The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [82]
Tanya jerked forward in the Audi when she saw him coming out. She instantly knew that something was wrong. It was as if a wind had blasted Gaddis into the street. She saw him begin to jog along Reichenberger, apparently without direction or purpose. She switched on the engine, reversed into the street and followed him in a first-gear crawl.
Gaddis became aware of the Audi when he was about three hundred metres from Meisner’s apartment. It could only be the Russians, he thought, the accomplices of the man he had just shot. They were following him down the street and they meant to finish the job. His mind was scrambled. He was sick with fear, sick with guilt at what he had done. He wished that he had kept the gun that had felled the Russian, but realized that he had dropped it on to Meisner’s body as he stared at his wounds. He looked back. The Audi was fifty metres away. Why was it coming so slowly? Why were they not intent on killing him? He stopped and turned, suddenly overcome by a desire to confront them. There were two members of the public walking on the pavement on the opposite side of the street. Would they dare to kill him in the presence of so many witnesses?
‘Sam!’
It was a woman’s voice, a scream in the night. It made no sense that somebody should know his name. Gaddis veered into the road.
The car came to an immediate halt. Gaddis was standing in front of it, the headlights blinding him. As he adjusted his gaze, squinting and shielding his eyes from the glare, he saw, to his utter consternation, that Josephine Warner was at the wheel.
‘Get in,’ Tanya said.
Chapter 29
‘What happened, Sam? Tell me.’
Gaddis was staring at her, pressed back into the front seat as Tanya accelerated along Reichenberger.
‘Why are you here? What’s going on?’
‘I am not who you think I am,’ she said. ‘Tell me what happened.’ She turned to look at him. ‘You have blood on your jacket. Where’s Meisner?’
‘Meisner is dead.’ He knew that she was MI6. It was obvious to him now: the deception at Kew; the dinner; the coincidence of her trip to Berlin. He wished that he had kept running. ‘Meisner was shot. I just killed a man. What the fuck is happening? Why are you here?’
‘My name is Tanya Acocella. I’m an officer with the Secret Intelligence Service. We’ve been following you because of your investigation into Edward Crane. I’m sorry, it was necessary for me to pretend to be somebody else. Please try to stay focused. What do you mean, you just killed a man?’
It was almost a relief to hear her confession. At least he knew, finally, what he was up against. Then Gaddis told her what had happened and, as he did so, heard the truth of his own life and career, annihilated by what he had done. ‘Somebody was in the apartment,’ he said. ‘A Russian. Maybe the same man who killed Charlotte. Maybe the same man who killed Calvin. You know who these people are. You know what I’m talking about?’
‘I know what you’re talking about.’ Tanya’s eyes were fixed on the road.
‘We went back to get cigarettes.’ Gaddis wanted to be inside the car and outside the car. He wanted to be protected by this woman and yet he wanted to be as far from her as possible. ‘A man was inside the front door. He must have been waiting for Meisner. We must have surprised him. I don’t know what he was doing there. He shot him as soon as he walked in.’
‘Are you carrying a gun?’
Tanya was making a fast left-hand turn through a green light on a deserted roundabout. She could not understand how POLARBEAR had got out alive.
‘Of course I’m not carrying a fucking gun. I forced the door and it fell out of his hand. He can’t have been expecting two people. It fell in front of me. I picked it up because there was nothing else I could do. I just turned and shot. I think I may have killed him.’
‘Jesus, Sam.’
He didn’t like the fact that she used his name so easily. He had been duped by Crane and now he had been duped by Josephine Warner, a woman that – Christ! – he had hoped to sweet-talk into bed twenty-four hours later.
‘Look,