Vagabond (61 page)

‘Can you hear me, Malachy?’

It was fifteen minutes since they had left. Danny Curnow had leaned against a tree, let it take his weight. He was near to the entrance of the bunker.

‘I stayed because I owe you, Malachy.’

There were times when all the proven lessons went out with the bath water. There was no good reason for Danny Curnow to have stayed in the forest around the desolate buildings of the former base. And less of a good reason for him to go to the bunker’s entrance, stand on the top step and silhouette himself against whatever light the moon gave. It seemed the right place and the right time. Maybe he’d waited too long.

‘The occasion and the opportunity came together, Malachy.’

There was no answer from the blackness, and he assumed the man was still huddled at the far side of the bunker. He knew he was alive. If he had been dead, well, the Russian wouldn’t have made it up the steps. It was clear that he’d been pushed up and was too dazed to negotiate them on his own – and two voices had alerted Danny. He assumed he had delivered a body blow. Malachy Riordan had spent a quarter of an hour in hiding, hearing nothing but the wind in the trees and the occasional night bird’s call. Knowing that the Russian was gone – having heard the footfalls blundering away at speed – he had been steeling himself to emerge and slide away, hoping to find obscurity.

‘I used to see you as a kid, Malachy. I did surveillance on the farmhouse. Your father was the target, and I was often tasked there. I used to see you go to school and come back, and in the holidays and at weekends you’d be with your father out at the back or working on the lorries. I watched you, Malachy.’

He listened and heard nothing. He might have been talking to himself – he often did, sitting in the cemeteries or at the back of the beaches by the closed ice-cream outlets. He might have been speaking to the headstones in their precise lines or to the men who had sheltered in the shallow pits of shifting sand in the dunes when the aircraft had swooped on them. Sometimes in his room he talked quietly to the pictures on the walls.

‘I was there when the priest came and told your mother that your father had died in the ambush. You came out of the door. What were you? Eight or nine? You screamed, Malachy, and I heard you. I knew then that you’d be a fighter and that you’d not be caged. I killed your father. I ran the agent who touted him. They said I was the best and I ran many agents so I killed many men. It’s a burden. I’m wondering if you feel the same weight because of men you’ve killed. They say it’s better when you talk about it. I’ve tried to find somebody, anybody, who’ll hear me out but don’t seem to know how to go about it.’

It was colder and the wind had freshened. It gusted through the tunnels the trees made and past the buildings. He aimed his voice at the abyss beyond the steps, but heard no movement. The man would be like a rat in a corner, considering his best chances and failing to find any. He persisted and felt as if he’d come across a soul-mate. He’d never talked to Dusty like this.

‘I shouldn’t think your burden would be any policeman you’d shot – have you killed any, or just hurt them, damaged a leg or an eye? I’m not up to speed on the statistics of your war. They brought me back to run the agent here. Malachy, two things about you surprise me. You’re a big man, a hard man, an intelligent man, a fighter, who has the respect of the crowd up at Palace Barracks. They want to bang you up, shut the door on you, but they admire your professionalism. It’s always a plus for them – good tactics and strong commitment. But you must be carrying a burden – you are, aren’t you? Because of the girl.’

He sat down on the top step. His knees were against his chest. He held the pistol loosely, not as if he believed himself threatened.

‘I’m a part of your life, just as you are of mine. I killed your father and I’ve destroyed you. That’s the way it is. I’m not taking you in. I don’t have cuffs, or an arrest warrant, and I don’t have an army out there behind me. I just wanted to talk. Funny thing about you, Malachy, I don’t reckon you as a theorist. Some can spout every hour and every date of an ‘atrocity’, always the victim, never to blame. You’re not one of them, I’m told. You’re a soldier. The first thing that confuses me is how you didn’t smell the tail and the deceit. It kind of lets you down in my image of you.’

He was answered by the quiet.

‘What else bothers me about you, Malachy, is that you killed the girl. Nice-looking kid, smart and bright. We’d the impression she was here for kicks – know what I mean? She wasn’t one of the ideologues who recite doctrine for twenty-four hours a day. She wouldn’t have lasted, would have been out the door in a year and holed up with a banker or a broker in Zürich or Hamburg, like the struggle was a rite of passage for her. Some kids backpack round Australia but she wanted something with more muzzle velocity. Did you have to kill her? Why?’

He scratched his nose and realised, then, that he was at the heart of it.

‘It’s the burden, and it never goes. ‘‘The cliff I’m going to climb gets steeper, and the rock I’m going to carry to the top gets heavier.’’ That’s what the burden’s like, and I couldn’t think of anyone other than you to talk to about it. But you won’t answer me and we’ll sit here a while longer. You’ve shoved that scumbag Russian into their arms, bought yourself time. He was what they wanted, not you. You were just the route in, otherwise insignificant. You have a little time. And I’m in no hurry.’

With a last juddering heave, the wheels of the van cleared a pothole on the track and they lurched onto a decent surface. They were on a public road, lights glowing in the sky above the trees, within touching distance of a sort of civilisation, and had shed the old world of great armies and traditions in their backpacks. Charlie put his foot down.

Alpha worked round her, not gently or with compassion. He did his job. He wrapped a strip of plaster over Timofey Simonov’s face, then trussed his legs. He took off the handcuffs and taped the man’s wrists. The handcuffs went into a deep pouch pocket in his trousers. She recognised that the symbols of evidence were being removed. The man was supine and might have thought himself already dead: he had received, as yet, no explanation, and Gaby Davies felt no need to supply one. They came into the town.

It was quiet. There were high apartment blocks. Some had lights on and open curtains, but the majority were dark. The village of Milovice, which had been a closed community, boasted no night life. They faced deserted streets, a closed-down railway station and a small parked car.

They spilled out. Alpha and Bravo took the arms of the prisoner, then dragged him, boots scraping along the ground, towards the car. It was well away from light, well placed. Karol Pilar had the keys and opened the back hatch. A bigger man would not have fitted into the boot but Timofey Simonov went in, his knees pressed to his stomach. That was how it was done, she reflected. She was not in any police service. He had not been informed of the charges laid against him, or of any rights. He was a turkey travelling to a Christmas table. She was hugged – the boys took it in turns. Alpha and Charlie were enthusiastic, and Bravo was apologetic – he couldn’t squeeze her tightly because of the flesh wound in his arm near where the bullet had ricocheted, but he kissed her cheeks. Then they were gone in the van, job done.

The satnav was plugged in.

Karol Pilar drove.

She said to him that he should do it. Premature? She didn’t think so. He kept his feet on the pedals and she took the wheel, leaning across him, while he tapped out the message that would go to the secure offices of the station chief in Prague.

He showed her.
Pick-up. On schedule for delivery
. She nodded. It was sent. She heard a muffled groan. The route would be the D8 highway, then the E55 and on to Teplice, then the border.

Tiredness came over her in waves. She let her head drop and her eyes close. She declined to confront the questionable legality of taking the prisoner, and had a suspicion of a smile on her face. She was imagining the response back in London, a building beside the river, the pleasure and satisfaction. But there was a border to negotiate before she could expect praise. It didn’t cross her mind that she should wonder where Danny Curnow was, what move Ralph Exton had made to extricate himself and the Irishman. It was a matter of priorities.

They walked arm in arm. She might have stayed, done battle with another bottle, but Matthew Bentinick had helped her up and led her from the bar. It had been a shaky passage out – elbows had been bruised and drinks slopped, but they’d absorbed the protests. The cool outside was sobering.

He was taller than her and she needed to skip from time to time to match his pace. They came to a stop at a small building site off Horseferry, where a wall had been exposed and there was a tap. It hadn’t been disconnected. She went first. Jocelyn, keeper of secrets for the Security Service, known to her peers as a resolutely private woman, crouched beside the tap and turned it on. When water gushed to the pavement she cupped her hands, splashed her face, rinsed her mouth and spat. Matthew Bentinick was dressed for the formality he practised in Thames House – as if a degree of dandyish eccentricity enhanced his standing. She held his jacket and he pulled up his cufflinked shirt sleeves. His tie was safe inside his waistcoat. Water dribbled from his hands, cheeks and chin. When he had turned off the tap, he produced a large handkerchief from his trouser pocket and offered it to her for her face and hands. He was easing into his jacket when the phone warbled. He took it out.

He read. He passed it.

She said quietly, close to his ear, ‘Well done.’

They were again the servants of the state. Their arms were no longer linked and their stride was brisk because work needed to be done from offices on the fourth floor. There was no celebration that any man or woman on the pavement would have noticed. Each in their own way had focused on the priority of the hour: a small man with a protruding stomach, thinning dark hair and bright but suspicious eyes, as seen in the surveillance photographs. Neither Matthew Bentinick nor Jocelyn allowed any other person entry to that space.

‘Nobody tells you about the burden when you start out. Your people wouldn’t, and mine didn’t.’

Danny Curnow talked as if to himself but had an audience.

‘It’s not accepted by your godfathers or mine that we’ll carry the weight of it through our lives. Accept it and they have to take the guilt, so they don’t. Big people reckon they’re above guilt or blame. They’ll tell you to get a grip and move on. They don’t care. They use you, bleed you and walk away. Same for you and me.’

There had been movement in the darkness, a lapping of water against a lower step and, once, a stifled cough. He believed that the fighter would have been experienced enough to protect his ears and eyes when the grenade was thrown. It would be cold down in the bunker. His purpose was to break the man, and he thought he was on course for success. Nothing personal, but Danny Curnow intended to walk away a winner.

‘It’s no secret, Malachy, that you weren’t the principal Tango – sorry, I’m using our old jargon. I was Vagabond then and came out of Gough, and “Tango” was our shorthand for a man like your father, Padraig Riordan. No one would ever have said we should
kill
your father – we didn’t use language like that. We’d have said something like “How far do we go to remove this man from our area of responsibility?” Simple enough question, and there was a simple enough answer. “As far as is necessary.” It was a no-brainer. You with me, Malachy?’

He paused to let it sink in. Danny Curnow had always been well practised in allowing silence to hang.

‘You aren’t seen as the equal of your father so, today, you weren’t the main Tango. The Russian was, and you were just a way of getting to him. We wanted him, and you don’t need to know why. You got us where we wanted to go. This wasn’t about arresting you. What they did in Lithuania was different – take down the buyer and bang him up in a shit gaol in Vilnius. It’s not what they’ve got in mind for you . . . You want to come up out of there or are you happy?’

It was the turning of a screw. Always good to be patient. The business of destroying a man should be done slowly: blurt out the big lines too fast and the man can shrug them off. He felt confident. He had nothing left to contribute to the mission but was manacled to the job – Matthew Bentinick had called him back because he did it well. He’d done it so well that it had nearly broken him.

‘You can come out of there, walk into the village and get a train into town, then the bus out to the airport. I won’t be on the same flight, because I don’t go to the UK or the Republic. You won’t be stopped at the desk but will be allowed to board. It’s all arranged, Malachy. You have free passage and can use whatever passport suits you. You’ll not face arrest for conspiracy to purchase weapons, or for previous attacks on security-force personnel, or for killing that girl. You’ll get to Ireland and you’ll have the number for the driver who’ll take you back up to the mountain, and you’ll say where you want dropping – maybe near the place where you threatened the dealer, the chancer you trusted, with the drill. Tomorrow afternoon, if you shift yourself, you’ll be safely back with your wife and son. From the moment you go through the back door, though, you’ll have the weight of the burden. It’ll be heavy on your back . . . For God’s sake, come up out of the cold and all that shit down there, dry out and have a fag while I tell you about the weight you’ll be carrying.’