, but the blood group match is almost irrefutable evidence. There are questions which cannot be dodged. If your son lives there are enormous problems to be faced concerning specialised treatments and care. No person in this condition can live without round-the-clock attention.’

Harland thought for a moment.

‘Look, as you have guessed, I am his father. I have known this for less than a week. The circumstances are extremely difficult to …’ His voice faded. He felt almost drugged.

‘How long is it since you’ve had a decent night’s sleep, Mr Harland?’

‘I can’t think. Three days?’

‘I suggest that you get some sleep soon.’

‘Let me just finish. I was going to say that I cannot tell you why anyone would wish to kill Tomas, but I suspect that there is a very evil man behind this shooting and the death of Tomas’s girlfriend. It will help me greatly if you do not reveal that Tomas is my son.’

‘You are asking me to lie?’

‘No. If the police ask you, I would not want to prevent you from telling the truth. It’s just that I don’t believe that the police will ask you. After all, they have no reason to interview you.’

Smith-Canon nodded.

‘Very well, I agree, and I will tell Susan Armitage, who came out with me just now, to do the same. But we will still need a next of kin to consult over the next few days. What of his mother?’

‘I will try to trace her in the Czech Republic. But it’s going to be difficult. She has changed her name several times.’

‘I see,’ said Smith-Canon.

‘If I leave the country, I will put you in touch with my sister who will be able to get in touch with me wherever I am. Her name is Harriet Bosey.’

‘Right, shall we agree on this, then – that your son remains here until he is out of immediate danger? I will then arrange for him to be transferred to my hospital and we will begin to assess the situation.’

Harland gave him his telephone numbers and dragged himself out of the chair. His arm still hurt like hell but the pain had faded as he learned of the true nature of Tomas’s condition. He walked back down the hallway, away from the operating theatres, to where he knew the police would be waiting for him.

14

THE BITTER MADELEINE

Harland told two officers about the shooting and his escape along the riverbank. They said that one of the policemen had been killed, the other would recover but there was a likelihood of his not being able to walk again. After twenty minutes he began to feel faint. They called a doctor, who said he must have immediate rest, and he was driven to Harriet’s house where two police guards were posted outside.

He slept until six-thirty that evening when Harriet woke him with a concise version of what had plainly been an elaborate Christmas lunch, which she brought to him on a tray. She didn’t need to ask what had happened because she had learned all she wanted from the police guards to whom she had given lunch in the kitchen. There was also a detailed report on the evening news that made much of the tragedy of the young constable’s death on Christmas Eve. Harland was sure there would be a lot more coverage. It would only be a matter of time before his name was released and someone linked him with the La Guardia crash. Then there was the connection to be made between the death of a young florist in a North London flat and the shooting of her boyfriend.

Robin joined them, stealing into the room with a stage tiptoe. He seemed genuinely horrified by the account of Harland’s conversation with the surgeon and said that he would do anything to help with Tomas’s care. All bills would be taken care of. Harriet touched him on the hand and smiled. In that instant Harland saw why their marriage worked.

‘One thing bothers me,’ she said, turning back to her brother. ‘How did they trace you to the embankment? They must have followed you from here, I suppose.’

‘No,’ said Harland emphatically. ‘They would have shot him outside the house, no matter how many people were around. They were obviously desperate to kill him.’

‘Then they must have waited for you to join him before the shooting. After all, they’d tried to do away with you in New York.’

‘That assumes a lot of things, the first of which was that they knew that it was me at Cleopatra’s Needle. The second point is that they didn’t make any real attempt to shoot me once I fled down those steps.’

‘Not half, they didn’t,’ said Robin, looking at the bandage on his shoulder.

‘No, I mean it. These were professional killers. If it had mattered to them, they would have gone after me.’

‘But they saw or heard the police coming and made their getaway,’ said Robin. ‘So they couldn’t chase after you.’

‘No, that doesn’t quite work either. The first shots were fired by a relatively quiet sniper’s rifle. Only when they came across the road did they use a machine gun, which could be heard. That’s what drew the attention of the police car. You see, I didn’t hear its siren until I was on the riverbank.’

‘What’s all this add up to, then?’ asked Robin.

‘Bobby thinks that they haven’t made the connection between him and Tomas,’ said Harriet, ‘or at any rate that they didn’t identify him last night. That’s right, isn’t it, Bobby?’

‘Yes.’

‘But why didn’t they shoot before you arrived?’ said Harriet, then she clapped her hands and answered her own question. ‘Because they had only just got there themselves! And that’s interesting, Bobby, because although they had only just arrived they knew enough about the meeting to position themselves across the road in that park. Right? And that can mean only one thing: they’d listened to the phone call that Tomas made to you. So, if we assume that they didn’t know who he was calling – and we’ve already agreed that there are good reasons to suppose that – it means they must have been monitoring his cellphone. They knew his number – that’s the only solution.’

‘You could be right,’ said Harland. ‘And it would have been a simple matter to extract that number from his girlfriend, or even from some sort of record they found in the flat – a phone bill perhaps.’

Robin had sat down on the end of the bed. ‘But doesn’t it require considerable resources to do a thing like that? I mean, intercepting a particular mobile number needs a lot of sophisticated equipment. That’s the sort of operation GCHQ goes in for – you know, collaring underworld barons in Marbella.’

‘Yes, you’re right, you do need pretty comprehensive equipment,’ said Harland slowly, and he thought of Luc Bézier and the phone-tracking operation that had lured the French special forces team to a hotel in the Balkans.

‘Well, perhaps you should point all this out to the police,’ said Robin, pleased with his contribution. ‘They’re downstairs – two rather senior detectives. That’s why I came up. I can tell them to go away if you want. After the last week and a bit, you’ve got every excuse to take a night’s rest without being bothered.’