Читать книгу A Deadly Trade: A gripping espionage thriller - E. Seymour V. - Страница 11

Conscious she’d call for reinforcements, I took a fast, circuitous route. Whether she believed me or not was incidental. We both knew what we were dealing with. We both knew what we wanted. Whether or not she would play on my team, I’d no idea.

A creature of shadows, I liked the dark: my milieu. But that night I wasn’t paying enough attention. The memory of the MI5 girl’s laugh, her penetrating stare, a blizzard of green, had sidetracked me. Quite suddenly, I found myself in a shabby lane, a cut-through between two rows of houses within spitting distance of Earls Court, reminding me of the many hutong you find in the Forbidden City in China – without the bikes and rickshaws. Lights from neighbouring streets cast a sickly glare through the gloom. I could hardly see but I could imagine the shattered walls that flanked the alley, the corrugated iron and outbuildings in varying states of disrepair. Weeds grew in knots between the cobbled stones beneath my feet. I didn’t hear another, no telltale breath, no loud footfall, but I recognised that I had company. Too late, I turned.

The guy exploded into action, raining blows, several cracking my jaw and head. I darted, lunged, parried. Bone connected. Blood spattered. Mostly mine. My adversary was bigger than me in every respect, a wall of muscle, a human Pit Bull. Grabbing me by one ear, he yanked me close with one hand, by the throat with the other. He had a bad case of halitosis; his breath reeked of garlic and Guinness.

‘Where is it, you fucker?’

‘Where’s what?’

‘The fucking hard drive.’

We were eyeball to eyeball. Blood streamed from my head. Shot through with pain, I wasn’t so far gone that I didn’t notice his strong Belfast accent.

‘You’ve got the wrong guy,’ I moaned through bloodied teeth.

Predictably he released his hold on my throat so he could mess me up some more. I arched, thrust my body back, felt my ear tear, but I was free. Enraged, he came in again at close range, fists, head and feet. Whoever he was, this clown meant business.

Under this level of fire thought vanished like the mist swirling around us. Fortunately I had good instincts and my instinct was to draw him back through a terrain of empty cans, litter and used needles towards a derelict building. He sensed my game and changed tempo. The pressure increased. I mostly absorbed the pain, landing the odd blow without doing him any serious damage. Acting the vanquished, I drew him close. Close enough to…

The length of wire flashed quicksilver against the dark and twisted round his neck with the speed of a cobra strike. In two steps I was behind him, hauling back, putting my full weight into hanging on, the struggling man twisting and turning and grunting, shoes sliding in the dirt. His fingers scrabbled to loosen the wire before it became embedded. I hauled some more. A fine spray of blood released and cascaded into the night. He fell back heavily, knocking the air out of my lungs as I collapsed beneath him. ‘Think like him and never stop thinking like him until he is dead’ Reuben had taught me. Men can do extraordinary things even when dying. I didn’t doubt that if I let go my assailant would produce a knife and make one last attempt to kill me. I clung on with grim determination until the spray became a pumping torrent of plasma and his heels drummed on the rough surface. My arms and shoulders juddering with strain, I gave one final wrench and it was over. A noise, like water gurgling down a plughole, rasped, rattled and hissed into the night.

I slid out from beneath him and dragged him by his feet into the remains of an empty building partially boarded up and smelling of piss. Rifling through his clothing revealed a wallet with five hundred pounds in sterling, no credit cards, no identification. He also carried a gun. Difficult to tell what it was in the stuttering light, but it felt like a Colt. I briefly wondered why he hadn’t used it, and pocketed both.

To conceal the bloodstains on my coat, I took it off, turned it inside out and put it back on. Retrieving the wire, I wiped it on the dead man’s trousers, returned it to my pocket, and made my way back to Reuben’s.

This time I used a conventional form of entry: I rang Reuben’s doorbell. He let me in, invited me through to the sitting room.

‘You look like hell.’

I shrugged off my coat. ‘This needs to be disappeared.’

He took it from me without a word and told me to take a seat. ‘I will get something for the cuts and bruises.’

A fire blazed in the grate, throwing shadows on the walls. I realised how cold I was and stood and warmed myself. Reuben was halfway down a bottle of red wine. There were three glasses, one empty, one his, one used.

Reuben returned with a medical kit and expertly cleaned me up. It stung.

‘Who did this?’ he said.

Had it not been for my assailant’s mean and precise line of questioning, I might have thought I was the victim of a stranger attack. If you walk in those sorts of places you’re likely to meet trouble. As it was, had to be someone with more than a passing interest in Wilding although I didn’t believe it was anyone in an official capacity. Not their style. As for the accent, well, who knew? Plenty of out of work thugs from that part of the world. I wondered whom he worked for.

‘A guy with no name built like a banned breed of canine.’ I was spent and dejected. My head and ear throbbed. I flinched as Reuben traced my face with his thick fingers for fractures.

‘You’re fine,’ he said.

I grunted thanks. I felt anything but fine and gladly accepted his offer of a drink, a Grand Vin and premier cru of a fine vintage from Bordeaux. He asked nothing more of me. He knew that I’d speak when ready. We sat in awkward silence for some minutes until I chose to deliver edited highlights. I did not tell him about my audience with a Russian crime lord and his theory that the motive for Wilding’s murder was revenge. I did not tell him about my personal run-in with the British intelligence officer. I wanted to keep her to myself. Instead, I told Reuben that Wes wanted the hard drive returned in three days. Seemed like Wes was not the only person who wanted to get his hands on it, any number of parties after the same thing. Made my job a hundred times more difficult.

‘To give it to whom?’

‘I don’t know but I intend to find out.’

Reuben did not react.

‘Who in hell wants to inflict biological ethnic genocide?’ I snapped.

‘You lack the evidence to support your claim,’ Reuben softly reminded me.

‘You’re now saying I’m wrong?’ After all you told me? My mind reeled back to my conversation with Wes. Drugs that kill certain types of people. What else if it wasn’t this? And McCallen hadn’t exactly blown out my allegations about nerve agents. I wildly wondered whether the Israelis harboured a desire to annihilate their Arab neighbours by twisting the genetic key, and vice-versa. I asked Reuben.

He smiled broadly and shook his head. ‘Israelis and Arabs share similar genetic characteristics. They are both of Semitic origin. In simple engineering terms, it would be a tremendous feat to divide one human genome from another. Any pathogen developed in a test-tube would result in mutually-assured destruction.’

I gaped at him. He leant forward, rested a paw of a hand on my knee. ‘Do not worry, Joshua, you come from a mongrel race. It would be extremely difficult to wipe out you and yours.’

Then whom in God’s name were we talking about? Orientals? I looked him in the eye. For reasons I could not describe I found Reuben’s fervour neither convincing nor reassuring. Difficult was not the same as impossible. The white man in the Korean showcase had been chosen for a reason. My mind unravelled. I’d narrowly escaped moving from the steal-to-order market into something more deadly and dangerous, maybe even state sponsored terrorism. And what of the Russian connection? By now, MI5 would have disseminated the contents of my briefcase, trawled through my false identification papers and studied the photographs on the camera. I wondered whether they’d yet identified Yakovlevich’s mystery contact.

Reuben broke into my thoughts. ‘I have not been idle in your absence. It’s all right I was discreet,’ he added in response to my obvious consternation. ‘I have an old contact who passed on some timely information.’ I retained a mask of inscrutability. That very morning Reuben had tried to persuade me that he no longer had connections. ‘The London station chief received a visit this afternoon from MI5’s Inger McCallen.’

Inger McCallen. I silently drank in her name, rolling it round my mouth like a fine wine. Suggestive of a Scottish origin, it explained the pale colouring, the copper-coloured hair, and flinty manner. It intrigued me. I mused whether Scandinavia played a part in her background. In my reverie, I clean forgot that her name was in all probability fictional. Reuben was still talking. ‘Apparently, Dr Wilding was killed by a bubble of air injected into the jugular vein.’ The suspected method used to kill Robert Maxwell before he was chucked overboard from his yacht, I remembered. I also remembered that in my foolish enthusiasm to impress McCallen I’d offered this as a possibility. In Wilding’s case, the combination of pills and alcohol would have masked the prick of the needle entering her skin. She would have put up no defence. As a method, it was brilliantly conceived, her assassin clearly taking advantage of available conditions on the ground – a masterstroke.

‘According to my source, the British are unusually upset by Wilding’s death.’

I gave a snort of frustration. ‘I’m not surprised.’

‘To be expected, indeed,’ Reuben said. ‘With the lingering stink over the Kelly affair, the security services are bound to be at the centre of a swirl of new allegations. They will not welcome renewed attention.’

I didn’t react. With every appearance of calm, as if Wilding were nothing more than a humble computer programmer setting up a new project, I said, ‘What if Wilding had her own agenda? What if she was working in an offensive capacity?’ Why else would the information be at her home?

He spread his hands and gave a wide shrug. I frowned. Reuben was doing the equivalent of feeding me titbits and then running away. ‘Whatever it was, this is well outside my experience,’ I said. ‘More than likely a foreign security service is responsible for her death.’

‘Then why were you employed?’

He had me there. Wes dealt exclusively with international organised crime. Silence invaded the room like a conquering army. I stayed still, tuned out. Finally Reuben broke the deadlock.

‘The British have an asset within a newly emergent fundamentalist Muslim splinter group based in the Midlands.’

‘Terrorists?’ I said, with a snatch of alarm.

‘Yes.’

I remembered Yakovlevich’s take on young Muslim radicals. I eyed Reuben with suspicion. ‘How do you know and how is this relevant?’

He let out a tired sigh as though I was particularly stupid. ‘Muslim groups are always relevant. The uneducated masses still declare death to Israel and death to the West.’

I suddenly didn’t buy Reuben’s alleged ignorance. ‘Reuben,’ I added sternly. ‘You are forcing connections and speaking in riddles,’ I said, exasperated. ‘Frankly, this is political dynamite and I don’t do politics.’ Nor religion nor fundamentalism, I could have said.

Reuben flashed a smile and hunched his shoulders. ‘I may be out of the game, Joshua, but there are certain things that a man like me can divine.’ I looked deeply into his eyes. He met my gaze with a considered expression. ‘McCallen is meeting the asset tomorrow here in London.’ He gave me the details.

‘Divination is one thing,’ I said deliberately. ‘If you’re so out of the game, how come you know about the meeting?’

Reuben slow-blinked, issued a wily smile. ‘Remember that everyone is there to be used.’

Dissatisfied, I stood to leave. Reuben got up, too, and followed me out into the hall and to the front door. Before he opened it he rested a hand on my arm. Despite the lightness of touch, I could feel the power of the man radiating through his fingertips. He quoted a motto of which he was particularly fond: By way of deception, thou shalt do war.