He was more businesslike as he said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get out of this trip home, but I’ll be there day after tomorrow at the latest, sooner if I can.” He paused before he said, “How much have you managed to find out?”
“A lot, enough for you to do what you need to do, and hopefully enough for you to keep your side of the bargain, get them to leave me and Charlie alone. I mean, Jesus, they’re squeamish about the things we did for them, but they’ve been using some low-life gangsters this week.”
There was another pause, a second or two only, but in some way, Dan knew it was ominous, an emptiness creeping into his stomach.
He was expecting bad news, but still wasn’t sure he quite heard right when Patrick said, “Dan, Charlie’s dead. His body was found yesterday. He was in Croatia. I don’t know how they tracked him down.”
Dan immediately thought of Tito, the doctor in Innsbruck. Dan had never trusted him and he was pretty certain now that Tito must have played some part in selling Charlie down the river.
But he felt sick at the thought that Charlie had gone to Croatia, no doubt looking for Darija and the memory of another summer. He’d been overtaken by dreams of settling down and this was the price he’d paid.
Dan felt hollowed out by the news. He’d lost other friends in the last few weeks, but in Charlie’s death he’d lost one of the great certainties in his life. He’d always been there when he’d needed him, right up until the end, taking a bullet that had been meant for Dan. They’d all been there for each other at different times, but now Charlie was gone too, and Dan was on his own.
“Was it Brabham?”
“His people, yes. Maybe freelancers, although I know a lot of those resources were tied up with you.”
“How was he killed?”
He needed to know. He wasn’t sure why, but it mattered.
“Shot.”
“But how? Execution style, in a gun battle, sniper? How?”
“Dan, does it really matter? Charlie was a good guy, he got shot.”
Patrick was keeping something back, Dan knew it, and now he said, “Patrick, tell me how it happened. You know I’ll find out and I won’t be pleased if you’re holding back on me.”
There was another silence, but Dan didn’t fill it, and a little while later, Patrick sighed and said, “He had multiple gunshot and knife wounds. It looks like they tortured him.”
“To get information on me?”
“Maybe. Or if it was Brabham’s own team it might have been . . . retaliation, for Jack Carlton and Rob Foster.”
And at last, something filled the hollowness. Dan had liked Jack Carlton, just as Jack had liked Benoit Claudel, and maybe none of them had been possessed of enough humanity, but they’d lived by the same informal rules, had respected each other in some way. The anger he felt now wasn’t just for the death of Charlie Hamsun, for the loss of him, but for the manner of it.
For the first time in the last two weeks, Dan could see the way forward with total clarity. He knew exactly what he had to do now. He’d been thinking about his own future, and that was tied up in this, but he had to act now for Charlie and Benoit, for Mike Naismith and Karl Wittmann and the others.
Yes, they’d all done bad things, but they’d been good men, and they’d acted for the agency and the government that had killed them. Jack Redford, too, had been targeted by the people he’d served. And Dan didn’t feel he was in much of a position to take a moral stand, but he was the only one left, so he knew it was up to him, and that he would take this back to them.
“Dan . . .?”
“Patrick, when you get to Paris, get in touch with the Swedish Embassy—that’s where Inger will be, and she’ll give you the proof of what I’m about to tell you. Fourteen years ago, Harry Brabham—that’s Congressman Harry Brabham—murdered Sabine Merel in Paris. His father oversaw a crime against the French Government, including the murder of Jean Sainval of the DGSE, and has done everything in his power ever since to keep this hidden. But that’s what happened. Jack Redford knew about it, which is why Brabham knew exactly who Jacques Fillon was.”
“Harry Brabham?” The surprise was evident in his voice, backing up what Dan had suspected before, that Patrick had expected the evidence to point to the father. “You said you have proof?”
“We do, and if anyone happens to be listening to this and thinking of intercepting Inger Bengtsson, don’t bother because we’ve got more than one copy. We have the security tape, Patrick, the tape that Brabham ordered Jack Redford to steal from the DGSE.”
There was another brief silence, and then Patrick said, “I’ll be there tomorrow night, I’ll contact you and Inger as soon as I arrive.”
“Contact Inger at the Swedish Embassy. I won’t be in Paris—I have something else to do.”
“Yes, I can contact Inger,” he said, failing to mask his unease. “But, Dan, I hope your other plans have nothing to do with what I’ve just told you.”