Breaking Cover

23

The fog was just lifting at Heathrow airport, allowing the early-morning long-distance flights that had been stacked overhead to land, filling the Immigration Hall with weary arrivals. In the Departure Hall Miles Brookhaven, along with thousands of other frustrated travellers, was scanning the departure boards for information about when his flight to Washington was likely to take off.

He hadn’t wanted to make this journey. He didn’t think it was necessary and, if it hadn’t been for Andy Bokus’s insistence on a face-to-face meeting, was sure it could all have been sorted out in a video conference. Andy Bokus, Miles’s predecessor as CIA Head of Station in London, had left Britain under a bit of a cloud. A gruff, son-of-the-soil sort of man, he had never liked the place. He hated the weather, he didn’t like London, and above all he didn’t like the Brits, particularly Geoffrey Fane of MI6, who he thought, rightly, patronised him.

Andy was nonetheless rather good at his job, and the London Station had done well under him. Yet after he’d spent years asking for a new posting, Bokus had finally got his wish – though only after he had made a misjudgement and lost a potentially useful counter-terrorism source to Russia. Now, after six months’ rest and recuperation leave, he was back in Langley as Head of Counter-Intelligence Operations in Northern Europe, which meant that he was still involved in some of the London Station’s activities.

What had triggered Miles’s flying visit to Langley was a message that had come in the day before from the Kiev Station. Mischa, the Russian military source Miles had met, had resurfaced. Shortly after that he had left Ukraine but no one knew where he’d gone and nothing had been heard from him. The Kiev Station was under instructions not to try and contact him as he was seen as a potentially valuable long-term source; nothing was to be done that might put him at risk. But a message had come from him. He was in Estonia for a month and wanted to see the ‘British expert’ again; he had more information. He would provide contact arrangements when a meeting was confirmed, the message had said.

The communication, which Kiev had sent to London and Langley simultaneously, had triggered a rapid response from Bokus. No one was to contact Mischa in Estonia, and Miles was to come to Langley for a meeting. So here he was, hanging around at Heathrow, expecting to spend more time in the air in the next twenty-four hours than he would on the ground – that is, if he ever got off the ground at all.

Heathrow eventually got itself back to something approaching normal and Miles’s plane landed at Dulles airport in the early evening, several hours late. He stayed the night at the guest house near the HQ building at Langley and turned up early and grumpy for the eight-thirty meeting. Rather to his surprise he found that it had been moved from Andy Bokus’s office to the grander suite of the Director of Counter-Intelligence.

This post was now held by someone Miles had not met, a new man called Sandy Gunderson. His predecessor, the legendary Tyrus Oakes, known as ‘The Bird’, was a small thoughtful man with outlandishly big ears and an obsessive habit of taking voluminous notes by hand on yellow legal pads, even in the most sensitive meetings. People speculated about what happened to the notes afterwards. Some said it was just a nervous habit and that they were immediately destroyed, others thought that he was saving them up for his memoirs, but only his secretary knew for sure. And she wasn’t saying.

Gunderson, Oakes’s successor, was too new to have acquired a nickname, and from the look of his office was almost fetishistically tidy – his desk and the table in the windowless conference room attached to it were bare. The walls held only framed photographs of the Agency headquarters, and the chrome-and-leather chairs looked more functional than comfortable. There was not a legal pad in sight or any person except Gunderson’s secretary. Miles was early.

‘Mr Gunderson will be along in a moment,’ she said, placing a plate of pastries and a jug of coffee on the table. ‘Help yourself.’

Ten minutes later the meeting that Miles had come so far to attend got under way. Round the table were Andy Bokus, looking slimmer and fitter than when Miles had last seen him, and a tall, square-jawed man in a dark blue suit and gleaming black shoes, who was introduced as Bud McCarthy from the FBI.

At the head of the table sat Gunderson: early fifties, thin-faced, rimless glasses, intense pale blue eyes. Reminds me of photographs of Himmler, thought Miles, who had studied the Second World War at college. But Gunderson began in friendly enough style.

‘I’ve called this meeting to discuss our response to the message from your friend Mischa asking for a meeting in Estonia, Miles. And thank you for coming over at such short notice, and to you too, Bud, for coming across. We have no one here from our Kiev Station, but Miles, you’ve met their source so maybe you’d begin by reminding us of the background and the intelligence he provided.’

Miles outlined the circumstances of his meeting in Ukraine and reminded them of Mischa’s information about Illegals and Russian efforts at subversion and disruption in the West. ‘His information came from his brother who is an FSB officer working on the programme,’ he added. ‘He specifically mentioned the US and France – and Britain, where he said the Illegal was having success. I was described to him as a British expert, so as he’s asked to see me again, I assume he has more information about the British operation.’

‘Thanks. That’s useful background. Now, Andy, you have concerns about a meeting in Estonia, so would you tell us your angle?’

‘Yes, I certainly have,’ replied Andy Bokus. ‘Estonia is a hotbed of Russian activity at the moment. The FSB has a large station there and the GRU too. Our station is covert. We’re watching what’s going on and keep pretty close tabs on the situation. We’re as sure as we can be that they haven’t sussed us out. We have some excellent sources and are working ourselves into a position to pre-empt the Russians, if and when they start the sort of disruption operations that have been so successful in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Estonia’s population is roughly one-third Russian, and as in Ukraine there’s tension building between them and the indigenous people, which the Russians are stirring up.

‘I’m fairly sure we’ve identified your Mischa. He is officially part of a military delegation holding consultative meetings with their Estonian counterparts on cross-border security. But his real mission, we’ve learned, is to assess what kinds of weaponry and manpower Russia would need if the decision were made to do another Crimea and send in covert forces. We think it’s unlikely, because of the NATO umbrella there, but you never know what our friend Vladimir is going to decide to do. Now that we think we’ve identified Mischa, we’ve got the Moscow Station working on identifying his brother, the source of your stuff, Miles.’

‘OK. Thanks for that, Andy. Miles, I think that explains the background and indicates why Andy is so concerned about a meeting with Mischa in Estonia.’

Before Miles had a chance to reply, Andy Bokus broke in again. ‘I sure am,’ he said. ‘The Station has put in a mighty effort to get where they are and they don’t want someone like you – and let’s face it, Miles, you are not exactly unknown to the Russians – coming in and blowing it up.’

Gunderson broke in, looking at Miles. ‘You would of course do a completely professional job, but I can see his point, Miles. In the little fish bowl of Tallinn, you might well be identified. Even if you kept clear of the Station, you might alert the opposition and conceivably blow Mischa’s cover into the bargain.’

Miles was annoyed. He resented Andy’s tone and the implication that he was going to go barging in, but he decided to suppress his irritation. He didn’t want to get into an undignified slanging match in front of Gunderson and the FBI man, who so far had said nothing. So he replied, as calmly as he could, ‘What are you suggesting we do, Andy? I don’t feel we can ignore Mischa’s request for a meeting. If he has more information about the FSB’s operation in Britain then we must try and get it. We can’t ignore an Illegal’s operation against our main ally. After all, it may well affect our own interests if it is successful. And what about the Illegal in the States?’ He turned to the FBI man. ‘Bud, what do you feel about it? Would you be happy for us to turn down Mischa’s request?’

Bud looked embarrassed – as though interfering in a family squabble. ‘We’re working hard to find the Illegal they’ve put in over here. Your source said he was suffering from lymphoma, so we’re searching for foreign nationals being treated for the disease. We’ve narrowed it down a bit – we’re not looking in remote rural areas – but the pool of possibles is still pretty large. Obviously we’d value anything more that might help us find him.’

Gunderson said, ‘Miles, your report said there was a couple operating in France.’

‘That’s right.’ He looked at Bokus. ‘Any news on them?’

Bokus shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not. We spoke to the DGSI and they got pretty excited. They claim they have their own informant, who said the Russians have planted someone in the National Front Party, close to Marine le Pen. It’s not clear if this “someone” could be the same person your friend Mischa is referring to. The French, in their usual way, aren’t telling us much.’ His irritation was obvious. ‘Until we know more, there’s no way of saying.’ He was looking almost accusingly at Miles, as if he were responsible for the French service’s intransigence.

Gunderson cut in now. ‘Okay, that’s the state of things from our end. What’s your take on this, Miles?’

‘If Mischa has more information on Britain and wants a meeting right away while he’s in Tallinn, I think we should meet him.’

He paused while Bokus made huffing noises.

‘But if Andy is uneasy about me going in, and I admit I’m not unknown to the Russians, then perhaps we should send someone else.’ Miles paused for a beat. ‘One of the Brits maybe.’

Gunderson looked at Bokus, who was turning red in the face. ‘MI6?’ he spluttered. ‘I’m not having one of Geoffrey Fane’s golden boys trampling around Tallinn. They’ll be just as well known to the Russians as you are. They’ll stand out like a sore thumb.’

‘Actually I wasn’t thinking of MI6,’ responded Miles calmly.

‘Who then?’ Bokus said sarcastically. ‘Scotland Yard? Or is Sherlock Holmes on your books these days?’

‘No, MI5. If there’s an Illegal working in the UK it’s primarily their business. They don’t have any presence at all in Tallinn, and there’s far less chance of one of their people being detected. I was going to talk to Liz Carlyle. I’ve worked with her before; she’s very good.’ This time he looked at Gunderson. For all his bluster, Bokus wasn’t going to make the final call on this one.

But he also wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Bokus clasped both hands on the table, squeezing them together as if he was trying to crack a nut between them – or perhaps Miles’s head. ‘Sandy,’ he said to Gunderson, ‘this is crazy. Carlyle’s okay,’ he said grudgingly, ‘but it’s not Five’s kind of work. I know the Brits – Geoffrey Fane at Six will take over Mischa as quick as you can whistle. In six months’ time Mischa will be sitting in a British safe house, spilling his guts out with fabricated stories, when he and his brother could have stayed in place, working for us. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘I don’t agree.’ Miles knew he had a fight on his hands. He didn’t know Gunderson well enough to say whether he was a man to cave in to the sheer force of Bokus’s bluster. ‘There’s no danger of losing Mischa as our source. MI5 would see him in Tallinn, get whatever he has to say about the British operation, but that’s it – once he’s back in Moscow all his dealings would be with us again. But unless you can tell me how we can a) safely meet the guy in Tallinn ourselves, or b) get his information about the British operation without someone meeting him, then I think we’ve got no option but to ask the Brits to do it. And if it’s going to be the Brits, then my firm recommendation is that it should be Liz Carlyle.

‘Look, we’re not talking about a meet in a hostile country. Estonia’s a NATO ally, for God’s sake. It gets swarms of tourists from Britain all year round. They arrive on cruise ships and low-cost flights every day. I’m quite sure Liz Carlyle can slip in, do the job and slip out undetected.

‘I don’t see that we have anything to lose. If we go ahead alone, we could compromise the source, and screw up Andy’s operations; equally I think it would be a great mistake simply to refuse to meet him. If we did that we’d lose whatever intelligence he has access to now, and we’d almost certainly lose him as a source in future, not to mention screw up any chance of recruiting his brother.’

‘Bud?’ asked Gunderson softly. ‘Have a view?’

The FBI man thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Not really. Outside our bailiwick. Just to say we’d welcome anything more this Mischa has to give on the guy with lymphoma. Could save us a lot of trouble. But anything else I said would be pure opinion.’ Miles suppressed a smile; Bud obviously dealt in facts and hadn’t grasped that what they were asking for was his opinion.

‘Okay,’ said Gunderson, planting his elbows firmly on the table. ‘Thanks, everyone, for your advice. There’s strength in both sides of the argument but I don’t see any possibility of compromise. Miles, you’re the only one of us who’s actually met Mischa, so it’s your judgement I’m going to back on this one. Let’s go with the Brits, assuming they’re willing to play ball. I just hope this Carlyle woman’s as good as you say.’