The List Read online

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  THE LIST

  Mick Herron

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  Books by Mick Herron

  Down Cemetery Road

  The Last Voice You Hear

  Why We Die

  Reconstruction

  Smoke & Whispers

  Nobody Walks

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  The Slough House Series

  Slow Horses

  Dead Lions

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  Copyright © 2015 by Mick Herron

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  All rights reserved.

  Published in ebook format in 2015 by Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  eISBN 978-1-61695-641-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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  Those who knew him said it was how he’d have wanted to go. Dieter Hess died in his armchair, surrounded by his books; a half-full glass of 2008 Burgundy at his elbow, a half-smoked Montecristo in the ashtray on the floor. In his lap, Yeats’s Collected—the yellow-jacketed Macmillan edition—and in the CD tray Pärt’s Für Alina, long hushed by the time Bachelor found the body, but its lingering silences implicit in the air, settling like dust on faded surfaces. Those who knew him said it was how he’d have wanted to go, but John Bachelor suspected Dieter would sooner have drunk more wine, read a little longer, and finished his cigar. Dieter had been sick, but he hadn’t been tired of life. Out of respect, or possibly mild superstition, Bachelor waited a while in that quiet room, thinking about their relationship—professional but friendly—before nodding to himself, as if satisfied Dieter had cleared the finishing line, and calling Regent’s Park. Dieter was long retired from the world of spooks, but there were protocols to be observed. When a spy passes, his cupboards need clearing out.

  ♠

  There was a wake, though nobody called it that. Most of the attendees had never known Dieter Hess, or the world he’d moved in as an Active; they rode desks at Regent’s Park, and his death was simply an excuse for a drink and a little stress relief. If they had to come over pious at the name of a dead German who’d fed them titbits in the Old Days—which were either Good or Bad, depending on the speaker—that was fine. So as the evening wore on the gathering split into two, the larger group issuing regular gales of laughter and ordering ever more idiosyncratic rounds of drinks, and the smaller huddling in a nook off the main bar and talking about Dieter, and other Actives now defunct, and quietly pickling itself in its past.

  The pub was off Great Portland Street; nicely traditional-looking from the road, and not too buggered about inside. John Bachelor had never been here before—for reasons that probably don’t need spelling out, Regent’s Park had never settled on a local—but had developed affection for it over the previous two and a quarter hours. Dieter too had faded into a warm memory. In life, like many of Bachelor’s charges, the old man could be prickly and demanding, but now that his complaints of not enough money and too little regard had been silenced by a heart no longer merely dicky but well and truly dicked, Bachelor had no trouble dwelling on his good points. This was a man, after all, who had risked his life for his ideals. German by birth, then East German by dint of geopolitics, Dieter Hess had supplied the Park with classified information during two dark decades, and if his product—largely to do with troop movements: Hess had worked in the Transport Ministry—had never swayed policy or scooped up hidden treasure, the man responsible deserved respect . . . Bachelor had reached that maudlin state where he was measuring his worth against those who’d gone before him, and his own career had been neither stellar nor dangerous. That his current berth was known as the milk round summed it up. John Bachelor’s charges were retired assets, which is to say those who’d come in from other nations’ colds; who’d served their time in that peculiar shadowland where clerical work and danger meet. Veterans of the microdot. Agents of the filing cabinet. Whatever: it had all carried the same penalty.

  It had been a different world, of course, and had largely vanished when the Wall came down, which was not to say there weren’t still pockets of it here and there, because friends need spying on as much as enemies. But for John Bachelor’s people the Active life was over, and his role was to make sure they suffered no unwelcome intrusions, no mysterious clicks on the landline; above all, that they weren’t developing a tendency to broadcast the details of their lives to anyone who cared to listen. It sometimes amused Bachelor, sometimes depressed him, that he worked for the secret service in an era where half the population aired its private life on the web. He wasn’t sure the Cold War had been preferable, but it had been more dignified.

  And now his rounds were shorter by one client. That was hardly surprising—nobody on his books was younger than seventy—but what happened afterwards? When all his charges expired, what happened to John Bachelor? It was a selfish question, but it needed answering. What happened when the milk round was done? Then the door opened, and a cold blast nipped round the room. Thanks for that, he thought. He was drunk enough to read significance in the ordinary. Thanks for that.

  The newcomer was Diana Taverner.

  He watched her pause at the larger, noisier group and say something which roused a cheer, so probably involved money behind the bar. Then she glanced his way, or his group’s way.

  “Oh god,” groaned the soak next to him. “Here comes the ice queen.”

  “She can read lips,” said Bachelor, trying not to move his own. They buzzed with the effort.

  Taverner nodded at him, or perhaps at all of them, but it felt like at him. He’d been Dieter’s handler. It seemed he was in for some line-managed compassion.

  It was news to him that compassion was in her repertoire.

  Diana Taverner—Lady Di—was one of the Park’s Second Desks, and wielded much of the power around that edifice, and not a little of the glamour. In her early fifties, she wore her age more lightly than Bachelor; wore smarter outfits too. This wasn’t difficult. He shifted on the bench seat; caught the end of his tie between finger and thumb, and rubbed. It felt insubstantial, somehow. When he looked up his neighbouring soak had vacated the area, and Lady Di was settling next to him.

  “John.”

  “ . . . Diana.”

  Ma’am, usually. But this was not the office.

  His group had fragmented, its constituent parts repairing to the bar or the gents, or just generally finding an excuse to be elsewhere. But this was a while seeping through Bachelor’s consciousness, swaddled by alcohol as it was. He did not want to talk to Taverner, but she had at least arrived bearing more drink. He took the proffered glass gratefully, raised it to his lips, remembering at the last minute to say “Cheers.” She didn’t reply. He swallowed, set the glass down again. Tried to gauge how presentable he looked: a fool’s mission. But he found himself running a hand through his hair anyway, as if that might add lustre, or bring its former colour back.

  “Dieter Hess died of natural causes.” Diana Taverner’s voice was always precise, but there seemed extra edge in it now. More than was called for, fuddled intuition told Bachelor, at a social occasion. “Just thought you’d like to know.”

  It hadn’t occurred to him there’d be any other explanation.

  “He’d been sick for a while,” he said. “Was on medication. Heart pills.”

  “Do you remember what?”

  Of course he didn’t remember what. Wouldn’t remember sober, couldn’t remember drunk. “Xenocyclitron?” he freewheeled. “Or something like.”

>   She stared.

  I did say or something like, he thought.

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Alive?”

  “Of course alive.”

  “Well then.” He gathered thoughts. “That would be last Tuesday. I spent the afternoon with him, chatting. Or listening, mostly. He complained a lot. Well, they all do.” He added this to avoid accusations of speaking ill of the dead. Speak ill of the whole bunch of them, and the dead don’t feel singled out.

  “Money?”

  “Always money. They never have enough. Prices rising, and their income’s fixed . . . I mean, is it just me, or do you ever think, it’s not like they have mortgages to pay? I know they’ve done their bit and all, but . . .”

  Even drunk, Bachelor wasn’t sure he was putting his argument cogently. Also, he felt he might be coming across mean-spirited.

  “Well,” he amended. “Of course they’ve done their bit. That’s why we’re looking after them, right?”

  He reached for his glass.

  When he looked at Taverner again, her face was cold.

  “He complained about money,” she said.

  “Yes. But they all do. Did. I mean, they still do, but he—”

  “So he didn’t mention an alternative source of income?”

  Sobriety had never been so swift nor so unwelcome.

  He said, “Ah. No. I mean—” He stopped. His tongue had swollen to twice its size, and sucked up his mouth’s moisture.

  “Strange that he’d keep that quiet, don’t you think?”

  “What happened?”

  “You were his handler, John,” she reminded him. “That doesn’t just mean making sure he’s fed and watered, and listening to his grouses. It means checking his hide for fleas. You—”

  “What happened?”

  He’d just interrupted Diana Taverner in full flow. Better men had been sandblasted for less.

  “Dieter had a bank account you didn’t know about.”

  “Oh Christ.”

  “And there was money going into it. Not sure where from yet, because someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to hide the source. But that in itself is somewhat suggestive, wouldn’t you say?”

  He was going to be sick. He could feel the heave gathering force. He was going to be sick. He was going to be sick.

  He’d finished his drink.

  Diana Taverner regarded him the way a crow regards carrion. Eventually, she picked up her glass. Bachelor craved that glass. He’d kill for its contents. He had to settle for watching her swallow from it.

  She said, “It’s hardly Tinker, Tailor, John. You wipe their noses, feed their cats, make sure they’re not blowing their pensions on internet poker, and—and I really didn’t think this needed emphasising—and above all, make sure they don’t have bank accounts they’re not telling us about. You want to take a guess as to why that’s so important?”

  He mumbled something about being compromised.

  “That’s right, John. Because if they’ve got secret bank accounts someone else is filling with money, it might mean they’ve been compromised. You know, I’m going to go out on a limb here. It very definitely certainly fucking does mean they’ve been compromised, which means we can’t trust anything they’ve ever told us, and do you have any idea, John, do you have the remotest idea of the headache that’ll cause? When we have to go trawling through everything we ever thought we knew about everything they ever told us? To find out where the lies start, and what actions we took based on them?”

  “Ancient history,” he found himself saying.

  “That’s right, John. Ancient history. Like discovering your house’s foundations aren’t made of stone but pizza dough, but what’s the harm, right? Now go get me another one of these.”

  He did what he was told, each action muffled by a sense of impending doom. The floor buckled beneath his feet. Laughter boomed from the youngsters’ table, and he knew it was aimed at him. He paid for three doubles, downed the first, and carried the survivors back to land.

  Look for a loophole, he screamed inwardly. Just because this is happening doesn’t mean it can’t be unhappened. He was fifty-six years old. He didn’t have much of a career, but he didn’t have anything else going for him.

  Setting her drink in front of Lady Di, he asked, “How long?”

  “More than two years.”

  “How much?”

  “Eighteen grand. Give or take.”

  He said, “Well, that’s not—”

  She raised a hand. He shut his mouth.

  For a few minutes, they sat in silence. It was almost peaceful. If this could go on forever—if there never had to be a moment when the consequences of Dieter Hess receiving money from unknown sources had to be faced—then he could live with it. Stay on this seat in this pub, with this full glass in front of him, and the future forever unreached. Except that the future was already nibbling away, because look, see, his glass, it was emptying.

  At last, and possibly because she was reading his mind, Taverner said, “How old are you, John?”

  It wasn’t a question you asked because you wanted to know the answer. It was a question you asked because you wanted to crush your underling underfoot.

  He said, “Just tell me the worst, would you? What is it, Slough House? I’ll be sent to join the other screw-ups?”

  “Not everyone who screws up gets to join the slow horses. Only those it’d be impolitic to sack. That clear enough for you?”

  That was clear enough for him.

  “Dieter was an asset,” she went on. “And assets, even retired assets, even dead assets, fall on my desk. Which means I do not want the Dogs sniffing round this, because it makes me look bad.”

  The Dogs were the Service’s police.

  “And what makes me look bad makes you look redundant.”

  Her eyes had never left his during this speech. He was starting to get an inkling of how mice felt, and other little jungle residents. The kind preyed on by snakes.

  “So. How do you think we resolve this situation?”

  He shook his head.

  “Excellent. And there’s the can-do attitude that’s made your career such a shining example to us all.” She leaned forward. “If this gets to be an inquiry, John, you won’t just be out on your ear, you’ll be implicated in whatever crap Dieter Hess was up to. I’ll make sure of that. And we’re not just talking loss of job, John, we’re talking loss of pension. Loss of any kind of benefit whatsoever. The best your future holds is a job in a supermarket, assuming you’re still of working age when they let you out of prison. Just stop me when you come up with a plan. Not stopping me yet? It isn’t looking good, John, is it? Not looking good at all.”

  He found his voice. “I can fix this.”

  “Really? How very very marvelous.”

  “I’ll find out what he was doing. Put it right.”

  “Then I suggest you start immediately. Because that’s how soon I’ll expect to be hearing from you.”

  She put her glass down.

  “Are you still here?”

  He made it to the street somehow, where he went stumbling for the nearest lamp post, grabbed it like a sailor grabs a mast, and puked into the gutter, all the evening’s drink pouring out of him in one ugly flood.

  Across the road, a well-dressed couple averted their gaze.

  ♠

  It might have been the hangover, but the leakage from the headphones of the man opposite sounded like a demon’s whisper. John Bachelor was on an early train to St Albans, his limbs heavy from lack of sleep, his stomach lumpy as a punchbag. Something pulsed behind his left eye and he was sure it glowed like a beacon in the gloomy carriage. The demon’s whisper slithered in and out of meaning. Every time he thought he’d grasped its message, his mind greyed it out.
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br />   He had not had a good night. Good nights, anyway, were rare—at forty, Bachelor had discovered, you began dreaming of gravestones. After fifty, it was what you dreamed of when you were awake that frightened you most. Could Diana Taverner really engineer him behind bars? He wouldn’t bet against it. If Dieter Hess had been in the pay of a foreign power, Bachelor would be guilty by default. Implicating him would be child’s play to an old hand like Taverner.

  The train flashed past a fox curled up in weeds by the side of the track, and two minutes later pulled into the station.

  Bachelor stepped out into light rain, and trudged the familiar distance to Hess’s flat.

  ♠

  For the past ten years he’d called here at least once a week. Two days earlier, letting himself in, he had known—was almost positive he’d known—that he’d be finding Dieter’s body. Dieter had been sick for a while. Dieter had been an old man. And Dieter hadn’t been answering Bachelor’s calls—the fact was, Bachelor should have been there sooner. So the sight of Dieter at peace in his armchair, his passing eased by wine, tobacco and music, was, if anything, a relief. If he’d found Dieter face-down on the carpet, frantic scrabble marks showing his attempts to reach the phone, Bachelor would have had to work the scene a little, cover up any appearance of neglect. He’d been Dieter’s handler, as Taverner had kept reminding him. Letting his charges die alone in pain didn’t look good.

  Any more than having them turn out doubles did.

  But it was too soon to say whether Dieter had been a double. There were other explanations, other possibilities, for Dieter having had an illicit source of income. All Bachelor had to do was find one.

  The flat had been searched, as protocol demanded, but not torn apart—the significance of the paperwork removed from Dieter’s desk had only come to light back at the Park. What John Bachelor embarked on now was more thorough. He began in the kitchen, and after spreading newspaper on the floor he went through cupboards, opening jars and dumping their contents onto the paper; reading the entrails of Dieter’s groceries, and finding nothing that shed light on his own future or on Dieter’s past. All that came to light were coffee grounds and teabags, and surely more jars of herbs and spices than a single man could have need of? No secrets buried under packets of sausagemeat in the freezer drawers. Nothing under the sink but bottles of bleach and the usual plumbing. As he searched, Bachelor found himself working faster, intent on finishing the task in hand, and forced himself to slow down. He was breathing heavily, and on the spread-out newspaper sat a mountain of mess. He should have thought harder before launching into this. He couldn’t even make himself a cup of coffee now, which would have been welcome, given the state of his head.