‘There were people in America who wanted to inflame the arms race,’ he said finally, looking as if a weight was being lifted from his shoulders. ‘Industrialists, arms manufacturers, money men . . . A few weeks before Dominic disappeared, I received information that Zarkov had been found dead in Moscow. I remember that night quite clearly. It was the evening of Ros and Dominic’s engagement party. Officially Zarkov died of a heart attack, but he was only thirty-five. I knew then that Dominic was in danger.’
‘Did you tell Victoria?’
He shook his head.
‘Everyone knew the service was compromised. Burgess, Maclean . . . No one knew who to trust. I certainly couldn’t trust Victoria, as much as I admired her.’
‘You thought Victoria was also working for the Russians?’
She remembered the old woman’s words at Appledore. There must have been a mole . . .
Victoria had laid the blame at Jonathon’s door, but maybe she had been the one who had betrayed Dominic. Perhaps she wasn’t even formally working for the Russians, but her love for Dominic had made her lash out when he had announced he was marrying Ros. Perhaps her betrayal had been a moment of madness that had had terrible consequences.
‘I didn’t trust Victoria because I didn’t trust Tony,’ said Jonathon slowly.
‘Tony? Victoria’s husband?’
‘Tony Harbord was linked to the cartel of industrialists that wanted Dominic dead.’
‘But Victoria said she didn’t think Tony knew about her espionage activities.’
‘Tony was one of America’s wealthiest men, all of it self-made. He was a smart and ruthless businessman who was solely concerned with the pursuit of money. He’d have known about Victoria’s link to the intelligence services, even if Victoria thought otherwise, and would have used it to his advantage.’
Jonathon paused before he continued.
‘Once I had seen intelligence that Dominic was, essentially, a marked man, I knew that the only way to stop him from being assassinated was to take matters into my own hands.’
He let the words hang in the air for a moment.
‘What are you telling me?’ asked Abby, not daring to even think it. ‘You murdered Dominic? You killed your best friend because he was a liability, because he knew too much?’
A ghost of a smile pulled on the old man’s lips.
‘I didn’t murder him, Abby. I saved him. He didn’t die in the Amazon rainforest in 1961. Dominic Blake is still alive.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
He was late, of course he was. There was a time, many years before, when he used to be late for everything, when his life had seemed so fast, so exciting, that there were barely enough hours in the day to fit everything in. But things were different now, thought Dominic Blake, squinting at the wheel of his Land Rover Defender as he navigated the dark Irish country roads. Today it had seemed to take him forever to have a shave, find his only blue shirt that wasn’t faded from too many washes, and get out of the house, not because he had so many other things to do but because everything seemed to require more effort than it had ten, even five years earlier.
He reminded himself that he had much to be thankful for. Just the other day he had been reading how one person in six over the age of eighty had dementia. He had friends who could no longer recognise him, acquaintances now reliant on family members to dress and feed them. Besides which, he lived in
a particularly magical part of the world that had brought him a considerable amount of pleasure over the years. The west coast of Ireland lacked the dizzy excitement of the bright lights of London, it was not as exotic as some of the places he had visited as a younger man, yet there was wonder of a different sort in the place he had called home for over forty-five years. A walk along the wild and rugged Connemara coast always lifted his spirits; he would never tire of the thick taste of Guinness on a cold winter’s night; the sight of the ocean sparkling silver in the sunshine took the edge off his regret.
‘Dammit,’ he muttered as he misjudged the corner and swerved his old Defender up a grassy verge, bumping it back down again and through the gates of Dunlevy Farm. As he brought it to a stop, he puffed out his cheeks with relief and clenched his fingers tighter around the wheel, wondering nervously when he was due to renew his driver’s licence. The thought of not being able to drive, being stuck, immobile, in his cottage a mile away from anyone, made him shiver.
His friend’s farmhouse glowed in the darkness in front of him. He turned off the engine, picked up a bottle of red wine from the passenger seat and opened the door, steadying himself by holding on to the car until his boot hit t
he driveway. The sound of music drifted from the building. He took a moment to compose himself, a little nervous, not used to big social gatherings, and tuned in to the more familiar sound of the sea in the distance, waves crashing against rocks and gulls squawking overhead.
He smiled to himself, remembering the good old days, when he’d have bounded into a party, eager to scour it for the most attractive woman in the room, impatient to seek out anyone who might be useful to him as a contact or a source. Sometimes he had to remind himself that he had actually lived that life, that
he hadn’t dreamt it or read about it in a pulp fiction novel, but fragments of memory were still there, and for a split second he felt as if it was the sixties again and he was turning up at one of Victoria Harbord’s parties, not knowing where the night would take him.
He knocked on the door and a red-faced, smiling woman answered it.
‘Dominic, you came!’
‘Finally.’ He smiled at his friend and neighbour Julia. ‘I’m sorry I’m so late. I hope everyone isn’t sitting down already.’