The train left St Petersburg at exactly one minute
to midnight, and the gentle, rhythmic sound of the carriage wheels clattering over the tracks soon made Connor feel drowsy. He woke with a start, and checked his watch: four thirty-seven. The most sleep he’d managed in the past three nights.
Then he recalled his dream. He had been sitting on a bench in Lafayette Square, facing the White House and talking with someone who never once looked in his direction. The meeting he’d had with the Deputy Director the previous week was being replayed word for word, but he couldn’t recall what it was about the conversation that continued to nag away at him. Just as Gutenburg came to the sentence he wanted to hear repeated, he had woken up.
He was no nearer to solving the problem when the train pulled in to Raveltay station at eight thirty-three that morning.
‘Where are you?’ asked Andy Lloyd.
A phone booth in Moscow,’ Jackson replied. ‘Via London, Geneva and St Petersburg. As soon as he got off the train he led us all on a wild goose chase. He managed to lose our man in Moscow in less than ten minutes. If it hadn’t been me who taught him the doubling-back technique in the first place, he would have shaken me off as well.’
‘Where did he end up?’ asked Lloyd.
‘He checked into a small hotel on the north side of the city.’
‘Is he still there?’
‘No, he left about an hour later, but he was so well disguised that I nearly missed him myself. If it hadn’t been for the walk, he might have given me the slip.’
‘Where did he go?’ asked Lloyd.
‘He took another circuitous route, and ended up at the campaign headquarters of Victor Zerimski.’
‘Why Zerimski?’
‘I don’t know yet, but he came out of the building carrying all Zerimski’s campaign literature. Then he bought a map from a news-stand and had lunch in a nearby restaurant. In the afternoon, he hired a small car and returned to his hotel. He hasn’t left the building since.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Lloyd suddenly. ‘It’s going to be Zerimski this time.’
There was a long pause at the other end of the line before Jackson said, ‘No, Mr Lloyd, that’s not possible.’
‘Why not?’
‘He’d never agree to carry out such a sensitive assignment unless the order had come directly from the White House. I’ve known him long enough to be certain of that.’
‘Try not to forget that your friend carried out exactly the same assignment in Colombia. No doubt Dexter was able to convince him that that operation had also been sanctioned by the President.’
‘There could be an alternative scenario,’ said Jackson quietly.
‘Namely?’
‘That it’s not Zerimski they’re planning to kill, but Connor.’
Lloyd wrote the name down on his yellow pad.
BOOK TWO
THE LONER
12
‘AMERICAN?’
‘Yes,’ said Jackson, not looking down at the source of the piping voice.
‘You need anything?’
‘No thanks,’ he said, still not taking his eyes off the front door of the hotel.