Traffic shunted forwards, and came to a halt again. The lane heading back to London was moving freely, if with wariness; the snow was drawing black lines on the road where tyres had cut through it. It occurred to River that the lanes up ahead, the far side of the spilled load, might be inches thick by now. But we’ll plough that furrow when we come to it.
“Yellow car,” said Shirley.
“What?”
But she didn’t explain.
And the snow kept falling.
On a normal day London was bright and busy, full of open spaces and well-lit squares. But it was also trap streets and ghost stations; a spook realm below the real. Think of the city as a coded text beneath an innocent page, thought Richard Pynne; a hidden string of silent letters, spelling out missing words. Every footfall on every paving stone tapped out meaning few could read.
Pynne had never wanted to be a joe, preferring to view the world from a desk, confident that these desks would become bigger, their views more panoramic, as his career skyrocketed. But it couldn’t be denied that moments like this carried excitement; a pleasure that was necessarily furtive, borderline sexual. It helped that it was Hannah he was on his way to see, and that the meeting was unlogged—at the Park, he’d diarised the hour as UPB, urgent personal business; standard code for dentist or clap clinic. For now he was wrapped in a legend, and London was enemy ground.
Ground slowly whitening under a soft wet blanket of snow.
He waited behind Embankment Station, and when he saw her approaching ostentatiously checked his watch; not to show her she was late, but to indicate to anyone watching that they were an ordinary couple, and she was late.
“You got here.”
She looked amused. “Is there any reason I shouldn’t have?”
“No. None. I only meant . . .” What he’d meant was lost before he’d said it. He looked around: nobody in sight. Nobody important. A man fussing about with a sheet of cardboard. Two young women, hand in hand. He said to Hannah, “Would you like to get coffee?”
“I don’t have time. You said it was important?”
“It’s about Peter.”
Peter Kahlmann, her BND handler. The man who thought he was running a German spy in the British Civil Service.
“What about him?”
“Has he . . . said anything lately?”
“Has he said anything? What does that mean?”
“Has anything unusual happened?”
“No, Richard. Nothing unusual has happened.”
“So no security worries? He hasn’t asked if anyone’s been . . . checking up on him?”
“You’ve asked me this before.”
“And now I’m asking you again.”
“And the answer’s the same, no, nothing. He’s a tired old man, that’s all. I’m his last job. He just wants to take my reports, which are full of useless rubbish as you know, because you write them, and then go back to his nice warm flat and listen to Radio 3. As far as he’s aware I’m someone’s idea of a prank, a tiny little mole in Whitehall, beaming back gossipy bullshit. That’s all.”
Instead of, thought Richard, a tiny little mole in the Bundesnachrichtendienst, beaming back snippets of tradecraft.
Hannah eyed him kindly. “What’s the matter? Really?”
“It’s probably nothing.”
“But not actually nothing.”
“No . . .” She was his joe, he was her handler, and there were no secrets between joe and handler. Or at least, not where a joe’s safety was concerned. That was sacred text: a handler protected his joe.
He said, “It’s just that something happened. Back at the Park. An analyst ran Kahlmann’s name through several databases.”
“You told me that. Why is it important? Analysts analyse things. It’s what they do.”
“But not long after, this particular analyst, well . . . he was compromised.”
“Because he was checking up on Peter Kahlmann?”
“. . . I don’t know. It’s possible.”
“So you think that the BND value me so highly that they’d nobble anyone who probes too close?”
“I value you.”
“Glad to hear it. But if I was valuable to them, they’d not have given me to Kahlmann in the first place. They’d have assigned someone of a higher calibre. Someone keen to do a proper job.” She punched him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m small fry, I know that. I don’t have esteem issues, don’t worry.”
And that was the truth of it, he thought with relief. As far as the BND was concerned, Hannah was a little fish, a sleeper who might never wake, but merely murmur messages from the edge of slumber. Pillow talk from Whitehall’s dormitory—gossipy bullshit, like she said. Not someone the BND would risk a diplomatic incident to protect. Which meant Snow White would remain his and his alone: their secret meetings, their familiar haunts, their special relationship. Kahlmann was a nobody, which meant that Lech Wicinski’s fall from grace was his own guilty problem, nothing more.
This was good, because at the disciplinary hearing earlier, back in the Park, he’d given Di Taverner a truncated version of T&T’s report on Wicinski’s laptop.
“The material can’t have been planted remotely.”
“Is that a hundred percent?”
“. . . As good as.”
