The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [99]
‘You’ve lost me,’ he replied. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘No,’ said Wilkinson. ‘I expect you don’t.’ Another gust of wind came buffeting across the plain. ‘But Sir John Brennan knows exactly what I’m talking about. Be sure to tell him that I understand the definition of loyalty. He never looked out for me, so why should I look out for him? If this Gaddis wants chapter and verse on ATTILA, perhaps I’ll give it to him. It’s time the whole story came out anyway. Christ, the British government would probably benefit if it did. Wouldn’t you like to see the back of that maniac?’
‘Which maniac?’
‘Platov,’ Wilkinson replied witheringly, as if Brooke had laid out his ignorance for the world to see. ‘They really haven’t put you in the picture at all, have they? You really have no idea what the hell is going on.’
Chapter 35
Late on Thursday afternoon, Sam Gaddis was squeezing through a pavement crush of students outside the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies when he spotted Tanya Acocella on the opposite side of Taviton Street. She was wearing a beige raincoat, leather boots and a beret which brought out the stark white bones of her face. He thought that she looked tired, but felt the irritating pang of attraction nonetheless; he had to remind himself to look annoyed as he crossed the street to speak to her.
‘I don’t suppose this is a coincidence.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Walk with me?’
She was taking a risk, being seen with him. Brennan could have eyes all over UCL. A simple surveillance photograph of the two of them together, fed back to Vauxhall Cross, would reveal that she had ignored the Chief’s order to abandon contact with POLARBEAR.
‘I wondered how you were getting along,’ she asked.
Gaddis took the question at face value and said that he had been ‘fine, absolutely fine’ since the shootings in Berlin.
‘We’ve managed to come to an arrangement with the German authorities. They’ve put a squeeze on coverage of the incident in the media. The police won’t be looking for a second gunman. The man who killed Meisner, the man you shot, was a Russian named Nicolai Doronin. MI5 had been observing him for several months. The Germans know that he has links to the FSB, but they’re not expecting to pursue a complaint against Moscow. Doronin will make a full recovery and he’ll be turfed out of Berlin. He’ll know that if he tries to finger any of his colleagues in connection with the conspiracy, there’ll be repercussions for his family in London.’
‘What a lovely story,’ said Gaddis, taking out a cigarette. Tanya asked for one and he lit it for her as a student came up behind them, asked Gaddis a question about an essay deadline and then walked off towards Endsleigh Gardens.
‘The Berlin solution is the best you’re going to get,’ Tanya said, pointedly expecting some measure of thanks for the horse-trading SIS had done on Gaddis’s behalf.
‘I understand that,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I’m extremely grateful.’
They walked in silence. She was wondering how best to say what she had come to say.
‘You are being careful, aren’t you, Sam?’
‘Careful in what way?’
‘You understand the terms of our arrangement? You can’t go looking for Crane. You can’t go seeking vengeance for what happened to Meisner and Charlotte.’
She thought of Brennan lashing out at her in his office and wondered why she was being so considerate of Gaddis’s feelings. A pigeon settled on the pavement ahead of them, hopped into the path of a taxi turning