The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [79]
Looked at from this perspective, it made absolute sense to Gaddis that Crane should have chosen to tell the ATTILA story through a shell personality; it would have been contrary to his nature to expose his true self. A spy needed the protection of a cover story, a pseudonym. Besides, Crane would have enjoyed the intellectual challenge of duping Gaddis; doubtless he had derived enormous satisfaction from gulling a so-called leading academic. At what point had he been planning to come clean? Would he have gone to his grave as Thomas Neame, holding on to this last, elusive secret? Almost certainly. Why break the habit of a lifetime?
‘POLARBEAR looks well fucked off,’ said Des, following Gaddis on foot from Meisner’s surgery. Meisner had agreed to meet him at a café near his apartment in Kreuzberg at eight o’clock. ‘Whoever the fuck this Edward Crane is has put our boy in a very bad mood indeed.’
Two hundred metres away, Nicolai Doronin was also watching Meisner’s surgery, though he paid scant attention to Gaddis as he came out on to the street at half-past four, incorrectly assuming that the six-foot man with a corduroy jacket and leather satchel was a resident of one of the luxury apartments on the fourth or fifth floors. Nor did Doronin notice Des getting out of a blue-black Audi A4 on the corner of Schönhauser Allee in order to tail Gaddis to the U-Bahn at Eberswalder Strasse. Doronin’s interest lay solely in Benedict Meisner. He had been watching the doctor for forty-eight hours. He had established that he lived alone, had learned his daily routine, calculated his approximate physical strength, pondered his likely resistance to violent assault. On balance, Doronin felt that it would be wisest to pursue a similar strategy to that which had succeeded with Charlotte Berg. Just as Alexander Grek had broken into her office, he would access Meisner’s apartment, add 10mg of sodium fluoracetate to the bottle of water which Meisner kept by his bed, and return to London on the next scheduled flight from Tegel.
Doronin had not expected to carry out the plan until the following day, but having tailed Meisner back to his apartment on Reichenberger Strasse he had waited outside for an hour, only to see the doctor emerge at ten to eight wearing a fresh set of clothes and carrying a copy of Der Spiegel. It was obvious that he was going out for dinner. Sure enough, Doronin followed Meisner the length of Liegnitzer Strasse to his favourite café, which was a few hundred metres away on the corner of Paul-Lincke-Ufer. Meisner took an outdoor table, scanned the menu and ordered a glass of beer. This presented Doronin with a window of opportunity. He was keen to return to London so that he could spend at least some of the weekend with his young son. If he could pull off the Meisner operation tonight, he could be back at his flat in Kensington by lunchtime the next day.
So Doronin missed seeing the six-foot man with the corduroy jacket and the leather satchel getting out of a cab on Liegnitzer Strasse. Less than three minutes after he had turned and walked back in the direction of Meisner’s apartment, Sam Gaddis had pulled up, spotted Meisner and sat down at his table.
British Intelligence, on the other hand, were ahead of the game. Knowing that Meisner and Gaddis had arranged to meet at the café, Katie and Ralph had positioned themselves on the terrace, ordered two enormous bowls of onion soup, occasionally held hands for cover, and waited for POLARBEAR to show up. Tanya was sitting outside Meisner’s apartment, at the opposite end of the street, texting them from the front seat of the Audi. To her fury, POLARBEAR had left his mobile at the Novotel, which meant that audio coverage of his conversation with Meisner would now be impossible.
The café was