Illegal Action

29

The last message from Moscow had not come as a total surprise. It warned her that the operation might have been compromised. The British authorities could have information to endanger the plan. It was not known at this stage precisely what the British knew. A suspect was in custody in Moscow and was being questioned. More information would be forthcoming.

She needed to find out where this Jane Falconer woman lived. Asking the chauffeur was out of the question, though she had overheard him telling Brunovsky that she lived in Battersea. There was nothing under her name in directory enquiries; nothing on the electoral roll. But it had proved easy enough to follow her this evening to the Savoy. She’d met some man for drinks, then down here to Battersea, within a long stone’s throw of Albert Bridge Road.

She was sure she hadn’t been spotted on the bus and she had turned the opposite way when she got off at the same stop. She had made it back to the corner before her target had disappeared from sight into a large block of flats further down this narrow street. Though she had looked back before she went in, Jane couldn’t possibly have recognised her as the same person who’d got off the bus with her. Night was drawing in now, and she walked slowly down the pavement, ready at any moment to cross over to avoid suspicion. Outside the Victorian block, built like an armoury out of orange brick with black ironwork, she cast a casual look and registered the name—Battersea Mansions.

As she continued down the road, she wondered how to find out which was the right flat. There were probably at least two dozen in the building. She could ask another resident, but would the flat be in the name of Jane Falconer? Almost certainly not. And getting in would be risky. It would be more dangerous outside, but there seemed to be no real choice.

She was about to turn and head back when she saw a man with a blue overcoat on the far side of the street. He was standing in the shadow; he seemed nervy, peering around, turning his head from side to side, walking a few steps forward then back into the shadow, manifestly ill at ease. She kept her own head down to avoid attracting his attention and as she passed him on her side of the road, he seemed to make up his mind and he walked off quickly towards the lights of Parkgate Road.

She waited until he had reached the corner of the larger road before turning around herself. Then she noticed the beat-up Ford parked across the road. Its lights and engine were both off, but there was a man sitting behind the steering wheel. He looked as if he were dozing.

Odd. Normally, you’d sit with the lights on if you weren’t going to be there very long and were waiting to pick someone up. So why were his lights off?

She reached the end of the road and walked around the corner. She passed another parked car with its lights off. This time two people were in the car, a man and a woman behind the wheel. She wondered if they were watching the same house she was. Hard to tell—they might just be minicabs waiting for fares, or a glum couple waiting for tempers to subside after a row. But two cars? No, this was a surveillance team. But who were they watching?

She turned again and went back round the corner, torn between leaving and her curiosity about these other watchers. Then out of Battersea Mansions she saw a woman emerge, in a raincoat. It was Jane Falconer.

Time to leave the area, the woman decided, and as she walked on, the car from round the corner came past her, briefly flashing its lights as it passed the parked Ford. Her suspicions were correct, then—they had been waiting for Jane. And the man on foot, was he with them too? Then why had he gone away?

She struggled to make sense of the Chinese boxes of watchers watching watchers. If Jane was just a low-level agent, placed in Brunovsky’s household to help protect him, then what were all these other men doing here tonight? Why would they be watching Jane? It didn’t make sense, unless for some reason they thought she needed protecting.

They were right.

The message she sent later that night was unambiguous, as was the reply she received six hours later: