Reaction of the tiger, p.21
REACTION OF THE TIGEr, page 21
part #4 of André Warner, Manhunter Series
I looked at Tony. He didn’t meet my eyes.
‘You can’t declare one of our people persona non grata,’ he said, but didn’t sound very convincing.
‘Ministerial approval has already been granted,’ MacCowan said, drawing on his e-cigarette.
It was growing dusk outside. In the sky to the south, a large passenger jet was traversing the sky from left to right and climbing. I watched it dwindle in size until it merged with the pewter coloured line of clouds on the horizon.
It was Tony who broke the silence.
‘As it happens Mark is going abroad tomorrow on department business, so we can live with your edict.’
‘Good, good.’ MacCowan exhaled vapour, and smiled at nobody in particular.
‘But in his absence we’ll be lodging a formal complaint with the Home Office. Even if you had the say-so to deport an MI6 operative, this particular one is a British subject, born and bred. How do you make one of your own citizens persona non grata?’
‘That’s a very fair point. If only we could be certain he is a British citizen. Nationality aside, if he insists on standing on his rights, we won’t physically deport him as the Swiss did, of course. We’ll just arrest him and cooperate with the Germans in extraditing him.’
‘Your even-handedness overwhelms me,’ I said.
‘In the circumstances, we’ll waive the statement concerning the incident at the hotel. You’re free to go.’
‘You haven’t heard the last of this,’ Tony blustered.
‘Don’t make too much of a fuss, Mr Dimeloe,’ Smith said. ‘We might decide to do a full investigation of you.’
‘Yes.’ Again, the meaningless smile from MacCowan. ‘We could look into your gambling habits, for instance.’ He paused to let it sink in. ‘If we were minded to.’
Tony’s mouth opened then closed, no words issuing from it.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
Minutes later we were in the street, Londoners of many hues swirling past. While Tony lit a much-needed cigarette, I settled for sucking in the air of freedom, like a newly-released convict walking through the prison gate at the end of his sentence.
‘Arnold fucking Black,’ he said heavily. ‘What the fuck were you up to, Anders?’
‘You don’t want to know, even if you think you do.’
His cell phone played “Rule Britannia”. He applied it to his ear. He listened and his face brightened like the sun coming out from behind a particularly dark cloud.
‘That’s marvellous, bloody marvellous. And she’s really okay?’
More listening. He said goodbye and came off the phone.
‘That was the hospital,’ he told me. ‘Sammie’s come out of her coma and she’s fine.’
‘No kidding. Hey, buddy, that’s fantastic news.’ I slapped his back.
‘Yes … yes. I can go and see her whenever I like.’ His relief was palpable. He pulled hard on his cigarette. ‘Thank Christ for that. Our marriage may be shaky but I still love the cow.’
‘It’s a massive load off my conscience too,’ I said. ‘You going round there right away?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Will I be allowed to visit? Or maybe you don’t want me to.’
‘It’s family only for now. Leave it till you get back. Maybe she’ll even be home by then.’
He sounded curt, dismissive. If he held me responsible for what had happened to her, I couldn’t blame him. Or was it that he still suspected me of having a fling with her? It wasn’t as if the idea hadn’t crossed my mind more than once, despite ultimately rejecting the offering.
‘You still want me to do the Wharfe job, after what MacCowan said?’
‘Bloody hell, yes. He’s still a traitor, still got to be stopped, and you’re already booked to fly to Finland. Just get on with it. Who cares about your ancient screw-up with the Germans? I’ll try and sort it, but it won’t be easy, your MI6 status being phoney.’
‘Good enough. Give Samantha my … best.’
I had almost said, ‘Give Samantha my love,’ but then he might have taken that too literally.
‘Make sure you’re out of the country by this time tomorrow.’
‘You bet.’
‘Don’t let me down on this, Anders.’
‘It’s as good as done.’
I would never have been able to convince him that when I accepted a contract, I never welshed on it. In my line of business, contracts, unwritten, unsigned, though they were, were as sacrosanct as any of the Ten Commandments.
A handclasp and an arm squeeze and he took off to retrieve his car, leaving me to flag a cab.
The decision of Scotland Yard to turf me out called for a change of plan. Instead of flying out of Heathrow, I would drive to Folkestone, board Le Shuttle to travel to France through the Channel Tunnel, and continue on to Brussels. Leaving the car at Zaventem airport, I would switch passports for the flight to Helsinki, and don the identity of John (known as “Jack”) Henley. After clearing passport control in the Finnish capital I would revert to my MI6-supplied ID. The driving was inconvenient compared with flying, but better than abandoning my nearly-new Range Rover Evoque in the Hornton Street underground parking garage. To guard against leakage, I wasn’t telling even Tony of my itinerary.
The ID switch would interrupt the paper trail and thwart enemies and friends alike. The problem with friends is that they have mouths.
The only remaining uncertainty was the condition of my wounded leg. It was healing well. I had had the dressing changed before the meeting at the Yard, and it was smarting a bit, but if I could avoid running and climbing for a week or so, it would see me through. Just another old wound for Maura to inventory, if ever we got back together.
How did it go that night with her, as I recovered from a second session of energetic lovemaking, and she set about exploring my man-made blemishes?
‘You’re like an old tomcat.’ She had traced a raised cicatrice along my ribcage, a memento collected in a fracas with a French gang boss and his gang. ‘Victor of a thousand street fights. At least nobody’s taken a nip out of your ear.’
Like all the little vignettes recalled from my period as Maura’s lover it gave me a twinge.
* * * * *
My text to Giorgy read as follows:
That’s as close as you’ll get
to sanitising me.
(The SIS euphemism would make them scratch their Italian heads).
Try again and I’ll be coming
for T. Then you.
This is my final communication
from this cell phone. I am closing
it down and you will be unable to
contact me.
Troisi had too much protection to let my threat worry him. Giorgy would see it in less sanguine light. In some senses a fish out of water in his management role for Il Sindicato, he would worry enough for both of them and might just muster enough influence with Troisi to persuade him to leave me be. But I would never know if he did. Even if they agreed to back off and got that message through to me, their word was not to be trusted.
By shutting down my cell, I would ensure only that I couldn’t receive their threats. It was the only method I could think of to keep Maura and Lindy safe from retribution. At best it was a short-lived solution.
My future remained unclear, seen as through the biblical glass darkly. All I could do was try and stay ahead of Troisi’s baying hounds. It was a mystery and a concern how they had located me at the Park Grand Hotel. If they had found me once, they could do so again. For now, whereabouts unknown, communication blocked, were my only protections.
IV
COLD PURSUIT
Fifteen
Finland. Land of lakes, forests, mosquitos, and unpronounceable names. I was last here during my period as an SIS operative, when I was dispatched to meet up with a Russian defector who had upset Vladimir Putin. It was a straightforward mission. The guy, whose name was Alexeyev, was crossing the border into Finland near Saiija, a hamlet in the north. The risk was all on his side. In the main street, the front room of a house had been converted into a coffee house, and this was where I set up my surveillance post. All I had to do was sit by the window, watching for my man, and look like a tourist. In January. It was snowing big fat flakes, and the mercury was at minus twenty Celsius.
Alexeyev didn’t come alone. Not his fault. A couple of heavies from the FSB were on his tail and they took him out right in front of the window, narrowly missing taking me out with him when one of the bullets came through the window and sprayed me with broken glass.
It wasn’t part of my remit to get into a gunfight, therefore I wasn’t even carrying. The FSB pair drove off, wheels churning snow and gravel, leaving me to pick up the pieces. With my non-existent Finnish, it wasn’t exactly a cakewalk.
As I stooped over Alexeyev he was still breathing though barely. Two holes in his chest, blood bubbling from the corner of his mouth. Face as white as the snow that was already collecting on his chest.
‘Apua! Apua!’ I yelled at the circle of faces that quickly formed around me. “Help” in Finnish, and one of maybe a dozen words I knew. My pronunciation was awful. I made it sound like ‘App-wa,’ when it should have been ‘Uh-poo-uh’. One of the smarter rubberneckers figured it out and hauled out a cell phone; while he spoke gibberish into it, the rest stood around gabbling gibberish to each other.
Alexeyev’s grey ushanka hat had fallen off and lay beside him. I lifted his head gently and slid the hat under it.
The ambulance had to come from Salla, forty kms away. It showed up a half hour after the shooting, preceded by the obligatory sirens. By then Alexeyev was long dead. Bullets through the chest usually have that effect.
Nobody knew the reason for my presence in Saiija; I was treated as just another witness. A statement was required. The police sergeant who entered it into his word processor spoke English after a fashion. We muddled through it somehow, and I was let off the leash to fly back to Helsinki, and onward to London and MI6 headquarters, where I received a dressing down over my failure.
‘Failure is failure,’ my immediate boss, Tony Dimeloe, chided, ‘You know it’s results that count. Excuses count for nothing.’ Then he grinned to show he was just following procedures and we were really still pals. No black marks then. At the time, still bent on a career in MI6, I was relieved.
Now I was back again, in harness to the Firm again, going north again.
‘Thanks a fucking bunch, Tony,’ I said to my mirror that first morning, in the bathroom of my square, soulless cell of a room at the Finn Hotel in the Ullanlinna district of Helsinki, elsewhere known as Downtown.
* * * * *
First stop was the pink-stuccoed British Embassy, in Ostra Allen, next door to the French Embassy, and across the road from the US Embassy. Funny how embassies tend to cling together, even in countries with a benign regime. To my right, the Baltic, to my left Kaivopuisto Park. I had jogged on the tree-bordered pathways of the park during my previous visit.
The Embassy was expecting me. My ID gained me entry, though the gatekeeper smirked when he saw it, as if he knew it wasn’t worth the plastic it was encased in.
‘Wait here, Mr Andrews,’ he said, indicating an empty seat in the reception area. Of the dozen or so seats, only four others were occupied.
My wait was short. I was shown into a poky office on the second floor. According to the name board at the front of his desk, the occupant was Mika Burnett, Attaché, a quasi-military rank within the diplomatic service. He didn’t stand to greet me, nor offer to shake hands. You could say he behaved as if he knew all about me. To him, I would be a renegade.
‘This is what you have come for, I believe,’ he said stiffly, extracting a jiffy bag from a drawer in his desk and shunting it across the table towards me.
Behind him the view through the window was of the courtyard I had just crossed, with the gatehouse and other outbuildings. A corner of the French Embassy could be glimpsed, together with a tree or two, still with foliage but receding fast. More leaves lay on the ground than remained attached to the branches. Winter was coming, and it would be predictably cold up here on the 60th parallel.
I emptied the contents of the bag onto Attaché Burnett’s desk.
‘Must you?’ he said, as the Beretta thumped on the veneered surface, with both magazines and the silencer in its wake. My business cards in a rigid plastic container were last out.
‘Yes.’
He frowned as I checked the gun’s action. Taking it apart could wait until I was alone.
‘I hope you’re not going to cause a diplomatic incident.’
‘Here? Don’t worry, Mika. I’m heading north. I’ll be well out of your hair. I won’t even need this.’ I waved the silencer under his nose before returning it to the bag, with the other components of my armoury.
He produced a sheet of paper with the Embassy logo at the top.
‘Sign this receipt,’ he said. He even supplied a pen to sign it with.
Two minutes later I was out of there, the parcel making an unsightly bulge in my parka’s inside pocket. It was a pleasant day, above average temperature, no breezes off the Baltic, so I went for a walk in the park. Found a bench seat under a birch tree, sat there and smelled the sea, which smelled like all the other seas I had encountered except it had a chilly edge to it. For visual entertainment I watched the Finns go by. A stern, rather taciturn race in my experience. Comes of living in a tough climate, I suppose. Strange sense of humour too. Just for fun, I said good morning in Finnish to an elderly man who was being taken for a walk by a Pekinese in a vest.
‘Hyvàà humoenta,’ according to my phrase book.
My pronunciation must have been terrible, because he just gaped at me and accelerated past, even overtaking the dog. I made a mental note to practice speaking the language correctly before it landed me in trouble.
* * * * *
Tony had referred me to an unofficial contact called Vilho Granit to act as my “mentor”. I was to meet him in the Villa Waino club, opposite my hotel at 6.00pm. Quaintly, he had provided a password. He would be at the bar and would ask me what was my poison. I was to reply ‘Mine’s a whisky sour, go easy on the sour.’ He had a photo of me, transmitted by email, I had a description of him: tall, thin, with blond hair worn long, and an earring. The earring alone made me twitchy, but I couldn’t afford to be choosy.
The Villa Waino was hot, noisy, and full of mostly men, though I did spot a dead ringer for Agnetha of Abba at a table in a corner, chatting up a blubbery geezer with a polished shaven head. She had to be a hooker, the way she was mooning over him. Money opens all doors, including or especially the vaginal one.
Above the bar, with its three inches thick wooden counter, were a number of black boards with handwritten lists of the available booze. The selection was extensive and included Strongbow cider. The tables were solid enough to dance on, with bench seats that looked uncomfortable. The interior walls were mostly rough brick, artificially aged.
There he was, at the bar, one foot on the rail. Several inches taller than me, dressed in a leather bomber jacket with the cuffs turned up, grey jeans, grey sneakers. His near-platinum hair curled up at the ends, very fetching. Ah, well.
As I filled the empty space to his right he turned towards me. A smile made his young face younger. His ear ring twinkled.
‘What’s your poison?’
I smiled back and trotted out the other half of the password.
He shoved a be-ringed hand at me. ‘Vilho Granit,’ he said. ‘My English friends call me Rocky.’ He had a Scandinavian accent, a bit sing-song, but easy to decipher.
‘Mark Andrews.’
He had a grip that was strong enough to revise my opinion of him.
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘I need that hand.’
‘Sorry. I not know my own strength.’
‘Well, I do, now.’
He ordered my whisky sour and a drink called lakka for himself, and we took them to a vacant table next to Agnetha and her mountain of jelly.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, when we were settled, indicating his glass. The liquid was amber coloured.
‘Lakka? It’s a liqueur, made from … cloudberry, I think you call it. Is this your first visit in Helsinki?’
‘No, but the last was a long time ago. You Finnish?’
‘Half and half. I have a Finnish passport.’ His grin was slanted. ‘Among other passports.’
I sipped my whisky and listened over my shoulder to Agnetha speaking Finnish. She was talking very fast, her tone wheedling. Trying to hype up the price, probably.
‘You work for the Embassy?’
‘No, I work for British Secret Service.’ He winked. ‘Part time.’
‘What do you do the other part of your time? Work for the Russian Secret Service?’
He tut-tutted my heresy. ‘I breed dogs.’
The noise level was building around us, which suited me. Music and conversation is good news for the spy fraternity. The age range of the clientele was twenties to forties with the occasional exception. A few more women were coming in, one or two with that slightly Asiatic look some Finns have. Not bad looking at all.
‘What you want from me?’ Rocky said, and sipped lakka while he waited for my response.
‘I’m not sure yet. I have a job to do way up north. I’ll probably need you to organise travel and accommodation and be on hand in case I run into trouble.’
‘Uh-huh. What kind trouble you expect?’
I eyed him, weighing how much he knew, how much I should tell him.
‘Your contact at the SIS is Tony Dimeloe, right?’
‘Correct.’
‘What did he tell you?’
He shrugged. ‘You know Tony. He operates on need to know rule. He said place myself in your disposal … er, sorry, at your disposal, and you fill me in on details.’
It made sense. Tony was as security sensitive as I was, he would never tell you more if he could get away with telling you less.
A bellow of laughter from a few tables away brought a frown to Rocky’s brow. He had the air of a man who would irritate easily.
‘You can’t declare one of our people persona non grata,’ he said, but didn’t sound very convincing.
‘Ministerial approval has already been granted,’ MacCowan said, drawing on his e-cigarette.
It was growing dusk outside. In the sky to the south, a large passenger jet was traversing the sky from left to right and climbing. I watched it dwindle in size until it merged with the pewter coloured line of clouds on the horizon.
It was Tony who broke the silence.
‘As it happens Mark is going abroad tomorrow on department business, so we can live with your edict.’
‘Good, good.’ MacCowan exhaled vapour, and smiled at nobody in particular.
‘But in his absence we’ll be lodging a formal complaint with the Home Office. Even if you had the say-so to deport an MI6 operative, this particular one is a British subject, born and bred. How do you make one of your own citizens persona non grata?’
‘That’s a very fair point. If only we could be certain he is a British citizen. Nationality aside, if he insists on standing on his rights, we won’t physically deport him as the Swiss did, of course. We’ll just arrest him and cooperate with the Germans in extraditing him.’
‘Your even-handedness overwhelms me,’ I said.
‘In the circumstances, we’ll waive the statement concerning the incident at the hotel. You’re free to go.’
‘You haven’t heard the last of this,’ Tony blustered.
‘Don’t make too much of a fuss, Mr Dimeloe,’ Smith said. ‘We might decide to do a full investigation of you.’
‘Yes.’ Again, the meaningless smile from MacCowan. ‘We could look into your gambling habits, for instance.’ He paused to let it sink in. ‘If we were minded to.’
Tony’s mouth opened then closed, no words issuing from it.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
Minutes later we were in the street, Londoners of many hues swirling past. While Tony lit a much-needed cigarette, I settled for sucking in the air of freedom, like a newly-released convict walking through the prison gate at the end of his sentence.
‘Arnold fucking Black,’ he said heavily. ‘What the fuck were you up to, Anders?’
‘You don’t want to know, even if you think you do.’
His cell phone played “Rule Britannia”. He applied it to his ear. He listened and his face brightened like the sun coming out from behind a particularly dark cloud.
‘That’s marvellous, bloody marvellous. And she’s really okay?’
More listening. He said goodbye and came off the phone.
‘That was the hospital,’ he told me. ‘Sammie’s come out of her coma and she’s fine.’
‘No kidding. Hey, buddy, that’s fantastic news.’ I slapped his back.
‘Yes … yes. I can go and see her whenever I like.’ His relief was palpable. He pulled hard on his cigarette. ‘Thank Christ for that. Our marriage may be shaky but I still love the cow.’
‘It’s a massive load off my conscience too,’ I said. ‘You going round there right away?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Will I be allowed to visit? Or maybe you don’t want me to.’
‘It’s family only for now. Leave it till you get back. Maybe she’ll even be home by then.’
He sounded curt, dismissive. If he held me responsible for what had happened to her, I couldn’t blame him. Or was it that he still suspected me of having a fling with her? It wasn’t as if the idea hadn’t crossed my mind more than once, despite ultimately rejecting the offering.
‘You still want me to do the Wharfe job, after what MacCowan said?’
‘Bloody hell, yes. He’s still a traitor, still got to be stopped, and you’re already booked to fly to Finland. Just get on with it. Who cares about your ancient screw-up with the Germans? I’ll try and sort it, but it won’t be easy, your MI6 status being phoney.’
‘Good enough. Give Samantha my … best.’
I had almost said, ‘Give Samantha my love,’ but then he might have taken that too literally.
‘Make sure you’re out of the country by this time tomorrow.’
‘You bet.’
‘Don’t let me down on this, Anders.’
‘It’s as good as done.’
I would never have been able to convince him that when I accepted a contract, I never welshed on it. In my line of business, contracts, unwritten, unsigned, though they were, were as sacrosanct as any of the Ten Commandments.
A handclasp and an arm squeeze and he took off to retrieve his car, leaving me to flag a cab.
The decision of Scotland Yard to turf me out called for a change of plan. Instead of flying out of Heathrow, I would drive to Folkestone, board Le Shuttle to travel to France through the Channel Tunnel, and continue on to Brussels. Leaving the car at Zaventem airport, I would switch passports for the flight to Helsinki, and don the identity of John (known as “Jack”) Henley. After clearing passport control in the Finnish capital I would revert to my MI6-supplied ID. The driving was inconvenient compared with flying, but better than abandoning my nearly-new Range Rover Evoque in the Hornton Street underground parking garage. To guard against leakage, I wasn’t telling even Tony of my itinerary.
The ID switch would interrupt the paper trail and thwart enemies and friends alike. The problem with friends is that they have mouths.
The only remaining uncertainty was the condition of my wounded leg. It was healing well. I had had the dressing changed before the meeting at the Yard, and it was smarting a bit, but if I could avoid running and climbing for a week or so, it would see me through. Just another old wound for Maura to inventory, if ever we got back together.
How did it go that night with her, as I recovered from a second session of energetic lovemaking, and she set about exploring my man-made blemishes?
‘You’re like an old tomcat.’ She had traced a raised cicatrice along my ribcage, a memento collected in a fracas with a French gang boss and his gang. ‘Victor of a thousand street fights. At least nobody’s taken a nip out of your ear.’
Like all the little vignettes recalled from my period as Maura’s lover it gave me a twinge.
* * * * *
My text to Giorgy read as follows:
That’s as close as you’ll get
to sanitising me.
(The SIS euphemism would make them scratch their Italian heads).
Try again and I’ll be coming
for T. Then you.
This is my final communication
from this cell phone. I am closing
it down and you will be unable to
contact me.
Troisi had too much protection to let my threat worry him. Giorgy would see it in less sanguine light. In some senses a fish out of water in his management role for Il Sindicato, he would worry enough for both of them and might just muster enough influence with Troisi to persuade him to leave me be. But I would never know if he did. Even if they agreed to back off and got that message through to me, their word was not to be trusted.
By shutting down my cell, I would ensure only that I couldn’t receive their threats. It was the only method I could think of to keep Maura and Lindy safe from retribution. At best it was a short-lived solution.
My future remained unclear, seen as through the biblical glass darkly. All I could do was try and stay ahead of Troisi’s baying hounds. It was a mystery and a concern how they had located me at the Park Grand Hotel. If they had found me once, they could do so again. For now, whereabouts unknown, communication blocked, were my only protections.
IV
COLD PURSUIT
Fifteen
Finland. Land of lakes, forests, mosquitos, and unpronounceable names. I was last here during my period as an SIS operative, when I was dispatched to meet up with a Russian defector who had upset Vladimir Putin. It was a straightforward mission. The guy, whose name was Alexeyev, was crossing the border into Finland near Saiija, a hamlet in the north. The risk was all on his side. In the main street, the front room of a house had been converted into a coffee house, and this was where I set up my surveillance post. All I had to do was sit by the window, watching for my man, and look like a tourist. In January. It was snowing big fat flakes, and the mercury was at minus twenty Celsius.
Alexeyev didn’t come alone. Not his fault. A couple of heavies from the FSB were on his tail and they took him out right in front of the window, narrowly missing taking me out with him when one of the bullets came through the window and sprayed me with broken glass.
It wasn’t part of my remit to get into a gunfight, therefore I wasn’t even carrying. The FSB pair drove off, wheels churning snow and gravel, leaving me to pick up the pieces. With my non-existent Finnish, it wasn’t exactly a cakewalk.
As I stooped over Alexeyev he was still breathing though barely. Two holes in his chest, blood bubbling from the corner of his mouth. Face as white as the snow that was already collecting on his chest.
‘Apua! Apua!’ I yelled at the circle of faces that quickly formed around me. “Help” in Finnish, and one of maybe a dozen words I knew. My pronunciation was awful. I made it sound like ‘App-wa,’ when it should have been ‘Uh-poo-uh’. One of the smarter rubberneckers figured it out and hauled out a cell phone; while he spoke gibberish into it, the rest stood around gabbling gibberish to each other.
Alexeyev’s grey ushanka hat had fallen off and lay beside him. I lifted his head gently and slid the hat under it.
The ambulance had to come from Salla, forty kms away. It showed up a half hour after the shooting, preceded by the obligatory sirens. By then Alexeyev was long dead. Bullets through the chest usually have that effect.
Nobody knew the reason for my presence in Saiija; I was treated as just another witness. A statement was required. The police sergeant who entered it into his word processor spoke English after a fashion. We muddled through it somehow, and I was let off the leash to fly back to Helsinki, and onward to London and MI6 headquarters, where I received a dressing down over my failure.
‘Failure is failure,’ my immediate boss, Tony Dimeloe, chided, ‘You know it’s results that count. Excuses count for nothing.’ Then he grinned to show he was just following procedures and we were really still pals. No black marks then. At the time, still bent on a career in MI6, I was relieved.
Now I was back again, in harness to the Firm again, going north again.
‘Thanks a fucking bunch, Tony,’ I said to my mirror that first morning, in the bathroom of my square, soulless cell of a room at the Finn Hotel in the Ullanlinna district of Helsinki, elsewhere known as Downtown.
* * * * *
First stop was the pink-stuccoed British Embassy, in Ostra Allen, next door to the French Embassy, and across the road from the US Embassy. Funny how embassies tend to cling together, even in countries with a benign regime. To my right, the Baltic, to my left Kaivopuisto Park. I had jogged on the tree-bordered pathways of the park during my previous visit.
The Embassy was expecting me. My ID gained me entry, though the gatekeeper smirked when he saw it, as if he knew it wasn’t worth the plastic it was encased in.
‘Wait here, Mr Andrews,’ he said, indicating an empty seat in the reception area. Of the dozen or so seats, only four others were occupied.
My wait was short. I was shown into a poky office on the second floor. According to the name board at the front of his desk, the occupant was Mika Burnett, Attaché, a quasi-military rank within the diplomatic service. He didn’t stand to greet me, nor offer to shake hands. You could say he behaved as if he knew all about me. To him, I would be a renegade.
‘This is what you have come for, I believe,’ he said stiffly, extracting a jiffy bag from a drawer in his desk and shunting it across the table towards me.
Behind him the view through the window was of the courtyard I had just crossed, with the gatehouse and other outbuildings. A corner of the French Embassy could be glimpsed, together with a tree or two, still with foliage but receding fast. More leaves lay on the ground than remained attached to the branches. Winter was coming, and it would be predictably cold up here on the 60th parallel.
I emptied the contents of the bag onto Attaché Burnett’s desk.
‘Must you?’ he said, as the Beretta thumped on the veneered surface, with both magazines and the silencer in its wake. My business cards in a rigid plastic container were last out.
‘Yes.’
He frowned as I checked the gun’s action. Taking it apart could wait until I was alone.
‘I hope you’re not going to cause a diplomatic incident.’
‘Here? Don’t worry, Mika. I’m heading north. I’ll be well out of your hair. I won’t even need this.’ I waved the silencer under his nose before returning it to the bag, with the other components of my armoury.
He produced a sheet of paper with the Embassy logo at the top.
‘Sign this receipt,’ he said. He even supplied a pen to sign it with.
Two minutes later I was out of there, the parcel making an unsightly bulge in my parka’s inside pocket. It was a pleasant day, above average temperature, no breezes off the Baltic, so I went for a walk in the park. Found a bench seat under a birch tree, sat there and smelled the sea, which smelled like all the other seas I had encountered except it had a chilly edge to it. For visual entertainment I watched the Finns go by. A stern, rather taciturn race in my experience. Comes of living in a tough climate, I suppose. Strange sense of humour too. Just for fun, I said good morning in Finnish to an elderly man who was being taken for a walk by a Pekinese in a vest.
‘Hyvàà humoenta,’ according to my phrase book.
My pronunciation must have been terrible, because he just gaped at me and accelerated past, even overtaking the dog. I made a mental note to practice speaking the language correctly before it landed me in trouble.
* * * * *
Tony had referred me to an unofficial contact called Vilho Granit to act as my “mentor”. I was to meet him in the Villa Waino club, opposite my hotel at 6.00pm. Quaintly, he had provided a password. He would be at the bar and would ask me what was my poison. I was to reply ‘Mine’s a whisky sour, go easy on the sour.’ He had a photo of me, transmitted by email, I had a description of him: tall, thin, with blond hair worn long, and an earring. The earring alone made me twitchy, but I couldn’t afford to be choosy.
The Villa Waino was hot, noisy, and full of mostly men, though I did spot a dead ringer for Agnetha of Abba at a table in a corner, chatting up a blubbery geezer with a polished shaven head. She had to be a hooker, the way she was mooning over him. Money opens all doors, including or especially the vaginal one.
Above the bar, with its three inches thick wooden counter, were a number of black boards with handwritten lists of the available booze. The selection was extensive and included Strongbow cider. The tables were solid enough to dance on, with bench seats that looked uncomfortable. The interior walls were mostly rough brick, artificially aged.
There he was, at the bar, one foot on the rail. Several inches taller than me, dressed in a leather bomber jacket with the cuffs turned up, grey jeans, grey sneakers. His near-platinum hair curled up at the ends, very fetching. Ah, well.
As I filled the empty space to his right he turned towards me. A smile made his young face younger. His ear ring twinkled.
‘What’s your poison?’
I smiled back and trotted out the other half of the password.
He shoved a be-ringed hand at me. ‘Vilho Granit,’ he said. ‘My English friends call me Rocky.’ He had a Scandinavian accent, a bit sing-song, but easy to decipher.
‘Mark Andrews.’
He had a grip that was strong enough to revise my opinion of him.
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘I need that hand.’
‘Sorry. I not know my own strength.’
‘Well, I do, now.’
He ordered my whisky sour and a drink called lakka for himself, and we took them to a vacant table next to Agnetha and her mountain of jelly.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, when we were settled, indicating his glass. The liquid was amber coloured.
‘Lakka? It’s a liqueur, made from … cloudberry, I think you call it. Is this your first visit in Helsinki?’
‘No, but the last was a long time ago. You Finnish?’
‘Half and half. I have a Finnish passport.’ His grin was slanted. ‘Among other passports.’
I sipped my whisky and listened over my shoulder to Agnetha speaking Finnish. She was talking very fast, her tone wheedling. Trying to hype up the price, probably.
‘You work for the Embassy?’
‘No, I work for British Secret Service.’ He winked. ‘Part time.’
‘What do you do the other part of your time? Work for the Russian Secret Service?’
He tut-tutted my heresy. ‘I breed dogs.’
The noise level was building around us, which suited me. Music and conversation is good news for the spy fraternity. The age range of the clientele was twenties to forties with the occasional exception. A few more women were coming in, one or two with that slightly Asiatic look some Finns have. Not bad looking at all.
‘What you want from me?’ Rocky said, and sipped lakka while he waited for my response.
‘I’m not sure yet. I have a job to do way up north. I’ll probably need you to organise travel and accommodation and be on hand in case I run into trouble.’
‘Uh-huh. What kind trouble you expect?’
I eyed him, weighing how much he knew, how much I should tell him.
‘Your contact at the SIS is Tony Dimeloe, right?’
‘Correct.’
‘What did he tell you?’
He shrugged. ‘You know Tony. He operates on need to know rule. He said place myself in your disposal … er, sorry, at your disposal, and you fill me in on details.’
It made sense. Tony was as security sensitive as I was, he would never tell you more if he could get away with telling you less.
A bellow of laughter from a few tables away brought a frown to Rocky’s brow. He had the air of a man who would irritate easily.
