“Pashkin’s travelling light,” Marcus said.
“He must be on the stairs.”
“So let’s go.”
They ran for the stairwell again, but at the firedoor Louisa paused. “He could be on any floor.”
“He wants out. Once the scare’s over, it won’t be so easy.”
He had to bend into her ear to speak. The scare wasn’t over yet, though the alarm seemed to be winding down, as if running on a tired battery.
Louisa checked her phone. “Still no good,” she said. “And Webb’s bleeding out for all we know. I’ve got to find an outside line.”
He said, “Okay. I’ll keep going.”
“Shoot straight,” Louisa said.
Marcus continued down the neverending stairs, and Louisa went back into de Koenig’s.
“You were a Kremlin brain.”
“Yes. Until I became, instead, a Moscow cipher clerk. With just enough of the right sort of information to be granted entry into your Jerusalem.”
“You invented Popov, who we knew was a legend. So we thought the cicadas were a legend too, but they were real. Why’d you bring them to Upshott?”
“They had to be somewhere,” Katinsky said. “Once Moscow fell apart. Besides, they were sleepers, and where better to sleep?”
“They were agents of influence.”
“They were bright talented people, with access to people with access, and they reached right into the heart of the establishment. It would have made for an interesting game, if it hadn’t come to a premature end.”
“You mean if you hadn’t lost, you might have won,” River said. “Do they even know? About each other, I mean?”
Katinsky laughed. He laughed so hard he started to wheeze and had to put a hand up as if instructing River to stop right there, put everything on hold. It was the hand that held his iPhone. The other remained out of River’s view.
At length he said, “On the whole, I think not. Though they may have suspicions.”
River said, “All these years, and you decided to come back to life. There’s got to be a reason for that. You’re dying, aren’t you?”
“Liver cancer.”
“That’s one of the painful ones. Too bad.”
“Thank you. You liked the girl, didn’t you? Young Kelly Tropper. I mean, I know you screwed her, but it went beyond business, didn’t it? Spies screw girls when they’re called upon to do so, and young men screw girls when the opportunity presents. Which were you when you bedded her, Walker?”
“Did it bother you, sending her out to die?”
“Sending her? She’d say it was her own idea.”
“I’m sure she thought so. Are you really waiting for a call?”
“I might be. Or I might be waiting to make one.”
“It’s over, you know.”
“It was over a long time ago,” Katinsky said. “But that’s the thing about dying. It encourages you to tidy up.”
“To settle scores,” River said.
“I prefer to think of it as redressing a balance. You don’t think this is about ideology, do you?”
“Well, I don’t think it’s about a heist. Why Upshott?”
“You already asked.”
“You didn’t answer. Nothing you’ve done’s been accidental. You came here for a reason.”
The sun was trying to clear the belltower, and given time and patience, would succeed. It always had done before. Behind them, gravestones were soaking in warmth, but the bench remained in shadow. Katinsky gave the impression that this was where he belonged. For all his solidity, River half-expected him to evaporate once the sun’s rays touched him.
“Why do you think?”
No, River thought; it wasn’t his grandfather the man reminded him of. It was Jackson Lamb.
He said, “It’s England.”
“Oh come on. So is Birmingham. So is Crewe.”
“Picture postcard England. Medieval church, village pub, village green. You wanted to park your network at the heart of a vision of rural England.”
Like a grudging tutor, Katinsky nodded. “Maybe. What else?”
River said, “When you chose it, it had a military base. Most of the town existed just to serve it. There was nothing else here.”
“A small place with no proper existence … Why would the man who invented Alexander Popov choose such a place, I wonder?”
A passing wind crawled through the neatly-trimmed grass, shaking the spray of daffodils in a tin vase by a headstone. For no reason he could think of, River remembered the O.B., his grandfather, reaching with a twig to rescue a beetle from a burning log in his grate. And then the memory fizzed and vanished, the way the beetle itself had popped when the fire swallowed it. But the connection had been made. Here in the quiet churchyard, River recalled a distant conflagration.
“ZT/53235,” he said.
Katinsky said nothing. But his eyes answered yes.
“That’s where you’re from,” River said, and even as he spoke, Katinsky’s words,
Louisa found a phone; called emergency services, but couldn’t get through—what the hell was going on? Through the window, traces of black smoke spread inkily across the sky. Way down below, London was burning.
She called Slough House and filled Catherine in.
“He was still alive when you left him?”
“He was breathing. I’m not a doctor.”
