The Trinity Six Part 27

He wondered how much time she had spent in the house, how often she and Jeremy were together. Was 'NGO' a cover for SIS? Almost certainly. They had probably met and fallen in love at work. Their jobs took them to all the corners of the Earth; they were probably lucky to meet for dinner three or four times a year.

'The video,' Tanya said.

Gaddis went back into the sitting room and retrieved the tape from the plastic bag. He turned to find her walking up the stairs.

'I think Jeremy has an old machine in his office.'

Moments later, she was back, bearing a dusty video recorder and a tangle of leads.

'Success.'

They knelt in front of the television. He could smell her perfume and wondered if she had applied more in the bedroom upstairs. The television was state of the art, a screen the size of a small deckchair, and Gaddis was concerned that the technology in the video would be out of date.

'There's a SCART plug,' Tanya said hopefully, and slotted it into the back.

His next concern was the tape itself.

'We need to take it easy,' Gaddis said. 'These things can chew.'

He pushed the power b.u.t.ton. The television was already on and automatically switched to an AV channel which appeared to support the video.

'Give it a try,' Tanya told him.

Gaddis slid the tape into the mouth of the VHS, felt it pull away from his fingers and clunk down on to the heads of the recorder. He heard the noise of the tape beginning to spool.

'Don't chew, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' he muttered. 'Don't f.u.c.king chew.'

Tanya laughed. Her knee was touching his and he was aware that she did not seem interested in moving it. Suddenly, the television flared into life. But there was no sign of Sergei Platov. Instead, they were confronted by the credit sequence of the Parkinson show.

'Can you turn the sound on?' Gaddis asked.

Tanya pushed a b.u.t.ton on a remote control and the theme tune jumped out at them. 'Hang on,' she said, and turned down the volume.

It appeared to be a relatively recent episode. The ident.i.ty of the first guest Jamie Oliver confirmed that the show had been recorded within the last ten years.

'Can we get past this?' Tanya asked.

Gaddis held down the fast-forward b.u.t.ton and they watched the programme spinning past in a blur of close-ups. Joan Rivers. Cliff Richard. Parky. For five minutes they were hunched on the ground, their eyes fixed on the screen, growing dizzy for any sign of a break in the transmission. But it never came. There was no film of Sergei Platov secluded in a Berlin safe house; instead, there was an episode of Cheers Cheers, followed by over an hour of blank, unrecorded fizz and static. As the tape came to an end, ejecting from the machine, Gaddis felt a dead weight of disappointment and voiced the thought that perhaps he had been too optimistic.

'There's always the other one,' Tanya said, nodding at the plastic bag. As she stood up, the joints in her knees creaked.

Gaddis retrieved the BASF ca.s.sette. Tanya had opened a cupboard near the table containing a small Denon hi-fi. A tape deck was stacked halfway down. He handed her the ca.s.sette and sat in a hard wooden dining chair. She pressed 'Play'. There was a three-second silence as the tape began, then the opening bars of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet. Gaddis met her eyes.

'Patience,' she said. 'Patience.'

For more than an hour they listened to the ballet, wandering around the room, drinking second cups of tea, making scrambled eggs on toast. Halfway through the second side, Tanya gave up and opened a bottle of wine, convinced that no recording of Platov existed. Gaddis dutifully heard the tape to the end, then took his plate through to the kitchen.

'Back to square one,' he said.

'Back to square one.'

She was sitting on a stool in the corner of the kitchen. He began to wash up the pan in which Tanya had made the eggs, a guest earning his keep. It was past ten o'clock, the long, strange day drawing to an end.

'You must be exhausted,' she said. 'Holly can't have given me all the boxes.' Gaddis rinsed the pan in a stream of hot water. 'Her house is a tip. Most of the files were in a store room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of her building. It's possible there are more of them in t.i.te Street.'

'You can't call Holly,' Tanya said.

The finality of the instruction annoyed him. 'What?'

'We don't know if her phone is compromised, if her house is being watched.' Tanya's tone was businesslike and matter of fact, as if she was deliberately killing off the intimacy which had built up between them since the airport. 'You ring her and it could draw the Russians right to you.'

Gaddis was silent as he dried their plates. He wondered why Tanya's mood had changed at the very mention of Holly's name. Was she jealous? As the evening had drawn on, they had been as relaxed in each other's company as lovers. Now she had offered him a stark, blunt reminder of his circ.u.mstances. He began to resent the power that she held over him.

'How am I supposed to reach her then?'

'Let me work it out,' she replied, though it sounded as if she was running short of ideas. 'I have to go to the Office first thing in the morning. Brennan knows about Wilkinson. There have been reports on the news. He probably won't know that I got you out of Vienna. He certainly doesn't know that you're staying here. I'll have a lot of explaining to do. But there's a possibility that we can still find a way of protecting you and resolve everything with the Russians.'

It sounded like hot air. Gaddis looped the tea-towel over the back of a chair. 'You're not listening to me,' he said. 'I don't want to be wrapped in cotton wool. I don't need protecting. There's a chance that Holly has the Platov tape gathering dust in the bas.e.m.e.nt of her house. All I'm asking is that you give me the chance to call her to see if she'll look for it. It's that simple.'

'Patience,' Tanya replied, for what seemed like the tenth time in as many hours, and Gaddis's anger boiled over.

'Is there any chance you could stop saying that? It's like you're talking to a four-year-old. I'm grateful for everything you're doing, Tanya. Seriously. But I'm not going to sit on my a.r.s.e for the next few days and hope that John Brennan suddenly changes his mind about me. What did you think I can achieve achieve here? Watch some daytime TV? Do the crossword?' here? Watch some daytime TV? Do the crossword?'

Tanya, to his astonishment, took him at face value. 'I'm afraid so. Until we can find somewhere safe for you to go, you'll have to stay here. That means you can't make phone calls. It means you can't even go outside.'

He looked at her in disbelief. He had a gla.s.s of wine on the kitchen table and drained it as he absorbed what she had said. He was amazed by how quickly their flirtatious rapport had evaporated; there had been several moments during the course of the evening when he had even entertained the possibility that they might spend the night together. Now Tanya seemed to be taunting him with the stark fact of his imprisonment.

'Fine,' he said.

'What do you mean "fine"?'

He recalled their conversation on the street outside UCL. Don't go looking for Crane. Don't go looking for Wilkinson. Don't go looking for Crane. Don't go looking for Wilkinson. He had made promises to Tanya Acocella before. He could do so again. He had made promises to Tanya Acocella before. He could do so again.

'I mean that I'll do as you say. I'll stay here while you go to work. I'll watch Countdown Countdown and go through your knicker drawer. Forget about Holly. Forget about the tape.' and go through your knicker drawer. Forget about Holly. Forget about the tape.'

Tanya knew that he was lying.

'That simple?' She produced a look which suggested Gaddis was making her job even more difficult than it already was. 'That's not a Sam Gaddis "I-swear-I-won't-go-to-Austria" type of promise, is it? The last time you said something like that, a few days later you were in a bar in Vienna.'

'It's not that type of promise.'

Tanya shook her head. She knew that Gaddis would stop at nothing to avenge Charlotte and to retrieve the tape. What choice did he have? She could hardly keep him under house arrest indefinitely. If he walked out of the mews, there was nothing she could do about it.

'Fine,' she said eventually, walking into the sitting room. She began to puff the cushions on the sofa, like a physical demonstration of her desire to bring the conversation to an end. 'Why don't we get some sleep? It's been a long day. You must feel like a bath or something.'

'In the morning, Mummy.' Gaddis was surprised that she had let him off the hook so easily and seized the opportunity to lighten the mood with a joke. But Tanya did not laugh. Instead, she said: 'I've laid out one of Jeremy's T-shirts for you,' which made Gaddis feel like an unwanted suitor who has outstayed his welcome.

'Terrific.'

'There's a towel as well, whisky in the kitchen if you want it.' She yawned in a way that was stagey and self-conscious and Gaddis began to resent her again. 'You're in the room at the end of the corridor. Jeremy uses it as a study.'

'Is he likely to come back and climb into bed with me?'

She allowed herself a smile, the glow in her eyes like a break in bad weather. 'No,' she said softly, and Gaddis reflected that she was probably just tired and worried.

'Thank you,' he said, because it was right to acknowledge the huge sacrifice she had made. 'I don't know what I would have done without you. I'm sorry for all the trouble I've made.'

'All in a good cause.' She surprised him by kissing him gently on the cheek. 'Most of it, anyway.' She turned and walked up the stairs. 'Sleep well. Will you turn off the lights before you go to bed?'

'Of course. I'll be five minutes.'

Gaddis found the whisky in the kitchen and poured himself four fingers. Switching on the television, he surfed briefly for a twenty-four-hour news channel which might be covering developments in the Wilkinson shooting. But CNN was fixed on an American political story, Sky News broadcasting a business programme. He turned the television off, checked the bolt on the front door and made his way upstairs.

He could hear a shower running when he reached the landing. There was a line of light under Tanya's bedroom door. He thought of the pleasure, the blessed release of spending the night with her, but walked resignedly in the other direction, down the corridor towards Jeremy's study. Sure enough, Tanya had laid out the towel and the T-shirt, as well as a packet of aspirin, a bottle of mineral water and an alarm clock to put beside his bed. Gaddis showered and changed into the T-shirt, briefly flicked through a copy of the Spectator Spectator and was asleep before midnight. and was asleep before midnight.

He woke at eight to find that Tanya had already left for work. There was a note on the kitchen table reiterating her demand that Gaddis remain in the house. 'If you have to smoke,' she said, 'keep doing it in the garden.' He scrunched the note into a ball and threw it into a bin, noticing a spare set of house keys hanging on a nearby hook. He pocketed them, fixed some cereal and a percolator of coffee, read the second half of the Spectator Spectator and smoked a cigarette through an open window. At about nine o'clock he had another shower, changed into a shirt which Tanya had hung for him on the landing 'another one of Jeremy's', the note had said and wondered how he was going to kill the next ten hours under effective house arrest. He was not nosey by nature and had no interest in going through Tanya's private possessions; his own encounter with a permanent blanket of MI6 surveil-lance had made him more, not less respectful of other people's privacy. He flicked through a couple of photo alb.u.ms, which were lying on a table in the sitting room, but learned only that Tanya and Jeremy had been on holiday together in Paris and Egypt and that Jeremy wore Speedos without apparent irony whenever he came within striking distance of a body of water. and smoked a cigarette through an open window. At about nine o'clock he had another shower, changed into a shirt which Tanya had hung for him on the landing 'another one of Jeremy's', the note had said and wondered how he was going to kill the next ten hours under effective house arrest. He was not nosey by nature and had no interest in going through Tanya's private possessions; his own encounter with a permanent blanket of MI6 surveil-lance had made him more, not less respectful of other people's privacy. He flicked through a couple of photo alb.u.ms, which were lying on a table in the sitting room, but learned only that Tanya and Jeremy had been on holiday together in Paris and Egypt and that Jeremy wore Speedos without apparent irony whenever he came within striking distance of a body of water.

By ten o'clock, Gaddis was bored out of his mind. He washed his clothes using the machine in the kitchen and hung them up on a line in the garden. By eleven he had resorted to watching daytime TV, settling on an old black-and-white thriller starring Jimmy Cagney. Was this his future? Whenever he stopped to think about what Brennan and Tanya were cooking up for him, he could only conclude that he would soon be sucked into the same witness protection programme which had claimed Edward Crane. It was no kind of life. It was too depressing even to contemplate. Such an existence would shut him off irreversibly from Min, from his work at UCL, from the entire structure of his life. He had had to contact Holly. Finding the tape was his only route to freedom. to contact Holly. Finding the tape was his only route to freedom.

At half-past two, he found a Tesco spaghetti bolognese and some salad in the fridge. It was only as he was mopping up the sauce with a slice of stale brown bread that he remembered the package which had been posted through his door in Shepherd's Bush. He retrieved the carrier bag from the sitting room and sat on the sofa with a kitchen knife, slicing through the seals on the envelope.

He did not recognize the handwriting on the front of the package. He a.s.sumed it was a book of some kind, a doc.u.ment sent by a colleague.

But it was not.

There were photographs inside. Seven of them. Gaddis pulled them out, along with a note which had been typed, unsigned, on a folded sheet of A4 paper.

THE SUM OF ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS WILL BE PAID INTO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT. THIS BUYS MORE THAN YOUR SILENCE.

He turned the photographs over and felt his soul twist like a corkscrew.

There were seven pictures of Min.

Min at the beach. Min with a friend. Min with Natasha. Min outside her school.

Gaddis stood up and ran to the door.

Chapter 52.

Gaddis found a phone box fifty metres from the Cromwell Road, the roar of six lanes of traffic funnelling into the booth as he picked up the receiver. He scrabbled in his pockets for change and had to turn the contents out into his hands as he searched for a twenty-pence piece. He had only pound coins, pushing one of them into the slot and accidentally dropping three others on to the floor of the booth as he did so.

The money clunked through, but did not register on the read-out. Gaddis swore and tried a second time, losing another pound in the same way. He dialled 155 for the international operator and was put through to a woman with a thick Liverpudlian accent.

'I need to make a reverse charge call to Spain.'

'Certainly, sir. What number please?'

He knew Natasha's landline by heart and, within a few seconds, could hear the phone ringing out in Barcelona. Be at home Be at home, he whispered. Be at home Be at home.

'Hola?'

It was Nick, the boyfriend. The operator explained that a man was calling 'collect' from London and would Nick accept the charge?

'Sure.' They were connected. 'Sam?'

'Yes. Is Min there?'

'What?'

'I said is Min there?'

Nick wasn't taking too kindly to Gaddis's tone. He had accepted the charges, after all. He deserved a bit of respect for his generosity, some appreciation, a little small talk. 'You want to talk to Min?'

'Yes, Min. My daughter. Is she there?'

'She's at school, Sam. You sound fl.u.s.tered. Is everything all right, mate?'

Gaddis didn't want to be called 'mate' by anybody at a time like this, least of all by Natasha's f.e.c.kless, underfunded boyfriend.

'No, nothing is all right. Where's Natasha?'

'I think she's at work.'

'What do you mean, you "think"?'

'Tell you what, mate. Why don't you call her there? Sounds like this is a conversation you should be having in private.'

'I don't have her num-'

To Gaddis's disbelief, Nick hung up. He swore at the phone, so loudly that two pa.s.sers-by on the street turned and looked at him with a look of fear in their eyes. Slamming down the receiver, Gaddis gathered up the loose change from the floor and realized that he could not remember the name of the company that Natasha worked for in Barcelona. All of his numbers were stored on a mobile phone still lying, battery-dead, under a filing cabinet in her apartment. He could not even recall the name of Min's school. It was a Catalan word, some regional anomaly that he had always found impossible to remember. How was he going to find out if she was OK?

He stopped. He tried to regain his composure. No news is good news No news is good news, he told himself. If Min had been harmed, Nick would know about it. Besides, the note had been a warning. All he had to do was drop the Crane story, forget about Platov and Dresden, and all his problems would be over.

He opened the door of the phone booth. Cars were being held at lights on the Cromwell Road. It was cold and Gaddis zipped up his coat against the wind. He lit a cigarette and smoked it while pacing the street, back and forth, like a prisoner in a yard. He could conclude only one thing: that he would never be free of the FSB. The note was meaningless in this context, the hundred grand just a lure. As long as he was alive, he posed a threat to Sergei Platov. If he agreed to the blackmail, it would only postpone his demise in a car crash, from a gas leak, from a little polonium-210 in his California roll. He walked back to the phone. The only way of securing Min's future was to get his hands on the tape. That would at least give him some leverage, something priceless with which he could negotiate her safety.

This time the phone accepted the pound coins. He dialled Holly's number. Her voice as she picked up was like his last chance of salvation.

'It's me,' he said.

'Sam? Where have you been?' She was more perplexed than irritated. 'I've been trying your mobile for days. Where are you?'