Greg Abimbola was drenched in sweat, his muscles aching from recent effort. Mikhail Sergeevich was heavy, significantly more so than Greg. It had been an effort lugging the limp, ursine mass back into the apartment. Morosov’s unconscious form, the whole left side of his face a swollen, bruised mess, kept sliding off the straight-backed dining chair he’d chosen for the purpose. It took several attempts to get the man sufficiently balanced for Greg to secure him with every last roll of duct tape in his kitchen cupboard. He tried not to think of the damage he was doing to the varnish.
Greg brushed a drop of sweat from his one good eyelid, noticing almost dispassionately that his hands were shaking. He was too old for this.
Too out of practice.
He’d barely started his run that morning when the phone had rung. It was Andrea. He could hear the muted growl of her Chevy’s busted muffler in the background.
‘Mr Abimbola? That nanny cam and motion sensor you had me install? I got an alert, like, thirty seconds ago. I’m looking at the feed right now. Some guy’s just gone into your apartment.’
The roar of blood rushing past his ears had been almost deafening.
‘Thanks, Andrea.’
‘You want me to call the po-po?’
‘That’s OK. I’ll handle it. And Andrea?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You have a real future in computers.’
He’d turned and jogged back up the hill, heart thudding far too hard for the effort required.
Staring at Morosov’s unconscious form, Greg stuck his hands into the waistband of his leggings in an attempt to steady himself. Part of the reason he was shaking was that the sweat was cooling on his body, making him feel a chill. He desperately wanted to change out of his running gear, but having seen the contents of Morosov’s Giant Eagle carrier bag, he hadn’t dared run the risk. Even retrieving the duct tape had been a gamble. He’d taken off his sweatshirt to do so, using it as a makeshift barrier between himself and any exposed surface. Thus protected, he’d retrieved an unopened pair of rubber gloves from his pantry. Only after he’d pulled the stubborn elastic over his hands had he accessed the yards of gray tape needed to hold Morosov down. Task done, he’d instinctively headed to the sink to wash his hands with soap and water but stopped himself just in time. Whatever was in the Russian’s innocent looking bottle of contact lens solution – and Greg would have bet dollars to rubles that it was some kind of skin-absorbed poison – there was a very good chance Morosov would have smeared it on the faucets. It’s what Greg would have done if the shoe had been on the other foot.
His cellphone emitted a small, plaintive chirp. A text message.
On our way. Do nothing.
He deleted it without bothering to reply. Still wearing the rubber gloves, he placed the bottle of contact lens solution on his coffee table, sat on his sofa, and waited.
Morosov groaned. The Russian’s left eye was swollen shut, but the right eye managed to find its way around the room, taking everything in before focusing on Greg with undisguised malevolence. He was already straining at the duct tape, testing its strength.
‘Zhopu porvu margala vikoliu,’ he growled.
Greg subconsciously rubbed his eyepatch.
‘This is Pittsburgh, Mikhail Sergeevich. We speak English here. Of a sort.’ He couldn’t resist a mischievous smile. ‘I’m English, now.’
‘Ty chertov predatel. Tya mama huyem v rot ebala!’
Stung by the insult, the smile vanished from Greg’s face.
‘English, Mikhail Sergeevich.’ Morosov was at least as slippery as he was greedy. But he was no great linguist. And dissembling in a foreign language would be more difficult for him.
‘Idi v zhopu.’
Greg leaned across to the coffee table, picked up the bottle of contact lens solution.
‘OK, OK, English,’ Morosov grunted. ‘You are fucking traitor. Your momma fuck you in mouth with big cock.’
‘Your English is still terrible, I see.’
Morosov glared at him out of his one good eye.
‘Who sent you?’
‘I send me.’
Greg chuckled.
‘Last I heard, GRU officers don’t give themselves orders.’
Morosov spat on the carpet, his bloody spittle making a watery red stain. Greg managed not to wince.
‘Because of you, not GRU anymore. Private practice. Security consultant.’
‘So who paid you?’
A stony silence. Greg stared meaningfully at the little plastic bottle on the coffee table. Morosov shrugged.
‘GRU pay me.’
‘How much?’
‘Half million, US’
Greg raised an ironic eyebrow.
‘Good as a place at Stayard College.’ He ignored Morosov’s puzzled expression. ‘And where did you leave my present?’
‘I not understand.’
Greg picked up the plastic bottle with a gloved hand, shaking it gently. There was a liquid, sloshing sound.
‘The nerve agent, or whatever it is you’ve got in here, where did you put it?’
Morosov grinned.
‘Fuck you, Petrov.’
Greg started to unscrew the cap on the bottle.
‘Go ahead. I dead man anyway. I know where you live.’
I …
Not ‘we’.
Greg’s fingers came to a halt. He’d been about to tell Morosov that if he talked, he would live. There was no point in killing him otherwise. Because if Morosov knew he was alive and in Pittsburgh, so did the GRU. Killing Morosov because he wouldn’t talk was one thing. Killing him to protect his location was quite another: it solved nothing.
But Morosov should know that. And yet, putting himself in Greg’s shoes, he had decided he was as good as dead. Which could only mean the GRU didn’t know where he was. They must know he was alive, obviously, or they wouldn’t have agreed a price for him. But, if Morosov didn’t trust them to pay, he would have kept Greg’s actual location a secret.
Maybe.
‘There are easier ways to die, Mikhail Sergeevich, than by poison. Are you sure this is the way you want to go?’
‘Bullet, breaked neck, novichok. Is all same to me.’
Novichok.
Well … shit.
‘I’d have thought, after Salisbury, GRU would have had more sense. America is not Britain, you know. You fuck up and kill Joe Public by accident over here, the consequences will be serious.’
‘I not fuck up.’
Greg had to laugh.
‘You’re tied to a chair in my living room, Mikhail Sergeevich. If that isn’t a fuck up, I don’t know what is.’
‘Maybe chair have termite and break. Then I kill you with bare hand.’
Greg smiled.
‘Did you see Polukhin’s face?’ he asked. ‘When the chair collapsed? I saw it like that only once before. In—’
‘Nairobi,’ Morosov finished. ‘When he put hand up woman dress. Discover not woman at all!’
Incongruously, the two men burst out laughing. When the laughter died down, Morosov asked softly, ‘Why did you become traitor, Grigoriy Adamovich? You good officer. Loyal. Why you become British bitch?’
The rumble of London traffic, the creaking of stairs sounded loud in Greg’s ears, as if it were happening right now, instead of a decade ago.
‘My circumstances changed.’
‘Chush’ sobach’ya! I dead man, anyway. Tell truth before I die. Why not?’
Greg was still on the creaking steps, following Robert Godfrey, junior diplomat, into his flat. He was sitting down on the deep red, leather Chesterfield, making small talk, intent on cultivating the man as a possible source. But the next thing he knew, he was waking up on a gray English morning, raindrops spattered on the windows, the same British diplomat naked in bed beside him. He’d grabbed his clothes, thrown up in the toilet, and rushed out of the house before the man had awakened.
Only to have an envelope of lurid photographs thrust into his hands a few days later.
The agents from the Security Service had been unfailingly polite, as if embarrassed to have raised the topic at all.
We’re all men and women of the world here, Mr Petrov, and God knows, far worse things happen at sea. We don’t judge. What would be the point, eh? Disapproving of homosexuality is like disapproving of … rain: it happens anyway. Always has, always will. Of course, our Russian friends are not so forgiving, as I’m sure you know. Still stuck in the 1950s, if you don’t mind my saying so. I have to be honest with you, Grigoriy – can I call you Grigoriy? This is a career ender for you. And your family is bound to be vilified. I don’t mind saying, I feel for your poor mother. Not her fault, of course, but unkind people will think otherwise, won’t they? And then there’s the Church. It’s hard to believe they still excommunicate people for same-sex attachments, but there it is …
It had gone on and on. If he’d been a real man, he’d have laughed in their faces and told them to fuck off. But he hadn’t, not when they’d asked for so little in return, and he got to spare his mother heartbreak and keep doing the job he loved. It wasn’t even confidential information they wanted, just public domain stuff you could lift off the internet.
At first. Soon enough they began to ask for small secrets, and then bigger ones. He’d been dragged in deeper and deeper, until the only way out involved a bullet to the back of his head.
He’d thought about it, too. The catharsis. The welcome relief. A slate wiped clean with blood and brain matter. He’d thought about it a lot. Because at the end of the day, he’d never found a way to forgive himself, not for any of it. For letting the Devil win; for betraying his country; for slamming Morosov in the head with a chair leg instead of taking the punishment he so richly deserved. And even now, with Morosov stalking him across a brand-new continent, he’d still refused to do the right thing: to surrender to his fate; to meet his maker and the eternal damnation that went with it.
Because he was weak.
The stairs creaked in his head again, even louder. It was only Morosov’s expression that told him he wasn’t imagining things. These creaks were real. Someone was climbing the steps.
Morosov’s sneer was made uglier by the fact that only half his face was working.
‘You not man enough kill me on own? You need others hold your hand?’
Greg ignored him. Headed to the door instead. He reached for the doorhandle.
‘Why you kill Pavel?’
His hand dropped away.
‘I didn’t kill Pavel.’ A sudden drying of the throat.
Morosov’s bark of a laugh was mixed with spittle and blood.
‘Do not lie to me, Grigoriy Adamovich. Not now. We find him dead, my brother dead, in Djibouti ditch, two day after you vanish like ghost, his balls cut off. His fucking balls! You kill him clean, like professional, OK, maybe I understand. He one who discover you traitor. But like that? Like some … animal? Pavel was your friend, you monkey bastard. He deserve better.’
Greg stared at the door, trying to gather himself, to control his breathing.
‘It wasn’t me,’ he said. ‘I knew something was up. Pavel had gone missing and suddenly you and Polukhin were flying in from Moscow. But I didn’t know I’d been made, not till later, till it was too late. Almost too late. And I didn’t know it was Pavel who’d figured me out … I swear to you, I didn’t know he was dead.’
Thinking himself more composed, he turned to look Morosov in his one good eye. But he still couldn’t meet the other man’s gaze. His stomach twisted with newly acquired guilt.
The one good eye narrowed shrewdly.
‘Da idi ty! Maybe you not kill him, after all. But you know who did. You sell him out to British as top handler for network. And British sell him out to some negr fuck gangster in Djibouti. Keep colonialist hand clean for tea and scones and make GRU think Pavel death just bad luck so we not kill one of theirs.’
‘I didn’t know, Mikhail Sergeevich. By all that’s holy, I didn’t know. I—’
Soft voices outside the door.
Greg’s cellphone chimed. A text.
We’re here.
He turned back to the apartment door. Looked through the peephole. Satisfied, he opened it up. A tall man in a dark-blue, woolen overcoat stepped across the threshold. He had carefully gelled dark hair and matching shoes. He was accompanied by a casually dressed woman wearing jeans and a black leather jacket over a light wool sweater. Her high-heeled suede boots, like the rest of her attire, were better suited to spring than a below freezing winter morning. She was trying very hard not to shiver.
‘Suka!’ Morosov strained so violently against his bonds that his chair threatened to tip over.
The man in the dark woolen overcoat extended a firm hand. Greg shook it.
‘How you doing, Greg?’ The man’s friendly American accent, matched by an easy smile, had a hint of the south about it.
‘Better now that you’re here, Deputy Werner,’ Greg answered. There was an ambiguity in his tone that made the marshall look at him curiously. Greg’s gaze, meanwhile, slid toward Werner’s companion. ‘Who’s your colleague?’
‘Dianna Aldis,’ the woman said, extending an immaculately manicured hand. ‘Pleasure to meet you.’
‘Suka!’
Aldis had the sort of crisp, upper-crust English accent that Americans associated with Jane Austen, or Masterpiece Theater. She did not, Greg noticed, explain whom she worked for. Not that that required any great leap of imagination. MI5. His mind was still churning over what Morosov had told him.
‘You’re not my usual case officer,’ he said, quietly. ‘And what are you doing here, anyway? You’re on the wrong side of the Atlantic.’
Aldis smiled disarmingly.
‘Perhaps I’m here as a liaison.’
‘Liaisons are based in DC. I texted WITSEC less than half an hour ago.’
‘Time and a place,’ Werner warned, looking at Morosov.
‘I think it’s a bit late for that,’ Greg said. ‘Mikhail Sergeevich is going to be in your custody for a very long time, I imagine. And given that Mr Morosov and Miss Aldis are clearly already acquainted, I don’t think I’m going to learn anything he doesn’t already know.’
Aldis nodded in agreement.
‘It was all a bit of a scramble,’ she said, ignoring Werner’s frown of disapproval. ‘Part of my job is – was – to keep an eye on Mr Morosov—’
‘Suka!’
‘—but my particular section didn’t realize he was targeting one of our own until the very last minute. Your case officer’s team was out of position, so to speak, so I came along to handle it.’ She glanced appreciatively at the tall American. ‘Not that we could have done anything without Mr Werner’s assistance, of course. Which was invaluable.’
Werner, despite himself, smiled a little at the compliment.
‘WITSEC prides itself on keeping its charges safe,’ he said. ‘Even if, strictly speaking, we’re doing someone else’s work.’
‘Yeah, well, not that safe.’ Greg picked up the small plastic bottle on the coffee table. ‘Mikhail got to me before you did. And he’s managed to drop enough novichok to kill a city somewhere close by, so I would be very careful about where I put my hands.’
‘May I see?’ Werner asked.
‘Do you have a pair of gloves? I’d direct you to my kitchen, but I honestly don’t know where he dumped the stuff. Wouldn’t want to get you killed by accident.’
‘I can assure you, I’m perfectly safe.’
After a moment’s hesitation, Greg handed over the bottle.
‘You’ve got more faith in antidotes than I have,’ he muttered.
Werner unscrewed the bottle cap. Before Greg could stop him, he squeezed a few drops onto the back of his hand.
‘What the …?’
‘Good old American H2O,’ Werner said, grinning. ‘After a lot of running around, we managed to acquire Mr Morosov at Reagan National. Swapped out his very deadly package for something a little more eco-friendly, if you catch my drift. You’re welcome, by the way.’
‘Suka!’
Greg could feel his mouth gaping open. He strongly suspected that he looked like Polukhin in Nairobi.
Minutes later, after Morosov was removed from the apartment by another pair of deputies, his cuffs tactfully hidden under a woolen scarf, Werner allowed himself to relax into Greg’s sofa. Aldis perched primly beside him on the sofa arm, as if distrustful of the comfort it might otherwise offer.
‘When did you realize Morosov was onto you?’ Werner asked.
Greg hesitated before replying.
‘Yesterday morning,’ he admitted, reluctantly.
‘And you didn’t think to call us then? Why the hell not?’
Greg, moved by the genuine concern in the marshall’s voice, tried to formulate an honest answer. That he deserved what was coming to him. That whatever happened, happened. That it was the will of God.
‘I thought I could handle it.’
‘It’s not your job to handle it, Greg, it’s ours. Let us do our jobs, OK? It’s what we get paid for. On top of which, these antics of yours have only gone and caused us a shitload of trouble.’
‘Why? Because I did your job for you?’
‘Because you interrupted our job,’ Aldis said.
Greg looked at her curiously.
‘Our friends in MI5,’ Werner explained, ‘planted a bug in Morosov’s cellphone months ago.’ Aldis nodded her head at this, happy to take the credit. ‘So when he called your old boss, Polukhin, we knew they were going after you with novichok. The plan was to intercept Morosov at Reagan, replace the novichok with water, and let him carry on with his mission. That way …’
‘He would think he’d killed me,’ Greg interjected.
‘Exactly. A few stories planted in the press, some calculated leaks to Russian Intelligence and you’d be dead – again. Morosov was the only GRU goon who doubted your original death. He must have been kicking over the traces for years. This time, because he’d “killed” you himself, there’d be literally no one looking for you ever again. Instead—’
‘Instead,’ Aldis cut in, ‘you fucked things up royally. No more dumbbells for you.’