Charles Cumming - The Trinity Six

‘Could you confirm the name of this Operation?’

‘LOOCH,’ Platov replied, without hesitation.

Gaddis briefly looked away from the screen as he tried to recall the details of the plan. ‘Looch’ meant ‘beam of light’ in Russian. The operation had entailed the KGB building a network of informers in East Germany who would continue to provide information to Moscow Centre in the event of the Communist regime collapsing. MI6 had learned about LOOCH in 1986; Wilkinson was clearly evaluating Platov’s willingness to give up state secrets.

The interview continued for what Gaddis estimated was at least another two hours: he forwarded the disk several times and saw no change either in the set-up of the camera or in Platov’s preternaturally calm demeanour. But there was no time to watch it. He ejected the disk and turned to Holly.

‘Can you burn this on to your laptop, make copies of the film?’

‘Rip, not burn,’ she said and smiled. He saw that she had already retrieved the laptop from her bedroom and booted it up.

‘I’d need three DVDs, minimum.’

She shrugged, as if this was the easiest thing in the world, and Gaddis felt a surge of gratitude towards her. ‘Might take an hour to do that many copies,’ she whispered. ‘Depends how long the film is.’

They worked out that the Platov interview lasted just under two hours. It took almost exactly as long as Holly had predicted to rip the three copies on to blank DVDs. They spent the intervening period talking in the bathroom about what had happened in Berlin and Vienna. Gaddis had switched on the taps and put the radio on the floor to give the impression that Holly was having a bath. He told her about the threat to Min. He also revealed everything about Edward Crane. Throughout, she reacted as a true friend: her only thought, seemingly, was for Gaddis’s safety and wellbeing.

‘I need you to do something for me,’ he said, as the last of the disks was finishing.

‘So what else is new?’

‘The woman who lives downstairs in flat five-’

‘Mrs Connelly.’

‘How well do you know her?’

‘Quite well. I shop for her every now and again. Why?’

‘I want you to go down there and to stay with her until I come back. It’s not safe for you to go outside any more and it’s not safe for you to stay here when I’m gone.’

He saw fear flicker in her eyes again, the same look that she had given him when he had told her about Wilkinson.

‘Tell her you have a power cut. Fuse box. Ask if you can sit with her until your boyfriend gets back at nine. Thank her for the flowers, too.’

‘What flowers?’

‘It’s a long story. I pretended to be delivering a bunch of flowers so that I could get into your building. She buzzed me inside. Give me your mobile as well.’

‘Why?’

‘Just give it to me.’

She passed it to him from the back pocket of her jeans. Gaddis was thinking of Tanya, of microphones and triangulation signals, as he pulled off the casing and removed the battery.

‘Better this way,’ he said.

The last of the three disks was complete. He retrieved it from the laptop and gave it to Holly. The other two, as well as Wilkinson’s original, were in the inside pocket of his coat.

‘Why have you given me this?’

‘Hide it in Mrs Connelly’s flat. Hide it somewhere that nobody would think to look. And tell nobody that you’ve been to see her. If something happens to me, but only if something happens to me, get the disk to the BBC, to ITN, to Sky. Get it out on YouTube. Do you understand?’

‘I understand.’ She reached out and touched his face. ‘I’m worried about you.’

‘Don’t be. I’m sorry I dragged you into this.’

‘You didn’t,’ she said. ‘Bob should never have sent Mum the disk without telling her what was on it.’

Gaddis hesitated. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Where are you going now?’

He took two envelopes, a biro and a book of stamps from her desk. ‘I need these. I have to talk to Tanya. I need her to get a message to Brennan and the FSB. But please don’t worry. You’re safe now. Just make sure you go to Mrs Connelly. If she’s not there, try any of your neighbours, even if you’ve never spoken to them. But don’t leave the building unless you have to. I’ll come back here as soon as it’s done.’

‘Des’, the veteran of Tanya Acocella’s Berlin surveillance operation against POLARBEAR, had been watching Holly Levette’s apartment — at Tanya’s request — for almost six hours. As luck would have it, he was parked no more than fifty metres from Alexander Grek’s blue C–Class Mercedes, which had pulled up on the corner of Tite Street and Royal Hospital Road a little after half-past four. About twenty minutes later, a Slav in his late twenties had opened the passenger door of the Mercedes and stepped inside. Des had noticed that the Slav had followed Holly down Tite Street, so he was keeping a close eye on the vehicle as the sun set over Chelsea. The two men seemed unusually preoccupied by activities in the third-floor window of Miss Levette’s apartment.

Des had started his shift before midday, so he had also noticed Dr Samuel Gaddis getting out of a taxi at about four o’clock. Recognizing his old mark from Berlin, he had immediately telephoned Tanya.

‘Strange thing just happened,’ he said. ‘You remember POLARBEAR?’

‘I remember POLARBEAR.’

‘Well, he just walked into Tite Street. I thought you said you had him under lock and key in a safe house?’

Tanya, who was in the middle of a four-hour meeting with Sir John Brennan at Vauxhall Cross, had sworn silently into the telephone and reassured Des that she would ‘cut off Sam’s balls’ when she saw him.

‘That might hurt,’ he replied. An hour later, he rang back with an update.

‘POLARBEAR’s been in there for a long time. Curtains are closed now, radio on, doubtless he’s making sweet love to sweet Holly Levette.’

‘Holly’s there as well?’

‘Yeah. Showed up about quarter of an hour ago.’

Des wondered if Tanya had developed feelings for the redoubtable POLARBEAR. Did he detect an undertow of jealousy in her voice? ‘One other thing…’ he said.

‘Tell me.’

‘Holly was being followed down Tite Street. Foot surveil-lance. Caucasian male, late twenties, winner of the Dolph Lundgren lookalike contest. We’ve also got a Mercedes parked across the street with a view of Holly’s sitting room. Dolph and another man sitting inside.’

‘FSB?’ said Tanya.

‘FSB,’ said Des. ‘I ran the numberplate. Vehicle is registered to the Russian Embassy.’

Tanya had been led to believe that her meeting with Brennan would be a private affair. When Des rang the first time, she had just finished informing her boss that she was shielding Gaddis at her house in Earl’s Court ‘until we can work out how to protect him’. Brennan had reacted calmly to the news, just as he had seemed almost indifferent to the revelation that Acocella had activated two separate networks in Austria and Budapest in order to finesse Gaddis’s exfiltration from Vienna.

But the appearance of Maxim Kepitsa, shortly after Des had telephoned a second time, had taken Tanya by surprise. Up until that point, she had been prepared to give Brennan the benefit of the doubt. After all, Wilkinson’s assassination at the Kleines Cafe could have been a coincidence; she had no evidence that her boss had tipped off the FSB about Wilkinson’s movements. But Kepitsa’s demeanour, and his seedy bear-hug with Brennan shortly after he strode into the room, stank of a stitch-up.

‘Mr Kepitsa has come here today to help us try to piece together what may have happened in Vienna,’ Brennan began.