The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [100]
‘If you leave the country, the minute your passport is presented anywhere in the EU, they’ll know where to find you.’
Gaddis stopped and turned. ‘What do you mean “they”?’
‘I’ve been removed from the operation. Pastures new. Brennan has a new team working on you.’
He was confused. Did she want his sympathy?
‘Why have they taken you off the case?’
‘Long story.’ Gaddis felt that she might have been about to explain, but instead Tanya merely reiterated her earlier warning. ‘It doesn’t matter who’s running you now. The terms of the arrangement are the same. Don’t go looking for Crane. Do you understand?’
Gaddis tried his best to convince her. ‘I have told you,’ he replied. ‘I understand, Tanya.’
She didn’t like to see him lying; it didn’t suit him.
‘It’s just that Robert Wilkinson may not be in New Zealand for ever,’ she said. ‘We wondered whether you might already know that. We wanted to be absolutely certain that you wouldn’t make any attempt to see him if, for example, he came to Vienna.’
Gaddis could only laugh, but it was a hollow sound, a breathless, near-silent surrender to the omnipotence of SIS. They had eyes and ears everywhere; they were listening to everything he said, even to a phone box on the edge of a housing estate in South Africa Road.
‘Wilkinson doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,’ he said. He dropped his half-smoked cigarette on to the ground and snuffed it out with his shoe. ‘Crane has disappeared. Even if I wanted to finish the book, I don’t have any more leads. It’s over.’
‘We both know that’s not quite true.’ He marvelled at her ability to convince him that she was still on his side. Perhaps it was the outfit: she looked so elegant, so off-duty, every inch the beautiful, available, seductive Josephine Warner.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I could go to Vienna. I could gate-crash Catherine’s wedding. I could grab Bob Wilkinson over a smoked salmon canapé and ask him to tell me all about Dresden, just as a favour to an academic that he doesn’t know and doesn’t even particularly like. Do you really think that’s what I’m planning to do?’
‘I think you’re capable of anything.’
Gaddis reached out and held her. ‘You need to trust me,’ he said. Her arms were gym-exercised, taut and wiry. ‘Check your surveillance records. I’m going to be in Barcelona for the rest of the month. I’ve arranged to spend a fortnight with Min.’
‘You have?’
Tanya was no longer privy to the POLARBEAR product; it was infuriating not to know even this simple piece of information.
‘I have,’ he said. ‘So if Des feels like following me, tell him to pack his swimming trunks. My daughter and I will be spending a lot of time at the beach.’
Chapter 36
It was a half-truth, at best, but Gaddis reasoned that he owed Tanya Acocella a lie or two. Barcelona was just his way of getting even.
He had spent the morning out at Colindale, on the outskirts of north-west London, going through back issues of The Times. He could have searched for what he was looking for online, but what was the point of risking the Internet when there were hard copies going back as far as the eye could see? The issue he found was dated 6 January. Gaddis laid a private bet with himself that Catherine Wilkinson had accepted her fiancé’s proposal on New Year’s Eve, shortly before the corks had flown on the midnight champagne.
MR M.T.M. DRECHSEL AND MISS C.L. WILKINSON
The engagement is announced between Matthias, elder son of Mr Rudolph Drechsel and Mrs Elfriede Drechsel, of Vienna, Austria, and Catherine, younger daughter of Mr Robert Wilkinson and of Mrs Mary Edwards, of Edinburgh, Scotland.
That gave him the surname for the wedding party, which was the first step of his plan.
The second step was to ascertain the date of the wedding and to find the hotel in Vienna where the bulk of the guests would be staying. To that end, Gaddis printed out a list of all of the four- and five-star hotels in Vienna and called them, one by one, from two phone boxes at Colindale station, making the same request.
‘Hello. I’d like