Dead Lions (17 page)

She said, “This better not turn into a circus.”

“A circus? This guy planted one of ours. If we let that happen without, what would you call it, due diligence? We let that happen without checking out who, what and why, then we’re not only not doing our job, we’re letting down our people.”

“Bow wasn’t our people any more.”

“It doesn’t work that way, and you know it.”

She sighed. “Yes, I know it. Didn’t know you did speeches, though.” She thought a moment. “Okay. We can probably rustle up a pre-used ID without ringing bells. It won’t be watertight,
but it’s not as if you’re sending anyone into Indian country. And if you fill out a 22-F, I’ll pass it through Resources. We’ll lay it off as some kind of archive expense. I mean, face it, you’re exploring ancient history. If that’s not an archive matter, I don’t know what is.”

Lamb said, “You can nick it from petty cash for all I care. No skin off my arse.”

To verify this assertion, he gave the area in question a scratch.

“Jesus wept,” said Diana Taverner. Then said, “I do this, we’re free and clear, right?”

“Sure.”

“You’d better not be pissing about on company time, Jackson.”

In a rare moment of tact, Lamb recognised when someone needed the last word, and said nothing. Instead, he watched her out of sight, then rewarded himself with a slow grin. He had Service cover. He even had an operating fund.

Neither of which he’d have got, if he’d told her the truth.

Retrieving his phone from his pocket, he called Slough House.

“You still there?”

“Yes, that’s why I’m answering the—”

“Get your arse to Whitecross. And bring your wallet.”

Snapping the phone shut, he watched as the wayward duck returned, coming to a skidding halt on the canal’s glassy surface, shattering the reflected sky, but only for a moment. Then it all shivered back into shape: sky, rooftops and overhead cables, all in their proper place.

Ho would have been happy about that.

“Y
ou took your time,”
Lamb said.

River, who’d arrived first, knew a Lamb tactic when he heard one. “What did I need my wallet for?”

“You can buy me a late lunch.”

Because it had been a while since his early lunch, River surmised.

The market was packing up, but there were still stalls where you could buy enough curry and rice to feed an army, then stuff it so full of cake it couldn’t march. River paid for a Thai chicken with naan, and the pair walked to St Luke’s and found a bench. Pigeons clustered hopefully, but soon gave up. Possibly they recognised Lamb.

“How well did you know Dickie Bow?” River asked.

Through a mouthful of chicken, Lamb said, “Not well.”

“But enough to light a candle.”

Lamb looked at him, chewing. He kept chewing so long it became sarcastic. When he’d at last swallowed, he said, “You’re a fuck up, Cartwright. We both know that. You wouldn’t be a slow horse otherwise. But—”

“I was screwed over. There’s a difference.”

“Only fuck ups get screwed over,” Lamb explained. “May I finish?”

“Please.”

“You’re a fuck up, but you’re still in the game. So if you turn up dead one day, and I’m not busy, I’ll probably ask around. Check for suspicious circumstances.”

“I can hardly contain my emotion.”

“Yeah, I said probably.” He belched. “But Dickie was a Berlin hand. When you’ve fought a war with someone, you make sure they’re buried in the right grave. One that doesn’t read Clapped Out when it should say Enemy Action. Grandad never teach you that?”

River remembered a moment last year when he’d had a glimpse of the Lamb who’d fought that war. So despite Lamb now being a fat lazy bastard, he was inclined to believe him.

On the other hand, he didn’t like Lamb slighting his grandfather, so said, “He might have mentioned it. When he wasn’t telling me Bow was a pisshead who claimed to have been kidnapped by a non-existent spook.”

“The O.B. told you that?” Lamb cocked his head. “That’s what you call him, right? The old bastard?”

It was, but how Jackson Lamb knew passed all understanding.

Aware that River was thinking this, Lamb gave his stalker’s grin. “Alexander Popov was a scarecrow, sure,” he said. “What else did grandpa tell you?”

“That the Park put a file together,” River said, “to see what it revealed about Moscow Centre’s thinking. It was mostly fragments. Place of birth, stuff like that.”

“Which was?”

“ZT/53235.”

“Why doesn’t it surprise me you remember that?”

“There was some kind of accident there,” River said, “and the town was destroyed. That’s a detail that sticks in your mind.”

“Well, it would,” Lamb said. “If it had been an accident.” Scraping the last of his curry from its foil container, he shovelled
it into his mouth, oblivious to the look River was giving him. “That wasn’t bad,” he said. With a practised flick of the wrist, he sent his spork spinning into a nearby bin, then sponged the remaining sauce up with his last hunk of naan. “I’d give it a seven.”

“It was deliberate?”

Lamb arched his eyebrows. “He didn’t mention that bit?”

“We didn’t go into great detail.”

“He probably had his reasons.” He chewed the naan thoughtfully. “I’m pretty sure your gramps never did anything without a reason. No, it was no accident.” He swallowed. “You’re still too young to smoke, right?”

“I’m still not stupid enough.”

“Get back to me when you’ve had a life.” Lamb lit up, drew in, exhaled. Nothing about his expression suggested he’d ever considered this might be harmful. “Z whatever you called it was a research facility. Part of the nuclear race. This is before my time, you understand.”

“Didn’t realise they had nuclear capability before your time.”

“Thanks. Anyway, to our best understanding, Moscow Centre decided it harboured a spy. That someone on the inside was feeding information about the Soviet nuclear programme to the enemy. Who would be us. Or friends of ours.” Lamb became still. For a few moments, the only thing moving was the thin blue trail of smoke aching wistfully upwards from his cigarette.

River said, “And they destroyed it?”

Lamb said, “Did gramps never mention, all these secret history lessons he’s been giving you, how fucking serious it got? Yes, they destroyed it. They burnt the place to cinders to make sure whatever was happening there stayed hidden.”

“A town of thirty thousand people?”

“There were some survivors.”

“They destroyed it with the people still—”

“More efficient. They could be reasonably sure their spy
ceased his activities forthwith. The joke being, of course, that there was no spy.”

“Some joke,” River said.

Some punchline, he thought.

“That was one of Crane’s favourite stories,” Lamb said.

Amos Crane, long before River’s time, had been a service legend, for all the wrong reasons. Not so much poacher turned gamekeeper as fox turned henhouse warden.

“Crane liked to say you had the whole hall of mirrors wrapped up in that episode. They build a fort, then worry we’ll burn it down. So they burn it down first, to make sure we can’t.”

“And Popov’s supposed to be one of those survivors, yes?” River said. In his mind, he was seeing a perfect circle. “They destroy their own town, and years later make a bogeyman from the ashes to wreak vengeance on us.”

“Yeah, well,” Lamb said. “Like I say, it tickled Crane.”

“What happened to Crane anyway?”

“Some chick whacked him.”

Lesser talents would need a whole novel to tell you that much, River thought.

Lamb stood, gazed at the nearest tree as if in sudden awe of nature, lifted a heel from the ground and farted. “Sign of a good curry,” he said. “Sometimes they just bubble about inside you for ages.”

“I keep meaning to ask why you’ve never married,” River said.

They crossed the road. Lamb said, “Anyway. Scarecrow he might be. Bogeyman he was. But Dickie Bow’s still dead, and he’s the only one who ever claimed to set eyes on him.”

“You think Mr. B’s connected to the Popov legend?”

“Bow left a message on his mobile, more or less saying as much.”

River said, “Untraceable poison. Dying message.”

“Something you want to get off your chest?”

“Seems a bit … unlikely.”

“Tony Blair’s a peace envoy,” Lamb pointed out. “Compared to that, everything’s just business as usual.”

Speaking of which, it was time for River to get his wallet out again. They stopped at a stall serving coffee. “Flat white,” said River.

“Coffee,” said Lamb.

“Flat white?” said the stallholder.

“Pink and chubby. Since you ask.”

“He’ll have what I’m having,” said River.

Cups in hand, they walked on.

“I’m still not sure why we’re having this conversation.”

“I know you think I pull a lot of shit,” Lamb said. “But I never send a joe into the field without giving him all the info to hand.”

This took five seconds to sink in.

“The
field
?”

“Can we skip the bit where you repeat what I’ve just said?”

River said, “Okay. It’s skipped. The field. Where?”

“Hope you’ve had your jabs,” said Lamb. “You’re going to Gloucestershire.”

It was
late when Min left the office. Free overtime; a not unusual reward for passive-aggressive behaviour. At five he’d turned his mobile off, so when Louisa rang she’d have to leave a message, and at seven he turned it on again: nothing. He shook his head. He deserved this. Things had been going too well. He’d screwed up without noticing. But then, that’s what he was famous for. He was the one who’d managed to flush his career then go home for a good night’s sleep; find out about it the following morning. The one the others laughed about, secure in the knowledge that they might all have screwed up, but at least they’d known it at the time. Hadn’t needed the nation’s flagship news programme to point it out.

And it wasn’t talking about Shirley that had done the damage. That’s just what had broken the surface, like a shark’s fin. No: it was about the way they were living, dividing their relationship between two lousy addresses. It was about what they could expect from the future, sharing an office and the same lack of prospects. And always, of course, it was about his other life: the children, wife and house he’d left behind when his career went up the spout. He might have separated from them, but they were still there, placing demands on his time and emotions and income that Louisa would inevitably come to resent, if she didn’t already. You could see why she’d been upset. And why it was his fault, even though it wasn’t.

All of which one half of Min’s brain was explaining to him while the other half was guiding him over the road to a dreadful pub, where he spent ninety minutes drinking beer and morosely shredding a beermat. Another familiar feeling; a reminder of long solitary evenings endured in the aftermath of his life hitting the wall. At least he wouldn’t be hearing about this one on Radio 4 in the morning. “In a totally unsurprising development, Min Harper has screwed up his love life and can expect to be alone for the foreseeable. And now sport. Gary?”

It was here that Min decided he’d wallowed in enough self-pity.

Because Louisa was in a snit but she’d get over it, and Slough House might be a cul-de-sac, but Spider Webb had dropped a rope ladder, and Min was grabbing it with both hands. The question was, would it hold the pair of them? Min considered the pyramid of shredded cardboard he’d constructed. It was best to regard everything as a test. He’d learned that during training, and had yet to be told to stop. So: Spider Webb. On scant acquaintance Min neither liked nor trusted Webb, and could easily believe he was playing a double game. But if that game involved a prize, it would be foolish not to attempt to win it, and equally foolish
not to imagine this hadn’t occurred to Louisa too. Hell, it wasn’t out of the question that her snit was because Min had shown he could play the big game this morning, while she was mostly showing her prowess at admin, at paper shuffling. The kind of activity Slough House was built on.

He checked his phone again. Still no message. But let’s be clear about this, he told himself; he wasn’t trying to pull a fast one over Louisa. In fact he’d call and apologise and head over there later. All of that. He’d do all of that, but first he called up Google Earth on his iPhone and examined the stretch of the Edgware Road where Piotr and Kyril’s taxi had stopped. Then he left the pub and collected his bike from round back of Slough House. It was nearly nine, and growing dark.

Diana Taverner’s
office had a glass wall so she could keep an eye on the kids on the hub. There was nothing overbearing about this; it was a protective instinct, a form of nurturing. The old guys would tell you ops were where it counted, but Taverner knew the stresses that mounted up backstage, as sleeplessly as rust. Across all those desks on the hub beamed intel, 24/7: most of it useless, some of it deadly; all of it to be weighed in a balance that needed recalibrating daily, according to how the wind blew. There were watch-lists to monitor, snatched footage to interpret, stolen conversations to translate, and underneath all the data-processing lay the knowledge that a momentary lapse of concentration, and you’d see bodies pulled from the wreckage on the evening news. It could splinter you, such pressure; it could rob you of sleep, cheat you of dreams, and surprise you into tears at your desk. So no, keeping an eye on the kids was because she had their welfare at heart, though it also allowed her to check that none of the bastards were playing funny games. Not all of Taverner’s foes lay abroad.

And to make sure the surveillance was one-way, there were ceiling-to-floor blinds she could pull when needed. They were down
now, and the overhead lights were dimmed, mimicking the fading daylight outside. And standing in front of her, because she hadn’t invited him to sit, was James Webb, who didn’t live on the hub but had an office in the bowels of the building—‘office’ sounded good, but what it meant was, he was outside the circle of power.