The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [47]
On Thursday morning he set off for Winchester, following the instructions that Neame had given him when they left the cathedral. He was to return to Waterstone’s and to wait for Peter on the first floor. This time, they had joked, there would be no need to carry a copy of the Herald Tribune.
Peter duly appeared at 11 a.m. wearing a red Manchester United shirt with ‘ROONEY’ emblazoned across the back. They were alone in the room and Gaddis laughed when he saw the shirt, Peter grinning back and handing him a small box and a piece of paper on which he had written a set of instructions.
‘Sat-nav,’ he said. ‘It’s already switched on. Just press the green button and do what it tells you. Your friend is waiting in the pub.’
Gaddis opened the box and found a small TomTom loosely wrapped in bubble plastic. The written instructions explained that he was to take the route pre-programmed into the sat-nav, a journey which would eventually lead to a village outside Winchester. Peter would be following Gaddis’s car at a discreet distance to ensure that he was not being tailed. If, at any point, he suspected that Gaddis was under surveil-lance, he would text the word ‘LONDON’ to his mobile phone, thereby aborting the meeting.
The plan seemed straightforward and, by now, Gaddis was familiar enough with the eccentric customs of the secret world to be neither surprised nor concerned by it. He returned to his car, put the TomTom on the passenger seat, switched on the engine and pressed ‘Go’.
‘At the end of the road, turn left.’
He was startled to hear the voice of Sean Connery, preprogrammed into the software. Another of Peter’s private jokes; Gaddis was beginning to like him. Pulling out into shuffling late-morning traffic, he was soon being slung around the narrow lanes and B-roads of southern Hampshire by an actor doing his very best impression of Commander James Bond. Peter had programmed the sat-nav with a series of turns and loops which often brought Gaddis back to a roundabout or junction that he had passed five or ten minutes earlier. The purpose of this was clear: any vehicle attempting to follow him would quickly be exposed. Gaddis kept an eye on his rear-view mirror, certain that Peter was driving a red Toyota. It would appear, six or seven cars back, on dual carriageways and at sets of traffic lights, and Gaddis found himself slowing down at regular intervals to allow him the chance to catch up.
When he had been on the road for almost half an hour, a text message came through on Gaddis’s phone. He reached for it and saw with a feeling of dread that the message had come from a ‘Withheld’ number. To his relief, though, Peter was simply instructing him to switch off the phone, doubtless to prevent it being tracked to the pub. Within five minutes, the sat-nav had brought him into the car park of a mock-Tudor inn in the village of Easton, just a few miles north of Winchester.
Neame was already seated in the corner of the dining room, far enough from neighbouring tables that their conversation would not be overheard. He was wearing the same tweed suit, the same wool tie and the same polished brown brogues that he had sported at their first meeting. It was almost as if he had walked directly from Winchester and had been waiting in the pub ever since. There was a pint of what looked like real ale in front of him and he appeared to be in jovial spirits.
‘Ah. The good doctor.’
Neame rose to his feet.
‘Is this your local, Tom?’
The old man’s hand was soft and damp as Gaddis shook it. His walking stick was resting in the crook of the wall behind his chair and