The Old Enemy Read online

  Also by Henry Porter

  Remembrance Day

  A Spy’s Life

  Empire State

  Brandenburg

  The Dying Light

  Firefly

  White Hot Silence

  This ebook published in 2021 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 2021 Henry Porter

  The moral right of Henry Porter to be

  identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any

  information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  EBOOK ISBN 978 1 52940 332 9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

  businesses, organizations, places and events are

  either the product of the author’s imagination

  or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, events or

  locales is entirely coincidental.

  Ebook by CC Book Production

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  For Charlie P. and Charlie K.

  Contents

  The Old Enemy

  Also By

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  Berlin Blue

  GreenState

  Survivors of the Bridge

  Room 2172

  Bulletin

  The Balsam Tree

  Cock and Bull

  Anastasia

  Düppel

  The Pit

  Strains of Illyria

  The Gravel Washer

  The Tulip Guy

  Sex, Venice and a Bullet

  Live Frog

  Bubble Wrap

  The Bird

  PART TWO

  Leverkusen-Opladen Intersection

  Firefly

  The Peacock

  KaPo

  Ulrike’s Story

  The Sargasso Sea

  Wet Grass

  Zoe

  Funeral in Tallinn

  Confession

  Open Toombs

  Raw Data

  In pectore

  PART THREE

  Locked in

  Seneca Ridge

  Angel

  Blink

  Sunset on Potomac

  2172 Revisited

  Old Friends

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Berlin Blue

  He had made it into the spring – three months longer than they gave him. And here he was, out on the peninsula in the early-morning light, feeling okay and in some ways happier than he’d ever been, though, of course, it was not Robert Harland’s custom to examine his state of mind too closely. He was alive and painting – that was enough. And a kilometre away, on this crooked finger of land that pointed north into the Baltic, his wife, Ulrike, was at their cabin, by now tucked into her spot between the porch and timbered wall, sheltered from the wind. She’d have a book in her hands and a shawl around her and she’d be looking out to sea, sometimes peering at the insects that were blown round the porch and came to rest beside her on the bench.

  In a moment he’d sit in the camp chair and maybe smoke one of the three cigarettes in the breast pocket of the old field-coat he wore, ignoring her strictures without much thought. For there was work to be done to the small oil sketch in front of him, which, like the others in the series, had been executed rapidly with some of the basic colours of the seascape mixed the night before. He looked up. The continent of cloud suspended over the ocean was about to deliver shafts of light that would reflect from the sea and spread through the spray-mist above the waves. With a brush clamped between his teeth and more brushes and a palette in his hands, the old spy waited, looking and looking, hardly breathing.

  Ulrike would never know what made her open her eyes at that moment. She was plunged in the terrible finality of their time together, these days of being alone when, if Bobby was feeling strong, he would go out early with his paraphernalia loaded on to the light handcart that he was so pleased with, returning only when he was too tired to carry on, or he’d finished the painting. In the evenings, they were together. She’d cook – not much, because his appetite had gone – and he’d sit with a whisky looking at the day’s painting and peering intently across the scrub to the sea. Later, they’d lie in bed, mesmerised by the dancing shadows thrown by an oil lamp, the smell of which filled the cabin. Sometimes they’d go back to events three decades before in Leipzig and Berlin and, later, in Tallinn – the cities that marked chapters in their lives – and to the people they’d known and lost, and occasionally murmuring their love for each other. When he slept, she kept watch, wondering what she’d do when he was gone; what it would it be like without him beside her. Before dropping off the night before, he’d muttered, almost angrily, ‘I’m sorry, I had no idea this would be so ghastly for you!’ And, grazing her forehead with his lips, ‘You know that no one is more loved than you? You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said eventually, and, using the German for her usual reply, ‘Ja, und ich liebe dich auch,’ – and I love you, too – then she asked, ‘Are you happy out here? You don’t want to be doing anything else? Go home?’ She worried he was pressuring himself, because he was so short-tempered in the mornings.

  ‘The work’s got to be done.’ He’d been promised an exhibition in late May and he knew that was what kept him going. He needed twenty-four decent canvases to add to the works on paper that were already framed at the gallery in Tallinn. She reckoned he had nineteen, maybe twenty-two at a push. He wasn’t so sure.

  He slept, but she did not, so now she dozed in her spot, smelling the resin in the wood heating up when the sun came out. The only sound came from a lark suspended in the sky, way off to her right, and the wind nudging the porch door. What made her start she could not say. But she sat up, filled with alarm. She shielded her eyes against the light and looked around. A figure was moving purposefully along the track by the shore; hard to make out because of the dark rocks, but occasionally a silhouette flashed against the breaking waves. She stepped inside and unhooked the binoculars they’d inherited with the cabin and trained them through the kitchen window. This individual, certainly a man, was carrying something, but not fishing gear, not a hiker’s backpack, not even the wildfowler’s shotgun under his arm; more like a case slung over his shoulder. She lost then found him again and, without thinking, pulled her phone off the charging lead, went outside and dialled her husband’s number. The call didn’t go through. She moved to a rise a few metres away and phoned again. This time the call was successfull but he didn’t answer. She waited a few moments, because there wasn’t anywhere with better coverage, and searched the shoreline with the binoculars, but saw nothing. She dialled and this time got through but was cut off. Then she dialled again.

  He felt the vibration in his pocket but didn�
��t answer. The clouds had spilled a pool of light and he had caught it because he was waiting and the few brushstrokes applied automatically were so certain. To respond to nature in real time, almost as quickly as film, was what he was still alive for and, when he got it absolutely right, it was thrilling. The second call came and he put the palette and brushes down on the collapsible table – another piece of equipment that gave him huge satisfaction – and fished out his phone, smearing the screen with the paint on his fingers. He could hear her moving and called out her name – maybe she had dialled him by mistake. But she spoke, breathless. He couldn’t hear her because of the noise of boots in the dead grass. He waited and implored her to stand still – Goddammit! – and speak to him. He heard the crunch of the hard-core track beneath her boots then she said something. ‘What?’ he bellowed. ‘I can’t hear you.’

  ‘Someone’s out there with you. I don’t like the look of him, Bobby. Where are you?’

  ‘Just beyond the wreck.’ He pushed up his blue tam-o’-shanter, looked around and saw nothing, except the light-fall from the clouds, which now had the faintest yellow tinge and made the spray glow. He caught his breath. It was too late to change his painting and, anyway, that was then; this was now. He grappled with the phone to take a photograph, hoping that he wouldn’t lose Ulrike. He took several because the scene was developing every second. Then he returned the phone to his ear: she had gone, so he called her back. ‘I can’t see anyone.’ But at that moment he spotted a man moving by the rocks at the water’s edge, right in line with an illuminated patch of sea. ‘Ah, I’ve got him!’ he exclaimed. The figure hesitated then moved off to the right to take the track to the lighthouse that ran across the peninsula between him and Ulrike. ‘He’s going the other way,’ he said, letting himself down into the camp chair. ‘Let’s have a brew-up! Come and join me. I want you to see what I’ve been doing. I think it’s rather good . . . well, it’s not bad.’ He was never sure what he felt about his work. Elation was often followed by a crash in spirits. She hung up and he reckoned he’d got about ten minutes to get the water boiling and smoke a cigarette. He leaned forward and yanked a camping stove from his bag, lit it and placed a small whistling kettle on the flame. There was just one enamel mug for them, but he had tea, milk and a silver-and-glass hip flask that he had inherited from his father, together with the taste for a dash of whisky in his tea. They often shared a mug beneath the Baltic sky, Ulrike making a rather too penetrating appraisal of his latest. She could go easy on him, he reflected, but that wasn’t her. He sat back and ran an eye over his work, an unlit cigarette in his hand. Some sketchiness in the foreground, where the paint was thin, worried him, but he decided he liked the effect, and he was glad he hadn’t done any more to the light on the sea. She’d stopped him overworking the scene.

  The roar of the camp stove obliterated all other sound, so he would not hear her call out, which she always did with a wave when she reached the brow. He looked to his right and lit the cigarette discreetly, inhaled and let the smoke dribble from the corner of his mouth. It was stupid to pretend he didn’t smoke. What bloody harm could it do now? But it made her very angry indeed, because she quit her tiny ration of smokes when he received the diagnosis. He took another drag and leaned forward to remove the kettle, which was beginning to tremble on top of the stove. As he did so, something very powerful hit the aluminium frame of his chair and threw him on to the grass to his right. He rolled on to his front. A man was moving towards him, marching robotically, with the scope of a rifle pressed to his eye. A second shot hit the table and Harland thought, fucking amateur. But he had nothing to defend himself with, and nowhere to go and, besides, he wasn’t up to running, not over this ground, not with his lungs, not with his aching bones. All he hoped was that Ulrike wouldn’t witness this. He rolled again to search for his phone. He needed desperately to speak to her, to say he loved her, because this was it: they’d found him and, however incompetent the assassin, he would certainly take what little life remained to him.

  The third shot tore across the back of his left calf. He writhed in the grass, as much from anger as pain, and at the same time realised the prescribed morphine was suppressing the effect. He’d started the course, without telling Ulrike, three days before when a deep internal pain made it hard to concentrate. He reached for his sketchbook, the pages of which were fluttering in the breeze, and, half noticing that the burner was on its side and scorching the grass very close to the turpentine container, he scrawled ‘Berlin Blue’ on the back of the pad, ringed the words, then wrote in block capitals ‘LOVE YOU’.

  An idea flickered in his mind. He seized the turpentine bottle, unscrewed the top as he rolled on to his left side, which caused the pain from his leg to surge upwards. He didn’t yell out. Not now. Not after a life of fear and pain and self-control – he just waited. The man was twenty paces away: black beanie, an unexceptional, fleshy, mid-thirty-year-old face, gloves and dark brown lace-up military boots. He lowered the rifle. Why? To enjoy the moment, or make sure his rotten aim wouldn’t fail him again? Harland flung the bottle. It Catherine-wheeled through the air, spraying turps, and hit the man in the groin. He followed that with the burner, which fell short but did its job of lighting the turps on the ground around the man, and instantly his legs and midriff caught fire. Harland groaned an expletive and collapsed on to his back and looked at the sky. The heightened awareness that came from concentrating on nature, which always remained for an hour or so after stopping, was still with him, and the sky at that moment seemed impossibly beautiful. Four shots were loosed off chaotically, one of which entered his heart.

  Chapter 2

  GreenState

  Paul Samson was familiar with her routine. Before leaving the sixties block on the fringes of Westminster, where GreenState’s campaign headquarters were housed, Zoe Freemantle would go over to the water cooler and fill her flask. She’d return to her desk, then work her phone and slip her laptop into her shoulder bag. After checking her phone a few times, she would get up without saying anything to those around her and head for the stairwell, which she used in preference to the lift. All this gave Samson a head start, and by the time she pushed through the double doors on to the street he was wearing his helmet and had started the bike. He was sure she hadn’t been trained in counter-surveillance, yet she was good. She would walk for about half a mile with her big stride and air of imperturbable self-possession until she suddenly stopped and got into the ride she’d hailed twenty minutes before. She never used the same rendezvous and always chose a spot where the driver could slip into what was for London relatively fast-moving traffic. She usually included a dry-cleaning move in the route and twice Samson had lost her because he couldn’t follow her on the bike, although without it there was little hope of keeping up with her. On this occasion, she walked along the Embankment and at the last moment jogged up the steps and into the main entrance of the Tate Gallery. Samson turned right and stopped on the street corner so he could watch the front and side entrances of the gallery simultaneously. Ten minutes later, he caught sight of her long suede coat ascending the steps at the far end of the side entrance. He followed her through Pimlico, past Victoria Station, to a small triangular park, which she crossed, and, on the far side, climbed into a silver Prius hybrid.

  She retraced her route to Westminster. The car crawled through Parliament Square and headed east along the Embankment, towards the City of London. But just as it reached the intersection near Embankment station, he saw the rear door open and Zoe hop out and plunge into the crowds converging on the Underground station. It was a smart move. There was access to Charing Cross main-line station and two lines ran through the Underground station. He parked the bike and locked his helmet in the seat box, but it was already hopeless. There was no guarantee he would find her, or that she wouldn’t walk straight through the main-line station and exit towards Trafalgar Square. There was, as he had discovered when losing her twice before, little point follo
wing her on to the Tube. He would have to guess at her eventual destination, which a couple of times had been the Edgar Coach and Engineering Works, a large industrial building on an intersection known as the Junction, north of the City of London. She was probably headed there, so he would go there, too. And if she had given him the slip again, well, that was on her.

  It was less than ninety seconds before he mounted his bike. He didn’t take particular note of a much more powerful bike that roared up with a pillion passenger and lingered under the rail bridge, but he would remember it later.

  He arrived at the Junction twenty-five minutes later, stood the bike in a cobbled passageway called Cooper’s Court and entered the Lina Café and Bakery, diagonally across the intersection from the Edgar Building, which he had used on the two previous occasions. He certainly wondered what went on inside, but it wasn’t his task to investigate Zoe, or find out the reason she was at GreenState. He was employed to watch for any threat against her, report back and make sure she didn’t get hurt. He hardly saw himself as that kind of muscle and, in truth, the job was rather below him, but Macy Harp, head of the private-intelligence firm Hendricks Harp that he often worked for, said it required brains and a keen eye. Besides, he’d negotiated a very good rate with the individual who wanted to keep Zoe Freemantle alive. He stressed over and over that it was a question of life and death, although he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say what the threat was.

  Samson found her on social media under her cover name, Ingrid Cole. As far as he could see, Zoe Freemantle had no presence whatever. Ingrid, however, was on three big platforms, a dedicated environmentalist, animal lover and climate-change activist who frequently linked to her own website. This consisted mostly of photographs of her work, dating back several years – he admired the care she’d taken in pushing back the history of her legend – and some deadly-dull screeds about big tech, poverty and media ownership. Photographs of her were few, except those in which she was wearing round dark glasses or her face was partially hidden by her long brown hair, which, at work, she wore in a knot, or rather haphazardly clipped. Her wardrobe was unvarying – light brown, calf-length suede coat, or a navy-blue blouson with the GreenState bird logo hot-pressed above her left breast. She favoured well-cut trousers, never jeans, and ankle boots, which pushed her height an inch over six feet, or black trainers, which he came to recognise were a sign that she’d leave the office at some point during the day.