Dead Spy Running

23

Spiro looked again at the grainy image of a two-tonne, dark-blue military truck, standing in heavy traffic on the northern edge of Warsaw.

‘Grom. Polish special forces. When was this taken?’ he asked, pulling hard on his cigarette.

‘20.30 hours,’ Carter said.

The room had gone quiet as everyone stared at the truck.

‘Bring us in closer,’ Spiro said, walking up to the wall as the image grew bigger and more blurred. ‘This part here, the windscreen.’

The truck’s windscreen was highlighted with an animated dotted line, before it expanded to fill the entire wall. The driver could clearly be seen on the right-hand side of the cabin, and the outline of another figure was visible in the passenger seat. But it was the profile of a third person between them that had interested Spiro.

‘Can we rebuild this?’ he asked.

The atmosphere grew tense as Carter and his team exchanged glances with each other, realising that Spiro was about to show them up. They had been more interested in establishing where the truck had gone next, and whether any of the city’s other unreliable cameras had captured its progress.

In a few moments the image had been enhanced enough to reveal the blurred features of a familiar figure. Spiro turned to address the room, one side of the projected figure dappling his own. ‘Hugo Prentice, employee of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Warsaw station. I guess his mother loved him. Langley wants him fried.’

Hugo Prentice wandered through Kolo Bazaar, aware of at least one set of watchers on his tail. He had already counted three of them, and spotted a fourth in the antique mirror on the stall in front of him. They had picked him up after he had left the embassy by car after lunch, following at a safe distance. He knew what their presence meant: they had spotted his image on the traffic CCTV. On the journey down from Stare Kiejkuty he had leant forward in the Grom truck at almost every set of lights, hoping that at least one of the ancient police traffic cameras had been working.

He walked down to the end of the market, stopping occasionally to look at items that genuinely caught his eye: Russian samovars, iron crosses, old leather sofas. It was important for his followers to believe that they had not been spotted. When he made his move, he must do it with the purpose of an intelligence officer who was taking the usual precautions before meeting his agent, rather than someone who was panicking under surveillance.

Spiro was agitated, watching Prentice on the main screen as he moved through the market in the fragmented images of the city centre’s CCTV network.

‘He’s about to dry-clean,’ he said. ‘Moscow rules, British style. They should put this guy in a museum.’

Spiro knew what Prentice was up to. Marchant was too hot to be kept at the British Embassy — they needed to deny all involvement — so he had been secreted somewhere in the city. Prentice was now on his way to meet him. Spiro had asked old friends in the WSI for assistance, but he wasn’t sure if they would be in a position to help after the Stare Kiejkuty fiasco.

‘Eyes on the tram, unit three,’ he said, as Prentice quickened his pace.

The number 12 pulled in just as Prentice reached the stop. He stepped aboard, glancing casually at his watch as he did so. The tram was crowded with afternoon commuters, and there were no seats available, but he wasn’t going far. At the next stop he would get off, descend into the nearby underpass by a subway, and then leave from exit four, one of six possible exits, which was at street level. The street was one-way — the wrong way for any vehicle that might have been following the number 12 tram.

‘Somebody better be following him,’ Spiro said as Prentice disappeared down the underpass. ‘He’s in dead ground.’

‘Unit four?’ the junior officer said.

‘The busker’s playing our song,’ a relaxed voice said on the intercom.

An image of a guitarist, sitting on the floor of the underpass, flashed up on the main screen. Carter allowed himself a nervous smile, pleased that his men were performing well on Spiro’s watch. But Spiro wasn’t impressed.

‘Something’s not right here,’ he said. ‘It’s all too predictable, even for the British.’

‘Exit four,’ said the junior officer.

Spiro watched as Prentice sauntered up onto the street.

‘We have a problem. It’s one-way.’

‘That’s better,’ Spiro said. ‘The old soldier’s warming up.’

* * *

Prentice slowed down to look in the window of a shoe shop, checking for trams as he did so. Number 23 was coming down the road, but was still fifty yards from the stop. If he increased his pace now, he just might make it. But he needed his tail to catch the tram too, and he was still packing up his guitar in the underpass.

The lights ahead changed, delaying the traffic enough for Prentice to walk slowly towards the stop. He didn’t need to check that the busker was behind him. Prentice climbed on board at the front of the tram and worked his way down, searching for a seat. The busker was good, Marchant thought. He never once looked up to see where Prentice had sat, which made him think he was wired. He would know in a few seconds. Just as the front and rear doors were about to close, Prentice slipped back out onto the street, synchronising his exit with the moment when the busker had a ticket in his hand.

The doors closed with the busker still inside.

‘Textbook,’ Spiro said.

‘Unit 3’s approaching now,’ Carter said, watching the screen.

‘Reminds me of my first surveillance op in London,’ said Spiro. ‘The Russian was sitting in the last carriage of the subway train, front end. When the train pulled into Charing Cross, Northern Line, he walked off just before the train left. I tried to follow, but the last set of doors don’t open at Charing Cross. I must have been the only spook in London who didn’t know. I swear the guy waved as the train pulled out.’

‘Sir, target’s on the move again,’ one of the junior officers said. ‘Boarding a 24, heading uptown.’

‘Stay with him,’ Carter said. ‘These guys can take all day to clean up.’

* * *

Prentice, it was true, had been known to spend twenty-four hours establishing that he wasn’t being followed, but he didn’t have that luxury today. Instead, he took the tram towards the central railway station, getting off on the corner of Jerozolimskie and Jana Pawla II. The next ten minutes would be critical. He walked past the station’s entrance and headed towards Zlote Tarasy, the latest in a series of huge shopping malls to have opened in the capital in recent years. Prentice knew the Varsarians loved to shop, but even he was surprised by Zlote Tarasy’s opulence and range of familiar Western names. He could have been in Bluewater.

He headed for the escalator that would take him down to the lower ground floor. At the bottom, he moved confidently around to the base of the up escalator and rode back to the ground floor, glancing across at the escalator he had just come down on. He knew the Americans wouldn’t fall for it, but today was about maintaining appearances. The CIA’s watchers had never rated the Service’s counter-surveillance skills, and he was more than happy to play down to their expectations.

He glanced at his watch and then headed for a café on the ground floor, where he ordered a black coffee, sat down at a small corner table, and started to read a copy of the International Herald Tribune that he had picked up from the counter. His table was discreet, with an empty seat opposite him.

For a few minutes he looked through the paper, concentrating on stories rather than just pretending to read them. He was always reminding his officers that the best counter-surveillance watchers were trained to spot eye movements. The vibration of his mobile phone interrupted a story on Belgium beer prices. Prentice reached inside his jacket pocket and read the text.

‘This is it,’ Spiro said. ‘All units, I want Daniel Marchant brought in the moment he shows. Alive.’