Dead Lions (31 page)

In one of their first conversations River had asked Kelly how they managed to afford it all, and slight puzzlement had flitted across her face as she’d explained that their parents had paid. “It’s not much more expensive than riding lessons,” she’d said.

Above the desk was a calendar, the month’s days marked off in small square boxes. Several had been X’ed out with thick red marker pen. Last Saturday, River noted, and the Tuesday before that. And tomorrow. Underneath it, holiday postcards had been blu-tacked to the wall: beaches and sunsets. All a long way away.

His mobile vibrated in his pocket.

“I’ll be outside,” he told Tommy, which was where he checked the incoming number before answering.

It was Catherine Standish, not Lamb.

“This is going to sound odd,” she promised.

Catherine gone
, Lamb closed his window, pulled down his blind and poured a glass from the Talisker kept, true to cliché, in his desk drawer. As he drank, his gaze slipped out of focus. Anyone watching might have thought he was slipping into a booze-fuelled nap, but Lamb asleep was more restless than this—Lamb asleep made sudden panicky movements, and sometimes swore in
tongues. This Lamb was still and silent, though his lips shone. This Lamb was impersonating a boulder.

At length, this Lamb spoke aloud: “Why Upshott?”

If Catherine had been there, she’d have said, Why not? It had to be somewhere.

“And if it was anywhere else, I’d be asking why there?” Lamb replied. But it wasn’t anywhere else. It was Upshott.

And whoever had decided that that’s where it should be had Kremlin brains in a Kremlin head. Which meant they didn’t choose breakfast without weighing up the consequences. Which meant there was a reason for it being Upshott which didn’t involve a map and a pin.

Eyes closed, Lamb summoned up the Ordnance Survey map he’d studied once a day since River Cartwright had become an agent in place. Upshott was a small village among larger towns, none of which had any strategic significance; they simply nestled in the heart of the British countryside, attracting tourists and photographers. They were towns where you bought antiques and expensive sweaters. Places to go to when you were sick of cities. And if you wanted an image of England, they were the places you thought of, once you’d used up Buck House and Big Ben and the Mother of Parliaments.

Or at least, he amended, they were the places a Kremlin brain in a Kremlin head might think of when thinking of England.

Now Lamb stirred, and sat up. He poured another scotch and drank it; the two actions twin halves of a single seamless gesture. Then he pawed at his collar with a meaty hand, to confirm he already wore his coat.

It was late, but he was still up. And in Lamb’s world, if he was still up, there was small reason why any other bugger should be sleeping.

Needing a Russian brain to pick, he left Slough House and headed west.

River said
, “You
what
?”

Catherine repeated herself. “Half the names you’ve mentioned, Butterfield, Hadley, Tropper, Mor—”

“
Tropper?
”

Catherine paused. “Any special reason for singling him out?”

“… No. Who else?”

She read them out; Butterfield, Hadley, Tropper, Morden, Barnett, Salmon, Wingfield, James: the rest … seventeen names, most of which River had encountered. Wingfield—he’d met a Wingfield at St Johnno’s. She was in her eighties; one of those old ladies who seem half bird: bright of eye and sharp of beak. Used to be something at the Beeb.

“River?”

“Still here.”

“We thought Mr. B was in Upshott to meet a contact. It could have been any one of them, River. It looks like the cicada network exists, all right. And is right there, right now.”

“There a Tommy Moult on that list? M – O – U – L – T.”

He could hear the printout shimmy in her hands. “No,” she said. “No Moult.”

“No, I didn’t think there would be,” River said. “Okay. How’s Louisa?”

“The same. It’s this summit thing tomorrow. Your old friend Spider Webb and his Russians. Except …”

“Except what?”

“Lamb came up with background on the woman who ran Min over. It looks like the Dogs might have been hasty, writing it up as an accident.”

“Jesus,” he said. “Louisa know?”

“No.”

“Keep an eye on her, Catherine. She already thinks Min was murdered. If she gets proof …”

“I will. How do you know she thinks that?”

“Because I would,” he said. “Okay. I’ll watch my step. But so far, I’ve got to tell you, Upshott appears to be what it looks like on the map. A small piece of nowhere in some pretty countryside.”

“Roddy’s still digging. I’ll get back to you.”

River stood a while longer in the dark. Kelly, he thought. Kelly Tropper—maybe her father, yes, former big-shot lawyer in the capital; maybe he was the kind of long-term burrower the old-style Kremlin might have put in play. But his daughter had barely been born when the Wall came down. There was no reason to suspect she might be part of the network. What were the chances that this little nowhere was nurturing a new generation of Cold War warriors, and what would they be fighting for if it did? The resurrection of the Soviet Union?

Through the window, he watched Tommy Moult pour more vodka, then take something from his pocket and put it in his mouth. He used the alcohol to wash it down. He still wore his red cap, and the hair that poked from it seemed comical. His skin was tight across his jaw, and bristled with white stubble. The gleam in his eyes was lively enough, but there was an air of weariness about him. The cap struck a jaunty note at odds with everything else.

Turning, River faced the hangar. The big doors giving onto the landing strip were padlocked, but there was an unsecured side entrance. He stepped inside, listening hard, but the only sounds were those of an empty structure, and when he swept the interior with his pocket torch’s beam, nothing scuttled from its reach. The plane loomed in the shadows. A Cessna Skyhawk—he’d not been this close to it before, but had seen it ploughing the skies above Upshott, where it seemed a child’s toy. It wasn’t that much more substantial now: about half as tall as River himself, and
maybe three times that long. It was single-engined, with space for four passengers; white with blue piping. When he laid a hand on its wing it was cold to the touch, but promised warmth; the warmth of coiled potential. He hadn’t really registered until now that Kelly flew. Had known it as a fact, but not felt it. Now he did.

The rest of the structure was mostly clear floorspace, everything else being stacked against the walls. A flatbed trolley’s handle reared up like a hobbyhorse. Whatever it held was draped in canvas. This was secured to the trolley with clothesline, and River had to fiddle with a knot, torch in mouth, before he could peel it free. Having done that, it took him a moment to work out what it was that was stacked there, three sacks deep. He put a hand to it. Like the plane it was cold, but warm with the same coiled potential.

What felt like a pair of darts struck him on the neck.

A flash of light ignited River’s brain, and the world turned to smoke.

The Wentworth
Academy of the English Language was quiet, no lights showing from its third-floor offices above the stationer’s off High Holborn. This suited Lamb. He’d prefer to find Nikolai Katinsky asleep. Being woken at this hour would stir memories, and render him amenable to questioning.

The door, like Slough House’s, was black and heavy and weathered, but where the latter hadn’t been opened in years, this saw daily use. No groaning from the tumblers as Lamb slipped a pick into its keyhole; no squealing from the hinges as he eased it open. Once inside he waited a full minute, accustoming himself to the dark and the building’s breathing before tackling the staircase.

It was often observed of Lamb that he could move quietly when he wanted. Min Harper had suggested that this was only true on his home ground, because Lamb knew every creak and
wobble of Slough House, having doctored the noisier stairs himself. But Harper was dead, so what did he know? Lamb went up without a sound, and paused at the Academy’s door barely long enough to squint through its frosted window, or so it appeared, though the pause proved long enough for him to gain entry. He closed the door behind him as silently as he’d opened it.

Again, he stood a moment, waiting for the atmospheric disturbance his entrance had made to settle, but it was wasted caution. There was nobody there. The door to the next office hung ajar, and there’d be nobody in there either. The only living thing was Lamb himself. Slivers of streetlight broke through blinds, and as his eyes adjusted he could make out the shape, under the desk, of the still-folded camp bed; its thin mattress folded round its metal frame like a diagram of an unlikely yoga position.

Lamb carried no torch. Torchlight in a darkened building screams burglary. Instead, he switched the anglepoise on, flooding the desk with cold yellow lamplight and puddling the rest of the room. Everything looked as it had on his previous visit. Same bookshelves holding the same thick catalogues; same paperwork littering the desk. He opened drawers and scuffled through papers. Most were bills, but a letter lay among them, handwritten, peeping from a coyly curling flap. A love letter, of all things; not even an explicit one, but expressing regret at parting. It seemed that Nikolai had seen fit to end an affair. Neither the fact that he had done so, nor that he had embarked upon an affair in the first place, surprised Lamb. What he did find curious was that Katinsky had left the letter in what amounted to plain view. All it took was for someone to break in and rifle his desk. Katinsky had never been a player—a cipher clerk, one among many; barely known to Regent’s Park before his defection—but still, Service life should have taught him Moscow Rules, and Moscow Rules should never be forgotten.

He replaced the letter. Examined a desk diary. No appointments had been noted for today. The remainder of the year was
empty too: a string of blank days stretching ahead. Lamb flipped back and found annotations: brief reminders, initials, times and places. He put it down. In the small adjoining office was a filing cabinet which held clothing; in a mug on a shelf, a razor and toothbrush. A shirt hung on the back of the door. In a corner, a blue coolbox held tubs of olives and houmous, slices of ham and a chunk of mouldy bread. In a cupboard he found a stash of empty pill bottles, none with prescription labels. ‘Xemoflavin,’ one read. He dropped it in a pocket, then surveyed the tiny room once more. Katinsky lived here all right. He just wasn’t here now.

Lamb switched off the anglepoise and left, locking the door behind him.

L
ondon slept, but fitfully
, its every other eye wide open. The ribbon of light atop the Telecom Tower unfurled again and again, traffic lights blinked through unvarying sequence, and electronic posters affixed to bus stops rotated and paused, rotated and paused, drawing an absent public’s attention to unbeatable mortgage deals. There were fewer cars, playing louder music, and the bass pulse that trailed in their wake pounded the road long after they’d gone. From the zoo leaked muffled shrieks and strangled growls. And on a pavement obscured by trees, leaning on a railing, a man smoked a cigarette, the light at its tip glowing brighter then dying, brighter then dying, as if he too were part of the city’s heartbeat, performing the same small actions over and over, all through the watches of the night.

Unseen eyes observed him. This stretch of pavement was never unregarded. What was curious was that he’d been allowed to stand there so long without interference. A half hour crawled by before a car turned up at last and purred to a halt. Its driver spoke through its rolled-down window. His tone was weary, though this might have had less to do with the time of night than with the man he was forced to address.

“Jackson Lamb,” he said.

Lamb tossed his cigarette over the railings. “Took your time,” he replied.

When River
came round he was staring at the sky, and the ground was rolling beneath him. He was on a trolley. Doubtless the one he’d seen in the hangar. Was bound to it, in fact; with the same clothesline—was strapped like Gulliver: wrists, ankles, across the chest, across the throat. In his mouth a wadded-up handkerchief, secured in place by tape.

Pushing the trolley was Tommy Moult.

“Taser,” he said. “If you’re interested.”

River arched his back and flexed his wrists, but the line held firm. The only give came from his flesh.

“Or you could lie still,” Moult suggested. “Want to be Tasered again? I’m out of cartridges, but I can give you a contact blast. It’ll hurt.”

River lay still.

“Up to you.”

The one name not on Catherine’s list was Tommy Moult. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder why Moult was here on a Tuesday night, when he was usually only seen at weekends.

A wheel hit a rock, and if River hadn’t been tied in place he’d have been thrown clear. The clothesline bit into his throat and he made an indecipherable noise: pain, fury, frustration, all muffled by the gag in his mouth.