The Man Between: The gripping new spy thriller you need to read in 2018. Charles Cumming

       7

      Carradine had been on the Gatwick Express for only a few minutes when he saw the photograph. He was seated alone at a table in a near-deserted carriage finishing off a cappuccino and a fruit salad from M&S. A passenger had left a copy of the Guardian on a seat across the aisle. Carradine had picked up the paper and begun to read about developments in the Redmond kidnapping. The Transit van, which had been stolen from a North London car park, had been found abandoned and burned out at the edge of a wood not far from Henley-on-Thames. CCTV showed a bearded man wearing a woollen hat filling the van up with diesel in Cricklewood a few hours before Redmond was seized. Resurrection sympathisers had now claimed responsibility for the kidnapping but no images of Redmond in captivity had been released. ‘Experts’ quoted in the article drew comparisons with the kidnapping of Otis Euclidis, pointing out that Resurrection had waited ten days before publishing footage of an apparently healthy and well-rested Euclidis sitting on a bed in an undisclosed location reading a book. The same experts claimed that the police were at a loss to know where Redmond was being held. At the bottom of the story there was a small box directing readers to a longer piece on the history of the Resurrection movement. Carradine had turned to the back of the paper, intending to read it.

      Beneath the headline on the article was a layout of four pictures arranged in a square, each of them about the same size as the passport photograph of ‘Maria’ that Mantis had given to Carradine in Lisson Grove. The photograph in the top left-hand corner showed Redmond taking part in a reality television show several years earlier. Beside it was a picture of Euclidis in characteristic Instagram pose, wearing a white, gold-encrusted baseball cap, a gold crucifix medallion and outsized designer sunglasses. The photograph in the bottom left-hand corner showed Nihat Demirel, a pro-government talk-show host in Turkey who had been kneecapped by Resurrection outside his summer house in Izmir in May. It was the fourth picture that rocked Carradine.

      He had seen the photograph before. It showed Ivan Simakov, the deceased leader of Resurrection, standing beside the woman who was reported to have been his girlfriend when the movement was conceived: Lara Bartok. Carradine stared at her. She had long, dark hair and slightly crooked front teeth. It was ‘Maria’.

      He reached into his wallet. He placed the photograph of Maria alongside the picture of Bartok. There was no question that they were the same woman. He was about to pull up her Wikipedia page on his iPhone when he remembered that the search would flag. A young woman had taken a seat at the far end of the carriage. Carradine considered asking to borrow her phone to make the search but decided against it, instead reading the article for more detail on Bartok’s background. A Hungarian-born lawyer, she had met Simakov in New York and become attached to Occupy Wall Street. Described as ‘a latter-day Ulrike Meinhof’, Bartok was wanted in the United States on charges of armed assault, kidnapping and incitement to violence. She had reportedly become disillusioned with Resurrection and vanished from the couple’s apartment in Brooklyn. Several months later, Simakov was killed in Moscow.

      Carradine put the newspaper to one side. The train had come to a halt at a section of track littered with cans and bottles. He stared outside, trying to work out what Mantis was up to. He assumed that the Service had recruited Bartok as an agent, persuading her to inform against Resurrection. But how had they managed to lose track of her? And why was Mantis using an untried and untested support agent to try to find her? In the Lisson Grove flat he had refused even to reveal Bartok’s name, telling Carradine that ‘several officers and support agents’ were searching for her in places as far afield as Mexico, Cuba and Argentina. If that was the case, it was plausible that she was no longer a source for British intelligence, but instead a fugitive from justice. Carradine had learned enough from his father about the workings of the Service to know that they were not a law enforcement agency. There had to be another reason behind Mantis’s search. Carradine recalled the wistfulness with which he had spoken about her beauty, his irritation with the photograph of her surfer boyfriend. As the train began to move away, he wondered if Mantis was romantically involved with her. That might explain the furtiveness with which he had spoken about ‘Maria’.

      Gatwick airport was rammed. Carradine checked the suitcase containing the book and the sealed package into the hold and cleared security without any complications. He was carrying €1,000 of Mantis’s money in his wallet and the other €2,000 inside an envelope in his carry-on bag. The departure gate for the flight with Royal Air Maroc was a twenty-minute walk from security along increasingly deserted corridors leading further and further away from the heart of the terminal. A flight attendant wearing a headscarf and heavy mascara clicked a counter for every passenger that came on board. Carradine was one of the last to take his seat. He glanced at the counter as he passed her. There were fewer than fifty passengers on the plane.

      As the flight took off, Carradine had the vivid sensation that he was leaving the old part of his life behind and entering a new phase which would in every way be more challenging and satisfying than the life he had known before. His thoughts again turned to Bartok. Was Mantis using him to try to get a personal message to her? If so, how could he guarantee that Carradine would find her at the festival? Was she a fan of his books? Did the Service think that she was going to show herself at his event? Perhaps she wanted to meet Katherine Paget, the novelist with whom he was due to appear on stage.

      The sealed package was somewhere beneath Carradine’s feet in the chill of the baggage hold; he knew that it would contain the answers to his many questions and felt his professional obligation to Mantis dissipating with every passing mile. He did not consider himself to be particularly cynical or suspicious, but neither would he enjoy the feeling of being duped. He needed to know what was inside the envelope. If that meant breaking his promise to the Service, so be it.

      About an hour into the flight, Carradine was handed a small tray with a plastic knife and fork and told that alcohol was not served by the airline. Craving a beer, he ate a tiny, vacuum-packed trout fillet with a bread roll and something the flight attendant claimed was chicken casserole. Leaving most of it unfinished, he decided to go for a stroll. As he passed his fellow passengers bent over their in-flight meals, Carradine could hear a man with a deep, resonant voice speaking in Spanish near the toilets at the rear of the plane. He assumed that the man was talking to a friend, but when he reached the galley he saw that he was alone. His back was turned and he was looking out of the window. He was wearing shorts and a black T-shirt. Religious tattoos completely covered his arms and the backs of his hands. There were tufts of black body hair protruding from the neck of his T-shirt. He was holding a mobile phone perpendicular to his mouth and appeared to be dictating notes. Carradine spoke very little Spanish and could not understand what he was saying. The man sensed that Carradine was behind him and turned around.

      ‘Sorry. You want the bathroom, man?’

      The accent was Hispanic, the face