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

all this – Martin Reid, a right-wing billionaire. He’s offered to help.’

‘Yeah, I know who he is. I’m also interested in a character called Jonathan Mobius, who runs it, but I haven’t got on to that yet.’

‘That’s what we’re paying you for, isn’t it, Samson?’ It was out before she could stop herself.

He waited a few seconds before replying. A familiar coolness ensued. ‘I was employed to see no harm came to Zoe Freemantle, but the real reason I was put in there by your husband and Harland was to act as a decoy. As a result, my friend Jo and I were stabbed. Denis wasn’t paying me to investigate anything and, by the way, he wasn’t compensating me for the risk either.’

‘Your friend – how is she?’ she asked.

‘She’s okay, but badly shaken. It was unpleasant – a sexual aspect to it.’

‘As to what Denis was doing, I am as much in the dark as you.’

He grunted and said, ‘Perhaps we should wait until we meet for this conversation. I’ll be travelling for a day or so. You can phone, but I won’t have anything new.’

‘I’m going to be busy. I have meetings here.’

‘Okay, my train has been called. I need to go,’ he said.

The call had not gone well, and she had to admit that was probably her fault. She should have had more sense than to needle him, yet, there again, he knew nothing of what she’d been through in the past two years, because he hadn’t made the effort to find out. He could have called when she crashed, but he didn’t. He assumed that she had rejected him when, in fact, she simply wasn’t in any state to talk to him, though desperate to do so. Like every man she knew, he thought it was about him. And the mention of the friend who’d been stabbed, the woman he’d had an affair with before, that didn’t help matters.

And apart from telling her to call Naji again, he hadn’t given any proper help. Naji was now her first concern.

The call went on playing in her head and half an hour later she realised that Samson had sounded strained and tired. She texted him with ‘Sorry – XX.’

Samson boarded the night train to Düsseldorf, where he would change for Berlin and catch the service to Warsaw. He was among the first passengers but, instead of finding his seat straight away, he waited at the door, looking down the platform at the forty or so people making their way to the train. It would be surprising if he’d picked up a tail on the journey from Zeebrugge to Brussels, but he wanted to be sure. The only likely candidates were two men, apparently travelling separately, who boarded the carriage next to his. One, wearing a flat cap and a quilted vest under a dark jacket, stepped aside to allow two women in hijabs on to the train, glanced at Samson then looked away. The other, in a black skiing anorak and with a rucksack hanging from one shoulder, climbed on without looking in Samson’s direction but made his way through the carriage and sat a few seats away from the connecting door. The first man went to a seat three rows behind him and began to study his phone. There was absolutely nothing to say they were following him. Samson reminded himself that he hadn’t slept properly for two nights and that the pain of his leg might be making him jumpier than usual. Nevertheless, at the moment the doors began to close, he stepped down on to the platform and moved away. The man in the cap looked up as the train drew out of the station. Samson couldn’t tell if there was anything more than indifference in his expression.

He bought a ticket for Amsterdam, where he would connect with Deutsche Bahn’s intercity service to Cologne and Berlin. The whole journey would take about eight hours, during which time he could rest and put his leg up. He went through the same checks as the train prepared to leave Brussels for the Dutch capital, then again when he was leaving Amsterdam Centraal in the early hours, and both times satisfied himself that he was alone.

Once on the almost-empty train for Berlin, he ate a baguette and drank one of two half-bottles of red wine he’d bought. He lifted the leg with both hands to rest it on the opposite seat, but this seemed to make it worse. He looked around. No more than half a dozen people were in the carriage. He dived into his bag and took out one of the three morphine pen injectors and, as per the instructions, placed the blunt purple end to his good thigh and pressed as firmly as he could. He winced at the pain. Nothing much happened so he distracted himself by making a list.

His lists were the subject of mockery by Jo and Anastasia, yet they worked to reduce a tangle of facts and ideas in his mind to a few simple statements.

He wrote:

1. Nov. 2019 Harland saw someone in Berlin – the ‘Ghost from the East’.

The Ghost is German (?)

2. Harland collaborates with Denis Hisami. That means the Ghost must have relevance, or live in the US.

3. Hisami pays for team of young investigators. They are hacking GreenState. Is Ghost part of GreenState? Maybe owner? Who is Jonathan Mobius? Originally German?

4. Five colour code names. Are the colours targets, or operatives?

5. Hisami to reveal in Congress part or all of what they have found out to show who is behind attacks on him in the US.

6. The Ghost gets wind of this and orders pre-emptive hits on Harland, Hisami and me.

7. A Serb named Oret who may have hired three killers is murdered.

8. Anatoly Stepurin, Russian operative ultimate boss and behind Oret’s murder? Kremlin?

His leg began to feel better. He sat back and watched little towns flash by in the vast black night of northern Europe. Toombs was right: there was only