Fire Hawk (61 page)

Kessler blanched.

‘Are you implying something?'

‘Yes.'

Kessler remained in the living room doorway, one hand gripping each side of its frame.

‘What are you hiding in there?' Sam snapped.

‘Nothing.'

Sam moved towards him. ‘In that case you won't mind showing me.'

‘I certainly would mind. Who the hell do you think you are? Get out of here! This is my property.'

‘And this is my
life
you've been buggering about with!' Sam's anger was erupting like magma. He grabbed Kessler's shoulders and tried to shove him aside, but the man clung to the door frame like an octopus.

‘You bloody
will
move, you bastard,' Sam raged, bringing his knee up sharply.

Kessler buckled forward, air howling from his throat, hands hovering over his groin. Sam elbowed past him and pushed open the door.

It was in here, he told himself. He felt it. In this room somewhere. The proof he needed.

The furniture was antique Victorian, neat and attractive. Chrissie's taste. But the place was in chaos. On the floor lay a roll of plastic bubble wrap, sheets of brown paper, some string and sealing tape. Leaning against a glass-fronted cabinet of fine blue and white china were
several hardwood frames with canvas stretched over them. Oil paintings.

Sam picked the first one up and turned it round. It was good. Very good. Reminded him of Hockney. He read the signature. God, it
was
a Hockney.

He heard movement behind him and spun on his heel. Kessler was bearing down on him, wielding a large crystal vase. He aimed a swinging blow, but Sam deflected it with his forearm. He staggered back, smarting from the pain.

‘Fuck you, Kessler!' he spat, searching frantically for a weapon for himself. ‘Is this what you spent all your payoffs on? Bloody oil paintings?'

The spymaster was advancing on him again, murder in his eyes this time and the vase raised above his head. Sam grabbed the Hockney as a shield.

‘Careful Martin. Wouldn't want to wreck your investment, would you now?' He saw Kessler falter.

He couldn't believe this. The two of them, Chrissie and her husband, endorsing mass murder in order to surround themselves with valuables.

‘Thousands of people were going to die so you could have these, Martin!' Sam yelled incredulously. ‘Don't you understand? That's
insane
.'

‘You don't know what you're talking about,' Kessler retorted self-righteously. ‘We knew absolutely nothing about the anthrax. Nothing whatsoever.'

Sam gaped. An admission at last. An admission of Martin Kessler's total involvement.

‘Didn't know about the anthrax?
What the hell
did
you think it was all about?'

‘A financial scam,' he answered dismissively, ‘that's all. A scheme to get hold of some of Saddam's hidden cash.'

Sam searched for shame on Kessler's face but found none. The man was as free of conscience as his wife had been. Defiant even.

‘Oh! That's okay then,' he mocked. ‘If it was just for
money.
Perfectly all right to betray a few minor state secrets. Perfectly okay to send poor old Sam to hell and back, if it helped you on your way to a Rembrandt!'

Kessler lowered his head contemptuously. He looked like a bull ready to take out the matador. His glasses were askew and the eyes behind the oval lenses contrived to be both expressionless and calculating.

Sam edged to one side, still clutching the painting. Out of the corner of his eye he'd spotted a mahogany bureau with its flap open.

‘Where were you taking these pictures, Martin?' he asked as a diversion.

‘Not mine. Borrowed from a friend. Taking them back,' Kessler mumbled, moving sideways.

‘You borrowed a
Hockney,
' Sam mocked, shaking the painting. ‘Who from? The Saatchis?'

‘Look, put it down will you. It's valuable.'

‘I know it's fucking valuable. That's why I'm holding it.'

Sam had reached the desk. He'd spotted an air ticket on it. And a folder of travellers' cheques. And a passport. He rested the painting on the floor and made a grab for the ticket.

‘Jamaica,' he read quickly. ‘Oh,
very
nice.'

Suddenly Kessler lunged. The painting flew aside before Sam could restore his grip on it. He lost his balance, falling backwards, hands flailing the air as Kessler went for his throat. Thumbs fixed onto his windpipe like artery clamps. The floor came up behind him, his head cracking down on the parquet. The weight of Kessler on top of him burst air from his lungs, air that wouldn't come back.

No air.

No air for God's sake!

He was choking, with Kessler's smelly breath daubing his face like a sick-soiled flannel.

Panicking, he scrabbled for Kessler's own throat, but the man tucked his chin hard into his breastbone. He went for the eyes beneath the glasses, but Kessler pressed his face down onto Sam's chest. He tore at his hair, pushed against his shoulders, kicked up with his legs, but the man's weight pressed down on him with a strength that seemed to grow as his own consciousness began to ebb.

Jesus, thought Sam. He's going to kill me. After everything that's happened, the bastard's going to squeeze the life out of me.

Suddenly he heard a crash from the hallway. He felt Kessler flinch. Feet thudded on the floor. There was a shout, then the weight was lifted from him. Air roared back into his lungs.

‘Sam? You all right?'

A face bending over him. A man's face with broad features. Familiar, probing eyes that didn't blink.

The name came back to him. It was Charles. The man who'd questioned him in the flat above the Isleworth launderette on his return from Baghdad. SIS internal security.

He felt himself being raised into a sitting position.

‘Yes,' he coughed, sucking in air to the very depths of his lungs. ‘Yes, I'm all right. Where the hell have you sprung from?'

‘We were outside in a van, listening. We've been bugging this place.'

So much for his belief that Waddell and friends were protecting one of their own.

‘Thank God you were.'

On the other side of the room Kessler was being restrained by two men with powerful physiques. He'd
lost his glasses and looked like a mole caught in a shaft of sunlight.

Sam got back onto his feet.

‘Thanks. That bugger tried to kill me,' he accused, shaking with shock.

‘And he would have done, easily,' Charles told him bluntly. ‘Kessler trains with weights twice a week. He's as strong as an ox.'

The security man took a cell-phone from his pocket and dialled. ‘Police Special Branch,' he whispered to Sam as the number rang out. ‘We have to get them involved. I don't have any power of arrest, you see.'

Sam looked around the room again, seeing its entirety for the first time. French windows overlooked a neat garden with a freshly mown lawn and a bed of dahlias that exploded with colour. Next to the window stood a grand piano, its lacquered black surface cluttered with photo frames. He picked one up. Then another. All the pictures were of Chrissie. He turned his head. Everywhere he looked in the room there were photographs. On the mantelpiece, on the bookcases. He picked up more of them. Chrissie as a small child and as a teenager. Chrissie at her wedding with Kessler. Chrissie on the beach, walking in the country, studio poses . . . The room was a shrine. A shrine to a woman who'd betrayed every damned friend she'd ever had.

The man called Charles stuffed the aerial back into his cell-phone. ‘There'll be someone here in half an hour,' he told Sam. ‘Sooner, more likely.' He picked up the canvas from the floor. There was a small tear in it now. ‘Never liked his stuff much,' he murmured. ‘But then I
am
old-fashioned.' He put the Hockney back with the other paintings. ‘The Yard's Art Squad will need to take a look at this lot.'

He turned towards Kessler who now stood
straight-backed and still, watching what was happening with a dispassion that suggested none of it concerned him.

‘There is one thing I'm still curious about, Martin,' said Charles, standing squarely in front of him. ‘Which of you was in the driving seat? You or Christine?'

He'll blame it on
her,
thought Sam.

‘
I
was,' Kessler answered promptly. ‘I ran Chrissie. She needed me, you see. Couldn't run a
tea shop
on her own.' He turned to Sam with a look of triumph on his face. ‘By the way,' he added, and there was a vindictive edge to his voice, ‘I knew all along, you know.'

‘Knew what?'

‘About you and her. And about her and Clare.'

‘
What?
' The man was lying, he felt sure of it.

‘Yes. That's surprised you, hasn't it. It's true. Chrissie always told me absolutely everything. From the very beginning.'

Sam stared blankly at him. Whether this was true or not, Kessler seemed proud of the fact that he'd coped so manfully with his wife's serial adultery. Eager to show what an enlightened husband he'd been, a man ready to accept what his spouse got up to, just so long as she
talked
to him about it.

Charles grabbed Sam's arm and led him out to the hall.

‘I think that's probably enough,' he cautioned. ‘There's some sensitive stuff here and anyway it'll be best if you aren't around when the police come.' He tried the other two doors off the hall and, discovering one was the kitchen, ushered Sam inside for a moment. ‘It makes things tidier for us if you're not here. I'm sure you understand.'

‘Of course,' Sam nodded. His mind spun as he tried to fathom out what sort of world of sensory deprivation Kessler had been living in all these years.

He noticed Charles was waiting for him to leave.

‘I . . . I still don't quite understand,' he stumbled. ‘How long have you known about Kessler?'

‘Not long. We had very strong suspicions, that's all,' the security man confessed, ‘but what he said to you a few minutes ago made all the difference. It's all on tape.'

‘Since when did you have these suspicions?'

‘Well, actually, since the day you came back from Baghdad. All your protestations of innocence on the question of how the Iraqis knew about you – you convinced me, you see.'

‘Could have fooled me . . .'

‘Ah yes. But that's my job.' Charles allowed himself a smile. ‘We did some checking – what the Kesslers spent their money on, that sort of thing. Cars, holidays . . . They had a package tour to Jamaica last year. But enquiries on the island revealed they hadn't been there most of the time. They'd travelled on to the Cayman Islands. To set up bank accounts.'

‘Good grief!'

‘But that's confidential, all right? It'll come out as evidence. Now, how do you feel? Okay to be on your way?'

‘Absolutely,' Sam sighed. ‘Never felt better.'

They shook hands, then Charles opened the front door for him. ‘You can leave it all to us now,' he said on parting. ‘Okay?'

‘Willingly.'

Outside, the air smelled wonderfully fresh. Overhead the sky was clearing and a breeze was getting up.

As he walked towards the river Sam began to feel as if the past hour had been spent on the far side of some mirror. The fact that one of the characters who'd inhabited the world beyond it had taken such a hold on his own life for an embarrassing number of years troubled him somewhat.

But the more he thought about it, the more he realised
that all it did was confirm something he'd known about himself for a very long time. He was a lousy judge of women.

But at least Chrissie was history for him now. For Kessler, he guessed, she would never be. Chrissie would always be there in that world of his behind the looking-glass.

Sam was approaching the river by now. He began to think of the real world that was beckoning him, not one seen through a distorting lens and never felt, but one that roughened the skin, froze the fingers and quickened the pulse.

Yes, he thought, looking up at the sky again. Tomorrow had the makings of being a damned good day for a sail.

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Epub ISBN: 9781448151530

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Arrow Books in 1999

10

Copyright © Geoffrey Archer 1998

Geoffrey Archer has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the products of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First published in the United Kingdom in 1998 by Century

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780099271437