Timebomb : A Thriller (9781468300093) Read online

  ‘I can’t believe it of Simon. It’s impossible.’

  Viktor had told him what was ‘impossible’ in a voice that carried no emotion. Brief and factual. Nothing in the words he used betrayed Viktor’s feelings on the matter, but his eyes were not so utterly controlled. In them, not hidden, was his contempt for a foreign worker allowed so close to the family. Viktor was not Josef Goldmann’s man. Two low-ranking officers in the apparatus of State Security, working in Perm – once with responsibility for political dissent, later in a department operating alongside the criminal police and offering protection to businessmen during the great sell-off of national assets – had realized they worked from the wrong side of the fence. One had been Viktor, the other Mikhail. One had been outwardly sophisticated, the other outwardly a thug. They had resigned from State Security and had climbed the fence – stepped across the ditch, whatever – and gone to an apartment in a tower block. They had been admitted by the old lady, had stood in the presence of Reuven Weissberg and offered themselves to him. They had brought with them a degree of respectability in the provision of protective roofs, a deep knowledge of the work practices of their former employers and a network of contacts. They had stayed together when Reuven had tired of Perm and moved to Moscow with his financial adviser and launderer, but had split when Goldmann had transferred his office to London, and Weissberg had relocated to Berlin. In Josef’s mind, and he had seen nothing to dislodge the thought, Viktor’s loyalty was first to Reuven Weissberg, second to the Goldmann family. In Berlin, Reuven Weissberg lived the life almost of a peasant, and employed no foreigners … Not Josef Goldmann’s way.

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ Esther slapped her hands on her thighs in frustration. ‘He doesn’t drink. It’s ridiculous.’

  Was it a big or small matter? That was the confusion. Viktor had brought back from Russia the offer of the deal. It had gone through the fingers of Josef Goldmann and been referred to Reuven Weissberg. He, Josef Goldmann, would have turned it down the day it was presented to him, but the decision had not lain with him. He remembered his surprise on being told that a deal was to be made, and a market found for what was on sale, and arrangements for delivery concluded. It was beyond the scope of his experience – but he would not have dared gainsay Reuven Weissberg. It was, now, close to completion, and his trusted British-born driver was locked in a common police cell, accused of driving while above the legal limit of alcohol consumption.

  ‘You should do something. Arrange a lawyer. Get him out.’ She waved her arms, an actress on a stage, across furniture, at artwork, over carpets and drapes. ‘What’s all this for if you can do nothing? Are you powerless?’

  Esther was beautiful to him. She was admired in company, was a honey-pot to men, satisfied him in bed to the limits of his vanity, and asked little of him. When her arms waved and her throat was thrown back, the diamonds mounted in rings, bracelets and necklaces flashed. He refused her nothing. His frown deepened. He was not in Perm or Moscow where a phone call, quoting his relationship to Reuven Weissberg, could be made to a police official. He was beyond the immediate reach of his patron. The satisfaction of the evening was gone, because a goddam driver was drunk and in a police cell, because she challenged him and he couldn’t rise to it.

  ‘So, tell me, what are you going to do?’

  He stood and pushed her aside, went to the table by the door, lifted a telephone and dialled the internal number. It was the mark of the worry hovering over him – two men were driving the merchandise towards a pick-up and exchange point, an onward purchaser was in place, and the verifier of the merchandise’s integrity had been approached – that he wanted only to be in his bed, to sleep and lose the weight of the cloud. He asked Viktor to bring Johnny Carrick up. He had liked Simon. He had trusted him, within limits – there was never business talk in the car when Simon drove. He had thought Simon grateful for the inflated salary paid him, and that gratitude dictated self-discipline. He put the telephone down heavily. Was Viktor right? Should there be no foreigners in the house? But there was need of them, a goddam proven need. He heard the knock on the door.

  ‘Come.’

  Carrick stood, was not asked to sit. Viktor was behind him.

  Josef Goldmann paced. ‘Is there anything I can do, Johnny? Anything I should do?’

  Carrick thought of the man who had pulled him from the wreckage of an under-protected Land Rover, who had put a tourniquet on his leg that might have been the sole reason it was not amputated, who had stayed with him, held his hand and told him bad jokes until the casevac chopper had come in. He thought of the man who had visited him in the field hospital before his flight home.

  ‘Straight up, sir, I wouldn’t have thought so. Send a top-flight lawyer down there and all you do is draw attention to yourself.’

  He thought of an engineered meeting. The pub that surveillance had identified – better than an ‘accidental’ recognition in the street. He saw himself going through the door and seeing Simon Rawlings throwing darts, waiting his turn, then expressing all the crap, his surprise, and mouthing off that it was a bloody small world.

  Esther Goldmann sat upright in the chair. ‘We should do anything possible. What is possible?’

  He thought of himself going to the bar and calling back, asking what his sarge would have: being told it was the usual, Coke, ice, lemon. Had ordered a lime and soda for himself, had lied, not with difficulty, that he himself no longer touched alcohol, didn’t miss it and felt better for it. Had been asked, with the noise of the pub bar flowing round them, the obvious and banal question – what was he up to now?

  ‘There isn’t anything, ma’am. It has to take its course. Forgive me if this sounds brutal, sir, but he put himself into that situation and he’ll have to get himself out of it. Nothing you can do will take him out of that cell tonight.’

  He thought of the lies and deceit that had tripped off his tongue in the pub. First a fact, then into legend. The fact was that he could have stayed in the army – just not the Parachute Regiment – in one of the support corps: signals, intelligence, logistics, ordnance. They weren’t for him. Then into the legend. Joined a firm that did bodyguard work, a firm that couldn’t get their hands on enough ex-Para guys. The acquired biography – the legend in SCD10-speak – was, of course, checkable and would stand examination, and there was a bogus CV available from a front address up in Leeds: an office in Leeds, run by a guy and two girls, supplied proof to the legends of maybe half a dozen undercovers. All lies from then on, up damn near to closing time, and the run of them broken only when Simon Rawlings was called up to throw darts at the board.

  Josef Goldmann turned on his heel, as if this was a crux moment. ‘What are the consequences of this for Simon?’

  He saw the Bossman’s mix of anxiety and irritation. The legend said he had gone on the bodyguard courses, checkable, and had escorted starlets and millionaires, checkable. All a lie. Johnny Carrick had left the army on a medical discharge, had gone before an interview board at the headquarters of the Avon and Somerset Police, had been lucky enough to have a former naval officer – now doing human resources – on the board, who had taken a shine to him, who had remarked that he was probably, duff leg and all, a damn sight fitter than most they recruited. He had sailed through a probationary half-year, then been posted to the inner-city station at the Bridewell, had found himself the oldest among the juniors and realized he did not fit easily with them; he had badly missed the buzz of active service with a front-line regiment.

  It had happened by chance. Crown Court security had been beefed up to protect an undercover officer whose evidence was going to send away a drugs-importation syndicate. Police had crawled through the court complex, been on every landing, every lift, every door. He’d heard the chatter among the full-time court staff about the undercover – life at risk, wormed inside a gang of serious people, had laid a finger on untouchables – had known it was for him. He’d gone to see the officer who had supported him at the interview
board and been encouraged: ‘Why not? They can only turn you down. My advice, give it a thrash.’ Before the trial had ended he had sent in his application to join the Serious Crime Directorate, Section 10, and when the letter had gone into the box he’d rated himself able to live with lies.

  ‘I would assume, sir – but, of course, I don’t know, because courts and the police are outside my experience – that Simon will be released, then summonsed to appear in court. He’ll end up with a criminal record and a driving ban for something between a year and eighteen months.’

  ‘For definite?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Only in the most exceptional circumstances would there be – I assume – an acquittal and no criminal record, or just a fine and no driving ban.’

  ‘I like you, Johnny.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘We have both found your work satisfactory, and the children like you.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  He saw Josef Goldmann look at his wife, and he saw her, almost imperceptibly, nod agreement. The Bossman’s eyes lifted, would have focused on Viktor, who was behind him. Then the hesitation … Carrick thought he had taken advantage of a situation – dumped on Simon Rawlings, whom he had never seen drink alcohol and whose breath had never smelled of it … who had been the saviour of his life, possibly, and his leg, probably. Then the hesitation was wiped.

  ‘You will take his place, Johnny. I offer you his position.’

  ‘That’s very kind, sir. I am very happy to accept. Only thing, sir, I’ve a family matter tomorrow evening that’s important to me. I’d be grateful if I could be excused duty then – Simon was covering for me. Thank you, sir, thank you, ma’am. Goodnight.’

  He was gone. Viktor watched him go through the door, but Carrick didn’t meet his eye. A cell door had slammed shut, but for Carrick another had opened wide – he couldn’t fathom it, just couldn’t. But climbing the ladder would make life harder, would demand more care on the legend’s preservation, would expose him to more thorough inspection.

  He wiped the mud, clods of it, from his boots. Then he took the sheet of old newspaper, passed to him by Mikhail, and cleaned the leather. If there had been a stream nearby, or a pond in the trees, he would have washed them. It was not the interior of the car that should be protected, but his grandmother would scold him if he came back to their home and tramped dirt on the floors. He worked hard at the sides, soles and uppers of his boots and did not finish until he was certain they would leave no mess on the carpets. Mikhail watched him. Satisfied, Reuven Weissberg put his boots back on, laced them loosely and opened the car door.

  He never used the rear seat when Mikhail drove him and they were alone. They rode together always, in silence if he wished it and in conversation if he did not. Sometimes he would give Mikhail the role of sounding-board and demand his opinion, and sometimes he would ignore him. The former KGB officer would not have dreamed, or dared, to take the liberty of commenting on plans and intentions unless requested to do so. Two differences existed. Nobody paid Reuven Weissberg. He paid Mikhail. He was a Jew and Mikhail was not. But, other than his grandmother, no one was closer to him than his minder. And such a man as Reuven Weissberg, who was now in his fortieth year, needed protection. He could provide it, could put a secure krysha above the head of a businessman, a politician or an oil man, but his success required that an altogether more carefully built roof covered his own scalp. Once, that cover had slipped. Mikhail carried a Makharov in his belt and a PPK in the glove compartment, and he would have said that Mikhail’s loyalty to him could not be doubted. Once, Mikhail had been tested. It came at a price.

  It would take them six hours to drive to the apartment. They would be back in the early morning, before the dawn washed thinly over the city, but his grandmother would be up and dressed, waiting for him.

  Mikhail would take a route carrying them first due south to the town of Chelm, which they would skirt, then reach the feeder road for the highway to Lublin. Lublin to Warsaw, and Warsaw to Poznan. After Poznan they would join the best road in Poland, then cross the frontier. An hour after negotiating Immigration and Customs, when staff were either in their huts or asleep, he would be back at the door of his home, and his grandmother would greet him, and he would hold her frail, aged body in his arms.

  He paid many men for their services, drivers and couriers, thieves and killers, but none was allowed to be as close to him as Mikhail, who slept in the next room and carried the weapons, and who could scent danger. He’d always had that skill, which had failed him only once – and had many times served him well. Weissberg tolerated minimal familiarity from this one man, a degree more than he would have accepted from Josef Goldmann, whose talent was in the manipulation of money.

  The car pulled away, left the parking area empty behind them. The lights swept over the trees where, buried from sight, was the house built of wood planks – and inside a barking dog but not its owner. The beams flared back from the tree trunks.

  ‘You don’t believe I’ll find the grave.’

  Mikhail went at speed on the forest road and perhaps did not care to taunt him. ‘If you want to find it, I believe you will. I understand why you search.’

  Ahead, an owl flew low, was caught by the lights, veered from them and was lost in the trees. He had promised his grandmother that he would find it, and her life was ebbing.

  ‘When we come back … How many days?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Then I’ll look again .’ He let his hand rest lightly on Mikhail’s arm, near to the wrist and the fist that held the wheel. ‘It is demanded of me.’

  He closed his eyes and shut out the view of trees, pines and birches, racing past, and in his mind he heard the story of what had been done to Jews in the forest.

  Innocence is gone. I think I was lucky – or stupid – to have known innocence for a whole week.

  I am in Camp 1. I sleep in the top bunk of three in a dormitory barracks for women, and I am the youngest there, more a girl than a woman. The first nights I cried myself to sleep and the women around me cursed and said I disturbed them. I cried because I wanted to be with my family, close to my father and mother, everyone else. ‘Why are you making such a noise?’ I was asked, many times in the first night and the second. Each time I told the questioner I wanted to be reunited with my family, that I was fearful they would be shipped on to the east, to the new settlements, and that I wouldn’t be with them. Some women swore at me, and others tittered … but it was a week before I was told, and innocence was lost.

  In the first week I did not go out of Camp 1. All I saw of the world was the sky. I saw clouds, rain, and for two days there was fierce sunshine. There were men in Camp 1 but we were forbidden to speak to them, and the open ground inside the wire was patrolled by Ukrainians under the supervision of German officers. On the third day, a male prisoner was shot by an officer. He was in the ranks lined up for roll-call. It was dawn. He was sick. Those on either side of him tried to hold him upright, but he slipped from their grasp and fell in front of the officer. Then he vomited on the officer’s boots. The officer moved his boot from under the man’s head and away from his mouth, and took a pistol from the leather holster that was on his leather belt. He cocked it, aimed for the man’s head and fired. The bullet broke open the man’s skull, and there was blood with the vomit on the boot. He lay where he had been killed through the roll-call, and he was taken away only when we were sent to the workplaces. I couldn’t believe it, but he was dragged to the gate of Camp 1 by the same men who had tried to support him. They each had a leg and dragged his body as if it were a sack of rubbish.

  Later that day, the third, I saw through the window of the hut where I worked a prisoner carry a pair of boots into Camp 1. He cleaned them for an hour. He used his tunic to wipe off the vomit and blood, then spat on them and polished them with his undershirt. Of course, I cannot be exact in the time because there were no clocks in the hut, but I thought from the sun and the sha
dows beyond the window that it took him an hour to clean them.

  Inside Camp 1 there were places for work, but some of the men were escorted outside to the forest to cut timber. Some of the women were taken out to the officers’ compound for cleaning. Inside Camp 1 there were workshops for tailors, who cut and sewed uniforms for the Germans, a shoemaker’s shop, where leather saddles were made for the Germans’ horses, a place for mechanics and for carpenters, a hut where paints were stored, and the kitchen.

  I was sent to work in the kitchen within an hour of being separated from my family.

  We mixed soup for the men and for the women. We provided the food for all, except the officers, in Camp 1. What we made was foul, and only hunger prevented us vomiting or refusing it. In that week I wondered where my family was, and whether they had the same food as us, and whether it was as awful, and where the kitchen was that made it. It is important to understand that the camp was a cage, and I knew nothing of life beyond the fences that were interwoven with dead pine branches. When the needles fell from them and it became almost possible to see out, the men brought more and repaired the gaps.

  It was a miracle that my innocence lasted a whole week. It ended so suddenly.

  We were heating soup on the seventh day – it was in old metal dustbins that were on bricks above chopped logs that made the fire, and we stirred it with lengths of wood that had been stripped of bark.

  The capo was behind me and supervised an older woman who put potatoes into the water, and some turnips, but no meat. The capo was from Chelm and did not have to work; she was a Jewess but was privileged and carried a short whip. She was feared. I had forgotten she was behind me, I think tiredness and the ache in my stomach had made me forget her. Her name was Miriam.

  I said to the woman beside me, ‘My elder sister won’t eat this. She has a delicate stomach.’