The Wolf at the Door (20 page)

“I take you to Colonel Lermov. I’ve been working with him on this case by order of the Prime Minister.”

“I am impressed.” Ivanov led the way, and Holley said, “You’ll know all about me, then?”

“You could say that.”

“So you’ll know what dear old Josef wants with me?”

“Of course I do, but I think he’ll prefer to tell you himself. This way.” He gestured up the stairs to the walkway and followed Holley up.

Lermov was standing beside the old tea lady, and she was filling a glass for him.

“Just in time, Josef,” Holley said. “I’ll join you.”

“Another for my friend,
babushka,
” Lermov told her. “You look good, Daniel. They’ve been treating you well, I think.”

“Six months since you last saw me,” Holley said. “I’ve been promoted. Looking after the accounts in the general supply office. A corrupt lot, the staff in there. Thieves and chancers. Most of them merited a cell themselves.”

“Yes, the governor told me how pleased he was. Didn’t want to part with you.”

Holley sipped the tea the old lady had given him. “And is he going to part with me? How can he? Who says so?”

Lermov took the letter from his pocket and unfolded it. “Captain Ivanov and I have several copies between us. It’s proved to be an open sesame everywhere we’ve shown it.”

Holley held it in one hand and studied it, still sipping his tea. “Well, it would, wouldn’t it? Vladimir bloody Putin himself.” He handed the letter back. “Your chum here dismissed the guards. What was that all about?”

“We don’t need them,” Ivanov told him. “What are you going to do, Daniel, suddenly make a run for it? Where would you go?”

“Daniel, now, is it?” Holley said. “We are getting friendly.” He switched to English, and the Yorkshire accent was obvious. “I’ll say it again, Josef, what goes on?”

Lermov answered him in English. “It’s a miracle you’re here at all, Daniel. Five years ago, when you killed two of my men in Kosovo, the rest wanted to execute you. I kept you alive, with two bullets in you, for moral reasons, then discovered we’d captured someone very special indeed.”

“Someone worth saving,” Holley said.

“Absolutely—an open window on terrorism and the death business. Over twenty years of hard experience. You were beyond price, and the knowledge I’ve gained from our many talks has been i nvaluable.”

“Happy to have been of service, but I didn’t have much of a choice about that, did I?”

“Station Gorky?” Lermov shook his head. “At least be honest with yourself. You had a choice of a better option and took it. Whatever else you are, you’re no martyr, Daniel, and shall I tell you why? You have to believe to be a martyr. You, my friend, don’t believe in anything.”

Daniel Holley changed, something dark passing on his face like a shadow over the sun, an elemental force there that had Ivanov reaching for the flap of his holstered pistol, and then Holley actually laughed.

“You want to know something, Josef? I think you might well be right. What happens now?”

Lermov nodded to Ivanov, who said to Holley in English, “You and I will go into the office opposite, where I’ll show you a DVD and offer you certain files on the computer—”

“Some of which is information gained from you from our conversations over the years,” Lermov cut in.

“—Then we’ll have a look at a situation that is giving us trouble, and we’ll see what suggestions you might make to rectify the matter,” Ivanov finished.

“That’s what you were always good at, Daniel, isn’t that so? Analyzing the situation, assessing the risk? You’re a master at that sort of thing,” Lermov said.

“If that’s supposed to make me feel good, you’re wasting your time. What is the point of this exercise, Josef?”

“Your sentence, Daniel. You’ve done five years so far, you’re forty-nine and look forty on a bad day. But as the years roll on, that won’t last. Maybe we can do something about that.”

“Your logic is irrefutable.” Holley turned to Ivanov. “So let’s go into the damn office and see what you’ve got.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Lermov told him, and went along to the walkway to where the old tea lady had pushed her trolley, when Holley’s mood turned black.

“Tea, Colonel?”

“No,
babushka,
I need vodka . . . a lot of vodka.”

“The one with the accent? He’s a little mad, I think.”

“Aren’t we all,
babushka
?” Lermov told her, and went down the stairs.

 

 

 

But instead of the bar,
he went to his room, sat at a desk by the window, got out the manuscript of the book he was working on, and read through the current chapter, which had been cut off in midsentence by a tap on the shoulder by Ivanov in the university library. It was good stuff, but it was unfinished, there was no ending, but, then, there seldom was in his business, the life he’d chosen instead of a calm and scholarly career in the academic world. It suddenly struck him that he’d never really had a choice. He glanced at the final page of the chapter, then closed the manuscript with a kind of finality and put it in his briefcase.

“So what next?” he asked himself softly, and the knock on the door answered him.

 

 

 

Holley wore a cord
around his neck, a red-and-gold security tag dangling from it of the kind worn only by senior staff members.

Lermov pointed to it. “What’s this?” he asked Ivanov.

“I thought people might wonder who he was when he’s walking round.”

“You know, like going to the lavatory or down to the bar, Josef,” Holley told him.

He pulled a chair forward, sat opposite Lermov, and Ivanov leaned against the door. Lermov said, “So you’ve gone through everything, Daniel?”

“Absolutely. You don’t seem to have missed much, you and the boy wonder here.”

“So what do you think?”

“About the fact that the boss man wants Charles Ferguson and his people eliminated and doesn’t care how you do it?”

“Yes,” Lermov replied calmly.

“Well, I like his advice about that Moscow Mafia hit man. It’s almost flattering. I’ve been called many things, but Mafia has never been one of them.”

“Get on with it.”

“All right. If we take Ferguson’s immediate clan, that means Roper, Dillon, Miller and his sister, the two Salters, and Blake Johnson. Eight in all,” Holley said.

“Don’t forget Kurbsky and Bounine,” Ivanov put in.

“Silly me,” Holley said. “I was forgetting the greatest novelist Russia’s produced in modern times, a possible Nobel Prize winner. So ten in all.”

“So it would appear. Peter joked that all we needed was a dinner party and a bomb under the table.”

Holley glanced at Ivanov. “It’s the real world we’re talking about here.” He turned back to Lermov. “So the man in the Kremlin wants no hint of any Russian influence in this whole affair?”

“If possible.”

“So if there was a hint of PIRA about what takes place, that would be just the thing?” Daniel asked.

“Exactly.” Lermov leaned forward. “I was thinking of Caitlin Daly.”

Holley allowed his anger to show. “Damn you, Josef, I should never have told you about her.”

“You told me many things, Daniel, it was part of our agreement.”

“This is ridiculous. I visited her only once, Lermov, in November 1995. That’s fourteen years ago. She could be dead, for all I know.”

“She is alive and well, living and working exactly where she was then.” Lermov smiled. “I had Major Ivan Chelek at the London Embassy make inquiries.”

Holley said, “He went to the church, I suppose?”

“Something like that. He said she was a very attractive lady.”

“She would be about fifty now,” Holley said.

“Chelek said you could take ten years off that.”

Holley suddenly got up. “I don’t know about you two, but I need a drink. I can’t get my head round this.”

He turned to the door, Ivanov barred his way for a moment but Lermov nodded, so Holley pulled it open and went out.

Ivanov said, “He doesn’t seem keen.”

“He’ll come round. We’ve talked so many times over the years, I feel I know him.” He shrugged. “At least, as much as one can ever hope to understand another human being.”

“Forgive me, Colonel, but I’m a cynic,” Ivanov told him. “I often experience considerable difficulty in knowing myself.”

“I admire your honesty. Tell me something: how often have you killed?”

“I was too young for Afghanistan and the First Chechen War, but I was bloodied in the Second. I was twenty when I went to that. Field intelligence, not infantry, but it was a desperate, bloody business. The Chechens were barbarians of the first order, imported Muslims from all over the place to serve with them. You couldn’t drive anywhere without being ambushed.”

“Yes, I saw some of that myself,” Lermov said, “and know exactly what you mean. Daniel Holley’s experience has been different. His killing has been close and personal. Back in Kosovo when my Spetsnaz boys got him, he double-tapped the two men he killed on the instant, no hesitation.”

“I wonder how many times he did that on his travels?” Ivanov said. “It stands to reason that as an arms salesman, he kept rough company.”

“Exactly.” Lermov stood up. “Let’s see how he’s getting on.”

 

 

 

They found Holley sitting
in the bar, a glass of beer in front of him and a large whiskey. Lermov said, “I thought you had no money.”

“I told the barman I was waiting for you. Have a seat.”

Lermov waved to the barman and sat down.

Holley raised the beer and drank, not stopping until the glass was empty. He finished with a sigh, and said in English, “As they’d say in Leeds, that
were
grand.” He reached for the glass of whiskey and tossed it down. “And that were even better.”

“Would you like another one?” Lermov asked.

“Not really. It’d be nice to have a rugby match to go with it. But this is Moscow, not Leeds, and Russia, not Yorkshire, so let’s get down to brass tacks.”

“And what would that be?”

“Why do you think a woman I spoke to fourteen years ago will still be waiting and still interested in a cause long gone?”

“But that’s what sleepers do, Daniel, they’re always the chosen ones, the believers, and they wait, no matter how long it takes, even if they’re never needed at all.”

“A gloomy prospect,” Holley said.

“And let me remind you what Caitlin Daly did back in 1991—the bombs she and her cell set off in London. The general panic, confusion, and fear she caused lasted for months. A considerable victory.”

Holley said, “I know all that. Anyway, there’s not just her to consider. What about the men in her cell? Alive or dead, who knows? I can’t even remember their names.”

“I can help you there. I have a fax all the way from your old partner in Algiers, Hamid Malik. I got in touch with him when you fell into my hands five years ago. He’s proved a valuable asset to us,” Lermov told him.

“You clever sod,” Holley said. He waved to the barman.

“Yes, I am, aren’t I? Anyway, he had the original correspondence from your cousin Liam, and I have all the names.”

“It means nothing. Even if these men are still round, there’s no way of knowing if they feel the same way about dear old Ireland.”

“True, but I’ve given the list to Chelek, and he’ll trace them.”

“You said you didn’t want any obvious Russian involvement in this business.”

“Absolutely right, but it’ll save you time, and, once you get there, it’ll all be in your hands. It’ll also be of assistance to Caitlin Daly if she has lost touch, but you won’t know that until you’ve seen her.”

“Don’t you mean
if
I see her?” Holley asked, and drank his new beer down.

“No, I mean when you see her, so make your decision now.”

“To arrange the deaths of ten people, one of them a woman, isn’t what I planned to do when I got up this morning.”

“You mean, when you got up in your cell at the Lubyanka, where Captain Ivanov will certainly return you if I order him to. And then I’ll give him another order.”

“To do what?”

“To get your head shaved, your belongings packed and ready for the early-morning flight to Station Gorky.”

There was a pregnant moment, and Ivanov looked wary. Holley said, “So in the end, Josef, you’re just as bad a bastard as the rest of us.”

“I’ve no intention of having my head served up on a plate at the Kremlin.”

“I can see that, you’re not the John the Baptist type. So you want me to play public executioner again?”

“I suppose I do.”

“And can the hawk fly away to freedom afterwards?”

“I should imagine that is exactly what he would do if this matter was resolved to our mutual satisfaction.”

“Excellent.” Holley tossed his whiskey down. “If you’d said yes, I wouldn’t have believed you anyway.” He got up. “Right, I don’t know what you are doing about my accommodation, but I presume I can use the office, so I’m going to go up now and knock out some sort of plan of action.”

“A room will be arranged for you,” Lermov told him. “But the office is yours. You may use my authority to extract any information you like from the GRU computers.”

“And this Max Chekhov who’s on his way from London? I know we’re supposed to keep the Russian influence out of things, but he’s floating along on a sea of money, booze, and women. I bet he could be useful.”

He went out, and Lermov said, “So, Peter, are you disappointed again?”

“No,” Ivanov said. “I think he’s a thoroughly dangerous man.”

“I know, and he looks so agreeable. Let’s have another vodka on it.”