Saturday
Rome, Italy
Nobody stopped her. As far as Raya could tell, nobody even looked at her as she fought her way through the crowds and stepped out of the airport building. The sunshine was dazzling, its glare compounded by the reflection from vehicle windows, and the heat hit her like a muggy blanket, the air so heavy and humid that she felt she could almost grab a handful and squeeze the moisture out of it. She slipped on a pair of wraparound sunglasses with a ‘DG’ logo on the frame – a Dolce & Gabbana knock-off she’d picked up for a few roubles from a street market in Moscow a couple of months earlier.
The chaos, she saw at once, extended outside the airport as well, but here a cacophony of car horns now added an even sharper and more discordant note. The Italians, she noticed, didn’t queue for taxis the way people in Russia did, always lining up so obediently. In Rome, it was a no-holds-barred free-for-all, as men and women shouted and elbowed their way forward to get to the vehicles first.
This was such an unusual – such a foreign – sight, that she stood and watched it for a few seconds. But, even as she stood there, staring at the crowds of people milling about her, three black Alfa Romeo saloon cars drove up, their tyres squealing as they stopped just beyond the taxi rank. Six men climbed out, and three of them began walking quickly towards the terminal building, while the remaining trio fanned out, two of them checking groups of people waiting for taxis, the other one heading across to the stops where the hotel buses picked up their passengers.
For a few seconds Raya didn’t move, just remained standing beside a group of Italians who were arguing loudly over something. Just watching the six men, she didn’t need telling who they were.
She was stunned that the hunt for her had started so quickly, having hoped that she would have at least the weekend to put some distance between herself and her pursuers. This meant the Border Guards officer must have raised the alarm at Yasenevo.
At this stage in her escape, Raya didn’t care where she went as long as it was somewhere well away from the airport. She had originally planned to take one of the small buses that ran to various hotels in the centre of Rome, but now immediately ditched that idea. And she’d never even considered taking a taxi, since their drivers sometimes remembered faces, and might even recall exactly where they had taken an individual customer. The only other possible method of transport from Fiumicino was by rail, and the train station was actually inside the terminal building.
Raya silently gave thanks that she’d taken the time to apply her rudimentary but hopefully effective disguise, as she turned round and headed back into the terminal.
Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi Headquarters, Yasenevo, Tëplyystan, Moscow
Major Abramov sat, with his head in his hands, at the table in a small interview room in the security section of the Yasenevo complex.
As soon as he’d known for certain that Raya Kosov had defected, he’d done what he hoped were all the right things. He’d issued immediate instructions to the SVR duty officer in Rome, once the Sheremetievo Border Guards had definitely confirmed that the city was Raya’s destination, and given orders that she was to be apprehended and held for questioning, pending further instructions.
And only then had he told his direct superior what had happened, telephoning the colonel at his small dacha on the outskirts of Moscow. The officer had listened in silence to Abramov’s halting explanation, then ordered the major to remain at Yasenevo until further notice, while he, in turn, informed the higher echelons of the SVR.
Within two hours of Abramov’s arrival at Yasenevo, a full-scale operation had begun, and almost the first thing the SVR senior officers did was to open a sealed red file classified Sov Sekretno – Top Secret – that possessed a distribution list so restricted that only one of the officers summoned to Yasenevo even knew the document existed. And he only knew about it because he’d been involved in preparing some of the contents.
Specialist officers had immediately been summoned to Yasenevo and briefed, and they were now already either en route to the Moscow airports or actually there, awaiting flights that would take them to France, Austria and Switzerland, with the largest number flying to Italy, for obvious reasons. Photographs of Raya – taken from her personnel file as well as a couple transferred from the security cameras at Sheremetievo – had been sent to the Rome embassy, and also those embassies located in other cities to which the SVR officers were travelling, together with an accurate written description of her.
In parallel with what could be termed this recovery operation, a damage-control analysis had been ordered to assess what she might have taken with her. They weren’t expecting that she walked out of Yasenevo with any classified documents, since the elaborate security protocols in place at the SVR headquarters would have prevented that, but her position as Deputy Computer Network Manager would have obviously given her almost unparalleled access to virtually all of the data held on the Yasenevo computer system. And that was what worried them most.
A search team had already entered her small apartment and removed everything that wasn’t nailed or screwed down, and this haul was now being picked over by a group of specialists at Yasenevo, looking for clues to where she might have gone, or any other evidence of her guilt.
Abramov had already faced one interrogation by a hawk-faced colonel named Yevgeni Zharkov, who had simply introduced himself as a member of the security staff. It was a session that left the major white and shaking, after which he’d been instructed to wait in the interview room.
Abramov looked up, his eyes staring sightlessly at the blank white wall opposite, and muttered the same mantra he’d been repeating for the last hour: ‘Why, Raya, why?’ But, again, no answer was forthcoming.
At that moment, the door swung open and Colonel Zharkov strode in, two SVR guards following him.
Abramov stood up automatically.
‘Hand over your building pass,’ Zharkov snapped, and the major hastened to obey. ‘Now we’ll go to your office.’
‘Why?’ Abramov asked.
‘Because, from this moment onwards, your security clearance is revoked. You will give me all your keys and passwords, and open your safe. You are to hand over every classified document in your charge, and your office will then be sealed until this investigation has been completed.’
‘But I—’
‘But what, Major? Did you expect that you’d be able to continue working here as if nothing had happened, despite the fact that your direct subordinate is now apparently trying to defect to the West?’
Twenty minutes later, Abramov was escorted back to the interview room by the two guards, pushed inside and the door locked. Zharkov hadn’t accompanied him back, but had remained in the network manager’s office suite, inspecting the rooms occupied by Abramov and Raya Kosov.
This time the major had a longer wait. Nearly an hour passed before Zharkov returned, clutching a bulky file in his hand. He slammed it down on the table, pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Abramov.
For several seconds he just stared at the major, his mouth compressed into a straight, hard line and his expression unblinkingly hostile.
Abramov dropped his own gaze, unable to face such blatant aggression. He looked down at the folder and recognized it immediately as a personnel file. The name printed on its front cover was ‘Kosov, Raya’.
‘Was it your plan?’ Zharkov began.
‘What?’
‘Was it your plan – or was it all Kosov’s idea?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
Zharkov lifted the cover of the file and pulled out a slim red folder. He opened it and glanced at the first page, taking his time. Finally, he looked up again.
‘Then let me explain it to you. Kosov used a travel warrant taken from your safe to escape from Russia. She cannot possibly have known the combination of your safe, because that would be in direct contravention of Yasenevo standing orders. So obviously you yourself must have supplied her with the warrant, and therefore you must have known that she intended to defect. Or am I wrong, Major?’
Abramov held the colonel’s gaze for less than a second this time, then dropped his eyes. He had already guessed the direction Zharkov’s questioning was likely to take, and he knew that the only possible chance he had of getting out of this mess was to make a clean breast of everything, while trying as far as possible to exonerate himself. If he attempted to obstruct the investigation, or conceal anything, he knew he could face the same fate that was being planned for Raya.
‘Please believe me, Colonel,’ he replied. ‘I had no knowledge, no knowledge at all, of what Kosov planned to do. I didn’t know she had the combination of my safe, nor did I ever tell her what it was. I can only assume that she must have watched me open the door and noted the numbers I was using.’
That was the first lie Abramov had told, and he mentally crossed his fingers as he spoke the words. Zharkov’s next words chilled him.
‘Perhaps,’ the colonel said, his eyes never leaving Abramov’s face. ‘Or perhaps not. When we get her strapped down on a table in the cellars at the Lubyanka, we’ll find out the truth. And,’ he added, leaning forward for emphasis, ‘if I even begin to suspect that you’re not cooperating fully with this investigation, that’s where we’ll continue your questioning, too.’ Zharkov sat back. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘why did she run?’
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ Abramov replied truthfully. ‘I thought she was happy here and enjoyed her work. Her mother—’
‘Her mother,’ Zharkov interrupted, ‘was dead even before Kosov requested compassionate leave, you fucking idiot.’
‘I know,’ Abramov said miserably. ‘I know that now,’ he amended.
‘Precisely. Didn’t it ever occur to you – didn’t you even think – to check on what she was telling you? One telephone call, that’s all it would have taken. One call to Minsk and we wouldn’t be sitting here now, having to mount a recovery operation that’s going to cost us millions of roubles.’
‘I trusted her,’ Abramov muttered. ‘I know I—’
‘Trust is for idiots. I trust no one, and nothing I can’t prove. So you’ve no idea why she ran?’
Abramov shook his head, but didn’t reply.
‘I haven’t had time to read her personnel file. Did she have any relatives outside Russia – outside the Federation?’
‘None that I knew of.’
‘So why did she choose to go to Italy?’
Again, Abramov shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea.’
‘We’re just lucky that a border guard at Sheremetievo wasn’t satisfied with her explanation, and decided to check her story. Otherwise we might not have even known she’d run until Monday, and by then she could have got to almost anywhere in Europe. It’s just a shame he didn’t call us before she got on that flight.’
‘But you will find her?’
Zharkov smiled unpleasantly. ‘Don’t worry, Major, we’ll track her down. And I’ll make sure we get all the answers from her, before I order someone to put a bullet in the back of her head.’
For a few seconds Abramov just stared down at the surface of the table in front of him, weighing up his options, few though they now were. He knew he’d be lucky to survive the purge that would inevitably follow Raya Kosov’s defection, but maybe, just maybe, if he could show that he was fully committed to helping find her, he might at least escape with his life. He murmured a silent apology to his subordinate, then looked up at Zharkov.
‘There is something,’ he began.
The colonel looked interested. ‘Yes, Major?’
‘Well, two things, actually,’ Abramov said. ‘I know Kosov, and you don’t, and I don’t think she’ll be easy to find. She’s obviously been planning this for a long time, and I know the way her mind works. She must have had some good reason for choosing to fly to Rome.’
‘To defect. We already know that,’ Zharkov snapped.
‘No, that’s not what I meant. Why did she pick Rome? Why not Paris or London or Madrid? What was her reason for choosing Italy?’
‘That’s a good point.’ Zharkov nodded slowly. ‘So why did she select that city?’
‘I don’t know, but it might be worth somebody going through her personnel record to see if she’s ever had any connection with anyone in Italy. I’m not aware of any relevant association, but I’ve never fully checked.’
‘Perhaps you should have done, Major.’
‘Perhaps,’ Abramov snapped, ‘but I was under the impression that investigating the background of Yasenevo staff was the responsibility of the SVR security staff, not its line officers. The responsibility of your department, in fact, Colonel.’
Zharkov’s cold eyes bored into him, though Abramov met his stare levelly. ‘I’m not responsible for internal security, Abramov,’ he snapped back. ‘I just have to solve the problem once it’s arisen. I’m the senior colonel in the Zontik Directorate. Perhaps you know what that means?’
Abramov nodded and dropped his gaze. He knew exactly what Zharkov was talking about.
In 1988, a specialist and ultra-secret unit had been created within the SVR itself. The Spetsgruppa Zaslon – special operations or spetsnaz team ‘Barrier’ or ‘Shield’ – was formed ostensibly to provide armed backup for SVR operations. But in fact its remit was more wide-ranging, and it was given a virtually unlimited budget. It was also known as the Zontik or ‘Umbrella’ Directorate, or sometimes just as the ‘Z Directorate’, by those few people within the corridors of Yasenevo who even knew about it.
Spetsgruppa Zaslon had been involved in a variety of different types of operations since its first creation. These included a clandestine mission deep into Iraq, at the time Saddam Hussein still held the reins of power, when the operatives successfully located and removed a large quantity of highly sensitive and secret documents from the dictator’s palaces. Those were documents that would have severely embarrassed Moscow, had they been found by the invading American forces.
Some three hundred very experienced officers were selected for Spetsgruppa Zaslon, all characterized by two criteria: all had extensive experience in special operations and also in working outside the borders of the Russian Federation. Many of the officers selected had a further qualification that wouldn’t normally be on their CVs. For, during some of their special operations, they’d been involved in what the old KGB used to refer to euphemistically as mokrie dela, ‘wet affairs’, meaning that blood had been spilt.
The reality was that, despite its somewhat vague and deliberately ill-defined operating brief, the principal job of Zaslon operatives was, ever since the unit’s inception, to act as a highly professional assassination squad.
‘Was that it, then? We should spend our time finding out why she chose to run to Italy?’
Abramov shook his head. ‘No, not just that – and, in any case, I might be wrong about it. Maybe she just stuck a pin in a map, though I doubt it. No, there are two things that I think you need to bear in mind during your search for her.’
The major leant forward then, and spoke earnestly to the Zaslon colonel for a couple of minutes, before he sat back in his seat.
Zharkov nodded. ‘I confess I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said. ‘Good, Major. You might have just bought your life with that. As long as we do find Kosov, of course.’
Ax-les-Thermes, France
On the terrace of the Auberge du Lac, Gerald Stanway gazed up the road towards the Hostellerie de la Poste, and wondered if he’d missed anything.
He’d watched a tall blond man, who’d been sitting at the far end of the terrace, receive a phone call on his mobile and leave the hotel. But there was nothing unusual about that, of course. What was odd was that the same man had then walked down the road, crossed to the other hotel and gone inside.
Then there was the Renault Laguna. The vehicle had pulled up in a lay-by a short distance down the road, and it had been standing there ever since, nearly half an hour. It could, of course, just be that the driver was making a long phone call, or was completely lost and trying to find out where he was on a map. But the simpler explanation, Stanway guessed, was that the man in the Renault was watching the Hostellerie de la Poste.
Putting these two things together, it seemed to him most likely that the blond man was the Russian cipher clerk he’d come to find, and that the man in the car was covering the hotel to ensure that the clerk’s initial debriefing wasn’t interrupted. And that, in turn, meant that there was at least one or possibly two SIS officers inside the building as well.
Stanway wasn’t concerned that the Russian would betray him at this stage in the questioning. The man would obviously realize that the identity of a traitor within the British establishment must be the crown jewel in his dowry, and he wouldn’t release that piece of information until he was safely tucked away in a safe house somewhere in the Home Counties, in possession of a new identity, a British passport and a decent bank balance.
No, Stanway had read enough reports regarding the debriefing of various defectors to have no worries on that score. In this first – he assumed it was the first – meeting, all the interrogators would be doing was establishing the man’s identity and asking him a lot of background questions. They’d be trying to find out where he’d been employed at Yasenevo, what his job description was, what grade and classification of files he had been allowed to work on. All of these were questions intended to confirm that he was who he claimed to be, and that he might have access to the kind of information he was supposedly peddling.
So far, Stanway reckoned, he’d done quite a good day’s work. He’d possibly identified the renegade Russian as well as the vehicle being used by one of the surveillance officers. All he needed to do now was confirm his suspicions, and he thought he’d worked out an easy, if slightly risky, way to do so.
He stood up, put enough money on the table to cover the cost of his drinks, and picked up the copy of Le Monde that he’d bought in the centre of Ax. He walked out to the car park, climbed into his Peugeot, and started the engine to let the air-conditioning cool the interior. He pulled out his Browning, extracted the magazine and checked that it was loaded, then replaced it in the butt of the pistol. He racked back the slide to cock the weapon, then set the safety catch and tucked it into the waistband of his trousers, resting in the small of his back, and out of sight.
The one thing he hadn’t been able to establish, from his vantage point on the hotel terrace, was whether or not the watcher in the Renault was using binoculars. That meant he had to be careful, so it would all be a matter of timing.
Stanway drove the Peugeot over the uneven ground to the entrance of the car park, which lay on the south side of the hotel and was at least one hundred yards from where the Laguna was parked. If the watcher had binoculars, the Peugeot’s number plate would be readable at that distance, but not with the naked eye. So what he had to do was make sure that, when he made the turn onto the main road, he was effectively invisible. He didn’t want the man in the Laguna to realize that the car had also been at the Auberge du Lac, because that would immediately raise a flag.
He stopped the car at the side of the road and checked the oncoming traffic heading south towards the centre of Ax-les-Thermes, picking his moment. An elderly Citroën van, painted brown, perhaps to hide the rust, was just coming around the bend towards him. Stanway waited until the van was directly between him and the Renault, then pulled out, accelerating hard and turning right. Behind him, the van driver noisily expressed his displeasure at this manoeuvre with a blast from his horn, but Stanway ignored him. He would have preferred to have driven away from the hotel in a less obtrusive manner, but he was certain that all the watcher in the Renault would know about him now was the make, model and colour of the car, and Peugeots were common enough for that not to be a problem. His registration plate would have been completely invisible, and that was all that mattered.
Stanway drove on through the town until he reached the small roundabout just outside the casino, where the main road forked. Then he swung the Peugeot left, right around the roundabout, to head back the way he’d come. There were several parking spaces in front of the casino itself, and he pulled into one of them and waited for a few minutes. After about fifty cars had driven past him, heading north, he waited for a convenient gap in the traffic, then backed out and joined the northbound flow himself.
He drove steadily back through the town and as he reached the Hostellerie de la Poste he pulled off the road and stopped the vehicle in one of the handful of vacant parking spaces directly in front of the hotel.
Stanway turned off the Peugeot’s engine and unbuckled his seat belt, but his eyes never left the interior mirror, in which the parked Renault Laguna and its driver were clearly visible – the man’s face staring directly towards the hotel. As Stanway watched, he saw the seated figure briefly move his lips, apparently just uttering a sentence or two. The man could easily have been mouthing the words to a song playing on the radio, or talking into a hands-free mobile phone, but Stanway frankly doubted either explanation. His guess was that he was using a short-range, two-way radio to tell one of the men inside the hotel that a car had just drawn up outside. Well, in that case, he’d soon find out.
This was, Stanway knew, probably the most risky part of the entire operation, the time when he would literally have to show himself to the enemy, but he couldn’t think of any other way of confirming his suspicions about that tall blond man. He picked up his copy of Le Monde, checked that his Browning was securely in place but still invisible, opened the car door and walked into the hotel.
‘Sierra, this is Whisky. That Peugeot outside is on French plates, registered in this département, and it has a single male occupant. I’ve noted the number. Stand by.’
Adamson didn’t take his eyes off the car newly parked outside the hotel, till the door opened and the driver climbed out.
‘Confirmed. Single male carrying a newspaper. He’s heading for the front entrance.’
‘Copied,’ Dekker radioed. ‘Nothing seen to the rear of the building.’
Stanway stood for a couple of seconds in the small lobby of the Hostellerie de la Poste and looked around. There was a small reception desk, currently unmanned, directly in front of him, and to the right of that a wide curving staircase leading up to the first-floor bedrooms. To his left was the dining room, where he could see several tables already laid with plates, napkins and cutlery, but what he was primarily interested in was the bar and lounge over to his right-hand side.
He could hear the soft murmur of voices from behind the half-closed door, too faint for him to decide what language was being used, much less decipher what was actually being said.
Stanway pushed open the bar door and walked in. The sound of the voices immediately ceased. Seated at a circular table in one corner were three men: one was the fair-haired man he’d seen crossing the road from the Auberge du Lac about three-quarters of an hour earlier, but the other two were unfamiliar to him. All three had turned to look as he entered the room.
He nodded in their direction, murmuring a polite ‘Bonjour’, then carried on over towards the bar. He pulled up a stool, opened up Le Monde, and started reading an article. A few seconds later, one of the hotel staff appeared from a back room and asked what he wanted to drink. Stanway ordered a small beer, and for a couple of minutes he and the barman chatted about one of the stories in the newspaper.
They’d barely begun this exchange of views before the three men at the corner table started talking again. And, within ten seconds, Stanway knew his guess had been right. For although their murmured conversation was too quiet for him to catch more than the odd word, the language spoken was definitely Russian.
Wallis and Hughes had exchanged glances as the newcomer walked into the room but, after he continued across to the bar and started a conversation in French with the barman, they’d more or less dismissed him. Richter watched him for a few seconds longer, then turned his attention back to the lies he was busy telling the two SIS officers.
As the barman retreated into the back room again, Stanway bent his head over the newspaper and appeared to completely ignore the other three occupants of the bar, but actually he was straining his ears, to pick up any recognizable snippet of their conversation. Though his spoken Russian was poor, he did have a reasonable vocabulary, but unfortunately those few words and phrases he managed to overhear didn’t help him much. Twice the blond-haired man mentioned ‘papers’, and once each ‘Moscow’ and ‘Yasenevo’, the latter word confirming to Stanway that he’d identified his quarry correctly. Because they had their backs to the bar, the voices of the other two men were much less clear and from them he could gather nothing useful.
The question now, Stanway mused, was not what he should do about it but when.
He had no idea if the men wearing grey suits were armed – he presumed they were SIS officers, probably from the Paris station – but he knew he would have the element of surprise on his side if he just pulled out the Browning and started blasting away, right now.
But there were two obvious problems attending that course of action. Quite apart from the fact that it would involve shooting three men in cold blood, the barman who’d served him might remember Stanway’s face well enough to provide an accurate photofit picture, and by now the watcher in the Renault Laguna might have taken down the number of the Peugeot. Not that it would help him or anyone else, of course, because they were stolen plates. But, after a triple murder, the French police would obviously be keen to follow up every lead, and Stanway didn’t want a photofit image of his face in circulation after the event.
Nor did he think he’d be able to get across the road and take out the man in the Renault as well, for good measure. He’d just have to wait and bide his time, but at least he now felt certain of his target.
Five minutes later, Stanway drained the last of his beer, tucked the newspaper under his arm and walked out of the bar, wishing the three other men bonne journée as he passed them. None of them replied to him, or even looked up as he left.
On his way past the empty reception desk, Stanway reached over to grab one of the room keys, then continued on his way.
Rome, Italy
Raya kept hoping the odds were in her favour. As far as she knew, none of the SVR personnel stationed in Italy had ever seen her in person, so all they could be using in their search were whatever photograph and description Yasenevo would have sent electronically to the embassy in Rome. And she knew perfectly well that she now looked nothing like the person appearing in any of those pictures.
She pushed her way through the crowds, and back into the terminal, her glance flicking left and right as she searched urgently for the three men who’d already entered the building.
She spotted them almost immediately. They’d positioned themselves widely apart, so as to cover the maximum area and number of passengers. And, no doubt, once the three men outside had satisfied themselves that Raya wasn’t waiting for a taxi or a hotel bus, two or maybe all three of them would join their companions inside the terminal. She knew she had to move quickly.
But Raya didn’t want to risk just heading straight for the train station because no matter how effective her rudimentary disguise, she knew that the SVR men would be looking out for a single woman.
Several Italians were heading in the same direction. Raya checked them out as she walked along, looking for a suitable cover. She really needed to make herself part of a group, or at least one half of a couple, and quickly.
An elderly lady, carrying a heavy suitcase as well as a carry-on bag, was making her way slowly towards the train station. Raya crossed swiftly towards her and tried out a little of the Italian she’d tried to learn in Moscow.
‘Mi scusi, Signora, posso aiutarla?’ she said, pointing to the obviously heavy suitcase.
The old woman turned and looked her up and down carefully, but apparently approved of what she saw.
‘Grazie molto, Signorita,’ she replied, and waited while Raya seized the handle of the suitcase and began heading steadily on towards the railway station.
‘Quale è il suo nome?’
‘Mi chiamo Maria,’ Raya replied, giving the woman the first name that popped into her head.
‘Di dove è?’
‘Sono Americana, Signora, e imparo l’italiano da un mese.’
Claiming to be American seemed safe enough, because she doubted the woman spoke a word of English, though Raya was fluent in it.
‘Bene.’
They continued swapping pleasantries all the way to the platform, and actually passed within fifteen feet of one of the men who’d climbed out of the three black Alfas. He looked at the elderly Italian lady chattering away to a young dark-haired woman who could be her granddaughter, then shifted his glance to inspect the mass of people approaching behind them.
Raya helped her new-found friend to a seat on the platform, bought for herself the cheapest ticket she could from a machine, had it validated and then sat down next to her to wait. Within a couple of minutes a train arrived, and with a smile she helped the elderly Italian lady on board and then followed her, lugging the heavy suitcase. She had not the slightest idea where the train was going and cared less. All she was interested in was getting away from the airport as quickly as possible.
Raya glanced out of the window, back towards the terminal itself, and what she saw made her realize she was still a long way from safety.
Ax-les-Thermes, France
Outside the Hostellerie de la Poste, Stanway climbed back into the Peugeot, started the engine and drove away, heading north and away from the town. This manoeuvre allowed him a second opportunity to take a look at the Renault Laguna, still parked in the lay-by.
The fact that the car was still there was confirmation of his suspicions that the man sitting inside it was a surveillance officer. Stanway decided to drive a few miles up the road, find somewhere for an early dinner or just buy a snack, and then return to the town in a couple of hours. Then he’d have to find a suitable vantage point from which he could see the Hostellerie de la Poste clearly. Ideally, he hoped he’d be able to spot the fair-haired man leaving the hotel, because then he could follow him and take him down. But, realistically, he knew he’d probably have to tackle him in his hotel room.
‘Sierra, Whisky. The unidentified male who arrived in the Peugeot has just left, going north.’
‘Copied. No change at the rear of the building. No sightings of anyone.’
In the driving seat of the Renault Laguna, Adamson stretched his cramped limbs and shuffled the papers on the seat beside him. Whatever was going on inside the target hotel, he hoped somebody would appear soon, because he was getting extremely bored, and God knows what Dekker felt like, lying motionless under some bush up in the copse, staring at an unchanging scene through the telescopic sight attached to his rifle.
‘We will have to talk again, and soon,’ Hughes said, as the three men stood up. ‘Later this evening, perhaps? Or over dinner here?’
‘No.’ Richter shook his head. ‘Tomorrow, please.’
‘Very well, then. We’ll see you here, in this room, at ten tomorrow morning, agreed?’
‘Agreed.’ Richter shook hands with the two men and walked out of the bar and up to his bedroom.
The discussion had been quite draining, partly because he hadn’t spoken Russian very much over the last couple of years, and had found it quite hard work just to keep up with Hughes. But the more difficult task – despite the SVR crib sheet Simpson had supplied, and Richter had memorized – was that the SIS man’s questioning had forced him to invent more and more detailed stories about his work in Moscow. He’d been approaching the point where he was likely to trip himself up because he’d forgotten the answer he’d given to an earlier question. And Wallis and Hughes would certainly pick up any errors he made, because both had been making copious notes throughout the interview.
He just hoped Simpson would be satisfied with what he’d done and now call a halt to the whole pointless charade.
‘What do you think?’ Wallis asked, as he and Hughes ordered drinks from the bar.
‘I’m not convinced. He looks the part – I’ve met quite a few blond-haired blue-eyed Russian men – but there’s something about that man that doesn’t quite ring true. A couple of times he gave slightly different answers to the questions I asked him, but that could be just a minor misinterpretation.’
‘He also refused to give us any information at all about this mole he claims to know about in London.’
‘Yes,’ Hughes agreed, ‘but that didn’t really surprise me. He’d know that data would be the clincher, so I wouldn’t expect him to even talk about it until we’d lifted him. No, it’s more his whole manner. I’ve debriefed half a dozen defectors over the years, and every one of them spent most of his time looking over his shoulder, metaphorically speaking. Markov just sat there, looking perfectly comfortable with the situation, and quite calm. That’s what bothers me: his whole demeanour is wrong.’
‘And that’s what you’ll tell Simpson?’
‘That’s my assessment, so that’s what I’m going to tell him,’ Hughes confirmed, taking his mobile out of his pocket.
‘Not over the phone,’ Simpson warned, as soon as he answered the call. ‘Meet me outside the casino in ten.’
‘I think he’s a plant,’ Hughes said, once he and Wallis sat down opposite Simpson at a table outside a cafe situated on the west side of the main road that ran through the centre of the town.
‘Why, precisely? Justify that.’
‘He’s giving the right answers, but he seems too comfortable. He’s not worried enough. The data he’s supplying is superficial, and just sufficiently detailed to be believable. So I think he could be part of a deception operation being run by the SVR. I recommend we either assume he’s SVR and sweat him, subject him to some hostile interrogation, or just throw him back.’
‘Good deduction,’ Simpson observed. ‘In fact, Anatoli Markov is as English as you are. His real name’s Paul Richter, he’s ex-Royal Navy, and he’s never even been to Russia.’
Hughes stared at him. ‘Then what the hell are we doing wasting our time like this?’
‘This is important, so shut up and listen. There’s a hell of a lot you’re not aware of. You’re right, this is a deception operation, but we’re running it, not the Russians.’ In brief sentences he then explained how Richter was just a decoy playing the part of a defecting Russian cipher clerk.
‘Why choose us?’ Wallis asked.
‘Because neither of you has the level of access needed to obtain the kind of data Gecko is trying to sell to the Russians. Also you’re based in Paris, not London, so for both reasons I’m satisfied you’re clean.’
Hughes nodded. ‘So what happens now?’
‘Richter has a packet of papers with him, which you probably saw – and that’s the real bait.’
‘What’s in it?’ Wallis asked.
‘Most of the sheets in the packet are blank, but the first few pages are copies of an extract from a Russian maintenance manual for the Victor III submarine. Technically, they’re classified Secret, but in fact there’s nothing in them that we haven’t known for years. The papers are just a decoy, something we could safely give Richter to carry, and something that the target, Gecko, can focus on. I hope Gecko will believe that those documents contain enough evidence to identify him, because that’s the story we’ve disseminated. I told you not to take the packet, because that would mean Gecko would come after you, and not Richter. In fact, he’d probably come after you and Richter.’
‘So all we’ve really been doing here is fingering Richter.’
‘Exactly. That’s why you’ve been speaking Russian. I want Gecko to be certain that Richter is the defecting clerk, so that he’ll act.’
‘And if he decides to do that while we’re with Richter tomorrow?’
‘Trust me, he won’t. He’ll want to eliminate Richter sometime when he’s alone.’
‘Do we know who this target is?’ Wallis asked.
Simpson stopped and stared at him. ‘Of course we don’t know who the fucking target is,’ he snapped. ‘If we did, none of this charade would be necessary. We’d just have picked him up and shoved him in the slammer.’
‘Sorry, I meant do you know which division Gecko works for, anything like that? SIS or GCHQ, maybe?’
‘No, not yet. We’ve no idea who he is except that he’s someone highly placed in the security establishment. Now, what you did today was start talking to Richter, the kind of initial meeting we’d do for real in the case of a defection, and I didn’t brief you about it beforehand because I wanted you to handle it as realistically as possible. And it needed to be realistic in case anyone was watching you. Was there anyone else in the hotel when you talked to him?’
‘Richter’s good,’ Hughes said grudgingly. ‘I thought he was a plant, but it never occurred to me that he wasn’t Russian. No, there was nobody in the lounge apart from the barman – and I presume you’d exclude him – and the only other person who turned up was some French guy who walked in and ordered a beer. He was there for about five minutes.’
‘You’re quite certain he was French?’
‘Yes, he chatted to the barman for a few minutes, about some story in the newspaper. He was a local, I’m sure.’
‘Right,’ Simpson said, nodding, ‘so it looks like Gecko hasn’t shown yet. Richter will be staying at the hotel tonight, and you’ll be seeing him again tomorrow. Carry on exactly as you’d do if this was for real. I’ll brief him tonight so that he, too, knows what he’s supposed to do.’
‘And then?’
‘And then you pack your bags and head for the hills. If Gecko doesn’t appear here tomorrow either, we’ll know he hasn’t taken the bait. And if he does, I’ve got people waiting ready to take him down.’
‘Take him down as in kill him?’
‘If it comes to that, yes, but I’d rather keep the bastard alive so we can sweat him for a while. We need to identify his case officer or handler, and he’ll have some other useful information, no doubt. We’ll kill him only if we’ve got no other options.’
‘And if your decoy, this man Richter, is threatened?’
‘Different rules apply. Richter’s expendable.’