The Man Between. Чарльз Камминг

Mantis asked.

      Carradine hesitated.

      ‘No,’ he said, feigning surprise. ‘What’s happened?’

      ‘Grabbed by Resurrection.’ Mantis opened a double-glazed window on to a small parking area at the rear of the building. Cool air poured into the room. ‘Thrown in the back of a Transit van and driven off – in broad bloody daylight.’

      ‘Christ,’ said Carradine.

      He was not a natural liar. In fact, he could not remember the last time he had deliberately concealed the truth in such a way. It occurred to him that it was a bad idea to do so in front of a man who was professionally trained in the darker arts of obfuscation and deceit. Mantis gestured outside in the direction of Edgware Road.

      ‘A mile away,’ he said. ‘Less! Three men kicked the living shit out of her poor husband, who’s apparently some kind of hotshot TV producer. One of them had a pop at a have-a-go-hero who tried to save the day. It’s all over the news.’

      ‘What do you think will happen to her?’ Carradine asked, though he knew the answer to his own question.

      ‘Curtains,’ said Mantis. ‘Another Aldo Moro job.’

      Moro, the Italian Prime Minister kidnapped by the Red Brigades in 1978, had been murdered in captivity, his body discovered in the back of a Renault two months later. Carradine wondered why Mantis had made such an obscure historical connection but conceded his point with a nod.

      ‘I’m surprised she didn’t have any security,’ he said. ‘People kept saying she was a target. In America, employees in the White House, staff at Fox News, prominent Republican officials, they’ve all been carrying guns for months.’

      ‘Quite right too,’ said Mantis with an impatience that reminded Carradine of the way his temper had flared on Bayswater Road. ‘People have a right to defend themselves. You never know who’s going to come out of the woodwork and take a pop at you.’

      Carradine looked at the sofa. Mantis understood that he wanted to sit down and invited him to do so ‘on the plastic cover’. He asked Carradine to switch off his mobile phone. He was not particularly surprised by the request and did as he had been asked.

      ‘Now if you wouldn’t mind passing it to me.’

      Carradine handed over the phone. He was delighted to see Mantis place it inside a cocktail shaker that he had removed from one of the cupboards in the kitchen. He had used an identical piece of tradecraft in his most recent novel, stealing the idea from an article about Edward Snowden.

      ‘A Faraday cage,’ he said, smiling.

      ‘If you say so.’ Mantis opened the door of the fridge and put the cocktail shaker inside it. The fridge was completely empty. ‘And if you could just sign this.’ He crossed the room and passed Carradine a pen and a piece of paper. ‘We insist on the Official Secrets Act.’

      Carradine’s heart skipped. Without pausing to read the document in any detail, he rested the piece of paper on the table and signed his name at the bottom. It occurred to him that his father must have done exactly the same thing some fifty years earlier.

      ‘Thank you. You might want to take a look at this.’

      Mantis was holding what appeared to be a driving licence. Carradine took it and turned it over. Mantis’s photograph and personal details, as well as a Foreign Office logo and a sample of his signature, were laminated against a pale grey background.

      ‘This wouldn’t be enough to get you into Vauxhall Cross,’ he said. It was necessary to demonstrate to Mantis that he did not fully trust him. ‘Do you have any other forms of ID?’

      As though he had been expecting Carradine’s question, Mantis dipped into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a moulded plastic security pass.

      ‘Access all areas,’ he said. Carradine had wanted to inspect the pass, if only to experience the buzz of holding a genuine piece of Service kit, but Mantis immediately put it back in his pocket.

      ‘Always worried about losing it on the number nineteen bus,’ he said.

      ‘I’m not surprised,’ Carradine replied.

      He asked for a glass of water. Mantis produced a chipped William and Kate mug and turned on the cold tap in the kitchen. It spluttered and coughed, spraying water onto his hand. He swore quietly under his breath – ‘fucking thing’ – filled the mug and passed it to Carradine.

      ‘Who owns this place?’

      ‘One of ours,’ he replied.

      Carradine had met spies before but never in these circumstances and never in such a furtive atmosphere. He leaned back against the thick plastic cover and took a sip from the mug. The water was lukewarm and tasted of battery fluid. He did not want to swallow it but did so. Mantis sat in the only other available seat, a white wooden chair positioned in front of the window.

      ‘Did you tell anybody that you were coming here today?’ he asked. ‘A girlfriend?’

      ‘I’m single,’ Carradine replied. He was surprised that Mantis had already forgotten this.

      ‘Oh, that’s right. You said.’ He crossed his legs. ‘What about your father?’

      Carradine wondered how much Mantis knew about William Carradine. A rising star in the Service, forced out by Kim Philby, who had given his name – as well as the identities of dozens of other members of staff – to Moscow. Surely somebody at Vauxhall Cross had told him?

      ‘He doesn’t know.’

      ‘And your mother?’ Mantis quickly checked himself. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Of course …’

      Carradine’s mother had died of breast cancer when he was a teenager. His father had never remarried. He had recently suffered a stroke that had left him paralysed on one side of his body. Carradine made a point of visiting him regularly at his flat in Swiss Cottage. He was his only surviving blood family and they were very close.

      ‘I haven’t told anybody,’ he said.

      ‘Good. So nobody has been made aware of our chat in the street?’

      ‘Nobody.’

      Carradine looked more closely at his interlocutor. He was wearing pale blue chinos and a white Ralph Lauren polo shirt. Carradine was reminded of a line judge at Wimbledon. Mantis’s hair had been cut and his beard trimmed; as a consequence, he no longer looked quite so tired and dishevelled. Nevertheless, there was something second-rate about him. He could not help but give the impression of being very slightly out of his depth. Carradine suspected that he was not the sort of officer handed ‘hot’ postings in Amman or Baghdad. No, Robert Mantis was surely lower down the food chain, tied to a desk in London, obliged to take orders from Service upstarts half his age.

      ‘Let me get straight to the point.’ The man from the FCO made deliberate and sustained eye contact. ‘My colleagues and I have been talking about you. For some time.’

      ‘I had a feeling our meeting the other day wasn’t an accident.’

      ‘It wasn’t.’

      Carradine looked around the room. The flat was exactly the sort of place in which a man might be quietly bumped off. No record of the meeting ever happening. CCTV footage from the lobby conveniently erased. Hair samples hoovered up and fingerprints wiped away by a Service support team. The body then placed inside a thick plastic sheet – perhaps the one covering the sofa – and taken outside to the car park. Should he say this in an effort to break the ice? Probably not. Carradine sensed that Mantis wouldn’t find it funny.

      ‘Don’t look so worried.’

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘You look concerned.’

      ‘I’m fine.’ Carradine was surprised that Mantis had failed to read his mood. ‘In