The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [43]
‘What about him?’ His voice quickened as he added: ‘Can we move along, please? I’m keen to get home. Can we start walking towards my—’
‘You will remain here while we speak.’ Grek gestured in the direction of the car park. ‘I do not want to move far from my vehicle. Where is Meisner, please?’
Somers spluttered another laugh and wondered why Grek was asking him questions about colleagues he hadn’t seen for more than ten years. How was he supposed to answer? He wasn’t friends with Meisner, he wasn’t friends with Waldemar, never had been. The Crane deception was all that they had in common.
‘Look, I don’t have a fucking clue,’ he said, and regretted swearing, because the temperature dropped in Grek’s eyes.
‘I see.’ They were narrow eyes, a very pale brown, and within them Somers could see the extent of his own betrayal. ‘This is interesting. Nor have we had any success in locating Mr Crane himself.’
Somers felt as though he was being swung from point to point, as if the Russian had no real interest in the answers to the questions he was asking, only in generating a sense of unease. Was that a standard spy tactic? Why did Grek even suspect that Crane was still alive?
‘Why do you keep telling me how bad you are at your job?’ he said. ‘I don’t get it. I don’t walk around telling people when I’ve made a mistake on the ward. All you’ve seemed interested in talking about for the last ten minutes is what a fuck-up you’re making of your investigation.’
Grek did something now that was commonplace, and yet utterly unsettling. He spat on the ground. The Russian then reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out a cigarette, not from a packet, but from a pristine silver case. He placed the cigarette in his mouth, rolled a Zippo lighter across his thigh and held Somers’s gaze as he brought the flame to his lips. He was no longer a suit-wearing officer in the Russian FSB with a chauffeur-driven car and five-hundred-dollar loafers; you could see in his movements, in the stillness of his eyes, the remnants of the St Petersburg thug that he had once been.
‘A cigarette case,’ Somers said, his throat narrow and dry. The words were barely audible. ‘Don’t see those very often.’
Grek closed the Zippo. Click.
‘No, you do not.’ Then, as calmly as slipping a knife into Somers’s ribs, he said: ‘Have you spoken to anybody else about Edward Crane, Calvin? Anybody apart from Charlotte Berg?’
Somers lost a breath as he realized what Grek had said. The Russians knew about Charlotte. If that was the case, Christ, they probably knew about the academic. For the second time in a matter of minutes he thought that his legs were going to go. He cursed his own stupidity, his cowardice.
‘What?’ he said, trying to buy time. ‘Who’s Charlotte Berg?’
Grek exhaled a lungful of smoke which held in a neat column above the path before it was parted by a gust of wind. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘We are both men of the world, Mr Somers. Do not waste my time.’
‘Have you been bugging my telephone? Have you been hacking into my computer? How do you know about Charlotte?’
This was a confession, of course, and if Grek had possessed any lingering doubts about the nature of Somers’s betrayal, they were now finally dispelled.
‘This is England,’ he replied, gesturing at the countryside. He was smiling. ‘We do not have jurisdiction to bug telephones.’ A fly settled on Grek’s arm, but he ignored it. ‘My colleagues have seen transcripts of your email correspondence with Miss Berg. These were in strict violation of our agreement.’
‘And you’re in strict violation of my human fucking rights getting your “contacts” to bug my computer. How dare you?’
Somers was surprised by the ferocity of his response, even taking a step towards Grek in an attempt to impose himself. But neither his words nor his actions had any visible impact at all.
‘Please calm down,’ he was told, as the Russian took another drag on the cigarette. ‘Tell us who else you have