PART II
Winchester
29
Pope had taken up position in the churchyard of St Mary’s Church. It was open, with a lych-gate that stood alone as if the wall it had once offered access through had been removed at some point in the past. There was a path to the building that cut between the graves and several large shrubs had been planted along it; these offered excellent cover from the house and the occasional car that passed by, while also allowing Pope a good view of the entrance to the driveway. He checked his watch. It was 12.30 am. He had been watching the house for ninety minutes. The temperature had dropped quickly and he wasn’t really dressed for a long stake-out. Never mind. He would be busy soon enough.
Another five minutes had passed when the van with the BT Openzone logo came around the corner. It continued around the bend in the road until Pope couldn’t see it any longer. He waited a moment to check that no one was watching from the drive and, happy that he was still undetected, cut between the bushes and shrubs and followed the van. He walked for three minutes until he reached a car park that served the Itchen Motor Company. There was a one-storey building set back from the road with enough parking spaces for six or seven cars. The spaces were empty save for the van and a vintage Jaguar that Pope guessed was waiting to be serviced. Pope heard the buzz of an engine and, as he approached the van, he saw a drone detach from the roof and lift off into the night. It had eight mini-propellers and a suite of cameras was cradled beneath the airframe. The drone climbed almost noiselessly and then proceeded toward the house.
Pope reached the van. The driver’s compartment was empty. Pope went around to the other side of the vehicle where he couldn’t be seen from the road. He tapped on the door and, after a pause, it slid open.
The interior was not what one would have expected to see from the outside. It had been fitted with a console along the opposite wall. There were two monitors, one of them displaying the feed from the discreet 360-degree periscope that poked up from the top of the van and the other showing aerial footage from the drone. There were digital recording devices, a directional antenna that was sensitive enough to discern the details of conversations from distance and a microwave receiver. There was a man at the console.
“Evening, WATCHER,” Pope said.
“Good evening, Five.”
WATCHER was the operational codename for Ziggy Penn, the hacker from Group Six who was on long-term loan to Group Fifteen. Ziggy was short and wiry with untidy ginger hair, a messy thatch that had not seen a comb—or, Pope guessed, shampoo—for some time. His eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets, sitting above puffy bags that suggested a lack of sleep. His skin was pale, thanks, Pope knew, to a life spent inside staring at computer screens. His face was sallow, the skin on either side of his nose pitted with old acne scars. Pope had worked with Ziggy on a previous occasion and had found him mildly annoying, although the irritation was alleviated somewhat by the fact that he was unquestionably talented at what he did.
The van’s ceiling was low, and Pope had to crouch.
“You took your time,” Pope said.
Ziggy indicated the van. “It’s not really built for speed,” he said. “Got here as fast as I could.”
“What do you have?”
“Not as much as you’d like,” Ziggy said. “I’ve got the estate agent’s plans from the last time the house was sold.” He nodded to one of the screens with a plan of the property displayed on it. “And I just put a drone up.”
“I saw it,” Pope said.
“It’s equipped with a day/night camera and a thermal camera. Here.” He indicated the screen with the overhead footage and pushed a button; an infra-red shot replaced the feed on the screen. Pope saw the church and, using that as the waypoint, found the house and the van that they were in. Ziggy smirked with self-satisfaction. “I’ll station it over the house. I’ll take a close look before you need to go in.”
“Anything else?”
“Well,” he said, stroking his chin. “They’ve got a standard domestic broadband connection that I should be able to hook into. I’ll have a look for alarms and cameras and, if they have them, I’ll see if I can take them out. And if—” Ziggy was interrupted by movement in the drone feed. “Wait a minute,” he said. His fingers flashed across the keyboard and the display focused on the car. It had already turned off the road and was rolling into the property. Pope saw its brake lights flash as it rolled to a stop.
“Can we get a better look?” Pope said. “I want to see who’s driving.”
Ziggy moused over and clicked a button. The drone swung several feet to port, opening up an angle so that it could look down at the car as two occupants got out. He froze the footage, drew boxes around the two people—a man and a woman—and zoomed right in. The software corrected the digital artefacts that would otherwise have spoiled the image, lightened the shot and presented an acceptable view of both people.
“That’s them,” Ziggy said. “Timoshev and Kuznetsov.”
“Send it to HQ,” Pope said. “And call Tanner for me, please.”
Ziggy swivelled in his chair, picked up a headset with an attached microphone and handed it to Pope. He put it on and waited as Ziggy placed the call and then directed it to Tanner.
The call was noisy, with the sound of a powerful engine making it difficult to hear what Tanner was saying. “Hello?”
“It’s Number Five,” Pope said. “We’ve had a development.”
“Report.”
“WATCHER has forwarded pictures to you.”
“Hold on,” Tanner said, then, “They’re downloading now.”
“I followed PAPERCLIP to Winchester, as reported. He took the train and then got a taxi from the station to an address in Kings Worthy.”
“He doesn’t know you’re there?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“You don’t believe so?”
“High level of confidence.”
Tanner exhaled impatiently. “These pictures. What am I looking at?”
“The male and female at the property two minutes ago. WATCHER is running the registration on the car.”
“It’s registered to a Mr. Thomas Ryan,” Ziggy interceded. “The Land Registry has him down as joint owner of the property. The other owner is an Amelia Ryan. Biometric match confirms—that’s them. It’s Timoshev and Kuznetsov.”
“Anything else?” Tanner asked.
“I’m running a full script on them now,” Ziggy reported. “I’ll have more when it’s done.”
“As fast as you can,” Tanner said. “What’s your recommendation, Five?”
“There’s a lot we don’t know. There are at least three adults in the house now: PAPERCLIP, Timoshev and Kuznetsov. Might be more—no way of knowing unless we get closer.”
“We’re going to need you to take them. That comes directly from Control.”
“I’ll need backup. Five or six agents would be ideal.”
“We don’t have five or six. Most of our strength is tied up outside the country. You can have two.”
“That might not be enough.”
“It’ll have to be. I’m two minutes away with Number One. Ten is on her way, too. Hold your position. We’ll be with you soon. Report if anything changes. Tanner out.”
30
It was twelve-thirty when Beck heard the sound of footsteps approaching on the gravel and, a moment later, a key turning in the lock. The door opened and Mikhail came inside.
He saw Beck and stopped. “Vincent,” he said. “Shit. What’s the matter?”
“Where’s Nataliya?”
Mikhail stepped aside and his wife came through the door, closing it behind her. She stepped into the light and Beck saw that there was an ugly contusion on her forehead. There was a cut from her left eyebrow to the scalp above her right eye and it was picked out with a trail of dried blood. The skin on either side ran from deep black to purple to blue.
“What happened?” Beck said.
“Geggel crashed his car,” she said.
“Are you all right? Your head—”
“I’m fine,” she said, allowing him to reach up and gently run his fingers down her cheek. “Mild concussion at worst. I had a couple of hours’ sleep in the car. I’ll be okay. I have a headache, that’s all.”
“Why are you here?” Mikhail asked.
“Come inside.”
Beck ushered them into the front room. He sat down on the sofa.
“Well?” Mikhail said.
“We’ve been compromised.”
He shook his head. “After today? No. That’s impossible. We were careful.”
“No. Not after today—it might not even be because of you. The Center has confirmed it—we’ve been blown. They signalled me this afternoon. There’s no question.”
Mikhail’s anger flared. “What the fuck?”
“Calm down,” Beck said. “Just relax. You’re certain you’re black now?”
“Of course we’re black,” Mikhail snapped. “You think we’d come home if we weren’t? We’re not amateurs. We’ve been driving for hours.”
Beck concentrated on maintaining his sangfroid. “I know you’re careful,” he said. “We just need to be sure.”
“We’re sure,” Nataliya said, more evenly than her husband. Her voice was quiet. She sounded tired. “We took our time. That’s why we’re late. No one is following.”
“What do you mean we’ve been compromised, Vincent?” Mikhail pressed, his temper up. “How did they fucking find out?”
“Please, Mikhail. We need to address this rationally. Please—sit down.”
Mikhail was cool most of the time, but he had a propensity to lose his temper when things had gone wrong. Nataliya, on the other hand, never wavered; she was collected at all times and, even now, Beck was not surprised as she reached over and laid her hand on her husband’s shoulder. He sat down on the other sofa and Nataliya sat down beside him.
“We have to think about what’s next,” Beck said. “Working out what happened can come later. The Center will get to the bottom of it.”
“They’d better,” Mikhail snapped, although some of the anger was gone from his voice. “I’m telling you that we did not mess up. It’s nothing to do with us.”
Beck nodded solemnly. “This is what I know. I got a flare this evening. The British have breached our security and we need to shut down. We’re about to be exposed and we need to shut everything down and get out of the country.”
“How could they possibly know that?”
Beck held out his hands. “I don’t know, Mikhail. It was just a flare—no detail. I’ve heard rumours that there might be a leak within the Center. There’s no evidence to suggest that a traitor has access to Directorate S, but it can’t be ruled out, especially now.”
Both husband and wife were pale-faced when he finished.
“So what do we do?” Nataliya asked him.
“We go.”
“Tonight?”
“Right away.”
They didn’t protest. Beck wasn’t surprised; there had been close shaves before, but this was of a different order entirely. The British would unravel every strand of their fake lives until there was nothing left to unpick. Their property business would be shuttered and then every deal that had been done would be forensically examined for links to Moscow. Their friends would be interrogated. They would visit the restaurants they enjoyed, the tennis club that Nataliya had been attending for five years, the running club that Mikhail ran with every Tuesday night. The Ryans knew that they were burned. They were good at hiding, at blending in, but no one could stay out of sight forever, and not when the spotlight was shining as brightly as this.
“We’ve had bad luck,” Nataliya said. “Losing Callaghan was a blow. This—it feels like they have someone inside.”
“Maybe. Callaghan was a pity, but we did well with him for as long as we could. He was never going to listen to us forever. He was too impatient. Took too many risks.”
“He was an operational nightmare,” Mikhail said.
“You ran him well, Misha. That wasn’t your fault, and neither is this. But you’re burned. It is what it is. You’ve done enough. It’s time to go home, where the president will present you with medals for the sacrifices you’ve made. For the things you’ve done for the Rodina.”
Nataliya nodded decisively and stood. “Fine,” she said.
“I’ll load the car,” Mikhail said.
“I’ll help,” Beck offered.
They made their way upstairs. Beck followed Mikhail into one of the bedrooms. He took down a suitcase from on top of the wardrobe and opened it; it was already packed with clothes.
Beck realised he hadn’t even asked about the operation. “How was this afternoon?”
“They met,” he said. “They talked.”
“Did you hear what they said?”
“No,” he said. “I couldn’t get close enough.”
“And?”
“Aleksandrov is dead, isn’t he?”
“And Geggel?”
“Dead,” Nataliya said, coming into the room.
“Well done. Excellent work. The Center will be pleased.”
Mikhail could be hot-headed, but that was not surprising given the stress that he and Nataliya were under. They had been covert for twenty years. Maintaining their secrecy while undertaking work for the Center was difficult and dangerous. It was claustrophobic. Beck had two main functions: he delivered orders to Mikhail and Nataliya and placated them when they complained about what they had been asked to do. And now a third had been added: get them out of the country before they could be caught.
31
The helicopter swooped low over Winchester and continued to the north. The pilot located a football field adjacent to a sports and social club and descended quickly. As the helicopter settled on its skids, the noise from the turbines dropped from a roar to a whine and then a murmur. Tanner opened the door and hopped down to the grass below. Milton followed. The rotors were slowing down, gradually drooping over the helicopter. Hot exhaust gases vented from the back of the fuselage, causing the air to shimmer in the glow of the helicopter’s range lights.
There was a car waiting in the dirt car park next to the field. Milton and Tanner made their way across to it. The engine switched on and the lights flicked to life. Tanner opened the door for Milton and he got in. There was a woman sitting in the driver’s seat. Milton recognised her.
“Number Ten,” he said.
“Hello, Number One.”
Her name was Conway. Milton remembered her file: she had served for several years in the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, and had extensive experience related to covert surveillance and denied area operations. She had been seconded to the MI6 team in Yemen to train Yemeni forces fighting al Qaeda and to identify targets for drone strikes. She had been tagged as a potential recruit to Group Fifteen by her MI6 handler during that operation, and Milton had been impressed enough during her selection to recommend her file to Control. Her work had been excellent so far: efficient, decisive, and, when the need arose, ruthless.
Tanner stayed outside.
“You’re not coming?” Milton said.
“It’s down to you now,” Tanner said. “It’s your operation. I need to get back to London.”
Tanner slammed the door and slapped his palm on the roof.
Ten pulled away.
Conway drove them into the village and pulled up in the car park of the Itchen Motor Company. Milton and Conway got out of the car and crossed over to the van that was waiting there. Milton knocked on the door, stepped back, and waited until it was unlocked and pulled open. Light shone out of the interior, enough for Milton to see that Michael Pope had opened the door.
“Evening,” Milton said.
Pope reached out a hand and Milton clasped it. “Good to see you,” he said.
Pope shuffled aside so that Milton and Conway could clamber into the van. Milton looked around, blinking to allow his eyes to adjust to the wash of light that was emanating from the various pieces of equipment. Ziggy Penn was sitting at a control desk; he swivelled around in his chair.
“Hello, Number One,” he said. “Shut the door, would you?”
Milton slid the door closed again. Much of the space in the back of the van had been taken up by the equipment, and it was cramped for the four of them.
Ziggy turned to Conway. “Number Ten?”
Conway gave a short nod of acknowledgement.
“Then the gang’s all here,” Ziggy said. “Let’s get down to it.”
“What have you got?” Milton asked.
Ziggy swivelled his chair so that he was facing the console. “Quite a bit,” he said. “I’ve got a drone over the property.”
Milton examined a high-definition overhead image of a house and the surrounding area. It was large, with two wings, several outbuildings and the bright blue square of a swimming pool. The northern boundary of the garden was marked by the curve of a private road that offered access to a collection of similarly large houses. The road that they had taken to get to the van marked the southern boundary.
“The property was last on the market four years ago. I found a cached copy of the plans—here.”
Milton looked at the screen to Ziggy’s left. It was a brochure from a local estate agent advertising a large house. Ziggy swiped two fingers down on the console’s trackpad until he had the plan.
“It’s big,” he said. “Six thousand square feet with the outbuildings. The Land Registry records the sale to the Ryans for just over one and a half million pounds.”
“Business must have been brisk,” Pope said.
Ziggy tapped a finger against the screen. “Three floors, eight bedrooms, three large reception spaces and a cellar. Multiple ways inside. You’ve got doors in through the annex sitting room, kitchen, utility room and study. That’s on top of the front door that opens into the hall.”
“There,” Milton said, turning to Pope and Conway and then resting his finger on the screen. An annex had been built off the eastern wall of the house. There was a double garage, then a bedroom and then a sitting room. “One of us goes in there.”
“I’ll take it,” Conway said.
Milton nodded. “Five—go in through the front door here. Clear the drawing room and the sitting room.”
Pope nodded his agreement.
“And I’ll go in through the study door here and work up into the kitchen. We clear the ground floor, meet in the hall and then take the stairs up. Have we seen any movement inside?”
“Nothing,” Ziggy said. “A couple of lights on, but that’s it.”
Milton paused to give them a moment to suggest a change to the plan, but both Pope and Conway were silent.
He turned back to Ziggy. “What about security?”
“I’ve found an agreement with a firm in Winchester. I got into their files and dug out the contract. The Ryans went for the full package—motion detectors inside the house and access alarms on the doors and windows. The alarm rings a monitoring service and also the local police station.”
“Can you do something about it?”
Ziggy looked almost insulted that the question needed to be asked. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll override it. Just say when.”
“Anything else we need to know?” Milton asked.
“Not from my perspective.”
“Do you have equipment for us?”
Ziggy reached up to the racking that had been installed on the partition that separated the driver’s compartment from the cabin and took down three radios and their accompanying holsters. The units were around five inches by three inches, slabs of metal that were worn beneath their arms. The radios had small control fobs with two buttons. One opened a channel to speak and the other broadcast a solid tone for when silence was required: rapid clicks for target moving, three clicks for yes, two for no. Ziggy gave one unit to Milton, one to Conway and one to Pope. Milton put on the holster, clipped the microphone to his collar and pressed the earpiece into his ear. Pope and Conway did the same.
“Put them on channel two,” Ziggy said. “Usual protocol. Comms check when you’re outside, please.”
“You’re monitoring signals?”
“Yes,” Ziggy said. “Calls and data going into or out of the house.”
“And the police frequency?”
“I’ll let you know if there’s any chatter.”
“Weapons?” Pope asked.
“Over there.”
There was a large canvas flight bag pushed up against the partition that divided the cabin from the front seats of the van. Pope stooped down to collect it, dumped it on a seat and unzipped it. He took out three UCIWs, the compact variant of the tried and tested Colt M-16. It was 22 inches from front to back and weighed less than six and a half pounds. Each weapon was equipped with a red dot sight on the front accessory rail and Surefire suppressors. Pope handed one to Milton and the second to Conway and took the third for himself. He reached into the bag again, collected six thirty-round standard M-16 magazines and handed them around.
Milton ejected the seated magazine and checked it with the two spares, pressing on the top rounds with his thumb to ensure that they were charged, then pulled back on the charging handle on the top of the upper receiver to ensure that there was a round in the chamber. He released the handle so that the bolt carrier group could travel all the way forward and hit the forward assist to ensure that the weapon was good to go. He slid the original mag back into the magwell, giving it a tap on the bottom so that it was engaged, and then pulled it down to check that it was properly seated. He put the spares in his pockets, one left and the other one right.
“Ready?” he said.
Pope stood, ducking his head against the low ceiling. “Ready.”
Conway nodded.
“Let’s go get them.”
32
Pope pulled the handle and slid the door back. All three of them jumped down. Milton closed the door and turned to the road and the property beyond. They crossed over to the pavement on the opposite side. There was no need to say anything else. They all knew what they had to do. The three of them were experienced operatives, well equipped and benefiting from the fact that the Russian agents inside the house should be oblivious to the danger that they were in.
Milton pointed to the left and held up two fingers. Pope and Conway nodded their acknowledgement, turned and jogged away in that direction. Milton waited until they were out of sight around the bend and then turned and made his way to the east, looking for a spot where he could scale the wall without being seen. It didn’t take long to find. There was a stretch of fence that had collapsed. A large tree had pushed through it, splintering the boards. The wall was lower here, too, and the gap was open apart from the bushes and small shrubs that were spilling out onto the pavement.
Milton’s radio crackled. “Group, Group,” Ziggy said. “This is WATCHER. Requesting comms check. Over.”
“WATCHER, WATCHER,” Milton said. “This is One, strength ten. Over.”
Pope’s voice came over the radio. “WATCHER, WATCHER. This is Five. Also strength ten. Over.”
“WATCHER, WATCHER. This is Ten. Strength ten. Over.”
“Group, Group,” Milton said. “Synchronise watches. I have twelve-fifty-seven in three… two… one… synchronise. Over.”
Conway and Pope both radioed back that they had the same time.
“Group, Group, I’m going into the garden now,” Milton said. “Radio when you are in position and ready to breach. Out.”
Milton walked past the opening in the fence, turned back and then dawdled in front of it, holding the compact machine gun to his side as he waited for the car he had heard approaching to carry on by. Headlights lit up the buildings on the other side of the road as the car hurried around the bend, its taillights disappearing as it went on its way. Milton took a breath, clambered onto the low wall and forced his body into the slender gap with a brick pier on one side and vegetation on the other. He found a crease between the branches and pushed through it as quietly as he could.
33
Nataliya opened the wardrobe all the way, unhooked the metal rail that held her dresses, and deposited it, and the clothes, on the floor behind her. She pressed her right hand against the edge of the rear panel, pushing it back enough so that she could slide the fingers of her left hand beneath it. She yanked, hard, and worked the false panel away so that she could get to the void behind it. She took out a bag full of banknotes in all denominations and two passports issued in the names of their emergency legends. She handed Mikhail one of the passports and he flicked through it to refresh his memory: he was to be Johan van Scorel and Nataliya would be his girlfriend, Francine Claesz. They were Dutch, from Rotterdam, and they had been in the United Kingdom for five years.
She and Beck descended the stairs to the ground floor. There was enough moonlight from outside for them to navigate around the island.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Beck asked her.
“I’m fine, Vovochka,” she said, using the diminutive of Vladimir, his real name. “A headache. Nothing more.”
“I would like you to see a doctor,” he said.
“And how am I going to do that?”
“When you get to France. I will arrange for someone to be there.”
“I’d rather just get back home. It’s been a long time.”
Mikhail came back from the garage.
“The bags are loaded,” he said. “Are we good to go?”
“We are,” Beck said.
“Where are we going?” Mikhail asked.
“There’s an airfield at Popham. There’ll be a pilot with a light aircraft waiting for us.”
“And then?”
“France. Calais. We’ll drive to Charles de Gaulle and fly to Moscow via Luxembourg. Everything being well, we’ll be back in Yasenevo by this evening. Any issues with that?”
“None,” Mikhail said. “All good.”
“Let’s get going.”
Conway and Pope moved briskly. The streets were quiet, but that was both a blessing and a curse: on the one hand, there would be no one to witness them breaking into the property; on the other, any passing police patrol would immediately consider the two of them, out late in this kind of rich residential area, as suspicious. There was the small matter of the submachine guns, too; they both carried them held against their bodies on the side farthest from the road.
The road to the north of the property was The Paddock. It was marked ‘Private Road – Residents Only,’ but there was no one around to notice them as they jogged along it and followed the fence that marked the boundary of the target address. Tall leylandii had been planted to restrict the view over the fence, but one of the trees was sickly and had died back. Conway put her hands on the lip of the fence and, after taking a breath, she put her foot against Pope’s linked hands and allowed him to boost her up and over. She was in the garden, hidden from view by a line of shorter shrubs that had been planted in front of the leylandii. Conway crouched down low and scoped her immediate surroundings: she saw a large outbuilding and then, beyond that, a courtyard and the garage block. She looked up. The sky was black, and if the drone was up there, she couldn’t see or hear it.
Pope vaulted up now, his boots scraping against the panel until he was over the fence. He dropped down next to her.
She held up her thumb to indicate that the way ahead was clear. She waited another beat, listening intently, and then, hearing and seeing that nothing was out of the ordinary, she jogged across to the outbuilding. Pope followed. The garage was north of their position. The study, where Milton would breach, was one hundred yards to the east.
They exchanged looks. Pope held up his fist and then raised one finger, then a second, then a third.
They split, jogging carefully and quietly to their entry points. Conway had to pass through an open area, but she stayed in the undergrowth at the side of the garden, crouching down low. She reached the garage block. There were two large roller doors; she guessed that Ziggy would be able to hack them, but they would make a lot of noise as they opened. Instead, she followed the wall around until she found the door at the back of the structure that she had seen on the plan. It was uPVC, with a glass inset panel. She knelt down to examine it and saw a simple mortice lock.
Her earpiece buzzed and Milton’s whispered voice came over the channel. “Group, Group. This is One. Are you in position? Over.”
Conway pressed to speak. “This is Ten. In position.”
“This is Five. Also in position. Over.”
There was a pause. Milton was double-checking his strategic assessment.
“WATCHER, WATCHER. This is One. Report.”
“No activity visible,” Ziggy said. “The alarm is disengaged. I’m working on the cameras. Over.”
Conway felt the usual emptiness in her gut. Nerves. She didn’t mind. Nerves kept you sharp. On your toes. Comfort led to complacency, and, in their line of business, being complacent was a good way to get yourself killed.
“This is WATCHER. Cameras are offline. Clear to breach. Over.”
She took out her lock picks and knelt down at the door. The lock was old and corroded. It would be easy to force.
34
Nataliya went into the kitchen and was about to open the door to the annex when something caught her eye. There was a monitor on the counter, the screen split into six panels to show the feeds from the cameras that had been installed around the property. There were cameras up high on the corners of the house and all of them were equipped with infra-red so that they could be used at night. Nataliya paused and stared at the screen. A man was standing next to the outbuilding, his back pressed against the wall. The camera was too far away to offer useful detail, but the image was good enough to show that the man was cradling something in his hands.
“Mikhail,” Nataliya hissed. Her husband came across and watched the screen. The man dropped down low and, after looking around the corner of the outhouse, he set off toward the main house. The camera was fixed and the man passed beneath it and out of its field of vision.
And then, as they watched, the screen suddenly went black. All six cameras tripped out at the same time.
“Fuck,” Mikhail swore. “They cut the feed.”
Beck was biting the inside of his cheek.
“How many do you think?” she whispered.
“More than just him,” Mikhail hissed back.
“Do you have weapons?” Beck asked.
“Yes. In the garage.”
“Nothing else in the house?”
Nataliya reached over to the knife block and pulled out two knives: a long bread knife with a sharp point and a serrated edge and a chef’s knife. She gave the chef’s knife to Mikhail and kept the bread knife for herself.
“The car’s ready,” he said. “We need to go now, before they breach. We’ll need the guns.”
Mikhail clasped the chef’s knife, crossed the room and opened the door to the annex sitting room. The quickest way to the garage was through there, and he led the way. They passed through the sitting room and then the bedroom and approached the partition door that opened into the garage. Mikhail paused against the door, listening carefully, and, satisfied that there was no one on the other side, he opened it.
The garage was dark. There was a window in the opposite wall, but it was up close to the garden fence and only a little moonlight was able to filter through. They kept all their junk in here: cardboard boxes that they had still not unpacked after they had moved in, tins of paint, an old tumble dryer. The equipment for the pool had been fitted here, too, with a bulbous pump and a large boiler to clean and warm the water. There was a car in the middle of the space. It was a new Porsche Cayenne, boxy and powerful.
Nataliya went to a large wooden wardrobe that had been left in the corner of the garage. It was used to store tools and equipment for the garden. She opened the door, reached inside, laid her palm flat against the right-hand edge of the backing panel and pushed down. It was the same as the wardrobe in the bedroom: a false back. The panel squeaked as the loose edge rubbed up against the carcass of the wardrobe, moving back enough for the left-hand edge to come forward. She slipped her fingers into the newly opened gap and yanked the panel out, standing it on its side against the wall. The hidden space was ten inches deep and had been rigged up as an armoury. There was a selection of weaponry there: pistols, two stubby MAC-10s, a combat shotgun and an AR-15. She took one of the submachine guns.
“Shit,” Mikhail cursed.
“What is it?” Nataliya said.
“I left the passport on the kitchen counter,” he said, cursing for a second time.
“I’ll go back,” Nataliya said. “Start the car.”
“I’ll go,” Beck said. “You’re not well.”
“I’m fine,” she said sternly. “Stay here, Vincent. I’ll be quick.”
35
Milton had already picked the lock, and now he pushed down on the handle and stepped into the study. The room, like the rest of the house, was dark. There was a computer on a desk and the standby light cast just enough of a glow to show a collection of papers and a wireless keyboard beneath it. There was an armchair on one side of the room and a bookcase on the other. Milton recalled the layout of the house from the plans Ziggy had shown them: the study led into a downstairs cloakroom with Jack and Jill doors that, in turn, opened into the hall. From there, Milton would clear the sitting room and then move into the kitchen. Pope was to the east, at the front door. He would already be inside and clearing the drawing room and sitting room. Conway would come in through the garage and clear the annex. They would meet in the kitchen and then take the stairs to clear the floors above.
Milton gripped the UCIW, swivelling the barrel across the room as he cleared it. It was empty.
He moved deeper into the house.
Conway was buzzing with adrenaline; she took another breath and rested her hand on the handle of the garage door. She pressed down and the door opened, swinging into the dark space beyond.
“This is Five. Drawing room is clear. Out.”
It was dark. Conway didn’t have a torch, and she wouldn’t have wanted to light one even if she did. She waited inside the doorway for her eyes to adjust, waiting as the shapes of the things around her started to clarify in the dim moonlight that came through the open door: a rack of shelves against the wall, cardboard boxes stacked in rows of two, a large SUV in the middle of the space.
“This is One. Study is clear. Out.”
She sensed movement before she saw it. She felt someone behind her and, as she stepped forward and started to turn, she saw something moving through the darkness. She moved just in time to see the dim light from outside catching on the blade of a knife that was swinging toward her. She blocked up with her right hand, catching the blade against her forearm, and felt the sharp edge bite through the sleeve of her shirt and into her flesh. Pain flashed up her arm, a jagged bolt of electricity that burned into her brain. The machine gun was in her hand and she tried to pull the trigger, but the impact had jostled her finger out of the trigger guard and, as she slid it through again, she felt a strong hand around her wrist, forcing the gun away and then up toward the ceiling. She managed to slide her finger back around the trigger and the gun fired, three loud reports that echoed around the confined space. A shower of dislodged plaster fell down onto her.
Her assailant was male. He had his left hand locked around her right wrist, and, as Conway tried to force the gun down again, the man yanked her closer and stabbed at her again. There was nowhere for her to go. The edge of the knife slid into the soft flesh of her gut and was then yanked up, ripping through the wall of her stomach. She felt the strength drain out of her and the gun slipped from her fingers, vanishing into the darkness. She dropped down onto her knees.
The man with the knife followed, and, as he passed through the weak shaft of light from the open doorway, Conway saw his face: it was Timoshev. His expression was determined. Pitiless.
“You’ve been burned,” she muttered through the rending pain. “Give up. This won’t help.”
Timoshev didn’t respond. He stepped out of the light and into the darkness again, his face dissolving into the gloom as he drew closer to her. He was behind her before she could say anything else. He knotted her hair in his fist, pulled her head back to expose her neck, and sliced the blade across from one side to the other. She gasped, unable to draw breath, and, as she saw the blood spray out from her severed throat, she knew that she was done.
Her radio had a panic button and, with the last ounce of her strength, she reached up and pressed it.
36
Milton had just cleared the sitting room and was working his way back to the cloakroom when he heard the gunshots. He froze, and, a moment later, his earpiece buzzed. Someone had pressed the panic button on their radio.
“This is One. Report.”
“I’m here,” Pope said. His voice was as tight as a drum. “Did you hear that?”
“Ten,” Milton said. “Report. Repeat: Ten, report. Out.”
There was no reply.
“Shots fired,” Pope said.
Milton turned toward the cloakroom and started to move. “WATCHER, WATCHER,” he radioed. “Ten is not responding, likely down. Over.”
“Acknowledged. I heard gunshots. Over.”
Milton went into the cloakroom, cleared it, and passed through into the hall. The door to the kitchen was ahead of him. It was open. He thought of Conway, likely compromised, likely dead, and felt the familiar tremor of weakness.
No.
Not now.
Not here.
He paused, breathed in and out, then crossed the hall and stopped again to aim up the stairs to the first floor. It was dark up there, and he couldn’t see anything. He moved on and paused in the doorway. There was another door directly opposite him. He saw, just in time, the shadow standing there, half hidden in the gloom.
“Hands!”
The shadow paused.
Milton aimed the submachine gun.
“Hands!”
The shadow took a step back and, in so doing, moved into a shaft of dim moonlight from a window in the room beyond. Milton could see more now. It was a woman. Milton fumbled for the trigger.
Callaghan was sitting on the breakfast bar, kicking his heels. There was blood running down his face. You going to do it again? he asked him. You going to kill her, too? Milton looked down at the gun in his hand, at the blood on the floor, blowback smeared on his skin.
His arm fell a little and, as if waiting for the opportunity, the woman pointed a stubby MAC-10 at him. Milton snapped back just in time, falling back into the hall as a fusillade of nine-millimetre rounds streaked across the space. She had fired quickly, and her aim was off. The door frame detonated in a volley of tiny explosions, fragments of wood and paint and plaster stinging Milton’s skin.
The pain banished the dream. “I’m taking fire,” he called into the microphone as a second barrage held him in place. “WATCHER—call for help. Five—on me.”
The barrage ended. Milton heard the jangle of empty casings falling to the floor.
“You’ve been burned,” he called out.
There was no reply. Milton crawled ahead on hands and knees.
“We know who you are and what you’ve done.”
There was another volley of gunfire; this one was not aimed in his direction, though. Milton glanced around the doorframe. There was enough silvery light for him to see the fragments of broken tile and other debris on the floor next to the door to the dining room. Pope would have approached from that direction.
Milton aimed and fired, sending a fusillade in the direction of the target.
“Five,” Milton said when the clatter of the rifle had faded away. “Come in. Over.”
“The shooter saw me,” Pope responded. “I’m pinned down.”
“Go outside and come around the back.”
“On my way.”
He heard the buzzing of a motor and then a scraping noise from the direction of the annex. He knew what it was: the garage doors were opening.
He crawled forward and poked his head around the chewed-up doorframe.
Muzzle flash. The submachine gun fired again, and Milton jerked back into cover. The wall and balustrade behind him exploded, chunks of plaster and wood blowing out into the room as the hall was riddled with incoming fire. The plaster fell onto him, coating him in a fine white powder.
37
Nataliya had been taken by surprise. She had almost blundered into the kitchen, had almost run into the agent who had been waiting there. She had fired too quickly, the rounds going high and wide, but it had still bought time to get the passport and retreat. She was backing up when she saw another shadow in the doorway that connected with the dining room. She fired another volley.
She heard the sound of the motor that opened the garage doors and then, immediately after, the grumble of the Porsche’s engine. That was her cue to move. The first man called out again, telling her to stay where she was, but she ignored him. She left cover, and, walking backwards so that she could continue to aim at anyone who might try to follow her through the doorway to the kitchen, she crossed the annex sitting room, then the bedroom, and finally returned to the garage.
The doors had just finished opening and, in the wide shaft of moonlight that they admitted, she could see that Mikhail was inside the car. Vincent was next to the armoury, the shotgun held in both hands. There was the body of a woman on the floor.
Vincent had pressed the dead woman’s earpiece into his own ear and was monitoring their comms. “There are at least two more,” he said, raising his voice so that Nataliya and Mikhail could hear him over the rumble of the engine. “And they’ve just called for backup. We need to leave.”
Milton felt as if he was caught between reality and the dream. He was balanced on a precipice, teetering there; it would only take a little for him to fall. He moved through the annex, staying low, stumbling a little, the gun up and his finger held loosely around the trigger. He cleared the sitting room and then the bedroom, finally reaching the door to the garage. The door was closed; he slid next to it, pressing himself against the wall. His breath was coming in shallow gasps and he was sweating, drops rolling down his forehead and into his eyes. He wiped his face with the back of his sleeve.
He heard a car door open and close, took a deep breath, wiped his eyes again, reached for the handle and pulled it down. The door was unlocked. He opened it and, after waiting for a moment, he stepped back so that he could look through the doorway.
There was a car in the garage. The engine was turning over and the cabin lights were lit, casting a greenish glow over the silhouette of the man who was sitting in the driver’s seat. He looked into the back and saw another person: a woman, perhaps the one who had just shot at him.
Milton raised his weapon and aimed at the driver.
He straightened his arm and started to tighten his finger around the trigger, but before he could pull it all the way back, he caught the reflection of a second man in the window of the car. He had been around the corner, hidden, but now he moved into sight, a shotgun clutched in both hands. The man brought the stubby barrel around and fired; Milton fell farther back into the bedroom as the doorframe exploded. He was showered with another cloud of wood and plaster.
He heard the sound of a car closing and then the whine of the engine as the driver fed it gas. Milton rolled low out of the door as the car pulled out onto the drive. He fired a burst into the car, aiming for the engine and the driver’s side window. The bodywork chimed with each impact and holes were punched through the glass, but the window held.
The car kept going.
“Targets are in a Porsche Cayenne,” Milton said into the radio, his voice hoarse. “They’re heading toward the gate. Over.”
He saw the silhouettes of two people in the back of the car: the man with the shotgun had joined the woman. He heard the buzz of the hydraulic motor; the doors were closing again. The light from outside narrowed and dimmed as the doors drew together but, before the light was snuffed out altogether, he saw a woman’s body on the floor. He recognised the jacket that Conway had been wearing.
“Ten is down. Repeat: Ten is down.”
38
Pope retraced his steps and, the UCIW clasped in both hands, he ran back into the drawing room, into the hall and then out of the front door. He ran hard, reaching the corner of the building and poking his head around it in an attempt to scope out the garage. A car raced out of it and went by him, the brake lights flaring bright red as it slowed for the turn in the drive, and then the engine roaring loudly as it straightened out. Pope ran after it, making his way around the turn as the car started to accelerate toward the closed metal gates.
He raised the machine gun and pulled the trigger, five short bursts to stop the muzzle climbing on him. The gun chewed through the magazine, sending rounds slapping into the back of the vehicle. The rear window spiderwebbed as bullets punched through it. The car remained on course, the engine whining as it plunged into the dead centre of the gates. The metal screamed as it was torn apart; the gates were ripped from their hinges and spun onto the asphalt, clanging loudly as they slammed down hard. The car raced across the short fringe that separated the gates from the road, the brake lights showing again as it fishtailed right and then left, then winking out as the driver buried the pedal and raced away to the west.
Pope sprinted after it, ejecting and reloading as he ran. He came out of the gates just as the glare of a motorcycle’s headlamp approached along the main road. Pope jumped out in front of it, waving his arms. The motorcycle was travelling slowly, and the rider brought it to a halt and put his foot down. Pope grabbed the man and dragged him off the bike, dumping him on the road. Pope caught the bike before it could fall, mounted it, shoved the UCIW around so that it hung from its sling across his back and twisted the throttle. He raced away from the house and sped after the fleeing spies.
Beck found that he was biting his lip. The atmosphere in the car was tense. Nataliya had cursed as the rounds had punched through the rear window, and Beck had reached over to brush away the small fragments of glass that had fallen onto her. They had been lucky: most of the bullets had missed, and the rest had been stopped by the chassis of the car or the luggage in the boot behind them.
Mikhail was driving fast, hitting sixty as he raced out of the village and then squeezing up to seventy despite the narrow, twisting road. Nataliya had half-turned in her seat so that she could look back through the window for signs of pursuit. She was beautiful. Beck sometimes thought of her and Mikhail as the children that he had never been able to have. He had often daydreamed about what it might have been like if they had been allowed to return to Russia together. The two of them had been good enough to let him indulge his fantasy, and he knew that they would have stayed in contact with him even after their professional relationship had come to an end. It was unprofessional, but he loved them. He loved them, and, because he did, he knew what he had to do.
Mikhail glanced up into the rear-view mirror. “Someone’s behind us,” he said.
Beck craned his neck around and saw the glow of a single headlight in the distance behind them.
Mikhail turned the wheel to the right and swept into a minor road that ran to the north. He put his foot down, quickly racing up to sixty and then seventy. Beck turned around again and saw that the glow of the headlamp was still behind them. Mikhail swung the car onto another minor road and then immediately turned right, making a series of unpredictable manoeuvres that the vehicle behind would be unlikely to match unless it was following them.
They raced through the countryside. Beck turned back. The headlamp was still there.
“Pull over,” he said.
“Beck—” Nataliya started to protest.
“I’ll slow them down. The longer we wait, the more coverage they’ll have. That’s a motorbike. Maybe that’s all they have now. You won’t be able to get away if we give them the chance to bring more.”
“But you’re still coming?”
He turned to the front, said, “I am,” and hoped that she wouldn’t be able to read his face. “There,” he said, pointing to a track on the right. “Stop there.”
Mikhail braked suddenly, the seat belts biting and holding them all in place even as the wheels slithered across the dusty road.
Beck had rested the shotgun next to him. He took it, opened the door and stepped out.
“Go,” he said. “Don’t wait. Remember: Popham Airfield. I’ll see you in Moscow.”
He slammed the door before either of them had a chance to speak and waited until the car lurched ahead once more. He could see the glow of the headlamp suffusing the night above the meandering hills. He clasped the shotgun in both hands and walked out into the middle of the road to meet it.
39
Pope gripped the handlebars and gritted his teeth. The targets had a head start and they were driving aggressively and quickly. He knew that it would be impossible for him to follow them without them noticing, and that had been confirmed as the Porsche had taken two sharp turns and then accelerated away at high speed. They were going to try to shake him; Pope would have to try and stay on them until he was able to summon reinforcements. Control’s preference that the operation remain limited to Group Fifteen looked fatuous now; they were going to need to call on the police to bring the car to a stop. Pope just had to stay on them until that was possible.
The road was straight for a moment; Pope took the opportunity to reach up to his radio and pressed the button to open the channel.
“WATCHER, WATCHER, this is Five. Can you hear me? Over.”
“Barely. Speak slowly and clearly. Over.”
“I’m in pursuit of the targets. They are driving a Porsche Cayenne, partial registration BL12. Repeat: partial registration is BL12. We are proceeding west out of Kings Worthy. Over.”
“Five, copy that. Over.”
The road curved to the right; Pope gritted his teeth as he bent the bike low to the ground.
“Request police assistance. Track my location and get them to close the road ahead. Out.”
The road was narrow, with barely enough space for two cars to pass. There was open space to the left and right, with hawthorn hedges marking the boundaries. There was no light; Pope could see no farther than the glow of the headlamp. The wind rushed around him, pushing his hair back against his scalp and stinging his eyes.
A sharp left-hand turn approached. Pope drifted wide so that he could accelerate through the apex and, as he cleared it and straightened out, he saw the figure of a man standing in the middle of the road ahead of him. The headlamp bathed him in its golden glow and threw out a long shadow behind him; Pope could see that he had a shotgun braced against his shoulder and that it was aimed down the road at him.
He yanked the handlebars hard and leaned back. The bike slid through ninety degrees until it was almost parallel to the road. It bounced against the surface and then scraped along it. Pope travelled with it, then released his grip and allowed it to slide ahead of him. He felt the burn of the road’s surface against his legs.
He heard the boom of a gunshot, but the lead passed harmlessly overhead.
The bike continued down the road. It started to spin and, as it did, the front wheel clipped the legs of the gunman. The man toppled face first to the ground, his head cracking off the hard surface, his body bouncing once before it crumpled and he lay still.
The bike crashed into the hedge and came to rest. Pope slid by the man, digging in with the heels of his boots until he had arrested his forward momentum. His trousers were ripped and torn, and the flash of pain said that he had abraded the skin on his thighs and calves. Those were minor concerns that he had no time to worry about now.
The road was dark without the glow of the headlamp to illuminate it. Pope waited a moment for his eyes to adjust and then approached, covering the shooter with the machine gun. There was enough silvered light from the moon for Pope to see that his assailant was male and seemingly well dressed. He was face down, his arms splayed above his head. Pope knelt down for a better look. The man was no longer armed; Pope couldn’t see the shotgun in the darkness. He reached down with his left arm and turned the man over so that he lay on his back. It was too dark for Pope to see much, but there was enough light for him to recognise Vincent Beck. Blood was pouring out of a gash in his forehead.
Pope stood and gazed down the road. The bike was on its side, wrapped around the trunk of a small tree. The engine was still turning over, and the headlamp glowed through the vegetation. It wasn’t going anywhere. He looked beyond it, into the deeper darkness as the road led away. The agents were gone. He doubted that he would have been able to find them now, even if he had transport to continue the pursuit. Beck had sacrificed himself to buy their escape.
Pope pressed the button on his radio.
“WATCHER, I’ve got PAPERCLIP. Please send pickup to my location. Over.”
“Copy that, Five. The others? Over.”
“Gone. Have you informed the police? Over.”
“I have. But it’s late. Minimal assets available. Over.”
Pope knew it was a lost cause. Timoshev and Kuznetsov were in the wind. “Copy that, WATCHER. Out.”
Pope ended the call and took his phone out of his pocket. He switched on the flashlight and shone the beam on the old man’s face. The blood covered his face from his scalp all the way down to his chin, and more was still pouring from the gash. Pope opened the camera app, snapped off two quick photographs, and emailed them to Global Logistics. Then, he put the phone on the ground, the beam shining up, and frisked the man. He found a wallet inside his jacket and flipped it open. There was a driver’s licence in the name of Vincent Beck. Nothing else of interest.
Pope looked down at the old man. It had already been a rough night for him. That was a nasty gash on his forehead, but it was just an hors d’oeuvre for what was coming next. Pope didn’t envy him. His night was going to get much, much worse.
29
Pope had taken up position in the churchyard of St Mary’s Church. It was open, with a lych-gate that stood alone as if the wall it had once offered access through had been removed at some point in the past. There was a path to the building that cut between the graves and several large shrubs had been planted along it; these offered excellent cover from the house and the occasional car that passed by, while also allowing Pope a good view of the entrance to the driveway. He checked his watch. It was 12.30 am. He had been watching the house for ninety minutes. The temperature had dropped quickly and he wasn’t really dressed for a long stake-out. Never mind. He would be busy soon enough.
Another five minutes had passed when the van with the BT Openzone logo came around the corner. It continued around the bend in the road until Pope couldn’t see it any longer. He waited a moment to check that no one was watching from the drive and, happy that he was still undetected, cut between the bushes and shrubs and followed the van. He walked for three minutes until he reached a car park that served the Itchen Motor Company. There was a one-storey building set back from the road with enough parking spaces for six or seven cars. The spaces were empty save for the van and a vintage Jaguar that Pope guessed was waiting to be serviced. Pope heard the buzz of an engine and, as he approached the van, he saw a drone detach from the roof and lift off into the night. It had eight mini-propellers and a suite of cameras was cradled beneath the airframe. The drone climbed almost noiselessly and then proceeded toward the house.
Pope reached the van. The driver’s compartment was empty. Pope went around to the other side of the vehicle where he couldn’t be seen from the road. He tapped on the door and, after a pause, it slid open.
The interior was not what one would have expected to see from the outside. It had been fitted with a console along the opposite wall. There were two monitors, one of them displaying the feed from the discreet 360-degree periscope that poked up from the top of the van and the other showing aerial footage from the drone. There were digital recording devices, a directional antenna that was sensitive enough to discern the details of conversations from distance and a microwave receiver. There was a man at the console.
“Evening, WATCHER,” Pope said.
“Good evening, Five.”
WATCHER was the operational codename for Ziggy Penn, the hacker from Group Six who was on long-term loan to Group Fifteen. Ziggy was short and wiry with untidy ginger hair, a messy thatch that had not seen a comb—or, Pope guessed, shampoo—for some time. His eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets, sitting above puffy bags that suggested a lack of sleep. His skin was pale, thanks, Pope knew, to a life spent inside staring at computer screens. His face was sallow, the skin on either side of his nose pitted with old acne scars. Pope had worked with Ziggy on a previous occasion and had found him mildly annoying, although the irritation was alleviated somewhat by the fact that he was unquestionably talented at what he did.
The van’s ceiling was low, and Pope had to crouch.
“You took your time,” Pope said.
Ziggy indicated the van. “It’s not really built for speed,” he said. “Got here as fast as I could.”
“What do you have?”
“Not as much as you’d like,” Ziggy said. “I’ve got the estate agent’s plans from the last time the house was sold.” He nodded to one of the screens with a plan of the property displayed on it. “And I just put a drone up.”
“I saw it,” Pope said.
“It’s equipped with a day/night camera and a thermal camera. Here.” He indicated the screen with the overhead footage and pushed a button; an infra-red shot replaced the feed on the screen. Pope saw the church and, using that as the waypoint, found the house and the van that they were in. Ziggy smirked with self-satisfaction. “I’ll station it over the house. I’ll take a close look before you need to go in.”
“Anything else?”
“Well,” he said, stroking his chin. “They’ve got a standard domestic broadband connection that I should be able to hook into. I’ll have a look for alarms and cameras and, if they have them, I’ll see if I can take them out. And if—” Ziggy was interrupted by movement in the drone feed. “Wait a minute,” he said. His fingers flashed across the keyboard and the display focused on the car. It had already turned off the road and was rolling into the property. Pope saw its brake lights flash as it rolled to a stop.
“Can we get a better look?” Pope said. “I want to see who’s driving.”
Ziggy moused over and clicked a button. The drone swung several feet to port, opening up an angle so that it could look down at the car as two occupants got out. He froze the footage, drew boxes around the two people—a man and a woman—and zoomed right in. The software corrected the digital artefacts that would otherwise have spoiled the image, lightened the shot and presented an acceptable view of both people.
“That’s them,” Ziggy said. “Timoshev and Kuznetsov.”
“Send it to HQ,” Pope said. “And call Tanner for me, please.”
Ziggy swivelled in his chair, picked up a headset with an attached microphone and handed it to Pope. He put it on and waited as Ziggy placed the call and then directed it to Tanner.
The call was noisy, with the sound of a powerful engine making it difficult to hear what Tanner was saying. “Hello?”
“It’s Number Five,” Pope said. “We’ve had a development.”
“Report.”
“WATCHER has forwarded pictures to you.”
“Hold on,” Tanner said, then, “They’re downloading now.”
“I followed PAPERCLIP to Winchester, as reported. He took the train and then got a taxi from the station to an address in Kings Worthy.”
“He doesn’t know you’re there?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“You don’t believe so?”
“High level of confidence.”
Tanner exhaled impatiently. “These pictures. What am I looking at?”
“The male and female at the property two minutes ago. WATCHER is running the registration on the car.”
“It’s registered to a Mr. Thomas Ryan,” Ziggy interceded. “The Land Registry has him down as joint owner of the property. The other owner is an Amelia Ryan. Biometric match confirms—that’s them. It’s Timoshev and Kuznetsov.”
“Anything else?” Tanner asked.
“I’m running a full script on them now,” Ziggy reported. “I’ll have more when it’s done.”
“As fast as you can,” Tanner said. “What’s your recommendation, Five?”
“There’s a lot we don’t know. There are at least three adults in the house now: PAPERCLIP, Timoshev and Kuznetsov. Might be more—no way of knowing unless we get closer.”
“We’re going to need you to take them. That comes directly from Control.”
“I’ll need backup. Five or six agents would be ideal.”
“We don’t have five or six. Most of our strength is tied up outside the country. You can have two.”
“That might not be enough.”
“It’ll have to be. I’m two minutes away with Number One. Ten is on her way, too. Hold your position. We’ll be with you soon. Report if anything changes. Tanner out.”
30
It was twelve-thirty when Beck heard the sound of footsteps approaching on the gravel and, a moment later, a key turning in the lock. The door opened and Mikhail came inside.
He saw Beck and stopped. “Vincent,” he said. “Shit. What’s the matter?”
“Where’s Nataliya?”
Mikhail stepped aside and his wife came through the door, closing it behind her. She stepped into the light and Beck saw that there was an ugly contusion on her forehead. There was a cut from her left eyebrow to the scalp above her right eye and it was picked out with a trail of dried blood. The skin on either side ran from deep black to purple to blue.
“What happened?” Beck said.
“Geggel crashed his car,” she said.
“Are you all right? Your head—”
“I’m fine,” she said, allowing him to reach up and gently run his fingers down her cheek. “Mild concussion at worst. I had a couple of hours’ sleep in the car. I’ll be okay. I have a headache, that’s all.”
“Why are you here?” Mikhail asked.
“Come inside.”
Beck ushered them into the front room. He sat down on the sofa.
“Well?” Mikhail said.
“We’ve been compromised.”
He shook his head. “After today? No. That’s impossible. We were careful.”
“No. Not after today—it might not even be because of you. The Center has confirmed it—we’ve been blown. They signalled me this afternoon. There’s no question.”
Mikhail’s anger flared. “What the fuck?”
“Calm down,” Beck said. “Just relax. You’re certain you’re black now?”
“Of course we’re black,” Mikhail snapped. “You think we’d come home if we weren’t? We’re not amateurs. We’ve been driving for hours.”
Beck concentrated on maintaining his sangfroid. “I know you’re careful,” he said. “We just need to be sure.”
“We’re sure,” Nataliya said, more evenly than her husband. Her voice was quiet. She sounded tired. “We took our time. That’s why we’re late. No one is following.”
“What do you mean we’ve been compromised, Vincent?” Mikhail pressed, his temper up. “How did they fucking find out?”
“Please, Mikhail. We need to address this rationally. Please—sit down.”
Mikhail was cool most of the time, but he had a propensity to lose his temper when things had gone wrong. Nataliya, on the other hand, never wavered; she was collected at all times and, even now, Beck was not surprised as she reached over and laid her hand on her husband’s shoulder. He sat down on the other sofa and Nataliya sat down beside him.
“We have to think about what’s next,” Beck said. “Working out what happened can come later. The Center will get to the bottom of it.”
“They’d better,” Mikhail snapped, although some of the anger was gone from his voice. “I’m telling you that we did not mess up. It’s nothing to do with us.”
Beck nodded solemnly. “This is what I know. I got a flare this evening. The British have breached our security and we need to shut down. We’re about to be exposed and we need to shut everything down and get out of the country.”
“How could they possibly know that?”
Beck held out his hands. “I don’t know, Mikhail. It was just a flare—no detail. I’ve heard rumours that there might be a leak within the Center. There’s no evidence to suggest that a traitor has access to Directorate S, but it can’t be ruled out, especially now.”
Both husband and wife were pale-faced when he finished.
“So what do we do?” Nataliya asked him.
“We go.”
“Tonight?”
“Right away.”
They didn’t protest. Beck wasn’t surprised; there had been close shaves before, but this was of a different order entirely. The British would unravel every strand of their fake lives until there was nothing left to unpick. Their property business would be shuttered and then every deal that had been done would be forensically examined for links to Moscow. Their friends would be interrogated. They would visit the restaurants they enjoyed, the tennis club that Nataliya had been attending for five years, the running club that Mikhail ran with every Tuesday night. The Ryans knew that they were burned. They were good at hiding, at blending in, but no one could stay out of sight forever, and not when the spotlight was shining as brightly as this.
“We’ve had bad luck,” Nataliya said. “Losing Callaghan was a blow. This—it feels like they have someone inside.”
“Maybe. Callaghan was a pity, but we did well with him for as long as we could. He was never going to listen to us forever. He was too impatient. Took too many risks.”
“He was an operational nightmare,” Mikhail said.
“You ran him well, Misha. That wasn’t your fault, and neither is this. But you’re burned. It is what it is. You’ve done enough. It’s time to go home, where the president will present you with medals for the sacrifices you’ve made. For the things you’ve done for the Rodina.”
Nataliya nodded decisively and stood. “Fine,” she said.
“I’ll load the car,” Mikhail said.
“I’ll help,” Beck offered.
They made their way upstairs. Beck followed Mikhail into one of the bedrooms. He took down a suitcase from on top of the wardrobe and opened it; it was already packed with clothes.
Beck realised he hadn’t even asked about the operation. “How was this afternoon?”
“They met,” he said. “They talked.”
“Did you hear what they said?”
“No,” he said. “I couldn’t get close enough.”
“And?”
“Aleksandrov is dead, isn’t he?”
“And Geggel?”
“Dead,” Nataliya said, coming into the room.
“Well done. Excellent work. The Center will be pleased.”
Mikhail could be hot-headed, but that was not surprising given the stress that he and Nataliya were under. They had been covert for twenty years. Maintaining their secrecy while undertaking work for the Center was difficult and dangerous. It was claustrophobic. Beck had two main functions: he delivered orders to Mikhail and Nataliya and placated them when they complained about what they had been asked to do. And now a third had been added: get them out of the country before they could be caught.
31
The helicopter swooped low over Winchester and continued to the north. The pilot located a football field adjacent to a sports and social club and descended quickly. As the helicopter settled on its skids, the noise from the turbines dropped from a roar to a whine and then a murmur. Tanner opened the door and hopped down to the grass below. Milton followed. The rotors were slowing down, gradually drooping over the helicopter. Hot exhaust gases vented from the back of the fuselage, causing the air to shimmer in the glow of the helicopter’s range lights.
There was a car waiting in the dirt car park next to the field. Milton and Tanner made their way across to it. The engine switched on and the lights flicked to life. Tanner opened the door for Milton and he got in. There was a woman sitting in the driver’s seat. Milton recognised her.
“Number Ten,” he said.
“Hello, Number One.”
Her name was Conway. Milton remembered her file: she had served for several years in the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, and had extensive experience related to covert surveillance and denied area operations. She had been seconded to the MI6 team in Yemen to train Yemeni forces fighting al Qaeda and to identify targets for drone strikes. She had been tagged as a potential recruit to Group Fifteen by her MI6 handler during that operation, and Milton had been impressed enough during her selection to recommend her file to Control. Her work had been excellent so far: efficient, decisive, and, when the need arose, ruthless.
Tanner stayed outside.
“You’re not coming?” Milton said.
“It’s down to you now,” Tanner said. “It’s your operation. I need to get back to London.”
Tanner slammed the door and slapped his palm on the roof.
Ten pulled away.
Conway drove them into the village and pulled up in the car park of the Itchen Motor Company. Milton and Conway got out of the car and crossed over to the van that was waiting there. Milton knocked on the door, stepped back, and waited until it was unlocked and pulled open. Light shone out of the interior, enough for Milton to see that Michael Pope had opened the door.
“Evening,” Milton said.
Pope reached out a hand and Milton clasped it. “Good to see you,” he said.
Pope shuffled aside so that Milton and Conway could clamber into the van. Milton looked around, blinking to allow his eyes to adjust to the wash of light that was emanating from the various pieces of equipment. Ziggy Penn was sitting at a control desk; he swivelled around in his chair.
“Hello, Number One,” he said. “Shut the door, would you?”
Milton slid the door closed again. Much of the space in the back of the van had been taken up by the equipment, and it was cramped for the four of them.
Ziggy turned to Conway. “Number Ten?”
Conway gave a short nod of acknowledgement.
“Then the gang’s all here,” Ziggy said. “Let’s get down to it.”
“What have you got?” Milton asked.
Ziggy swivelled his chair so that he was facing the console. “Quite a bit,” he said. “I’ve got a drone over the property.”
Milton examined a high-definition overhead image of a house and the surrounding area. It was large, with two wings, several outbuildings and the bright blue square of a swimming pool. The northern boundary of the garden was marked by the curve of a private road that offered access to a collection of similarly large houses. The road that they had taken to get to the van marked the southern boundary.
“The property was last on the market four years ago. I found a cached copy of the plans—here.”
Milton looked at the screen to Ziggy’s left. It was a brochure from a local estate agent advertising a large house. Ziggy swiped two fingers down on the console’s trackpad until he had the plan.
“It’s big,” he said. “Six thousand square feet with the outbuildings. The Land Registry records the sale to the Ryans for just over one and a half million pounds.”
“Business must have been brisk,” Pope said.
Ziggy tapped a finger against the screen. “Three floors, eight bedrooms, three large reception spaces and a cellar. Multiple ways inside. You’ve got doors in through the annex sitting room, kitchen, utility room and study. That’s on top of the front door that opens into the hall.”
“There,” Milton said, turning to Pope and Conway and then resting his finger on the screen. An annex had been built off the eastern wall of the house. There was a double garage, then a bedroom and then a sitting room. “One of us goes in there.”
“I’ll take it,” Conway said.
Milton nodded. “Five—go in through the front door here. Clear the drawing room and the sitting room.”
Pope nodded his agreement.
“And I’ll go in through the study door here and work up into the kitchen. We clear the ground floor, meet in the hall and then take the stairs up. Have we seen any movement inside?”
“Nothing,” Ziggy said. “A couple of lights on, but that’s it.”
Milton paused to give them a moment to suggest a change to the plan, but both Pope and Conway were silent.
He turned back to Ziggy. “What about security?”
“I’ve found an agreement with a firm in Winchester. I got into their files and dug out the contract. The Ryans went for the full package—motion detectors inside the house and access alarms on the doors and windows. The alarm rings a monitoring service and also the local police station.”
“Can you do something about it?”
Ziggy looked almost insulted that the question needed to be asked. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll override it. Just say when.”
“Anything else we need to know?” Milton asked.
“Not from my perspective.”
“Do you have equipment for us?”
Ziggy reached up to the racking that had been installed on the partition that separated the driver’s compartment from the cabin and took down three radios and their accompanying holsters. The units were around five inches by three inches, slabs of metal that were worn beneath their arms. The radios had small control fobs with two buttons. One opened a channel to speak and the other broadcast a solid tone for when silence was required: rapid clicks for target moving, three clicks for yes, two for no. Ziggy gave one unit to Milton, one to Conway and one to Pope. Milton put on the holster, clipped the microphone to his collar and pressed the earpiece into his ear. Pope and Conway did the same.
“Put them on channel two,” Ziggy said. “Usual protocol. Comms check when you’re outside, please.”
“You’re monitoring signals?”
“Yes,” Ziggy said. “Calls and data going into or out of the house.”
“And the police frequency?”
“I’ll let you know if there’s any chatter.”
“Weapons?” Pope asked.
“Over there.”
There was a large canvas flight bag pushed up against the partition that divided the cabin from the front seats of the van. Pope stooped down to collect it, dumped it on a seat and unzipped it. He took out three UCIWs, the compact variant of the tried and tested Colt M-16. It was 22 inches from front to back and weighed less than six and a half pounds. Each weapon was equipped with a red dot sight on the front accessory rail and Surefire suppressors. Pope handed one to Milton and the second to Conway and took the third for himself. He reached into the bag again, collected six thirty-round standard M-16 magazines and handed them around.
Milton ejected the seated magazine and checked it with the two spares, pressing on the top rounds with his thumb to ensure that they were charged, then pulled back on the charging handle on the top of the upper receiver to ensure that there was a round in the chamber. He released the handle so that the bolt carrier group could travel all the way forward and hit the forward assist to ensure that the weapon was good to go. He slid the original mag back into the magwell, giving it a tap on the bottom so that it was engaged, and then pulled it down to check that it was properly seated. He put the spares in his pockets, one left and the other one right.
“Ready?” he said.
Pope stood, ducking his head against the low ceiling. “Ready.”
Conway nodded.
“Let’s go get them.”
32
Pope pulled the handle and slid the door back. All three of them jumped down. Milton closed the door and turned to the road and the property beyond. They crossed over to the pavement on the opposite side. There was no need to say anything else. They all knew what they had to do. The three of them were experienced operatives, well equipped and benefiting from the fact that the Russian agents inside the house should be oblivious to the danger that they were in.
Milton pointed to the left and held up two fingers. Pope and Conway nodded their acknowledgement, turned and jogged away in that direction. Milton waited until they were out of sight around the bend and then turned and made his way to the east, looking for a spot where he could scale the wall without being seen. It didn’t take long to find. There was a stretch of fence that had collapsed. A large tree had pushed through it, splintering the boards. The wall was lower here, too, and the gap was open apart from the bushes and small shrubs that were spilling out onto the pavement.
Milton’s radio crackled. “Group, Group,” Ziggy said. “This is WATCHER. Requesting comms check. Over.”
“WATCHER, WATCHER,” Milton said. “This is One, strength ten. Over.”
Pope’s voice came over the radio. “WATCHER, WATCHER. This is Five. Also strength ten. Over.”
“WATCHER, WATCHER. This is Ten. Strength ten. Over.”
“Group, Group,” Milton said. “Synchronise watches. I have twelve-fifty-seven in three… two… one… synchronise. Over.”
Conway and Pope both radioed back that they had the same time.
“Group, Group, I’m going into the garden now,” Milton said. “Radio when you are in position and ready to breach. Out.”
Milton walked past the opening in the fence, turned back and then dawdled in front of it, holding the compact machine gun to his side as he waited for the car he had heard approaching to carry on by. Headlights lit up the buildings on the other side of the road as the car hurried around the bend, its taillights disappearing as it went on its way. Milton took a breath, clambered onto the low wall and forced his body into the slender gap with a brick pier on one side and vegetation on the other. He found a crease between the branches and pushed through it as quietly as he could.
33
Nataliya opened the wardrobe all the way, unhooked the metal rail that held her dresses, and deposited it, and the clothes, on the floor behind her. She pressed her right hand against the edge of the rear panel, pushing it back enough so that she could slide the fingers of her left hand beneath it. She yanked, hard, and worked the false panel away so that she could get to the void behind it. She took out a bag full of banknotes in all denominations and two passports issued in the names of their emergency legends. She handed Mikhail one of the passports and he flicked through it to refresh his memory: he was to be Johan van Scorel and Nataliya would be his girlfriend, Francine Claesz. They were Dutch, from Rotterdam, and they had been in the United Kingdom for five years.
She and Beck descended the stairs to the ground floor. There was enough moonlight from outside for them to navigate around the island.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Beck asked her.
“I’m fine, Vovochka,” she said, using the diminutive of Vladimir, his real name. “A headache. Nothing more.”
“I would like you to see a doctor,” he said.
“And how am I going to do that?”
“When you get to France. I will arrange for someone to be there.”
“I’d rather just get back home. It’s been a long time.”
Mikhail came back from the garage.
“The bags are loaded,” he said. “Are we good to go?”
“We are,” Beck said.
“Where are we going?” Mikhail asked.
“There’s an airfield at Popham. There’ll be a pilot with a light aircraft waiting for us.”
“And then?”
“France. Calais. We’ll drive to Charles de Gaulle and fly to Moscow via Luxembourg. Everything being well, we’ll be back in Yasenevo by this evening. Any issues with that?”
“None,” Mikhail said. “All good.”
“Let’s get going.”
Conway and Pope moved briskly. The streets were quiet, but that was both a blessing and a curse: on the one hand, there would be no one to witness them breaking into the property; on the other, any passing police patrol would immediately consider the two of them, out late in this kind of rich residential area, as suspicious. There was the small matter of the submachine guns, too; they both carried them held against their bodies on the side farthest from the road.
The road to the north of the property was The Paddock. It was marked ‘Private Road – Residents Only,’ but there was no one around to notice them as they jogged along it and followed the fence that marked the boundary of the target address. Tall leylandii had been planted to restrict the view over the fence, but one of the trees was sickly and had died back. Conway put her hands on the lip of the fence and, after taking a breath, she put her foot against Pope’s linked hands and allowed him to boost her up and over. She was in the garden, hidden from view by a line of shorter shrubs that had been planted in front of the leylandii. Conway crouched down low and scoped her immediate surroundings: she saw a large outbuilding and then, beyond that, a courtyard and the garage block. She looked up. The sky was black, and if the drone was up there, she couldn’t see or hear it.
Pope vaulted up now, his boots scraping against the panel until he was over the fence. He dropped down next to her.
She held up her thumb to indicate that the way ahead was clear. She waited another beat, listening intently, and then, hearing and seeing that nothing was out of the ordinary, she jogged across to the outbuilding. Pope followed. The garage was north of their position. The study, where Milton would breach, was one hundred yards to the east.
They exchanged looks. Pope held up his fist and then raised one finger, then a second, then a third.
They split, jogging carefully and quietly to their entry points. Conway had to pass through an open area, but she stayed in the undergrowth at the side of the garden, crouching down low. She reached the garage block. There were two large roller doors; she guessed that Ziggy would be able to hack them, but they would make a lot of noise as they opened. Instead, she followed the wall around until she found the door at the back of the structure that she had seen on the plan. It was uPVC, with a glass inset panel. She knelt down to examine it and saw a simple mortice lock.
Her earpiece buzzed and Milton’s whispered voice came over the channel. “Group, Group. This is One. Are you in position? Over.”
Conway pressed to speak. “This is Ten. In position.”
“This is Five. Also in position. Over.”
There was a pause. Milton was double-checking his strategic assessment.
“WATCHER, WATCHER. This is One. Report.”
“No activity visible,” Ziggy said. “The alarm is disengaged. I’m working on the cameras. Over.”
Conway felt the usual emptiness in her gut. Nerves. She didn’t mind. Nerves kept you sharp. On your toes. Comfort led to complacency, and, in their line of business, being complacent was a good way to get yourself killed.
“This is WATCHER. Cameras are offline. Clear to breach. Over.”
She took out her lock picks and knelt down at the door. The lock was old and corroded. It would be easy to force.
34
Nataliya went into the kitchen and was about to open the door to the annex when something caught her eye. There was a monitor on the counter, the screen split into six panels to show the feeds from the cameras that had been installed around the property. There were cameras up high on the corners of the house and all of them were equipped with infra-red so that they could be used at night. Nataliya paused and stared at the screen. A man was standing next to the outbuilding, his back pressed against the wall. The camera was too far away to offer useful detail, but the image was good enough to show that the man was cradling something in his hands.
“Mikhail,” Nataliya hissed. Her husband came across and watched the screen. The man dropped down low and, after looking around the corner of the outhouse, he set off toward the main house. The camera was fixed and the man passed beneath it and out of its field of vision.
And then, as they watched, the screen suddenly went black. All six cameras tripped out at the same time.
“Fuck,” Mikhail swore. “They cut the feed.”
Beck was biting the inside of his cheek.
“How many do you think?” she whispered.
“More than just him,” Mikhail hissed back.
“Do you have weapons?” Beck asked.
“Yes. In the garage.”
“Nothing else in the house?”
Nataliya reached over to the knife block and pulled out two knives: a long bread knife with a sharp point and a serrated edge and a chef’s knife. She gave the chef’s knife to Mikhail and kept the bread knife for herself.
“The car’s ready,” he said. “We need to go now, before they breach. We’ll need the guns.”
Mikhail clasped the chef’s knife, crossed the room and opened the door to the annex sitting room. The quickest way to the garage was through there, and he led the way. They passed through the sitting room and then the bedroom and approached the partition door that opened into the garage. Mikhail paused against the door, listening carefully, and, satisfied that there was no one on the other side, he opened it.
The garage was dark. There was a window in the opposite wall, but it was up close to the garden fence and only a little moonlight was able to filter through. They kept all their junk in here: cardboard boxes that they had still not unpacked after they had moved in, tins of paint, an old tumble dryer. The equipment for the pool had been fitted here, too, with a bulbous pump and a large boiler to clean and warm the water. There was a car in the middle of the space. It was a new Porsche Cayenne, boxy and powerful.
Nataliya went to a large wooden wardrobe that had been left in the corner of the garage. It was used to store tools and equipment for the garden. She opened the door, reached inside, laid her palm flat against the right-hand edge of the backing panel and pushed down. It was the same as the wardrobe in the bedroom: a false back. The panel squeaked as the loose edge rubbed up against the carcass of the wardrobe, moving back enough for the left-hand edge to come forward. She slipped her fingers into the newly opened gap and yanked the panel out, standing it on its side against the wall. The hidden space was ten inches deep and had been rigged up as an armoury. There was a selection of weaponry there: pistols, two stubby MAC-10s, a combat shotgun and an AR-15. She took one of the submachine guns.
“Shit,” Mikhail cursed.
“What is it?” Nataliya said.
“I left the passport on the kitchen counter,” he said, cursing for a second time.
“I’ll go back,” Nataliya said. “Start the car.”
“I’ll go,” Beck said. “You’re not well.”
“I’m fine,” she said sternly. “Stay here, Vincent. I’ll be quick.”
35
Milton had already picked the lock, and now he pushed down on the handle and stepped into the study. The room, like the rest of the house, was dark. There was a computer on a desk and the standby light cast just enough of a glow to show a collection of papers and a wireless keyboard beneath it. There was an armchair on one side of the room and a bookcase on the other. Milton recalled the layout of the house from the plans Ziggy had shown them: the study led into a downstairs cloakroom with Jack and Jill doors that, in turn, opened into the hall. From there, Milton would clear the sitting room and then move into the kitchen. Pope was to the east, at the front door. He would already be inside and clearing the drawing room and sitting room. Conway would come in through the garage and clear the annex. They would meet in the kitchen and then take the stairs to clear the floors above.
Milton gripped the UCIW, swivelling the barrel across the room as he cleared it. It was empty.
He moved deeper into the house.
Conway was buzzing with adrenaline; she took another breath and rested her hand on the handle of the garage door. She pressed down and the door opened, swinging into the dark space beyond.
“This is Five. Drawing room is clear. Out.”
It was dark. Conway didn’t have a torch, and she wouldn’t have wanted to light one even if she did. She waited inside the doorway for her eyes to adjust, waiting as the shapes of the things around her started to clarify in the dim moonlight that came through the open door: a rack of shelves against the wall, cardboard boxes stacked in rows of two, a large SUV in the middle of the space.
“This is One. Study is clear. Out.”
She sensed movement before she saw it. She felt someone behind her and, as she stepped forward and started to turn, she saw something moving through the darkness. She moved just in time to see the dim light from outside catching on the blade of a knife that was swinging toward her. She blocked up with her right hand, catching the blade against her forearm, and felt the sharp edge bite through the sleeve of her shirt and into her flesh. Pain flashed up her arm, a jagged bolt of electricity that burned into her brain. The machine gun was in her hand and she tried to pull the trigger, but the impact had jostled her finger out of the trigger guard and, as she slid it through again, she felt a strong hand around her wrist, forcing the gun away and then up toward the ceiling. She managed to slide her finger back around the trigger and the gun fired, three loud reports that echoed around the confined space. A shower of dislodged plaster fell down onto her.
Her assailant was male. He had his left hand locked around her right wrist, and, as Conway tried to force the gun down again, the man yanked her closer and stabbed at her again. There was nowhere for her to go. The edge of the knife slid into the soft flesh of her gut and was then yanked up, ripping through the wall of her stomach. She felt the strength drain out of her and the gun slipped from her fingers, vanishing into the darkness. She dropped down onto her knees.
The man with the knife followed, and, as he passed through the weak shaft of light from the open doorway, Conway saw his face: it was Timoshev. His expression was determined. Pitiless.
“You’ve been burned,” she muttered through the rending pain. “Give up. This won’t help.”
Timoshev didn’t respond. He stepped out of the light and into the darkness again, his face dissolving into the gloom as he drew closer to her. He was behind her before she could say anything else. He knotted her hair in his fist, pulled her head back to expose her neck, and sliced the blade across from one side to the other. She gasped, unable to draw breath, and, as she saw the blood spray out from her severed throat, she knew that she was done.
Her radio had a panic button and, with the last ounce of her strength, she reached up and pressed it.
36
Milton had just cleared the sitting room and was working his way back to the cloakroom when he heard the gunshots. He froze, and, a moment later, his earpiece buzzed. Someone had pressed the panic button on their radio.
“This is One. Report.”
“I’m here,” Pope said. His voice was as tight as a drum. “Did you hear that?”
“Ten,” Milton said. “Report. Repeat: Ten, report. Out.”
There was no reply.
“Shots fired,” Pope said.
Milton turned toward the cloakroom and started to move. “WATCHER, WATCHER,” he radioed. “Ten is not responding, likely down. Over.”
“Acknowledged. I heard gunshots. Over.”
Milton went into the cloakroom, cleared it, and passed through into the hall. The door to the kitchen was ahead of him. It was open. He thought of Conway, likely compromised, likely dead, and felt the familiar tremor of weakness.
No.
Not now.
Not here.
He paused, breathed in and out, then crossed the hall and stopped again to aim up the stairs to the first floor. It was dark up there, and he couldn’t see anything. He moved on and paused in the doorway. There was another door directly opposite him. He saw, just in time, the shadow standing there, half hidden in the gloom.
“Hands!”
The shadow paused.
Milton aimed the submachine gun.
“Hands!”
The shadow took a step back and, in so doing, moved into a shaft of dim moonlight from a window in the room beyond. Milton could see more now. It was a woman. Milton fumbled for the trigger.
Callaghan was sitting on the breakfast bar, kicking his heels. There was blood running down his face. You going to do it again? he asked him. You going to kill her, too? Milton looked down at the gun in his hand, at the blood on the floor, blowback smeared on his skin.
His arm fell a little and, as if waiting for the opportunity, the woman pointed a stubby MAC-10 at him. Milton snapped back just in time, falling back into the hall as a fusillade of nine-millimetre rounds streaked across the space. She had fired quickly, and her aim was off. The door frame detonated in a volley of tiny explosions, fragments of wood and paint and plaster stinging Milton’s skin.
The pain banished the dream. “I’m taking fire,” he called into the microphone as a second barrage held him in place. “WATCHER—call for help. Five—on me.”
The barrage ended. Milton heard the jangle of empty casings falling to the floor.
“You’ve been burned,” he called out.
There was no reply. Milton crawled ahead on hands and knees.
“We know who you are and what you’ve done.”
There was another volley of gunfire; this one was not aimed in his direction, though. Milton glanced around the doorframe. There was enough silvery light for him to see the fragments of broken tile and other debris on the floor next to the door to the dining room. Pope would have approached from that direction.
Milton aimed and fired, sending a fusillade in the direction of the target.
“Five,” Milton said when the clatter of the rifle had faded away. “Come in. Over.”
“The shooter saw me,” Pope responded. “I’m pinned down.”
“Go outside and come around the back.”
“On my way.”
He heard the buzzing of a motor and then a scraping noise from the direction of the annex. He knew what it was: the garage doors were opening.
He crawled forward and poked his head around the chewed-up doorframe.
Muzzle flash. The submachine gun fired again, and Milton jerked back into cover. The wall and balustrade behind him exploded, chunks of plaster and wood blowing out into the room as the hall was riddled with incoming fire. The plaster fell onto him, coating him in a fine white powder.
37
Nataliya had been taken by surprise. She had almost blundered into the kitchen, had almost run into the agent who had been waiting there. She had fired too quickly, the rounds going high and wide, but it had still bought time to get the passport and retreat. She was backing up when she saw another shadow in the doorway that connected with the dining room. She fired another volley.
She heard the sound of the motor that opened the garage doors and then, immediately after, the grumble of the Porsche’s engine. That was her cue to move. The first man called out again, telling her to stay where she was, but she ignored him. She left cover, and, walking backwards so that she could continue to aim at anyone who might try to follow her through the doorway to the kitchen, she crossed the annex sitting room, then the bedroom, and finally returned to the garage.
The doors had just finished opening and, in the wide shaft of moonlight that they admitted, she could see that Mikhail was inside the car. Vincent was next to the armoury, the shotgun held in both hands. There was the body of a woman on the floor.
Vincent had pressed the dead woman’s earpiece into his own ear and was monitoring their comms. “There are at least two more,” he said, raising his voice so that Nataliya and Mikhail could hear him over the rumble of the engine. “And they’ve just called for backup. We need to leave.”
Milton felt as if he was caught between reality and the dream. He was balanced on a precipice, teetering there; it would only take a little for him to fall. He moved through the annex, staying low, stumbling a little, the gun up and his finger held loosely around the trigger. He cleared the sitting room and then the bedroom, finally reaching the door to the garage. The door was closed; he slid next to it, pressing himself against the wall. His breath was coming in shallow gasps and he was sweating, drops rolling down his forehead and into his eyes. He wiped his face with the back of his sleeve.
He heard a car door open and close, took a deep breath, wiped his eyes again, reached for the handle and pulled it down. The door was unlocked. He opened it and, after waiting for a moment, he stepped back so that he could look through the doorway.
There was a car in the garage. The engine was turning over and the cabin lights were lit, casting a greenish glow over the silhouette of the man who was sitting in the driver’s seat. He looked into the back and saw another person: a woman, perhaps the one who had just shot at him.
Milton raised his weapon and aimed at the driver.
He straightened his arm and started to tighten his finger around the trigger, but before he could pull it all the way back, he caught the reflection of a second man in the window of the car. He had been around the corner, hidden, but now he moved into sight, a shotgun clutched in both hands. The man brought the stubby barrel around and fired; Milton fell farther back into the bedroom as the doorframe exploded. He was showered with another cloud of wood and plaster.
He heard the sound of a car closing and then the whine of the engine as the driver fed it gas. Milton rolled low out of the door as the car pulled out onto the drive. He fired a burst into the car, aiming for the engine and the driver’s side window. The bodywork chimed with each impact and holes were punched through the glass, but the window held.
The car kept going.
“Targets are in a Porsche Cayenne,” Milton said into the radio, his voice hoarse. “They’re heading toward the gate. Over.”
He saw the silhouettes of two people in the back of the car: the man with the shotgun had joined the woman. He heard the buzz of the hydraulic motor; the doors were closing again. The light from outside narrowed and dimmed as the doors drew together but, before the light was snuffed out altogether, he saw a woman’s body on the floor. He recognised the jacket that Conway had been wearing.
“Ten is down. Repeat: Ten is down.”
38
Pope retraced his steps and, the UCIW clasped in both hands, he ran back into the drawing room, into the hall and then out of the front door. He ran hard, reaching the corner of the building and poking his head around it in an attempt to scope out the garage. A car raced out of it and went by him, the brake lights flaring bright red as it slowed for the turn in the drive, and then the engine roaring loudly as it straightened out. Pope ran after it, making his way around the turn as the car started to accelerate toward the closed metal gates.
He raised the machine gun and pulled the trigger, five short bursts to stop the muzzle climbing on him. The gun chewed through the magazine, sending rounds slapping into the back of the vehicle. The rear window spiderwebbed as bullets punched through it. The car remained on course, the engine whining as it plunged into the dead centre of the gates. The metal screamed as it was torn apart; the gates were ripped from their hinges and spun onto the asphalt, clanging loudly as they slammed down hard. The car raced across the short fringe that separated the gates from the road, the brake lights showing again as it fishtailed right and then left, then winking out as the driver buried the pedal and raced away to the west.
Pope sprinted after it, ejecting and reloading as he ran. He came out of the gates just as the glare of a motorcycle’s headlamp approached along the main road. Pope jumped out in front of it, waving his arms. The motorcycle was travelling slowly, and the rider brought it to a halt and put his foot down. Pope grabbed the man and dragged him off the bike, dumping him on the road. Pope caught the bike before it could fall, mounted it, shoved the UCIW around so that it hung from its sling across his back and twisted the throttle. He raced away from the house and sped after the fleeing spies.
Beck found that he was biting his lip. The atmosphere in the car was tense. Nataliya had cursed as the rounds had punched through the rear window, and Beck had reached over to brush away the small fragments of glass that had fallen onto her. They had been lucky: most of the bullets had missed, and the rest had been stopped by the chassis of the car or the luggage in the boot behind them.
Mikhail was driving fast, hitting sixty as he raced out of the village and then squeezing up to seventy despite the narrow, twisting road. Nataliya had half-turned in her seat so that she could look back through the window for signs of pursuit. She was beautiful. Beck sometimes thought of her and Mikhail as the children that he had never been able to have. He had often daydreamed about what it might have been like if they had been allowed to return to Russia together. The two of them had been good enough to let him indulge his fantasy, and he knew that they would have stayed in contact with him even after their professional relationship had come to an end. It was unprofessional, but he loved them. He loved them, and, because he did, he knew what he had to do.
Mikhail glanced up into the rear-view mirror. “Someone’s behind us,” he said.
Beck craned his neck around and saw the glow of a single headlight in the distance behind them.
Mikhail turned the wheel to the right and swept into a minor road that ran to the north. He put his foot down, quickly racing up to sixty and then seventy. Beck turned around again and saw that the glow of the headlamp was still behind them. Mikhail swung the car onto another minor road and then immediately turned right, making a series of unpredictable manoeuvres that the vehicle behind would be unlikely to match unless it was following them.
They raced through the countryside. Beck turned back. The headlamp was still there.
“Pull over,” he said.
“Beck—” Nataliya started to protest.
“I’ll slow them down. The longer we wait, the more coverage they’ll have. That’s a motorbike. Maybe that’s all they have now. You won’t be able to get away if we give them the chance to bring more.”
“But you’re still coming?”
He turned to the front, said, “I am,” and hoped that she wouldn’t be able to read his face. “There,” he said, pointing to a track on the right. “Stop there.”
Mikhail braked suddenly, the seat belts biting and holding them all in place even as the wheels slithered across the dusty road.
Beck had rested the shotgun next to him. He took it, opened the door and stepped out.
“Go,” he said. “Don’t wait. Remember: Popham Airfield. I’ll see you in Moscow.”
He slammed the door before either of them had a chance to speak and waited until the car lurched ahead once more. He could see the glow of the headlamp suffusing the night above the meandering hills. He clasped the shotgun in both hands and walked out into the middle of the road to meet it.
39
Pope gripped the handlebars and gritted his teeth. The targets had a head start and they were driving aggressively and quickly. He knew that it would be impossible for him to follow them without them noticing, and that had been confirmed as the Porsche had taken two sharp turns and then accelerated away at high speed. They were going to try to shake him; Pope would have to try and stay on them until he was able to summon reinforcements. Control’s preference that the operation remain limited to Group Fifteen looked fatuous now; they were going to need to call on the police to bring the car to a stop. Pope just had to stay on them until that was possible.
The road was straight for a moment; Pope took the opportunity to reach up to his radio and pressed the button to open the channel.
“WATCHER, WATCHER, this is Five. Can you hear me? Over.”
“Barely. Speak slowly and clearly. Over.”
“I’m in pursuit of the targets. They are driving a Porsche Cayenne, partial registration BL12. Repeat: partial registration is BL12. We are proceeding west out of Kings Worthy. Over.”
“Five, copy that. Over.”
The road curved to the right; Pope gritted his teeth as he bent the bike low to the ground.
“Request police assistance. Track my location and get them to close the road ahead. Out.”
The road was narrow, with barely enough space for two cars to pass. There was open space to the left and right, with hawthorn hedges marking the boundaries. There was no light; Pope could see no farther than the glow of the headlamp. The wind rushed around him, pushing his hair back against his scalp and stinging his eyes.
A sharp left-hand turn approached. Pope drifted wide so that he could accelerate through the apex and, as he cleared it and straightened out, he saw the figure of a man standing in the middle of the road ahead of him. The headlamp bathed him in its golden glow and threw out a long shadow behind him; Pope could see that he had a shotgun braced against his shoulder and that it was aimed down the road at him.
He yanked the handlebars hard and leaned back. The bike slid through ninety degrees until it was almost parallel to the road. It bounced against the surface and then scraped along it. Pope travelled with it, then released his grip and allowed it to slide ahead of him. He felt the burn of the road’s surface against his legs.
He heard the boom of a gunshot, but the lead passed harmlessly overhead.
The bike continued down the road. It started to spin and, as it did, the front wheel clipped the legs of the gunman. The man toppled face first to the ground, his head cracking off the hard surface, his body bouncing once before it crumpled and he lay still.
The bike crashed into the hedge and came to rest. Pope slid by the man, digging in with the heels of his boots until he had arrested his forward momentum. His trousers were ripped and torn, and the flash of pain said that he had abraded the skin on his thighs and calves. Those were minor concerns that he had no time to worry about now.
The road was dark without the glow of the headlamp to illuminate it. Pope waited a moment for his eyes to adjust and then approached, covering the shooter with the machine gun. There was enough silvered light from the moon for Pope to see that his assailant was male and seemingly well dressed. He was face down, his arms splayed above his head. Pope knelt down for a better look. The man was no longer armed; Pope couldn’t see the shotgun in the darkness. He reached down with his left arm and turned the man over so that he lay on his back. It was too dark for Pope to see much, but there was enough light for him to recognise Vincent Beck. Blood was pouring out of a gash in his forehead.
Pope stood and gazed down the road. The bike was on its side, wrapped around the trunk of a small tree. The engine was still turning over, and the headlamp glowed through the vegetation. It wasn’t going anywhere. He looked beyond it, into the deeper darkness as the road led away. The agents were gone. He doubted that he would have been able to find them now, even if he had transport to continue the pursuit. Beck had sacrificed himself to buy their escape.
Pope pressed the button on his radio.
“WATCHER, I’ve got PAPERCLIP. Please send pickup to my location. Over.”
“Copy that, Five. The others? Over.”
“Gone. Have you informed the police? Over.”
“I have. But it’s late. Minimal assets available. Over.”
Pope knew it was a lost cause. Timoshev and Kuznetsov were in the wind. “Copy that, WATCHER. Out.”
Pope ended the call and took his phone out of his pocket. He switched on the flashlight and shone the beam on the old man’s face. The blood covered his face from his scalp all the way down to his chin, and more was still pouring from the gash. Pope opened the camera app, snapped off two quick photographs, and emailed them to Global Logistics. Then, he put the phone on the ground, the beam shining up, and frisked the man. He found a wallet inside his jacket and flipped it open. There was a driver’s licence in the name of Vincent Beck. Nothing else of interest.
Pope looked down at the old man. It had already been a rough night for him. That was a nasty gash on his forehead, but it was just an hors d’oeuvre for what was coming next. Pope didn’t envy him. His night was going to get much, much worse.
Farnborough
40
It was two in the morning and the motorway was empty. Pope was driving the plain black Range Rover that had been driven to Winchester by one of the Group Three bloodhounds. Vincent Beck was in the back, his hands cuffed behind him. PAPERCLIP had regained consciousness not long after Pope had loaded him into the car. He had been groggy and had grunted and groaned in response to Pope’s simple questions.
He followed the M3 northeast, approaching Farnborough on the way to Vauxhall Cross. Pope had pushed the speed up to a hundred and ten. The satnav suggested that they would be at their destination by three at the latest. There was no time to delay; Tanner had already relayed Control’s orders that they debrief PAPERCLIP as quickly as they could. Timoshev and Kuznetsov—and any other agents for whom Beck was responsible—would not be in the country for long. If they wanted to stop them, they would have to find them in the next few hours.
“Where are they?” Pope asked, looking up into the mirror so that he could see Beck’s response.
“Where are who?”
“Come on, Beck. This isn’t going to help you.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are talking about.”
“You know what’s coming. When we get to London—you know, right? It’ll be easier this way. Just tell me.”
“I’m sorry, Mr…”
“My name doesn’t matter.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I really do not know what you mean. I hit my head. I need to see a doctor.”
Pope drove on, his knuckles whitening around the wheel. “You’re going to have an awful morning if we get to London and you haven’t given us anything.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
What was the point in talking to him? Pope doubted that it would be fruitful and, anyway, there was something to be said for letting him stew in his own thoughts. If he was the agent runner responsible for the two sleepers, then he would know the gravity of the situation that he had found himself in. Despite that, Beck remained composed as Pope followed the motorway. His age suggested experience and he was probably old enough to have a realistic fatalism about what would find him eventually. Death or capture. It came to them all, one way or another. Pope was very aware of it. Not many made it out on their own terms.
They passed a sign for Fleet Services.
“I’m sorry,” Beck said. “I need the bathroom.”
“You’ll have to wait.”
“I can’t. Please—I’m old. When I have to go… well, you know. I’m sorry, it’s embarrassing, but there’s nothing I can do. Please.”
Pope told Beck to hold on, flicked the indicator and took the slip road off the motorway. He slowed down, turned into the car park and found a space next to the buildings. He got out, went around to Beck’s side, and helped him to get down, too. The old man’s hands were still behind his back. Pope stood him against the car and, for the second time, frisked him. There was nothing of concern. Pope took the key for the cuffs from his pocket and unlocked them.
Beck rubbed his wrists. “Thank you,” he said.
Pope gripped Beck’s elbow and led the way to the entrance. The car park was lit by the yellow sodium wash of the overhead lights and they could hear the occasional rush of cars on the motorway. Beck allowed himself to be led, reaching up to remove his spectacles as if to clean them. Pope paid no heed to it until Beck put one arm of the spectacles into his mouth and bit down on it. Pope reached for his hand and pulled it away from his mouth; the glasses fell to the ground and shattered, and, as Pope looked, he saw that Beck had chewed down hard on the arm so that a section of the plastic was missing.
Shit.
Beck was already gasping for breath. Pope manoeuvred him to a bench and lowered him down onto it. He grabbed the spectacles and examined them; the missing piece of plastic was a cap for the compartment that would have held a sodium or potassium cyanide pellet. The compartment was empty.
“You stupid fucker,” Pope said.
Beck stared up at him. He was already frothing at the mouth. Pope had been trained on the use of cyanide and knew precisely how it worked. The chemical affected the haemoglobin in the blood, compromising its ability to transport oxygen around the body. Cyanide led to death by asphyxiation. He might have been able to reverse the process with amyl nitrate, but he didn’t have any. Pope loosened the old man’s collar, but it was hopeless. His lips were blue and, as Pope leaned over him, his breathing grew shallow and, finally, stopped.
40
It was two in the morning and the motorway was empty. Pope was driving the plain black Range Rover that had been driven to Winchester by one of the Group Three bloodhounds. Vincent Beck was in the back, his hands cuffed behind him. PAPERCLIP had regained consciousness not long after Pope had loaded him into the car. He had been groggy and had grunted and groaned in response to Pope’s simple questions.
He followed the M3 northeast, approaching Farnborough on the way to Vauxhall Cross. Pope had pushed the speed up to a hundred and ten. The satnav suggested that they would be at their destination by three at the latest. There was no time to delay; Tanner had already relayed Control’s orders that they debrief PAPERCLIP as quickly as they could. Timoshev and Kuznetsov—and any other agents for whom Beck was responsible—would not be in the country for long. If they wanted to stop them, they would have to find them in the next few hours.
“Where are they?” Pope asked, looking up into the mirror so that he could see Beck’s response.
“Where are who?”
“Come on, Beck. This isn’t going to help you.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are talking about.”
“You know what’s coming. When we get to London—you know, right? It’ll be easier this way. Just tell me.”
“I’m sorry, Mr…”
“My name doesn’t matter.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I really do not know what you mean. I hit my head. I need to see a doctor.”
Pope drove on, his knuckles whitening around the wheel. “You’re going to have an awful morning if we get to London and you haven’t given us anything.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
What was the point in talking to him? Pope doubted that it would be fruitful and, anyway, there was something to be said for letting him stew in his own thoughts. If he was the agent runner responsible for the two sleepers, then he would know the gravity of the situation that he had found himself in. Despite that, Beck remained composed as Pope followed the motorway. His age suggested experience and he was probably old enough to have a realistic fatalism about what would find him eventually. Death or capture. It came to them all, one way or another. Pope was very aware of it. Not many made it out on their own terms.
They passed a sign for Fleet Services.
“I’m sorry,” Beck said. “I need the bathroom.”
“You’ll have to wait.”
“I can’t. Please—I’m old. When I have to go… well, you know. I’m sorry, it’s embarrassing, but there’s nothing I can do. Please.”
Pope told Beck to hold on, flicked the indicator and took the slip road off the motorway. He slowed down, turned into the car park and found a space next to the buildings. He got out, went around to Beck’s side, and helped him to get down, too. The old man’s hands were still behind his back. Pope stood him against the car and, for the second time, frisked him. There was nothing of concern. Pope took the key for the cuffs from his pocket and unlocked them.
Beck rubbed his wrists. “Thank you,” he said.
Pope gripped Beck’s elbow and led the way to the entrance. The car park was lit by the yellow sodium wash of the overhead lights and they could hear the occasional rush of cars on the motorway. Beck allowed himself to be led, reaching up to remove his spectacles as if to clean them. Pope paid no heed to it until Beck put one arm of the spectacles into his mouth and bit down on it. Pope reached for his hand and pulled it away from his mouth; the glasses fell to the ground and shattered, and, as Pope looked, he saw that Beck had chewed down hard on the arm so that a section of the plastic was missing.
Shit.
Beck was already gasping for breath. Pope manoeuvred him to a bench and lowered him down onto it. He grabbed the spectacles and examined them; the missing piece of plastic was a cap for the compartment that would have held a sodium or potassium cyanide pellet. The compartment was empty.
“You stupid fucker,” Pope said.
Beck stared up at him. He was already frothing at the mouth. Pope had been trained on the use of cyanide and knew precisely how it worked. The chemical affected the haemoglobin in the blood, compromising its ability to transport oxygen around the body. Cyanide led to death by asphyxiation. He might have been able to reverse the process with amyl nitrate, but he didn’t have any. Pope loosened the old man’s collar, but it was hopeless. His lips were blue and, as Pope leaned over him, his breathing grew shallow and, finally, stopped.
London
41
Milton woke up. He lay on the damp sheets and concentrated on his breathing—in and out, in and out—until he found a point of balance, some equilibrium, something stable that he could build upon. He didn’t feel nauseous any longer but, instead, he just felt washed out. His sleep had not been restorative; quite the opposite. It was as if the strength had been allowed to drain out of him, as if his resistance had been scoured away.
He opened his eyes. The bedroom was a mess. He had undressed down to his shorts, and his trousers and shirt were strewn over the back of the wooden chair in the corner of the room. He reached across to the bedside table to his right, scrabbling through the loose change, his cigarettes and lighter until he felt the links of his watch strap. He took it, holding the watch close to his face until he was able to focus on the time.
It was one o’clock in the afternoon. He tried to remember what had happened after he had left the property in Kings Worthy. He couldn’t recall what time he had made it back to his apartment, but, he knew that he must have been out of it for several hours. He turned over so that he could look for his phone; it wasn’t on the bedside table, which meant that it was probably still in the pocket of his jeans.
He sat up, and immediately wished that he hadn’t. His head throbbed and he tasted vomit, stale cigarette smoke and alcohol in his mouth. He glanced around the room and saw the detritus of another lost night and morning. There was a bottle of gin on the floor, resting on its side; there was an inch of liquid still inside it, a damp patch darkening the carpet just beneath the mouth. He saw three crumpled tin cans in the wastepaper basket and a bottle of prescription sleeping pills, the contents spilled out over the floor.
He put his feet down and gingerly stood up. A fresh wave of vomit bubbled up his gullet, and he stumbled to the bathroom to lower his head over the toilet bowl, just in time. His vomit was thin and acidic, followed by mouthfuls of bile. He spat it all out, rubbed the sweat off his face with a hand towel and then ran the shower. He stripped and stepped into the cubicle, turning his face so that the water could splash off him.
He stood there for five minutes, scrubbing away the dirt of the previous day. A wave of guilt swept over him. He thought of the dream, of Callaghan, of the latest in the long line of victims whom he had murdered. He thought of all the others, the men and women, more than a hundred of them. They all visited him in his dreams, the things that he had done replaying over and over again: a knife slashed across a throat, the muzzle of a gun pushed against a head, a chokehold cinched until life drained away. They visited him more and more often. Milton thought of them and imagined all the others that he would be asked to kill if he continued working for Control. How many more victims? How many more dreams?
He felt dizzy and thought that he was going to be sick again; he spat out a mouthful of phlegm, but the moment passed.
He needed to get out of the Group. He had known it before, a thought that drifted through his consciousness like a phantom, but it was tangible now. He couldn’t ignore it. He knew that it wouldn’t be easy—that it might not even be possible—but he knew, with complete conviction, that his career spent murdering for the government needed to come to an end.
Milton towelled himself off and went back into the bedroom. He found his jeans, fished his phone out of the pocket, and checked the display. There were no missed calls. He didn’t know whether that was a good or a bad sign, but he put it out of his mind. He opened the browser and navigated to the page that he had bookmarked, the one that showed the details of the AA meetings in London. There was one near Dalston in an hour. He found clean clothes in his wardrobe and dressed, putting on his shoulder holster with the Group-issue Sig. He hid it beneath his jacket, pulled on a pair of boots and made his way to the door.
42
Milton performed careful counter-surveillance on his journey. He took a bus from his flat in Chelsea, riding it for ten minutes before hopping off and getting another that headed back in the opposite direction. He hurried down into the underground and changed trains twice before boarding the eastbound East London Line train that eventually deposited him at Dalston Junction station. It was a classic dry-cleaning run and now, as he emerged from the station onto the street, he was confident that he was black. It felt ridiculous to have to assure himself that he was not being surveilled by his own people, but this would hardly have been the first time that Control had assigned agents to follow one of his own. Control was paranoid, his neuroses bred in the suspicions of a divided Berlin, and Milton knew that he had to be careful.
He walked east. St. Jude and St. Paul’s Church was on Mildmay Grove, a pleasant road to the north of one of the main thoroughfares that passed through this part of central London. It was a warm afternoon and Milton unzipped his jacket a little. Milton could see half a dozen men and women ambling toward the entrance of the church and he felt the same mixture of anxiety and nervousness as he had felt at the hospital meeting last night. He delayed, pausing on the bridge to watch a train as it passed through the cut. The church was ahead of him, on the junction of King Henry’s Road. There was a row of terraced houses beyond it that would once have offered accommodation to the workers who had made this part of London their home, but had now been forced out by rising prices that could only be afforded by the professionals who travelled into the city every morning. There were expensive cars parked in bays on both sides of the road, with a leafy canopy overhead. The tall spire of the church reached up high into the afternoon sky. Milton looked back to the entrance and watched as the men and women went inside. He looked at his watch: a minute before two. The meeting was about to start.
He had come all this way. He wasn’t going to turn around now. He tried to rationalise it: he would go in and see what happened. He wouldn’t speak, and if he didn’t like it, he would never have to come again. There was nothing to lose.
The gates that separated the churchyard from the pavement were open, and the blue cardboard sign that had been tied to the railing fluttered in the gentle breeze. Milton reached up and took it between his thumb and forefinger: it was a blue circle with a white triangle inside it and, inside that, two white As. Milton released the sign, watched it twist in the wind, and then, swallowing down on a dry throat, he pushed the gate open and walked up the path to the door.
There was a lobby just inside. The church was built from stone, and it was cool here out of the sunshine. It reminded Milton of a crypt, but it also felt peaceful and calm. A table had been folded open and a large urn of hot water had been set up. There was a collection of dirty cups, a handful that were still clean, and a plate of biscuits. The table was unattended; the woman who Milton guessed had been responsible for the refreshments was making her way into a small hall to the right. Milton followed.
The hall wasn’t large, and had rows of stacking chairs along the stone walls. The chairs were almost all taken; Milton guessed that there were twenty-five men and women here. They were talking quietly to one another, the meeting not yet started. There was a table with two chairs behind it. There was a lit candle on the table and a poster had been blu-tacked to the front of it. The poster was made to look like a parchment scroll, with twelve separate points running from the top to the bottom. The poster was headed THE TWELVE STEPS TO RECOVERY.
Milton had hoped to take a seat at the back of the room where he could melt into the background, but he could see that that would be impossible. The chairs were arranged so that they all faced into the middle; there was nowhere that Milton could go where the others would not be able to look at him. The arrangement spooked him, and he was about to turn around and leave when he felt someone behind him.
He turned.
“Hello.”
It was the man that he had spoken to outside the meeting yesterday evening. He tried to remember his name, but couldn’t.
The man saw Milton’s confusion. “It’s Michael. We met yesterday.”
Milton definitely wanted to leave now. This was a bad mistake. He shouldn’t be here.
“You want to sit over there?”
There were two chairs together on the opposite side of the room. Milton was about to say no, to make his apologies and leave, but Michael was in the way and some of the others were looking up at them.
“Take your seats, please,” a woman in the middle of the room said. “Hello. My name is Laura, and I’m an alcoholic. Let’s get started.”
Michael put his hand on Milton’s shoulder. “Just stay and listen,” he said. “You don’t have to say anything.”
Milton flinched at the touch of the man’s hand, but he didn’t try to leave. He flashed back to the dream again, and the drink and the drugs that he had abused in an attempt to keep his memories at arm’s length, and he knew that he had to try something else. His method wasn’t working. More than that, it was making things worse; he knew that he would kill himself if he continued on the same path. He was here now. He was black, no one knew who he was, and no one needed to know. Michael was right; he would sit down and listen. What harm could come of that?
43
Milton found, to his surprise, that he enjoyed the meeting. There was a formal structure to it, with the woman who had spoken first—Michael leaned over and whispered that she was the secretary—introducing the speaker who was going to share her story with the others. The speaker was in her forties, Milton guessed, and looked like any one of the women who could be seen with their babies in expensive prams outside the coffee shops in Highbury and Islington. Milton had expected that her story would be dull and have no correlation to his own and, at least in content, he was right. She spoke about a boring life, the tedium of looking after two small children, and a career that she had abandoned for her kids but that she now missed terribly. Milton’s first conclusion was that she had nothing to offer him, but, as she spoke about why she drank, he started to see the points of similarity. She had guilt: she loved her children but didn’t feel that she was a good mother, and drank a bottle of wine every night to push that toxic thought to the back of her mind. She resented her husband for his career, his friends, and the normality that she feared that she would never see again.
Milton found himself nodding as she made her points.
Guilt.
Resentment.
Fear.
He knew them all.
The woman finished her story after half an hour and was applauded for it. The secretary opened the floor to those who wanted to share their own experiences, and Milton listened to them, too. He felt his phone buzzing in his pocket as the meeting drew to a close, but ignored it. After a moment, the buzzing stopped.
The secretary brought the proceedings to an end with housekeeping matters, and a plate was passed around for donations. Milton reached into his pocket for a crumpled ten-pound note and dropped it onto the plate with the coins and other notes as it made its way around the room.
He got up and waited for those ahead of him to filter through the door.
Michael got up with him. “How was that?” he asked.
“It was good.”
“That was your first meeting?”
There seemed little point in lying. “Yes,” Milton said.
“And?”
Milton paused.
“Did you get anything out of it?”
“I don’t know. It was peaceful. I needed that. But anything else? I don’t know. The speaker didn’t seem like she got any answers. No one offered their opinions.”
“It doesn’t work like that. Can I give you some advice?” Michael paused for a moment, but Milton could see that he was going to give it no matter what he said and so he managed a nod of assent. “We share our stories here, but it’s not a conversation. Cross-talk isn’t allowed. You share your story, you spill your guts, and everyone else just listens. You reflect on what has been said and look for the ways that their experience is like yours. And then you thank them, maybe share your own experiences, you listen some more, then you leave. That’s it.”
“But no discussion?”
“It’s a room full of drunks. Discussion can turn to argument before you know it, and arguments can lead to a fight. That’s the last thing you want in the rooms. We want serenity. Peacefulness, like you said. It’s like the best kind of meditation when it’s at its best. You’ve got to come back—the more you come, the better you’ll get at just switching off and absorbing it all.”
“Are they all like this?”
Michael shook his head. “They’re all different. The ones around here are like this: most of us are reasonably well off, professionals, decent jobs. But if you go to West Ham or Plaistow you’ll get an”—he paused, searching for the right word—“an earthier crowd. I was at a meeting over there on Friday. The guy who was sharing was straight out of prison for armed robbery. Seriously. The man next to me said he was going inside next week. It varies. You’ve just got to find one that suits you and what you need. Try a few out. You’ll get what you need eventually. One day at a time.”
The crowd had shuffled out into the lobby. Milton made his way out, too, and Michael followed.
“We go for coffee now if you fancy it,” Michael said.
Milton felt his phone buzzing again. He reached into his pocket and took it out. The call was from Global Logistics.
“There’s a place down the road—”
“Sorry,” Milton spoke over him, holding the phone up. “I’ve got to take this.”
Michael held up both hands, smiled, and stepped back. Milton felt awkward and rude, but he didn’t want to go for coffee and this was a good excuse not to. On the other hand, he didn’t want to speak to Control either, but he knew that he couldn’t ignore him forever. He took the call and put the phone to his ear.
“It’s Tanner.”
“Hello.”
“Are you all right? I’ve been trying to get you for twenty minutes.”
“I’m fine.”
“You need to come in. The old man wants to speak to you.”
“About?”
“Just come in, Milton. Soon as you can. He’s not in a good mood.”
44
Milton was sent straight up to Control’s office. He remembered the first time that he had been shown up to the room. He had been much younger then, still in the Regiment and itching for a new challenge. He had worn his best suit, the one that he had last worn to the wedding of one of his old SAS muckers, and he had spent half an hour polishing his shoes until he could see his reflection in the caps. He looked down at himself now and could not fail to be disappointed by the comparison. His jeans and shirt had received the most cursory of irons. His boots were scuffed and marked and, as he reached up to rub his temple, his fingers ran through strands of hair that were long overdue a cut. Milton tried to pretend that he had allowed his standards to slip because it was easier to merge into the background when one looked like everyone else, but, although there was truth to that, it was not the reason. The enthusiasm that he had felt back then, and the desire to impress, had all faded away. He was going through the motions now. He had been for a while. He knew that something had to change.
Milton knocked on the door.
“Come,” Control called.
Milton opened the door and stepped into the office. Control was standing behind his desk, facing the window with his arms clasped behind his back.
“Hello, sir,” Milton said.
“Sit down, Number One.”
Milton did. He could see in the reflection that Control had his pipe in his mouth. He took a matchbook from his pocket, broke off a match and lit it. He puffed in and out as he held the match to the bowl; it took thirty seconds to light the pipe, a process that Milton knew Control was prolonging in order to make him feel uncomfortable. It didn’t matter; Milton was wise to all of Control’s foibles. They had worked together for years. He sat quietly with one leg folded over the other and waited until Control was done.
He inhaled, held the smoke, and then blew it out. He turned to face the room. His expression was grim.
“What’s going on, Milton?”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Are you well?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’ve been off the reservation all morning. Tanner couldn’t reach you. Is there anything I need to know?”
“No, sir. I don’t believe so.”
“Penn said that you looked ill last night.”
“He did?”
“When you left the property. He said you looked like you’d been sick.”
“I had a migraine, sir,” Milton said. “I’ve been suffering from them for the last few weeks.”
“A migraine?”
“Yes, sir. They’ve been interrupting my sleep—I haven’t been well rested. I finished up at the Ryans’ house and went home to sleep.”
“I see,” he said. “And are you better now?”
There was no compassion in the question; it was as if Control was asking a repairman if a domestic appliance had been fixed.
“Yes, sir. I am.”
Control watched him shrewdly. “Nothing on your file about migraines.”
“They’ve been recent.”
“Have you spoken to the doctor?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“My preference would be to deal with it myself.”
Control stared at him for a beat. He was old school; you didn’t let something as mundane as a headache interrupt your work. You’d need to be shot, or stabbed, or break an arm or leg, but even then, it would be a case of getting patched up and throwing yourself back into the fray. A migraine, though? That wouldn’t do.
“See that you mention it next week,” he said.
“Next week, sir?”
“I’ve referred you to Dr Fry. He’ll want to speak to you. Make sure you tell him what he needs to know.”
This was a black mark against his name; Milton knew it, but he didn’t care. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll do that.”
Control stood and started to pace the carpet behind his desk. “I need to update you on PAPERCLIP.”
“Number Five apprehended him.”
“Yes,” Control said. “He did. But then he killed himself. Cyanide capsule hidden in the stem of his glasses. We lost Kuznetsov and Timoshev, then we lost him. You can understand why I’m unhappy with how the operation was handled. It’s been a bit of a fuck-up, hasn’t it? A comedy of errors—one thing after another. The government is going to want to know what happened and, frankly, I have no idea how I’m going to dress it up.”
There was a knock on the door.
“You’ll be glad to hear, though, that you have a chance to make amends. You and Five, actually. Come.”
The door opened and Tanner came inside. “He’s here, sir,” he said.
“Send him in.”
Milton turned in his chair as Pope stepped into the office. Tanner said he would bring in some refreshments and hobbled away.
Control rested the pipe in an ashtray. “Good afternoon, Five.”
“Sir.”
Control indicated the chair next to Milton and Pope took it.
“You two are going to have to cancel any plans you might have been unfortunate enough to have arranged. What happened yesterday obligates a strong response from us. You dropped the ball—the illegals are gone and PAPERCLIP is dead. But we have another source of intelligence and we have another opportunity. I’m going to give you the highlights, and then I’m going to tell you what I want you to do.”
45
Control puffed on his pipe. “We have a source of intelligence within the Center: the cryptonym is BLUEBIRD. We were told that Beck was a Directorate S handler, but BLUEBIRD didn’t know about the operation against Aleksandrov until after the fact. We were fortunate that we had Beck under surveillance, and that he led us to Timoshev and Kuznetsov. We’ve confirmed that they murdered Aleksandrov and Geggel yesterday.”
“Do we know why?” Milton asked.
“Why they did it?” Control shook his head. “BLUEBIRD suggests that Aleksandrov was in possession of a list of all the SVR’s agents in Western Europe, and that he wanted to sell it to us. Aleksandrov approached Geggel to act as intermediary.” Control blew smoke. “Geggel’s phone records have been examined—it turns out that Aleksandrov called him last week. We don’t have any record of what was said, but it was important enough for him to drive over from London to see him.”
“And Geggel didn’t tell anyone? Didn’t call it in?”
“He did not,” Control said. “And that’s not surprising. I knew him a little. He’d been around. He left SIS under a cloud. Made a mess of one of the files that he was handling—a source in the GRU was burned and it looked like he might have been to blame. He wasn’t ready to retire and they rather pushed him toward the door. If you asked me to guess, I’d say he went to see for himself whether Aleksandrov had anything of interest and, if he decided that he did, he was going to be the one to bring it in.”
“And we believe the intel?”
Control shrugged. “Aleksandrov was a nobody. He gave us decent intelligence when he was operational, but that was years ago. Something changed that made him a target. Offering us a list of active agents would be enough to put him in the crosshairs.”
Control took another match and lit the pipe again.
“Where are Timoshev and Kuznetsov now?” Pope asked.
“On their way back to Russia. They were exfiltrated out of a private airfield after you lost them. They had a pilot fly them over the channel to France. ATC confirmed the vector—they took off from Popham and landed at Calais-Dunkerque at just after six. We’ve contacted the DSGE, but the odds of finding them now are slim. They will have picked up new legends as soon as they arrived. If it were me, I’d get them into the Netherlands and fly them out of Schiphol, but it could be anything. They’re gone. We can’t stop them getting home.”
Pope crossed his legs. “So what do we do now?”
“We go after them. BLUEBIRD thinks he might be able to help us find them again. The two of you are going to go to Moscow and set up there. As soon as we know where they are, you are going to take them out.” He got up again and walked to the window that overlooked the grey river. “They killed those two men to make a point. The Center is sending a message: they want any other dissident, inside or outside the motherland, to know that the SVR has a long memory and a long arm. And they were making a point to us, too. To the security services. To the country. It was an insult. They don’t care because they don’t see us as a threat. They are thumbing their noses at us, and we cannot allow that to stand. So that’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go to Moscow, you’ll find the sleepers, and you’ll kill them both. And then you’ll find whoever it was who ordered the operation and you’ll kill them, too. We’re going to show our Russian friends that there are consequences to their actions. We won’t be anyone’s punchbag.”
Milton sat quietly. An operation in Moscow would be difficult, to say the least. An operation in Moscow against two high-profile SVR agents would be something else entirely.
“There’s an Aeroflot flight out of Heathrow at ten forty-five tonight. Pick up your legend from Tanner. You’ll be briefed at Moscow Station at seven tomorrow morning. I want this taken care of as quickly as possible. No mistakes this time. Absolutely no mistakes. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Pope said.
Control didn’t take his eyes off Milton. “Number One?”
“Sir?”
“See that it gets done. Take them both out. Dismissed.”
41
Milton woke up. He lay on the damp sheets and concentrated on his breathing—in and out, in and out—until he found a point of balance, some equilibrium, something stable that he could build upon. He didn’t feel nauseous any longer but, instead, he just felt washed out. His sleep had not been restorative; quite the opposite. It was as if the strength had been allowed to drain out of him, as if his resistance had been scoured away.
He opened his eyes. The bedroom was a mess. He had undressed down to his shorts, and his trousers and shirt were strewn over the back of the wooden chair in the corner of the room. He reached across to the bedside table to his right, scrabbling through the loose change, his cigarettes and lighter until he felt the links of his watch strap. He took it, holding the watch close to his face until he was able to focus on the time.
It was one o’clock in the afternoon. He tried to remember what had happened after he had left the property in Kings Worthy. He couldn’t recall what time he had made it back to his apartment, but, he knew that he must have been out of it for several hours. He turned over so that he could look for his phone; it wasn’t on the bedside table, which meant that it was probably still in the pocket of his jeans.
He sat up, and immediately wished that he hadn’t. His head throbbed and he tasted vomit, stale cigarette smoke and alcohol in his mouth. He glanced around the room and saw the detritus of another lost night and morning. There was a bottle of gin on the floor, resting on its side; there was an inch of liquid still inside it, a damp patch darkening the carpet just beneath the mouth. He saw three crumpled tin cans in the wastepaper basket and a bottle of prescription sleeping pills, the contents spilled out over the floor.
He put his feet down and gingerly stood up. A fresh wave of vomit bubbled up his gullet, and he stumbled to the bathroom to lower his head over the toilet bowl, just in time. His vomit was thin and acidic, followed by mouthfuls of bile. He spat it all out, rubbed the sweat off his face with a hand towel and then ran the shower. He stripped and stepped into the cubicle, turning his face so that the water could splash off him.
He stood there for five minutes, scrubbing away the dirt of the previous day. A wave of guilt swept over him. He thought of the dream, of Callaghan, of the latest in the long line of victims whom he had murdered. He thought of all the others, the men and women, more than a hundred of them. They all visited him in his dreams, the things that he had done replaying over and over again: a knife slashed across a throat, the muzzle of a gun pushed against a head, a chokehold cinched until life drained away. They visited him more and more often. Milton thought of them and imagined all the others that he would be asked to kill if he continued working for Control. How many more victims? How many more dreams?
He felt dizzy and thought that he was going to be sick again; he spat out a mouthful of phlegm, but the moment passed.
He needed to get out of the Group. He had known it before, a thought that drifted through his consciousness like a phantom, but it was tangible now. He couldn’t ignore it. He knew that it wouldn’t be easy—that it might not even be possible—but he knew, with complete conviction, that his career spent murdering for the government needed to come to an end.
Milton towelled himself off and went back into the bedroom. He found his jeans, fished his phone out of the pocket, and checked the display. There were no missed calls. He didn’t know whether that was a good or a bad sign, but he put it out of his mind. He opened the browser and navigated to the page that he had bookmarked, the one that showed the details of the AA meetings in London. There was one near Dalston in an hour. He found clean clothes in his wardrobe and dressed, putting on his shoulder holster with the Group-issue Sig. He hid it beneath his jacket, pulled on a pair of boots and made his way to the door.
42
Milton performed careful counter-surveillance on his journey. He took a bus from his flat in Chelsea, riding it for ten minutes before hopping off and getting another that headed back in the opposite direction. He hurried down into the underground and changed trains twice before boarding the eastbound East London Line train that eventually deposited him at Dalston Junction station. It was a classic dry-cleaning run and now, as he emerged from the station onto the street, he was confident that he was black. It felt ridiculous to have to assure himself that he was not being surveilled by his own people, but this would hardly have been the first time that Control had assigned agents to follow one of his own. Control was paranoid, his neuroses bred in the suspicions of a divided Berlin, and Milton knew that he had to be careful.
He walked east. St. Jude and St. Paul’s Church was on Mildmay Grove, a pleasant road to the north of one of the main thoroughfares that passed through this part of central London. It was a warm afternoon and Milton unzipped his jacket a little. Milton could see half a dozen men and women ambling toward the entrance of the church and he felt the same mixture of anxiety and nervousness as he had felt at the hospital meeting last night. He delayed, pausing on the bridge to watch a train as it passed through the cut. The church was ahead of him, on the junction of King Henry’s Road. There was a row of terraced houses beyond it that would once have offered accommodation to the workers who had made this part of London their home, but had now been forced out by rising prices that could only be afforded by the professionals who travelled into the city every morning. There were expensive cars parked in bays on both sides of the road, with a leafy canopy overhead. The tall spire of the church reached up high into the afternoon sky. Milton looked back to the entrance and watched as the men and women went inside. He looked at his watch: a minute before two. The meeting was about to start.
He had come all this way. He wasn’t going to turn around now. He tried to rationalise it: he would go in and see what happened. He wouldn’t speak, and if he didn’t like it, he would never have to come again. There was nothing to lose.
The gates that separated the churchyard from the pavement were open, and the blue cardboard sign that had been tied to the railing fluttered in the gentle breeze. Milton reached up and took it between his thumb and forefinger: it was a blue circle with a white triangle inside it and, inside that, two white As. Milton released the sign, watched it twist in the wind, and then, swallowing down on a dry throat, he pushed the gate open and walked up the path to the door.
There was a lobby just inside. The church was built from stone, and it was cool here out of the sunshine. It reminded Milton of a crypt, but it also felt peaceful and calm. A table had been folded open and a large urn of hot water had been set up. There was a collection of dirty cups, a handful that were still clean, and a plate of biscuits. The table was unattended; the woman who Milton guessed had been responsible for the refreshments was making her way into a small hall to the right. Milton followed.
The hall wasn’t large, and had rows of stacking chairs along the stone walls. The chairs were almost all taken; Milton guessed that there were twenty-five men and women here. They were talking quietly to one another, the meeting not yet started. There was a table with two chairs behind it. There was a lit candle on the table and a poster had been blu-tacked to the front of it. The poster was made to look like a parchment scroll, with twelve separate points running from the top to the bottom. The poster was headed THE TWELVE STEPS TO RECOVERY.
Milton had hoped to take a seat at the back of the room where he could melt into the background, but he could see that that would be impossible. The chairs were arranged so that they all faced into the middle; there was nowhere that Milton could go where the others would not be able to look at him. The arrangement spooked him, and he was about to turn around and leave when he felt someone behind him.
He turned.
“Hello.”
It was the man that he had spoken to outside the meeting yesterday evening. He tried to remember his name, but couldn’t.
The man saw Milton’s confusion. “It’s Michael. We met yesterday.”
Milton definitely wanted to leave now. This was a bad mistake. He shouldn’t be here.
“You want to sit over there?”
There were two chairs together on the opposite side of the room. Milton was about to say no, to make his apologies and leave, but Michael was in the way and some of the others were looking up at them.
“Take your seats, please,” a woman in the middle of the room said. “Hello. My name is Laura, and I’m an alcoholic. Let’s get started.”
Michael put his hand on Milton’s shoulder. “Just stay and listen,” he said. “You don’t have to say anything.”
Milton flinched at the touch of the man’s hand, but he didn’t try to leave. He flashed back to the dream again, and the drink and the drugs that he had abused in an attempt to keep his memories at arm’s length, and he knew that he had to try something else. His method wasn’t working. More than that, it was making things worse; he knew that he would kill himself if he continued on the same path. He was here now. He was black, no one knew who he was, and no one needed to know. Michael was right; he would sit down and listen. What harm could come of that?
43
Milton found, to his surprise, that he enjoyed the meeting. There was a formal structure to it, with the woman who had spoken first—Michael leaned over and whispered that she was the secretary—introducing the speaker who was going to share her story with the others. The speaker was in her forties, Milton guessed, and looked like any one of the women who could be seen with their babies in expensive prams outside the coffee shops in Highbury and Islington. Milton had expected that her story would be dull and have no correlation to his own and, at least in content, he was right. She spoke about a boring life, the tedium of looking after two small children, and a career that she had abandoned for her kids but that she now missed terribly. Milton’s first conclusion was that she had nothing to offer him, but, as she spoke about why she drank, he started to see the points of similarity. She had guilt: she loved her children but didn’t feel that she was a good mother, and drank a bottle of wine every night to push that toxic thought to the back of her mind. She resented her husband for his career, his friends, and the normality that she feared that she would never see again.
Milton found himself nodding as she made her points.
Guilt.
Resentment.
Fear.
He knew them all.
The woman finished her story after half an hour and was applauded for it. The secretary opened the floor to those who wanted to share their own experiences, and Milton listened to them, too. He felt his phone buzzing in his pocket as the meeting drew to a close, but ignored it. After a moment, the buzzing stopped.
The secretary brought the proceedings to an end with housekeeping matters, and a plate was passed around for donations. Milton reached into his pocket for a crumpled ten-pound note and dropped it onto the plate with the coins and other notes as it made its way around the room.
He got up and waited for those ahead of him to filter through the door.
Michael got up with him. “How was that?” he asked.
“It was good.”
“That was your first meeting?”
There seemed little point in lying. “Yes,” Milton said.
“And?”
Milton paused.
“Did you get anything out of it?”
“I don’t know. It was peaceful. I needed that. But anything else? I don’t know. The speaker didn’t seem like she got any answers. No one offered their opinions.”
“It doesn’t work like that. Can I give you some advice?” Michael paused for a moment, but Milton could see that he was going to give it no matter what he said and so he managed a nod of assent. “We share our stories here, but it’s not a conversation. Cross-talk isn’t allowed. You share your story, you spill your guts, and everyone else just listens. You reflect on what has been said and look for the ways that their experience is like yours. And then you thank them, maybe share your own experiences, you listen some more, then you leave. That’s it.”
“But no discussion?”
“It’s a room full of drunks. Discussion can turn to argument before you know it, and arguments can lead to a fight. That’s the last thing you want in the rooms. We want serenity. Peacefulness, like you said. It’s like the best kind of meditation when it’s at its best. You’ve got to come back—the more you come, the better you’ll get at just switching off and absorbing it all.”
“Are they all like this?”
Michael shook his head. “They’re all different. The ones around here are like this: most of us are reasonably well off, professionals, decent jobs. But if you go to West Ham or Plaistow you’ll get an”—he paused, searching for the right word—“an earthier crowd. I was at a meeting over there on Friday. The guy who was sharing was straight out of prison for armed robbery. Seriously. The man next to me said he was going inside next week. It varies. You’ve just got to find one that suits you and what you need. Try a few out. You’ll get what you need eventually. One day at a time.”
The crowd had shuffled out into the lobby. Milton made his way out, too, and Michael followed.
“We go for coffee now if you fancy it,” Michael said.
Milton felt his phone buzzing again. He reached into his pocket and took it out. The call was from Global Logistics.
“There’s a place down the road—”
“Sorry,” Milton spoke over him, holding the phone up. “I’ve got to take this.”
Michael held up both hands, smiled, and stepped back. Milton felt awkward and rude, but he didn’t want to go for coffee and this was a good excuse not to. On the other hand, he didn’t want to speak to Control either, but he knew that he couldn’t ignore him forever. He took the call and put the phone to his ear.
“It’s Tanner.”
“Hello.”
“Are you all right? I’ve been trying to get you for twenty minutes.”
“I’m fine.”
“You need to come in. The old man wants to speak to you.”
“About?”
“Just come in, Milton. Soon as you can. He’s not in a good mood.”
44
Milton was sent straight up to Control’s office. He remembered the first time that he had been shown up to the room. He had been much younger then, still in the Regiment and itching for a new challenge. He had worn his best suit, the one that he had last worn to the wedding of one of his old SAS muckers, and he had spent half an hour polishing his shoes until he could see his reflection in the caps. He looked down at himself now and could not fail to be disappointed by the comparison. His jeans and shirt had received the most cursory of irons. His boots were scuffed and marked and, as he reached up to rub his temple, his fingers ran through strands of hair that were long overdue a cut. Milton tried to pretend that he had allowed his standards to slip because it was easier to merge into the background when one looked like everyone else, but, although there was truth to that, it was not the reason. The enthusiasm that he had felt back then, and the desire to impress, had all faded away. He was going through the motions now. He had been for a while. He knew that something had to change.
Milton knocked on the door.
“Come,” Control called.
Milton opened the door and stepped into the office. Control was standing behind his desk, facing the window with his arms clasped behind his back.
“Hello, sir,” Milton said.
“Sit down, Number One.”
Milton did. He could see in the reflection that Control had his pipe in his mouth. He took a matchbook from his pocket, broke off a match and lit it. He puffed in and out as he held the match to the bowl; it took thirty seconds to light the pipe, a process that Milton knew Control was prolonging in order to make him feel uncomfortable. It didn’t matter; Milton was wise to all of Control’s foibles. They had worked together for years. He sat quietly with one leg folded over the other and waited until Control was done.
He inhaled, held the smoke, and then blew it out. He turned to face the room. His expression was grim.
“What’s going on, Milton?”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Are you well?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’ve been off the reservation all morning. Tanner couldn’t reach you. Is there anything I need to know?”
“No, sir. I don’t believe so.”
“Penn said that you looked ill last night.”
“He did?”
“When you left the property. He said you looked like you’d been sick.”
“I had a migraine, sir,” Milton said. “I’ve been suffering from them for the last few weeks.”
“A migraine?”
“Yes, sir. They’ve been interrupting my sleep—I haven’t been well rested. I finished up at the Ryans’ house and went home to sleep.”
“I see,” he said. “And are you better now?”
There was no compassion in the question; it was as if Control was asking a repairman if a domestic appliance had been fixed.
“Yes, sir. I am.”
Control watched him shrewdly. “Nothing on your file about migraines.”
“They’ve been recent.”
“Have you spoken to the doctor?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“My preference would be to deal with it myself.”
Control stared at him for a beat. He was old school; you didn’t let something as mundane as a headache interrupt your work. You’d need to be shot, or stabbed, or break an arm or leg, but even then, it would be a case of getting patched up and throwing yourself back into the fray. A migraine, though? That wouldn’t do.
“See that you mention it next week,” he said.
“Next week, sir?”
“I’ve referred you to Dr Fry. He’ll want to speak to you. Make sure you tell him what he needs to know.”
This was a black mark against his name; Milton knew it, but he didn’t care. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll do that.”
Control stood and started to pace the carpet behind his desk. “I need to update you on PAPERCLIP.”
“Number Five apprehended him.”
“Yes,” Control said. “He did. But then he killed himself. Cyanide capsule hidden in the stem of his glasses. We lost Kuznetsov and Timoshev, then we lost him. You can understand why I’m unhappy with how the operation was handled. It’s been a bit of a fuck-up, hasn’t it? A comedy of errors—one thing after another. The government is going to want to know what happened and, frankly, I have no idea how I’m going to dress it up.”
There was a knock on the door.
“You’ll be glad to hear, though, that you have a chance to make amends. You and Five, actually. Come.”
The door opened and Tanner came inside. “He’s here, sir,” he said.
“Send him in.”
Milton turned in his chair as Pope stepped into the office. Tanner said he would bring in some refreshments and hobbled away.
Control rested the pipe in an ashtray. “Good afternoon, Five.”
“Sir.”
Control indicated the chair next to Milton and Pope took it.
“You two are going to have to cancel any plans you might have been unfortunate enough to have arranged. What happened yesterday obligates a strong response from us. You dropped the ball—the illegals are gone and PAPERCLIP is dead. But we have another source of intelligence and we have another opportunity. I’m going to give you the highlights, and then I’m going to tell you what I want you to do.”
45
Control puffed on his pipe. “We have a source of intelligence within the Center: the cryptonym is BLUEBIRD. We were told that Beck was a Directorate S handler, but BLUEBIRD didn’t know about the operation against Aleksandrov until after the fact. We were fortunate that we had Beck under surveillance, and that he led us to Timoshev and Kuznetsov. We’ve confirmed that they murdered Aleksandrov and Geggel yesterday.”
“Do we know why?” Milton asked.
“Why they did it?” Control shook his head. “BLUEBIRD suggests that Aleksandrov was in possession of a list of all the SVR’s agents in Western Europe, and that he wanted to sell it to us. Aleksandrov approached Geggel to act as intermediary.” Control blew smoke. “Geggel’s phone records have been examined—it turns out that Aleksandrov called him last week. We don’t have any record of what was said, but it was important enough for him to drive over from London to see him.”
“And Geggel didn’t tell anyone? Didn’t call it in?”
“He did not,” Control said. “And that’s not surprising. I knew him a little. He’d been around. He left SIS under a cloud. Made a mess of one of the files that he was handling—a source in the GRU was burned and it looked like he might have been to blame. He wasn’t ready to retire and they rather pushed him toward the door. If you asked me to guess, I’d say he went to see for himself whether Aleksandrov had anything of interest and, if he decided that he did, he was going to be the one to bring it in.”
“And we believe the intel?”
Control shrugged. “Aleksandrov was a nobody. He gave us decent intelligence when he was operational, but that was years ago. Something changed that made him a target. Offering us a list of active agents would be enough to put him in the crosshairs.”
Control took another match and lit the pipe again.
“Where are Timoshev and Kuznetsov now?” Pope asked.
“On their way back to Russia. They were exfiltrated out of a private airfield after you lost them. They had a pilot fly them over the channel to France. ATC confirmed the vector—they took off from Popham and landed at Calais-Dunkerque at just after six. We’ve contacted the DSGE, but the odds of finding them now are slim. They will have picked up new legends as soon as they arrived. If it were me, I’d get them into the Netherlands and fly them out of Schiphol, but it could be anything. They’re gone. We can’t stop them getting home.”
Pope crossed his legs. “So what do we do now?”
“We go after them. BLUEBIRD thinks he might be able to help us find them again. The two of you are going to go to Moscow and set up there. As soon as we know where they are, you are going to take them out.” He got up again and walked to the window that overlooked the grey river. “They killed those two men to make a point. The Center is sending a message: they want any other dissident, inside or outside the motherland, to know that the SVR has a long memory and a long arm. And they were making a point to us, too. To the security services. To the country. It was an insult. They don’t care because they don’t see us as a threat. They are thumbing their noses at us, and we cannot allow that to stand. So that’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go to Moscow, you’ll find the sleepers, and you’ll kill them both. And then you’ll find whoever it was who ordered the operation and you’ll kill them, too. We’re going to show our Russian friends that there are consequences to their actions. We won’t be anyone’s punchbag.”
Milton sat quietly. An operation in Moscow would be difficult, to say the least. An operation in Moscow against two high-profile SVR agents would be something else entirely.
“There’s an Aeroflot flight out of Heathrow at ten forty-five tonight. Pick up your legend from Tanner. You’ll be briefed at Moscow Station at seven tomorrow morning. I want this taken care of as quickly as possible. No mistakes this time. Absolutely no mistakes. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Pope said.
Control didn’t take his eyes off Milton. “Number One?”
“Sir?”
“See that it gets done. Take them both out. Dismissed.”
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