The Hidden Man - Charles Cumming [91]
‘I’ve heard that name.’ Ben stood up and the backs of his legs felt damp beneath his clothes. ‘McCreery used it. Told me exactly the same thing.’
‘About Lander?’
‘About Lander.’
‘Well, there you go.’ Mark was glad that Ben at last looked appropriately respectful. ‘Five and Six are both trying to find the same guy. I reckon Lander queried what was going on, told Dad about it, and Macklin had him shot before he whiffed the gig to the Russians. Either that or he simply found out that Viktor and Tom were in bed together and threatened to go to the police.’
‘So the whole Kostov thing really is bullshit?’
‘Total bullshit. A red herring. Probably dreamed up by Kukushkin to throw us off the scent. That’s why 2I asked you where the letter came from. Kukushkin’s people in New York probably rented out the PO Box, got hold of Bone’s stationery, then faked the letter. That’s why there was no fixed address. The Russian mob’s full of former KGB and soldiers who did time in central Asia. They’d know all about what Western intelligence got up to out there during the Soviet invasion. It would have been easy to make something up, to take the names of dead men like Mischa and Kostov and re-invent their lives for a smokescreen. I bet Jockis running a trace on the PO Box right this minute, finding out who’s been renting it.’
‘So Jock knows about all this?’ Beneath his relaxed demeanour, Ben felt humbled by the realization that for weeks he had been a small, nearly irrelevant player in a drama of bewildering scale and complexity.
‘Not my end of it,’ Mark replied. ‘I have to keep that hush-hush. Far as I know, Five have just used the local cops in Moscow. The other day my controller said they were finally bringing in SIS to help trace Lander, but otherwise the Friends have been kept right out of it.’
‘Listen to you,’ Ben said. ‘Got all the lingo. The old man would be proud of you. Like looking in a mirror.’
Ben had meant this only lightly, but Mark’s face hummed with pride. He said, ‘Thankyou,’ and reached out to hold Ben’s wrist. His touch was very warm and certain. ‘I’m doing this for him, brother,’ he said. ‘And for us. Got to try and help. Got to dismantle the whole Kukushkin thing. Want to make sure nothing like this can ever happen to anybody else.’
‘Well, I think that’s great.’ And Ben felt that he was twelve or thirteen years old again, looking on his older brother with a rapt and fascinated attention. He possessed little of Mark’s instinctive decency, his natural sense of right and wrong. A part of him dismissed this element of his brother’s personality as wrong-headed and idealistic; yet there was something to be envied in Mark’s secret life, a sense that he was honouring their father’s memory.
‘What are you thinking?’ Mark asked.
‘Just that I hope you’re being careful. And that if you need any help I’ll do what I can.’
‘I appreciate it. Thankyou.’
‘And you trust this guy Randall? You really think he knows what he’s doing?’
‘A hundred per cent.’
A cold wind cut across the garden and Mark stood up out of the wicker chair, rolling his neck like a doll. Ben experienced another stab of frustrated envy, a craving to be involved.
‘Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help?’ he said.
Mark looked at him and stepped down on to the grass. He was touched by Ben’s concern and already feeling the relief of having confessed his secret to the one person he could trust. Perhaps Ben’s presence would take the sting out of the job; perhaps Ben could act as a buffer for all the stress and concern.
‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing you could really do, mate.’
‘It’s just that I get so fucking bored all day up there in the studio. Maybe if I could just do something, even if it was only for Dad…’
‘Well, look,’ Mark began, recognizing the sentiment, ‘why don’t you come and meet the Russians sometime, make it look like there’s nothing going on? I’m going to a place with Tom on Friday, supposed to befriend one of them and get him on my side.’
Ben leaped on this.
‘Christ, yeah,’ he said. He