“I’ll shoot him. He’s a loner, which simplifies things. Someone alone in the street on a rainy night, someone behind . . .” He smiled, and she took a step back.
“Someone walked over my grave when you said that.”
“Not you, Caitlin, not for years. Call me when you’re ready.”
He went out and straight up the aisle, opened the door wide, and started down the path. Peter Ivanov, dressed in a trench coat and trilby, stepped out of a monumental archway and faced him.
Holley stood there looking at him. “So you knew about the church and where it was even when we were in Moscow. You’re not supposed to interfere, Ivanov. You’ll ruin everything.”
“Come with me,” Ivanov told him. “We’re going to have a little discussion. I wouldn’t argue with Sergeant Kerimov here. He doesn’t like it, and he’s bigger than you.”
Holley walked towards the car, where Kerimov, large and lumpen, stood on the other side waiting to get behind the wheel. He looked formidable. “Come on, get in.” Ivanov opened the front passenger door. “I’ll sit behind you.”
Kerimov was smiling when he eased behind the wheel. Holley leaned down as if to sit on the passenger seat, pulled the Colt from his ankle holster, and shot Kerimov through the back of the left hand. He cried out, tried reaching for his gun with his right hand, and Holley rapped him across the head. Kerimov slumped across the wheel.
“Oh, dear, you’ll have to get him in the backseat and drive him somewhere. Better not make it an emergency room. They call the police to a gunshot wound. Of course, there’s always the medical facility at the Embassy,” Holley said.
“God damn you,” Ivanov told him.
“Next time, I’ll kill you, remember that. Especially if I find you’ve come back here and interfered with Caitlin Daly.”
He walked briskly away and left them to it.
12
On the way back, he reviewed the situation. He wasn’t bothered in the slightest by what he had just done. Ivanov could hardly call in the law. All he could do was haul the wretched Kerimov back to the Embassy’s sick bay. Lermov would have to hear about what had happened, of course, but it was obvious that Ivanov had broken the rules they’d all agreed on. What would Lermov make of that? Not very much, Holley concluded. He’d probably tell Ivanov to stop being an ass. Holley had made his point, drawn a line in the sand, and that was that.
He got out at the hotel but didn’t go in. There wasn’t much he could do right now, waiting on news of the meeting and which way things would swing. He also needed to give Chekhov the addresses and phone numbers of Barry and Flynn so Chekhov could speak to Potanin and get things up and running, but there was the same problem there. Frustrated, he went along to Shepherd’s Market to visit Selim.
Sitting in the study, darkness falling outside, a gas fire burning in the Victorian fireplace, Holley fidgeted while waiting for the call. Selim had once again provided champagne, but Holley’s was untouched.
“You really should drink up, Daniel,” said Selim. “It’ll help you relax. What’s wrong? Can you tell me?”
“Not in any detail,” said Holley. “It’s just . . . I’m on the verge of satisfactory resolution to my job here, but—”
“But someone is interfering?”
“How do you know?” Holley asked.
“Because you always do things on your own. You hate any interference, and I can just bet that whoever you’re doing this job for doesn’t see it the same way.”
“We agreed that we should never meet, that we should only make contact by encrypted mobile, and just now I had some eager young bastard, together with a sergeant the size of a brick wall, try to put me in a car in Kilburn.”
“Ah, a sergeant. The military’s involved, then. Men in uniform, they need to take charge, give orders.”
“Well, not to me.” Holley took the glass and drank it down in one gulp.
“So what did you do?”
Holley reached to the ankle holster and took out the Colt .25 and laid it on the brass table. “Shot the Sergeant in the back of the hand as he gripped the wheel and left his captain to struggle back to the Embassy with him.”
“Wonderful.” Selim smiled. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard in years. You’re a lone wolf, Daniel, the most dangerous beast in the forest.”
Holley’s mobile sounded. It was Caitlin. “Can we talk?”