The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [83]
Gaddis moved in his seat, aware that he was soaked in sweat. He looked at his jacket and saw spots of blood sprayed across the sleeve. He felt as though he was locked down, trapped, and experienced a vivid need to wrench the wheel from Tanya’s hands and to send the car piling into a newsstand at the side of the road.
‘I should go to the police,’ he said, trying to remain calm. ‘I need you to stop the car.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that.’ Wipers swept dirt from the windscreen. ‘If you go to the police, Crane will be exposed. We can’t allow that to happen. The German authorities would very quickly start to piece things together. Whoever you killed tonight was almost certainly working for the Platov government. I need to get you out of Berlin and back to London.’
Gaddis looked again at his sleeve, streetlights pulsing on the blood.
‘How am I supposed to get out of Berlin?’ he said. ‘There are fingerprints on the gun. I passed a girl on the stairs as we came in. I was seen at the café with Meisner. The police will have a description of me in less than twenty-four hours. The only thing I can do is tell them the truth of what happened. Why I was meeting Meisner, why I was in Berlin, why the Russians wanted him dead.’
‘You cannot do that.’
He was bewildered and yet he knew why she was obstructing him. It was an MI6 cover-up. Nobody could know about Crane, about ATTILA, about Dresden.
‘Why?’ he said. ‘Tell me why? What is so fucking important about a twenty-year-old secret that people have to die in order to stop it coming out? I saw a man’s brains tonight. I saw Meisner’s head completely blown away.’
‘We are simply trying to protect the relationship between London and Moscow,’ Tanya replied feebly. She knew that she was retreating into platitudes and could hear the disgust in Gaddis’s voice.
‘What? What does that mean, Josephi—’ He began to use her cover name and felt a fool. ‘What relationship between London and Moscow? There isn’t a relationship between London and Moscow. You loathe each other.’
Tanya tried again, although she knew that what Gaddis had said was close to the truth. ‘The German press can’t get hold of this story, nor can they know about your involvement with Crane.’
Gaddis shook his head.
‘What happened in Dresden?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Dresden. Something happened in Dresden. On ATTILA’s watch, in the twilight of his career. Something involving Platov and Robert Wilkinson. Tell me what it was.’
‘Sam, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ This was the truth. She thought of Brennan and wondered if Gaddis had stumbled on the very secret which the Chief himself was surely trying to conceal from her. ‘We need to concentrate on you at the moment. We need to get you out of Berlin. There’ll be all the time in the world to hear your concerns when we are back in London.’
‘My concerns,’ he repeated witheringly. Tanya’s mobile rang and he gazed out of the window as she picked up.
‘Yes?’ Gaddis could hear a male voice speaking on the line and assumed that it was the man who had been watching him at the café. ‘No, I’ve got him,’ she said. ‘Something happened. Yes. Everything’s fine. I can’t speak now. Get everyone back to the flat. I’ll contact you there.’
‘Friend of yours?’ he asked when she had hung up.
‘Friend of mine,’ she replied.
‘Tell him I liked his girlfriend’s coat.’
Tanya ran an amber light. ‘Look. What can you remember? Was there any CCTV in the apartment building? Did you see a camera?’
‘I wasn’t looking. We were just going upstairs for cigarettes. We left the café to get away from your friends.’
‘But you say you passed a girl on the stairs?’
‘A Goth. Yes.’
Tanya was piecing things together, trying to find a way of saving him. He was oddly grateful for the effort. ‘And the receptionist saw your face at the surgery today.’
‘Oh great,’ he exclaimed. ‘You were there as well?’
‘We were there.’
She did not have the heart to tell him about the bug in his phone.
The Audi was skirting the edge of a park. In a floodlit