The Man Between: The gripping new spy thriller you need to read in 2018. Charles Cumming
a beautiful moment.
Almost immediately there were copycat attacks. Dozens of politicians and right-wing figures around the world came under threat. My favourite was done by the refugee in Amsterdam. The kitchen porter. A Muslim from Iraq who had been washing dishes in a restaurant so that he could feed his wife and baby daughter. He was no older than twenty-five or twenty-six. Samir. I’ve forgotten his surname. [JWS: Samir Rabou] He learned that Piet Boutmy, the leader of the Dutch far-right party – again, I don’t remember the name of this party [JWS: Partij voor de Vrijheid] – was eating in the restaurant. A waiter, a Syrian, I believe, came into the kitchen and told him Boutmy was there. Samir knew about the kidnapping of Euclidis, he told the police who later interviewed him that he had followed Resurrection from its very first statements and that he greatly admired Ivan Simakov. He took off his washing gloves, kept his apron, walked out of the kitchen and went directly into the restaurant. The security guard protecting Boutmy thought he was a waiter. The table was covered in many dishes, including – perfectly! – a soup prepared with beetroots which was still very hot. Also bottles of water, glasses of red wine, cutlery, a vase of flowers. Shouting ‘Resurrection!’ Samir lifted the whole table on top of this racist animal, soaking him to the bone, also the colleague from the same party who was dining with him. I heard that he faced no charges and soon found another job at a rival restaurant. It was beautiful.
Everything that Ivan and myself had hoped for came to pass. Ivan was worried that the Resurrection movement would burn out. It didn’t. He wrote that he wanted Resurrection to have ‘a seismic effect on public attitudes to the liars and enablers of the Right’. This is exactly what happened. The summer homes of criminal bankers were burned to the ground. Cars belonging to producers at Fox News were vandalised and damaged. Those who had attended white supremacist rallies were identified by their peers and targeted for retribution. They paid the price for their hate with the loss of their careers, their friends. All it took was one or two examples for everyone to follow suit.
But, of course, Resurrection changed. What started as a non-violent movement, symbolic acts targeted against deserving victims, quickly became violent. I was naive to believe that this would not happen, but what distressed me was Ivan’s willingness to change his position, not only towards non-violence, but also concerning his own role as a figurehead. He wanted the limelight. He craved adulation. I had not identified these characteristics in him when we first met. His vanity, his stubbornness, his readiness to lose sight of what Resurrection was about and instead to place himself at the heart of what became a hijacked, paramilitary organisation. It became impossible to live with him. I could no longer do useful work. I lost my respect for Ivan Simakov and I left him. That is when they began to hunt me down.
Carradine reached his room and switched on the television.
Every major news network was carrying the story. The police believed the murder had been carried out by the same members of Resurrection who had kidnapped Redmond five days earlier. Tributes were being paid by friends and colleagues, inevitable expressions of outrage articulated by politicians, fellow journalists and friends.
Carradine muted the television. He sat on the bed and felt a hollowness inside him close to a feeling of personal responsibility in the death of an innocent woman. Had he done more to help, had he found the courage to cross the street and to confront Redmond’s kidnappers, she might still be alive. He thought of the girl who had been standing beside him, chatting away to her friend. So I says to him, I’m like, no way is that happening, yeah? I’m like he needs to get his shit together because I’m like just not going through with that bullshit again. Where was she now? How would she react to news of this kind? Would she share Carradine’s remorse or experience nothing but a momentary, fleeting anxiety that Resurrection had again resorted to murder? Would she even be aware that Redmond had been killed?
He went to the window and looked down at the vast city. Low whitewashed buildings stretched in a broad semi-circle to the Atlantic coast. At the sea’s edge the vast Hassan II Mosque dominated the skyline; to the north-west, the cranes and wharves of the port were blocks of shadow partly obscured by a high-rise hotel. Carradine had detested Redmond. He had abhorred her character and public style. She had weaved deliberate ignorance into casual prejudice with the sole purpose of inciting outrage, hysteria and fear. She had craved the spotlight of notoriety. In the wake of an Islamist suicide bombing on the streets of London, she had called for ‘internment’ for male Muslims under the age of forty. Handed a column in a tabloid newspaper with which to disseminate her toxic views, she had advocated the use of naval warships to prevent refugees – many of them fleeing the horrors of Syria and Yemen – from crossing the Mediterranean. When her rhetoric became too vile even for the leather-skinned editors of the Fourth Estate, Redmond merely had to look across the Pond to find any number of right-wing media outlets in the United States eager to beam her prejudices into the homes of the ignorant and the dispossessed. Indeed, Redmond had been only days from moving to the United States to work for Fox News when she had been seized by Resurrection. Carradine knew that if he opened Twitter, or switched to Fox itself, he would be swamped in partisan bile and hate. For every person shocked by Redmond’s murder there would be another openly celebrating; for every person applauding Resurrection for taking the fight to the goons and trolls of the alt-Right, there would be another – like Carradine himself – who knew that violence only made the situation far worse.
He turned from the window and began to unpack. The sealed envelope was at the top of his suitcase. He took it out and placed it on the bed. To try to clear his head he did fifty press-ups, took a shower and changed into a fresh set of clothes. Whatever was in the package, he knew that he could now be incriminating himself by passing documents to a suspected member of a terrorist organisation. The Redmond murder had changed the game. He had been transformed – without prior agreement – into a foot soldier in the global struggle against Resurrection. To hell with the Service; Carradine needed to do what he had to do. He picked up the package and felt it in his hands. He could make out the edges of the passport, the outline of the document.
He hesitated momentarily – then cut at the Sellotape using the knife on a bottle opener from the minibar. He reached inside the package.
It was a British passport, just as Mantis had said it would be. Carradine opened it to the back. A photograph of Bartok, identical to the one he was carrying in his wallet, looked out at him from the identity page. Bartok was identified as ‘Maria Consuela Rodriguez’, a British citizen, born 8 June 1983. A Santander credit card fell out of the passport and dropped onto the floor. The name MS M RODRIGUEZ was stamped across the bottom. The back of the card was unsigned.
Carradine reached into the package and pulled out a smaller rectangular envelope. The envelope was sealed. No name or address had been written on it, only the word ‘LASZLO’ in block capitals. This time he did not bother using the knife. He tore the envelope open with his hands.
Inside was a single piece of white A4 paper, folded twice. The letter was typed.
IF THIS MESSAGE FINDS YOU IT IS A MIRACLE. TRUST THE PERSON WHO GIVES IT TO YOU.
YOU ARE NOT SAFE. THEY HAVE WORKED OUT WHERE YOU ARE. IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE THEY FIND YOU.
I CANNOT HELP YOU EXCEPT BY GIVING YOU THESE GIFTS. USE THEM WISELY. THE NUMBER IS 0812.
I AM THE MAN WHO TOOK YOU TO THE SEA.
Carradine read the message several times trying to decipher what was behind Mantis’s language. He assumed that 0812 was the Pin number for the credit card though he doubted that Bartok, should he ever find her, would risk using it more than once; to do so would be to pinpoint her location to anyone tracking the account. ‘The man who took you to the sea’ sounded romantic, but Carradine was wary of leaping to that conclusion without stronger evidence. Yet the tone of the letter was unquestionably personal. Mantis seemed