He felt Dima’s presence and lifted his eyelids slowly as if they were heavy weights. He peered at his visitor. ‘I heard you were dead.’
‘Yeah, I heard that too.’
‘It was on the news.’
‘Then it must be true.’
Paliov’s eyes started to close. Dima slapped his cheeks. ‘They drug you?’
‘Probably Can’t think why, I’m practically dead as it is.’
‘Timofayev?’
He nodded. ‘Seems I’ve fallen foul of the powers that be.’
Yeah, well that makes two of us. Did you know the Kaffarov mission was based on corrupted intelligence and was blown before we even took off from Rayazan?’
Paliov came back to life for a moment, a subterranean eruption of anger welling to the surface.
‘Timofayev wanted a lightweight team — deniable, disposable. I was determined you’d have the full complement you needed. He wanted you to fail.’
Then it subsided. He shook his head.
‘What he sees in Kaffarov — and with that WMD. .’
‘Kaffarov’s dead.’
Paliov’s face brightened.
‘Don’t get too happy. Want to take a guess who’s got his bombs?’
He told him. Paliov hung his head. Solomon had been Paliov’s project as well, the ultimate agent, gifted, ruthless, no past, no allegiances.
There was a long silence as he absorbed the information. ‘Everything I’ve worked for and now this. .’
‘We had a deal, remember. I’m going to Paris.’
‘Ah Paris. Your old haunt.’ An inane smile spread across his face. His eyelids started to close again.
‘The photographs, remember?’
He frowned. Dima felt an almost uncontrollable urge to throttle him. He settled for another hard smack on the cheek.
‘My son, remember? In the pictures. You were going to get me a name and an address.’
Paliov’s eyes focused, the muscles in his sagging cheeks tensed. Some of the life came back into him. But the impression was not so much alert as panicked.
‘Your son?’
Dima leapt forward, grabbed the old man’s shoulders.
‘The fucking pictures. You showed them to me. It’s why I agreed to go on that fucked-up mission.’
Paliov’s hand went up to his mouth.
‘It’s happening again.’ His eyes unfocused.
Dima saw the photographs in his head clear down to every pixel. Camille’s features, some of his own. Good looking kid. My son.
‘I’m sorry, it’s. .’ Then a glimmer of recognition came into his watery eyes. ‘Timofayev had them. His people found him. He didn’t allow me the details.’
He stared at Paliov with a mixture of fury and despair. This man, once a formidable spymaster, keeper of all secrets, scourge of the West, the focus of all his respect and admiration. He cursed Paliov’s decrepitude, cursed himself for not prising the information out of either of them when he had the chance. For a moment he felt the energy that had kept him going these last days evaporating.
He had to keep moving. He had to get to Paris, with or without the information he craved.
‘Goodbye Paliov.’
‘Dima.’ Paliov’s voice was suddenly much stronger. ‘One last favour.’
‘I’m fresh out of favours.’
He pointed at the guard’s XP-9 that was still in his hand. ‘Would you mind if I borrowed that? I think the time has come. I’d ask you to but I’ve put you through too much.’
Dima froze. Love him or hate him, he had been in his life longer than any other person he had known.
He offered his right hand. Paliov clasped it. Then Dima handed over the pistol, turned and walked to the door.
‘Dima.’
He looked over his shoulder. A glimmer of light in Paliov’s eyes.
‘Your boy. He works at the Bourse.’
69
He heard the shot when he got outside the door. To Dima it meant more than the death of one man: it signalled the end of an era. Paliov had personified a set of values and principles that they had both given their lives to. Love them or hate them — and Dima had done both — they were in his DNA. For all the trouble Paliov had caused him, the lies, the mess and the waste, most of all the lost lives in Kaffarov’s compound — despite it all, Dima felt a twinge of regret.
But there was no time to process all that now. As the lift took him down, Paliov’s final words reverberated round his head.
He’s a trader at the Bourse.
Kroll was waiting for him in the Merc.
‘We have a problem.’
‘Just for a change.’