Timebomb : A Thriller (9781468300093) Read online

  Paratroopers weren’t permitted to limp, but policemen were. He’d come out of the army four years back, and within three months a West of England force had accepted him. Then he had been thirty-two, and had a leg that was a mass of blotched, grafted skin but serviceable. Time had moved on. Change of workplace and change of specialization, a target in his new unit that was being evaluated for a crack or weakness in its defences. A surveillance photograph showed Josef Goldmann, Russian national and launderer of dirty money, on the steps of his London home, two Russian hoods escorting him, and a springy, slightly built guy holding open the door of an armour-plated, 8-series Audi saloon. ‘I know him – God, saved my life in Iraq. That’s Rawlings, my sergeant in recce platoon, Zulu Company, of 2 Para …’ An engineered meeting had led to an interview with Josef Goldmann. Rawlings must have spoken up for him, and the Bossman must have felt the threat level around him and his family rising – could be rivals after his cake slices or could be government agents from back home. Anyway, Carrick had been offered employment. His controller had said that after three months ‘on the plot’, the operation would be reassessed. His cover officer had said that three months would give them an idea whether the investment was good, indifferent, or cash down the drain.

  It wasn’t going well. Carrick drove the children to school, drove Esther Goldmann to shops and parties, watched the security of the house, and spent most days in a basement ready room, watching security screens and waiting to be called upstairs. Most hours of most days he sat with Grigori and most hours of most days the heavier honcho, Viktor, was closer to the family and up close to the Bossman – and Simon Rawlings had the Bossman’s trust, drove him, and never talked about him. Simon Rawlings was a model of a limpet shell: closed down and gave nothing, didn’t even do small-talk about his employer.

  ‘Haven’t had a night off in a fortnight, about damn time.’

  ‘Not going down the pub to get bladdered, Sarge?’ Carrick grinned because he knew the response.

  ‘Cheeky sod. When did I last have a drink? Eh, tell me.’

  ‘Have to say it, not while I’ve been here – haven’t seen you.’

  ‘Not since I walked in the door here, not one. That’s three years, five months and two weeks. Go down my pub, but no alcohol. Get pissed up, chuck this lot away, you’ve got to be joking.’

  ‘You have a good evening. You going to call by, late?’

  ‘Maybe, depends whether I’ve a promise … That’s a joke, Johnny. Most likely I’ll call by.’

  Carrick understood the pecking order and, also, that nothing could be done to alter precedence. The family, the Bossman in particular, depended on Simon Rawlings because of the man’s bloody dedication and reliability. He was always there for them, their doormat. And he doubted that Simon Rawlings knew, or cared to know, the first basics of cleaning, washing and rinsing money. ‘Have a good evening, then …’

  He watched Rawlings take his coat and go out through the ready-room door. Grigori looked up from the TV home-improvements show and waved a languid hand. Carrick checked his watch. He went to the hooks, took down the Mercedes’ keys. Time to get the kids from school.

  He was the most disliked man in the building. With the exception of two people – his director general and his personal assistant – he had no friends, no soul-mates, no confidants inside the massive edifice beside the river. Every weekday morning upwards of two thousand people streamed through the main gates and out again every evening, and more came for night shifts and more for weekend work. Other than Francis Pettigrew and Lucy, none of them knew him well or even had a slightly complimentary word for him. The dislike ran like a virus through all floors of VBX, from heads of department and heads of section, via heads of desks, and down to chauffeurs and analysts, typists and human-resources clerks, archivists, security guards and canteen staff. The dislike was based on his keen rudeness, his refusal to gild lilies when most would have applied a brush of sensitivity, his short-fuse impatience, and a boorish refusal to accept diminished standards. Those who knew his domestic situation best gossiped that his wife treated him as an unwelcome stranger in the marital home and that the only child of the union now lived on the other side of the world. They also said that he cared not a ha’penny damn for their feelings.

  Christopher Lawson was sixty-one, had been an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service for thirty-eight years – never had and never would answer to ‘Chris’, would ignore any man or woman who addressed him with a comrade’s familiarity. But somehow, aloof, awkward and prickly, he survived. His most recent ultimatum had been accepted; his seniors had caved in the face of his demand. His most frequent heresy was ignored. Other men and women of similar decades of experience had issued ultimatums on where in the building they would work and where not, in what fields they were prepared to operate and what they would refuse: they had been politely given their premature pensions and had their swipe cards summarily removed. Other men and women who had voiced the ultimate heresy – that the ‘war against terror’ was being lost, was unwinnable, that the tectonic plates of global power had shifted irreversibly – had been labelled defeatist and had gone by the end of the next Friday.

  His survival was based on his success as an intelligence-gatherer. Without it, Christopher Lawson would have been put out to grass years ago, like the rest of them. The director general had told him, ‘The vultures may hover above but I’m not letting them get to your bones, Christopher. I’m not losing you. About as far from Arab matters as I can shunt you is Non-Proliferation. You’ll do the Russian section there. I remind you, but I’m not hopeful you’ll remember it, that blood on the carpet leaves a permanent stain. I value you, and by doing so I expose myself – I urge you not to abuse my support.’ And his personal assistant, Lucy, had said: ‘I don’t care what people say about you, Mr Lawson. I’m staying put and not asking for a transfer. I’m running your office, at your desk, and the legs of my chair are set in concrete.’ And he hadn’t even thought to thank either of them.

  He was, to be sure, a much disliked man. He was also a man who had respect, however grudging. Respect came from success. Success came from his ability to isolate and identify seemingly trivial items of information, then ruthlessly focus upon them. It was not a talent that could be taught by the Service’s instructors and was in rare supply. Christopher Lawson was blessed with it, knew it, and was arrogantly dismissive of colleagues lacking his nose. It was on his screen that the detail of calls from and to the Russian town of Sarov arrived.

  It had been a quiet week. He had gutted a couple of papers on arms reduction, and Lucy had worked on the improvement of his computer files … Then he had read the word ‘Sarov’. He knew where the town was, what work was done there, what name the town had had in Soviet times … Papers were flung aside, the filing abandoned. The scent of a trail was established, and his eyes gleamed.

  Chapter 2

  9 April 2008

  He was aware of more phone calls than usual coming to the house.

  Flowers were delivered that afternoon, a massive bouquet that filled Carrick’s arms when he took them from the van driver. An hour after the flowers, another van had brought a dress from the shop in the High Street that Mrs Goldmann patronized. Both had come to the main door so Carrick had escorted the housekeeper, Irena, up from the basement, had done the checks through the spyhole, opened the door and signed the dockets with a scrawl.

  And he was aware of greater activity upstairs in the reception rooms, had heard an unfamiliar pace in the movement there of Josef Goldmann.

  Carrick had sensed the changed mood and had heard phones when he had gone up the front stairs – the formal rooms used when they entertained were on the ground floor and off the hallway, but the family’s rooms where they ate, watched the TV and lived their lives were on the first floor, bedrooms above. Under the roof and reached by narrow back stairs were the cramped attic rooms where the Russian minders and the housekeeper slept. It was unspoken but understood that Carrick
was not permitted up the stairs unless by invitation or unless he was accompanied. The housekeeper was with him and he trailed behind her, first with the bouquet, then with the dress box.

  An atmosphere of urgency penetrated the house. He couldn’t isolate it, or make sense of it … A problem for Johnny Carrick, one that went with the job, was to lead two lives – to act like a civilian, and to retain the suspicion and prying wariness of a police officer … Something was different, strange, as it had not been before.

  When he had brought up Mrs Goldmann’s flowers, had hovered behind the housekeeper, had heard the lady of the house exclaim with extravagant delight, had watched her rip open the little accompanying envelope, had listened as she had read out a note of gratitude for the generosity of her donation from the organizing committee of a charity raising funds for Chernobyl children, he had seen through an opened inner door that Viktor spoke on a mobile and that Josef Goldmann was close enough to him to take in both sides of a conversation. On the way back down the stairs he had heard two telephones ring. Returning with the dress in the box, through that same inner door, Carrick had seen Josef Goldmann and Viktor in deep whispered conversation. Then his view had been masked by the lady holding a cocktail frock across her body and twirling in circles. Her eyes had met his, a flash of the briefest flirtation, and he had mouthed silently, as if it were expected of him, ‘It’s very fine, ma’am, very suitable.’

  It had been hoped, of course, that the presence in the Goldmann house of a skilled police officer – one with the talent and nerve to reach level one in the small, closed society of SCD10 – would open up the hidden secrets of the launderer’s existence.

  He had assumed, as weeks went by and as the family and the minders became more used to him, that he would be increasingly accepted. It hadn’t been that way. Truth was, Johnny Carrick knew little more about the life and criminality of his employer than when Katie had put the file into his hand for him to speed read, than when George, his controller, had done the ‘big picture’ briefing, than when Rob, his cover officer, had talked through the details of communications for routine reports and for a crisis moment. He dealt with the children and with Mrs Goldmann. He lived alongside the housekeeper, Irena, who either did not have English or cared not to use it. He shared the ready room, off the kitchen and in the basement, with Grigori, who spoke only when he needed to and slept in a recliner chair, smoked or watched football on the satellite channels. Simon Rawlings had the access to the Bossman, and was a gossip-free zone.

  With Rawlings, when they were together, the talk was of forgotten wars – a tour of Northern Ireland, down by the border, as the ceasefire was shaking down, the advance into Kosovo, the firefights and bombs in southern Iraq – but nothing that had meat on it. He did not believe himself to be suspected by either of the minders, but they seemed to live by a code of total secrecy and silence. In honesty, Carrick could say that he had not learned one item of intelligence that could have been presented as evidence of criminality in the Central Criminal Court.

  The target, Josef Goldmann, seemed indifferent to him. Always polite, but always distant. They met rarely – on the stairs, in the hallway – and then the Bossman was remote. Carrick would be asked how he was, how the school drive had gone, how he liked the Mercedes. He was no closer to the man than he had been on the day he had arrived. Always he was greeted with a smile, but behind the smile and the quiet voice was a wall. Light on his feet, almost dapper in his walk, slim and slight, with styled hair cut short on his scalp, the best suits on his back, fashionable stubble on his cheeks and chin, the Bossman appeared like a host of other immigrant businessmen making their names, and fortunes, in London … The frustration of failure gnawed in Carrick when he reflected on his lack of success. It was worst when he had the meetings with his cover officer and his controller. Then he saw the disappointment on their faces. It would be the same the next evening, on the narrowboat, when he told George, the DCI, and Rob, the DS, that he had learned – frankly – fuck-all. There was no bug in the house, and no tag on the big Audi car. Grigori swept the house every other day, and the car each morning.

  But for the first time something in the pulse of the household had stirred that day. It beat faster and harder. He didn’t know what it was, only that it was something.

  He killed time before the drive to collect the kids. He sat in the ready room, read a paper for the third time and watched the security screens.

  It stood to reason: if it didn’t improve – and fast – George and Rob would be hacking at the old calculator, Katie would be offering up an inventory of cost against effectiveness and they’d be cutting the cable. Too damn soon he’d be going to Rawlings and saying, ‘I’m really sorry, Sarge, and it was good of you to get me this little number, but actually I don’t think it’s for me. Reckon I’ll be going, busted leg and all, for protection work overseas. But thanks for what you did for me.’ Simon Rawlings was a good guy, straight. He would be devastated and disappointed. Carrick did not know of an alternative to him coming out, operation abandoned. He might be told of it as soon as the next debrief session on the narrowboat. It bloody hurt, failure did.

  Josef Goldmann was taken back in time. He had heard the voice of Mikhail, and later that of Reuven Weissberg, and memories had flooded him.

  An ethnic Russian Jew, Goldmann was from the city of Perm, twenty hours by the fast firmeny train south-east from Moscow. It was the city used by Chekhov as the inspiration for his Three Sisters, and its name had been stolen to identify the ‘special regime’ prison camp of Perm-36. A few, today, would have delighted in the city’s association with a considerable man of letters, but many more would have acknowledged the links with an archipelago of gaols where politicals and criminals had been held and had laboured.

  From the age of ten, on his entry to secondary school, Josef Goldmann had known Reuven Weissberg. Jews, the minority in the city, either stood together or were bullied, abused, beaten. From its birth, it had been a relationship based on mutual need. Reuven, four years the older, had recognized that Josef possessed an extraordinary ability to understand money, its value and the use to which it might be put, and was sharp with figures that were to become balance sheets: Josef had accepted the need for protection and the source where it could be found. They had become inseparable.

  Reuven Weissberg had built little roofs over the heads of schoolkids whose parents were in the nomenklatura of the city’s life. A father was a noted physician in the central hospital, a factory manager or a senior police officer. The roof, the krysha, offered protection not from the snow and the springtime rain, but from the thugs who stalked school corridors and playgrounds. When it was known that Reuven Weissberg provided the roof for a kid, and was paid for it, the thugs had learned quickly to back off. There were fights. Knives flashed. Along with the knives there were clubs with leaded ends. A culture of premeditated and exceptional violence had swept through a school that was in a concrete jungle wasteland behind the Tchaikovsky Theatre of Opera and Ballet, and then the calm had descended.

  The head teacher and her department heads had been shocked, horrified, at the sight of scarred and bruised kids attending classes, then had marvelled as peace had fallen across the complex. That head teacher, a perceptive woman, had realized the cause of the violence and the cause of the calm and had, herself, bought a roof from the Jew teenager, Weissberg. For three more years there had been no hospitalization of students, and the pilfering of school property had ended. The head teacher, of course, had never written down in any report for the Education Committee why, for a brief period, the statistics of violence in her school had soared, or why, almost as suddenly as conflict ended on a battlefield, the statistics of property stolen from her students and her school had ebbed away, like water into sand. The conclusion of such a report, which remained unwritten, would have mirrored the judgement of another Jew kid, Goldmann. The provider of the roof had no fear, was a beast of ruthless cruelty, was a man-child capable of inflicting horrif
ic injuries without losing sleep. From the age of eleven to just past his thirteenth birthday, Josef Goldmann was the banker.

  He had had no training in investment, no background in economics, no tuition in finance. With a squeaky, not yet broken voice, he told Reuven Weissberg where the fees for the roofs should be put, what should be bought and how the money could be hidden. In the city of Perm, a portfolio had built and a treasure chest of bicycles, leather jackets and alcohol had gone into store for selling on when shortages dictated there was demand for the unobtainable. The new business had broken out of the perimeter walls of the school and had moved on to the city’s streets. Kiosk-holders had received visits from the hugely muscled Weissberg, who had explained the risks of fire engulfing a kiosk, and from Josef Goldmann – with a pimpled face and large spectacles perched on a shallow nose – who made fast estimations of what a kiosk business should take in a month and therefore what should be the cost of protection. Where there was refusal, there followed fire. Where there were rivals and a roof already in place, there were skirmishes. Reuven Weissberg was never bested.

  Defectors came. Tongue-tied and awkward, kids from other teenage gangs pleaded to be allowed to join the Weissberg brigada. Loyalties shifted. At eighteen, in one of the toughest cities in the Soviet Union, Weissberg was acknowledged as an avoritet, and Goldmann as a brigadir, and there were more than twenty gofers, couriers and hooligans behind them who were at the level of a boevik in the expanding banditskaya krysha. Then Weissberg was gone.

  More memories. With Weissberg a conscript into the army, Josef Goldmann, only thirteen, had no roof. Power shifting. The banditskaya krysha collapsing. The city of Perm, without the roof over him, was a frightening, threatening place. He had lain low, had concerned himself with his studies and with the money accumulated before Weissberg had left. Three times, in the following two years, he had been beaten – clothes ripped, spectacles smashed – and had thought himself lucky not to have been tied at the wrists and ankles and thrown into the waters of the Kama river.