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

‘It’s yours now, Ulrike.’

‘No, Bobby would have liked you to have it: his legacy to you, Samson,’ she said with a very slight smile. ‘Shall we look at it together? Why don’t you bring your computer over here and we can research the names together?’

‘That’s going to take some time,’ he said.

‘“I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.”’ She sang the line and glanced at him a little ruefully, as if she really knew she’d had too much to drink. ‘Bob Dylan – “Mr Tambourine” Man. Bobby loved his namesake’s music – we’re going to use him in the service. It’s for our generation, of course,’ she explained. ‘Come over. I want to see what my husband was hiding from me.’

‘It’s a network – Mila Daus’s network. All the people in the Berlin Blue Network,’ he said.

Chapter 23

The Sargasso Sea

Luka drove Anastasia and Naji across the Bulgarian border to Sofia, where they took a plane to Warsaw then to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, and just missed a connecting flight to Tallinn. At Naji’s insistence, they kept their distance during the day, but now faced a night in Vilnius airport hotel together before catching the early flight the next day. He had barely spoken to her in the preceding twenty hours and showed no sign of doing so now. When he wasn’t looking into the distance, he had his head in his phone and sat with his legs crossed, one foot jigging. He’d removed himself in the way he did as a boy in the camp on Lesbos where she first came across him. When she’d asked him about his parents, or pointed out the impracticality of his plan to walk across Europe to Germany, he simply shut down.

It was late and the hotel restaurant was closed. She insisted that he needed to eat and went to the bar, where the barman assembled a scratch meal of starters, breads, smoked eel and salmon, which Naji delighted in. She wasn’t going to ask him anything, but as she handed him the Diet Coke she’d brought with her glass of wine from the bar, she said, ‘I want you to know something, Naj. Me and Samson, we think you’re the best. We love you like family. You’re very, very special to us. You know that, don’t you?’

He looked up, tugged the ring pull and grinned awkwardly.

‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘I know how you feel. I just wanted to make sure that you knew we felt the same way.’ She smiled. ‘In my line of work, I realise life would be a lot easier for everyone if we took our courage in both hands and said the things that we all need to say but don’t know how.’

He nodded. ‘It is the same for me, Anastasia. Of course.’ Then the foot started jigging again and he took rapid sips of Coke. ‘I like eels. They come from the Sargasso Sea, which spins like a black hole, though it isn’t like a black hole because nothing disappears there except eels. That’s where they go to mate and die. Did you know that?’

‘I did. I know two other things about the Sargasso Sea,’ she said. ‘It has very clear water and it spins clockwise.’

‘Not if you are an eel. If you’re an eel, it spins counter-clockwise.’ He caught her puzzled expression and shook his head in exasperation. He took a piece of paper from his backpack and drew a clockwise arrow. ‘Hold the paper above your head against the light. Now you are the eel.’

‘Right, it’s counter-clockwise,’ she said. ‘I knew that!’

He shook his head. ‘You did not.’

She smiled. ‘How do you know about eels?’

‘Ifkar catches eels. He tells me about them. We eat them together. We like to go to catch fish together. It is the activity that I like best in my life to go fishing with my friend and Moon.’

‘He’s a good friend.’

‘Best friend – we saved each other’s life.’ He brought his phone up to his face. Evidently, the conversation was over.

She watched him closely for a few moments, some understanding beginning to dawn. She might have asked the question then, but her own phone sprang into life with a call from Jim Tulliver, who she had been trying to reach between flights. ‘How is he?’ she asked, getting up to walk away.

‘You talked to the doctor?’

‘I’ve had coverage problems and I’ve been on planes.’

‘They won’t tell me everything, but I know the guy well enough now and he said Denis is not progressing as they would hope.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I think there’re some heart issues and maybe something neurological. I don’t know. I think you should speak with him as soon as—’

‘I will. Have you seen Denis?’

‘Yeah, he looks pretty good, though he’s still in a coma. Talk to the doc. I told him you were in a different time zone. Where are you, by the way?’

‘The Baltic. What about Denis’s business?’

‘All good, no problems that I can see. You know the FBI were really pissed that you skipped the country like that. I mean, really pissed. Reiner called me.’

‘Yeah . . . They’re in Europe. I had Reiner calling the hotel in Athens.’ That seemed a long time ago.

‘And your fan club has been in touch. Warren Speight wants to talk urgently and Marty Reid says he has information. They’ve both been trying to reach you. Reid is on the phone all the time, wanting to know what you’re doing, where you are.’

‘I’m not really interested in Reid. Speight, what did he want?’

‘They’re making some move in Congress. I’ll try to find out more. I’ll talk to the aide again and to Shera Ricard’s people. They’ll know if something is afoot.’

‘Am I hearing this right? Are they thinking of pursuing the investigation of Denis when he’s in a coma, for Christ’s sake?’

‘That’s not my impression.’

‘I sure hope you’re right. I’ll call the doctor.’

She rang off and looked across the lobby.