The Outsiders (6 page)

‘We’ll be fine,’ he said.

‘It’ll be good,’ she said. ‘I mean it. Lots of fun.’

‘It’ll be great.’

‘Better than that. Brilliant. Can’t wait. One long laugh – thanks.’

Their hands were together and they drank their coffee, spearing looks at their watches. They were taking liberties with the time, as they talked through where they’d meet in the morning for the drive to Stansted. He told her about the tickets and she promised to pay him back for hers. They talked a bit about cost-sharing when they were there, and then they stood up. Posie had her arms around his neck and gave him a long slow kiss. Jonno thought that house-sitting with the cat at Geoff and Fran’s Villa Paraiso might be Paradise and heaven rolled into one. Other punters in the coffee shop eyed them, one or two laughing. It was a good moment – no, a great one.

Out on the pavement they did cheek kisses, and had another hug, then went their separate ways.

The Major dominated the meeting.

He had not come this far, in an executive jet, to exchange small-talk.

The shipping agent they met would have expected a session with the doors closed and the windows keeping out the wind that came off the inland sea. They talked bulk and tonnage. The cargo was opiate paste, or crude heroin, refined in Ashgabat where the factory was cheaper than in Trabzon: Turkmenistan cost a pittance compared to Turkey. He preferred always to meet face to face so that he could watch a man’s eyes when they talked business. The Major believed he could recognise half-truths, evasions. Men were dead because they had not taken account of that skill.

The smoke from the shipping agent’s cigarettes was whipped away from his face by the gusts off the Caspian. They were outside. The temperature was hovering between fourteen and fifteen degrees, and they sat at tables by the pool, which was drained, and looked out over a patio area, the beach and the water. They were the only people who had ventured outside. The Major did not talk business in hotel rooms or restaurants. He regarded himself as a prime target of the Americans and wanted open spaces. He didn’t use mobile phones unless he had clearance from the Gecko. The shipping agent was cold – he had worn his best silk suit to the meeting – and showed his discomfort. They could not be overheard as they talked money. The deal involved a margin of trust: the shipping agent would build into his price what he must pay to Customs officials at each end of the transhipments across Azerbaijani territory. The Major could not verify the figures but his word was backed by his reputation – and the menace of those with him.

He did not cheat those he did business with. He pressed for hard bargains, but good ones. The threat of violence hung over every clinched deal if honesty was not two-sided. It was the same as it had been when he had started out, and the same for all of those who existed in that twilight world and under that particular roof. Authority was backed by violence. He knew of no other way to guarantee control. It was done, agreed.

He held out his hand, the gesture that pledged his word better than any lawyer’s contract. The shipping agent flinched. The Major had watched the man’s eyes all through the meeting: they had flitted across his hand, his warrant officer’s and the master sergeant’s. The missing fingers enhanced the threat. The warrant officer had sat behind the shipping agent, with his back to him, and had watched the hotel building; the master sergeant had a view of the area where the recliners were stacked and into the car park. The shipping agent shook the hand. The meeting was finished.

There was material to be sent from the laptop.

‘Is the Gecko back?’ He was not.

A shrug.

‘For fuck’s sake, he only went to buy pills for toothache.’ But he had not yet returned.

He led them inside. He would go back to his suite and the girl would be there. She’d had enough time to see her hair fixed – the last time he would pay for it. He reminded himself to take back the earrings before they flew.

‘Send the Gecko to me when he gets back.’

By her own admission, Liz Tremlett was a bit player in the world of international diplomatic relations. Until that morning she would have bet against herself on negative involvement in intelligence gathering. She had been called by the front desk.

The resident spook, Hugh, was across the border in Armenia on the monthly brainstorm meeting, his PA with him, and the ambassador was home on leave. The first secretary was in the northern town of Saki, opening a secondary school funded by British aid, and the military attaché was at home with influenza. Anyway, his home was in Tbilisi, Georgia, and . . . She had reached the spook by open phone and been told what to do. Paramount was that Bear should be with her every inch of the way. She had sensed, down the line, a crackling disappointment that the man was not where she sat.

Among her normal work, Liz Tremlett organised the annual English-language essay competition in Baku. She would have described the boy as pitiful. No spare weight on him, light stubble on his cheeks, an abrasion on his forehead and another on an elbow. His jeans – threadbare and faded – were torn at a knee and his glasses were bent. They were in an interview room behind the reception and security area but still cut off from the main staircase and lift. She should have been arranging the guest seating for the ambassador’s monthly dinner, or a greetings-card list, or working at pre-publicity for a Welsh choir’s visit – and there was preparation to be done for the Confederation of British Industry seminar . . .

Having the Bear with her was massively reassuring. He was a man of few words, had been a company sergeant major in a commando of marines, and was the embassy’s security officer. He was fit, athletic and owned a presence.

What was the visitor’s name? Natan. Would Natan, please, stand up? The boy had done so. Would he, please, extend his arms sideways and open his hands? Liz Tremlett had watched the Bear frisk the boy. Opened hands showed he had no explosive trigger device. The Bear had crouched at the boy’s feet and slid off the trainers. He had bent them, then put them on the X-ray tray by the metal-detector arch in front of the security door. She had seen the boy shiver and known it was not cold that caused it. Watching the shaking in the shoulders, the tremor in the hands and the slack jaw, she had known that the boy had made a life-changing decision by walking into the building. Would Natan, please, empty his pockets of everything metallic? It was done: belt, spectacles, mobile phone, loose change, everyday paraphernalia. She had led, and the Bear had followed the boy through the door while the machine had scanned his possessions. Liz had reckoned that any sudden movement the boy had made would have been curtailed by a chop, closed fist, on the back of that fragile neck.

The Bear had sat at the side of the table, poised, and she had sat behind it with her pencil and notepad. The boy was on a hard chair in front of her. The Bear had murmured to her that she should keep it disciplined and under control, not allow it to ramble, that a ‘walk-in’ was likely to be some sad no-hoper with a life history of injustice. A gold-dust moment was unlikely . . . but the possibility existed.

She did as she was advised. Date and place of birth, names of parents. She might have been doing benefits in a small-town social-security office at home. Passport details – two were handed to the Bear and he’d glanced at them. A fractional wintry smile had slipped over his lips. She was given the passports and realised that none of the details they carried matched what she had already written down.

Headlines slipped on to her pages.
Communications/hacker/encrypter
. She found his voice hard to understand.
Russian-based crime boss
. The English was what she might have called ‘lazy’, a sort of vernacular and electronic shorthand. His employer was
Petar Alexander Borsonov
, he whispered. She had to strain to hear him.
The Major
. Associates were
the warrant officer/the master sergeant
. They did
drugs
, and
money washing
, and
trafficking
, and
killing . . . state killing
.

They did
state killing
and they were protected by a
roof
. Liz Tremlett, earnest, enthusiastic, a young woman who read every Foreign Office advisory that came to her screen, had no idea what a
roof
was. The question must have shown in her eyes, and it was answered. She flipped her notepad page, scribbled again.

They kill for FSB. FSB is the roof. The roof protects. The roof is the state and the state protects. They kill for the state. They cannot be harmed as long as they are the servants of the state.

She was out of her depth now. She caught the eye of the Bear and murmured, ‘Heavy stuff, if true,’ and the Bear mouthed that it was Six work or more likely Central Intelligence Agency business. She felt a brush of annoyance, as if a prize had gone beyond reach. Still the boy shivered, and she sensed he was restless, as if time had slipped too far and the fear grew in him. He’d glanced twice at his wristwatch. She understood the enormity of what he’d done, the scale of his treachery. It was true betrayal.

She said quietly, ‘Natan, I really appreciate that you’ve come to us with your story, and we take very seriously the allegations you make, but this is far above my level and— Look, where can you be contacted? What numbers can I pass to the relevant people?’

He was slight enough, and seemed to shrivel further. ‘We are gone tomorrow. We go to Constanta. You think I would allow a stranger to call me? You think I would expose myself? At five o’clock tomorrow, I will try to be in a bar in Constanta. That is Romania, where we go to do more business. Do I trust you? Perhaps, a little. Do I trust you enough to give you my life? What do you think? I thought it too difficult to go to the Americans who hide inside their fortresses, their embassies, but I thought it more of interest to the British. In Constanta, I will speak to an intelligence officer, which you are not.’

‘I can only repeat, Natan, what I said. We take very seriously what you’ve told us. It’ll be passed on, higher and—’

It was the first time the Bear had spoken directly to him. ‘Natan, why is it of more interest to us?’

The boy’s head turned. He spat, ‘He killed your man. Enough? He kicked your agent until he died. The Major did it, all three of them. Once we stopped near to Pskov and they wanted to piss. The lay-by was a dump, and there was a shop-front dummy, full-size there. They pissed and they kicked the head of the dummy, and they laughed. They were shouting, excited. I sat in the car and I heard it. Before I joined them . . . It was a Briton, an agent, and it was in the darkness. It was in Budapest. It was an entertainment, to kick the head from the dummy in the lay-by. It is why I came to you before the Americans.’

‘Bloody hell,’ the Bear muttered.

With some perception, Liz Tremlett said, ‘You hate them.’

‘Very much.’

The Bear gripped the boy’s arm, just above the raw flesh. ‘The bar in Constanta, tomorrow at five o’clock local. Its name?’

She wrote it down.

He stood, and the Bear rose with him, dominating him. He might have realised his movement was intimidating, so a ham of a fist touched the boy’s arm. The gesture was shaken away. Liz Tremlett read it: the boy wanted no favours, only the righting of a wrong, a version of vengeance. Her mind was awash with images of wrongs that could be righted only by such a degree of betrayal.

They shook hands briefly with the boy, rewarded with a loose grip, devoid of emotion. There was no bonding. They saw him walk feebly across the lobby. The plastic bag, from the chemist down the street, swung from his hand.

He didn’t look back. They went to the door, stood inside the glass and saw him shambling off. The Bear said, with certainty, that the spooks would ‘have a bloody wet dream fantasising about a walk-in like that’, then shrugged as if she should take that as an apology for his vulgarity.

She knew the answer, but asked, ‘What would happen to him, Bear, if they knew what he’d done?’

‘Just get on with the paperwork.’

The jeans were down to his buttocks, the shoulders drooped and his hair was tousled. The boy, Natan, went round a corner, and they lost sight of him. Liz Tremlett didn’t wait for the lift but went up the stairs two at a time and hurried to her desk. She slapped the pad down, then started to prepare the message she would send.

‘Where is he?’ the Major asked, annoyed, holding sheets of paper with scribbled messages. The warrant officer went to find him. The girl was in the bedroom, doing her nails. He paid the Gecko well. All men of influence and authority had a Gecko on their payroll. They were young, without social skills, initiative or women, but they had extraordinary computing ability. They knew the inner secrets of what was planned, but they were welcomed only when their work was wanted. The Gecko did not eat or drink with them when they were away, and sat apart from them on a plane. He was in the front of the car and his opinion was never asked, unless they wanted the intricate details of computer security. The Major would have been unhappy not to have him close. He thought the boy gave him a ‘firewall’ of protection.

He was brought in – must have been intercepted in the corridor because he carried a small plastic bag. He was dirty and scarred.