London, England
Winter had been deliberately vague with Lindegaard when the two men had met the previous evening. Events were beginning to spiral out of control. While Winter was sure Lindegaard was either involved or at the very least knew more than he was letting on, it was too early for Winter to play his hand. He’d toyed with the idea of dropping Belenov’s name into the conversation to gauge Lindegaard’s reaction, but ultimately had decided against it.
No, in all honesty, he’d plain bottled it. As much as he despised Lindegaard and relished the thought of being able to get one over on him, Winter was still somehow in awe of the man, forever feeling like a naughty schoolboy in his presence. He hated himself for it, but that was Lindegaard’s power.
Since that meeting, though, events had taken yet another twist. News had come through that Lena Belenov had been murdered in Moscow. Belenov had been central to the deal that the JIA and CIA had been trying to broker for Logan’s release. In that regard, her involvement in the ongoing mess was clear. But given that Winter now knew of her relationship to Lindegaard, her death was a startling development. Could the Russians have found out about her? And yet if that was the case, why were the Russians blaming Logan for her death? And Medvedev’s too?
The more Winter thought about it, the less sense it made. Whatever the explanation, it looked increasingly likely that Logan wasn’t in bed with the Russians, which had always been the main fear for Winter – and for Mackie, before his death.
It had been more than twenty-four hours since Winter had last spoken to Paul Evans. Winter was certain his agent had been captured by the Russians following the botched meet with Nikolai Medvedev. Someone had blown either Evans’s or Medvedev’s cover. Both of the Russian agents who’d been killed had links back to the JIA, for different reasons, but links nonetheless.
The only conclusion Winter could come to was that a mole on at least one side of the playing field had led to those two Russian agents losing their lives and to Evans’s disappearance. Winter was increasingly coming to the conclusion that there was no one left he could trust.
Well, almost no one. There was Carl Logan. So far, the one man who everyone seemingly wanted dead was the only man whose role Winter still could not figure out. In fact, the only thing that seemed to fit was that Logan was being made a scapegoat. First for Mackie’s death and now Medvedev’s and Belenov’s too. The Russians were gunning for Logan for sure. But was there more to it than that even?
Since Evans’s disappearance, Winter had been riffling through as much information on the missing agent as he could find, looking for some hint as to who could have set him up. But Evans’s work had always been so clean. Medvedev had been a key source for Evans, but the two of them had never generated any heat from their relationship. Evans’s other work for the JIA was similarly seamless. Winter just couldn’t grasp any answers at all.
But as he sat in his office, staring out of the window at the thick grey clouds hanging over London, he suddenly thought of something. Lindegaard and his relationship with Belenov.
From what Winter had learned, Belenov was the daughter of Lindegaard’s half-sister, one of four siblings who shared the same American mother. The half-sister had been conceived in an extramarital affair, fathered by a Russian expat living in America – a communist escapee. The bastard child had held dual nationality and had long ago moved to Russia, where she’d married a wealthy Russian businessman. He’d been killed under suspicious circumstances when he’d supposedly driven his car over a bridge into a river, high on drugs and alcohol. His wife had died some five years later in much less suspicious circumstances: she’d developed bowel cancer in her early thirties and passed away a mere three months after diagnosis. Their only child was Lena Belenov. Lindegaard’s niece.
The biological link was clear-cut. What was less clear was how Lindegaard had exploited that relationship. What role had he taken in bringing up Lena, who had been eight years old when her mother died? What part had he played in her landing a job with the FSB? And what destruction had the two of them wrought in the years since?
Winter didn’t know. Yet. But could Evans similarly have skeletons in his past? From before his days at the JIA?
Winter began typing away at his computer, his fingers moving in a steady rhythm. He pulled up Evans’s personnel file and methodically scrutinised the details of his life and career. The file gave intimate details about his upbringing, his schooling, his qualifications, his JIA missions, his psych reports, his performance assessments. But it didn’t include everything. It didn’t have what Winter needed.
Winter opened up a new page and began to dig further. Not on the JIA’s intranet, but on the World Wide Web. Winter knew that even secret agents left traces of their lives on the internet. It was impossible not to leave footprints. Even if the world was in the dark as to the JIA’s existence and methods, that didn’t stop the fallout from its operations on occasion making news or being debated in chat forums. And personal information, even if out of date and spurious, was everywhere. Registers of births, deaths and marriages and electoral, land and educational records were just the tip of the information iceberg that was available quickly and entirely legitimately – not to mention the often ludicrous amounts of personal data that people willingly posted to the world through social media and other channels.
Sure, the clandestine nature of a JIA agent’s existence and the fact they carried multiple IDs made the matter of matching together all of those facets of information all the more difficult, but it was there and it could be done, if you knew what to look for and how.
And it was a task at which Winter had become an ace.
After a painstaking search, he finally found something. When he did, he could hardly believe what he was looking at.
‘It can’t be,’ he said to himself, not sure whether to laugh or fume.
He quickly went back to Evans’s personnel record, double-checking the information that he had cross-matched, sure that he must have taken a leap somewhere and that he was wrong about what he had found.
But he wasn’t. It was right there, no mistake. The skeleton from Evans’s past.
His brain began to whir, his hands felt clammy and he fidgeted on his seat. This was a revelation that blew wide open his thoughts on what was happening in Russia. And suddenly recent events made a whole lot more sense.
There was a knock on the door and Pam stuck her head around.
Winter jumped at the unexpected intrusion and quickly closed down the pages he had been viewing. As much as Pam had helped him in the last few days, this was something he had to keep to himself.
‘What is it?’ Winter asked, trying his best to sound calm.
‘You said you wanted to see me? Earlier?’
‘I did?’
‘Yeah, before I went out to lunch, you said you were having trouble accessing some of Mackie’s files.’
‘Oh, of course,’ Winter said, remembering. He’d got completely side-tracked digging into Evans. ‘Come and take a look.’
Pam came across and stood over Winter’s shoulder as he clicked through restricted folders and screens until he reached the area in question. Having taken over Mackie’s role, Winter essentially had free access to information on every live agent, informant and case that Mackie had worked on. In reality, as Mackie’s second in command, Winter had been privy to much of that information in any case, but there were some areas that Winter either had been blocked from or just hadn’t needed to know about during his time working for Mackie.
So far, Pam seemed to be the gatekeeper to it all.
‘Any idea?’ Winter said, turning around and looking up at Pam.
He was surprised to see concern on her face.
‘Do you know what these files are?’ Winter said.
‘Yes,’ Pam said.
‘Can you get me into them?’
‘I … I’m not sure, to be honest. Maybe this is one that should be checked with the committee first?’
Winter frowned. ‘Are you serious?’
Pam began to rub at her neck nervously. ‘I just don’t know.’
‘Pam, believe me, if you know what this is and how to get in, you have to tell me. Better involve me than that trumped-up prick Lindegaard, surely?’
Pam laughed anxiously. ‘Yeah, I guess.’
‘So what is it?’
‘I really can’t say much. It’s probably better you look for yourself.’
Pam leaned over and scribbled something on a sticky note. Winter looked at the words – ‘Operation Romana’ – then back up at Pam, who smiled meekly. Without saying another word, she turned and headed to the office door.
Winter looked again at the note, then clicked onto the restricted folder. A password prompt popped up. He typed in the words on the note. Nothing happened. The page simply closed down.
He picked up his office phone and called Pam. She answered within a second.
‘Think outside the box,’ she said, then hung up.
‘What the hell?’ Winter said to the phone.
He looked down at the note again, his face creasing as he thought about what she meant.
Finally he got it.
He’d thought the words on the note referred to a past operation that Mackie had run. It pre-dated Winter’s time at the JIA, but Mackie had briefed him on the details and of its importance. In the late 1990s, post-Soviet Russia was plunged into a deep economic recession. Operation Romana was a clandestine operation with the aim of hitting at the very heart of growing discontent rising among many within Russia’s intelligence community and political elite who were eager for a return to the good old days of the Cold War. As part of the operation, the JIA, CIA and MI6 together had managed to turn many high-ranking officials or their family members.
The operation had to be cut short when a mole exposed the list of informants, with many suffering untimely and unusual deaths soon after – or, if they were lucky, running for their lives to the UK and US to see out their days in hiding. Nonetheless, the operation quelled a rising storm and was seen as a success and an embarrassing blow to the newly formed FSB and SVR, which had both been deeply infiltrated.
It was that angle Winter decided to explore further. The reference to Operation Romana. Could Mackie have had someone deep on the inside once more that only he had known about?
Winter loaded up an internet page and used a search engine to start digging. The first four searches revealed nothing and Winter began to question just what he was actually looking for. But then another thought came. Romana. Rome. Italy.
Going back to the other page, he clicked on the restricted folder again and typed in a name. A Russian name. A name that he knew connected Italy to Russia. To the FSB.
The password box vanished and the folder opened to reveal a list of files. Winter resisted hard the urge to do a fist pump.
His brain was racing, adrenaline pumping. Winter quickly opened the first file and read it, then the next. He scanned the documents, taking in as much as he could, reluctant to spend more than a few seconds on each, as though having the documents open too long would lead to someone finding out what he was reading.
It only took a couple of minutes to confirm what he had hoped.
With his heart pounding in his chest, he picked up the phone to Pam again.
‘You got in?’ she said.
‘I did.’
‘Just be careful. I may only be a secretary but I know what kind of damage that could cause.’
‘I know. I will be.’
‘And don’t even think about copying those files.’
‘I don’t need to.’
‘Okay … good. Is that all?’
‘Not quite. Can you do something for me?’
‘What is it?’
‘I need you to get me on the next plane to Moscow.’