saloon. Martin didn’t make a sound, gave him no chance at all. He simply extended his pistol and shot him neatly through the right arm. Turkin cried out, dropped his weapon and staggered into the saloon and Martin went down the com-panionway.
Tanya moved to join him. Martin picked up Turkin’s gun and put it in his pocket. Turkin leaned against the table, clutching his arm, glaring at him. Shepilov was just pulling himself up and sank on to the bench with a groan. Martin swung Turkin round and searched his pockets until he found his gun. He turned to Turkin again.
‘I was careful with the arm. You aren’t going to die – yet. I don’t know who owns this boat, but you obviously meant to leave in it, you and chummy here. I’d get on with it if I were you. You’d only be an embarrassment to our people and I’m sure they’d like you back in Moscow. You ought to be able to manage between you.’
‘Bastard!’ Peter Turkin said in despair.
‘Not in front of the lady,’ Alex Martin told him. He pushed Tanya Voroninova up the companionway and turned. ‘As a matter of interest, you two wouldn’t last one bad Saturday night in Belfast,’ then he followed the girl up to the deck.
When they reached the Peugeot, he took off his jacket gingerly. There was blood on his shirt sleeve and he fished out his handkerchief. ‘Would you mind doing what you can with that?’
She bound it around the slash tightly. ‘What kind of a man are you?’
‘Well, I prefer Mozart myself,’ Alex Martin said as he pulled on his jacket. ‘I say, would you look at that?’
Beyond, on the outer edge of the marina,L’Alouette was moving out of the harbour. ‘They’re leaving,’ Tanya said.
‘Poor sods,’ Martin told her. ‘Their next posting will probably be the Gulag after this.’ He handed her into the Peugeot and smiled cheerfully as he got behind the wheel. ‘Now let’s get you up to the airport, shall we?’
At Heathrow Airport’s Terminal One, Harry Fox sat in the security office, drank a cup of tea and enjoyed a cigarette with the duty sergeant. The phone rang, the sergeant answered, then passed it across.
‘Harry?’ Ferguson said.
‘Sir.’
‘She made it. She’s on the plane. Just left Jersey.’
‘No problems, sir?’
‘Not if you exclude a couple of GRU bogeymen snatching her and Martin off the Albert Quay.’
Fox said, ‘What happened?’
‘He managed, that’s what happened. We’ll have to use that young man again. You did say he was Guards?’
‘Yes, sir. Welsh.’
‘Thought so. One can always tell,’ Ferguson said cheerfully and rang off.
‘No, Madame, nothing to pay,’ the steward said to Tanya as the one-eleven climbed into the sky away from Jersey. ‘The bar is free. What would you like? Vodka and tonic, gin and orange? Or we have champagne.’
Free champagne.Tanya nodded and took the frosted glass he offered her. To a new life, she thought and then she said softly, ‘To you, Alexander Martin,’ and emptied the glass in a long swallow.
Luckily, the housekeeper had the day off. Alex Martin disposed of his shirt, pushing it to the bottom of the garbage in one of the bins, then went to the bathroom and cleaned his arm. It really needed stitching, but to go to the hospital would have meant questions and that would never do. He pulled the edges of the cut together with neat butterflies of tape, an old soldier’s trick, and bandaged it. He put on a bathrobe, poured himself a large Scotch and went into the sitting room. As he sat down, the phone rang. His wife said, ‘Darling, I phoned the office and they said
you were taking the day off. Is anything wrong? You haven’t been overdoing it again, have you?’
She knew nothing of the work he’d done for Ferguson in the past. No need to alarm her now. He smiled ruefully, noting the slash in the sleeve of the Yves St Laurent jacket on i the chair next to him.|
‘Certainly not,’ he said. ‘You know me? Anything for a i quiet life. I’m working at home today, that’s all. Now tell me ‘ – how are the children?’