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

protect someone or something from an imminent threat that stemmed from the investigation at GreenState. And GreenState is vital; otherwise I wouldn’t have been used as a decoy. Have you learned anything more about Zoe Freemantle, Macy?’

‘No.’

‘I watched her leave her apartment last night. The place was part of her backstory – not her real home. She knows what happened to Bobby and Denis and she was in the street when I was attacked the first time, so we can assume that she’s either gone to ground or has skipped the country because she’s in great danger.’

The Bird made a snorting noise and looked up good-naturedly at Samson.

‘Cuth has a theory, but he also has some information,’ said Macy. ‘Tell Samson, Cuth.’

The Bird’s gaze locked on to a vase of flowers on the coffee table in front of him. ‘I talked to Bobby a couple of weeks ago. We were friends from a long time back, like Macy here.’ He looked up and offered him a comradely smile, which was reciprocated. ‘When he got cancer, I rang quite a bit. These last few weeks, he knew he was out of time, and that makes me think that Bobby wanted to see some results from what he and your friend Mr Hisami were doing. So, I believe you’re spot on when you say it was a rushed job. Rushed on both sides – these Balkan cut-throats were obviously recruited in a blind panic.’

Macy interrupted. ‘Stop waffling, Cuth, and tell him your bloody information.’

The Bird’s great hands came together and he rubbed his knuckles as though trying to restore the circulation. ‘It all goes back to Berlin. You know that the three of us – Bobby, Macy and me – were part of the operation to extract an Arab terrorist named Abu Jemal in ’89 and, subsequently, we helped Bobby exfiltrate his two agents on the night the Wall came down. Their names were Rudi Rosenharte and Ulrike Klaar. You probably know that they married and then Rudi was murdered by ex-Stasi assassins and Ulrike ended up marrying Bobby.’

‘Yes, she told me the story.’

‘Well, they were both invited back to Berlin for the thirtieth-anniversary celebrations. Very discreet, very low key, no bloody journalists – a lunch with some old faces, a few veterans from the GDR networks, heads of the German intelligence services, station chiefs, the mayor of the city, and so forth. I gather the German Chancellor looked in and was very sweet to one and all. Of course, she was from the East, as you know.’

‘They told me about it,’ said Samson. ‘He asked me there for the anniversary and I had dinner with Bobby, Ulrike and her son that evening.’

‘Really! Anyway, sometime during that weekend he laid eyes on an individual he thought was dead. He called this person the “Ghost from the East”. Ulrike may know who it was, but he certainly wouldn’t tell me. He never spoke about this again to me, but I knew it was terribly important to him.’

Macy got up from his desk, moved to the drinks cabinet and waggled the decanter at them. Samson shook his head. ‘This all may seem like history to you,’ continued the Bird, ‘but very soon after that weekend in Berlin, Denis and Bobby, who had already met, came together and started cooking up something. Denis funded it and Bobby acted as director.’

‘Good of you to bloody well tell me all this,’ said Samson to Macy.

‘It wasn’t in my power to do so. It was Denis’s decision, and he would have told you everything in the call he’d arranged.’ He looked embarrassed, swirled the whisky in his glass before knocking it back in one. ‘What’re you going to do?’

‘I’m going to have to talk with Nikolai Horobets, the man who killed Harland.’

‘They’ve got him locked down in that hospital.’

‘Not for me he isn’t.’ He stopped. ‘I will need money – a lot of it. You have the bank details for Aymen Malek and Claude Rameau. Tell Tulliver this is for my expenses. I’ll need 10k initially. More later.’

‘Anastasia is running the show now. We’ll have to ask her.’

‘Fine, you talk to her.’

‘I’ll give her your new number. How are you planning to get out of the country? Imogen said the police were here three hours ago. They told her they’d be back.’

‘Ferry to Belfast, drive to Dublin then ferry to France. I’ll use the Belgian ID.’

‘There’ll be a biometric check at the ferry terminal.’

‘Never been a problem before.’

At this the Bird woke from a reverie. He had a better idea. He’d need to make a call, because he wasn’t sure his contact was still in business. He pulled out a surprisingly sophisticated smartphone, dialled and waited, looking up at the ceiling with an absolutely insane expression on his face. Samson shook his head and began to make moves to collect his bags, which had been brought round from Cedar by a waiter. Macy raised a hand to him to say, hold on. At length, the Bird’s face lit up and after several barks of pleasure he said, ‘I have a friend who needs a ride.’

They waited until first light the next day for the spring tide to float Silent Flight, the forty-eight-foot sloop skippered by Gus Grinnel, an old MI6 hand who had come close to qualifying for the Olympics as helm in the Flying Dutchman Dinghy Class but instead ended up representing his country in the year-round Cold War regatta in the Southern Baltic. The yacht crept along a channel between the mudflats to the north of the Kent town of Faversham and took about half an hour to reach open water, whereupon Samson was stood down from his duty of buoy spotting.

Gus was cantankerous and almost certainly a drunk. Samson saw that relations between him and his Belgian crew, Fleur – thirty years his junior – were more or less broken. They snapped at each other constantly and disagreed about everything. They were proficient sailors, however, and Samson decided to let them get on