PART III
Moscow
46
Aeroflot flight SU 2585 was delayed on its departure from Heathrow, finally taking off at five minutes past midnight. The captain apologised, but said that he was confident that they would be able to make up the lost time en route. It was a standard flight for the carrier. The cabin crew were efficient but not particularly attentive and the late snack that was brought around was cold and unpleasant. Milton passed up the food, asking instead for a vodka and tonic. He drank it as he studied the legend that Tanner had supplied.
The name was his usual one—John Smith—but this time he was a diplomat in the British Embassy reporting to work in the Economic Section. He had been educated at Colchester Royal Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he had obtained a BA and then a PhD. He had joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and was then posted to Bucharest where he had worked as Second Secretary for three years. Following that, he had been transferred to Ankara and then Rome and then, bringing the file up to date, he was moved to Moscow. He was single, had a flat in Highgate, enjoyed cooking and supported Arsenal. He went over the details again, committing it to memory. He had done the same thing many times before, and he knew it would stick.
Pope was several rows ahead of Milton in the cabin; he could see the back of his head. They would maintain a discreet distance until they met at the embassy for their briefing in the morning. They both knew that there was a good chance that there would be SVR agents on the flight with them, and they did not want to give them any reason to increase the surveillance that they would be subjected to upon landing. Milton didn’t even know Pope’s legend; he might be a diplomat, like him, but he could equally be a trade delegate or a cultural attaché. It made little difference.
The vodka slid down easily and Milton ordered another. He downed that, too, and then put his chair back as far as it would go, strapped himself in and allowed the drone of the engines to lull him to sleep.
They landed at Sheremetyevo at four in the morning. The terminal was quiet and they were able to disembark and make their way to immigration quickly. Milton made his way across the lines until he was in the diplomatic channel, and then breezed through the checks and into the arrivals lounge. The embassy had sent a car for him and the driver was waiting, holding a sign with his name on it.
“Hello,” Milton said.
“Mr. Smith?” He was English.
“That’s right.”
“Come with me, please.”
The man offered to take Milton’s suitcase, but he shook his head and said that he had it covered. Milton followed the driver through the airport to the parking garage.
“Pleasant flight, sir?”
“It was fine.”
Milton looked around at the other travellers who were making their way to the garage. He saw a few whom he recognised from the aircraft, and others whom he had not seen before. He glanced at the ones following behind them—a young man with tattoos who was carrying a guitar in a case, an elderly couple, a middle-aged woman—and wondered which of them worked for the FSB, the domestic intelligence service. He saw the CCTV cameras positioned overhead. Those feeds would all end up in the Lubyanka and would, he knew, have already been examined by the clerks who were paid to scrutinise new arrivals and cross-check them with known intelligence agents. It was a long time since Milton had been to Russia, and the identities and likenesses of Group Fifteen agents were known to a vanishingly small cohort of senior staff. Milton did not believe that there was a file on him, but he knew not to take anything for granted.
They reached the garage, took the elevator to the second floor and reached a Mercedes with blacked-out windows. The driver opened the rear door for Milton and slid into the front.
“We’ve booked you into the Lotte,” the man said as he pulled out.
It had been raining, with a fine drizzle still hanging in the air. A large municipal building faced them as they drove away, and, with its pink and yellow tiers, it reminded Milton of a Battenberg cake. An illuminated sign on the roof announced MOCKBA, the glow reflecting off rain-slicked asphalt. Milton stared out of the window. It felt real now. He was in Moscow, in enemy territory. He was naked, too, an agent operating without backup. He was always reminded of the espionage films and novels that had enthralled him during his youth, and the malign influence of the all-powerful KGB. That body might have been disbanded, but the change was little more than window dressing. The FSB was its successor, with a reach and malignancy that was every bit its equal. Milton and Pope were alone against it now, and if they were compromised, there would be little support.
He leaned back in the seat as they hurried through the quiet streets. He had grabbed an hour of fitful sleep on the flight, but that was all; his only rest since Friday had been his drunken stupor this morning, and he had an early start at the embassy today. It would just have to do.
The hotel was on Novinskiy Boulevard and was one of the best in Moscow. It was a large building that curved around a bend in the road, the neon sign on the roof burning bright against the slowly lightening sky. The desk was staffed twenty-four hours a day, and, after Milton had checked in, he was escorted to his room by a polite and attentive porter. The woman spoke excellent English, and asked Milton about his trip and what he hoped to do during his visit to the city. Milton suspected that her good nature was not entirely genuine, and that he was being probed for information that might be passed along to the FSB division that specialised in counter-intelligence and the monitoring of foreign visitors.
“I’m going to be working at the British Embassy,” he said.
They reached the second floor and the porter indicated that they should turn left to find room 261.
“We have many diplomats from the embassy,” the woman said.
Milton knew that, of course; it was the reason the room had been reserved for him here.
“Is it close?” he asked.
“You haven’t been before?”
“First time.”
“Yes, it is close. You can walk there in fifteen minutes.”
“Excellent,” Milton said.
They reached the door. “What will you be doing there, Mr. Smith?” she asked him.
“Working on a deal to buy more Russian oil and gas. Not particularly interesting, I’m afraid.”
Milton said that he was tired and how much he was looking forward to his bed. The porter shone a bright smile at him as she held a keycard to his door, said that she hoped that he would find the bed comfortable, and, after taking his tip, she left him alone in his room.
Milton checked his suite. There was a large marble bathroom and a similarly generous bedroom. He had no doubt at all that the room was bugged, but he made no effort to find the devices. That would be the behaviour of a spy, and John Smith was an economist. Milton didn’t mind that he was observed. He undressed and got straight into bed. It was just after five. The briefing was at seven. He had an hour; not nearly enough, but it would have to do. He closed his eyes and was asleep in minutes.
47
Milton woke at six. He felt rough, with not nearly enough sleep in the bank, and had to stand under a cold shower for five minutes to wake himself up. He stood before the mirror and stared at his reflection. He looked tired. He needed a cigarette, but that would have to wait.
He dressed in the business suit that he had brought with him, pairing his white shirt with a blue tie. He polished his shoes with the kit he found in the cupboard and put his credentials, wallet and phone in his pockets. He looked down at the opened suitcase on the bed; he would leave it there. He knew that they would go through his things, but they would find nothing that contradicted his legend. He was an economist, posted to the embassy. He would leave his laptop, too. They would be able to crack the rudimentary password with ease, but all they would find would be a collection of spreadsheets and documents that related to the deal that he was here to work on. Milton did not anticipate needing the computer, but if he did, the encryption key that he carried in his wallet would enable him to use it without fear of his communications being eavesdropped upon.
He went down to the lobby, used his card to buy some roubles from the receptionist, and stepped outside. He purchased a packet of cigarettes from a vending machine he found on the street, tore off the cellophane wrapper, tapped out a cigarette and lit it. The embassy was to the west. He followed Novinskiy Boulevard, its eight lanes already thick with traffic, and then turned into the quieter Protochnyy Pereulok. It was obvious that he was being followed. He saw a man and a woman who appeared behind him as he made his way off from the hotel, and noticed a car with tinted windows that was parked near the junction of the main road. Milton made no effort to shake the surveillance. He made his way along the pavement, passing apartment blocks and cheaper hotels until he reached the broad highway that overlooked the river. There was suddenly a sense of open space; the water was wide here, with long bridges that crossed to the other side and the impressive buildings that made up the political district.
He arrived at the embassy and showed his pass at the front door. The guard looked down at it, checked that the photograph was correct, and asked him to confirm his name. Milton did. The guard wished him good morning and stepped aside. Milton removed his coat, watch, belt and shoes and passed through the scanner, collected his personal belongings and waited in the lobby for someone to meet him.
A middle-aged woman joined him after five minutes. “Mr. Smith,” she said, maintaining his legend in the event that the intelligence services were listening in this unsecured part of the building. “My name is Susannah Jones. How are you?”
“Very well,” Milton said. “Tired. I got in early this morning.”
“We have some very strong coffee brewing. Come this way, please.”
Jones led the way through an exterior courtyard and then up a set of marble steps to the attic. This was where the embassy held briefings when classified intelligence might be discussed. The stairs ended in a large metal door of the sort one might expect to find securing a bank vault. The door was open and, beyond it, there was the day door with the cipher lock, and then a wire gate that was opened by the entry of a code on the electric keypad that was fitted to the wall next to it.
Jones led Milton through all the layers of security until he was inside the briefing room. Pope was already there.
“Morning,” he said.
“Won’t be a moment,” Jones said. “Help yourself to coffee.”
She turned and made her way back outside. There was a tray on the table with a vacuum flask of coffee and half a dozen china mugs. Pope filled two of the mugs, gave one to Milton and then sat down next to him.
“How’s your hotel?” Milton asked.
“Almost certainly bugged. Yours?”
“Same. And I was followed here this morning.”
“Me too,” Pope said. “We’re going to have to be thorough when we’re ready to move.”
Milton nodded his agreement, and then looked around the room. It was bare, with just the table and chairs. There was a laptop on the table, fixed with a lockable seal that helped guard against unauthorised access; the machine would have been preloaded with a secure software suite at GCHQ and then pouched to the embassy to ensure that it was not tampered with. The room was lit by overhead fluorescent tubes that would also have been imported from London to remove the risk that units sourced from the domestic market might have been provided with bugs included. There was a line of small windows on either side that were guarded by bars, then steel shutters, and finally triple-glazed glass. The lack of natural light, combined with the harsh glow of the tubes overhead, made for an unpleasant space. The price of security, Milton thought.
“Who’s briefing us?” he asked.
“Station Chief,” Pope said. “Just waiting for a fourth person.”
“He say who that is?”
“Station Chief is a she, actually,” Pope said. “And, no, she didn’t.”
They had been given very little in the way of information, save that they should report to the embassy for an operational briefing. Milton didn’t like to be unprepared, but he knew that the planning and execution of the operation would be left to him and Pope. Control had made it clear that speed was important, but Milton would balance it, so far as was possible, with careful organisation.
“Gentlemen,” said a voice from the doorway behind them.
Milton turned around. A middle-aged woman in a black skirt and jacket was standing just inside the wire gate.
“I’m Elizabeth McCartney,” she said, stepping inside and offering her hand. “I’m the chief here.”
Milton shook her hand but, before he could respond, he saw a second person ascending the stairs.
It was a second woman. She paused at the doorway and her mouth fell open.
“You?” she exclaimed.
He shook his head in wry amusement.
Jessie Ross.
“Hello,” he said.
“What the fuck?”
“Do you two know each other?” McCartney asked.
“We met on Sunday,” Ross said. “Smith was assigned to the Southwold investigation. Military liaison.”
“That’s right,” Milton said.
“What is it today? Still the same?”
Milton turned to indicate Pope. “We work for a government agency. I can’t tell you what that is, but I can say that we’ve been sent here to find the agents who are responsible for the assassinations in Southwold.”
“What government agency?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s classified.”
Milton watched her face as he spoke. She looked from him to Pope and back again. Her eyes sparked with irritation, and there was blood in her cheeks.
“This is nuts,” she said, throwing up her hands. “‘Find the agents responsible?’ What does that mean? Are you going to give them a good talking to? Tell them not to do it again?”
“No,” Milton said.
“So I’m being partnered with a killer, then. A murderer. Yes?” She glanced over at Pope and corrected herself. “Excuse me. Two murderers.”
“Is this going to be a problem?” McCartney said.
“I’m sorry,” Ross responded, “but why am I here? I don’t understand. Why do you even need me?”
“You agreed to come,” McCartney said evenly. “You volunteered, I believe.”
“Yes,” she said. “Before I knew…” She threw up her hands. “Before I knew this.”
“Raj Shah agreed with you because it made sense,” McCartney said. “You’re fairly new to the Russian desk. It’s possible they”—she pointed to the one uncovered window, and the buildings that crowded the far shore of the Moskva—“won’t even know who you are. And if they don’t have anything on you, you’ll find that movement is a little easier. Believe me—that’s a benefit here, and it doesn’t usually last long.”
“So I’m new and they don’t know who I am. That’s it?”
“And you’ve been here before,” McCartney added patiently. “You studied here. Your Russian is flawless.”
The compliments mollified Ross a little. She turned to Milton and Pope. “And them? What do they do?”
“You’re right,” McCartney said. “We can’t ask the Russians to put the bad guys on the first BA flight back to London. We need to draw a line. They’re going to draw it.”
48
Primakov took the executive elevator to the fourth floor. He folded his arms and tapped his foot impatiently, glancing up at the shield of the SVR, the Star and Globe, that had been fixed to the wall of the car. The doors opened and he emerged into the gloom and silence of the corridor that led down the centre of the floor. The carpet was thick, muffling the sound of the footsteps of the men and women who worked here. No one spoke, the silence disturbed only by the clacking of keyboards in the typists’ pool. Primakov looked left at the portraits of previous directors of the KGB, each man glaring down at him as he passed, as if disapproving of his illicit use of agency resources to further his own goals. The opposite wall was hung with the portraits of the directors of the ‘reformed’ SVR; a sick joke, he thought, knowing from personal experience that the current incarnation of the agency was at least the equal of its murderous forerunner.
Primakov went through into his office and sat down behind the grand desk, a slab of oak finished with a leather top. He swivelled his chair so that he could reach the credenza and picked up one of the telephones, buzzing his secretary to ask her whether Nikolaevich had arrived for the meeting yet. The woman said that he hadn’t, and would he like her to contact the deputy director’s office to see where he was? Primakov looked at the clock on the wall. Nikolaevich was already thirty minutes late, and it was he who had asked for the meeting. He knew this was one of his old comrade’s favoured tricks, a not-so-subtle gesture designed to remind him that Nikolaevich was the more senior man. It irritated Primakov, and he would not normally have stood for it, but he knew that he might need Nikolaevich’s help if his plan did not succeed, and so he decided to make a show of just how patient he could be. He told his secretary that there was no need; he would wait.
Primakov turned to look at the deep fringe of forest that encircled the building. He always found the view peaceful, and a little tranquillity was precisely what he needed now. Patience was one thing, but that didn’t mean that Nikolaevich’s game playing had no effect on Primakov’s mood. Primakov hated having to rely on others at the best of times, especially when it came to a rival. The two men had known each other for twenty years, ever since they had met at the Academy, and their careers had mirrored one another. Primakov had been an agent in Madrid. Nikolaevich had served in Bruges. Primakov had been made the rezident in Caracas. Nikolaevich had been made the rezident in Rio. They had returned to the Center within three months of one another and had both been promoted: Primakov was placed at the head of Directorate S while Nikolaevich was made First Deputy Director of the FSB. Both knew that the other coveted the directorships of their respective agencies. Those were the very top rungs of the ladder, with the only report being to the president himself. Primakov had had designs on his advancement right from the start, and although Nikolaevich was less obvious in his covetousness, he wasn’t fooling anyone; he most certainly wasn’t fooling Primakov.
“Nikolai.”
Primakov saw the reflection in the window and turned. Nikolaevich was standing in the doorway.
“Alexei,” Primakov said. “I told my secretary to—”
“I told her I’d go straight in,” Nikolaevich said. “I’m already late enough as it is. My apologies. The president wanted a report on a Chechen cell we’ve been keeping an eye on. The meeting lasted longer than I had expected.” There it was: a casual reference to a meeting with the president. It was classic Nikolaevich. He loved to present an impression of humbleness, but it was a show; he wanted Primakov to know that he had been to the Kremlin, that he had the president’s ear.
“You wanted to see me,” Primakov said. “What can I do for you?”
Nikolaevich took a seat. Primakov went to the sideboard. He had asked Catering to prepare tea for them both, and they had delivered a silver salver with two antique tea-glass holders. He gave one to Nikolaevich.
“This is a little delicate,” the major-general said.
Primakov opened his hands wide in a gesture he hoped would appear accommodating, and one that he hoped might mask the sense of foreboding he felt. “Please,” he said. “How can I help?”
“You have a source in MI6.”
It wasn’t a question.
“We do,” Primakov said.
“And this source—he or she is well placed?”
“Reasonably,” Primakov fenced. “What is it, Alexei—how can I help you?”
Nikolaevich rubbed his temples. “I have a problem, and I wondered whether you—your source—might be able to assist.”
Primakov felt a little twist of anxiety in his gut and took a sip of his tea to buy himself a moment. This had to be handled delicately. “Of course, but within reason. PROZHEKTOR is very valuable.”
“That’s the cryptonym?”
Primakov said that it was.
“Searchlight.” Nikolaevich gave an approving nod. “Shining a light onto MI6’s darkest secrets?”
The words sounded gauche when Nikolaevich said them, and Primakov felt a pulse of irritation. “Indeed,” he said. “They have been an effective source, and they promise more. But, because of that, I wouldn’t be able to agree to anything that might jeopardise their position.”
“Their position,” Nikolaevich mused. “Where is that?”
“You know I can’t say, Alexei. Please—what is your problem? I’ll help if I can.”
Nikolaevich slumped back in the chair. “Very well. I hope we can keep this between ourselves.” He waited for Primakov to indicate that he wouldn’t share whatever it was that Nikolaevich was about to tell him.
“Fine,” Primakov said.
“Thank you. Two British agents entered the country this morning. We picked them up at Sheremetyevo and we have surveillance on them, but I wondered if there was anything that PROZHEKTOR might be able to tell us about them. More specifically, what they are here to do.”
It was early, but Primakov glanced over at the decanter of vodka on the sideboard and yearned for one to steady his nerves. He couldn’t, of course; the last thing he wanted was for this cunning old fox to know that he was anxious.
“British agents come here all the time,” he said. “Why are these two any different?”
“I’m thinking about the operation with Aleksandrov. I have my own sources, of course, and the suggestion is that they are from Group Fifteen. And that makes me nervous.”
“I can’t speak to that,” Primakov said.
“I realise that. I suppose I’m a little embarrassed to know so little about them—ignorance will not be looked at kindly by the president if something were to happen.”
“What could happen?”
“There are several possibilities. Your agents, for example. The ones who carried out the operation. They are in Moscow?”
There was no point in pretending otherwise; it was common knowledge. “They are.”
“It crossed my mind that if the British knew who they were, they might try to take revenge. It would be the kind of thing that they would do. You are as familiar with Control’s file as I am, I’m sure—his vengeful streak is well known.”
“He wouldn’t be so foolish as to do something like that.”
“Why not? We killed one of theirs on their soil. It would be a quid pro quo.”
Primakov stood, eager to bring the conversation to an end. “Thank you for mentioning it, Alexei. I will review the security arrangements for my agents.”
Nikolaevich stayed seated. “And I will continue to watch the two of them. If, in the meantime, you felt able to ask your asset whether he or she knows anything about what they might be doing here, any information would be very gratefully received.”
Primakov had to resist the urge to reach down and pull Nikolaevich to his feet.
“What about our own mole hunt?”
Primakov fought back a sigh. Nikolaevich wasn’t finished. “Yes? What about it?”
“I had hoped that our colleagues in Line KR would have smoked out whoever it is by now.”
“But they haven’t. We must continue to be cautious.”
“Until they have been found, we must assume that they are providing intelligence to the British—intelligence like the location of your two sleepers. That’s why I am nervous about these two agents.”
“But that presumes that the leak is in my department. And I’m confident that it is not.”
Nikolaevich smiled and, finally, he stood. “It goes without saying that any help you can provide will be treated as a personal favour. It would be one that I would never forget; you would be able to call on it whenever you wanted and I would be honour bound to come to your aid.”
“Thank you, Alexei,” Primakov said. “I understand. I’ll see what I can do.”
46
Aeroflot flight SU 2585 was delayed on its departure from Heathrow, finally taking off at five minutes past midnight. The captain apologised, but said that he was confident that they would be able to make up the lost time en route. It was a standard flight for the carrier. The cabin crew were efficient but not particularly attentive and the late snack that was brought around was cold and unpleasant. Milton passed up the food, asking instead for a vodka and tonic. He drank it as he studied the legend that Tanner had supplied.
The name was his usual one—John Smith—but this time he was a diplomat in the British Embassy reporting to work in the Economic Section. He had been educated at Colchester Royal Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he had obtained a BA and then a PhD. He had joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and was then posted to Bucharest where he had worked as Second Secretary for three years. Following that, he had been transferred to Ankara and then Rome and then, bringing the file up to date, he was moved to Moscow. He was single, had a flat in Highgate, enjoyed cooking and supported Arsenal. He went over the details again, committing it to memory. He had done the same thing many times before, and he knew it would stick.
Pope was several rows ahead of Milton in the cabin; he could see the back of his head. They would maintain a discreet distance until they met at the embassy for their briefing in the morning. They both knew that there was a good chance that there would be SVR agents on the flight with them, and they did not want to give them any reason to increase the surveillance that they would be subjected to upon landing. Milton didn’t even know Pope’s legend; he might be a diplomat, like him, but he could equally be a trade delegate or a cultural attaché. It made little difference.
The vodka slid down easily and Milton ordered another. He downed that, too, and then put his chair back as far as it would go, strapped himself in and allowed the drone of the engines to lull him to sleep.
They landed at Sheremetyevo at four in the morning. The terminal was quiet and they were able to disembark and make their way to immigration quickly. Milton made his way across the lines until he was in the diplomatic channel, and then breezed through the checks and into the arrivals lounge. The embassy had sent a car for him and the driver was waiting, holding a sign with his name on it.
“Hello,” Milton said.
“Mr. Smith?” He was English.
“That’s right.”
“Come with me, please.”
The man offered to take Milton’s suitcase, but he shook his head and said that he had it covered. Milton followed the driver through the airport to the parking garage.
“Pleasant flight, sir?”
“It was fine.”
Milton looked around at the other travellers who were making their way to the garage. He saw a few whom he recognised from the aircraft, and others whom he had not seen before. He glanced at the ones following behind them—a young man with tattoos who was carrying a guitar in a case, an elderly couple, a middle-aged woman—and wondered which of them worked for the FSB, the domestic intelligence service. He saw the CCTV cameras positioned overhead. Those feeds would all end up in the Lubyanka and would, he knew, have already been examined by the clerks who were paid to scrutinise new arrivals and cross-check them with known intelligence agents. It was a long time since Milton had been to Russia, and the identities and likenesses of Group Fifteen agents were known to a vanishingly small cohort of senior staff. Milton did not believe that there was a file on him, but he knew not to take anything for granted.
They reached the garage, took the elevator to the second floor and reached a Mercedes with blacked-out windows. The driver opened the rear door for Milton and slid into the front.
“We’ve booked you into the Lotte,” the man said as he pulled out.
It had been raining, with a fine drizzle still hanging in the air. A large municipal building faced them as they drove away, and, with its pink and yellow tiers, it reminded Milton of a Battenberg cake. An illuminated sign on the roof announced MOCKBA, the glow reflecting off rain-slicked asphalt. Milton stared out of the window. It felt real now. He was in Moscow, in enemy territory. He was naked, too, an agent operating without backup. He was always reminded of the espionage films and novels that had enthralled him during his youth, and the malign influence of the all-powerful KGB. That body might have been disbanded, but the change was little more than window dressing. The FSB was its successor, with a reach and malignancy that was every bit its equal. Milton and Pope were alone against it now, and if they were compromised, there would be little support.
He leaned back in the seat as they hurried through the quiet streets. He had grabbed an hour of fitful sleep on the flight, but that was all; his only rest since Friday had been his drunken stupor this morning, and he had an early start at the embassy today. It would just have to do.
The hotel was on Novinskiy Boulevard and was one of the best in Moscow. It was a large building that curved around a bend in the road, the neon sign on the roof burning bright against the slowly lightening sky. The desk was staffed twenty-four hours a day, and, after Milton had checked in, he was escorted to his room by a polite and attentive porter. The woman spoke excellent English, and asked Milton about his trip and what he hoped to do during his visit to the city. Milton suspected that her good nature was not entirely genuine, and that he was being probed for information that might be passed along to the FSB division that specialised in counter-intelligence and the monitoring of foreign visitors.
“I’m going to be working at the British Embassy,” he said.
They reached the second floor and the porter indicated that they should turn left to find room 261.
“We have many diplomats from the embassy,” the woman said.
Milton knew that, of course; it was the reason the room had been reserved for him here.
“Is it close?” he asked.
“You haven’t been before?”
“First time.”
“Yes, it is close. You can walk there in fifteen minutes.”
“Excellent,” Milton said.
They reached the door. “What will you be doing there, Mr. Smith?” she asked him.
“Working on a deal to buy more Russian oil and gas. Not particularly interesting, I’m afraid.”
Milton said that he was tired and how much he was looking forward to his bed. The porter shone a bright smile at him as she held a keycard to his door, said that she hoped that he would find the bed comfortable, and, after taking his tip, she left him alone in his room.
Milton checked his suite. There was a large marble bathroom and a similarly generous bedroom. He had no doubt at all that the room was bugged, but he made no effort to find the devices. That would be the behaviour of a spy, and John Smith was an economist. Milton didn’t mind that he was observed. He undressed and got straight into bed. It was just after five. The briefing was at seven. He had an hour; not nearly enough, but it would have to do. He closed his eyes and was asleep in minutes.
47
Milton woke at six. He felt rough, with not nearly enough sleep in the bank, and had to stand under a cold shower for five minutes to wake himself up. He stood before the mirror and stared at his reflection. He looked tired. He needed a cigarette, but that would have to wait.
He dressed in the business suit that he had brought with him, pairing his white shirt with a blue tie. He polished his shoes with the kit he found in the cupboard and put his credentials, wallet and phone in his pockets. He looked down at the opened suitcase on the bed; he would leave it there. He knew that they would go through his things, but they would find nothing that contradicted his legend. He was an economist, posted to the embassy. He would leave his laptop, too. They would be able to crack the rudimentary password with ease, but all they would find would be a collection of spreadsheets and documents that related to the deal that he was here to work on. Milton did not anticipate needing the computer, but if he did, the encryption key that he carried in his wallet would enable him to use it without fear of his communications being eavesdropped upon.
He went down to the lobby, used his card to buy some roubles from the receptionist, and stepped outside. He purchased a packet of cigarettes from a vending machine he found on the street, tore off the cellophane wrapper, tapped out a cigarette and lit it. The embassy was to the west. He followed Novinskiy Boulevard, its eight lanes already thick with traffic, and then turned into the quieter Protochnyy Pereulok. It was obvious that he was being followed. He saw a man and a woman who appeared behind him as he made his way off from the hotel, and noticed a car with tinted windows that was parked near the junction of the main road. Milton made no effort to shake the surveillance. He made his way along the pavement, passing apartment blocks and cheaper hotels until he reached the broad highway that overlooked the river. There was suddenly a sense of open space; the water was wide here, with long bridges that crossed to the other side and the impressive buildings that made up the political district.
He arrived at the embassy and showed his pass at the front door. The guard looked down at it, checked that the photograph was correct, and asked him to confirm his name. Milton did. The guard wished him good morning and stepped aside. Milton removed his coat, watch, belt and shoes and passed through the scanner, collected his personal belongings and waited in the lobby for someone to meet him.
A middle-aged woman joined him after five minutes. “Mr. Smith,” she said, maintaining his legend in the event that the intelligence services were listening in this unsecured part of the building. “My name is Susannah Jones. How are you?”
“Very well,” Milton said. “Tired. I got in early this morning.”
“We have some very strong coffee brewing. Come this way, please.”
Jones led the way through an exterior courtyard and then up a set of marble steps to the attic. This was where the embassy held briefings when classified intelligence might be discussed. The stairs ended in a large metal door of the sort one might expect to find securing a bank vault. The door was open and, beyond it, there was the day door with the cipher lock, and then a wire gate that was opened by the entry of a code on the electric keypad that was fitted to the wall next to it.
Jones led Milton through all the layers of security until he was inside the briefing room. Pope was already there.
“Morning,” he said.
“Won’t be a moment,” Jones said. “Help yourself to coffee.”
She turned and made her way back outside. There was a tray on the table with a vacuum flask of coffee and half a dozen china mugs. Pope filled two of the mugs, gave one to Milton and then sat down next to him.
“How’s your hotel?” Milton asked.
“Almost certainly bugged. Yours?”
“Same. And I was followed here this morning.”
“Me too,” Pope said. “We’re going to have to be thorough when we’re ready to move.”
Milton nodded his agreement, and then looked around the room. It was bare, with just the table and chairs. There was a laptop on the table, fixed with a lockable seal that helped guard against unauthorised access; the machine would have been preloaded with a secure software suite at GCHQ and then pouched to the embassy to ensure that it was not tampered with. The room was lit by overhead fluorescent tubes that would also have been imported from London to remove the risk that units sourced from the domestic market might have been provided with bugs included. There was a line of small windows on either side that were guarded by bars, then steel shutters, and finally triple-glazed glass. The lack of natural light, combined with the harsh glow of the tubes overhead, made for an unpleasant space. The price of security, Milton thought.
“Who’s briefing us?” he asked.
“Station Chief,” Pope said. “Just waiting for a fourth person.”
“He say who that is?”
“Station Chief is a she, actually,” Pope said. “And, no, she didn’t.”
They had been given very little in the way of information, save that they should report to the embassy for an operational briefing. Milton didn’t like to be unprepared, but he knew that the planning and execution of the operation would be left to him and Pope. Control had made it clear that speed was important, but Milton would balance it, so far as was possible, with careful organisation.
“Gentlemen,” said a voice from the doorway behind them.
Milton turned around. A middle-aged woman in a black skirt and jacket was standing just inside the wire gate.
“I’m Elizabeth McCartney,” she said, stepping inside and offering her hand. “I’m the chief here.”
Milton shook her hand but, before he could respond, he saw a second person ascending the stairs.
It was a second woman. She paused at the doorway and her mouth fell open.
“You?” she exclaimed.
He shook his head in wry amusement.
Jessie Ross.
“Hello,” he said.
“What the fuck?”
“Do you two know each other?” McCartney asked.
“We met on Sunday,” Ross said. “Smith was assigned to the Southwold investigation. Military liaison.”
“That’s right,” Milton said.
“What is it today? Still the same?”
Milton turned to indicate Pope. “We work for a government agency. I can’t tell you what that is, but I can say that we’ve been sent here to find the agents who are responsible for the assassinations in Southwold.”
“What government agency?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s classified.”
Milton watched her face as he spoke. She looked from him to Pope and back again. Her eyes sparked with irritation, and there was blood in her cheeks.
“This is nuts,” she said, throwing up her hands. “‘Find the agents responsible?’ What does that mean? Are you going to give them a good talking to? Tell them not to do it again?”
“No,” Milton said.
“So I’m being partnered with a killer, then. A murderer. Yes?” She glanced over at Pope and corrected herself. “Excuse me. Two murderers.”
“Is this going to be a problem?” McCartney said.
“I’m sorry,” Ross responded, “but why am I here? I don’t understand. Why do you even need me?”
“You agreed to come,” McCartney said evenly. “You volunteered, I believe.”
“Yes,” she said. “Before I knew…” She threw up her hands. “Before I knew this.”
“Raj Shah agreed with you because it made sense,” McCartney said. “You’re fairly new to the Russian desk. It’s possible they”—she pointed to the one uncovered window, and the buildings that crowded the far shore of the Moskva—“won’t even know who you are. And if they don’t have anything on you, you’ll find that movement is a little easier. Believe me—that’s a benefit here, and it doesn’t usually last long.”
“So I’m new and they don’t know who I am. That’s it?”
“And you’ve been here before,” McCartney added patiently. “You studied here. Your Russian is flawless.”
The compliments mollified Ross a little. She turned to Milton and Pope. “And them? What do they do?”
“You’re right,” McCartney said. “We can’t ask the Russians to put the bad guys on the first BA flight back to London. We need to draw a line. They’re going to draw it.”
48
Primakov took the executive elevator to the fourth floor. He folded his arms and tapped his foot impatiently, glancing up at the shield of the SVR, the Star and Globe, that had been fixed to the wall of the car. The doors opened and he emerged into the gloom and silence of the corridor that led down the centre of the floor. The carpet was thick, muffling the sound of the footsteps of the men and women who worked here. No one spoke, the silence disturbed only by the clacking of keyboards in the typists’ pool. Primakov looked left at the portraits of previous directors of the KGB, each man glaring down at him as he passed, as if disapproving of his illicit use of agency resources to further his own goals. The opposite wall was hung with the portraits of the directors of the ‘reformed’ SVR; a sick joke, he thought, knowing from personal experience that the current incarnation of the agency was at least the equal of its murderous forerunner.
Primakov went through into his office and sat down behind the grand desk, a slab of oak finished with a leather top. He swivelled his chair so that he could reach the credenza and picked up one of the telephones, buzzing his secretary to ask her whether Nikolaevich had arrived for the meeting yet. The woman said that he hadn’t, and would he like her to contact the deputy director’s office to see where he was? Primakov looked at the clock on the wall. Nikolaevich was already thirty minutes late, and it was he who had asked for the meeting. He knew this was one of his old comrade’s favoured tricks, a not-so-subtle gesture designed to remind him that Nikolaevich was the more senior man. It irritated Primakov, and he would not normally have stood for it, but he knew that he might need Nikolaevich’s help if his plan did not succeed, and so he decided to make a show of just how patient he could be. He told his secretary that there was no need; he would wait.
Primakov turned to look at the deep fringe of forest that encircled the building. He always found the view peaceful, and a little tranquillity was precisely what he needed now. Patience was one thing, but that didn’t mean that Nikolaevich’s game playing had no effect on Primakov’s mood. Primakov hated having to rely on others at the best of times, especially when it came to a rival. The two men had known each other for twenty years, ever since they had met at the Academy, and their careers had mirrored one another. Primakov had been an agent in Madrid. Nikolaevich had served in Bruges. Primakov had been made the rezident in Caracas. Nikolaevich had been made the rezident in Rio. They had returned to the Center within three months of one another and had both been promoted: Primakov was placed at the head of Directorate S while Nikolaevich was made First Deputy Director of the FSB. Both knew that the other coveted the directorships of their respective agencies. Those were the very top rungs of the ladder, with the only report being to the president himself. Primakov had had designs on his advancement right from the start, and although Nikolaevich was less obvious in his covetousness, he wasn’t fooling anyone; he most certainly wasn’t fooling Primakov.
“Nikolai.”
Primakov saw the reflection in the window and turned. Nikolaevich was standing in the doorway.
“Alexei,” Primakov said. “I told my secretary to—”
“I told her I’d go straight in,” Nikolaevich said. “I’m already late enough as it is. My apologies. The president wanted a report on a Chechen cell we’ve been keeping an eye on. The meeting lasted longer than I had expected.” There it was: a casual reference to a meeting with the president. It was classic Nikolaevich. He loved to present an impression of humbleness, but it was a show; he wanted Primakov to know that he had been to the Kremlin, that he had the president’s ear.
“You wanted to see me,” Primakov said. “What can I do for you?”
Nikolaevich took a seat. Primakov went to the sideboard. He had asked Catering to prepare tea for them both, and they had delivered a silver salver with two antique tea-glass holders. He gave one to Nikolaevich.
“This is a little delicate,” the major-general said.
Primakov opened his hands wide in a gesture he hoped would appear accommodating, and one that he hoped might mask the sense of foreboding he felt. “Please,” he said. “How can I help?”
“You have a source in MI6.”
It wasn’t a question.
“We do,” Primakov said.
“And this source—he or she is well placed?”
“Reasonably,” Primakov fenced. “What is it, Alexei—how can I help you?”
Nikolaevich rubbed his temples. “I have a problem, and I wondered whether you—your source—might be able to assist.”
Primakov felt a little twist of anxiety in his gut and took a sip of his tea to buy himself a moment. This had to be handled delicately. “Of course, but within reason. PROZHEKTOR is very valuable.”
“That’s the cryptonym?”
Primakov said that it was.
“Searchlight.” Nikolaevich gave an approving nod. “Shining a light onto MI6’s darkest secrets?”
The words sounded gauche when Nikolaevich said them, and Primakov felt a pulse of irritation. “Indeed,” he said. “They have been an effective source, and they promise more. But, because of that, I wouldn’t be able to agree to anything that might jeopardise their position.”
“Their position,” Nikolaevich mused. “Where is that?”
“You know I can’t say, Alexei. Please—what is your problem? I’ll help if I can.”
Nikolaevich slumped back in the chair. “Very well. I hope we can keep this between ourselves.” He waited for Primakov to indicate that he wouldn’t share whatever it was that Nikolaevich was about to tell him.
“Fine,” Primakov said.
“Thank you. Two British agents entered the country this morning. We picked them up at Sheremetyevo and we have surveillance on them, but I wondered if there was anything that PROZHEKTOR might be able to tell us about them. More specifically, what they are here to do.”
It was early, but Primakov glanced over at the decanter of vodka on the sideboard and yearned for one to steady his nerves. He couldn’t, of course; the last thing he wanted was for this cunning old fox to know that he was anxious.
“British agents come here all the time,” he said. “Why are these two any different?”
“I’m thinking about the operation with Aleksandrov. I have my own sources, of course, and the suggestion is that they are from Group Fifteen. And that makes me nervous.”
“I can’t speak to that,” Primakov said.
“I realise that. I suppose I’m a little embarrassed to know so little about them—ignorance will not be looked at kindly by the president if something were to happen.”
“What could happen?”
“There are several possibilities. Your agents, for example. The ones who carried out the operation. They are in Moscow?”
There was no point in pretending otherwise; it was common knowledge. “They are.”
“It crossed my mind that if the British knew who they were, they might try to take revenge. It would be the kind of thing that they would do. You are as familiar with Control’s file as I am, I’m sure—his vengeful streak is well known.”
“He wouldn’t be so foolish as to do something like that.”
“Why not? We killed one of theirs on their soil. It would be a quid pro quo.”
Primakov stood, eager to bring the conversation to an end. “Thank you for mentioning it, Alexei. I will review the security arrangements for my agents.”
Nikolaevich stayed seated. “And I will continue to watch the two of them. If, in the meantime, you felt able to ask your asset whether he or she knows anything about what they might be doing here, any information would be very gratefully received.”
Primakov had to resist the urge to reach down and pull Nikolaevich to his feet.
“What about our own mole hunt?”
Primakov fought back a sigh. Nikolaevich wasn’t finished. “Yes? What about it?”
“I had hoped that our colleagues in Line KR would have smoked out whoever it is by now.”
“But they haven’t. We must continue to be cautious.”
“Until they have been found, we must assume that they are providing intelligence to the British—intelligence like the location of your two sleepers. That’s why I am nervous about these two agents.”
“But that presumes that the leak is in my department. And I’m confident that it is not.”
Nikolaevich smiled and, finally, he stood. “It goes without saying that any help you can provide will be treated as a personal favour. It would be one that I would never forget; you would be able to call on it whenever you wanted and I would be honour bound to come to your aid.”
“Thank you, Alexei,” Primakov said. “I understand. I’ll see what I can do.”
London
49
Control was unhappy that his morning had been interrupted. He had received a call that he was urgently required to attend a meeting at headquarters at ten. It was inconvenient, to say the least. He had scheduled a call with Moscow Station to discuss the operation against the Russian sleepers, and now he would have to postpone it. He queried the request with Tanner, but, after checking, his adjutant had reported that there was no way he could absent himself. Control asked for clarification on what was to be discussed, but Tanner was rebuffed and reminded that this was classified Strap Two-Level Secret. Eyes only.
It was only a short walk between the Global Logistics building and the monstrosity that had been foisted upon the Secret Intelligence Service as its new base of operations. It was a pleasant morning, but the good weather did nothing to brighten Control’s mood. He made his way in through the main entrance, passing through the mundane ignominies of the security scanners, and made his way up to the executive floor. The meeting was being held in one of the bland conference rooms next to the offices of the senior staff. Control was evidently the last attendee to arrive and, after acknowledging the others around the table, he took his seat and looked around. It was a particularly high-powered meeting; perhaps it was important, after all.
There were eight others around the table. The government was represented by two ministers, together with their private secretaries. To his right was Harry Cousins, the defence secretary. Cousins was a stolid, reliable political operator, resilient enough to have enjoyed a long career under three different prime ministers and yet not devious or avaricious enough to progress beyond his current station. Next to Cousins was Christopher Younger, the foreign secretary. Younger was something of a media darling, derided by those in the intelligence community for his fondness for the limelight, his embarrassingly naked ambition and the occasional buffoonery that caused frequent embarrassment abroad.
Representing the intelligence agencies were Sir Benjamin Stone and Vivian Bloom. Stone was SIS Chief; he was in his mid-fifties, a reasonably large man with a middle-age spread that he seemed uninterested in arresting. Bloom was the most interesting of the other senior attendees. He acted as the permanent liaison between the Firm and the Government. His nickname within the building was the Reverend. This sobriquet was derived from a brief appointment as the sub-rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, and, perhaps, the unruly dress sense that put Control in mind of a bumbling rural vicar. His appearance was deceiving, though, and Control had seen many people make the mistake of underestimating him. He was in his late sixties and had worked in the intelligence business since the start of the Cold War. One did not manage that sort of tenure without ruthlessness. Bloom was well connected, unfailingly zealous and duplicitous to a fault.
“Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” Stone said. “Particularly on such short notice. Shall we start?” Stone continued without waiting for an answer. “How much do you know about the Sukhoi-58?”
“The aircraft?” Cousins said. “Don’t you mean the Su-57? The one the Russians are building with the Indians?”
“Were building,” Stone corrected. “The Indians pulled out and the Russians mothballed it—officially, at least.”
“But the 58?”
“Sukhoi has been working on two fighters. The Su-57 is the one that has been publicly acknowledged. Knowledge of the Su-58 has been restricted. We’ve only heard rumours up until now.” Stone turned to the others. “I’m assuming no one else knows anything about it?”
“Nothing at all,” the foreign secretary said. Control thought that ignorance was always a safe assumption where Younger was concerned.
“I can give you a short summary, Foreign Secretary,” Stone said diplomatically. “The aircraft has been given the NATO designation ‘Factor.’ The Russians have known for years that they’ve got nothing in the skies that can get close to the Americans’ fifth-generation fighters. It appears that Putin has decided that that state of affairs must be reversed, and has authorised a multi-billion-rouble design program that is much, much farther along than we thought it was. Our understanding from previous intelligence is that the Factor is a single-seat, twin-engine multirole fighter designed exclusively for air superiority and attack operations. The aircraft is stealth equipped with best-in-class front, side and rear radar. Thrust vectoring control, a top speed exceeding Mach 2.5 and advanced supermanoeuvrability. It will carry an extensive payload including air-to-air, air-to-surface and anti-ship missiles.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, sir, that it will immediately be the most advanced fighter in the world. It will be more than a match for the F-22 and F-35. The assessment has always been that if the rumours were correct, the jump from the F-35 to the Su-58 would be about the same as the jump from the Tornado to the Lightning. Night and day.”
Cousins shook his head. “Why didn’t we know more about this?”
“No one knew,” Stone said. “They’ve played it very cleverly. The focus was on the Su-57. They let us gloat when they pulled the plug on it, but it was just misdirection. The real work was in Komsomolsk. We knew they’d built two new factories in the Russian Far East. We thought they were to handle the mass production of the Su-57. We were wrong.”
The foreign secretary knocked his knuckles against the table in a show of annoyance. “Might have been helpful to have had a little more intelligence before we paid the Americans £2.5 billion for fifty Lightnings, together with spending another half a billion at Marham so that we can fly the bloody things.”
“Yes,” Stone said. “That would have been wonderful, but I’m afraid they played us. Credit where credit is due. It’s been an impressive counter-intelligence operation.”
The atmosphere in the room had chilled. Control knew why: this kind of revelation would cause problems in lots of different departments and agencies, and the attendees were already working out how to deflect the blame and whom to scapegoat.
“What does this have to do with us?” Control said.
Stone steepled his fingers. “The Russians have been flawless so far, but we may have enjoyed a stroke of good fortune. We came into possession of this document on Sunday evening.”
Control, Younger, Cousins and Bloom leaned forward as the chief took a manila envelope from a sealed plastic document pouch. Stone slid his fingers inside and drew out two pieces of paper, which he placed on the table. The others stood up and leaned in so that they could see them. Control looked down at the documents: the first was an email and the second was a photograph of a schematic. It looked like part of a military jet.
“What is this?” Younger said.
“We retrieved it from the email account of Leonard Geggel. The schematic is the aft deck heating contour map of the Su-58. We believe that Pyotr Aleksandrov gave it to Geggel in Southwold before he was murdered. Geggel photographed it and sent it to himself—it’s standard redundancy, in case anything happened to the original. Turns out he was very sensible. The original wasn’t found on his body or in his car.”
“Why did Aleksandrov give it to him?” Younger asked.
“We had no idea until this morning, when we received this.”
Stone took out a third piece of paper. It was a copy of a handwritten note. He tapped his finger against it. “This was delivered to the front desk of the British Consulate in Vladivostok. A courier brought it in and left it. Nothing else. Control,” Stone said, “would you do the honours?”
The document contained a paragraph of handwritten Russian text. Control’s Russian was decent from the time he had worked at Moscow Station during the Cold War. He read it out loud.
‘My name is Anastasiya Romanova. I am the daughter of Pyotr Ilyich Aleksandrov, who was murdered by the Russian state in England two days ago. I am an aerospace engineer responsible for the development of the Sukhoi-58 aircraft. My father was attempting to arrange the terms of my defection to the United Kingdom when he was killed. I still wish to defect. I have extensive data relating to the Su-58 and I am prepared to give it to British intelligence in return for safe passage, protection for me once I arrive there and ten million pounds sterling. These terms are non-negotiable. If you are interested, I will be at the railway station at Komsomolsk-on-Amur at midday on Friday. Your agent should carry a copy of the Komsomolskaia Pravda. I will introduce myself to them if I am satisfied that it is safe to do so. If I am not satisfied, I will return the next day. In the meantime, please find enclosed a further schematic from the Su-58 to demonstrate my good faith.’
Stone held up a fourth piece of paper with another cutaway diagram. “This is the hard-point for a new air-to-air missile. We don’t have a NATO designation for it. We didn’t even know it existed.”
“Is this all legitimate?” Younger asked.
“It’s been checked,” Stone said. “It’s the real deal. You recall that we have a source within the Center?”
BLUEBIRD. They wouldn’t reveal the cryptonym to civilians who couldn’t be trusted to keep their mouths shut.
“Yes,” Younger said. “I remember.”
“We spoke with them,” Stone went on. “Goes without saying that this is eyes-only classified.” Stone took a sip from his cup and eyed them all for confirmation that they understood. They each nodded that they did, and he continued. “Pyotr Aleksandrov contacted Leonard Geggel and arranged the meeting in Southwold, after which they were both killed. What we didn’t know was why Aleksandrov wanted to meet, and why they were murdered. Our source indicated that Nikolai Primakov, the deputy director of Directorate S, led the Kremlin to believe that Aleksandrov was trying to sell a list of active SVR agents to us, and had to be killed because of it. But that looks to have been a lie. It was the Su-58 on the table, not their agents.”
Control knew of Primakov. They were of similar age and had been on opposing sides for years. “Why would Primakov lie about something like that? If Putin found out he’d been misled…”
“Quite,” Stone said. “We don’t know, but we are looking into it. For now, though, it would appear”—he tapped his finger against the letter—“that Aleksandrov was trying to sell the secrets his daughter has stolen.”
“What do we know about her?” Younger asked.
“A good question, Foreign Secretary,” Bloom said, taking over. “We’ve been busy investigating her, as you might imagine. We’re still building the picture, but it appears that she works for Sukhoi, and has done ever since she graduated from AFA State Technical University in Moscow. She’s thirty-nine and brilliant—she was given the Russian Federation Presidential Certificate of Honour for contributions to science. Our understanding was that there was a rift between father and daughter when he defected. Aleksandrov’s file was full of it—he said that both Anastasiya and his wife were patriots, and that they disowned him after he was convicted of spying for us. It would appear that she has had a change of heart.”
“Do we know why?”
“Our source reports that Anastasiya’s husband was arrested and imprisoned a year ago. We believe he died in the gulag. Some disagreement with an oligarch who is close to the Kremlin—the usual. It seems likely that his death changed her view on the motherland. But it doesn’t really matter. The schematic is authentic and Romanova checks out. There’s more than enough here for us to take it seriously.”
“Before you ask,” Stone took over, “we are aware that this could be a trap. It’s difficult to get any certainty out of Russia and we’re being forced to move fast—that means there’s a risk. On the other hand, our source thinks that this is legitimate. On balance, we think it’s something we have to move on. The benefits are significant.”
Younger gave an overly dramatic nod, his bouffant hair bouncing. “Assuming we give this the green light, what comes next?”
“That’s what we need to decide. The operation against the two Russian assassins is ready to go ahead. Control?”
Control pursed his lips as he weighed it all up; he knew that he was about to be asked to change his plans. “I have two assets in theatre, and the intelligence on Kuznetsov and Timoshev has been passed to a cut-out. The cut-out will meet with my agents in”—he checked his watch—“two and a half hours. Assuming that everything is acceptable, the plan is to go ahead tonight.”
“I propose a variation,” Bloom said. “Benjamin and I have spoken and we believe there might be a way that this could be done. Does the operation against the Russians need two agents?”
“Ideally, yes,” Control said.
“You have half a day—could you get another agent over there?”
“Possibly.” Control looked at his watch; it was half-ten. He sighed. “Probably.”
“Then that’s what we should do. Split your agents up. Send one to Komsomolsk to meet Aleksandrov’s daughter. The other one can stay in Moscow and do what needs to be done. It’ll draw the Center’s attention inward. Might be a distraction.”
Control didn’t object; he knew there was no point. The decision had already been made.
“Foreign Secretary?”
“Happy to defer to you chaps,” he said.
Stone turned to Cousins. “Secretary of Defence?”
“This is your area. I’ll go along with your recommendation.”
“And the PM?”
“Yes,” Cousins said. “We should mention it to her, yes. But I doubt she will have a problem.”
“That’s settled, then. Control—can I leave the arrangements with you?”
“What about local liaison?” Control said. “Moscow is one thing. We have support there. But Komsomolsk is something else altogether.”
“Doesn’t SIS have an agent runner with your assets? I don’t remember her name.”
“Her name is Ross,” Stone said. “Raj Shah vouched for her. Says she’s good. Excellent Russian, a cleanskin as far as the FSB is concerned—I’ve no objections with you borrowing her. She can go with whoever you choose to send.”
Bloom looked across the table at Control. “You’ll get onto it?”
Control stood. “I will.”
“If you need anything—”
“Thank you,” Control cut over him. “It’s in hand. I’ll report later, when it’s done, but I need to get back to the office. I have a telephone call to make.”
50
Control stood at the wide office window that overlooked the Thames and tamped down tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. He clenched the stem between his teeth and puffed down as he held a match to the bowl. His mouth filled with the taste of the smoke and he held it there for a moment before angling his head and emitting it in a long, languid stream that would hang in the room for hours. It was midday, and the sun was directly over the buildings on the other side of the water. He looked down and saw the familiar swell of traffic on the road that followed the river. He stood there for a moment and watched, allowing his thoughts to settle.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Control said.
Tanner opened the door. “Callan is outside, sir.”
“Send him in.”
Tanner stepped aside and, after a short pause, a new man stepped into the office. Christopher Callan was in his mid-thirties. He was tall and thin and elegantly dressed: he wore a dark grey suit with a faint herringbone pattern, his trousers neatly creased and his shoes polished to a high sheen. He undid the button of his jacket as he came inside and, as it fell open, Control saw two things: an understated lilac-coloured lining and the glint of a pistol holstered just beneath his left armpit. Callan would have been considered handsome by most people, but there was something a little alien in his appearance that Control found unsettling. His head was smaller than usual, crowned by a nest of tight curls that reminded him of the statues of da Vinci. His skin, too, was as alabaster-white as those statues.
“Sit,” Control said, gesturing to the comfortable chairs before the table.
Callan sat. Control watched him. His lips were thin and pale. His eyes were pale, too, almost limpid. There was a natural cruelty in his face. Control had been alerted to the man’s potential and, after studying his record, had decided that he was worthy of further investigation. He had served with distinction in the Special Boat Service until very recently. His father’s business had collapsed and Callan had passed the naval scholarship examination to pay for his school fees. He had served in the SBS company in the Middle East and had commanded a Marine company in Afghanistan. He had been in Kabul when a Taliban suicide squad had commandeered a tower block overlooking the embassy district and started firing grenades and automatic weaponry. Callan had commanded the SBS team who cleared the building. None of the jihadis had walked out of that building alive.
Control took the teapot and poured out two cups, handing one to Callan.
“Congratulations are in order, Mr. Callan,” he said.
“Sir?”
“One of my agents was killed in action yesterday morning. That means a vacancy has arisen. I’d like you to fill it—if you’re still interested in working for me, of course.”
“Yes, sir,” Callan said quickly. His enthusiasm was obvious.
Callan had been subjected to the usual barrage of tests that awaited any potential recruit to the Group. He had been taken to the Group’s facility at Trafalgar Place in Wiltshire where he had performed well. His recordable metrics were first rate, and he had returned an excellent score in the final assessment in the Brecon Beacons. He had been subjected to two days of brutal interrogation and his background had been given a forensic examination. There was nothing to cause concern: he was single, possibly homosexual, no close friends; his parents were dead; no obvious foibles or weaknesses that could be used against him; he lived for his work. In short, nothing had been uncovered that had warranted concern.
His physical scores were excellent and so, too, was his psychological report. The Group psychiatrists had reported a natural callousness and lack of empathy, together with a lack of concern for the feelings of others. They had suggested a possible inability to feel emotions deeply, together with an inability to acknowledge fear in others. There was an extremely high threshold for disgust, as demonstrated when Callan was shown pictures of battlefield fatalities. Control could diagnose that easily enough: these were all symptomatic of psychopathy. It did not concern Control at all. It was just a label, and, indeed, the qualities of a person whom society might deem psychopathic were useful in an agent, up to a point.
“Are you sure?” Control asked him. “You understand the gravity of your decision.”
“Yes, sir. Absolutely. And I am sure—I would like that very much.”
“Excellent. Then you are now Number Twelve.” He put out his hand. “Welcome to Group Fifteen.”
Callan took his hand and shook it. Control found his grip surprisingly loose. His fingers were long, almost feminine, and his flesh was cold. Control removed his hand. He needed to move things along.
“I have something for you to do today, as it happens.”
Callan nodded, then sat quietly and listened.
“You’re aware of the news, I’m sure.”
“Southwold?”
“Indeed. An almighty mess, but we’re getting to the bottom of it. Two Russian sleepers are suspected of carrying out the murders. We tracked them back to a property near Winchester, but they were able to escape. They’ve been recalled to Moscow where, I’m sure, the president will fête them as returning heroes. We can’t have that, Number Twelve. We can’t have that at all.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“We intend to move against the assassins this evening. Number Five is in Moscow now, planning the operation. I want you to join him. There’s a car downstairs that will take you to Heathrow. There’s an Aeroflot flight to Sheremetyevo in ninety minutes. You’re booked on it. Tanner will ride in the car with you to the airport and brief you on your legend.”
“Yes, sir. Of course.”
“The Russians killed Aleksandrov the way they did to send a message to us—to us and to anyone else who might be thinking of working against them. We’re going to show them that we were listening.”
49
Control was unhappy that his morning had been interrupted. He had received a call that he was urgently required to attend a meeting at headquarters at ten. It was inconvenient, to say the least. He had scheduled a call with Moscow Station to discuss the operation against the Russian sleepers, and now he would have to postpone it. He queried the request with Tanner, but, after checking, his adjutant had reported that there was no way he could absent himself. Control asked for clarification on what was to be discussed, but Tanner was rebuffed and reminded that this was classified Strap Two-Level Secret. Eyes only.
It was only a short walk between the Global Logistics building and the monstrosity that had been foisted upon the Secret Intelligence Service as its new base of operations. It was a pleasant morning, but the good weather did nothing to brighten Control’s mood. He made his way in through the main entrance, passing through the mundane ignominies of the security scanners, and made his way up to the executive floor. The meeting was being held in one of the bland conference rooms next to the offices of the senior staff. Control was evidently the last attendee to arrive and, after acknowledging the others around the table, he took his seat and looked around. It was a particularly high-powered meeting; perhaps it was important, after all.
There were eight others around the table. The government was represented by two ministers, together with their private secretaries. To his right was Harry Cousins, the defence secretary. Cousins was a stolid, reliable political operator, resilient enough to have enjoyed a long career under three different prime ministers and yet not devious or avaricious enough to progress beyond his current station. Next to Cousins was Christopher Younger, the foreign secretary. Younger was something of a media darling, derided by those in the intelligence community for his fondness for the limelight, his embarrassingly naked ambition and the occasional buffoonery that caused frequent embarrassment abroad.
Representing the intelligence agencies were Sir Benjamin Stone and Vivian Bloom. Stone was SIS Chief; he was in his mid-fifties, a reasonably large man with a middle-age spread that he seemed uninterested in arresting. Bloom was the most interesting of the other senior attendees. He acted as the permanent liaison between the Firm and the Government. His nickname within the building was the Reverend. This sobriquet was derived from a brief appointment as the sub-rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, and, perhaps, the unruly dress sense that put Control in mind of a bumbling rural vicar. His appearance was deceiving, though, and Control had seen many people make the mistake of underestimating him. He was in his late sixties and had worked in the intelligence business since the start of the Cold War. One did not manage that sort of tenure without ruthlessness. Bloom was well connected, unfailingly zealous and duplicitous to a fault.
“Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” Stone said. “Particularly on such short notice. Shall we start?” Stone continued without waiting for an answer. “How much do you know about the Sukhoi-58?”
“The aircraft?” Cousins said. “Don’t you mean the Su-57? The one the Russians are building with the Indians?”
“Were building,” Stone corrected. “The Indians pulled out and the Russians mothballed it—officially, at least.”
“But the 58?”
“Sukhoi has been working on two fighters. The Su-57 is the one that has been publicly acknowledged. Knowledge of the Su-58 has been restricted. We’ve only heard rumours up until now.” Stone turned to the others. “I’m assuming no one else knows anything about it?”
“Nothing at all,” the foreign secretary said. Control thought that ignorance was always a safe assumption where Younger was concerned.
“I can give you a short summary, Foreign Secretary,” Stone said diplomatically. “The aircraft has been given the NATO designation ‘Factor.’ The Russians have known for years that they’ve got nothing in the skies that can get close to the Americans’ fifth-generation fighters. It appears that Putin has decided that that state of affairs must be reversed, and has authorised a multi-billion-rouble design program that is much, much farther along than we thought it was. Our understanding from previous intelligence is that the Factor is a single-seat, twin-engine multirole fighter designed exclusively for air superiority and attack operations. The aircraft is stealth equipped with best-in-class front, side and rear radar. Thrust vectoring control, a top speed exceeding Mach 2.5 and advanced supermanoeuvrability. It will carry an extensive payload including air-to-air, air-to-surface and anti-ship missiles.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, sir, that it will immediately be the most advanced fighter in the world. It will be more than a match for the F-22 and F-35. The assessment has always been that if the rumours were correct, the jump from the F-35 to the Su-58 would be about the same as the jump from the Tornado to the Lightning. Night and day.”
Cousins shook his head. “Why didn’t we know more about this?”
“No one knew,” Stone said. “They’ve played it very cleverly. The focus was on the Su-57. They let us gloat when they pulled the plug on it, but it was just misdirection. The real work was in Komsomolsk. We knew they’d built two new factories in the Russian Far East. We thought they were to handle the mass production of the Su-57. We were wrong.”
The foreign secretary knocked his knuckles against the table in a show of annoyance. “Might have been helpful to have had a little more intelligence before we paid the Americans £2.5 billion for fifty Lightnings, together with spending another half a billion at Marham so that we can fly the bloody things.”
“Yes,” Stone said. “That would have been wonderful, but I’m afraid they played us. Credit where credit is due. It’s been an impressive counter-intelligence operation.”
The atmosphere in the room had chilled. Control knew why: this kind of revelation would cause problems in lots of different departments and agencies, and the attendees were already working out how to deflect the blame and whom to scapegoat.
“What does this have to do with us?” Control said.
Stone steepled his fingers. “The Russians have been flawless so far, but we may have enjoyed a stroke of good fortune. We came into possession of this document on Sunday evening.”
Control, Younger, Cousins and Bloom leaned forward as the chief took a manila envelope from a sealed plastic document pouch. Stone slid his fingers inside and drew out two pieces of paper, which he placed on the table. The others stood up and leaned in so that they could see them. Control looked down at the documents: the first was an email and the second was a photograph of a schematic. It looked like part of a military jet.
“What is this?” Younger said.
“We retrieved it from the email account of Leonard Geggel. The schematic is the aft deck heating contour map of the Su-58. We believe that Pyotr Aleksandrov gave it to Geggel in Southwold before he was murdered. Geggel photographed it and sent it to himself—it’s standard redundancy, in case anything happened to the original. Turns out he was very sensible. The original wasn’t found on his body or in his car.”
“Why did Aleksandrov give it to him?” Younger asked.
“We had no idea until this morning, when we received this.”
Stone took out a third piece of paper. It was a copy of a handwritten note. He tapped his finger against it. “This was delivered to the front desk of the British Consulate in Vladivostok. A courier brought it in and left it. Nothing else. Control,” Stone said, “would you do the honours?”
The document contained a paragraph of handwritten Russian text. Control’s Russian was decent from the time he had worked at Moscow Station during the Cold War. He read it out loud.
‘My name is Anastasiya Romanova. I am the daughter of Pyotr Ilyich Aleksandrov, who was murdered by the Russian state in England two days ago. I am an aerospace engineer responsible for the development of the Sukhoi-58 aircraft. My father was attempting to arrange the terms of my defection to the United Kingdom when he was killed. I still wish to defect. I have extensive data relating to the Su-58 and I am prepared to give it to British intelligence in return for safe passage, protection for me once I arrive there and ten million pounds sterling. These terms are non-negotiable. If you are interested, I will be at the railway station at Komsomolsk-on-Amur at midday on Friday. Your agent should carry a copy of the Komsomolskaia Pravda. I will introduce myself to them if I am satisfied that it is safe to do so. If I am not satisfied, I will return the next day. In the meantime, please find enclosed a further schematic from the Su-58 to demonstrate my good faith.’
Stone held up a fourth piece of paper with another cutaway diagram. “This is the hard-point for a new air-to-air missile. We don’t have a NATO designation for it. We didn’t even know it existed.”
“Is this all legitimate?” Younger asked.
“It’s been checked,” Stone said. “It’s the real deal. You recall that we have a source within the Center?”
BLUEBIRD. They wouldn’t reveal the cryptonym to civilians who couldn’t be trusted to keep their mouths shut.
“Yes,” Younger said. “I remember.”
“We spoke with them,” Stone went on. “Goes without saying that this is eyes-only classified.” Stone took a sip from his cup and eyed them all for confirmation that they understood. They each nodded that they did, and he continued. “Pyotr Aleksandrov contacted Leonard Geggel and arranged the meeting in Southwold, after which they were both killed. What we didn’t know was why Aleksandrov wanted to meet, and why they were murdered. Our source indicated that Nikolai Primakov, the deputy director of Directorate S, led the Kremlin to believe that Aleksandrov was trying to sell a list of active SVR agents to us, and had to be killed because of it. But that looks to have been a lie. It was the Su-58 on the table, not their agents.”
Control knew of Primakov. They were of similar age and had been on opposing sides for years. “Why would Primakov lie about something like that? If Putin found out he’d been misled…”
“Quite,” Stone said. “We don’t know, but we are looking into it. For now, though, it would appear”—he tapped his finger against the letter—“that Aleksandrov was trying to sell the secrets his daughter has stolen.”
“What do we know about her?” Younger asked.
“A good question, Foreign Secretary,” Bloom said, taking over. “We’ve been busy investigating her, as you might imagine. We’re still building the picture, but it appears that she works for Sukhoi, and has done ever since she graduated from AFA State Technical University in Moscow. She’s thirty-nine and brilliant—she was given the Russian Federation Presidential Certificate of Honour for contributions to science. Our understanding was that there was a rift between father and daughter when he defected. Aleksandrov’s file was full of it—he said that both Anastasiya and his wife were patriots, and that they disowned him after he was convicted of spying for us. It would appear that she has had a change of heart.”
“Do we know why?”
“Our source reports that Anastasiya’s husband was arrested and imprisoned a year ago. We believe he died in the gulag. Some disagreement with an oligarch who is close to the Kremlin—the usual. It seems likely that his death changed her view on the motherland. But it doesn’t really matter. The schematic is authentic and Romanova checks out. There’s more than enough here for us to take it seriously.”
“Before you ask,” Stone took over, “we are aware that this could be a trap. It’s difficult to get any certainty out of Russia and we’re being forced to move fast—that means there’s a risk. On the other hand, our source thinks that this is legitimate. On balance, we think it’s something we have to move on. The benefits are significant.”
Younger gave an overly dramatic nod, his bouffant hair bouncing. “Assuming we give this the green light, what comes next?”
“That’s what we need to decide. The operation against the two Russian assassins is ready to go ahead. Control?”
Control pursed his lips as he weighed it all up; he knew that he was about to be asked to change his plans. “I have two assets in theatre, and the intelligence on Kuznetsov and Timoshev has been passed to a cut-out. The cut-out will meet with my agents in”—he checked his watch—“two and a half hours. Assuming that everything is acceptable, the plan is to go ahead tonight.”
“I propose a variation,” Bloom said. “Benjamin and I have spoken and we believe there might be a way that this could be done. Does the operation against the Russians need two agents?”
“Ideally, yes,” Control said.
“You have half a day—could you get another agent over there?”
“Possibly.” Control looked at his watch; it was half-ten. He sighed. “Probably.”
“Then that’s what we should do. Split your agents up. Send one to Komsomolsk to meet Aleksandrov’s daughter. The other one can stay in Moscow and do what needs to be done. It’ll draw the Center’s attention inward. Might be a distraction.”
Control didn’t object; he knew there was no point. The decision had already been made.
“Foreign Secretary?”
“Happy to defer to you chaps,” he said.
Stone turned to Cousins. “Secretary of Defence?”
“This is your area. I’ll go along with your recommendation.”
“And the PM?”
“Yes,” Cousins said. “We should mention it to her, yes. But I doubt she will have a problem.”
“That’s settled, then. Control—can I leave the arrangements with you?”
“What about local liaison?” Control said. “Moscow is one thing. We have support there. But Komsomolsk is something else altogether.”
“Doesn’t SIS have an agent runner with your assets? I don’t remember her name.”
“Her name is Ross,” Stone said. “Raj Shah vouched for her. Says she’s good. Excellent Russian, a cleanskin as far as the FSB is concerned—I’ve no objections with you borrowing her. She can go with whoever you choose to send.”
Bloom looked across the table at Control. “You’ll get onto it?”
Control stood. “I will.”
“If you need anything—”
“Thank you,” Control cut over him. “It’s in hand. I’ll report later, when it’s done, but I need to get back to the office. I have a telephone call to make.”
50
Control stood at the wide office window that overlooked the Thames and tamped down tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. He clenched the stem between his teeth and puffed down as he held a match to the bowl. His mouth filled with the taste of the smoke and he held it there for a moment before angling his head and emitting it in a long, languid stream that would hang in the room for hours. It was midday, and the sun was directly over the buildings on the other side of the water. He looked down and saw the familiar swell of traffic on the road that followed the river. He stood there for a moment and watched, allowing his thoughts to settle.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Control said.
Tanner opened the door. “Callan is outside, sir.”
“Send him in.”
Tanner stepped aside and, after a short pause, a new man stepped into the office. Christopher Callan was in his mid-thirties. He was tall and thin and elegantly dressed: he wore a dark grey suit with a faint herringbone pattern, his trousers neatly creased and his shoes polished to a high sheen. He undid the button of his jacket as he came inside and, as it fell open, Control saw two things: an understated lilac-coloured lining and the glint of a pistol holstered just beneath his left armpit. Callan would have been considered handsome by most people, but there was something a little alien in his appearance that Control found unsettling. His head was smaller than usual, crowned by a nest of tight curls that reminded him of the statues of da Vinci. His skin, too, was as alabaster-white as those statues.
“Sit,” Control said, gesturing to the comfortable chairs before the table.
Callan sat. Control watched him. His lips were thin and pale. His eyes were pale, too, almost limpid. There was a natural cruelty in his face. Control had been alerted to the man’s potential and, after studying his record, had decided that he was worthy of further investigation. He had served with distinction in the Special Boat Service until very recently. His father’s business had collapsed and Callan had passed the naval scholarship examination to pay for his school fees. He had served in the SBS company in the Middle East and had commanded a Marine company in Afghanistan. He had been in Kabul when a Taliban suicide squad had commandeered a tower block overlooking the embassy district and started firing grenades and automatic weaponry. Callan had commanded the SBS team who cleared the building. None of the jihadis had walked out of that building alive.
Control took the teapot and poured out two cups, handing one to Callan.
“Congratulations are in order, Mr. Callan,” he said.
“Sir?”
“One of my agents was killed in action yesterday morning. That means a vacancy has arisen. I’d like you to fill it—if you’re still interested in working for me, of course.”
“Yes, sir,” Callan said quickly. His enthusiasm was obvious.
Callan had been subjected to the usual barrage of tests that awaited any potential recruit to the Group. He had been taken to the Group’s facility at Trafalgar Place in Wiltshire where he had performed well. His recordable metrics were first rate, and he had returned an excellent score in the final assessment in the Brecon Beacons. He had been subjected to two days of brutal interrogation and his background had been given a forensic examination. There was nothing to cause concern: he was single, possibly homosexual, no close friends; his parents were dead; no obvious foibles or weaknesses that could be used against him; he lived for his work. In short, nothing had been uncovered that had warranted concern.
His physical scores were excellent and so, too, was his psychological report. The Group psychiatrists had reported a natural callousness and lack of empathy, together with a lack of concern for the feelings of others. They had suggested a possible inability to feel emotions deeply, together with an inability to acknowledge fear in others. There was an extremely high threshold for disgust, as demonstrated when Callan was shown pictures of battlefield fatalities. Control could diagnose that easily enough: these were all symptomatic of psychopathy. It did not concern Control at all. It was just a label, and, indeed, the qualities of a person whom society might deem psychopathic were useful in an agent, up to a point.
“Are you sure?” Control asked him. “You understand the gravity of your decision.”
“Yes, sir. Absolutely. And I am sure—I would like that very much.”
“Excellent. Then you are now Number Twelve.” He put out his hand. “Welcome to Group Fifteen.”
Callan took his hand and shook it. Control found his grip surprisingly loose. His fingers were long, almost feminine, and his flesh was cold. Control removed his hand. He needed to move things along.
“I have something for you to do today, as it happens.”
Callan nodded, then sat quietly and listened.
“You’re aware of the news, I’m sure.”
“Southwold?”
“Indeed. An almighty mess, but we’re getting to the bottom of it. Two Russian sleepers are suspected of carrying out the murders. We tracked them back to a property near Winchester, but they were able to escape. They’ve been recalled to Moscow where, I’m sure, the president will fête them as returning heroes. We can’t have that, Number Twelve. We can’t have that at all.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“We intend to move against the assassins this evening. Number Five is in Moscow now, planning the operation. I want you to join him. There’s a car downstairs that will take you to Heathrow. There’s an Aeroflot flight to Sheremetyevo in ninety minutes. You’re booked on it. Tanner will ride in the car with you to the airport and brief you on your legend.”
“Yes, sir. Of course.”
“The Russians killed Aleksandrov the way they did to send a message to us—to us and to anyone else who might be thinking of working against them. We’re going to show them that we were listening.”
Moscow
51
Milton, Pope and Ross had spent the morning preparing for the operation. Milton had planned to go ahead that evening. Pope was responsible for making contact with the cut-out and it was decided that Ross would accompany him to the rendezvous, leaving the embassy after lunch in order to allow for an extended SDR. In the meantime, Milton would make the preparations for the hit and their exfiltration immediately afterwards.
Planning the operation had made Milton uncomfortable. The dream felt close; he saw glimpses of Callaghan out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look there was nothing there. He would have to add two more victims to his tally. He didn’t want to do it, but he knew he couldn’t easily say no. He felt deadlocked, caught between his fear of the dream and the consequences of insubordination. He found, to his surprise, that he wanted to go to another meeting.
They had a working lunch of sandwiches and coffee and pressed on. Ross seemed to have come to terms with the nature of the operation and had stifled any further objections. Pope had spread a map out over the table and Ross helped him plan the SDR, a long route with extensive switches and double-backs that would bring them to a vegetable warehouse in the Biryulyovo district where the cut-out had agreed to meet. Ross was evidently familiar with the city from her previous time here, and she suggested an alteration to the dry-cleaning run that Pope approved.
“What do we know about the cut-out?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Milton said. “That’s the point.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“It’s just how it is,” Pope said. “He’s the only one who has contact with the source and with us. If we get into trouble, the only person we can give up is the cut-out. The same goes for the source. It’s insulation.”
“I know how it works,” she replied. “It’s just… wouldn’t you rather go straight to BLUEBIRD?”
“That’s never going to happen,” Milton said.
“Do we know anything about them?”
“No. And I don’t want to know. Neither do you.”
COS McCartney had returned to the secure room. “How far have you got?”
“It’s coming along,” Pope said. “Depending on what we learn this afternoon, I think we’ll be ready to go tonight.”
She sat down at the table. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to adjust things a little. There’s been a development.”
Milton looked up. “What?”
“Potential change of plan. We know a little more about Southwold.”
“Go on,” Milton said.
“Aleksandrov was killed because of his daughter.”
“Why?”
“Her name is Anastasiya Romanov. She wants to defect. She’s offered British intelligence a cache of restricted information in return for safe harbour.”
“Information?” Ross asked.
“Plans for a new Russian fighter aircraft. I’m no expert, but it’s got everyone in the River House sitting up and paying attention. Aleksandrov was arranging the transaction, going through Geggel. The Russians must have found out what he was offering and decided that it was important enough to send two of their most valuable agents to deal with it. They killed them both for it.”
“But not the daughter?”
“No,” McCartney said. “Because she’s still in Russia. That’s where the plans need to change. We’re researching her at the moment, but she’s made contact directly. And we don’t think the Russians know where she is.”
“But we do?” Milton said.
“She couriered a package to the consulate at Vladivostok this morning. It was a message—the deal stands if we can get her out. She’s going to be waiting at the railway station in Komsomolsk-on-Amur in two days’ time, and then again on the following day.”
“I don’t know where that is,” Pope admitted.
“No reason why you should,” Ross said. “It’s in the east. A thousand miles north of Vladivostok. It’s the arse-end of nowhere. Not the sort of place you’d ever be expected to visit.”
“But you’ve been?”
“I have,” she said. “When I was a student. I did the Trans-Siberian. I wandered around when I got to the Far East. Komsomolsk has got to be one of the strangest places I’ve ever been to. It’s basically two cities—one grew up around the shipyard and the other around the Sukhoi factory. And this is in a place that is minus-twenty in the winter and plus-thirty in summer.”
Milton turned to McCartney. “What does London want us to do?”
“They want to get Anastasiya out, but it’s going to have to be done quickly and discreetly. You’re already on the ground. You can move fast. London wants you to go and collect her, then get her out of the country.” She turned to Ross. “They want you to go, too, Ms. Ross. It’s Smith’s operation, but there needs to be a Russian speaker and you’ve been there before.”
“A long time ago,” she protested.
“You speak the language and you know the region. Smith will need assistance, and that’s the best we can do at short notice.”
Pope drummed his fingers on the table. “And what about the assassins? We forget about them?”
“We do not,” McCartney said. “But we have to decide whether you can still make it work. Smith?”
Milton found, with a mixture of relief and shame, that he was relieved to have had the responsibility of eliminating Timoshev and Kuznetsov taken from him.
“Smith?”
Callaghan was in the shadows at the edge of the room. Don’t think that you’re getting away with it. This is just a reprieve. There’s still more killing to do.
“Smith?”
Milton blinked the phantom away. McCartney was asking him a question.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I missed that.”
“I need to know whether you think we can still go ahead with the operation.”
“With just one man?”
“No. They’re sending another to make up the team. He’ll be here later this afternoon.”
“Do we know who?”
“We don’t,” McCartney said.
Milton could guess: it would be one of the others from the Group.
“That doesn’t matter,” Pope said. “I’ll meet the cut-out this afternoon as planned and then I can nail down the plan with.” Pope turned to Milton for approval. “Agreed?”
“It can still be done,” Milton said.
“What about us?” Ross said, glancing over at Milton.
“You need to be on your way,” McCartney said. “London wants you to make contact with Romanova at the first available opportunity. That’s tomorrow. And Komsomolsk is a long trip. We’re going to need to work on new legends and get the travel documentation arranged. You’re flying out tonight.”
52
Primakov had been working on his plan all morning. He felt as if this sordid business was finally entering its end game. There were just a few loose ends to snip and then it would be done. He had to hold his nerve for just a little longer.
His intercom buzzed.
He turned back to his desk and pressed the button to speak. “Yes?”
“Major Stepanov and Captain Mitrokhin are here, sir.”
Primakov looked at the clock on the wall: they were on time, punctual as ever. “Send them in.”
Primakov sat down as Major Yuri Stepanov and Captain Boris Mitrokhin opened the door and came into the office.
“Good afternoon, Comrade General,” Stepanov said with the usual combination of respect and deference.
“Good afternoon, comrades,” Primakov said. “Please—sit.”
The two men unbuttoned their jackets and sat down opposite him.
Stepanov tugged down on both cuffs until an inch of creamy shirt showed beneath the sleeves of his jacket. He was a fastidious dresser, although, when the situation demanded it, adept at disguising himself so adroitly that he could melt into his surroundings. He was in his early forties, with an army buzzcut and thick, heavy features. Mitrokhin was younger, mid-thirties, and a little rougher around the edges. Both were more informally described as chistilshchiks, or ‘mechanics.’ Stepanov had first come to the attention of Primakov during the siege of School Number One in Beslan. Stepanov had been assigned to Vympel, the Spetsnaz unit that had been sent into the school to end the siege. He had eliminated more than a dozen of the Chechen terrorists who had been responsible for the atrocity, and had then chased down the leaders of the conspiracy as they fled into the hills and mountains of Ossetia.
Stepanov had then been reassigned to Department V of the SVR, bringing his enthusiastic junior officer with him. The Department’s role was described as ‘Executive Action,’ but that was a bland euphemism for the work that its agents concerned themselves with: they were deployed by the other Directorates when circumstances demanded a more rigorous solution to problems. Of course, Primakov knew of Group Fifteen, and Stepanov and the other men and women who comprised the Department fulfilled a similar function for the Rodina. The Department had existed in the same form during the reign of the KGB and had stubbornly resisted change during the KGB’s metamorphosis into the SVR. It seemed that there would always be a need for men like Stepanov and Mitrokhin, regardless of the window dressing and public relations nonsense that its mother organisation might now be subjected to.
Primakov had recruited them both six months ago. He wanted someone to whom he could turn when his illegals needed a specialist to close out their operations. There had been operations in the Crimea and the Ukraine, and all of them had been carried out flawlessly. Stepanov was something of a throwback to the purer days of the Soviet state, and his dissatisfaction with what he saw as the excesses of modern Russia had been noted in his file. That might have impeded his upward trajectory if he had stayed where he was, but Primakov was a pragmatist; Stepanov was an expert, a consummate professional who could be relied upon to deliver excellent results, and, as such, Primakov was prepared to accommodate his opinions. Indeed, Primakov too was opposed to much of what he saw at the Kremlin; he would have been a hypocrite to have penalised him.
Mitrokhin was easier to handle: he did everything that Stepanov told him.
“How are you both?”
“We are well, Comrade General,” Stepanov said, speaking for them both. “You have need of us?”
Stepanov was all business, just as ever. “I do.” Primakov stood up and went around to the other side of the desk. “The British have sent agents to Moscow to assassinate two SVR officers. I would like you to stop them from doing that.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Who are the agents?”
“Two men from Group Fifteen.”
If Stepanov was concerned about the pedigree of their targets, he did not show it. “When?”
“They will make an attempt on the lives of our agents this evening,” he said. “We have a source within their organisation—they will be told where the SVR officers are staying. We believe that the attempt will be made there.”
“Where?”
“The Four Seasons.”
“Do the SVR officers know that they are at risk?”
“They do not. It’s unnecessary. You will intervene before any action can be taken against them.”
“What action would you like us to take, sir?”
“Follow them—I’ll make a surveillance team available to you. They will be meeting a cut-out, and that might lead us to the traitor within the Center.”
“And then?”
“Kill them both when they make their attempt and then disappear them. This is something that must stay between us. No one else is to know what we have done.”
Primakov swivelled and reached down for the file on his desk, a manila folder with three sheets of paper clipped inside. It contained everything that Stepanov and Mitrokhin would need to know. Primakov handed it to the major.
Stepanov flipped through the pages, then closed the folder and stood. Mitrokhin did the same.
“Very good, sir. I’ll see that it is done. Is there anything else?”
“No.” Primakov looked at the silent Mitrokhin. “Captain? Anything to add?”
“No, Comrade General,” Mitrokhin said.
Stepanov gave a sharp nod. “We will report tomorrow.”
Both men saluted, turned on their heels and made their way out of the office. Primakov exhaled. Stepanov was a peerless operator, efficient and utterly ruthless, and Mitrokhin was the same. He had lost count of the number of files that he had passed to Stepanov for action—thirty, maybe more—and none of the men and women put in the chistilshchiks’ way was still breathing. It was strange: they both made Primakov nervous, and yet there was a calming sense of finality that came with handing the assassins a file and knowing that the work would be done without any further need for him to be involved.
He thought of Natasha. It would all soon be finished. The only loose end was Anastasiya Romanova, but PROZHEKTOR would find her eventually, and when that happened, the whole sorry mess would come to an end. He would prepare another file and hand it to Stepanov and then, finally, he would be able to relax.
53
Pope was driven out of the embassy at five o’clock that afternoon. The sun was still shining down onto the city, and it was pleasantly warm. The driver had taken a route that followed the Moskva River before looping around and crossing it on Smolenskaya Ulitsa. He had waited until the last moment to leave it, hanging a sharp right that pointed them toward the park at Lesya Ukrainka. He turned right again and then, almost immediately, left onto the narrow street that skirted the park. The driver turned again onto another quiet side street and, holding up three fingers, started a countdown as he slowed the car. Pope opened the door and bailed out, throwing himself down behind a parked van as the driver sped up again. The unmarked FSB tail followed just behind, maintaining a discreet distance that had allowed Pope—so far as he could tell—to get out without being seen.
He stayed where he was, waiting for another minute to confirm that there was not a second car, and then, satisfied that there was not, he set off toward the tall, dilapidated apartment block that loomed over the park like a sentinel. He took a cap out of his pocket and pulled it down so that the brim was tight around his forehead, and then put on a pair of dark glasses.
He walked north, caught a bus on Raduzhnaya Street and rode it for fifteen minutes before getting off at Otradnoye station and riding the Metro back in the opposite direction. He continued the game for four hours, covering miles of the city until his feet were aching and sore. By the time he finally reached out his arm to flag down a taxi he was as confident as he could be that he was black.
The taxi was an old Lada that had seen better days. The driver leaned across to wind down the window and asked him where he wanted to go. Pope told him the Annino Metro station; the driver grunted his approval and indicated with a jerk of his head that Pope should get into the back. He did, settling into a musty-smelling leather seat that was held together with strips of duct tape. He yanked the seatbelt across his chest and pushed it home. He had been driven in taxis all around the world, but he remembered his previous experiences on the streets of Moscow as being particularly concerning. This driver looked very much like the others that he remembered: surly, aggressive and, judging by the smell of alcohol that permeated the cabin of the car, quite possibly drunk. The car didn’t look as if it would offer much by way of protection if they were to be involved in an accident, and so he resorted to crossing his fingers as the driver bullied his way out into the traffic and set out toward Pope’s destination.
54
The warehouse district was open, with wide roads and lots of space within which the buildings had been constructed. Pope stepped out of the taxi, paid the driver the two thousand roubles he demanded, and then looked around in an attempt to gain his bearings. The streets around the station were broad, with three lanes of traffic passing in each direction. The sky looked especially large here, with clouds idling overhead on a gentle breeze.
Pope walked away from the Metro. He had been shown the route he would need to take before leaving the embassy, and he found it simple enough to match the landmarks around him with the images he had seen on Google Street View. He reached the warehouse that had been arranged as the location for the meet. The warehouse was a legitimate business, offering wholesale budget groceries to the city’s traders. He passed through the open door and made his way along rows of well-stocked shelving. The interior was functional at best, the lighting provided by ugly strip lights that swung from the ceiling on old metal chains. Pope reached the rear of the warehouse and the plain door that he had been told opened into the office. He went inside, passing between two lines of racking before he reached a second door. He rapped his knuckles against it.
There was a pause. Pope looked up at the camera that had been fixed above the door and knew that he was being scrutinised.
“Come in,” said a voice in heavily accented English.
Pope pushed the door open and stepped into the compact room beyond. It was evidently used as the office for the business. There was a desk with an old computer positioned on it, two green metal filing cabinets that had been dented and scuffed over the years, and a second screen that displayed the feeds from a number of security cameras that had been placed both inside and outside the property. There was a single window, little more than a slit in the wall, that offered an unglamorous view of the yard outside where industrial bins were stored in readiness for collection. The room was lit by an unmasked bulb that cast a harsh light on the man who was sitting on the chair behind the desk.
“Aleksey?” Pope said.
“Yes,” he said. The man’s name was Aleksey Varlamov. He was in his early sixties. The lines on his careworn face were deep, testament to the cold Russian winter and a life that was more than unusually full of stress. “I take it you have been careful?”
“I’ve been going around in circles for hours,” Pope said. “My feet ache. If they’re still on me, they’re better at this than I am.”
“Thank you,” he said. “They have been more vigilant than ever in these last few months. The president is building up the security apparatus to beyond where it was during the Cold War. It is tiring.”
The BBC’s twenty-four-hour news channel was showing on the monitor. The anchor handed over to an outside broadcast and the footage changed to a shot of the house in Kings Worthy where the Ryans had lived. The camera was positioned so that it could shoot up the drive. The house was invisible, but there were police officers in protective gear gathered around a plain white van. It was momentarily disorientating: Pope had been inside the house just thirty-six hours earlier.
Varlamov noticed that Pope’s attention was on the news. “It is quite a story,” he said.
Footage of Putin at a meeting in the Kremlin appeared on the screen. The old man waved a hand at the images. “Vova is making a point,” he said, using the president’s nickname. “It doesn’t matter where you hide and who is protecting you. He has a long arm and a longer memory.”
Varlamov leaned over, clicked a mouse and closed the window down.
“Shall we begin?” he suggested. “You are interested in Kuznetsov and Timoshev.”
“Do you know where they are?”
“Our mutual friend has provided me with information,” Varlamov said. “He says that they were debriefed this morning and that the sessions are expected to last for the rest of today and then tomorrow. The Center has a lot to ask them, no doubt.”
“And now?”
“The source tells me that they are staying in the Four Seasons hotel. They are being presented to senior members of the Center at a reception this evening, and then, I assume, they will return to the hotel to rest.”
“Where is it?”
“Ulitsa Okhotnyy Ryad.”
“How easy is it to get in?”
“Simple enough. They are not being given special security. Why would they need it? We are in the heart of Moscow. The British would not be so foolish as to make an attempt on them here.” Varlamov glanced over at Pope and smiled. “That you would be so foolhardy is what will give you your advantage. The Center has grown too arrogant. Perhaps you will teach them some humility.”
“Afterwards,” Pope said. “I’d prefer them to stay arrogant until I’m out of the country.”
“Of course,” Varlamov said.
“How do I get in?”
“We have taken measures to make that as easy as possible.”
He opened a desk drawer and took out a small key.
“This opens a locker at Leningradsky railway station. The locker is number 537. You can get there from here on the Metro. Everything you need is there. There are two uniforms for the hotel and a keycard. You must go around the back of the building. There is a passage that leads to the staff entrance. The card will open the door. You will go inside, through a lobby area, and then you will find the staff canteen and bathrooms. You won’t be challenged there. You and your colleague should get changed into the uniforms and then you will be able to make your way to their room without issue.”
Varlamov had been working on the basis that there would be a two-man team and hadn’t been updated since the recent change to the plan.
“What number room are they in?” Pope asked him.
“1022. The tenth floor.”
“What about the equipment?”
“There is a bag inside the locker,” he said. “It is all there.”
Varlamov got up, taking a moment to stretch out his shoulders. “Is there anything else?”
The monitor flicked across to its screensaver: a horizontal tricolour of green, white and red. The Chechen flag. There was almost always a personal reason—a family reason—why men and women decided to take such great risks to work against the state. Pope guessed that Varlamov had plenty of reasons.
“No,” Pope said. “That’s all I need.”
The old man leaned back against the wooden slats of his chair. “My people have a saying: Oyla yocuš lettarg ka docuš vella. Look before you leap. Be careful. They do not know you are coming, but Moscow is a dangerous city. They have eyes everywhere.”
Pope took the old man’s hand; his skin was leathery and the bones felt brittle beneath. “Good luck,” he said.
“And to you.”
Pope turned around and opened the door to the office. He slipped the key in his pocket and started for the street. He had plenty to do.
55
Stepanov was in one of the surveillance cars that was responsible for tracking the British spy. They were passing by the warehouse just as the man came out onto the street.
His driver reached down to the radio and opened the channel. “He is on the street again,” he reported.
“Go around,” Stepanov said to the driver. “He will go back to the Metro. I want one more look at him.”
The operation had proceeded smoothly. The surveillance team was large; Stepanov had counted eight cars, and there were more agents on foot. Ground units were arranged in several layers, able to swap in and out seamlessly. Foot assets waited ahead of the British agent along likely routes, and teams matched his progress on parallel flanks. There was nothing to suggest that the target had noticed that he was being watched. Primakov would be pleased.
The driver spoke into the radio again. “Alpha team: stay on Varlamov,” he said. “Find out where he goes. He is to be kept under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Beta team. Stay on the British agent.”
“Understood,” the leader of the second team radioed back. “What are the rules of engagement?”
Stepanov took the microphone. “This is Major Stepanov,” he said. “Follow him, but you are not to intervene under any circumstances. You only move against him with my express permission. Is that clear?”
“Very clear, Comrade Major.”
Stepanov was careful. He had advanced to his present position through a combination of planning, political acuity and ruthlessness. He was not old enough to remember the days of the KGB, but he had heard stories of how it had been from his uncle and his father, both of whom had served with distinction. He knew that he was as guilty of romanticising the agency as the ex-spooks who recalled it with such fondness, but he liked to think that advancement then had been more honourable and straightforward than had been the case during his own rapid rise to the top. The Kremlin today was a nest of vipers. The desire to please the president had bred an atmosphere of poisonous treachery, of risk assessments, of “optics” maintained by duplicitous press secretaries, an environment that favoured promotion by way of back-stabbing rather than merit. It was not what it once was. That was a cause of regret for him. At least the comrade general had given him the opportunity to indulge the strategies that had served his predecessors well for so long.
The driver looped around and they went past the warehouse in the opposite direction. It was a short drive to the Metro, and Stepanov saw the Englishman making his way along the sidewalk toward the entrance to the station. The man had conducted an impressive counter-surveillance routine; he wouldn’t have risked the meet unless he was satisfied that he was clean, and that assumption was reasonable. But the surveillance team was expert and they swarmed around him like bees around a honeypot. There were enough of them that they could duck in and duck out, varying the followers so that the subject continued to be blissfully ignorant of the true situation.
Stepanov expected him to return to the city and meet with his colleague. They would equip themselves and then prepare to put their plan into effect. Timoshev and Kuznetsov would be oblivious, nothing more than the bait used to lure the enemy into the trap.
Stepanov was confident that he could leave the surveillance detail to maintain their coverage. He told the driver to provide regular reports, and then indicated that he should stop alongside a cab rank. He got out of the car and then slid into the back of the taxi at the front of the queue.
“Where do you want to go?” the driver asked him.
“The Four Seasons,” he said, and settled back as the car pulled out. He took out his phone and sent a text to Mitrokhin, telling him to meet him at the hotel in an hour.
Stepanov closed his eyes and started to work through the list of things that they needed to do. They were going to be busy for the next few hours.
56
Pope rode the Metro to Leningradsky station. He spent the journey thinking about the operation, and the alterations that had been rendered necessary by the change in priorities. It would have been a straightforward job with Milton; they had worked together before, and Pope trusted him implicitly. But Twelve was different. He was new to the Group, stepping up from the reserves to replace the unfortunate Ten. Pope had known nothing about the agent—even his or her gender—until Tanner had forwarded him a brief précis from his file. Twelve’s history was impressive, but it didn’t carry the same weight as would personal experience gained in the field together. Pope would proceed with more caution than usual.
The train arrived at the station and Pope disembarked. He took the escalator up and into the station, made his way to the left luggage facility and found locker 537. He took the key from his pocket, put it into the lock and opened the door.
There was a leather backpack. He opened the backpack inside the locker so that he could examine it without being observed. There were two bundles of clothes, neatly folded, jackets and trousers that looked like the uniform one might expect a hotel porter to wear. Pope saw the logo of the Four Seasons on the lapel of one of the jackets. There were two Sig Sauer P224s, together with two boxes of ammunition and two suppressors. There was an envelope. He pushed his finger inside the flap and slid it along, opening it. The envelope contained a keycard that was also marked with the Four Seasons logo, a wedge of high-denomination banknotes, and two wallets with bank cards and other IDs in the name of two fresh legends, one for him and one meant for Milton. There were passports in the same names, with their pictures on the photo pages.
It all looked to be in order; Pope put the envelope back, zipped the bag up, took it out of the locker, unhooked the garment carrier and closed the door. He put the bag over his shoulder and, instinctively checking the aisle in both directions, made his way back to the entrance and the concourse outside.
Pope made his way to the Romanovsky Obelisk in Alexander Garden, close by the walls of the Kremlin. The monument had originally been erected to commemorate the Romanov dynasty, but Lenin’s propagandists had altered the obelisk so that it now paid homage to revolutionary thinkers: Marx, Engels, all the others.
Pope recognised Number Twelve from the description that Tanner had given him. He was waiting for him on the steps near the obelisk. He was in his mid-thirties, tall and thin and dressed in jeans, a shirt and a light jacket that he wore undone in the pleasant weather. He had a rucksack slung over his shoulder.
Pope nodded at Twelve as he approached. Twelve drew alongside and matched his pace.
“Good evening,” Pope said.
“Evening.”
It was a short ten-minute walk to the Four Seasons. They set off through the gardens. Pope glanced over at Twelve. He was looking left and right, eyes open for possible repeats that might suggest that one or both of them had brought surveillance with them. Pope had been watching, too, and had seen nothing. He saw nothing now, either.
Pope glanced over at him. “Do you have an update?”
“The operation is authorised. They want it done tonight. Do you know where they are?”
“The Four Seasons,” Pope said. “It’s not far.”
“Did you get the equipment?”
“I did. A keycard to get in, two uniforms for us, two pistols.”
They passed a couple sitting on a bench and Twelve was silent until they were out of earshot.
“Is this your first operation?” Pope asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “But I have experience.”
“I’m sure you do,” Pope said. “But this is my job. I’m the senior man. That going to be all right?”
Twelve looked across at him, his face impassive. “Of course.”
There was something about Twelve that Pope did not like. His tone, his coldness; it was difficult to put his finger on it, but he decided that he would need to be careful with him.
57
Primakov and Natasha had met at the safe house earlier that evening. Primakov had made them cocktails and then they had retreated to the bedroom for an hour. Primakov had fallen asleep and, when he awoke, it was to the smell of cooked liver. He showered, dressed, and padded through to the kitchen on bare feet.
Natasha was preparing a midnight snack of toast and pâté. She was an excellent cook, and it was his favourite of the dishes in her repertoire.
“Are you well rested?” she said, smiling at him.
“I am,” he said. “I needed it. It’s been a long week.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I know it’s my fault.”
“No, no,” he said, worried that she might think that he had rebuked her. “I don’t blame you, not at all. You were unfortunate.”
“And yet fortunate that I had you to take care of it for me.”
He stepped behind her and massaged her neck. He was happy to accept her gratitude. He stepped closer now so that her back was pressed against his chest and watched over her shoulder as she worked. She had caramelised chicken livers and pancetta, and then deglazed the pan with a slug of brandy. Now she was chopping parsley, capers and shallots, the knife slicing down with impressive speed and accuracy as she prepared the ingredients.
“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked.
“YouTube,” she grinned.
“Smells good,” he said.
She reached up with her left hand and held his hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Nikolasha,” she said, using the diminutive that he liked so much.
“For what?”
She turned her head so that she could kiss him on the lips. “For helping me. Thank you for everything.”
She added the chopped ingredients to the pan and then added lemon zest, lemon juice and a tablespoon of oil. The aroma deepened and Primakov’s mouth began to water.
“Five minutes,” she said.
He had left his phone on the dining table and he heard it buzzing with an incoming message. He went over to it, saw that it was an encrypted text, and waited for the algorithm to decrypt it.
He frowned. It was a message from PROZHEKTOR.
WE NEED TO MEET. USUAL PLACE. MIDNIGHT. PLS CONFIRM.
“Chyort wozmi,” he said. Shit.
“What is it?”
He looked at his watch. Eleven-thirty.
“Nikolasha? What’s the matter?”
“It’s work,” he said. “I have to go.”
“Now? Why? What’s wrong?”
He didn’t want to tell her that it was PROZHEKTOR, and that this was likely to do with the British and his attempt to clean up the mess that she had made with Anastasiya Romanova.
“I can’t say,” he deflected. “It’s probably nothing—nothing that you need to worry about. Will the pâté keep?”
“I can put it in the fridge,” she said, pouting a little. “But don’t be long. I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”
He put on his socks and shoes, took his coat from the back of the sofa and shrugged it on. “Give me an hour,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
58
Pope and Twelve found the hotel and split up so that they could scout the area independently of each other. The Four Seasons was next to a colourfully decorated arch that opened onto a neat communal square. The street was busy, despite the hour, with cars hurrying in both directions. There were a few pedestrians out and about, although Pope saw nothing to suggest that he was being surveilled.
They had agreed to meet at eleven-thirty. Pope found the entrance that led into the hotel garage and then, in turn, to the hotel’s staff entrance. Twelve was waiting for him there.
There were no security staff posted at the garage and they were able to enter without being seen. They found their way inside until they reached the staff door. Pope took out the keycard that he had been given and held it against the reader next to the door; the device emitted a satisfied beep, a light shone green and the lock clicked open. Pope pushed the door and they both made their way inside. There was an antechamber inside the door with a notice board and a vending machine with drinks and snacks. A corridor led away from the antechamber, and, as Pope tested the doors to the left and the right, he found male and female toilets and a small canteen. There were two women in the canteen, smoking cigarettes through a window that opened onto a fetid corner where the big industrial bins were kept.
Pope backed away from the door before the women noticed that he was there and made his way back to the male toilets. There were two rooms for men and two for women, each with a toilet and sink and a storage locker. Pope stepped into the first men’s room. Twelve came in after him and Pope slid the bolt in the lock.
Pope opened the rucksack and took out the hotel uniforms. They both changed. One jacket had been intended for Milton, and Twelve was slenderer than him; the jacket was a little baggy, but it would still serve. Pope took out the pistols and handed one over. Pope put on the shoulder rig, double-checked the load on his weapon and pushed it into the holster, checking in the mirror to ensure that the jacket covered it. It did. Twelve did the same.
Pope took their clothes and stuffed them into the rucksack. He opened the storage locker and left the bag inside.
“Ready?” he asked.
Twelve nodded.
Pope checked his watch: half past eleven. He took a deep breath, slid the bolt back and opened the door. The two women he had seen in the canteen were loitering outside the door to the women’s toilet; Pope nodded as he went by and, before they could speak to him and expose the fact that he spoke no Russian, he was past them and on the staircase that led to the hotel’s public spaces. Twelve followed close behind.
59
There was a service elevator in a separate shaft adjacent to the elevators that the guests used. Pope summoned the car and then he and Twelve stepped inside. The car needed to be authorised before it would move, but all it took was for him to press his keycard against the reader and the buttons for each floor changed from red to green. Pope pressed the button for the tenth floor and stood back to wait for the doors to close. He heard a man’s voice, a shouted request in Russian, and then, even as he willed the doors shut, a hand shot between them and pressed them open again. The man who stepped into the car with Pope was wearing the uniform of hotel security, with faux-military epaulettes and piping along the shoulders of his shirt.
“Zdravstvujtye,” the man said.
Pope had been staring down at his feet; now, though, he glanced up and saw that the guard was looking at him.
“Zdravstvujtye,” Pope said, knowing that his pronunciation was terrible.
Twelve stood there, quietly, and Pope could feel the violence emanating out of him like woozy summer heat.
Pope waited for the man to say something else. He wouldn’t be able to understand him or reply without making it obvious that he did not speak the language – and that, as a staff member in the glitziest hotel in Moscow, would not have been credible. He felt the shape of the gun tucked against his body and knew that there was a good chance that he would have to use it. That would lengthen the odds of successfully completing the operation to such an extent that he would most likely need to abort. And if he did that, if the alarm was sounded, then how would he—
His increasingly gloomy train of thought was interrupted by a chime as the elevator reached the seventh floor.
“Proshchay,” the man said, smiling guilelessly as he stepped through the open doors.
Pope found that he was holding his breath; the doors closed, the lift started to ascend again and Pope exhaled in relief.
“Lucky,” Twelve commented.
Pope knew that he didn’t mean them.
It was a temporary balm. The numbers ticked up through eight and nine and then reached ten. The lift chimed again and the doors parted. Pope and Twelve stepped out. There was a generous lobby, with a lit water feature burbling musically in a sconce, and a corridor stretched away in both directions. The carpet was deep and luxurious, and the door numbers looked to have been inscribed on pieces of polished slate.
Pope followed the signs for room number 1022. His palm itched for the weight of the Sig and he felt the first drops of nervous sweat running down his back. It wasn’t unusual for him to feel anxious at a time like this, and this operation, unlike almost all of the others that he had undertaken since he had joined Group Fifteen, had not received the same degree of planning. Indeed, it was quite the contrary; it seemed as if it had received very limited consideration, and then Twelve had been foisted on him at the last moment and what planning they had done had been disregarded. Intelligence had been received and it needed to be acted upon quickly and decisively; that might have been acceptable if he had been able to take out the targets at arm’s length with explosives or a ranged weapon, but that was not the case. The mandarins wanted to put on a show, to make a point that their counterparts at the Center would not be able to ignore or mistake. It was Pope’s job to make that point, and hang the consequences.
He was nervous.
60
The rendezvous was in Park Presnenskiy, near the children’s playground. It was just before midnight when Primakov arrived, and the only people he saw as he made his way inside were a couple who were evidently the worse off for drink, staggering together arm in arm. He paid them no heed and walked quickly, following the path between a line of oaks to the bench.
PROZHEKTOR was waiting for him.
He sat down.
“My dear Jessie.”
“Hello, General,” she said.
Jessie Ross was fidgeting with her phone, the screen washing blue light up over her face. Primakov had been personally responsible for her recruitment and had kept her file as a project even after his promotion to deputy director. She had been twenty when he had recruited her. They had been fortunate to find her when they did. The recruitment pool for possible Directorate S agents was large: foreign government representatives, businessmen looking to broaden their interests in a country that was encouraging inward investment, scientists, academics, military personnel, and students. It was in this last category that Ross had been found. Her professor had worked for Directorate RT, the KGB’s forerunner to Directorate S, and had continued to work for it after Putin had reincarnated the KGB as the FSB. He had identified her as politically active with socialist leanings and had suggested that she might be ripe for an approach. Directorate S almost always used native Russians; they were more malleable, could be motivated by patriotism and, when things went bad, could be influenced by threats to loved ones who were still at home. One had to be more careful with recruiting foreigners, and the process for bringing Ross aboard had been long and meticulous. The network of agents known as the agentura had become involved in a process of get-acquainted chats. She was studied via agents at the university, by administrative and professorial staff who were friendly to the cause. It was determined that she had the necessary aptitude to facilitate a career in a sensitive area on her return to her country.
Only then had the approach been made. Her professor had been responsible for it and, over the course of a month, he had reeled her in. She had not been won over by politics or ideology; she had shown no interest in either. Rather, she was a product of capitalism in its basest, most brutal sense: she had named her price, and Primakov had decided that they could pay it. The price had gone up over time, but so too had her performance.
She had received additional training that went beyond the curriculum of her course and had been returned to London with the tradecraft necessary to keep her beyond suspicion. Her subsequent application for work at Vauxhall Cross had been accepted and, to Primakov’s delight, he had found himself with a live asset in the heart of the enemy’s intelligence apparatus. She provided regular reports, using an SRAC relay that was buried in Epping Forest. She had developed an interest in mountain biking and would visit the forest under the pretext of indulging it. The trail she followed passed within fifty feet of the relay, allowing her to transfer her reports without incurring even the slightest scintilla of suspicion. Ross had already more than justified the time it had taken and the expense that had been invested in her recruitment.
Primakov had made the educated guess that Anastasiya Romanova would reach out to her father once she had gone into hiding. Ross had already been assigned to the department responsible for babysitting the traitors who had fled to the United Kingdom, and she had been able to pass Aleksandrov’s file to Vincent Beck. She had lobbied to be added to the trip to Moscow—it was an easy yes given the circumstances—and she had alerted Primakov to the two Group Fifteen headhunters who had arrived in the city ahead of her and the plan that had been conceived. She had given him the opportunity to prevent the assassination attempt on Timoshev and Kuznetsov. She had given him the chance to arrest the headhunters and hand a public relations coup to the president.
He turned to her. “What is it?” he asked.
“You have a problem.”
“With what? The operation—it’s still going ahead?”
“It is,” she said. “But that’s not the problem. There’s been a change of plan.” She took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I only have ten minutes. I’m supposed to be at the hotel. They think I’m getting ready to leave.”
“I don’t understand. Leaving? Where to?”
“Anastasiya Romanova has been in contact with Vauxhall Cross. She couriered a letter to the consulate in Vladivostok.”
Primakov clenched his fists. “Saying what?”
“That she wants to defect. She said that she had asked her father to help, and that the Russians killed him. But she hasn’t given up. She proposed a meeting the day after tomorrow and said that VX should send someone to get her out of the country.”
“Where?”
“Komsomolsk,” she said.
Primakov dug his nails into his palms. “She’s been there all the time?” he said.
“It seems so.”
“What will the British do?”
“They’re sending one of the agents to go and get her—John Smith.”
“Alone?”
“No,” she said. “That’s why I can’t stay. Smith doesn’t speak Russian, so they’re sending me, too.”
Primakov felt the buzz of anticipation; this was better news. “When?”
“We’re booked on a flight in the morning.”
“When and where has she proposed to meet?”
“The railway station. Saturday, at midday.”
“Well done. You must go back to them now. They must not suspect you.”
“What will you do?”
“I will send a team,” he said. “Two of my best men will lead it.”
“What do I do?”
“Whatever they’ve told you. Will you be going to the rendezvous?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I expect so.”
“We will be there. We will arrest them both. If anything changes, you must contact me. Do you understand?”
“Of course,” she said, with a little bite in her voice.
Primakov knew that the British had consistently underestimated her, and that she hated it; he reminded himself not to make the same mistake. She had already demonstrated tradecraft well beyond what he would have expected in one so young and so inexperienced.
“What about me?” she asked him.
“You’ll need to get away. Smith won’t be able to expose you. He will be locked up. They will have given you an emergency exfiltration route—what is it?”
“It hasn’t been mentioned. That might be down to Smith. I have a lot of time with him until the meet.”
“Follow it,” he said. “I’ll see to it that you can leave the country. Tell them that there was an ambush and you managed to escape. They know they have a leak. They will suspect that it is you. They will interrogate you, and it won’t be pleasant. You will have to win back their trust when you return.”
“I can do that,” she said.
“Go back to the hotel,” he said. “We will be waiting at the rendezvous.”
She started to leave, but paused. “Be careful,” she added.
“Of what?”
“Smith. There’s something about him. He makes me uncomfortable.”
“Don’t worry, Jessie,” Primakov reassured her. “He is here, in Russia, far from home. He might be dangerous, but he will be outnumbered. There will be nothing that he can do—you have seen to that.”
She nodded her agreement and, again, he marvelled at her composure. She had the potential to be the most important Russian agent since Philby and the others. She was young and already embedded within the institutions of British intelligence. There had been early successes, most notably her seduction of the private secretary to the foreign secretary, a coup that had delivered strong results before it had been brought to an abrupt end by the politician’s wife. Even with that, Primakov knew that she hadn’t even started to deliver everything of which she would eventually be capable; she could provide him with years of gold-plated intelligence. It would not be a simple thing to protect her now but, even given her potential future value, he was prepared to take the risk that she would be blown. There would be an inquest in London, but Ross was good and Primakov concluded that she stood a decent chance of continuing to fool them.
“Your flight—is it through Vladivostok?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I will send my man to speak with you there. There is a business lounge there—the Laguna Lounge. Two hours before your flight, tell Smith you intend to take a shower. He will meet you then, once you are alone. Yes?”
She nodded.
“Good luck, Jessie. You are doing valuable work. I am grateful—we’re all grateful.”
“Be sure that shows in my next payment,” she said, and, from her expression, Primakov knew that she was serious. She was driven by avarice; Primakov could ignore that when her production was so good.
Ross headed in the direction of the Metro and Primakov went to his car. He took out his phone and called Stepanov.
“Good evening, General.”
“Report, please.”
“The agents are in the hotel.”
“Who?”
“One of the men we have been following and another I don’t recognise.”
“Listen carefully, Major. I need you to abort.”
Stepanov couldn’t hide his surprise. “Sir?”
“Abort the mission. Do not interfere.”
“I don’t understand, sir. They will kill our agents.”
“I know that,” Primakov snapped. “How many men are with you?”
“Just me and Boris.”
“Good. You are not to mention this matter to anyone. Come to Yasenevo once it has been done—tonight. I have something very important that I need you to do for me.”
He ended the call and put his phone back into his pocket.
He knew that he had just signed the death warrants for two Russian heroes, but, at the same time, he knew that it was the right thing to do. The British couldn’t know that they had been compromised, and they would if his chistilshchiks killed their agents before they could carry out their orders. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but swallow it he must. Natasha’s future depended on him silencing Anastasiya Romanova, and Ross had given him his chance to do that. He would salve his conscience with Smith. He would bury him in Lefortovo Prison and let Stepanov have his way with him. They would squeeze every last drop of intelligence out of him, try him for espionage and then inter him in the foulest, most unpleasant camp that they could find.
And then, in time, they would take him outside, put him against the wall, and shoot him.
51
Milton, Pope and Ross had spent the morning preparing for the operation. Milton had planned to go ahead that evening. Pope was responsible for making contact with the cut-out and it was decided that Ross would accompany him to the rendezvous, leaving the embassy after lunch in order to allow for an extended SDR. In the meantime, Milton would make the preparations for the hit and their exfiltration immediately afterwards.
Planning the operation had made Milton uncomfortable. The dream felt close; he saw glimpses of Callaghan out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look there was nothing there. He would have to add two more victims to his tally. He didn’t want to do it, but he knew he couldn’t easily say no. He felt deadlocked, caught between his fear of the dream and the consequences of insubordination. He found, to his surprise, that he wanted to go to another meeting.
They had a working lunch of sandwiches and coffee and pressed on. Ross seemed to have come to terms with the nature of the operation and had stifled any further objections. Pope had spread a map out over the table and Ross helped him plan the SDR, a long route with extensive switches and double-backs that would bring them to a vegetable warehouse in the Biryulyovo district where the cut-out had agreed to meet. Ross was evidently familiar with the city from her previous time here, and she suggested an alteration to the dry-cleaning run that Pope approved.
“What do we know about the cut-out?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Milton said. “That’s the point.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“It’s just how it is,” Pope said. “He’s the only one who has contact with the source and with us. If we get into trouble, the only person we can give up is the cut-out. The same goes for the source. It’s insulation.”
“I know how it works,” she replied. “It’s just… wouldn’t you rather go straight to BLUEBIRD?”
“That’s never going to happen,” Milton said.
“Do we know anything about them?”
“No. And I don’t want to know. Neither do you.”
COS McCartney had returned to the secure room. “How far have you got?”
“It’s coming along,” Pope said. “Depending on what we learn this afternoon, I think we’ll be ready to go tonight.”
She sat down at the table. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to adjust things a little. There’s been a development.”
Milton looked up. “What?”
“Potential change of plan. We know a little more about Southwold.”
“Go on,” Milton said.
“Aleksandrov was killed because of his daughter.”
“Why?”
“Her name is Anastasiya Romanov. She wants to defect. She’s offered British intelligence a cache of restricted information in return for safe harbour.”
“Information?” Ross asked.
“Plans for a new Russian fighter aircraft. I’m no expert, but it’s got everyone in the River House sitting up and paying attention. Aleksandrov was arranging the transaction, going through Geggel. The Russians must have found out what he was offering and decided that it was important enough to send two of their most valuable agents to deal with it. They killed them both for it.”
“But not the daughter?”
“No,” McCartney said. “Because she’s still in Russia. That’s where the plans need to change. We’re researching her at the moment, but she’s made contact directly. And we don’t think the Russians know where she is.”
“But we do?” Milton said.
“She couriered a package to the consulate at Vladivostok this morning. It was a message—the deal stands if we can get her out. She’s going to be waiting at the railway station in Komsomolsk-on-Amur in two days’ time, and then again on the following day.”
“I don’t know where that is,” Pope admitted.
“No reason why you should,” Ross said. “It’s in the east. A thousand miles north of Vladivostok. It’s the arse-end of nowhere. Not the sort of place you’d ever be expected to visit.”
“But you’ve been?”
“I have,” she said. “When I was a student. I did the Trans-Siberian. I wandered around when I got to the Far East. Komsomolsk has got to be one of the strangest places I’ve ever been to. It’s basically two cities—one grew up around the shipyard and the other around the Sukhoi factory. And this is in a place that is minus-twenty in the winter and plus-thirty in summer.”
Milton turned to McCartney. “What does London want us to do?”
“They want to get Anastasiya out, but it’s going to have to be done quickly and discreetly. You’re already on the ground. You can move fast. London wants you to go and collect her, then get her out of the country.” She turned to Ross. “They want you to go, too, Ms. Ross. It’s Smith’s operation, but there needs to be a Russian speaker and you’ve been there before.”
“A long time ago,” she protested.
“You speak the language and you know the region. Smith will need assistance, and that’s the best we can do at short notice.”
Pope drummed his fingers on the table. “And what about the assassins? We forget about them?”
“We do not,” McCartney said. “But we have to decide whether you can still make it work. Smith?”
Milton found, with a mixture of relief and shame, that he was relieved to have had the responsibility of eliminating Timoshev and Kuznetsov taken from him.
“Smith?”
Callaghan was in the shadows at the edge of the room. Don’t think that you’re getting away with it. This is just a reprieve. There’s still more killing to do.
“Smith?”
Milton blinked the phantom away. McCartney was asking him a question.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I missed that.”
“I need to know whether you think we can still go ahead with the operation.”
“With just one man?”
“No. They’re sending another to make up the team. He’ll be here later this afternoon.”
“Do we know who?”
“We don’t,” McCartney said.
Milton could guess: it would be one of the others from the Group.
“That doesn’t matter,” Pope said. “I’ll meet the cut-out this afternoon as planned and then I can nail down the plan with.” Pope turned to Milton for approval. “Agreed?”
“It can still be done,” Milton said.
“What about us?” Ross said, glancing over at Milton.
“You need to be on your way,” McCartney said. “London wants you to make contact with Romanova at the first available opportunity. That’s tomorrow. And Komsomolsk is a long trip. We’re going to need to work on new legends and get the travel documentation arranged. You’re flying out tonight.”
52
Primakov had been working on his plan all morning. He felt as if this sordid business was finally entering its end game. There were just a few loose ends to snip and then it would be done. He had to hold his nerve for just a little longer.
His intercom buzzed.
He turned back to his desk and pressed the button to speak. “Yes?”
“Major Stepanov and Captain Mitrokhin are here, sir.”
Primakov looked at the clock on the wall: they were on time, punctual as ever. “Send them in.”
Primakov sat down as Major Yuri Stepanov and Captain Boris Mitrokhin opened the door and came into the office.
“Good afternoon, Comrade General,” Stepanov said with the usual combination of respect and deference.
“Good afternoon, comrades,” Primakov said. “Please—sit.”
The two men unbuttoned their jackets and sat down opposite him.
Stepanov tugged down on both cuffs until an inch of creamy shirt showed beneath the sleeves of his jacket. He was a fastidious dresser, although, when the situation demanded it, adept at disguising himself so adroitly that he could melt into his surroundings. He was in his early forties, with an army buzzcut and thick, heavy features. Mitrokhin was younger, mid-thirties, and a little rougher around the edges. Both were more informally described as chistilshchiks, or ‘mechanics.’ Stepanov had first come to the attention of Primakov during the siege of School Number One in Beslan. Stepanov had been assigned to Vympel, the Spetsnaz unit that had been sent into the school to end the siege. He had eliminated more than a dozen of the Chechen terrorists who had been responsible for the atrocity, and had then chased down the leaders of the conspiracy as they fled into the hills and mountains of Ossetia.
Stepanov had then been reassigned to Department V of the SVR, bringing his enthusiastic junior officer with him. The Department’s role was described as ‘Executive Action,’ but that was a bland euphemism for the work that its agents concerned themselves with: they were deployed by the other Directorates when circumstances demanded a more rigorous solution to problems. Of course, Primakov knew of Group Fifteen, and Stepanov and the other men and women who comprised the Department fulfilled a similar function for the Rodina. The Department had existed in the same form during the reign of the KGB and had stubbornly resisted change during the KGB’s metamorphosis into the SVR. It seemed that there would always be a need for men like Stepanov and Mitrokhin, regardless of the window dressing and public relations nonsense that its mother organisation might now be subjected to.
Primakov had recruited them both six months ago. He wanted someone to whom he could turn when his illegals needed a specialist to close out their operations. There had been operations in the Crimea and the Ukraine, and all of them had been carried out flawlessly. Stepanov was something of a throwback to the purer days of the Soviet state, and his dissatisfaction with what he saw as the excesses of modern Russia had been noted in his file. That might have impeded his upward trajectory if he had stayed where he was, but Primakov was a pragmatist; Stepanov was an expert, a consummate professional who could be relied upon to deliver excellent results, and, as such, Primakov was prepared to accommodate his opinions. Indeed, Primakov too was opposed to much of what he saw at the Kremlin; he would have been a hypocrite to have penalised him.
Mitrokhin was easier to handle: he did everything that Stepanov told him.
“How are you both?”
“We are well, Comrade General,” Stepanov said, speaking for them both. “You have need of us?”
Stepanov was all business, just as ever. “I do.” Primakov stood up and went around to the other side of the desk. “The British have sent agents to Moscow to assassinate two SVR officers. I would like you to stop them from doing that.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Who are the agents?”
“Two men from Group Fifteen.”
If Stepanov was concerned about the pedigree of their targets, he did not show it. “When?”
“They will make an attempt on the lives of our agents this evening,” he said. “We have a source within their organisation—they will be told where the SVR officers are staying. We believe that the attempt will be made there.”
“Where?”
“The Four Seasons.”
“Do the SVR officers know that they are at risk?”
“They do not. It’s unnecessary. You will intervene before any action can be taken against them.”
“What action would you like us to take, sir?”
“Follow them—I’ll make a surveillance team available to you. They will be meeting a cut-out, and that might lead us to the traitor within the Center.”
“And then?”
“Kill them both when they make their attempt and then disappear them. This is something that must stay between us. No one else is to know what we have done.”
Primakov swivelled and reached down for the file on his desk, a manila folder with three sheets of paper clipped inside. It contained everything that Stepanov and Mitrokhin would need to know. Primakov handed it to the major.
Stepanov flipped through the pages, then closed the folder and stood. Mitrokhin did the same.
“Very good, sir. I’ll see that it is done. Is there anything else?”
“No.” Primakov looked at the silent Mitrokhin. “Captain? Anything to add?”
“No, Comrade General,” Mitrokhin said.
Stepanov gave a sharp nod. “We will report tomorrow.”
Both men saluted, turned on their heels and made their way out of the office. Primakov exhaled. Stepanov was a peerless operator, efficient and utterly ruthless, and Mitrokhin was the same. He had lost count of the number of files that he had passed to Stepanov for action—thirty, maybe more—and none of the men and women put in the chistilshchiks’ way was still breathing. It was strange: they both made Primakov nervous, and yet there was a calming sense of finality that came with handing the assassins a file and knowing that the work would be done without any further need for him to be involved.
He thought of Natasha. It would all soon be finished. The only loose end was Anastasiya Romanova, but PROZHEKTOR would find her eventually, and when that happened, the whole sorry mess would come to an end. He would prepare another file and hand it to Stepanov and then, finally, he would be able to relax.
53
Pope was driven out of the embassy at five o’clock that afternoon. The sun was still shining down onto the city, and it was pleasantly warm. The driver had taken a route that followed the Moskva River before looping around and crossing it on Smolenskaya Ulitsa. He had waited until the last moment to leave it, hanging a sharp right that pointed them toward the park at Lesya Ukrainka. He turned right again and then, almost immediately, left onto the narrow street that skirted the park. The driver turned again onto another quiet side street and, holding up three fingers, started a countdown as he slowed the car. Pope opened the door and bailed out, throwing himself down behind a parked van as the driver sped up again. The unmarked FSB tail followed just behind, maintaining a discreet distance that had allowed Pope—so far as he could tell—to get out without being seen.
He stayed where he was, waiting for another minute to confirm that there was not a second car, and then, satisfied that there was not, he set off toward the tall, dilapidated apartment block that loomed over the park like a sentinel. He took a cap out of his pocket and pulled it down so that the brim was tight around his forehead, and then put on a pair of dark glasses.
He walked north, caught a bus on Raduzhnaya Street and rode it for fifteen minutes before getting off at Otradnoye station and riding the Metro back in the opposite direction. He continued the game for four hours, covering miles of the city until his feet were aching and sore. By the time he finally reached out his arm to flag down a taxi he was as confident as he could be that he was black.
The taxi was an old Lada that had seen better days. The driver leaned across to wind down the window and asked him where he wanted to go. Pope told him the Annino Metro station; the driver grunted his approval and indicated with a jerk of his head that Pope should get into the back. He did, settling into a musty-smelling leather seat that was held together with strips of duct tape. He yanked the seatbelt across his chest and pushed it home. He had been driven in taxis all around the world, but he remembered his previous experiences on the streets of Moscow as being particularly concerning. This driver looked very much like the others that he remembered: surly, aggressive and, judging by the smell of alcohol that permeated the cabin of the car, quite possibly drunk. The car didn’t look as if it would offer much by way of protection if they were to be involved in an accident, and so he resorted to crossing his fingers as the driver bullied his way out into the traffic and set out toward Pope’s destination.
54
The warehouse district was open, with wide roads and lots of space within which the buildings had been constructed. Pope stepped out of the taxi, paid the driver the two thousand roubles he demanded, and then looked around in an attempt to gain his bearings. The streets around the station were broad, with three lanes of traffic passing in each direction. The sky looked especially large here, with clouds idling overhead on a gentle breeze.
Pope walked away from the Metro. He had been shown the route he would need to take before leaving the embassy, and he found it simple enough to match the landmarks around him with the images he had seen on Google Street View. He reached the warehouse that had been arranged as the location for the meet. The warehouse was a legitimate business, offering wholesale budget groceries to the city’s traders. He passed through the open door and made his way along rows of well-stocked shelving. The interior was functional at best, the lighting provided by ugly strip lights that swung from the ceiling on old metal chains. Pope reached the rear of the warehouse and the plain door that he had been told opened into the office. He went inside, passing between two lines of racking before he reached a second door. He rapped his knuckles against it.
There was a pause. Pope looked up at the camera that had been fixed above the door and knew that he was being scrutinised.
“Come in,” said a voice in heavily accented English.
Pope pushed the door open and stepped into the compact room beyond. It was evidently used as the office for the business. There was a desk with an old computer positioned on it, two green metal filing cabinets that had been dented and scuffed over the years, and a second screen that displayed the feeds from a number of security cameras that had been placed both inside and outside the property. There was a single window, little more than a slit in the wall, that offered an unglamorous view of the yard outside where industrial bins were stored in readiness for collection. The room was lit by an unmasked bulb that cast a harsh light on the man who was sitting on the chair behind the desk.
“Aleksey?” Pope said.
“Yes,” he said. The man’s name was Aleksey Varlamov. He was in his early sixties. The lines on his careworn face were deep, testament to the cold Russian winter and a life that was more than unusually full of stress. “I take it you have been careful?”
“I’ve been going around in circles for hours,” Pope said. “My feet ache. If they’re still on me, they’re better at this than I am.”
“Thank you,” he said. “They have been more vigilant than ever in these last few months. The president is building up the security apparatus to beyond where it was during the Cold War. It is tiring.”
The BBC’s twenty-four-hour news channel was showing on the monitor. The anchor handed over to an outside broadcast and the footage changed to a shot of the house in Kings Worthy where the Ryans had lived. The camera was positioned so that it could shoot up the drive. The house was invisible, but there were police officers in protective gear gathered around a plain white van. It was momentarily disorientating: Pope had been inside the house just thirty-six hours earlier.
Varlamov noticed that Pope’s attention was on the news. “It is quite a story,” he said.
Footage of Putin at a meeting in the Kremlin appeared on the screen. The old man waved a hand at the images. “Vova is making a point,” he said, using the president’s nickname. “It doesn’t matter where you hide and who is protecting you. He has a long arm and a longer memory.”
Varlamov leaned over, clicked a mouse and closed the window down.
“Shall we begin?” he suggested. “You are interested in Kuznetsov and Timoshev.”
“Do you know where they are?”
“Our mutual friend has provided me with information,” Varlamov said. “He says that they were debriefed this morning and that the sessions are expected to last for the rest of today and then tomorrow. The Center has a lot to ask them, no doubt.”
“And now?”
“The source tells me that they are staying in the Four Seasons hotel. They are being presented to senior members of the Center at a reception this evening, and then, I assume, they will return to the hotel to rest.”
“Where is it?”
“Ulitsa Okhotnyy Ryad.”
“How easy is it to get in?”
“Simple enough. They are not being given special security. Why would they need it? We are in the heart of Moscow. The British would not be so foolish as to make an attempt on them here.” Varlamov glanced over at Pope and smiled. “That you would be so foolhardy is what will give you your advantage. The Center has grown too arrogant. Perhaps you will teach them some humility.”
“Afterwards,” Pope said. “I’d prefer them to stay arrogant until I’m out of the country.”
“Of course,” Varlamov said.
“How do I get in?”
“We have taken measures to make that as easy as possible.”
He opened a desk drawer and took out a small key.
“This opens a locker at Leningradsky railway station. The locker is number 537. You can get there from here on the Metro. Everything you need is there. There are two uniforms for the hotel and a keycard. You must go around the back of the building. There is a passage that leads to the staff entrance. The card will open the door. You will go inside, through a lobby area, and then you will find the staff canteen and bathrooms. You won’t be challenged there. You and your colleague should get changed into the uniforms and then you will be able to make your way to their room without issue.”
Varlamov had been working on the basis that there would be a two-man team and hadn’t been updated since the recent change to the plan.
“What number room are they in?” Pope asked him.
“1022. The tenth floor.”
“What about the equipment?”
“There is a bag inside the locker,” he said. “It is all there.”
Varlamov got up, taking a moment to stretch out his shoulders. “Is there anything else?”
The monitor flicked across to its screensaver: a horizontal tricolour of green, white and red. The Chechen flag. There was almost always a personal reason—a family reason—why men and women decided to take such great risks to work against the state. Pope guessed that Varlamov had plenty of reasons.
“No,” Pope said. “That’s all I need.”
The old man leaned back against the wooden slats of his chair. “My people have a saying: Oyla yocuš lettarg ka docuš vella. Look before you leap. Be careful. They do not know you are coming, but Moscow is a dangerous city. They have eyes everywhere.”
Pope took the old man’s hand; his skin was leathery and the bones felt brittle beneath. “Good luck,” he said.
“And to you.”
Pope turned around and opened the door to the office. He slipped the key in his pocket and started for the street. He had plenty to do.
55
Stepanov was in one of the surveillance cars that was responsible for tracking the British spy. They were passing by the warehouse just as the man came out onto the street.
His driver reached down to the radio and opened the channel. “He is on the street again,” he reported.
“Go around,” Stepanov said to the driver. “He will go back to the Metro. I want one more look at him.”
The operation had proceeded smoothly. The surveillance team was large; Stepanov had counted eight cars, and there were more agents on foot. Ground units were arranged in several layers, able to swap in and out seamlessly. Foot assets waited ahead of the British agent along likely routes, and teams matched his progress on parallel flanks. There was nothing to suggest that the target had noticed that he was being watched. Primakov would be pleased.
The driver spoke into the radio again. “Alpha team: stay on Varlamov,” he said. “Find out where he goes. He is to be kept under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Beta team. Stay on the British agent.”
“Understood,” the leader of the second team radioed back. “What are the rules of engagement?”
Stepanov took the microphone. “This is Major Stepanov,” he said. “Follow him, but you are not to intervene under any circumstances. You only move against him with my express permission. Is that clear?”
“Very clear, Comrade Major.”
Stepanov was careful. He had advanced to his present position through a combination of planning, political acuity and ruthlessness. He was not old enough to remember the days of the KGB, but he had heard stories of how it had been from his uncle and his father, both of whom had served with distinction. He knew that he was as guilty of romanticising the agency as the ex-spooks who recalled it with such fondness, but he liked to think that advancement then had been more honourable and straightforward than had been the case during his own rapid rise to the top. The Kremlin today was a nest of vipers. The desire to please the president had bred an atmosphere of poisonous treachery, of risk assessments, of “optics” maintained by duplicitous press secretaries, an environment that favoured promotion by way of back-stabbing rather than merit. It was not what it once was. That was a cause of regret for him. At least the comrade general had given him the opportunity to indulge the strategies that had served his predecessors well for so long.
The driver looped around and they went past the warehouse in the opposite direction. It was a short drive to the Metro, and Stepanov saw the Englishman making his way along the sidewalk toward the entrance to the station. The man had conducted an impressive counter-surveillance routine; he wouldn’t have risked the meet unless he was satisfied that he was clean, and that assumption was reasonable. But the surveillance team was expert and they swarmed around him like bees around a honeypot. There were enough of them that they could duck in and duck out, varying the followers so that the subject continued to be blissfully ignorant of the true situation.
Stepanov expected him to return to the city and meet with his colleague. They would equip themselves and then prepare to put their plan into effect. Timoshev and Kuznetsov would be oblivious, nothing more than the bait used to lure the enemy into the trap.
Stepanov was confident that he could leave the surveillance detail to maintain their coverage. He told the driver to provide regular reports, and then indicated that he should stop alongside a cab rank. He got out of the car and then slid into the back of the taxi at the front of the queue.
“Where do you want to go?” the driver asked him.
“The Four Seasons,” he said, and settled back as the car pulled out. He took out his phone and sent a text to Mitrokhin, telling him to meet him at the hotel in an hour.
Stepanov closed his eyes and started to work through the list of things that they needed to do. They were going to be busy for the next few hours.
56
Pope rode the Metro to Leningradsky station. He spent the journey thinking about the operation, and the alterations that had been rendered necessary by the change in priorities. It would have been a straightforward job with Milton; they had worked together before, and Pope trusted him implicitly. But Twelve was different. He was new to the Group, stepping up from the reserves to replace the unfortunate Ten. Pope had known nothing about the agent—even his or her gender—until Tanner had forwarded him a brief précis from his file. Twelve’s history was impressive, but it didn’t carry the same weight as would personal experience gained in the field together. Pope would proceed with more caution than usual.
The train arrived at the station and Pope disembarked. He took the escalator up and into the station, made his way to the left luggage facility and found locker 537. He took the key from his pocket, put it into the lock and opened the door.
There was a leather backpack. He opened the backpack inside the locker so that he could examine it without being observed. There were two bundles of clothes, neatly folded, jackets and trousers that looked like the uniform one might expect a hotel porter to wear. Pope saw the logo of the Four Seasons on the lapel of one of the jackets. There were two Sig Sauer P224s, together with two boxes of ammunition and two suppressors. There was an envelope. He pushed his finger inside the flap and slid it along, opening it. The envelope contained a keycard that was also marked with the Four Seasons logo, a wedge of high-denomination banknotes, and two wallets with bank cards and other IDs in the name of two fresh legends, one for him and one meant for Milton. There were passports in the same names, with their pictures on the photo pages.
It all looked to be in order; Pope put the envelope back, zipped the bag up, took it out of the locker, unhooked the garment carrier and closed the door. He put the bag over his shoulder and, instinctively checking the aisle in both directions, made his way back to the entrance and the concourse outside.
Pope made his way to the Romanovsky Obelisk in Alexander Garden, close by the walls of the Kremlin. The monument had originally been erected to commemorate the Romanov dynasty, but Lenin’s propagandists had altered the obelisk so that it now paid homage to revolutionary thinkers: Marx, Engels, all the others.
Pope recognised Number Twelve from the description that Tanner had given him. He was waiting for him on the steps near the obelisk. He was in his mid-thirties, tall and thin and dressed in jeans, a shirt and a light jacket that he wore undone in the pleasant weather. He had a rucksack slung over his shoulder.
Pope nodded at Twelve as he approached. Twelve drew alongside and matched his pace.
“Good evening,” Pope said.
“Evening.”
It was a short ten-minute walk to the Four Seasons. They set off through the gardens. Pope glanced over at Twelve. He was looking left and right, eyes open for possible repeats that might suggest that one or both of them had brought surveillance with them. Pope had been watching, too, and had seen nothing. He saw nothing now, either.
Pope glanced over at him. “Do you have an update?”
“The operation is authorised. They want it done tonight. Do you know where they are?”
“The Four Seasons,” Pope said. “It’s not far.”
“Did you get the equipment?”
“I did. A keycard to get in, two uniforms for us, two pistols.”
They passed a couple sitting on a bench and Twelve was silent until they were out of earshot.
“Is this your first operation?” Pope asked him.
“Yes,” he said. “But I have experience.”
“I’m sure you do,” Pope said. “But this is my job. I’m the senior man. That going to be all right?”
Twelve looked across at him, his face impassive. “Of course.”
There was something about Twelve that Pope did not like. His tone, his coldness; it was difficult to put his finger on it, but he decided that he would need to be careful with him.
57
Primakov and Natasha had met at the safe house earlier that evening. Primakov had made them cocktails and then they had retreated to the bedroom for an hour. Primakov had fallen asleep and, when he awoke, it was to the smell of cooked liver. He showered, dressed, and padded through to the kitchen on bare feet.
Natasha was preparing a midnight snack of toast and pâté. She was an excellent cook, and it was his favourite of the dishes in her repertoire.
“Are you well rested?” she said, smiling at him.
“I am,” he said. “I needed it. It’s been a long week.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I know it’s my fault.”
“No, no,” he said, worried that she might think that he had rebuked her. “I don’t blame you, not at all. You were unfortunate.”
“And yet fortunate that I had you to take care of it for me.”
He stepped behind her and massaged her neck. He was happy to accept her gratitude. He stepped closer now so that her back was pressed against his chest and watched over her shoulder as she worked. She had caramelised chicken livers and pancetta, and then deglazed the pan with a slug of brandy. Now she was chopping parsley, capers and shallots, the knife slicing down with impressive speed and accuracy as she prepared the ingredients.
“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked.
“YouTube,” she grinned.
“Smells good,” he said.
She reached up with her left hand and held his hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Nikolasha,” she said, using the diminutive that he liked so much.
“For what?”
She turned her head so that she could kiss him on the lips. “For helping me. Thank you for everything.”
She added the chopped ingredients to the pan and then added lemon zest, lemon juice and a tablespoon of oil. The aroma deepened and Primakov’s mouth began to water.
“Five minutes,” she said.
He had left his phone on the dining table and he heard it buzzing with an incoming message. He went over to it, saw that it was an encrypted text, and waited for the algorithm to decrypt it.
He frowned. It was a message from PROZHEKTOR.
WE NEED TO MEET. USUAL PLACE. MIDNIGHT. PLS CONFIRM.
“Chyort wozmi,” he said. Shit.
“What is it?”
He looked at his watch. Eleven-thirty.
“Nikolasha? What’s the matter?”
“It’s work,” he said. “I have to go.”
“Now? Why? What’s wrong?”
He didn’t want to tell her that it was PROZHEKTOR, and that this was likely to do with the British and his attempt to clean up the mess that she had made with Anastasiya Romanova.
“I can’t say,” he deflected. “It’s probably nothing—nothing that you need to worry about. Will the pâté keep?”
“I can put it in the fridge,” she said, pouting a little. “But don’t be long. I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”
He put on his socks and shoes, took his coat from the back of the sofa and shrugged it on. “Give me an hour,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
58
Pope and Twelve found the hotel and split up so that they could scout the area independently of each other. The Four Seasons was next to a colourfully decorated arch that opened onto a neat communal square. The street was busy, despite the hour, with cars hurrying in both directions. There were a few pedestrians out and about, although Pope saw nothing to suggest that he was being surveilled.
They had agreed to meet at eleven-thirty. Pope found the entrance that led into the hotel garage and then, in turn, to the hotel’s staff entrance. Twelve was waiting for him there.
There were no security staff posted at the garage and they were able to enter without being seen. They found their way inside until they reached the staff door. Pope took out the keycard that he had been given and held it against the reader next to the door; the device emitted a satisfied beep, a light shone green and the lock clicked open. Pope pushed the door and they both made their way inside. There was an antechamber inside the door with a notice board and a vending machine with drinks and snacks. A corridor led away from the antechamber, and, as Pope tested the doors to the left and the right, he found male and female toilets and a small canteen. There were two women in the canteen, smoking cigarettes through a window that opened onto a fetid corner where the big industrial bins were kept.
Pope backed away from the door before the women noticed that he was there and made his way back to the male toilets. There were two rooms for men and two for women, each with a toilet and sink and a storage locker. Pope stepped into the first men’s room. Twelve came in after him and Pope slid the bolt in the lock.
Pope opened the rucksack and took out the hotel uniforms. They both changed. One jacket had been intended for Milton, and Twelve was slenderer than him; the jacket was a little baggy, but it would still serve. Pope took out the pistols and handed one over. Pope put on the shoulder rig, double-checked the load on his weapon and pushed it into the holster, checking in the mirror to ensure that the jacket covered it. It did. Twelve did the same.
Pope took their clothes and stuffed them into the rucksack. He opened the storage locker and left the bag inside.
“Ready?” he asked.
Twelve nodded.
Pope checked his watch: half past eleven. He took a deep breath, slid the bolt back and opened the door. The two women he had seen in the canteen were loitering outside the door to the women’s toilet; Pope nodded as he went by and, before they could speak to him and expose the fact that he spoke no Russian, he was past them and on the staircase that led to the hotel’s public spaces. Twelve followed close behind.
59
There was a service elevator in a separate shaft adjacent to the elevators that the guests used. Pope summoned the car and then he and Twelve stepped inside. The car needed to be authorised before it would move, but all it took was for him to press his keycard against the reader and the buttons for each floor changed from red to green. Pope pressed the button for the tenth floor and stood back to wait for the doors to close. He heard a man’s voice, a shouted request in Russian, and then, even as he willed the doors shut, a hand shot between them and pressed them open again. The man who stepped into the car with Pope was wearing the uniform of hotel security, with faux-military epaulettes and piping along the shoulders of his shirt.
“Zdravstvujtye,” the man said.
Pope had been staring down at his feet; now, though, he glanced up and saw that the guard was looking at him.
“Zdravstvujtye,” Pope said, knowing that his pronunciation was terrible.
Twelve stood there, quietly, and Pope could feel the violence emanating out of him like woozy summer heat.
Pope waited for the man to say something else. He wouldn’t be able to understand him or reply without making it obvious that he did not speak the language – and that, as a staff member in the glitziest hotel in Moscow, would not have been credible. He felt the shape of the gun tucked against his body and knew that there was a good chance that he would have to use it. That would lengthen the odds of successfully completing the operation to such an extent that he would most likely need to abort. And if he did that, if the alarm was sounded, then how would he—
His increasingly gloomy train of thought was interrupted by a chime as the elevator reached the seventh floor.
“Proshchay,” the man said, smiling guilelessly as he stepped through the open doors.
Pope found that he was holding his breath; the doors closed, the lift started to ascend again and Pope exhaled in relief.
“Lucky,” Twelve commented.
Pope knew that he didn’t mean them.
It was a temporary balm. The numbers ticked up through eight and nine and then reached ten. The lift chimed again and the doors parted. Pope and Twelve stepped out. There was a generous lobby, with a lit water feature burbling musically in a sconce, and a corridor stretched away in both directions. The carpet was deep and luxurious, and the door numbers looked to have been inscribed on pieces of polished slate.
Pope followed the signs for room number 1022. His palm itched for the weight of the Sig and he felt the first drops of nervous sweat running down his back. It wasn’t unusual for him to feel anxious at a time like this, and this operation, unlike almost all of the others that he had undertaken since he had joined Group Fifteen, had not received the same degree of planning. Indeed, it was quite the contrary; it seemed as if it had received very limited consideration, and then Twelve had been foisted on him at the last moment and what planning they had done had been disregarded. Intelligence had been received and it needed to be acted upon quickly and decisively; that might have been acceptable if he had been able to take out the targets at arm’s length with explosives or a ranged weapon, but that was not the case. The mandarins wanted to put on a show, to make a point that their counterparts at the Center would not be able to ignore or mistake. It was Pope’s job to make that point, and hang the consequences.
He was nervous.
60
The rendezvous was in Park Presnenskiy, near the children’s playground. It was just before midnight when Primakov arrived, and the only people he saw as he made his way inside were a couple who were evidently the worse off for drink, staggering together arm in arm. He paid them no heed and walked quickly, following the path between a line of oaks to the bench.
PROZHEKTOR was waiting for him.
He sat down.
“My dear Jessie.”
“Hello, General,” she said.
Jessie Ross was fidgeting with her phone, the screen washing blue light up over her face. Primakov had been personally responsible for her recruitment and had kept her file as a project even after his promotion to deputy director. She had been twenty when he had recruited her. They had been fortunate to find her when they did. The recruitment pool for possible Directorate S agents was large: foreign government representatives, businessmen looking to broaden their interests in a country that was encouraging inward investment, scientists, academics, military personnel, and students. It was in this last category that Ross had been found. Her professor had worked for Directorate RT, the KGB’s forerunner to Directorate S, and had continued to work for it after Putin had reincarnated the KGB as the FSB. He had identified her as politically active with socialist leanings and had suggested that she might be ripe for an approach. Directorate S almost always used native Russians; they were more malleable, could be motivated by patriotism and, when things went bad, could be influenced by threats to loved ones who were still at home. One had to be more careful with recruiting foreigners, and the process for bringing Ross aboard had been long and meticulous. The network of agents known as the agentura had become involved in a process of get-acquainted chats. She was studied via agents at the university, by administrative and professorial staff who were friendly to the cause. It was determined that she had the necessary aptitude to facilitate a career in a sensitive area on her return to her country.
Only then had the approach been made. Her professor had been responsible for it and, over the course of a month, he had reeled her in. She had not been won over by politics or ideology; she had shown no interest in either. Rather, she was a product of capitalism in its basest, most brutal sense: she had named her price, and Primakov had decided that they could pay it. The price had gone up over time, but so too had her performance.
She had received additional training that went beyond the curriculum of her course and had been returned to London with the tradecraft necessary to keep her beyond suspicion. Her subsequent application for work at Vauxhall Cross had been accepted and, to Primakov’s delight, he had found himself with a live asset in the heart of the enemy’s intelligence apparatus. She provided regular reports, using an SRAC relay that was buried in Epping Forest. She had developed an interest in mountain biking and would visit the forest under the pretext of indulging it. The trail she followed passed within fifty feet of the relay, allowing her to transfer her reports without incurring even the slightest scintilla of suspicion. Ross had already more than justified the time it had taken and the expense that had been invested in her recruitment.
Primakov had made the educated guess that Anastasiya Romanova would reach out to her father once she had gone into hiding. Ross had already been assigned to the department responsible for babysitting the traitors who had fled to the United Kingdom, and she had been able to pass Aleksandrov’s file to Vincent Beck. She had lobbied to be added to the trip to Moscow—it was an easy yes given the circumstances—and she had alerted Primakov to the two Group Fifteen headhunters who had arrived in the city ahead of her and the plan that had been conceived. She had given him the opportunity to prevent the assassination attempt on Timoshev and Kuznetsov. She had given him the chance to arrest the headhunters and hand a public relations coup to the president.
He turned to her. “What is it?” he asked.
“You have a problem.”
“With what? The operation—it’s still going ahead?”
“It is,” she said. “But that’s not the problem. There’s been a change of plan.” She took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I only have ten minutes. I’m supposed to be at the hotel. They think I’m getting ready to leave.”
“I don’t understand. Leaving? Where to?”
“Anastasiya Romanova has been in contact with Vauxhall Cross. She couriered a letter to the consulate in Vladivostok.”
Primakov clenched his fists. “Saying what?”
“That she wants to defect. She said that she had asked her father to help, and that the Russians killed him. But she hasn’t given up. She proposed a meeting the day after tomorrow and said that VX should send someone to get her out of the country.”
“Where?”
“Komsomolsk,” she said.
Primakov dug his nails into his palms. “She’s been there all the time?” he said.
“It seems so.”
“What will the British do?”
“They’re sending one of the agents to go and get her—John Smith.”
“Alone?”
“No,” she said. “That’s why I can’t stay. Smith doesn’t speak Russian, so they’re sending me, too.”
Primakov felt the buzz of anticipation; this was better news. “When?”
“We’re booked on a flight in the morning.”
“When and where has she proposed to meet?”
“The railway station. Saturday, at midday.”
“Well done. You must go back to them now. They must not suspect you.”
“What will you do?”
“I will send a team,” he said. “Two of my best men will lead it.”
“What do I do?”
“Whatever they’ve told you. Will you be going to the rendezvous?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I expect so.”
“We will be there. We will arrest them both. If anything changes, you must contact me. Do you understand?”
“Of course,” she said, with a little bite in her voice.
Primakov knew that the British had consistently underestimated her, and that she hated it; he reminded himself not to make the same mistake. She had already demonstrated tradecraft well beyond what he would have expected in one so young and so inexperienced.
“What about me?” she asked him.
“You’ll need to get away. Smith won’t be able to expose you. He will be locked up. They will have given you an emergency exfiltration route—what is it?”
“It hasn’t been mentioned. That might be down to Smith. I have a lot of time with him until the meet.”
“Follow it,” he said. “I’ll see to it that you can leave the country. Tell them that there was an ambush and you managed to escape. They know they have a leak. They will suspect that it is you. They will interrogate you, and it won’t be pleasant. You will have to win back their trust when you return.”
“I can do that,” she said.
“Go back to the hotel,” he said. “We will be waiting at the rendezvous.”
She started to leave, but paused. “Be careful,” she added.
“Of what?”
“Smith. There’s something about him. He makes me uncomfortable.”
“Don’t worry, Jessie,” Primakov reassured her. “He is here, in Russia, far from home. He might be dangerous, but he will be outnumbered. There will be nothing that he can do—you have seen to that.”
She nodded her agreement and, again, he marvelled at her composure. She had the potential to be the most important Russian agent since Philby and the others. She was young and already embedded within the institutions of British intelligence. There had been early successes, most notably her seduction of the private secretary to the foreign secretary, a coup that had delivered strong results before it had been brought to an abrupt end by the politician’s wife. Even with that, Primakov knew that she hadn’t even started to deliver everything of which she would eventually be capable; she could provide him with years of gold-plated intelligence. It would not be a simple thing to protect her now but, even given her potential future value, he was prepared to take the risk that she would be blown. There would be an inquest in London, but Ross was good and Primakov concluded that she stood a decent chance of continuing to fool them.
“Your flight—is it through Vladivostok?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I will send my man to speak with you there. There is a business lounge there—the Laguna Lounge. Two hours before your flight, tell Smith you intend to take a shower. He will meet you then, once you are alone. Yes?”
She nodded.
“Good luck, Jessie. You are doing valuable work. I am grateful—we’re all grateful.”
“Be sure that shows in my next payment,” she said, and, from her expression, Primakov knew that she was serious. She was driven by avarice; Primakov could ignore that when her production was so good.
Ross headed in the direction of the Metro and Primakov went to his car. He took out his phone and called Stepanov.
“Good evening, General.”
“Report, please.”
“The agents are in the hotel.”
“Who?”
“One of the men we have been following and another I don’t recognise.”
“Listen carefully, Major. I need you to abort.”
Stepanov couldn’t hide his surprise. “Sir?”
“Abort the mission. Do not interfere.”
“I don’t understand, sir. They will kill our agents.”
“I know that,” Primakov snapped. “How many men are with you?”
“Just me and Boris.”
“Good. You are not to mention this matter to anyone. Come to Yasenevo once it has been done—tonight. I have something very important that I need you to do for me.”
He ended the call and put his phone back into his pocket.
He knew that he had just signed the death warrants for two Russian heroes, but, at the same time, he knew that it was the right thing to do. The British couldn’t know that they had been compromised, and they would if his chistilshchiks killed their agents before they could carry out their orders. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but swallow it he must. Natasha’s future depended on him silencing Anastasiya Romanova, and Ross had given him his chance to do that. He would salve his conscience with Smith. He would bury him in Lefortovo Prison and let Stepanov have his way with him. They would squeeze every last drop of intelligence out of him, try him for espionage and then inter him in the foulest, most unpleasant camp that they could find.
And then, in time, they would take him outside, put him against the wall, and shoot him.
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