Tundra Read Online Free

fifteen minutes, scrubbing away fourteen hours of staleness and grime.
    Fatigue would arrive suddenly, and drag him under. But for now, lying on his back on the single bed, Purkiss was wide awake, and able to reflect on the events of the previous seventy-two hours, and in particular those of the last two.
    He hadn’t heard from Vale for nearly eight weeks, since just before Christmas and the Hong Kong affair. Vale wasn’t one for New Year’s greetings, or casual contact of any kind. When he’d engaged Purkiss in an operation, he was as close and as affable as a lifelong friend. But in between, he might as well not have existed as far as John was concerned.
    The call had come as Purkiss was emerging from Tottenham Court Road Station, into the rain that had shrouded the country almost continuously ever since November. Purkiss pulled his phone from his overcoat pocket and glanced at the caller display. Name withheld.
    It could be only one person.
    ‘John. Quentin.’
    And so it had begun, the familiar rise in tension within Purkiss’s gut as he’d listened to Vale’s precise yet understated pitch. There was no small talk, no exchange of how have you been s . Not even a coy preamble by Vale along the lines of I’ve a job you might be interested in or are you available at short notice?
    Instead, after the two-name introduction, Vale said: ‘I’d like you to go to Siberia.’
    ‘Anyone I know?’
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    It was by now the standard first question Purkiss asked. Vale called him when a member of the British Secret Service, SIS, needed investigating. Purkiss was former SIS, and might therefore be expected to know at least some of the men and women he was sent after.
    ‘All right,’ said Purkiss. ‘Rendezvous?’
    Vale told him.
    Purkiss felt a prickle of anticipation. An outdoor meeting in the rain. It practically guaranteed that they wouldn’t be subject to any meaningful surveillance. Which meant secrecy was of the highest importance.
    So he’d met Vale in Hyde Park, at the Marble Arch entrance, the vast lawns traversed only by people scurrying towards their destinations and the odd die-hard jogger. Vale was as skeletal as the umbrella he angled over Purkiss’s head, a man in his sixties of Caribbean parentage who oozed the commingled odours of fresh and stale cigarette smoke.
    The brusqueness that typified Vale’s initial phone calls was never in evidence when they first met afterwards. The two men walked companionably, like friends catching up after a few months’ separation. Vale asked with genuine interest about Purkiss’s life, about his thoughts in regard to the last two missions he’d been despatched to undertake – in Pakistan and Hong Kong, respectively –  and about Kendrick, Purkiss’s friend who’d caught a ricochet bullet in the head last summer. Purkiss answered straightforwardly. He didn’t ask Vale about himself in return. He’d learned years ago that it was a fruitless task.
    They reached the Serpentine. A lone mother attempted to coax her sodden child away from the water’s edge where he was trying to lure the ducks nearer by hurling sticks at them.
    Purkiss said, ‘So. Siberia.’
    Vale handed the umbrella to Purkiss. He lit up, took a deep drag, breathed a profile of grey smoke into the rain.
    ‘Francis Wyatt. Does the name mean anything to you?’
    Purkiss used a peg system to hold names in his memory, involving concrete images linked to specific letters of the alphabet. He ran through it.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Wyatt is former SIS. A veteran field agent, earmarked for control jobs. Senior ones, possibly. But he retired early, at the age of forty-eight. Six years ago.’
    ‘Which fields?’
    Vale played with the cigarette between his thumb and first two fingers. ‘He was active in the mid-nineteen eighties as a postgraduate student in climatology at the University of Warsaw. The Department of Geography and Regional Studies. The product he supplied was superb. First