“That is a good way of putting it,” said Louisa. “A really good way.” She touched her lips with her index finger. “Wonder how we could arrange for the pair of you to go head to head?”
“Can’t do it in real time,” Lech said, giving it thought. “They’d shit bricks on the hub if we roped in Mr. Lightning just to watch him trounce Roddy.”
“But maybe we could devise something,” Louisa said. “Come up with some insanely difficult piece of data for them both to retrieve—”
“What, and time them doing it? That’s brilliant.”
“Just need to work out what . . .”
Lech screwed his face up, trying to recapture a distant memory. “Here’s something,” he said. “Friend was telling me about a KGB colonel he saw once, a woman, in Bonn. This would have been . . . ’88 or thereabouts.”
“Be realistic,” said Louisa. “We want difficult, not impossible.”
Lech shrugged. “Sounds like you’re worried you’re backing Goose.”
“No, I just meant—”
Roddy said, “That’s it? A KGB colonel in Bonn?”
“At a meeting. David Cartwright was there. 1988.”
Roddy Ho cracked his knuckles. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Start your watches.”
A quarter of an hour later Lech and Louisa were back upstairs with a printout, comparing the photograph of Colonel Alexa Chaikovskaya with one of Sophie de Greer they’d downloaded from the
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Don’t know? Come on. They’re practically identical.”
“Lots of people look practically identical.”
“And de Greer’s history’s a blank. She could be a plant.”
“You’ve sold yourself on this, haven’t you? Yes, okay, they look alike. Mother-and-daughter alike. But what are the odds? That a KGB colonel’s daughter is being used in some kind of undercover play decades after mum was on the scene?”
Lech said, “David Cartwright was a big wheel at the Park, and remind me what his grandson ended up doing?”
Louisa said nothing.
“Sometimes it’s a family business.”
“Okay,” she said. “But you can’t know for sure this de Greer woman’s a blank page. Just because a newspaper comes up short on intel.”
“Well I suppose I could ask Mr. Lightning to check her out.”
“LOL.”
“But either way, you have to admit. Not necessarily that there’s something dodgy going on. But that there is a distinct possibility that there’s something dodgy going on. Back on the hub—”
“Don’t.”
“Back on the hub, we’d follow this through. It’s way over the credibility line.”
“So take it to the hub.”
“It may be over the credibility line, but I’m not.”
“Lamb’ll listen.”
“Lamb can take a fucking walk. Anyway, what would he do? He’d send us out to watch her. You and me.”
“You’re very sure of that.”
“Well he’s hardly going to send Shirley and Ho.”
“You’ve not known him as long as I have. Anyway, aren’t you forgetting someone?”
“Who, Ash? She’s not been here ten minutes. He had me chained to my desk the first two months.”
“Which would be all the reason he needs.” Louisa looked at the two photos again, side by side. Mother and daughter? Caught cold, she might even have thought them the same woman. Colonel Alexa Chaikovskaya was uniformed, her hair tied back, her expression severe; Doctor Sophie de Greer wore glasses, and had softer hair, but the eyes were the same. They might have been options on a dating site: here’s me as stern librarian; me as the Red beside your bed. God, where did that come from? She should get out more. She said to Lech, “So what are you suggesting? That I give up my evening and spend it watching your supposed ringer, waiting for her handler to make contact?”
Lech said, “It’s something to do, right?”
Like she’d said earlier. He was worse than River Cartwright.
He looked at his watch. “I’ll leave you to think about it,” he said. “Twenty minutes?”
“Not going to happen.”
“See you outside.”
He stopped in the kitchen on his way downstairs, put the kettle on, and was wasting moments looking for a clean mug—which went to show he was still a relative newcomer; the last clean mug in Slough House commemorated Charles and Di—when Shirley appeared in the doorway, like one of those bollards that rise up out of the tarmac when you don’t expect.
“What were you and Louisa talking about?”
“We’re thinking of adopting.”
“No one’ll let you. You’d scare a kid stupid just being in the same room.”
“Always a pleasure, Shirley. But don’t you have things to be getting on with? I don’t know, accidents to cause or furniture to break?”
He found a mug that at least had a handle, and rinsed it under the tap.
“You’re up to something.”
“Shit. You got me. This whole thing about being an office worker doing boring stuff in a crappy workplace? That’s just pretending. I’m actually a spy.”
“I want in.”
“There’s nothing to be in.”
“I’ll tell Lamb.”
“Where are we, nursery school?” The kettle boiled and he poured water onto a teabag. “Look, remember Old Street Station? Remember we decided to take out one of the newbies sent to follow us?”
“. . . Yeah. So?”
