Authors: Jeremy Duns
Proshin lowered his gun and turned to Manning.
‘I am sorry to disturb,’ Proshin said quietly.
Manning stared at him, dazed. Proshin walked over to Cherneyev and crouched down next to him. He pulled his jacket roughly from his torso, making Cherneyev’s head bounce against the floor,
then reached into a pocket and turned it inside out. He leaned over and bit into it with his teeth, tearing the fabric. A small brown packet, no larger than a cigarette, fell onto the floor, and
Proshin picked it up and stared at it. Then he placed it in his own pocket and went to the desk in the corner of the room. He picked up the telephone and, in bad French, asked the operator to
connect him to the British embassy.
‘I am Paul Dark’s case officer,’ he said once the switchboard had answered. ‘I am at number 64 Rue de Stassart, and I wish to defect.’
Then he slumped into the chair behind the desk, leaning his head back as the sweat poured down his face. It was done, he thought. He had done it. His fate would be in the hands of the British
now. He just had to hope he’d made the right decision.
As Sebastian Thorpe speeded his Sunbeam through the outskirts of Brussels, Rachel focused on the corona of light around each passing streetlamp. They looked like small nooses,
she thought.
The stench of death filled her nostrils, but she was thinking about the living, too. Less than two hours ago Paul Dark had been just a few feet away from her, his face contorted in a savage
grimace in the half-light, a wild animal having just killed its prey. She had taken a hurried shot and followed him through the corridors of the arcade, but she’d been too far behind and had
lost him. Downhearted, she’d trudged back to Thorpe, who she found staring down at the body of Collins in the same position she’d left him. ‘He’s dead,’ was all he had
said, a stunned look on his face. She had felt she might panic then, but an unexpected sense of calm had come over her and she had known what to do, or thought she had.
They’d left Collins and trekked up to Manning’s flat, only to find more surprises in wait for them. Another body, this time a Russian, shot through the back of the skull. And seated
behind the desk had been none other than Alexander Proshin, leading light of the GRU’s Second Chief Directorate, spy-runner . . . Paul Dark’s handler.
She hadn’t recognised him at first, slumped against the chair with his eyes dazed. But at Review Section, they’d found a couple of photographs taken by UCL staff – summer
barbecues on campus, a picnic at the beach – in which he had been lurking in the background, and after a few moments she recognised him from them. She had leaned down to check she
wasn’t mistaken.
‘You must interview me now,’ he had whispered.
His English was good – well, he’d spent fifteen years as an illegal in London – but his accent was still strong and he strangulated the words in the Russian way, so it had
taken her a moment to understand what he was driving at.
‘Of course,’ she’d replied evenly. ‘But we need to get you to somewhere safe first, Mr Proshin.’
He’d smiled at her then, pleased that she knew his name. Then his eyes had flashed with desperation and fear. ‘But it must be here, you understand? Not in London.’
Her ears had pricked up at that. Defectors were usually a lot keener on getting safely to Britain and arranging the terms of their new lives there than the inconvenient business of revealing
secrets about their former colleagues.
‘What’s the hurry?’ she’d asked.
‘My life is in danger. It must be here.’
She’d stared at him, puzzled by his insistence. ‘Why?’
‘London isn’t safe for me. It may be that your superiors try to persuade you it is better if I am not interviewed at all. Don’t allow it. You must interview me, and you must do
it here – do you promise me this?’
She had nodded dully. Perhaps it was for the best, she’d thought. At least that way she wouldn’t have to face Sandy’s wrath quite yet. Proshin had looked at her like she was
his saviour, but she felt a long way from that. Sandy had been right to hold her back in London searching through old files. That was all she was good for, and even there she wasn’t so sure.
Would he ever forgive her for this? Professionally, perhaps. But personally? She doubted it.
She glanced in the rear-view mirror. Proshin was in the back seat, apparently lost in thought. Seated next to him, shivering under a blanket, was Manning, still looking shell-shocked. He had
initially been reluctant to come back into the bosom of the ‘hatefully corrupt’ Service, as he’d kept referring to it, but after she had explained that a hunter-killer unit could
soon be on its way from Moscow to find out what had happened to their two-man cell, the virtues of hiding out in a safe house until the coast was clear had come back to him and he’d allowed
himself to be bundled in.
Thorpe took the turning onto the motorway leading out of the city, and the streetlamps gradually became sparser. She breathed a small sigh of relief: the chances of their being stopped by the
police were now less likely. It didn’t bear thinking about what might happen if they were: as well as a Soviet agent in the back seat, the boot contained two corpses rolled up in a couple of
Manning’s rugs. It had then taken her and Thorpe over an hour to get both bodies into the car, all the while anxious that at any moment they might be seen or interrupted by the
authorities.
But they weren’t safe yet. She fiddled with the dial of the radio to see if there was anything on the news or the police scanners. There was nothing, and she left it tuned to a local rock
station. Sandy rarely listened to anything but Haydn, and as a result of spending so much time in his company she had largely missed out on her own generation’s music. A mournful male voice
was singing, and the lyric suddenly seemed like it was addressing her directly. It was an adaptation of Thoreau, she realised: ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ And
women, she thought. Look at her: here she was in a car with Paul Dark’s handler and all she could think of was how her married lover would react. It was all she could ever think of. She knew
in her heart of hearts that Celia was right – he would never leave her – and yet still she hung on. It was bloody pathetic.
Fields flitted past, and after a few minutes she spotted what she was looking for by the side of the road: a telephone booth. She told Thorpe to slow down and asked him to hand her all his loose
change. It was time to face the music, and call home.
Paul Dark ordered a Virgin Mary with an added dose of spices from the stewardess. She prepared the drink and passed it to him with a wide empty smile, then took the next
passenger’s order.
Dark gulped down the contents of the glass, the fiery familiarity of the Tabasco making up for the lack of alcohol, and reflected on what he had discovered in Brussels. He had read through
Manning’s file on the Selous Scouts three times before visiting the bathroom, tearing the papers into strips and flushing them down the toilet bowl. The file had only been a few pages long,
but from the description of the regiment’s methods, capabilities and previous operations, Dark was sure that they had carried out the kidnapping, and that the creature he’d met in Haga
Park had been their spotter. The head of the regiment was Major Roy Campbell-Fraser, and there was a separate file on him: he was ex-SAS and had served in Malaya. A ruthless sort of man, Dark
thought, and one very capable of planning such a job. Presumably he planned to use Claire and Ben – or already was using them – to exert pressure on Charamba and his group, most likely
in connection with the talks about to get under way in Rhodesia.
Dark’s first instinct had been to fly straight to Salisbury, because the file showed that the Selous Scouts had their headquarters just outside the city, in a place called Inkomo, and that
seemed the most likely place for them to be holding Claire and Ben. But there hadn’t been any direct flights there from Brussels, and the hitch made him realise he hadn’t really thought
it through. Even if he took several legs to get there, Rhodesia was well known to have some of the tightest customs controls on the continent. And if he managed to get through, what would he do
then? He could hardly single-handedly storm a special forces base, especially as he was unarmed and had no way of knowing where to find weapons in Salisbury, let alone pay for them.
But Manning had told him that Matthew Charamba lived in a heavily guarded villa in Lusaka. That meant weaponry. And if Claire was his daughter, as he thought she must be, he would have some very
good motivation to use that weaponry.
Rachel Gold dropped the francs in the slot and dialled the number. An operator answered on the fifth ring.
‘Savage and Cooper, how may I help you?’
‘Hello, I’d like to speak to a manager, please. I have a terribly urgent complaint about my Phoenix policy.’
There was a slight pause on the line as the operator registered the phrase ‘terribly urgent’. In Service field terminology, it was DEFCON 1, and required informing Chief at once. The
operator asked for her number and she read it out from the card next to the slot and hung up. Ninety seconds later the receiver chirruped back into life, and she picked up to hear Sandy’s
voice.
‘Rachel, what the hell’s going on? Where are you? Do you have Dark?’
‘No. I’m with Thorpe in a call-box outside Brussels – we’re on the way to the Château. And we’re two men down.’ She rapidly explained the events of the
previous few hours, leaving nothing out. She was expecting him to explode, but he didn’t speak for several seconds and when he did his voice was very quiet.
‘Am I to understand that you and the Head of Station are driving around the Belgian countryside with two corpses in the boot of his car?’
The coldness of his tone was more shocking than if he’d screamed abuse at her. She told him Thorpe had called in a favour with a long-term asset in Antwerp and that as soon as she and
Proshin were safely ensconced in the Château he would see to the cremation of both bodies.
Harmigan went silent again. Then he asked whether Collins’ passport had still been on him when they’d searched his body.
She had been waiting for the question and reached into her jacket. ‘Yes. I have it here. Frederick Collins, an independent fabric salesman.’
‘Destroy it,’ said Harmigan. ‘Did Dark take any passports from Manning? I imagine he has a few stashed away.’
‘Manning says he didn’t, but it might be that Dark was carrying more than one.’
‘Yes, that’s quite possible.’ Harmigan let out a heavy sigh. ‘I do wish you’d called me earlier. He’ll almost certainly have left the country by
now.’
I couldn’t call you earlier. I had to dispose of two bodies before I was arrested for aiding and abetting murder.
As if sensing her thoughts, Harmigan asked if there had been any sign of the Belgian authorities.
‘Nothing so far, and there was a nightclub open nearby that probably masked most of the noise. It might be a different picture come morning, though.’ She glanced down at her watch.
It was approaching three o’clock. ‘Come daybreak, I mean.’
‘But nobody saw you?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t
think
so?’ Now his anger was coming through openly and she could picture him seated at the desk in KH, the veins on his neck pulsing. She didn’t
respond, as she knew from experience that doing so usually enraged him even more.
‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll call my contacts in the Sûreté and have a discreet word. What about Dark – any idea at all where he’s
headed?’
‘From what Manning told me, it sounded like he’s on his way to Rhodesia. By the way, he’s shaved off the beard and dyed his hair blond, so the alert description needs to be
altered.’
‘Fine. What makes you think Rhodesia?’
‘Well, Manning was still rather shaken up when I spoke to him, but he claimed Dark wanted to know about a black Rhodesian woman by the name of Hope Charamba. That must be the
girlfriend’s real name.’
‘Did Dark tell Manning that?’
‘No, but why else would he be asking after her?’
‘Let’s not make any grand assumptions quite yet. It hasn’t got us too far.’
She ignored the rebuke. ‘Well, if she is his girlfriend it might be important – her father’s Matthew Charamba. He used to be one of the nationalist leaders there, but
he’s currently out of favour and living in Zambia. Dark also reacted to a photograph of a white Rhodesian who works for one of their special forces outfits.’ She looked down at the note
she had made for herself. ‘The Selous Scouts. A bloodthirsty lot that make the SAS look like the Boy Scouts, apparently. They capture guerrillas and turn them, sending them back into the bush
to gather intelligence on their former comrades. I think this must all be related to these talks the South Africans have set up. Perhaps the Rhodesians took the daughter to pressure the father at
the negotiating table, using black Africans as cover.’
‘Your pet theory,’ he said, and she remembered his objections to the idea during the COBRA meeting. ‘Do we know where this Charamba lives in Zambia? Dark might be headed there
instead of Salisbury.’
‘Manning said Lusaka.’
‘All right. Christ, what a fiasco.’ She didn’t reply. ‘What about Proshin? Have you spoken to him?’
She considered mentioning the remarks he’d made in Manning’s flat, and decided not to. ‘Just a few niceties so far.’
‘Has he said why he wants to defect to us, or what he’s bringing with him?’
‘Not yet. I’ll ask him all that as soon as we get to the Château.’
‘No, don’t. Leave him there with Thorpe, please. You need to get back here at once.’
‘What?’ She could scarcely believe her ears. ‘Surely you don’t want
Thorpe
to interview Proshin? He has no knowledge of the man at all!’
‘He’s not to interview him either – just tell him to keep Proshin on ice for the time being. Leave Manning there, too. They can play Scrabble together, or whatever the Belgian
equivalent is. Manning can head back to Brussels in a few days, and we can fly Proshin over here and question him until we know what he had for dinner eighteen months ago. But he isn’t our
priority right now. Dark’s still out there, and I need all the help I can get to find him. I’ll see if we can lay on a flight for you. Don’t go away.’