Manhunt

The call reached Raya Kosov a little after four in the afternoon. Normally calls originating through the civilian telephone system were rejected by the Yasenevo switchboard, but this caller had not only known Raya Kosov’s name but her extension number, so it was put through after the operator had checked with the internal security section and switched on the tape-recorder. Raya had been expecting it, expecting it for a long time, but it still gave her quite a shock.

The caller identified herself unnecessarily because Raya had known her since childhood, and her message contained all the code phrases they had arranged between them nearly five years earlier.

‘Hello, Raya, it’s Valentina. I’ve got some very bad news, I’m afraid. Your mother’s very sick again, and she’ll have to go back into hospital, perhaps for the last time. I know you’re very busy, but if you could possibly get away for just a few days and come and visit her it would mean the world to her. You know how much she misses you.’

‘Oh, Valentina,’ Raya replied, her voice suddenly choking with emotion, and it was some seconds before she could form another sentence. She swallowed and tried again. ‘Valentina, I’m so sorry to hear that. Look, tell Mama I will try to get some time off. I’ll call you about it tonight.’

‘Goodbye, Valentina.’ Raya waited until she’d put the phone down before she gave way to tears.

A perfectly innocuous, if sad, exchange which the internal-security section played back almost immediately. After confirming that the call had originated in Minsk, where officer Kosov’s elderly mother was known to live, the duty security officer transcribed the call, logging its date and time and the originating number, but took no further action.

Gerald Stanway sat at his desk, staring at his computer screen, but his mind was miles away. The briefing that Holbeche had given the previous afternoon had stunned and worried him. Worse, it had frightened him, and he’d suffered a sleepless night because of it.

What was worrying him most was the story about the clerk. It sounded too pat, too convenient, that this unnamed man should have reappeared in Vienna – the town itself was almost a spy-fiction cliché, for God’s sake – with some kind of information that might directly implicate him. For Stanway had no doubt at all that, if this clerk really did exist, he – Stanway – was the ‘leak that could be identified’, as that bumbling old fool Holbeche had put it.

Gerald Stanway had been guilty of passing classified information to anyone who was prepared to pay for it – the Libyans, the Iraqis, the Iranians and, even for one brief period, the IRA; though his principal customer had always been Russia – and he had been doing so for the past dozen years. He regarded himself as a businessman selling a commodity – in this case information – that was in high demand. He had neither morals nor scruples about what he was doing, regarding his employment by the SIS as nothing more than a convenient and unrivalled source of information.

Two months earlier, he’d managed to gain access to the London Data Centre’s System-Three computer system, which had greatly increased the scope and reach, and potential profit, of his activities. He’d already provided his Russian controller with numerous files that he’d managed to copy from the system, and had finally simply taken a snapshot of the entire directory structure, which he’d offered to the Russians as a shopping list, from which to choose the files they wanted to see.

The days when SIS officers were exempt from the payment of income tax were long gone, and nowadays officers receive an index-linked salary based upon the fairly modest scales set by the Treasury. Stanway’s lucrative activities as a mole allowed him to enjoy a lifestyle that was opulent rather than comfortable but, unlike Aldrich Ames, he had always been more than happy to explain to anyone curious enough to ask exactly how his wealth was earned.

He had realized, right from the start of his information-broking ‘career’, that the principal danger of his being detected would probably not come from anything as mundane as a spot check as he left Vauxhall Cross, but far more likely from the Inland Revenue. That was possible if he suddenly began spending money he couldn’t account for – and Stanway had every intention of spending his money.

The occasional sale of information to minor nations like Libya had been paid for in cash, money that he kept in a safety-deposit box at his bank, to be spent gradually and discreetly, usually in buying readily convertible assets, like paintings, antique furniture, good-quality diamonds, watches and the like.

But his first and best customers were the Russians, and with them he had developed a payment system that seemed foolproof, or at least as foolproof as any system ever could be. With a genuine inheritance of over half a million pounds, after tax, from an aunt some ten years earlier – he’d barely known she was alive, and her death came as a shock mainly because he had been named her sole beneficiary; he had decided to sell his small flat in Islington and buy a larger property in central London. Property prices had been on the rise, as usual, but he’d made an offer on the whole of a large terraced house in South Kensington which had been newly converted into four luxury apartments.

Even after selling his own flat, he had still been three hundred thousand pounds short when his offer was accepted, and so when he’d approached the Russians, he’d simply suggested they might like to underwrite his mortgage for him. He’d taken out the necessary loan with his regular bank and one month after he’d made the first payment, the Russians had begun paying an almost identical amount into an account in his name in the Cayman Islands. Statements of that account, to confirm the payments made, were sent to a post box which Stanway had rented in London. The Russians were, in other words, buying his new property for him.

Stanway moved into the best of the apartments, the one on the top floor, and advertised the other properties for rent. Finding suitable tenants within the month, the rent he received from them was more than twice what he was paying for his mortgage, and he had been able to increase the rent every year while his mortgage payments stayed more or less the same. Suddenly Stanway was a rich man.

Then, after he assessed that the value of the information he was passing to the Russians had increased sufficiently, he suggested a further payment mechanism. As a result, the Russians set up a dummy company in London and took out a ten-year lease on Stanway’s personal apartment, at some fifty per cent over the market rate, this extra percentage being in compensation for the inevitable inconvenience that would be caused if and when the lease was executed. Written into the lease was an agreement that Stanway would vacate the premises within twenty-eight days after receipt of a written notice to allow the director of the dummy company – who, of course, didn’t actually exist – to occupy the premises on demand.

Within two years of beginning his treacherous activities, Stanway’s declared income from his property speculation – and obviously not including the monies steadily accumulating in his account in the Cayman Islands – was more than three times his take-home pay from SIS, and he was able to account for every penny of it to the Inland Revenue.

After returning home the previous evening, Stanway had taken a walk, as he often did. Despite his fondness for good living, considering himself both a gourmet and a wine expert, he had always been careful to keep himself fit. He had even converted the smallest bedroom in his apartment into a gym, where he exercised every morning before his shower or bath, and he frequently walked or jogged along the streets of South Kensington in the evening.

That night, however, he had put on some casual clothes and just walked. His route had taken him into a newsagent’s in Gloucester Road, where he browsed for about ten minutes, before emerging with a carrier bag containing a copy of The Times, a wine magazine and a small cardboard box, and heading on into Harrington Gardens. At the second crossroad he had turned left into Collingham Road. Outside the church on the west side of the street he had apparently stumbled on an uneven paving slab, dropping the carrier bag, and had to put his right hand against the wall to steady himself as he felt his ankle for damage with his left hand. Then Stanway had retrieved the bag and walked on, limping slightly.

A keen observer might have noticed that, after Stanway had removed his hand from the wall, a small chalk circle was visible on the stonework, which hadn’t been there before.

‘This is not a good time, Raya,’ said Major Yuri Abramov, looking across the desk at his deputy, who was standing respectfully at attention in front of him.

‘I appreciate that, Major,’ Raya said, ‘and I am also very aware that you will not be in the office every day next week. But my mother has not been in good health and, if my aunt Valentina is right, she may well be dying.’ Raya was very aware that she was addressing her superior officer and, though she’d spent some minutes in the toilet composing herself, she still couldn’t stop the tears. She turned away quickly and reached for a tissue.

Major Abramov wasn’t a hard man. Like Raya Kosov, he’d been recruited by the SVR for his computer-system management skills, not for any kind of old-style KGB toughness. He stood up, walked round his desk and put an arm around his subordinate, pulling her close to him. ‘Sit down, Raya,’ he murmured softly, and led her the few paces towards a chair.

In a couple of minutes, she felt able to speak, and to face him again. ‘I’m so sorry, sir,’ she stammered. ‘I don’t know—’

‘Raya,’ Abramov interrupted, ‘please don’t distress yourself. Your feelings are entirely natural. Look, you’re owed a week’s leave and, frankly, I wouldn’t want you here working on the system in your present emotional state. Is there anything major that you have to get done this week?’

Raya shook her head. ‘Nothing that won’t wait, sir. I’ve a few basic housekeeping jobs to do, but I can get those out of the way by Friday.’

‘Right,’ Abramov said, ‘do whatever you feel you need to do by the end of work on Friday. If there’s anything you haven’t managed to finish, let me know and I’ll take care of it on Monday. You can sort out your travel arrangements tomorrow, and then fly to Minsk on Friday evening or Saturday morning. I’ll authorize an airline ticket for you. Don’t forget to check in at the local SVR office when you get there. I’ll call ahead to let them know you’ll be in the city.’

‘But what you must do, Raya, is get back here by Friday next week, because I will be away almost all of the following week, and I’ll need to do a full handover before I leave at the end of that day. If there’s even the slightest possibility of your being delayed, you must let me know immediately.’

‘Of course, sir,’ Raya said. ‘There’ll be no problem, I’ll make sure of that. And thank you so much.’

Three minutes later she closed Abramov’s door behind her and headed back to her own office, with a slight smile brightening her face despite the red-rimmed eyes. She had a lot to do and very little time to do it in.

Andrew Lomas had been born Alexei Lomosolov, in Kiev in 1963. After showing considerable promise at school, he had been recruited by the KGB before he was even twenty. He’d then attended language courses, and quickly became fluent in English.

His talents had led to him being selected to undertake lifestyle training at the KGB’s Balashikha special-operations school east of Moscow – where Yasser Arafat had been a pupil once, when the Russians had decided to groom him for future leadership of the PLO. Amongst other training included at Balashikha, the KGB provided facilities which precisely duplicated communities in various target countries. In the English facility, to which Lomosolov was sent, only English was ever spoken. Radio and television programmes were the genuine article, recorded and then re-broadcast over the local network; newspapers and books were English; the meals and drinks they were served were exactly what one would expect to find in an English home, pub or restaurant; and even the furniture and fittings had been purchased in London stores. It was the closest the KGB could get to providing an English environment without actually being in England itself.

Lomosolov had spent six months living and working there. The day he arrived the commanding officer had summoned him to his office and addressed him in English. On that occasion, he had explained the purpose of the facility, how it worked and what they expected from him. But he had finished with a warning: the only absolutely unbreakable rule there was that any student heard speaking a language other than English, for whatever reason and in any circumstance, would be instantly dismissed.

Lomosolov had been assessed as one of the top three students in his intake, and was advised by the commanding officer that he would be one of only two students selected to take the final examination. All the others would remain at the facility for a further two months, before being assessed again. When he’d asked what the examination consisted of, Lomosolov had simply been told to wait and see.

Late in May 1985, he was told to report to the facility’s English pub. Not knowing what to expect, he pushed open the door and walked in, hailing the barman cheerfully, as he always did, ordering a pint of bitter. Sitting in an armchair at a small round table near the bar was an elderly man, who was clearly frail and not in the best of health. He was nursing a whisky, and smiled as the young man approached him. His face was faintly familiar to Lomosolov and suddenly, with a jolt that was more shock than surprise, Lomosolov recognized him.

Harold Adrian Russell (‘Kim’) Philby was then seventy-three years old and not merely a major general in the KGB but a living legend whose name and exploits were spoken of in reverent whispers. Suddenly Lomosolov realized that this encounter had to be his final examination. Those thirty minutes or so spent talking to Philby, before the facility commanding officer arrived, had been the most difficult of Lomosolov’s short career, and when he was told to return to his quarters, he had no idea whether he had passed the test or failed.

Once Lomosolov departed, Philby had gestured for another Scotch and settled himself back into his seat as the commanding officer sat down opposite him.

Philby had smiled. ‘The first student, Nabokov, is very good. He would pass as an Englishman in any circumstances I can imagine.’

Philby had smiled more broadly, before replying. ‘I’ve been coming here for, what, almost twenty years to assess your students, Colonel, and never before have you tried this stunt. I’m surprised at you.’

‘You know perfectly well.’ Philby wagged a finger. ‘Where did you find him? What is he, some English student you’ve recruited? The son of an English defector? What I do know is that he’s not merely a Russian impersonating an Englishman. He is genuinely an Englishman.’

The commanding officer had shaken his head. ‘I’m afraid you’re wrong there, General, and there’s been no trickery. That young man was born Alexei Lomosolov in Kiev twenty-two years ago, the only son of two good Russian citizens named Andrei and Katerina Lomosolov.’

A little over eight months later, following an intensive six-month course in tradecraft and agent-handling, Alexei Lomosolov had arrived in London. He was carrying a genuine Canadian passport in the name of Andrew Lomas, and took out a lease on a small apartment in West London.

If anybody asked him, he explained that he was employed as a ‘creative consultant’ – which could mean pretty much whatever you wanted it to mean – for a graphic-design company based in Liechtenstein. The company actually existed, and his monthly commission cheques bore the company logo and contact details, but it was simply a KGB front: a device which allowed Lomosolov to receive a regular supply of clean funds to support his lifestyle.

In fact, after a period during which he established himself in London, Lomosolov’s – or rather Lomas’s – real job was acting as a case officer for a number of other agents in Britain, two of whom were employed within the security establishment. One of these had been operational even before Lomosolov himself arrived in Britain, but the other had been supplying information for a much shorter period of time. This man was code-named Gospodin, but Lomas knew, from his pre-departure briefings in Moscow, that his real name was Gerald Stanway.

Their actual meetings were very infrequent, normally never more than once every three months. Lomas’s principal task in servicing Stanway was simple enough: he merely cleared one of the current fifteen dead-drops whenever he received notification that Stanway had deposited some material. The routine for that was simple enough as well.

Each evening, Lomas walked from his apartment in Harwood Road, not far from Fulham Broadway Underground station, and through the streets of London, following a variety of routes as he mingled with the homeward-bound commuters, just another face in the thousands. Whichever route he took, he always walked down Collingham Road, and every time he passed the church he looked at the wall.

He also checked five other locations during his walk, but the church wall was always the last one. He frequently found marks at the other five places, too, but he’d never seen one on the church wall. This was because the first five indicated which dead-drop Stanway had filled, but the last one was reserved for emergency use only.

Lomas was so used to passing the wall and seeing nothing there at all that he’d actually taken three steps past before he registered that the chalked circle was even there.

He stopped so abruptly that the woman walking behind him, carrying four bulky carrier bags, cannoned into him. She cursed under her breath as she stepped around him. Lomas muttered apologies before briskly retracing his steps. He checked the street carefully for possible witnesses, before approaching the mark on the wall. As he drew level with it, he reached up and swiftly drew a cross within the circle, then stepped away quickly and carried on down the street, mentally planning the fastest route back to his apartment.

Richter pulled off the A2 autoroute and into a service area a few miles north of Wolfsberg, and filled up the Ford’s petrol tank. It was still well over half full but he always liked to have plenty of fuel, just in case. He was actually stepping through the entrance of the cafeteria in search of something to eat when his mobile phone rang again. He turned round immediately and went back outside, before pressing the button to answer.

‘Austria, and about to sample a genuine Austrian motorway sandwich. Where else do you want me to be?’

‘No,’ Richter replied. ‘As long as you don’t stop the credit card or cancel my passport, I can go anywhere at all. But I won’t make it today. It’s now gone three, and I reckon I’m still about three hundred kilometres from the Swiss border – and also on the wrong side of the Alps. Whereabouts do you want me to go in Geneva?’

‘At the moment,’ Simpson said, ‘we don’t know, so just check into a hotel somewhere near the city. And make sure you leave that mobile switched on.’

‘Call me when you stop somewhere tonight, and also when you reach Geneva. I’ll give you my mobile number.’

Richter noted the number, terminated the call, and turned back towards the cafeteria door.

The moment Gerald Stanway reached home he changed into a tracksuit and trainers, then headed down the stairs and out into the street, before jogging off on his usual route around the quieter local streets. He passed the circle which now contained a chalked cross, giving it the briefest possible sidelong glance, and continued on around the block. Fifteen minutes later, he was back in his apartment and standing under a stinging-hot shower.

As he dried himself, he glanced at the wall clock, mentally calculating times and distances. Dressed casually in flannel trousers, open-necked shirt and lightweight jacket, he went into the lounge and called a cab. Like most residents of central London, Stanway had long accepted the fact that owning a car in the city was a complete waste of time and money. He travelled everywhere by tube, bus or cab, and if he had to drive anywhere outside the city, he would call up Hertz or Avis and have them deliver a car to his flat.

Entering his study, he sat down at the computer and opened up Microsoft Word. A fresh empty document appeared automatically, so he typed a few lines of text, read through what he had written twice, and then clicked on the print icon. The laser hummed for a few seconds and then spat out a single sheet. Stanway knew that the output from a laser or ink-jet printer was completely anonymous and untraceable, unlike that produced by any kind of typewriter.

Having once more read the text as hard copy, he nodded and folded the sheet twice. He next clicked the cross in the top right-hand corner of the Word window, and selected ‘no’ when the program asked if he wanted to save the open document. He definitely wanted no record of what he had just written anywhere on the hard disk.

It was seven-thirty local time when Paul Richter pulled the Ford off the A4 autoroute at San Martino Buon Albergo, one of the longest place names he ever recalled coming across. He’d crossed the Italian border at Arnoldstein, where the A2 autoroute transmuted into the A23, and swung south towards a stretch of the Mediterranean that his new road map called the Golfo de Venezia.

Finding a small hotel on the edge of Verona, he parked the car at the rear of the building and climbed out. He plucked his overnight bag from the boot, then recovered the briefcase, which now contained the opened packet he’d collected in Vienna and not much else, from the back seat, before he headed around to the hotel’s reception to check in.

‘No, I’m perfectly sober – in fact, I’m a teetotaller. I’m now in a hotel on the outskirts of Verona. As in “Two gentlemen of Verona”. You’ve heard of this bloke Shakespeare, have you?’

‘Don’t try to get clever with me, Richter. When I ask you a question, just give me a straight answer, OK?’

‘I’ll bet you were the most popular boy in your class at school, weren’t you?’

The cab arrived twenty minutes later, and Stanway told the driver to take him to Tottenham Court Road, near the Goodge Street Underground station. He paid the driver, then headed towards a nearby side street.

For the briefest of instants he’d toyed with the idea of running various evasion manoeuvres, to shake off any tails he might have acquired, but he immediately realized there was no point. First, he wasn’t very experienced in counter-surveillance techniques and had never practised them, and, second, if he was being followed, any such actions on his part would immediately confirm the suspicions of the surveillance personnel. It was far simpler, he’d rationalized, to behave entirely innocently, because all he was apparently doing was going out for a meal in a restaurant, which was something he did three or four evenings every week.

About fifty yards down the street was a small Indian restaurant. Stanway asked for a secluded table for one, and was led towards the back of the room and shown into a tiny booth.

Andrew Lomas was sitting at a table at the front of the restaurant. He was accompanied by his current girlfriend, a thin and somewhat vacuous supposed model named Dawn, who had aspirations towards the theatre and insisted on calling everyone ‘dahling’. Lomas privately thought that she was probably on the game, but he didn’t care much because she made for good, if temporary, local colour, and besides that she was actually quite good in bed. They had been sitting there for a little over three-quarters of an hour before Stanway walked in. Neither man showed the slightest sign of recognizing the other.

The waiter placed a menu on the table and asked Stanway if he’d like anything to drink. He ordered a half pint of lager, glanced quickly at the menu, and decided on a chicken korma with basmati rice. He disliked Indian food, and had no appetite that evening anyway, but he knew he had to order something as he sat there waiting.

Stanway’s lager arrived and he took a cautious sip. It wasn’t a drink he particularly enjoyed, but at least it would serve to take away some of the taste of the korma. Five minutes after his meal arrived, Stanway was prodding unenthusiastically at a small number of yellowish chunks of chicken, when he noticed Lomas stand up and walk towards him, obviously heading for the toilets at the rear.

Immediately, Stanway reached into his inside jacket pocket and extracted the folded sheet of paper. As Lomas approached, Stanway placed it at the very edge of his table, with an inch or so jutting out. The Russian’s right hand just brushed against the side of the table, as he deftly seized the note and continued towards the toilets. Nobody at any of the other tables could have seen or taken the slightest notice.

Four minutes later, Lomas emerged, passing Stanway again, and continued to his own table while gesturing for the bill. The Russian paid right away, helped his girlfriend into her coat, and nodded briefly to the waiter as the two of them left.

Two other men had used the toilet before Stanway finally stood up and made his way to the rear. There were two urinals and one stall: he stepped into the stall and locked the door behind him. One reason for choosing this restaurant was that the stall had solid walls and a door that fitted its frame completely. They would never have picked one where the door had a sizeable gap at the top or bottom.

Stanway lifted the seat and stepped up onto the bowl. The toilet had an old-fashioned, wall-mounted cistern – another reason for choosing this restaurant – and his probing fingers quickly detected the paper tucked between the back of the cistern and the wall. He retrieved it, stepped back on the floor, lowered the toilet seat and sat down, then unfolded the paper to read what was written there.

Possible I have been compromised by low-level SVR cipher clerk who has fled Russia. According to high-level 6 briefing, clerk approached Moscow UK Embassy but left before asylum granted. Showed intelligence staff papers listing 6 file names and numbers. Claimed he had other data identifying SVR agent in 6. Latest information suggests clerk escaped to Vienna, still seeking asylum. Check veracity and advise.

NOTHING KNOWN. IF LOW-LEVEL DEFECTOR, LONDON STATION NOT ALWAYS INFORMED. WILL CHECK MOSCOW CENTRE AND ADVISE.

And that, Stanway thought, as he tore the paper into tiny squares and watched the flush carry it out of sight, was encouraging at least. If Lomas had already known about the defection, Stanway would have been forced to take immediate action to protect himself. The fact that Lomas knew nothing about it suggested that either the clerk was flying a kite, or that he was genuinely low-level with nothing of any significance to trade – and the SVR would know exactly what documents such a defector would have had access to – or else that the clerk simply didn’t exist.

But that scenario didn’t really make sense, for Holbeche – or whoever else had started this particular ball rolling – had to have received some information suggesting that there was a mole inside SIS, otherwise why had he started the witch-hunt? Something or someone had surfaced somewhere, and Stanway just hoped he could rely on Lomas to find out what or who, and quickly.

Chapter Six