The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [144]
‘I’m so sorry.’ He wanted nothing more than to be alone with her, back in his old life, Min safe in Spain, students coming to his office at UCL. But it had all been ripped away from him.
‘It’s OK. I just hope you’re being honest with me.’ She paused before adding: ‘If there’s somebody else—’
Gaddis looked out at the passing traffic and shook his head. ‘I promise you it’s not that. It’s about my daught—’ He almost choked on the word, lost in the wretchedness of his situation.
‘Sam?’
‘Please don’t worry. Just find the tape, OK? Just try to find it. You have no idea how important it could be.’
Chapter 53
Gaddis went back to the mews house and locked the door. There was a laptop in Jeremy’s room and he found the name of Min’s nursery on Google. He called the number, using Tanya’s landline. To his relief, the headmistress reassured him, in broken English, that Min was ‘completely fine’ and would be going home ‘as usual, in a few minutes’. Gaddis hung up, lit a cigarette and went out into the garden. The small, enclosed space was overlooked by more than a dozen windows in five or six separate buildings, but he was certain that here, at least, he was safe from FSB eyes.
He took the crumpled note out of his pocket and looked at it again.
THE SUM OF ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS WILL BE PAID INTO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT. THIS BUYS MORE THAN YOUR SILENCE.
Something about it didn’t ring true. If the Russians knew his home address, they would have killed him. Why bother with a crude blackmail? The FSB wanted anybody with any connection to Dresden out of the picture – Platov wasn’t interested in buying Gaddis’s silence. His political career, his reputation, his hold on power, was worth far more to him than £100,000. Besides, Tanya had insisted that the FSB knew nothing about Gaddis’s search for Edward Crane. So how come they knew about Barcelona? How come they could identify Natasha and Min? Only SIS had access to that information. The note could only have come from Brennan.
Back inside, he stared at the phone, willing Holly to ring, but knew that he would have to wait. Her audition would continue until five or six, she might then have dinner with friends and would not get home until late. It wasn’t even certain that she would bother looking for the tape once she did.
Gaddis knew that he had panicked in the aftermath of seeing the photographs. He realized that he had been a coward. He was entrusting his fate, and that of his daughter, to Holly, who could lose her life if she was caught in possession of the Platov evidence. He had to go to Tite Street himself. He would have to talk his way into Holly’s building and then somehow break into the basement.
He found a toolbox under the sink in Tanya’s kitchen. Inside it, there was a small steel saw, some screwdrivers and a hammer. He took them and put them in a plastic bag with no clear idea in his mind what he intended to do with them. He tried to compose himself, wondering if he was even making the right decision by leaving the safe house. But surely, in final analysis, he had no choice? He locked the house, went out on to Earls Court Road and waved down a cab.
In the taxi, he formed the basis of a plan. The storage cupboard was located in the basement of Holly’s building behind a door which was secured by padlock. Gaddis would use the metal saw to cut through the bolt. The basement could be accessed via an exterior staircase leading down from the street. Gaddis would need only to walk down this short flight of steps, to break the glass on the door and then to open it from the inside.
But he had never broken into a building in his life. He had seen private eyes picking locks on a thousand television shows, watched crime prevention advertisements in which hooded thieves entered properties via conveniently flimsy windows, but there was no reason to believe that he would be able to break in simply by smashing some glass and reaching for a door handle. After all, this was a basement in the heart of Chelsea – burglar