The Old Enemy by Henry Porter (read with me .TXT) 📕

was at least dark. Once there, she opened up the app and, shielding the light from her phone as much as she could, wrestled with the procedure for sharing her location. She waited, looking out from the bushes. Several times a car – almost certainly the Suburban – passed the park in both directions, moving without hurry or, it seemed, much purpose. She felt the old terror of her kidnap return – the shallow breaths and the fizzing panic in her head. The car passed for a third time and she strained to see two men searching the night. She called Samson. ‘They’re definitely looking for me. Where are you?’

‘I can see the car. I’m in the park. Be with you in a sec.’

There was a loud crash, and then another. Something had hit the car. It braked, swerved a little then tore off.

Samson ran up to her and she couldn’t do other than fall into his arms. ‘You okay?’ he said.

‘Jumpy. What the hell hit that car?’

‘I have a good cricket arm.’

She let go of him and stood back. ‘What’s that mean?’

‘I can throw a ball accurately. I aimed a couple of rocks at the passenger’s side.’

She gave him the bag. ‘I don’t know how we can do this by Monday. I mean, it’s all so damned complicated.’ She stopped. ‘I was thinking about Marty Reid.’

‘Ulrike told me that there’s film of him with an under-age girl. And Zillah confirmed it but not in detail. She was seventeen, and that counts in the State he was in at the time, and also in the one where his private plane picked her up. He trafficked a minor across a state line for the purposes of illegal sex. That’s something we have on him.’

‘Okay, so leaving aside the gross behaviour and criminality, the one thing I know about Reid is that threatening him will get us nowhere. He’s been winning against the odds his whole life.’ She stopped. ‘But he’s a patriotic American citizen and I don’t think he wants to be in this position, which is, essentially, betraying his country to a foreign power.’

‘Does he know he’s betraying his country?’

‘That’s a good question,’ she said. ‘Maybe he just thinks she’s a right-wing nut like him. What if we don’t use the film but, instead, appeal to his love of country?’ She shivered and clutched her arms tight.

‘Love of country,’ mused Samson. ‘Not sure that’s going to work. How’s Denis?’

She gave him a look of anguish. ‘He’s responding to Angel, but no one understands what’s wrong.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘About the other night . . . I feel so . . .’

‘It didn’t happen. You dreamed it. Look. I need to get these to Naji. I’ll walk you back.’

At that, her phone pinged with a message from Zillah Dee accepting the proof of Power of Attorney. She would have bodyguards in the hospital by morning.

Chapter 34

Blink

The next day there were efforts by Samson’s team across three different locations to unlock or reassemble the dossier that Denis Hisami and Bobby Harland had put together. They already had a lot – the entire presentation in Tallinn, for one thing – but Samson read everything with a rigorous eye for proof, and little made the grade. Zillah went through as much as she and her staff could remember, matching it with the discoveries of Pearl Grey, Pitch Black, Aurora Red and Saffron Yellow, the teams specialising in the activities of Jonathan Mobius, Erik Kukorin, Chester Abelman and Elliot Jeffreys.

Across two hotel rooms, Naji constructed wigwams from clip coat hangers and a sheet. Even though he had no intention of using the Web on the laptop, he had read somewhere that hotel rooms were sometimes fitted with minute surveillance cameras. He pointed out to the entirely sceptical Bird that Edward Snowden had hidden under sheets when on the run in Hong Kong. The Bird ordered breakfast in both hotels and sat sprawled, looking at the ceiling with the gun that had taken him precisely one hour to buy on the street in Columbia Heights. Naji was beginning to have doubts about the Bird but decided to make allowances because he had been Harland’s good friend. Before Samson had come with the computer and the calculator, the Bird had talked of their times together, his and Harland’s. The Bird was definitely the oddest person Naji had spent time with, but clearly he had admired Harland as much as Naji had, and once the computer arrived he was too busy to worry about him, or consider, eyeing his footwear with the professional eye gained as a boy selling dead men’s shoes in Syria, whether his enormous trainers had been specially made.

At the hospital, Anastasia spent most of the day with Denis. Angel said he would stay as long as it was necessary, and they took it in turns to sleep in the tiny room, which Anastasia had kept on. But Denis never slept. His eyes were moving more now, although it still took an awfully long time for him to respond by shifting his gaze to the speaker. For that reason, in the new room, she and Angel decided to talk from only the chair on his left. There was both understanding and incomprehension in those eyes, yet, in truth, never much hope. Angel was astonishingly good at keeping his interest, much better than Anastasia. She again told Denis they needed the code for the calculator but didn’t press him – what was the point when he couldn’t answer?

That evening Samson texted her to say that there was a match between the two DNA samples – the nineteen-year-old student who’d been arrested by the Stasi on 12 December 1974 was the same person who had shaved her legs and combed her hair at Seneca Ridge. She called him.

‘I’m relieved, and not just for the obvious reasons,’ said Samson. ‘I paid twenty thousand of Denis’s money for that. Half of me thought I was being had.’

‘You deserved to be, for taking that risk.’

‘Zillah says this