Close Quarters

THIRTY-SEVEN

We were back on the M04, which looked pretty much as it had the other side of Pavlohrad. It ran through predominantly flat farmland dotted with glints of water from rivers and lakes, and marked by the march of pylons disappearing over the horizon. We didn’t have time to take the minor roads, the way I’d been forced to do after leaving Donetsk. Unless we ran into more trouble and had no choice but to find cover in the back country, I was sticking to the more direct route. The further west we could get, the safer we’d be.

I checked my phone for the map and considered what alternatives might be open to us if we were forced off-track. Moldova had been the exit route from the beginning, since heading east or north was pointless; sooner or later we’d run into the wrong people. Besides, neither direction offered a safe exit even if by some miracle we stayed out of trouble. Going south, on the other hand, would take us towards the Black Sea, but I didn’t fancy our chances there, either.

That still left Moldova, a small country sitting on Ukraine’s western border. I checked the app, which gave the distance as roughly 300 miles, give or take. It was a long way but do-able. If we made it and stayed clear of trouble, we stood a chance of being lifted out by Callahan’s people. Before making that decision, however, and before calling Callahan, I had to make certain of some facts.

‘Did Denys say what would happen after he handed you over at the Tipol?’

‘No. I asked him but he said he didn’t know. They operated on a strict cell structure. He knew the address and a phone number for the local cut-out in Pavlohrad but that was all. I think each cut-out had the same information. He stopped and made a call before we arrived in the town and was told to go to the hotel where you found me. We were waiting to hear from the local man to see where I was going next.’

‘It was a woman.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘The cut-out was a woman.’ I looked at him and held his gaze. I could have let it slide, allowing the fate of an unknown CIA asset to disappear unspoken into the history books of covert missions. But I needed him to know how serious this was. That people had got hurt and if he didn’t do exactly as I said, he would go the same way. ‘Her cover got blown and she was arrested by your pal in the grey suit.’

He looked stricken. ‘I didn’t know that — that she was a woman, I mean.’

‘No reason why you should. At the request of the State Department, Langley activated a secure line of cut-outs to get you out of the country. You wouldn’t have needed to know any of them beforehand, but it looks as if some or all of the addresses got out there. Starting with Denys.’

‘How?’

I didn’t tell him because I didn’t know. I also didn’t want to freak him out with an attack of departmental guilt over the fact that the State Department had sent the data unencrypted. He’d know soon enough when he got back — if he got back — that his bosses had been careless, even negligent, with sensitive data. That would be for him and them to live with. For now we had to focus on the next move.

‘Did they say what they wanted you for?’

‘Who?’

‘The man in the grey suit.’

‘At first he didn’t say anything. He was fairly officious, even aggressive, but I put that down to being on edge with all the guns in the area. I got the impression he was taking me out of the hands of the separatists without their knowledge. Was that possible?’

‘He certainly had the muscle for it.’ I told him about the blanked-out trucks and the soldiers who looked anything but irregulars. ‘I think he was going to ship you back east. If he’d left you with the separatists there’s no saying what would have happened. But you don’t need to feel grateful to him — he would have used you any way he and his bosses thought fit. What else did he say?’

‘On the way to the place where Denys lived, he said he knew I was connected to western spies and traitors and he wanted all their names and addresses. I told him I didn’t know but he wouldn’t listen. He said he knew I’d had help while I was in the country, and if I gave him the names and addresses, he’d negotiate with the authorities and arrange for them to put me on a plane home. After you got me away and Denys took me to Pavlohrad, the other man showed up. I think he’d tracked Denys’s car.’

‘What did he want?’

‘He asked pretty much the same questions, only not so nicely.’ He winced at the memory. ‘Was he Russian?’

‘I believe so. Probably with connections to the separatists and on through to Moscow. I think he was there to take you back to Donetsk. Once back there you’d have been part of another trade. They’re all looking for bargaining tools.’

‘Those photos you were looking at,’ he said after a while. ‘The one of me is a State Department file copy. I recognized it.’

‘If you say so.’

‘How can that be possible? How does a file photo of me get into the hands of a thug like that?’

I didn’t say anything. He was just thinking out loud and hoping against hope. A former member of Military Intelligence would know perfectly well how it was possible for information like that to get into the wrong hands without me having to tell him. The reasons for spying hadn’t changed much over the years, but the various methods of acquisition and delivery had.

‘And the one of you,’ he continued. ‘You know where it was taken, don’t you? I saw it in your face.’

He was smart, in spite of his injuries, and perceptive.

‘I know, yes.’

‘Do you know who took it? Can you work it back from there?’

I knew the where, all right. The photo was a still taken from the security footage at the entrance to the CIA front office in New York where I’d first met Callahan. I could tell by the clothes I’d been wearing.

Who exactly had acquired the still was more of a puzzle. It was simple enough to do; you simply selected the section of footage and clipped the best frame you could find. From there you either copied the frame to a flash drive and walked out with it, or you emailed it from a secure, isolated workstation.

There was a third way, of course. Somebody with the right credentials could have accessed the hard drive remotely and simply taken what they wanted.

Somebody inside the CIA.