72

Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Main Building),
King Charles Street, London, England

November 5, 2009

12:05 p.m. (Greenwich Mean Time)

“Well, it all seems fairly straightforward to me. Mr. Quinn here will go back up and sort out this mess as soon as conditions permit, which I understand will be this coming spring. Her Majesty’s Government would obviously have preferred it to be sooner, but evidently winter is not the best time to try and climb Mount Everest.”

Quinn mouthed, “You don’t say,” quietly to himself as the civil servant continued to talk. “As you already know, Ms. Richards,” the man emphasized the “Ms.” with a drawn-out nasal burr, “we have found someone with previous Everest experience to accompany him—a Captain Mark Stevens. He was in the Paratroop regiment and undertakes sensitive security projects for us on a regular basis. The pair of them will go up to the”—he stopped to glance at a document on his desk—“Second Step. Once there, they will investigate the site where Mr. Quinn says he found the old ice axe and retrieve or dispose of any additional articles of interest depending on what is practical. The retrieved articles will then be couriered to London to be destroyed to the satisfaction of both the British and German authorities. This process will be coordinated by our representative in loco, which will be you, Ms. Richards, and also a representative of the German authorities.” He consulted the paper again to read, “Inspector Martin Emmerich of the Bavarian State Police.”

The civil servant raised a bushy eyebrow at Emmerich who was seated alongside Quinn and Henrietta.

“Which is you, sir, I trust?”

Martin Emmerich nodded in return, slightly bemused by the combination of the man’s plummy Old Etonian voice and his archaic, chalk-stripe suit. The permanent undersecretary immediately turned his attention back to Henrietta.

“By undertaking this exercise, Ms. Richards, I am assuming that we can put this irritating little matter to bed once and for all and permit Her Majesty’s Government to focus on more pressing world matters. I can’t imagine that there is anything particularly complicated to any of this. People climb Everest all the time these days, don’t they? It is not even as if they have to get to the top.”

The horse-faced man gave a desultory shrug of his shoulders, clearly convinced that arriving at the Second Step on Everest was as taxing as his morning walk to Cobham railway station to catch the 7:26 into Waterloo. Quinn opened his mouth to correct the error, prompting Henrietta to kick the side of his ankle before he could utter a word. Turning to look at her, Quinn saw her head shake ever so slightly as if to say, “Don’t you dare.”

Biting his tongue, he looked instead through the immaculately clean window of the old ministry building. Outside, Whitehall was cold and grey, damply making its way into winter. The trunks of the trees lining the street were black and greasy from years of traffic fumes, the leafless branches above disfigured from decades of pollarding that had rendered them miserable and sore like over-chewed fingernails. Quinn too felt miserable and sore. He had only been discharged from the hideous concrete tower of Guy’s Hospital a few days before. He still hurt like hell when the painkillers wore off. A walk of more than a hundred yards was a struggle. A return to Everest seemed impossible.

His attention was brought back into the room by the civil servant speaking to him directly. “Mr. Quinn, you will need to sign a confidentiality agreement bound by the Official Secrets Act to cover your participation in this matter. There are obviously to be no subsequent books or slideshows about this little Everest escapade. You do understand that?”

“Obviously,” Quinn replied in sarcastic repetition.

The civil servant’s face twitched a little at the cold stare that followed, forcing Henrietta to jump back into the conversation in her most enthusiastic headmistress voice. “Yes, it really will be quite routine. Mr. Quinn and Captain Stevens will be joining a British commercial climb organized by Bill Owen, an expedition outfitter I know well. He’s ex-army himself, and we can trust him to be totally discreet. It will be explained to the rest of the team that Mr. Quinn is acting in the capacity of private guide to Captain Stevens, who, after a failed attempt on the difficult West Ridge with the British Joint Forces team in 2006, is returning to make the summit this time by the Northeast Ridge route.

“They will acclimatize with the team but set off slightly earlier than the others for their ‘summit attempt’ even if they will actually be stopping at the Second Step to make the investigation. As this is happening, I will be visiting the Base Camp with Martin. We estimate this is likely to be some time from mid-May onward. Between us, we will then deal with all necessary matters once they have descended. It will be really quite exciting to go there, won’t it, Martin? Martin tells me he hiked Kilimanjaro once, so it won’t be an entirely new experience for him.”

She smiled at Emmerich and then abruptly closed the file of papers she was holding to prompt an end to the meeting.

It worked. The civil servant rose from his chair and showed them to the door.

Exiting the austere Ministry, Quinn began to rant at Henrietta as he slowly and painfully walked down the building’s steps to the street. “I’m glad that pompous twit seems to think it’s so easy to wander up to the Second Step, recover a few bits and bobs, and then head back down in time for bloody tea!”

Telling him to “Sssh,” Henrietta lowered her voice so that Emmerich wouldn’t hear her over the passing traffic. “Neil, the man is not actually a fool. He has agreed to a very effective operation with the German authorities so that together we—and I mean we—can make what could be a major problem at a time of resurgent neo-Nazi activity quietly go away. Who do you think wrote the report that he was reading from? I did, and I hope you appreciate that, bar their inclusion of the ex-paratrooper, they are effectively permitting us to manage the whole thing.”

Quinn knew she was telling the truth. All the time he had been in Guy’s Hospital, she had visited him daily and put the plan together.

“And another thing,” Henrietta continued testily, quickly glancing at Emmerich to be sure he wasn’t listening. “Why do you think you received no further legal letters on behalf of Tate Senior amidst the get-well cards?”

“I rather assumed that once you were able to speak with Dawa, you confirmed that his son’s death was not my fault.”

“Neil, I have made an entire career based on assuming nothing. I would suggest you start doing the same. Tate Senior will never forgive you for what happened to his son, whether you are innocent or not. However, his own need for a little forgiveness due to some financial naughtiness involving offshore funds in the British Virgin Islands has enabled us to persuade him to focus his ire on Sarron and leave you alone.”

There was little Quinn could say to that, so they walked on in silence until Henrietta pointed Quinn and Emmerich to a small corner pub, saying, “I think that before we go our separate ways over the winter, we should have lunch and compare a few notes to be sure that we are all on the same page.”

The pub was dark inside but warm. While they waited for their food at a table in a corner, Emmerich updated them on his subsequent investigations relating to Sarron. After their cold war in Munich, he was open and friendly to Henrietta. He knew that he had been totally outplayed by “Agatha Christie,” as he had secretly nicknamed her, but was smart enough to know that he should learn from it. His inclusion in the recovery plan had been Henrietta’s way of apologizing for the trouble she had caused him and, in return, he seemed satisfied that it gave him fair representation in the process ahead.

Emmerich told them that Sarron had killed Graf as suspected but that they also now knew he had been assisted by Oleg Vishnevsky, a Russian known to International Police as an enforcer for organized crime in Moscow. The German police officer continued to add that Oleg Vishnevsky always worked in tandem with his brother, Dmitri, so it was thought likely that he was the one who had followed Quinn into the Weisshaus Club. Since then, he added, Sarron had vanished, possibly going to Moscow with the Vishnevskys in a private plane owned by one of Putin’s inner circle.

Henrietta was disturbed by the information. “If Sarron’s back together with those two then that is very bad news indeed.”

“But surely if the bloody man is wanted for murder in Europe now as well as Asia, he’ll have been caught by someone before the spring?” Quinn said, looking to Emmerich for some reassurance.

“I would hope so,” Emmerich said but with little confidence in his voice. “However the Vishnevskys have established quite a reputation for themselves in Moscow, making a lot of friends in high places. It would be easy for them to get new documents, travel papers, whatever Sarron needs to move around under the radar. We do, at least, have some time to play with even if, in the meantime, Quinn, you will have to be very careful.”

“Neil is going to be staying with a cousin of mine in the country over the winter. He will not be found,” Henrietta replied to Emmerich.

“Can I at least have the address? We have closed the file on Graf’s death and, once his lawyers finish settling his estate, we will be able to release the motorcycle and possessions you left in his storage unit the night you were kidnapped.”

“No, I’m sorry, Martin, but you can’t,” Henrietta replied. “Until Sarron is caught only I will know where Neil is while he trains to get back to full fitness. It has to be impossible for Sarron to find him. You can send it all to this address marked for my attention.”

“Just the bags,” Quinn added. “Keep the bike in Munich for now, I’ll come and get it when all this is over. I don’t want Henrietta riding it around London.”