The Moscow Sleepers

2

As he sat in his car in the visitors’ car park, appearing to read the Burlington Free Press, Special Agent Boyd was watching the cars arriving. Visiting time was about to begin, and groups of people with carrier bags and bunches of flowers were gathering at the door of the hospital, making it difficult for him to see if anyone came out. The nurse had given him a good description of the man, and Boyd was fairly sure he knew which one was his car. The car park had been almost empty when he’d arrived and it had been easy to find the only vehicle with Canadian number plates – the visitor had told the nurse he’d driven down from Montreal so it must be his. Boyd had parked in a spot where he could see both the door of the hospital and the car. Now that the car park was beginning to fill up he felt less conspicuous.

Boyd was used to surveillance work but his usual targets were drug-runners and other crooks. He had no counter-intelligence experience, but he’d been told that the man in the hospital might be a spy. That would mean that the man who had come to visit him – this Ohlson character – might be a spy too, and that would mean he’d be a lot more professional than the average criminal. Boyd was just a bit nervous; he didn’t want to screw this one up.

What looked like a family group – three people with a couple of children – was just going into the hospital when a man emerged. It must be Ohlson; he fitted the nurse’s description. The man paused just outside the doorway, lighting a cigarette. Boyd recognised the move; he was looking for surveillance, although he seemed more interested in people on foot than the parked cars. Boyd slid down in his seat; he had a couple of discreet mirrors inside the car for just this sort of situation.

Having apparently decided the coast was clear, Ohlson walked directly towards the blue Volkswagen Passat with the Canadian number plates. Boyd photographed him as he did so. The car started up and drove straight towards the nearest exit, turning on to the highway. He was sorely tempted to follow but restrained himself. Single car surveillance was almost impossible without either losing the target or being spotted, and this guy was a pro. Boyd knew he’d be out on his ear if he let himself be spotted by Ohlson, which would be a lousy end to his career after seventeen years with the Bureau, half of them in his native Vermont.

He was the senior resident agent in Burlington, Vermont, which was not a Field Office since Burlington was deemed too small to support one. So Boyd had to report to the SAC, Special Agent in Charge in Albany, New York, across the waters of Lake Champlain. This rankled with him, as it would with most Vermonters, who resented the dominance of their bigger and more populous neighbour.

But it was not through the Albany Office that the Petersen job had come in. It was a SAC in FBI Headquarters in Washington DC who had contacted him a month or so ago. He had been frustratingly vague about just what Petersen, the Swedish lecturer at the University of Vermont, was suspected of. But it was Top Secret so Boyd guessed it was espionage. All Boyd was to do was to look out for any visitors he had and get their details, but he was not to do anything to alert them to his presence. Then he was to contact Washington immediately. Not Albany, but FBI Headquarters in Washington. That was all he had to do. No more than that.

As the Passat disappeared into the distance, he shrugged, accepting he would probably never find out what was going on, and drove back to his office to pass his observations, photographs and the address that Ohlson had written in the visitors’ book on to Washington.