The Hunter

CHAPTER 39

Central Intelligence Agency, Virginia, USA

Sunday

06:05 EST

Chambers’s expression was dour. She was perched elegantly on her chair, leaning slightly forward, elbows on the table. ‘I know it’s Sunday and I know it’s early, but I’m sure everyone appreciates the gravity of what we’re doing. Somebody we very much don’t want to see better armed could be recovering those missiles as we speak. This goes beyond arms superiority; this is about global safety. If this technology gets into the wrong hands, our ability to protect our interests as well as our capacity for peacekeeping will be critically diminished. I don’t think anyone around this table wants that to happen.’

Procter nodded his agreement. Ferguson and Sykes gave their own solemn nods.

‘I know none of you need motivational speeches to pull out all the stops,’ Chambers continued. ‘We all know the clock is ticking. It’s been almost a week since Ozols was killed and the information stolen. If we’re going to crack this, it has to be soon.’ She paused and looked at Procter. ‘Are we any closer to finding Ozols’s killer?’

Procter shook his head. ‘Alvarez is following a lead on who hired Stevenson and his crew, but we’re completely stalled on locating the assassin, I’m afraid to say. With what little we have to go on we can’t even establish whether he’s government or private sector. We have some witness statements that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, some CCTV footage of a man but no face, no solid physical evidence. We missed him by a day in Germany. He probably went to the Czech Republic, but we haven’t heard from him since.

‘All departments have been involved in this. Every station has been briefed. We have people on the lookout all over Europe. We can’t find him.’

Chambers’s brow wrinkled. ‘So he’s just vanished?’

‘He could be right under our noses and we wouldn’t necessarily see him. We don’t know who we’re looking for.’

‘We must have suspects though,’ Chambers said. ‘Which known assassins can’t be accounted for? What intelligence services are making suspicious movements?’

‘Even if we assume he’s not a direct operative for a foreign-intelligence service and that he was hired for this job, of which we have no proof, we’re not starting from a good position. There are hundreds of these guys operating in Europe, maybe even thousands. We know about a tiny percentage of them, and of those we can only rule out another small percentile. That leaves a huge number of suspects, most of whom we have absolutely no information on. And this guy is good, let’s not forget. He’s a needle in a hitman haystack.’

Chambers removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. ‘Best guess on him?’

‘We have a receptionist who says he spoke French like a native, and in Munich the neighbour said he sounded German. Either he’s from both France and Germany or he’s good with languages and could be from anywhere. He has used two British passports so far, so that might suggest he’s from the UK.’ Procter sat straighter. ‘We can speculate until we’re blue in the face, but I think the fact we’re dealing with a dead former Russian and Soviet naval officer who was trying to sell Russian missiles tells me the killer is probably SVR.’

‘If that’s the case we’ll never get that technology for ourselves,’ Chambers said. ‘Moscow would just love that.’

He nodded. ‘It would, but it doesn’t really feel like the Russians, does it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘If this guy’s SVR, then that explains a lot, but who then hired seven guys to kill him after completing the job? Who would know the SVR was sending him there? And gunning Ozols down in an alleyway is pretty basic. No polonium in his tea. Not even a suicide. Just painlessly executing a traitor isn’t really their style.’

Chambers pushed her hair back behind her ears. ‘I didn’t realize they had any style.’

Procter noted Sykes’s subservient smile. He looked at Ferguson. So far the old man had barely said a word. ‘What do you think?’

From behind his glasses Ferguson’s dark eyes met Procter’s. ‘I’m not sure, buddy.’

The old guy never used Procter’s actual name. It was always buddy, pal, or friend. Procter found it annoying, bordering on insulting, as though Ferguson did so as a sign of disrespect, but Procter told himself he was reading too much into it. And even if he wasn’t, he sure as damnit wasn’t going to get a rep as a precious a-hole by bringing it up or insisting Ferguson call him Mr Roland Procter.

‘Russia is your territory, Will,’ Procter said, happy to have returned the overfamiliarity favour. Procter was quite aware Ferguson disliked his first name being shortened. ‘Are the SVR a likely suspect?’

Ferguson looked at him and considered for a moment. ‘It’s more than a possibility for sure. This is Russian weapons technology we’re talking about, after all. Moscow will do anything it needs to do to protect its secrets.’

‘You think it’s their style?’ Chambers asked.

‘You think it isn’t?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Don’t think the KGB aren’t more than capable or willing to execute Ozols. If they’d found out what he was up to, then do you honestly think they wouldn’t try to get the information back and silence the leak? And traitors are always punished, no matter where in the world they are.’

Procter knew Ferguson’s referral to the SVR as the KGB was heritage from his Cold War days. To him they were one and the same. Ferguson may have been something of a hero during those dark days of the twentieth century, but he had failed to upgrade and modernize his thinking. The world had moved on. East and West were no longer ideals, merely compass points.

Procter continued, ‘But to risk the fallout-’

‘What fallout?’ Ferguson actually looked angry. ‘Unless we had irrefutable proof they were behind it, which of course is impossible, the most we would do these days is tell them off. What could we realistically do? And let’s face it, we would have a hard time doing that with a straight face. Remember, we were trying to steal their technology, hardly a sound moral basis for us to criticize their methods. Ozols was a traitor, don’t forget. We would have no right to rattle our sabre, and they wouldn’t care if we did.

‘And, may I remind you, this is technology that Moscow refused to sell to us on more than one occasion. Everyone seems to think that because of glasnost the bear has lost its claws, that fifty years of rivalry has been replaced by friendship. It’s a ridiculous notion, and one I can’t believe that America has lapped up so easily. A bear is still a fucking bear. He may be weaker now, but that only means he has to be more cunning.’

An uneasy silence hung in the air for a moment. Ferguson’s face was flushed. Procter was momentarily lost for words. So the old bastard did carry some resentment about the changing world order and his relegated place within it. Ferguson had obviously spent far too long fighting the communists to let it all go. It was quite pathetic, a shame really, but the sooner Ferguson retired the better.

‘So,’ Procter said eventually, ‘what do you think we should do?’

Ferguson took a calming breath. ‘Finding out what the hell the Russians are really up to would be a good place to start.’