The List Read online

“It’s not something anyone’s going to ask you to do,” he said. “It’s simply an idea that’s been . . . floated.”

  As if the idea had risen out of nowhere, and was bobbing even now between them like a balloon, red as the coat she wore. She could burst it with a word. If she did, he would do nothing to attempt to change her mind. Nothing at all. He swore this to himself on everything he kept holy, if anything still bore that description. And even if his failure to recruit her swept him straight back into Lady Di’s black books, he’d deal with that—even unto being cast out of Regent’s Park, into the pit of unemployability that awaited a man his age, with what was effectively a blank CV—sooner than strong-arm this young woman into leading a shadow life.

  Because that’s what he’d been leading, these decades gone. A shadow life. Scurrying round the fringes of other people’s history, ensuring that none of it ever raised its head in polite company.

  She was looking up into the trees, awaiting the next shower.

  John Bachelor knew enough not to say anything.

  He watched her though, and marvelled again at what it must be like to be young, and know that you hadn’t yet messed everything up. In Hannah’s case, he thought, she’d continue looking young well into age. Bone structure counted. He might be trying to steal her soul, just as dead Dieter Hess had stolen her identity, but ultimately Hannah Weiss would hang onto everything that made her who she really was. That, too, he marvelled at, a trick he’d not managed himself.

  She said, “Will it be dangerous?”

  “Not like in the films.”

  “You don’t know what kind of films I watch. I don’t mean car chases and jumping out of helicopters. I mean going to prison. Being caught and locked up. That kind of dangerous.”

  “Sometimes,” Bachelor said. “That happens sometimes. Not very often.”

  “And will I get training?”

  “Yes. But it’ll all have to be done in secret. As far as anyone knows, you’ll still be the girl you always were. Woman, I mean.”

  “Yes. You mean woman.”

  She looked upwards again, as if the answer to her questions sat hidden among leaves. And then she looked at John Bachelor.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay?”

  “I’ll do it. I’ll be your spy.”

  “Good,” he said, and then, as if trying to convince himself, he said it again. “Good.”

  ♠

  It was three months later that Jackson Lamb made an unaccustomed field trip. Hertfordshire was his destination: he’d received advance word of a wholesale spirits outlet going down the tubes, and had hopes of picking up a case or two of scotch at knockdown prices.

  It was a long journey to make on the off-chance, so he went on a work day, and made River Cartwright drive.

  “This is official business?”

  “It’s the secret service, Cartwright. Not everything we do is officially sanctioned.”

  Two hours later, with a satisfied Lamb in the back seat, and two cases of Famous Grouse in the boot, they were heading back towards the capital.

  Three hours later, with a rather more disgruntled Lamb in the back seat, they were still heading back towards the capital.

  “This is supposed to be a short cut?”

  “I never claimed it was a short cut,” River said. “I explained it was a diversion. A lorry shed its load on the—were you actually listening?”

  “Blah blah motorway, blah blah road closure,” Lamb said. “If I’d known it was a magical mystery tour, I might have paid attention. Where are we?”

  “Just coming out of St Albans. And you’re not smoking that.”

  Lamb sighed. In return for River driving him, buying lunch and not having the damn radio on, Lamb had agreed not to smoke in the car, and was starting to wonder how he’d let himself be bested. “Turn in here,” he said.

  “A cemetery?”

  “Does it have a No Smoking sign?”

  River parked just beyond the stone gateway.

  Lamb got out of the car and lit a cigarette. The cemetery was basic, a recent development; had no Gothic-looking statuary, and was essentially a lawn with dividing hedges and headstones. A wide path led to the far end, which was awaiting occupants, and here and there were standpipes where visitors could fill watering cans, with which to tend the plots of their beloveds. Lamb, who carried his dead round with him, didn’t spend a lot of time in graveyards. This one didn’t seem busy, but perhaps Wednesday afternoons were a slack period.

  St Albans was ringing a bell, though. He sorted through his mental files, and came up with the name Dieter Hess. Who’d run a ghost network from here, and had now joined one of his own.

  Wondering if Hess was nearby, and to give himself time to smoke more, Lamb wandered up the path. The only other human in sight was an elderly woman sitting on a bench, possibly planning ahead. At the far end he counted down a row of newer headstones. Sure enough, third along was Dieter Hess’s; a simple stone with just his name and dates. A lot of story crammed between two numbers.

  Lamb regarded the stone. A ghost network. The lengths some people go to for a few extra quid, he thought; but knew, too, that the money hadn’t been all of it. The reason they called it The Game was that there were always those ready to play, even if that meant switching sides. Ideology, too, was just another excuse.

  But now the old boy was buried, and no harm done. At least, Lamb hoped there was no harm done . . . He didn’t trust dying messages, and Hess’s posthumous list fell under that heading. When something was hidden, but not so well that it couldn’t be found, the possibility existed that that had been the intention. And if a ghost network consisted of nine shut-ins and one living breathing young woman, well: a suspicious mind might think that resembled bait.

  He dropped his cigarette and ground it underfoot. It was too much of a stretch, he conceded. Would have meant that the hypothetical Hans, far from being Dieter Hess’s dupe, was truly cunning: paying Hess simply to hide a coded list under his carpet, knowing that when he pegged out, his flat would be steam-cleaned—when a spy passes, his cupboards need clearing out. So the tenth name would come into the hands of the Service, and maybe—just maybe—its owner, already in the employ of the BND, would be adopted by MI5.

  And what looked like a ready-made double would become, in fact, a triple.

  But plots need willing players. Lamb could accept that a young woman with a sense of adventure might let herself be recruited by a foreign service in her teens, but didn’t think John Bachelor had the nous to play his part, and re-recruit her in turn; or, come to that, that Diana Taverner would give him the green light to do so. Taverner was ambitious, but she wasn’t stupid. Too bad for Hans, then. Sometimes you put a lot of effort into schemes that never paid off. Everyone had days like that, though today—thinking of the booty in the boot—wasn’t one of Lamb’s.

  An atavistic impulse had him bend over, find a pebble, and place it on Hess’s headstone.

  One old spook to another, he thought, then headed back to the car.

  ♠

  Later that same afternoon, Hannah Weiss made her way home by tube. It had been a good day. Her probation at BIS was over; her supervisor had given her two thumbs up, and let her know that great things were expected of her. This could mean anything, of course; that a lifetime of key performance indicators and quarterly assessments lay ahead; or that her career would stretch down Whitehall’s corridors, far into an unimaginable distance. “Great things” could mean Cabinet level. It wasn’t impossible. She had influential support, after all, even if it had to remain covert. This was the life she had chosen.

  She changed at Piccadilly, and found herself standing on a platform next to a middle-aged man in a white raincoat. He carried a rolled-up copy of Private Eye. When the train arrived they stepped on board together, and were crammed into a corner of the ca
rriage. The train pulled away, and she found herself leaning against his arm.

  For upwards of a minute, the train rattled and lurched through the darkness. And then, just as it began to slow, and the next station hauled into sight, she felt him shift so that his lips were above her ear.

  “Wir sind alle sehr stolz auf dich, Hannah,” he said. Then the train halted, the doors opened, and he was gone.

  We’re all very proud of you.

  A fresh crowd enveloped Hannah Weiss. Deep inside its beating heart, she hugged secret knowledge to herself.