SEVENTEEN
‘Boss.’ The relief in the syllable was almost comical. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Bit of a scrape.’
‘I heard gunshots.’
He thought about saying it had been a car backfiring, but couldn’t do it. He slumped, weary, his forehead against the cool glass of the booth. ‘It was a trap. The man chucked the bug out, then lay in wait. He’s dead. I’m okay, but I’m without a car or a phone. I’m calling from a public box.’
‘Where are you? I’ll come and pick you up.’
‘Too dangerous. They’ll be looking for me. No point letting them catch us both. I’m making my way back to town.’ A face appeared through the grimy glass inches from his own. Purkiss recoiled, but it was only a backpacker peering in. The adrenaline was dissipating but was still there, rendering him jumpy. He held up an index finger and the man stepped away, looking disgruntled.
‘Can you look up an address for me? It’s from the satnav in the man’s car. It comes up time and again as the starting point of his journey.’ He read it out, spelling each word, then said, ‘I’ll call you once I get a new phone.’
‘One more thing. Kendrick’s confirmed and is on his way. Same flight as you took yesterday. He should be here sevenish.’
He had made his way back towards the city with difficulty, keeping amongst the trees as much as possible to stay out of view of any search parties, but being forced back on to the road when the forest became impassable. He’d emerged at a bus stop just as a bus had come down the hill and had held up his hand hopefully. The driver hadn’t even slowed. The knees of Purkiss’s trousers were ripped and his face was pallid, and he supposed he would have been reluctant himself. Eventually a pick-up truck had stopped and the driver, with a good-humoured face beneath a peaked cap, had jerked his head at the back. Purkiss had climbed in and wedged himself between bundles of metal piping. When he’d spotted the phone booth on the outskirts he’d tapped the rear window of the cab and hopped off.
After his call to Abby he dialled again.
‘Vale.’
‘It’s me.’
‘Pay phone?’
‘Lost my own.’
He brought Vale up to date, leaving one detail until last. He’d wondered whether to reveal it at all, then decided.
‘At least one of the Service agents is working with Fallon.’ He explained. Vale listened in silence. After Purkiss had finished the silence continued to the point at which he wondered if the connection had been lost.
Vale said: ‘I’m pulling you out.’
‘No.’
‘You’re compromised beyond anything I could reasonably expect you to cope with.’
‘No.’
‘John. Listen to me. This has gone beyond tracking down Fallon. An operation involving numerous locals, some with military backgrounds, as well as not one but two or even more rogue Service personnel – it’s too big.’
‘So what do you propose?’
‘I’m going to make it official. Alert Century House.’
‘Fallon and his people will just go underground.’
‘If it means averting a disaster tomorrow –’
‘By cancelling the summit? That’s the point, isn’t it? That’s what Fallon wants.’
‘We can’t know that.’
‘I’ve told you. The answer’s no.’
‘For God’s sake, John. This is bigger than you and Fallon.’
‘Nothing’s bigger than that.’ Purkiss touched the bar, about to cut off the call. He said: ‘And if you bring the Service on board anyway, I’ll certainly be dead. Whichever of the agents it is that’s helping Fallon will panic and get rid of me post-haste.’ He pressed down, listened to the dial tone, then hung up.
*
At a little after three thirty Purkiss found a tired-looking department store in the outer suburbs, where he replaced his torn and filthy clothes and bought a new smartphone. He’d memorised Klavan’s number and those of the other two agents and added them to the contact list, then went outside and stood part-way down an alley where he could watch the street. He phoned Abby.
‘Got a fix on that satnav address,’ she said. ‘It looks like some sort of farm. East of Tallinn, about fifty kilometres.’
East: that was approximately the direction the driver had been heading when Purkiss had followed him. Abby continued: ‘You can see it for yourself on Google Earth, though you’ll get a better view on my monitor.’
‘Okay, thanks.’
‘And that memory stick you gave me.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s proving really hard to crack. Sorry.’
‘I have absolute faith in you, Abby.’
He punched in Teague’s number. When the man answered he said, ‘It’s Purkiss. Are you with Elle?’
‘Yes. Where are –’
‘I’m on the outskirts of town. Fallon’s people tried to run me off the road. I’ll explain later.’
‘Need us to pick you up?’
‘If you would.’ He gave the address. Teague rang off without comment. Purkiss pocketed his phone and stepped out into the sunlight.
He’d crossed a boundary, had never cut himself loose from Vale before. He wondered what the man would do. Vale would know there’d be no way of tracking Purkiss now, and wouldn’t waste time and whatever resources he had trying to do so. Instead, he might make good on his threat and alert Service headquarters and the Embassy. And then what? A police dragnet, which would uncover nothing that the months of extensive footwork by the Estonian intelligence services and SIS itself in preparation for the summit hadn’t already. Meanwhile, Rossiter and Teague and Klavan would be tipped off by the increased activity, and whichever of them was working with Fallon would either go to ground, as Purkiss had predicted, or would sit tighter than ever, not betraying themselves. Meanwhile the media would get hold of the story, no question. You couldn’t shut down a city without someone noticing. Panic would be stoked. And even if the summit went ahead regardless, the hysteria would be a propaganda coup for those who were opposed to the whole thing.
Vale knew this, which was why Purkiss was banking on his holding back. He’d be exasperated, furious even, but he might give Purkiss the breathing space to find a way in.
*
‘Sixteen hours left.’ Rossiter paced, terse choppy steps in a stereotyped route across the office carpet. ‘And nothing. No leads.’
Teague was perched languidly on the corner of a desk. Klavan stood, arms folded. Purkiss was the only one of them to have taken a chair.
He’d told them everything about his tracking of the car into the forest, the ambush and subsequent chase, and the death of the man over the edge. He left out the part about the satellite navigation unit. This time Rossiter hadn’t reacted with fury at his independent action.
‘I wouldn’t say no leads,’ said Purkiss. ‘We have what you’ve discovered.’
In the car on the way back, after Purkiss had finished his account, Klavan and Teague filled him in on what they had unearthed in the mean time. Klavan’s contact at the Ministry of Defence had told her that Abram Zhilin, the dead man from the toilet cubicle in the nightclub, had served in the same unit of the Scouts Battalion, part of the Estonian Maävagi or Ground Force, as Lyuba Ilkun. Ilkun and Zhilin hadn’t been exact contemporaries – he was six years older than her – but their time in the unit had overlapped by a year or so. Neither of them had been especially distinguished soldiers but neither had attracted negative attention, there were no disciplinary offences on record. Interestingly, both had left at the same time, five years earlier.
‘Of Ilkun there’s no subsequent trace until she turned up in the club,’ said Elle. ‘But Zhilin went to work for a private security firm here in the city. My contact found a reference request. Not an uncommon career move after the army. The firm still exists.’ She turned in her seat to face Purkiss. ‘Here’s where it gets interesting. The name of the firm is Rodina Security. Rodina is Russian for motherland. Their website is entirely in Russian, with no Estonian version.’
‘And Zhilin is – was – an ethnic Russian,’ said Teague. ‘Plenty of businesses target a minority clientele, of course. It’s just intriguing, given everything else.’
Elle: ‘Rodina Security handles routine work, according to the site. Bodyguard jobs, patrolling of private and corporate residences, countersurveillance.’
‘Any record of run-ins with the law?’ asked Purkiss.
‘We don’t know yet.’
*
At the office Purkiss remembered something and asked to use one of the computers. He called up the website he used to store photographs and downloaded the shots he’d taken of the man who had got out of the car along the coast road, the man he’d taken to be the one debriefing Lyuba Ilkun on Abby’s audio feed. The other three peered at the monitor. The resolution was poor but in one or two pictures the man’s face was clear: grim, set, the features of somebody with purpose.
‘Looks military,’ said Elle.
Rossiter: ‘And, dare I say it, Slavic.’
Elle switched places with Purkiss and emailed copies of the pictures to her contact at the Ministry of Defence. Rossiter stood looking down at the desk for a moment, then said: ‘All right. Are we agreed that for the moment our only lead, such as it is, is this security firm? Then we take a two-pronged approach. Two of us use every means at our disposal to find out what we can about the firm. History, personnel figures, finances, complaints, trouble with the police. The other two visit the firm’s offices and try to get an audience with somebody senior, on the pretext of wanting to hire them.’ He looked at them in turn, calmer, in charge once more. ‘Purkiss, you visit the offices. If the firm itself is involved in all this, they’ll know what each one of us looks like from the Ilkun woman, so it makes no difference which of us goes. But we have the local knowledge and contacts to do the financial and other searches. You don’t.’
‘Can’t argue with that.’ Purkiss stood and stretched, easing the stiffness that was beginning to creep back into his limbs. ‘Who comes with me?’
‘I will,’ said Elle. The glances shot back and forth between the three agents, too quickly to be interpreted, but Purkiss thought he knew what they were thinking: whoever went with him would be running a risk. Rossiter nodded.
‘Yes, it makes sense. A woman will be less immediately threatening.’ He removed his tie and handed it to Purkiss. ‘You’ll need this. It’s a bit late to get a suit.’
Elle’s phone rang. She listened, murmured a question or two, then said to the others, ‘My contact. The man in those pictures you took is Venedikt Kuznetsov. Former Scouts Battalion, same infantry company as the other two, but several years before either of them. Reached the rank of ensign, a junior officer, before being imprisoned following a court martial in 1994 for beating a civilian half to death.’
Rossiter said to Teague: ‘Get on to him.’
‘We’ve come across him already,’ said Elle. ‘He’s named on the Rodina Security website as their managing director.’
*
In the lift down to the basement Elle said: ‘If we don’t make some progress soon, we’re going to have to hand it over.’
‘To the police? The Service people at the Embassy? No.’
‘We might have no option –’
‘If we do that, Fallon will get away. He’ll go even further to ground than he has already. He’s clever, he knows he won’t be able to escape the combined resources of two countries’ intelligence services while staying active in the field.’
‘But is that so bad? If it aborts whatever he’s got planned, keeps the summit alive, does it matter?’
‘It’ll only postpone his plans. And if he disappears now we may never have another chance to get him.’
‘You may never.’
He stared ahead as the doors opened. ‘If you like.’
She kept a pace behind him as he strode towards the car, then said quietly, ‘I wasn’t being snide. In your situation I imagine I’d do exactly the same.’
She pressed the remote control for the car’s locks, swung into the driver’s seat. Purkiss got in the passenger side. He pulled the door shut and then his head snapped round at her.
The gun must have been in some sort of holster on the side of her seat. She was left-handed and she held it low and pointing across her body at a slight angle upwards towards his head, the barrel grotesquely elongated by the silencer screwed to its end.