A Spy's Life (26 page)

He dialled the mobile number and caught Frank Ollins in his car on the way to work. He sounded chipper and rested.

‘I was just wondering how things were progressing,’ said Harland.

‘They’re doing fine, thank you.’ From the tone it was also clear that Ollins wasn’t going to volunteer anything.

‘I wondered,’ said Harland nonchalantly, ‘what you meant by those questions last week? This business of how Alan Griswald held his computer just before we landed. What did you mean by that? What relevance does it have?’

‘Look, I have a feeling that you haven’t played straight with me, Harland.’

‘Oh, why?’

‘The more I thought about the people who attacked you in the UN building, the more I got to thinking that you had something that they wanted. I guess they probably took it from you too. Is that correct?’

‘The answer to that depends on your position, Ollins. We don’t know each other well. This affair gets more complicated by the minute and, frankly, I can’t afford to talk to someone who is going to share what I have with too many people.’

‘So you didn’t lose everything that night in the UN?’ Harland said nothing. ‘Okay, so are you suggesting a trade?’

‘That depends on what you have and what your position is.’

‘My position is this: we’re certain your plane was brought down, but as yet the Safety Board are out of the loop and it has not been disclosed to the public because it has terrifying implications. So, I want to find the people who did this. We are working on the same side.’

Harland decided to make the leap. ‘Well, inadvertently I didn’t tell you everything I knew.’

‘Ah,’ said Ollins. ‘Would you mind waiting while I stop the car? I don’t want to miss this.’ There was a pause. ‘Okay, what did you
inadvertently
forget to tell me?’

Harland explained about the wallet and how he had discovered after leaving the hospital that it contained a music disc encoded with some kind of message between the tracks of the music.

‘That’s certainly interesting, and since we are working on the same side, I’ll tell you something that you’ll keep under your hat. We found the phone that you took from Griswald’s pocket and we got to reviving those little circuit boards in the phone, which incidentally is a WAP, and you know what we found? We found a stored e-mail message of precisely one hundred and eighty digits in length. That also is encrypted.’

‘Then we may have two halves of a dollar bill,’ said Harland. ‘I’ve learned that Griswald’s investigation received two separate messages which only work together. I happen to have the bigger half but it’s worthless without yours.’

‘So we’re going to make a trade, aren’t we? What do you say we send these two pieces of information by e-mail to each other at nine o’clock my time – two yours?’

Harland said that seemed fine. He gave the Widdershins address and wrote down Ollins’s.

Then something occurred to Ollins. ‘What happens if you decode this material before I do? You’re going to send it to me, right?’

‘If that’s a reciprocal arrangement, yes.’

Ollins agreed, but Harland wasn’t ready to hang up quite yet. ‘What about those questions you were asking me? What did you mean? Obviously they had something to do with the phone because you asked whether it had been shielded by the computer.’

‘Now, that one isn’t for free.’

‘But you think that this is part of the solution as to how the plane went haywire in the last seconds of the flight?’

‘It’s not the cause, it’s a symptom. And that’s all I am prepared to say. Be seeing you.’

Ten minutes later the strand of code arrived. Harland had not the first idea what to do with it and felt rather deflated. The three calls he’d made that morning had each brought him hard intelligence, but not understanding. Codes were all very well, but his interest and faith in that side of intelligence work had always been slight. They distracted from the human issues of motive and betrayal. But he did have Griswald’s secret and he had to find a way of decrypting it. His only idea was to see if The Bird knew anyone who could tackle it.

In the next hour Harland made a few more calls, the first to Philip Smith-Canon, Tomas’s neurologist, whom he arranged to meet later in the afternoon. Then he put in a call to the Secretary-General’s office and left a message requesting that someone, preferably Jaidi himself, prevail on Reeve to help him. Lastly he got hold of The Bird, who had been riding out on The Ridgeway.

Cuth listened with undimmed enthusiasm, but said the only hope of their being able to meet in the next twenty-four hours was if Harland was prepared to travel to Cheltenham for the New Year’s Eve race meeting the next day. Cuth had a part share in a horse which stood a better than average chance in the 2.35. Macy was in the syndicate and would be there also. They would look in at the Arkel Bar in the members’ enclosure periodically throughout the afternoon. Harland explained a few of the things he wanted to talk about in an oblique fashion and mentioned that he wanted something decrypted. Cuth told him to bring all the material. Then he inquired as to what sort of company he’d been keeping over the last few days. Harland understood that he was asking whether he was being watched. He replied that he had seen quite a few old friends since arriving in London.

‘I see,’ said The Bird. ‘Well, let’s keep this to ourselves. A private drink at the races, eh?’ Harland smiled. It would be good to see both of them again.

The Neurological Unit to which Tomas had been transferred was contained in an unpromising red-brick hospital in Bloomsbury. Harland arrived there as it was getting dark. The lights shone out on a deserted pavement; there was very little sign of activity. A building in a coma, thought Harland.

He knew perfectly well that he should have summoned the energy over the weekend to visit Tomas, but the analogy with his own terror of imprisonment and pain was too close for him.

Dr Smith-Canon appeared soon after Harland announced himself at the reception and insisted they go straight away to Tomas’s room. He said progress was good, considering the severity of his injuries, but Harland should prepare himself to see Tomas – it was an unsettling sight at first.

He was led into a soft-lit room. A nurse rose from a chair, clutching a magazine to her breast. She looked from Smith-Canon to Tomas and back again and said there had been no change in his condition. The doctor nodded and, sensing Harland’s hesitation, guided him by the elbow to the side of the bed.

Tomas’s upper body was raised at an angle of thirty degrees. His head was encased in a helm of bandages and elsewhere there were pads and dressings which marked the places where the bullets had entered. A tracheotomy collar had been fitted to his neck to allow him to breathe. Tubes ran to his nose and mouth and from under the covers to his stomach. The machines beside and behind the head of the bed hissed and sucked and occasionally gasped in a rhythm of their own.

Smith-Canon said Tomas needed constant attention at this stage. For instance, it was necessary to prevent the tracheotomy tube from becoming blocked by mucus. But Harland’s attention was distracted by the air in the room which was warm and moist and overlaid by a brisk, medical odour.

Smith-Canon took hold of Tomas’s right hand and felt the pulse. Then he bent over his face and shone a torch into an eye which he held open by pulling the eyelid upwards with his fingertips. Harland saw the light glance through a very small, expressionless pupil. The doctor let the eyelid drop and turned to Harland.

‘I’m afraid there’s no sign of consciousness but that can be deceptive: often a patient will creep towards consciousness and although he appears to be dead to the world he can be fully aware of his surroundings.’

He talked Harland through the equipment around Tomas’s bed, explaining that he would have the tracheotomy for many months yet, probably for all his life. For the moment he was being fed by a tube which went straight into his stomach, but this might have to be changed over time because of the risk of the patient aspirating regurgitated food. Arrangements had been made to cope with the bowel and bladder, and these too would need to be reviewed.

Harland looked at his son’s face. It wasn’t quite vacant. There was definitely a look of his mother, and in the crease of his forehead he read an expression of frozen apprehension. He wondered whether this would be lifelong, but he didn’t ask the doctor. He was too overwhelmed by the sense that Tomas, whatever his problems, had been effectively snatched from him just as he had come to accept him as his son.

The doctor looked at Harland sympathetically.

‘I know, it’s all rather unpleasant. But it’s best that you’re fully aware of the situation. He’s going to need an awful lot of care, and there are many hurdles along the way which I can explain to you in a moment. But first I’d like you to do something for me. I want you to sit and talk to him. I think it would perhaps be best if you did this alone.’

He nodded to the nurse with a smile. When she had left, he said, ‘I believe it’s time we started using his real name. Of course I shall maintain his file and records in the name of Lars Edberg, but if we continue to address him as Lars, he may simply fail to recognise it. On the other hand, his real name is bound to mean something to him. The same may apply to use of the English language. I don’t know how well he spoke English, but even if he was a fluent speaker, I believe his birth language would be better. His mother – have you had any luck tracing her?’

Harland shook his head.

‘Well, it’s imperative that she’s found. When he comes round, his understanding will be not impaired, but he won’t be able to communicate the slightest wish. It’s an extremely frightening experience and can rapidly lead to depression. This is often expressed by the patients locking themselves in further by refusing to attempt to communicate – it’s the only thing they can control. But there are several ways for him to communicate – for instance the use of an eyelid, or the vertical movement of a pupil. Locked-in patients can also be trained to alter the activity in their brain so that they can move a cursor on a computer screen.’ He paused and glanced at Tomas. ‘But this is all a little way down the road yet. The main aim now is to get him awake. So would you sit here for a few moments and talk about things that would mean something to him?’

Harland was aware that the very last thing he wanted was to be left alone with Tomas’s lifeless form. In some way he was repelled by what he saw and that filled him with guilt.

‘I know it will be awkward at first,’ said Smith-Canon. ‘But open your heart to him. Talk about things that mean a lot to you. The nurse will be just outside if you need assistance and when you’ve finished she’ll know where to find you. Then we’ll have a chat.’ He smiled and departed.

Harland moved to the chair at the head of the bed and sat for a few moments, wondering how the hell to start. He cursed himself that he had asked Tomas so very little about his life.

‘Tomas? I hope you can hear me. The doctor says that you may be able to even though you’re in a very deep sleep.’ He stopped, leaned forward to the boy’s head and fought the fleeting fear of intimacy. His mind went back to the villa in Prague. How odd it was that now he spoke quietly into a person’s ear, a person who could not interrupt, object or walk away. ‘It’s difficult for me to know what to say because I realise I was far too wary when we met for the first time. I asked you nothing about yourself … nothing about you … and so I don’t know much about your life. If you can hear this, I’d like you to know how much I regret my attitude. I also want you to understand that I accept you as my son.’ He faltered for a moment. His eyes came to rest on Tomas’s hands. The fingers were long and delicate, almost like a woman’s. He was shocked that he had not noticed them before.

He started again. ‘Perhaps you’d like to hear how I met your mother. I know her as Eva, but she has a real name, which you know and I don’t. I was a young man – younger than you are now – and on my first posting abroad. It was actually more of a training session with a little work thrown in. It wasn’t difficult and I had a lot of time to get to know Rome and make friends. You know how we met because you told me about it. Your mother has remembered it more or less right. We were in a restaurant and I sat next to her and by the end of the evening I was lost to her. It’s impossible to talk about these things without sounding like an idiot. But I was smitten. From then on we spent a lot of time together, but because we were both working in intelligence we had to keep our relationship secret. In the end we found it was easier to leave Rome at the weekends. We stayed in some pretty run-down places. One time we went to Ancona, a resort on the Adriatic, for a couple of days. That was a happy time. We could just see the Dalmatian coast from our bedroom window. The Romans used to call it Illyria. We promised each other that one day we’d go there together. Some promise. I suppose we both knew neither of us would be able to keep it.’ He paused. ‘God, I wish I was better at this. I feel I’m failing you again. Perhaps the doctor is right that you would respond better to Czech. That’s why I’m going to try to trace your mother and bring her here. That’s what I’m going to be doing over the next few days so I won’t be able to come and see you. But when I get back I will come and we can work out a lot of things.’

At that moment Tomas’s head jerked backwards, and his entire body seemed to be racked by an electric current. His arms flew into the air, his fingers splayed in fright. One leg kicked out, the other folded towards his stomach. Harland watched horrified as the muscles and veins just beneath the tracheotomy collar bulged and Tomas’s face went puce. Then all four extremities began a slow rhythmic motion. Harland leapt up, tipping the chair over, and called out.

‘He’s waking. He’s moving. He’s coming to.’ Before the words were out the nurse was through the door and pushing him aside. She snatched a syringe on a tray nearby, held it up to the light then injected Tomas in the buttock. The movement in the legs and arms began to subside and his head slipped back to the pillow.

‘Why aren’t his eyes open?’ asked Harland. He turned and saw Smith-Canon.