‘I see.’
‘My sources at the Embassy tell me that Silsev and Sharp are to meet tomorrow afternoon at four o’clock at the Karl Marx Memorial in Highgate Cemetery.’
‘I know where that is. I’ve been there.’
‘It’s face-to-face stuff, no one else allowed, so Sharp won’t have his minders with him.’
There was a short silence. Grace Browning turned to the others. Curry’s face was pale and even Rupert Lang looked grave.
‘Moment of truth, my friends,’ she said and turned back to Belov. ‘How do you want it done?’
It was raining hard when the Mercedes limousine drew up by the main gates of Highgate Cemetery shortly before four o’clock on the following afternoon.
The man in the chauffeur’s uniform at the wheel said, ‘Sure you don’t want me to come, guv?’
‘No need, Bert, this guy’s kosher. Too much in it, for him not to be. Give me the umbrella. I won’t be long.’
He got out of the car, a large, fleshy man of fifty in a dark blue overcoat, put the umbrella up and went in through the gates. Dusk was already falling and what with the rain, the cemetery was deserted. He followed the path through a jumble of graves, monuments and marble angels. There were trees here and there and all rather overgrown. Sharp didn’t mind. He’d always liked the place, had always liked cemeteries if it came to that. Up ahead was the monument with the huge head, Karl Marx.
Sharp stood looking up at it, took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘Commie bastard,’ he said softly.
Major Silsev stepped round from the other side. He was small, eyes close set, wore a trilby hat and raincoat and like Sharp held an umbrella.
‘Ah, there you are, Mr Sharp.
‘Yes, here I bleeding well am,’ Sharp told him. ‘Wet and cold and I don’t like all this cloak and dagger stuff, so let’s get on with it.’
At that moment an engine roared into life and as they turned, a motorcycle emerged from a clump of trees and came towards them, the rider wearing black helmet and leathers.
‘What the hell?’ Sharp cried as it skidded to a halt.
Silsev turned to run, but Grace pulled the Beretta from the front of her leather jacket and shot him in the back.
‘Bastard!’ Sharp shouted and his hand came out of his overcoat pocket clutching a revolver. Before he could raise it, she shot him between the eyes and he went down. Silsev was still twitching. As she moved past, she leaned over and finished him with a headshot.
A few moments later she emerged through the main gate, a dark and anonymous figure as she drove past the Mercedes where Bert sat behind the wheel reading the Standard.
She moved through the evening traffic of Highgate Road into Kentish Town and then to Camden, finally turning into a yard in a side street near Camden Lock. There was a large truck, the rear door open, a ramp sloping up inside. As she ran the motorcycle up and put it on its stand, Curry, behind her, closed the yard gate.
He didn’t say a word, simply stood waiting while she stripped off the leathers and helmet, revealing jeans and a tee-shirt underneath. He opened a holdall bag he was carrying and offered her a nylon anorak and a baseball cap and she put them on quickly.
‘Right, let’s get out of here.’ Curry closed the truck door and opened the gates. ‘Belov’s people will clear up.’
She handed him the Beretta and he slipped it in the holdall. ‘Everything okay?’
‘If you mean did I kill Sharp and Silsev, yes. What with Ashimov, London’s not going to be a favoured KGB posting.’
‘I expect not.’ They were approaching a telephone kiosk. He said, ‘Give me a minute.’
A few seconds later the newsdesk at The Times received the call claiming responsibility for the deaths of Major Ivan Silsev and Frank Sharp by January 30 as a direct response to their involvement in the drug trade.
Curry paused on the corner of Camden High Street and hailed a cab. ‘You all right?’ he asked.
‘Never better.’
‘Good. Rupert’s got tickets for Sunset Boulevard. We’re eating at Daphne’s afterwards. Does that suit?’
‘Fantastic. Just get me home. As a great writer once said, a bath and a change of clothes and I can go on forever.’
A cab slid in to the kerb and he opened the door for her.
When Grace entered the piano bar at the Dorchester it was just before seven. Giuliano the manager met her with pleasure, kissed her hand and took her down to the far corner beside the piano where Lang, Curry and Belov waited. She looked quite spectacular in a black beaded shift, black stockings and shoes.
Belov waved off a waiter and started to pour from a bottle of Cristal champagne. ‘You look wonderful.’
At that moment Giuliano came up. ‘The late edition of the Standard. I thought you might like to see it. A double shooting in Highgate by some terrorist group. Isn’t it terrible? Not safe to be out these days.’
He walked away. Rupert Lang laughed; even Tom Curry was having difficulty keeping a straight face. Belov raised his glass, looked at Grace and she smiled slightly.
‘What can I say after that except to you, my friends.’ He toasted them.
The Lebanon was a kind of Arab Belfast, a setting for destruction unparalleled in modern world history. The country had once been the Switzerland of the Middle East, with Beirut its capital as popular with the wealthy of the world as the south of France, and yet since 1975 when serious fighting had broken out between members of the Christian Phalangist Party and the Muslim Militia, only death and destruction had followed.
In his room on the fourth floor of the Al Bustan Hotel Sean Dillon poured out a small Bushmills from the bottle he had brought with him. He’d need to conserve it. He was just adding a little mineral water when there was a knock on the door. He put down his glass and went to open it. Hannah Bernstein stood there, wearing a linen suit the colour of pale straw and tinted glasses.
‘Ah, Miss Cooper,’ he said.
‘Mr Gaunt.’
‘Come in.’
He went back to the window and picked up his drink and she joined him.
‘It looks quite a place,’ she said.
‘Used to be the most sophisticated place in the Middle East. Nearly three million people, Christians, Muslim and Druse.’
‘And what went wrong?’
‘Emerging Arab fundamentalism. It was originally French, which gave it a very sophisticated base, then in seventy-five the Christians and Muslims got stuck into each other, then Palestinian refugees moved in and made things worse. After that, the Israelis, then the Syrians, then the Israelis again, but there’s always that Arab fundamentalism eating away at the heart of things in the Middle East. Don’t know the answer.’ He raised his glass. ‘Here endeth the lesson.’
‘Very unhealthy,’ she said. ‘Poor old Dillon. You’re a doer, not a philosopher. Let’s remember that and get on with it.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Now,