The hidden man am-2 Page 17

  ‘Jesus,’ Mark said.

  Frank’s voice was a low, logical statement of the facts.

  ‘You got the number?’ he asked.

  ‘I can find it.’

  ‘Then do it now. Our friend just popped out for a sandwich. He’s due backin less than five minutes.’

  ‘Rebecca. Give me Sam’s magic book, will you? I need to find something out.’

  Mark prayed that she would retrieve it without asking any awkward questions. Without stopping to make conversation. Without wondering why he had a film of sweat on his forehead in the middle of winter.

  ‘Of course, Mr Keen, of course.’

  ‘Call me Mark,’ he said. ‘I think she keeps it in the drawer…’

  ‘Yeah, here it is. Everything all right?’

  Frank passed them at the reception desk, sucking on a carton of Ribena.

  ‘Everything’s fine, yeah. It’s just so hot down there.’ Lowering his voice, Mark whispered, ‘These guys are taking for ever.’

  And Rebecca smiled, enjoying the shared confidence. She handed him the book and followed Mark with her eyes as he walked away.

  ‘Mr Keen?’

  ‘Yes?’

  Mark turned round. Rebecca was touching her neck, swinging this way and that in her revolving chair.

  ‘It’s just that I was wondering if you could show me how the fax machine works. I’m having trouble receiving.’

  Wondering if this was a pass, Mark said, ‘Sure. Just let me do this one thing and I’ll be right backwith you.’

  ‘Great.’

  He closed the door of his office, heat spread across his body. Flicking through the book — where? — Mark searched for the number. What’s the name of the company? What the fuck are the computer men called?

  But Sam was efficient. Sam laid things out. In the section marked ‘Computers’ he found a list of companies, topped by a firm of Apple specialists whose name he instantly recognized. Dialling the number with dervish speed, Mark found himself in an automated queue.

  For General Enquiries press 1.

  For Information about our range of Software Products, press 2.

  For Customers experiencing problems with the latest version of Windows, press 3.

  For Corporate Accounts, press 4.

  Mark hit ‘4’ hard with a rigid index finger and swore as music drifted through on the line. A boy band. Guitars and harmonies. He could feel his back becoming soaked in sweat. And then, through the window of his office, Mark saw Macklin coming back with a sandwich, his thin hair pushed to one side by the wind. Stop and talk to the girl, he prayed. Try and get your fat arse laid.

  ‘Hello, can I help you?’

  A woman, young, with a voice not unlike Rebecca’s was on the line.

  ‘Yes. Hello. Listen, hi, I’m calling from Libra.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’ve solved our problem.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Remember we called you?’

  Silence.

  ‘About a virus.’

  ‘A virus?’

  The woman sounded bored. Not taking things in. So many calls to field in a day and nothing interesting about this one.

  ‘Yes. A virus at the Libra offices.’ Macklin was eating his sandwich and seemed to be laughing at something Rebecca had said. Stay there, you prick. Keep talking. ‘One of our office managers called you. You said you had a team coming out here at three.’

  ‘At three?’

  More silence, deep as a cave. Was she stupid? Did she even know how to spell ‘virus’?

  ‘I’m just going through the book now, sir.’

  ‘Is it there?’

  Impatiently the woman said, ‘Just a minute, I’m still looking.’ Then, ‘Here it is. Yes, three o’clock.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what, sir?’

  ‘Well I’d like to cancel it. If it’s not too late.’

  ‘I see.’

  Mark experienced a weakening sensation in his arms.

  ‘Are they already on their way?’

  ‘Just a minute, please.’

  And he was forced to wait as the woman abandoned the line to ‘Careless Whisper’. One minute passed. Two. He looked out into the office and could not see Macklin. Then there was a knock on his door.

  ‘Just a minute.’

  Macklin came in anyway.

  ‘Keeno, can I just…’

  Mark looked up and signalled sternly with his hand. Eyes set like stone and the words ‘Gimme five minutes’ mouthed with absolute intent. Macklin said, ‘Sorry, mate, I’ll wait then,’ and closed the door.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mark pressed the phone tighter to his ear.

  ‘That’s fine, sir.’

  ‘It’s cancelled?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘They’re not already on their way?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said the team, they’re not already on their way?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s great news.’

  Anxiety fell from his body, like a storm cloud shedding rain. He actually grinned.

  ‘Was there anything else?’ the woman asked.

  ‘No, nothing else,’ Mark said, sitting backin his chair.

  ‘Well, that’s fine, then,’ she said, and abruptly hung up the phone.

  31

  Tracy Frakes had been waiting for the letter for three long days. On Tuesday morning, Mark had left the house at 8.45 a.m., forty minutes before the fat postman ambled up Torriano Avenue and dropped a single postcard into his letter box. There was no second post that day, so Tracy had gone home and spent the rest of the afternoon with her kids, taking them to the movies and then on for a meal at McDonald’s. The following morning she had woken at five, driven west to Kentish Town and had difficulty finding a parking space with a decent view of Mark’s property. He had left earlier than the day before — at 7.25 a.m. — and Tracy had thought he looked attractively dishevelled, his hair still wet from the bath and lost sleep staining his eyes. Then she had to wait another two hours for the postman, the same overweight blob as the day before, passing the time reading Glamour magazine and a brand-new book by John Grisham. Once the postman was safely out of sight, Tracy had entered the property, only to find that Mark had been sent two bills (gas and water), an invitation franked by Q magazine, another postcard (this time from Argentina) and a piece of junkmail from a home-tailoring service in Epping. Nothing, in other words, from America. She would have to wait for second post and most probably come back tomorrow.

  By Thursday, Tracy was bored of the assignment. Another 5 a.m. rise, another headlight drive to Kentish Town. She didn’t get called by Taylor all that often, and had been hoping for a decent black bag, a job that entailed something more than just fiddling about with someone’s post. Taylor had recruited her straight out of prison six years earlier, hoping, he said, to take advantage of her ‘unique gifts for theft and petty larceny’. He was a right twat, Taylor. Ten stone of Yorkshire ponce who treated her like a street urchin. Still, the money was good, and it was nice to get out of the house. Tracy wondered what she’d buy for her boys when the cheque came through. Come to think of it, she wondered what she’d buy for herself.

  At eight on the dot, Mark came out. A bit nervous this morning, looking a bit stressed and concerned. He was wearing a classy suit cut in navy blue corduroy with trousers that flared just above the shoe. Tracy thought he looked handsome; she wondered what he did for a living, whether he had a girlfriend or family. That was an element of the workshe really enjoyed, the mystery of a target’s identity. Once, she had broken into an office block in Bracknell and seen the company chairman that very same night on the news. To get so close to someone, to see their furniture, their clothes, to riffle through drawers and cupboards and leave no trace of her passing. There was real skill to it, a gift for ghosting through. It annoyed Tracy when intelligence people made a mess of things, when there were stories in the papers about
break-ins going wrong. She couldn’t see any excuse for it, for leaving a room disturbed. They’d all been trained properly; people just got sloppy, stopped taking pride in their work.

  Mark came towards her now and, for the first time in three days, walked right past Tracy’s vehicle. She had to pretend to apply make-up in the rear-view mirror as he headed south for the tube. Then it was another two-hour wait for the postman, finishing the Grisham as the minutes crawled by. At 10.05, a woman wearing a dark-blue Post Office uniform with a red canvas bag turned into the avenue and began distributing letters, working more quickly than the overweight blob, who must have been off sick. Four minutes later she left her trolley at the gate of Mark’s house and took three letters up to the door, pushing them through the letter box and then turning backto the road. When she was out of sight, Tracy moved quickly. Reaching into the backseat for her clipboard and charity ID, she stepped out of the car, made a brief check of the surrounding doors and windows and walked across the street. She was inside Mark’s house within four seconds — her quickest time so far — and closed the door behind her with a soft bump. An airmail envelope had floated out about four feet into the room. Flipping it over, she read the return address on the reverse side:

  Robert Bone US Post Office/Box 650 Rt 12 °Cornish New Hampshire 03745 United States of America

  Bingo. She would get it to Taylor by noon. A quick glance through the front door’s fish-eye lens and Tracy was out on the street. Job done. With any luck, she’d be home by three.

  32

  It wasn’t there.

  Ben rummaged through the contents of the shoebox where he had hidden the original copy of Bone’s letter, but there was no sign of it. Tapes, random playing cards, paper clips, packets of gum, but no trace of an airmail envelope bearing Bone’s handwriting. Just two days before, Ben had come home, made a photocopy of the letter at a local news agent and placed the original for safe keeping in his studio. Alice could not have taken it because she would not have known where to look. And yet somebody had been through the box.

  He shouted down stairs:

  ‘Have you seen the letter?’

  Alice took a long time to reply. It was Saturday morning and she was reading the papers in bed.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The original copy. The letter from Robert Bone. Not the one in the car.’

  Again, a long delay. Then, tiredly, ‘No.’

  He walked down stairs and went into their bedroom.

  ‘You sure? You didn’t send it to your friend in Customs and Excise, the one who was going to check on Kostov?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Alice looked puffy and tired, trying to lock herself into the privacy of a weekend and not wanting to be disturbed. Ben had brought her a cup of coffee at ten and barely received a word of thanks. He was trying to make an effort with her but she seemed distant and cold. In the past, Saturday mornings had been almost consciously set aside for sex, but even that was a chore now.

  ‘I’m going out,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Thought I might go for a walk round Regent’s Park, maybe take a look at the roof on the British Museum, go to an exhibition or something.’

  ‘All day?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Probably, yeah.’

  She had told him that she was having lunch with a friend and afterwards going into the Standard. Another Saturday apart. Another weekend when they did separate things.

  ‘Did Mark ever call you back?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I’ve left twenty messages, sent a dozen emails. He must be ignoring me.’

  Peeling a satsuma in bed, Alice said, ‘Now why would he do that?’

  The tone of the question suggested that she could well imagine why.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Ben replied. ‘I’m trying to make it up to him.’

  Didn’t she realize that? Hadn’t she seen that he was trying to move on? Or was it simply that she didn’t care?

  ‘I mean, maybe he’s busy,’ Alice suggested. ‘Maybe his phone’s not working. Maybe he just wants to be left alone.’

  ‘Well that’s great, isn’t it? I have a lot of stuff I need to talk to him about and he won’t fucking get in touch.’

  ‘Relax,’ she said, an instruction that had the effect of making Ben feel even more on edge. ‘Where do they say he is when you call Libra?’

  ‘They say he’s around. That’s all they seem to know. That he’s around or in a meeting and can they take a message? And his mobile just rings and rings. I don’t even get to say anything.’

  Alice smiled as juice from the satsuma dropped on to the sheets.

  ‘So, as I was saying, I’m going out,’ Ben told her. ‘Thought I might take the car.’

  He picked up a bottle of mineral water from the floor, took a slug and scratched at his neck. Alice said, ‘OK,’ then, out of nowhere: ‘By the way, I had lunch with Sebastian yesterday.’

  The water caught in Ben’s throat. He had been walking out of the room.

  ‘Sebastian?’

  He knew exactly who she was talking about.

  ‘That’s right. Sebastian Roth.’

  Why was she telling him this now? To start a fight? To assuage her guilt? To bury the news in everyday chit-chat in the hope that it would just go away? Alice never did anything without first exactly calculating its impact.

  ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘He invited me.’

  ‘He invited you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Just you? Nobody else?’

  ‘Just me.’ She was pretending to read the paper.

  ‘And how was he?’

  ‘Great.’

  Ben moved across to the window and stared out at Elgin Crescent. He was aware of Alice chewing elaborately.

  ‘So did you get a story out of him? I mean, that was the point of the meeting, right? For the paper?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Well, go on then.’

  ‘Go on what?’

  ‘Well, what was the scoop? Why else would you bring it up? There must be a point to this announcement.’

  It depressed him that they had so quickly descended into yet another argument.

  ‘There’s no point to it,’ she said. ‘You’re making too much of a harmless piece of information. I just thought that you’d be interested.’

  ‘Well, I am.’

  ‘Well, good.’ Alice sighed theatrically and let the newspaper flap on to the bed. ‘We talked about your father, actually. Then we talked about Seb’s new restaurant…’

  ‘ Seb? ’ Ben said sarcastically. ‘You call him “ Seb ”?’ Alice ignored this.

  ‘He wants me to do a feature,’ she said. ‘A big interview for the paper.’

  ‘I didn’t know Libra were opening a restaurant.’

  ‘Well, there you go. That’s why we need journalists in the world, Ben, to keep people like you informed. Anyway, it’s not Libra officially. It’s just him and his lawyer.’

  ‘Tom Macklin?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘How come Mark never said anything?’

  ‘Well, maybe because he doesn’t know anything about it.’ Alice threw back the duvet. Her legs looked supple and warm and Ben suddenly wanted to touch them. Her pale naked body breezed past him as she said, ‘Maybe he would have said something if you two ever spoke,’ and went into the bathroom.

  ‘Did you mention anything to Roth about Bone’s letter?’

  ‘Christ no.’ She was coming back into the room. ‘You told me to keep quiet about that. I haven’t told a soul.’

  He scanned her face for the lie as he said, ‘Good.’ For all Ben knew, Alice and Roth could have skipped lunch, booked themselves into the Charlotte Street Hotel and fucked from noon till six. That was the extent of the trust he held for his wife. He heard the lock click on the bathroom door and sat down on the bed. There were shards of satsuma skin hidden in the white folds of the duvet.

  ‘Well, I’ll be off
then,’ he said, shouting through the door.

  ‘Fine,’ Alice called back.

  And then he heard the hot blast of water pouring into the bath and assumed that the conversation was over.

  33

  For Mark, this was the spy’s life. Secret codes, surreptitious phone calls, meetings in underground car parks, the total concealment of everyday life. Joking with Macklin, smiling at Seb, and nobody at work with the slightest idea that genial, approachable Keeno was a source feeding privileged information to an officer in MI5. It was just as he had imagined it. Just as his father had described. Mark had an aptitude for spying, a talent for secrecy and sleight of hand. It ran in the family. The Keen inheritance.

  And now safe houses. Randall had made contact via email insisting on a meeting on Saturday morning. Something important had come up, something vital to the operation. Mark was given exact directions from Kentish Town to an MI5 property west of the Kilburn High Road and set out shortly after breakfast. For security, Watchers posted along the route tracked him all the way to the front door. He arrived at 10 a.m.

  The flat was located on the first floor of a converted, semi-detached house in Priory Park Road. When Mark rang the bell, Ian Boyle opened the door and smiled warmly. Only twice before in his career had Ian had the opportunity to meet the target of his own surveillance at first hand, and he was intrigued to witness Mark close-up, the full weight and presence of the man unseparated by lens or windscreen.

  ‘All right there?’ he said, waving him inside. ‘You find us OK?’

  ‘No problem,’ Mark replied.

  There were flyers littering the narrow hall and a citrus smell of carpet cleaner and detergents. Directly ahead, a steep staircase led up to the flat with a bicycle partly blocking the way. Ian had to push it to one side and said ‘Sorry’ as oil from the chain rubbed up against the wall.

  ‘Bloody thing’s always getting in the way,’ he said. ‘Good for exercise, though. Keeps me in trim.’

  To illustrate his point more vividly, he patted his stomach, leading Mark upstairs past bedrooms with closed doors and a bathroom in the process of being redecorated. Taploe was waiting for them in a bright, yellow-painted sitting room off the top landing, standing by a window which overlooked the street. Dark blue velvet curtains were drawn against the light and he appeared to be chewing gum.