Christopher Jones - The Silent Oligarch

“What if there isn’t?”

“Then everyone will still want to talk to you, you’ll just have less to tell them. You can go back to Russia or talk to the FBI. I’ll help you.”

Lock thought for a moment. “Is she in Berlin?”

“As far as I know.”

“So I go, she gives me this file, this information, whatever it is, and then I come back. What does it do for me?”

“It makes you valuable. Simple as that. Christ, you can take it back to Malin if you like and he’ll pat you on the head and love you again. Maybe let you go around on your own. If that’s what you want. Otherwise it’s the difference between wanting to nail him and actually doing it.”

“It’ll never happen. It never happens.”

“It happens. I’ve seen it. And you’re the only one who can do it.”

“And you don’t care if I run off?”

“You’re not mine to control. But if you do I’ll know you got something.”

Lock sighed again, looking around the room at the stallholders coming in for their lunch.

“I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“I’m no spy. I tried it in Moscow and screwed it up. I have no talent for subterfuge.” He laughed a cold laugh. “Funny. Under the circumstances.”

“I’m quite good at it,” said Webster. “Let me help.”

There and then Webster made a plan, writing and sketching, angling his notebook on the table so that Lock could make it out. Lock ate a bacon sandwich; Webster left his to go cold as he scribbled and talked.

Lock should leave London straightaway. There was no point in delaying. He should take a flight to Amsterdam or Rotterdam. That far he could be traced, but once there he would create a little diversion. Using his credit card he would buy a train ticket to Noordwijk, where his father lived, so that anyone watching would assume he was going home. But he would drive to Berlin in a hired car paid for by Ikertu through an innocent-sounding front company. That way no one would have any idea of his true destination.

From Amsterdam to Berlin was a journey of four hundred miles, probably a seven-hour drive. He could stay overnight in Hannover or push on for Berlin in one go. There he would check in to a hotel that Ikertu had again found and paid for. He would be Mr. Richard Green, and would be careful not to present his passport when checking in.

“What do I say if they ask?” said Lock.

“Tell them you had your briefcase stolen at the airport and you don’t have it. You’re going to the embassy in the morning. We’ll find you a hotel that won’t care.”

Money was important. He should withdraw as much as he could today, in London and Holland, and use cash for everything once he landed in Europe. Phones too. Lock volunteered that he had dismantled his old ones yesterday.

“Good. Leave them that way. Before you go we’ll get you a pay-as-you-go,” said Webster.

And then he should see Nina. Lock should plan his own approach. He knew her, and he could decide what would work best. Webster gave him her address and phone number.

“How do I get back?”

“You arrive at the airport and book yourself on the next plane back to London. Leave it very late, just before check-in closes. I’ll meet you at the other end and take you somewhere safe.”

“What if they find me?”

“They won’t. You’re not leaving a trace.”

Lock sat for a moment, leaning on the table with his hands clasped together, his thumbs pressed against each other.

“When did you start following me?”

The question surprised Webster but he was happy to answer. “When you arrived yesterday.”

“No, not this time. I mean, when did you first start following me?”

“Yesterday.” Lock gave Webster an appraising look. “Really. We had no reason to before.”

“OK. OK.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. The last time I was here I thought someone was following me. Maybe I imagined it.” Lock sat back and rubbed his cheek. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Webster sat back, as if the planning was complete. With Yuri’s help he would know exactly where Lock was, but to go with him now was to risk overloading this delicate new trust between them. He needed Lock to think he was in control.

“I could. But this is your mission. I’ll be a phone call away. We’ll make a spy of you yet.” He smiled, the sort of smile that says everything will turn out fine, no matter how unlikely that might seem.

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS BEFORE, it must have been, Lock had traveled across Germany on roads like this to Altenau, a lake town in the Harz mountains. They had left at night to avoid traffic, his father driving, his mother and sister asleep. Opera played loud on the cassette, the high notes tinny and distorted. Lock stayed awake and watched the car’s softly glowing instruments reflected in the window against the dark. On the straight roads his father sat almost perfectly still, his arms locked and steady on the wheel.

That was their second holiday in the mountains. The first they had spent in tents, sometimes in campsites, sometimes in the wilderness, but that year Lock’s mother had insisted on a roof and a bath, and Everhart had booked them into a guesthouse on the edge of town by the lake. They were the only family there, everyone else was there to walk, and Lock and his sister, waking early and playing, were often in trouble for disturbing the other guests. Everhart seemed quietly pleased that they were bringing some life to the place.

For two weeks they walked, and swam, and took day trips to pretty towns. Sometime in the second week Everhart declared that he and his son were going for a proper walk, a long one, and early the next day they set off, Everhart leading the way around the edge of the lake through densely planted pines, the needles dry under their feet. Lock’s scuffed white tennis shoes slipped on the slopes, and he followed in awe the unerring tread of his father’s sturdy leather boots. Even now he could remember every moment of that day. They walked for hours, saying little. Everhart moved quickly, but not so quickly that with the occasional run and skip Lock couldn’t keep up. At lunch, the lake by now a long way behind them, they sat in the forest by a stream, ate their sandwiches, and talked about the future: where Lock would go to school, what he might study at the university, what he would do to earn a living, where he wanted to live. Everhart shared his tea in the cap of the Thermos flask.

This was the longest Lock had spent alone with his father; it made him nervous and happy. In the afternoon, the sun now over their heads and dropping light down between the trees, they carried on walking, stopping now and then for Everhart to refer to his compass and his map. Above the town of Bad Harzburg the path left the forest for a while, and for the first time they could see sky and hills and woods ahead of them. They stopped for a moment to take it in. Lock’s father crouched behind him and pointed across a shallow valley to a dark band of forest encased in a high metal fence.

“You see that fence?” said Everhart. “That is the Iron Curtain. It cuts Germany in two. You be thankful you’re a Dutchman.” Lock imagined vast curtains of gun-colored metal, swagged apart to reveal some hellish mechanical world beyond.

And what had Lock done? He had gone to live there. Perhaps that’s why his father was so appalled. Perhaps Lock had ceased to be a Dutchman in his eyes the moment he had gone east. The thought struck him as he drove past Osnabrück on a stretch of highway that seemed to go on forever no matter how fast he went. It was late now, past ten, and he should find a place to spend the night. Stopping seemed luxurious, but he reminded himself that if Webster was right he had time. He might feel pursued, but he was in no hurry.