Monday
Near Chambéry, France
‘How far now, Colin?’ Richter asked urgently, getting as much speed as he could out of the Renault.
Dekker had been looking behind, but quickly glanced back at the map. ‘About ten miles, that’s all,’ he replied.
‘That car won’t catch us,’ Richter said, ‘but by now he’ll be radioing for back-up. Let’s hope there aren’t too many police cars between here and the airport.’
The road was virtually straight, but they were meeting more traffic now because of the built-up areas fast approaching, and Richter was forced to drop his speed.
‘There’s an airport,’ Raya said urgently, pointing to the right as they drove out of Challes-les-Eaux.
‘Yeah,’ Dekker replied, ‘but it’s the wrong one.’
‘That’s just a little civilian field,’ Richter added. ‘It’s probably used for gliders and light aircraft, that kind of thing. I doubt the runway’s anything like long enough to handle a Lear.’
‘Traffic lights ahead,’ Dekker said, ‘and go straight on.’
As they approached, Richter weaving past cars and vans whenever he could, the lights suddenly turned red. In his mirror, he could see the French police car maybe half a mile back, its headlamps on and roof lights flashing. Travelling quickly, it was now too close.
‘Hang on,’ he said, swerving around a slowing articulated lorry and pulling over into the right-hand lane. A horn sounded loudly behind him as the lorry driver expressed his displeasure.
Traffic was already driving in both directions across the junction, but Richter just powered ahead, past the red traffic lights. He hit the brakes hard as a white van passed a few feet in front of the Renault’s nose, then picked a gap in the crossing traffic and accelerated hard. The driver of a small grey Peugeot did an emergency stop as Richter shot across in front of him, but the driver behind him didn’t react as quickly. There was a rending crash as his vehicle smashed into the back of the Peugeot, but by then Richter was already well past.
‘That might help,’ he muttered, glancing back. ‘Nothing like a traffic accident in the middle of a junction to slow everything down.’
The road swung around to the left and straightened up, then the traffic lanes got narrower as they approached a roundabout.
‘Keep going straight,’ Dekker instructed. ‘There are three roundabouts, one after the other.’
As they drove around the third one, Richter spotted another police car, lights flashing, heading directly towards them, but it carried on straight along the road towards the junction where the crash had just occurred.
They were now close to the centre of Chambéry, where the traffic was getting much more congested. The bad news was that Richter had to slow right down, but on the other hand their car was now just one more anonymous Renault in a town filled with French-made vehicles, so spotting them was going to be much more difficult for the local gendarmes.
Dekker directed him onto the Avenue de la Boisse, a north-bound road that ran alongside a railway line and then past a station. ‘Stay on this road,’ he said, ‘and maybe keep the speed down a bit. We’re pretty close now, only about five miles away.’
They were still driving in a heavily built-up area, so Richter actually had little choice but to keep going with the flow of traffic. At the next intersection, following Dekker’s instructions, he pulled onto the north-bound autoroute. It was a non-toll section, which meant there were no payment booths where they could be stopped.
Richter wound the speed up as soon as they cleared the junction. A couple of miles later, he hit the brakes and pulled off the urban autoroute, and back onto a normal road which ran to the west of a village named Voglans.
Dekker pointed ahead of them, towards another roundabout. ‘Turn left there,’ he said. ‘We’ve arrived.’
As Richter swung round the roundabout, he saw another police car heading down the road straight towards them. There was nothing he could do about it, so he accelerated the Renault towards the airport, hoping that the gendarmes hadn’t spotted them.
As the police vehicle carried straight on down the road towards Chambéry, Richter started to breathe more easily. He glanced to his left and saw what was probably a general aviation terminal, used by private pilots. Dwarfing the handful of light aircraft parked in front of the hangar was the unmistakable sleek black shape of a Lear 60.
‘That looks like our ride,’ he said, then glanced in his mirror again.
The French police car was performing a U-turn in the road, the lights on its roof bar now flashing.
‘We’ve got more trouble,’ he said.
‘There’s a surprise,’ Dekker replied, turning round in his seat to look back.
‘You’ll have to stop him, or we’ll never get on board that aircraft,’ Richter said, swinging the car off the road and towards the terminal building. ‘Then can you cover the pair of us as well?’
‘No problem. Just drop me here,’ Dekker instructed, seizing his rifle.
Richter slewed the car to a stop, waited until Dekker had climbed out, then surged forward, with tyres screeching, towards the Lear jet.
There was a pair of steel gates barring their way across to the hardstanding, but they looked more for show than security.
‘Brace yourself,’ he yelled to Raya, and powered the car straight towards the point where the gates met.
The Renault jolted under the impact, but the gates flew apart instantly. Richter pulled the car to a stop, about twenty yards from the Lear, and switched off the engine.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, grabbing Dekker’s rifle case.
‘What about Colin?’ Raya asked, picking up her bag.
‘He’ll be here any second.’
As if in response, they both heard the crack of a rifle somewhere behind them.
The passenger door of the Lear was open, and a dark-haired man wearing a grey suit was standing beside the aircraft, looking towards them. Above him, Richter could see two men sitting ready in the cockpit.
He hurried across the hardstanding, Raya beside him, and they stopped beside the aircraft.
‘John Westwood?’ he asked, and the man nodded. ‘My name’s Paul Richter, and this is Raya Kosov. If you can tell your guys to kick the tyres and light the fires, we’d appreciate getting this taxi into the air as soon as possible.’
Westwood nodded. ‘You’re very trusting,’ he said with a slight smile. ‘I could have a couple of guys inside the aircraft ready to shoot you down right now, and then take Raya straight back to the States with us.’
‘You could certainly try,’ Richter agreed, ‘but you’d never get off the ground. There’s a man behind me, watching you through the sights of a sniper rifle. If you try and pull a gun, you’ll be dead, then he’ll blow out the tyres on the landing gear, and we’d just take our chances at avoiding the French.’
Westwood glanced behind Richter, but apparently spotted nothing. His smile growing broader, he opened his jacket to show that he was unarmed. As he did so, a tiny red spot of light appeared in the exact centre of his chest.
‘I told you.’ Richter pointed.
‘It was just a hypothetical scenario,’ Westwood replied. ‘I always keep my word.’
‘Sure you do,’ Richter didn’t look entirely convinced, ‘but I’m going to check anyway.’ He pulled out his Browning, motioned to Raya to stay where she was, and climbed the steps up into the cabin, which was empty.
‘Now I believe you,’ he said, returning to the door of the aircraft. ‘Right, let’s go.’
As Raya climbed up the steps, Richter waved to where he thought Dekker might be hiding. Moments later, the SAS officer emerged from the bushes and ran across to the aircraft, the sniper rifle slung over his shoulder.
In seconds, all four of them were safely inside the Lear’s luxurious cabin. Westwood closed the exterior door and stepped across to the cockpit entrance. ‘We’re all aboard, Frank. Get us out of here.’
‘Yes, sir.’
A man emerged from the cockpit, glanced without apparent surprise at Richter and Dekker, who were both pointing pistols at him, and checked that the exterior door was properly secured. With a nod to Westwood, he then returned to the cockpit and closed the intervening door.
As the jet engines spooled up, Richter glanced at Dekker. ‘OK?’
‘No problem.’ That expression seemed like a mantra for the SAS man. ‘I just took out the front tyre on the plod-mobile, as it came around the corner.’
The speaker system switched on, and a Midwestern voice filled the cabin. ‘Please make sure your seat belts are fastened. We’ve been instructed to hold here in dispersal, Mr Westwood, at the request of local law enforcement. But we guessed you probably wouldn’t want to do that, so we’re heading for the runway right now.’
The Lear swung around and started moving quickly, heading south down the taxiway leading towards the end of the runway.
Richter peered out of the window beside him. Chambéry had the usual range of crash and rescue service vehicles and, as he stared at one of the buildings, red-painted steel door shutters started to roll up, and the fronts of a couple of heavy fire engines emerged.
‘They’re going to try and block the runway,’ he said urgently.
‘Relax, Mr Richter,’ Westwood said. ‘The guys in the cockpit are ex-USAF fighter jockeys. They’ll find a way past them.’
Richter doubted that any pilot, no matter how experienced or talented, could ‘find a way past’ a couple of ten-ton fire engines blocking the runway, but he lapsed into silence because there was nothing he could do about it. If he’d seen the fire engines, obviously the flight-deck crew would have seen them as well.
The Lear turned sharply to the north, and its engine noise rose to a crescendo as the aircraft began its takeoff run.
Richter looked again through the window. The two engines were heading for the mid-point of the runway, the intentions of the crews obvious. It was all a matter of speed and acceleration and physics. The two vehicles were probably travelling at twenty miles an hour, and gaining speed slowly. He guessed that the Lear was already doing nearly a hundred knots, and getting near V1. And there was also the human factor. He doubted if the crash crews would actually want to drive directly in front of a jet aircraft travelling at well over one hundred miles an hour, because that way they would effectively be committing suicide.
And as he watched, the two fire engines slowed right down, and then came to a stop just off the edge of the runway. The aircraft roared past them, and Richter gave an ironic wave as they went by.
The Lear lifted smoothly off the runway and started to climb swiftly over the long, narrow lake lying immediately north of Chambéry airfield.
As they passed through about five thousand feet, Westwood picked up a phone.
‘Frank,’ he said, ‘it’s possible our guests here might have offended the French, so make a call to see if our friends can join us.’
‘Friends?’ Richter asked.
Westwood nodded. ‘I’ve had a couple of F-16s from the 31st Fighter Wing at Aviano on standby, just in case we needed an escort out of here. They got airborne about twenty minutes ago. As far as the Italians are concerned, they’re being sent over to Mildenhall on a liaison visit, so they’re fitted with drop tanks to give them range. They’re also carrying what I believe the pilots refer to as a “full rack”.’
Dekker turned enquiringly to Richter.
‘That means they’re fully armed,’ he said, ‘just in case the Frogs decide their best interests might be served by having a couple of Mirages pop up beside us, to try to make us land at some French military airfield.’ Richter glanced at Westwood. ‘A U2, this Lear, and now a couple of F-16s? This has not been a cheap exercise for you. Why are you so interested in Raya here?’
Westwood shrugged. ‘Mainly, I suppose, we got interested because the Russians were so keen to get you back, Ms Kosov. You simply had to be important because of the size of the operation they’ve mounted to find you. And I’m very glad they didn’t succeed. The British, of course, denied all knowledge of your existence, and that was why I knew they were deeply involved.’
‘So what’s in it for you?’ Richter asked.
‘I work for the CIA, as I’m sure you know. Ideally, we’d like to debrief Raya ourselves, back at Langley, but now we know that’s not going to happen. So our next best option seemed to be to help you get her out of the clutches of the thugs that Moscow sent after her, and then ask politely if we can share her material.’
Westwood turned to Raya. ‘So who are you, exactly?’ he asked. ‘Our Moscow people first identified you a long time ago, but you haven’t popped up on our radar for quite a few years. We guessed you’d been recruited by one of the organs, like the SVR, and that’s why you seemed to vanish.’
‘She’s just a clerk,’ Dekker said, holstering his pistol and peering out of the window at the fast-receding ground. The Lear was climbing rapidly. ‘Goes up bloody fast, doesn’t it?’ he added.
‘Like a fart in a bath,’ Richter remarked. ‘Like Colin said, Raya’s a clerk.’
‘No, she isn’t,’ Westwood said firmly. ‘And Colin here is who, exactly?’
‘Our guardian angel. He’s the man with the long rifle to make sure the bad guys keep their distance.’
‘Sounds reasonable,’ Westwood said. ‘And what about you? I presume you’re the guy who was flying that little puddle-jumper you stole in Italy?’
Richter nodded and introduced himself. ‘I’m ex-military,’ he finished, ‘and I kind of got suckered into this by taking a job that looked too good to be true. Which it was, of course.’
‘So you’re not SIS at all?’
‘No, Mr Westwood,’ Raya chipped in, ‘because that was one of the conditions I insisted on. There are at least two SIS officers on our Moscow payroll, and the one thing I wasn’t prepared to risk was one of them being sent to meet me. That would be a sure and certain way of ending up back in Moscow. So I wanted London to send out somebody completely unconnected with SIS and I ended up with this character, who’s so far proved quite good at keeping me alive.’
‘OK.’ Westwood nodded. ‘Now we know who we all are, but no way is Ms Kosov just a clerk. Almost the entire Russian Embassy staff were out on the streets of Rome looking for her, plus a minimum of fifty experts flown in specially from Moscow to help. They wouldn’t do all that for a defecting clerk, so just who the hell are you, lady?’
Raya glanced at Richter, then nodded. ‘You may have just saved all our lives,’ she said, ‘so I think you at least deserve to know this. I was the Deputy Computer Network Manager at Yasenevo.’
‘Holy shit,’ Westwood muttered. ‘Or maybe I should say the holy grail.’ He glanced from Raya to Richter, and back again. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘don’t take this the wrong way, but I owe it to my bosses to at least make you an offer, just in case you might be interested. Whatever the British have agreed to pay you we’d double it at a minimum. You can have a new identity in the States, as part of the Witness Protection Program, and live wherever you want. This aircraft could take you to Virginia right now.’
Raya gazed at him for a long moment, then shook her head. ‘There’s more than one motive for betraying your country, Mr Westwood. Money doesn’t interest me. I have a very different reason for being here.’
‘And that is?’ Richter asked.
Raya smiled at him. ‘All in good time, Paul. Let’s get somewhere safe – somewhere really safe, I mean – and then I’ll answer all of your questions.’
‘Our playmates have just arrived,’ the captain announced over the cabin broadcast system.
As he made the announcement, there was a sudden roar audible even over the noise of the Lear’s engines. Richter changed seats and peered through the window. One of the F-16s was just passing down the starboard side of the Lear, at the same level and maybe eighty metres away. Clearly visible on the rudder were the ‘AV’ letters that identified it as being based at Aviano.
‘Now,’ Richter said, leaning back in his seat, ‘when I see a Fighting Falcon out there instead of an Aermacchi, I actually do feel safe. Just you make sure the jet jockeys driving this thing know we’re heading for London, not Langley, Mr Westwood. Because, you’re right, it was me flying that Piper Arrow over the Alps, and I’m perfectly capable of driving this executive knocking shop as well.’
Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi Headquarters, Yasenevo, Tëplyystan, Moscow
Yuri Abramov stood at the rear of Colonel Yevgeni Zharkov’s spacious office and stared around.
Members of the search team the general had sent in were busily opening doors and drawers, looking for anything that might be construed as incriminating. As Abramov watched, one of the men pulled a drawer completely out of the desk, the more easily to inspect its contents. As he lifted it up, another investigator spotted a metallic glint from the drawer’s underside, and muttered an instruction.
Working together, the two men swiftly removed the contents of the drawer and stacked them on the desk. Then they turned it over to inspect the base. Immediately, Abramov saw precisely what had attracted their attention. Secured to the underside of the drawer, with clear tape, were two flat keys. This find alone was enough to convince the searchers that they were onto something. If these keys were innocent – if they merely fitted a lock in the colonel’s apartment or something in his office – then why were they hidden?
They studied the keys closely, then one of the men made a call. A few minutes later General Morozov himself appeared.
‘Leave them where they are,’ he instructed. ‘I will invite Colonel Zharkov to explain what they are used for, and why he felt it necessary to conceal them.’
Then he turned to face Yuri Abramov. ‘I hate to admit it,’ the old man said, ‘but it looks as if you were right and Zharkov is playing some kind of a dirty game.’
‘Have you questioned him, sir?’ Abramov asked.
Morozov nodded. ‘Yes, but he merely claims somebody is trying to set him up. And there is one thing he’s saying that makes sense. You found his apartment number on the call diverter recovered from that office in the Lubyanka. Zharkov’s point is that the only reason for setting up such a diversion would be to link a computer terminal, here at Yasenevo, with another computer inside his apartment, so as to enable files and data to be sent out of this building. And because the call would apparently terminate in the Lubyanka itself, no suspicion would be aroused that anything was wrong.’
‘That was exactly what I thought, sir,’ Abramov agreed.
‘But Zharkov doesn’t own a personal computer, and claims he has never had such a machine in his apartment. Of course, it’s possible that he may have secreted it somewhere else, if he became concerned that questions might be asked of him. What I would like you to do, Major, is examine that call diverter and see if there are any other numbers on it that you might be able to recover. Can you do that?’
‘It depends on the way the diverter functions, but I will do my best.’
‘And do it right now,’ Morozov instructed, ‘before I ask Zharkov to explain what we’ve just found here.’
One of the search team escorted Abramov back to his office, and stood watching while the major tried to analyse the diverter’s history. It was quickly clear to Abramov that somebody had wiped any earlier numbers from the device, and apart from the telephone number that he now knew belonged to Colonel Zharkov’s apartment, there was only one other recorded. He wrote it down on a piece of paper, then ran a check on the directory system. But that produced no information and, wherever that particular number terminated, it was not a location known to the SVR.
Back in the colonel’s office, Abramov explained what he’d found.
‘Leave it with me now,’ Morozov instructed. ‘I’ll organize a back-trace of that number.’
London
The next message Andrew Lomas received from Moscow through the Australian website was completely unexpected, bearing in mind the earlier communications.
He had genuinely expected simply to receive confirmation that Raya Kosov had been captured somewhere in northern Italy, and then handed over to the Russian authorities. Instead, he was told that, against all odds, she had somehow managed to escape into France, and had then climbed into a North American registered executive jet, which had flown north. Moscow’s assessment of the situation was that the aircraft was making for London, so it was now up to Lomas to ensure that Kosov was unable to pass on any classified information to the British. And, more importantly, he must make certain she wouldn’t be able to betray the identity of the jewel in Moscow’s crown – the high-level SIS officer who had been working for the Russians for over twenty years.
Lomas closed the Internet connection and sat back in his chair to consider his next move. The first thing to do was obvious: identify the destination of the aircraft in which Kosov was travelling. That was probably the easy bit because, if it was heading for London, it wouldn’t land at any of the three major civilian airports, Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted, for a variety of reasons. That left only one choice, RAF Northolt, a military airfield conveniently located just north of Heathrow, with easy access to London and also the benefit of being closed to the public. It seemed to him the only possible destination.
He knew he would never be able to gain access to the airfield, but that didn’t present an insurmountable problem. He didn’t need to actually enter RAF Northolt, only find out where Raya Kosov was taken when she left the airfield. Once he knew that, he could decide exactly how to carry out the orders he’d received from Moscow Centre.
Lomas considered his next move carefully. It would mean breaking cover but, in the circumstances, he felt he had no option. There was no way that he could complete his assignment without help – and expert help at that.
Twenty minutes later he left his apartment and walked for about a quarter of a mile through the rain-soaked streets of West London. He picked a public phone box at random and made a call to a man he’d never met but whose name he knew very well. Although Lomas was using a public phone, he still had to be very careful in what he said and how he said it, because the man at the other end of the line was sitting in Harrington House at 13 Kensington Palace Gardens. It was home to the Russian Embassy in London, and all lines going into the building would almost certainly be monitored by British intelligence.
He used a series of code words couched in seemingly innocent and innocuous sentences to establish his bona fides, and finished by requesting a callback. He gave the Russian a telephone number which didn’t exist, but which he knew was held in a highly classified file inside the embassy, together with the real number to which the callback should be directed. That was a pay-as-you-go mobile phone which Lomas used just often enough to keep it active, but which he never used for any kind of sensitive conversation.
Less than a quarter of an hour later, during which time the Russian SVR officer had to leave the embassy and find a phone box, Lomas’s mobile rang. He answered it and then issued a series of urgent orders in Russian.
When he’d finished, Lomas used the public phone to make another very brief call. The man who answered sounded irritated, which was unsurprising. Most busy men would react that way if a car-insurance salesman called their personal mobile phone with details of some fatuous special offer during the working day. But, when Lomas ended the call, he felt certain that the other man had completely understood his message.
RAF Northolt, West London
The Lear 60 landed smoothly a little under ninety minutes later. The pilot had filed an in-flight flight plan while the aircraft was somewhere over central France. There had been no delays, caused by air traffic or otherwise, in their approach and final landing. Their escort duty over, the pair of F-16s had peeled off as the Lear crossed the coast of southern England, and then headed north for their own landing at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk.
The executive jet followed the ground controller’s instructions and taxied across to a hardstanding beside a small terminal building, well away from any other aircraft. As the twin jet engines spooled down, their roar dying away to a diminishing whine, the three of them unbuckled their seat belts and stood up. They followed John Westwood to the exterior door and waited while one of the flight crew emerged from the cockpit to unlatch it.
It had been hot and sunny in southern France and northern Italy, but Richter was unsurprised to discover that it was raining in London. The tarmac around the aircraft glistened in the early evening gloom, reflecting the sheen of lights that illuminated the hardstanding or shone from the windows of the terminal building.
‘That’s just bloody typical,’ he muttered, as he splashed through a succession of shallow puddles between the Lear and the terminal itself. He had an umbrella in one hand with which he was trying to protect Raya’s hair from the rain, while in the other he was carrying her bag.
‘Yeah,’ Dekker agreed. ‘Say what you like about the bloody Frogs, but they do have better weather than us.’
John Westwood followed behind the small group, because there were things he needed to do inside the terminal, including paying landing fees for the Lear and arranging for a bowser to refuel it. The pilots were out of flying hours, so he wasn’t going to make it back to the States until the following day. He needed to find accommodation, either somewhere on the base itself or in a local hotel, for himself and the two pilots.
Richter pushed open the door and walked inside the building. To his right was a waiting area sporting a few low tables and easy chairs, and on his left a reception desk behind which stood two uniformed senior RAF non-commissioned officers. He turned towards them and reached into his pocket for the diplomatic passport, which he hoped would be enough to avoid complications with the duty customs and immigration officers who might already be on their way over. He still didn’t know exactly what they would make of Raya, or whether her Russian passport would even allow her out of the airport. And the Browning pistol in his shoulder holster was almost certainly going to raise eyebrows.
His plan, such as it was, was to try to talk his way through the ranks of officials he expected to meet and, if that didn’t work, to call Simpson and let him sort it out. It was, after all, ultimately not Richter’s problem.
But, before he reached the desk, he heard an unpleasantly familiar voice calling out to him from behind. ‘And about bloody time, too.’
Richter turned immediately, and was rewarded by the unwelcome sight of Richard Simpson, as immaculately groomed as ever, rising from one of the easy chairs and walking over towards him. His complexion appeared slightly pinker than before, possibly an indication of the irritation he was doubtless feeling.
‘Simpson,’ Richter greeted him. ‘And it’s nice to see you, too.’
‘You can cut the crap, Richter. Your bloody phone’s been switched off ever since you last called me, when you told me a pack of lies about what you were doing and where you were going. As a result I’m seriously thinking about throwing you and Dekker straight back to the Italian authorities. And when they’ve finished with both of you, there are some highly placed officials in France who’d like a bit of a chat as well.’
There was a silence that seemed to last for minutes, while Richter tried to decide if it was worth shooting Simpson there and then, or if he should just settle for beating the crap out of him.
Then a cultured American voice broke in. ‘Hi, I’m John Westwood. You must be Richard Simpson.’ Westwood stepped forward, his hand extended.
Almost reluctantly, Simpson shook it. ‘How did you recognize me?’ he asked.
‘Word gets around,’ Westwood said somewhat enigmatically. Then he turned to face Richter. ‘It doesn’t look to me as if your talents are fully appreciated here, my friend. If ever you feel like a change of scene, you know where to find me. The Company can always use people like you.’
Richter nodded, then shifted his glance back to Simpson. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but for the moment I’ll stick with the devil I know – and right now that isn’t just a figure of speech. Let me ask you a question, Simpson. Have you any idea at all why my phone’s been switched off while we tried to get out of Italy without having our heads blown off?’
Simpson shook his head. ‘No, I just assumed you were disobeying every instruction I gave you, as usual.’
‘My phone was switched off because somebody was using it to track us.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Bollocks!’
Richter explained what had happened in Nervi, after following Raya’s instructions about the rendezvous.
‘This, by the way, is Raya Kosov,’ he finished, ‘who’s probably just as sick of hearing your whinging as I am. The point is that she wasn’t followed to Nervi.’
‘When you called me, you told me she had been followed,’ Simpson pointed out.
‘I told you a porkie, just to see what happened. And, right then, I wasn’t absolutely sure but now I’m quite certain that she wasn’t being followed. Apart from anything else, if the bad guys had been behind her, why didn’t they snatch her before she even got to the town? After all, she was the target, not me.’
Simpson didn’t respond.
‘The only other person who knew the location of the rendezvous,’ Richter continued, ‘was Colin Dekker, and we discussed that face to face, not over a telephone link. So the only way the bad guys could have known where we were was to track my phone.’
‘They could have been tracking Kosov’s mobile, or even Dekker’s.’
‘No, because Raya kept her unit switched off almost all the time, precisely so she couldn’t be tracked. And the bad guys were already waiting in the square at Nervi, but Colin wasn’t there. He was on a rooftop nearby, with his phone switched off and watching what was going on through the telescopic sight of his rifle. Just as well he was, otherwise I’d probably be lying on a slab in some Italian morgue, and I really don’t like to even think about what might have happened to Raya.’
‘That’s not the point, Richter. You could still have used a public phone, just to let me know what was happening. I don’t like being kept in the dark. And then there’s the matter of the private jet I sent out to Innsbruck to pick you up. The one which is still waiting there for you, as a matter of fact. You’ll be paying off the cost of that abortive mission for the rest of your life.’
‘I don’t think we’d have got anywhere near that airport,’ Richter argued, ‘because I think your organization leaks like a sieve.’
Simpson’s eyes blazed. ‘You’ll retract that remark or bloody well justify it, Richter, and right now.’
‘That’s easy enough. When I called you, after we’d got out of Nervi, I told you which town we were heading for, and even gave you the name of the hotel we were going to stay at. Exactly four people were privy to that information, Simpson – you, me, Raya and Colin.’
‘So?’
‘So we went somewhere else, but Colin found a perch where he could cover the hotel. Late that evening, a bunch of professional thugs arrived and checked everyone in the building. I hadn’t told anyone else we’d be there, and nor did Raya or Colin. So that means you must have done or somebody you talked to did, because we were set up.’
Simpson went white. ‘You’re sure?’ he asked. ‘You’re sure those people were looking for you?’
‘As near certain as makes no difference,’ Dekker intervened. ‘They definitely weren’t Italian security people, because they made sure they got the hell away from the hotel well before the carabinieri arrived. And they even beat up a couple of the residents who objected to being dragged out into the street.’
‘Right,’ Simpson said, ‘that puts a different complexion on things. Assuming, of course, what you say is correct, Richter – and I will be running a check to make sure you’re not just trying to cover your back. But you’re still wrong about one thing. If there was a leak, it didn’t come from my section, because I’ve not discussed this operation with anyone there. Somebody else is involved in this, and you can be certain I’m going to find out who.’
‘Raya here might be able to help with that,’ Richter suggested. ‘She knows that the SVR had at least two SIS officers in its stable. Gerald Stanway was presumably one of them, but her information might help identify the other.’
Simpson shook his head. ‘That probably won’t be necessary. ‘I know exactly who I told about your route through Italy. It must either be him, or somebody he discussed it with at SIS. You can leave that to me.’
Simpson turned to the other two. ‘Welcome to Britain, Miss Kosov,’ he said shortly. ‘And thank you, Dekker, for your support in this operation.’
‘How did you know we’d be on that aircraft?’ Richter asked.
‘I know almost everything, Richter, almost all of the time. In this case, it wasn’t particularly difficult to deduce. First, you shot up a couple of Italian police cars then stole an aircraft from some poor sod of a farmer. Next you nearly crashed it in the middle of the Alps, by pulling off some hare-brained manoeuvre. To cap that, you sent a transmission on a distress frequency, in which you used a false call sign and accused an Italian air force pilot of attacking you. And all that, of course, was a mere bagatelle compared to what you achieved in France. Do you have any idea how much those helicopters cost?’
‘Oddly enough, I do,’ Richter said, ‘because I used to fly the things. When you were busy talking to your chums on the east side of the Channel, did they mention that their helicopter crew opened fire on us with a heavy machine gun, before Dekker here gave them something else to think about?’
‘According to my contacts,’ Simpson said, ‘they just fired some warning shots to attract your attention.’
‘They certainly did that, but it all still comes down to the basic rule of engagement. If you fire at me, you shouldn’t be too surprised if I decide to shoot back.’
‘Yeah, well the French don’t see it that way. They’d like reparation for the loss of their very expensive helicopter, not to mention some clean trousers for the flight crew. Then there was the sudden appearance at a nearby French airfield of a North American-registered executive jet owned by a certain organization based at Langley in Virginia. The same jet then took off, in defiance of air traffic control instructions and the orders of the French police, and which was escorted all the way across France by two American fighters. Put all that stuff together and a conclusion wasn’t particularly difficult to reach.’
‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Richter asked.
‘Nothing at the moment. The Frogs and the Eyeties can simply wait until we’re sure of exactly what happened, and what Miss Kosov here has brought with her out of Moscow. If your data is valuable enough, we’ll tell them to sod off, and deny any suggestion that a British subject was involved. If we don’t like your dowry, then we might just throw you back.’
For a few moments Raya just stared at him. ‘I don’t think I’m going to like you,’ she said.
‘I don’t give a toss whether you like me or not. All I’m interested in is what you can give us, now you’re finally here. In view of the pile of shot-up cars and wrecked aircraft Richter and Dekker managed to leave across Italy and France, I hope you haven’t just brought us a few ordinary old files, from whatever section of Yasenevo you worked in.’
Raya smiled slightly. ‘I’ve done a little better than that,’ she said. ‘I was employed as the Deputy Computer Network Manager for the SVR, and in my bag here I have a CD player that’s been modified quite a lot. I took out most of the existing works and replaced them with a half-terabyte-sized hard disk. It’s full of files that I copied from the Yasenevo database, and I think you’ll find that what I can offer is essentially a snapshot of virtually all of the SVR’s current operations. And if you’re not interested, Mr Westwood here has already made me a counter-offer.’
‘That,’ Simpson muttered, unconsciously echoing Westwood’s remark earlier, ‘is the holy grail. You’re most welcome, Miss Kosov.’
Raya favoured him with a sharp look. ‘And just so you don’t get any sneaky ideas – because you look like that kind of person – the hard drive is password protected, and the gateway program includes an auto-destruct routine that will wipe the entire drive if an incorrect password is entered more than three times.’
Simpson didn’t look particularly impressed by this warning. ‘We have computer experts who would be able to crack that.’
‘I doubt it,’ Richter interrupted. ‘In case you hadn’t realized it, Raya is an expert too. But aren’t we all supposed to be on the same side here?’
Simpson rubbed his hands over his face. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s been a very long day. Right, let’s get Ms Kosov settled in one of our safe houses, and we’ll start analysing the data in the morning.’ He turned to her with a slight smile. ‘I’m sorry if we got off on the wrong foot, but I’ve spent most of today fielding angry calls from senior officials from both the French and Italian intelligence services. In fact, it hasn’t been the best day of my life so far, not least because I was worried that Richter wouldn’t get you out of Italy in one piece.’
‘I’m sorry, Simpson,’ Richter again intervened, ‘but we’ve no intention of going to a safe house. Until we’re certain that the leak’s been plugged, we’re doing our own thing. That means Raya and I will find a hotel somewhere and check in as Mr and Mrs Smith. I’ll call you at Hammersmith in the morning.’
Simpson glanced from Richter to Raya, and then back again. ‘Have you two become what the modern idiom refers to as an item?’
Richter shook his head. ‘That’s none of your fucking business.’
‘It might be, if it clouds your judgement.’
‘It won’t,’ Richter said sharply. ‘You just tell me where and when, and I’ll make sure we’re there for the debriefing. And, just so you know, I’m hanging on to the Browning in case your little mole hunt takes you longer than you think. So I recommend you don’t send anybody to follow us, because I’d hate to end up shooting one of your lot by mistake.’
West London
Evening traffic in West London is almost always heavy, and that night was no exception. Despite the rain, when their taxi emerged from the gates of RAF Northolt it joined a long stream of vehicles heading west. In those conditions it was almost impossible to tell whether anything might be following them. Richter did his best to check, turning to look behind at regular intervals, but all he could see was a forest of headlights following and of red tail lights preceding them.
He instructed the driver to just head west first, then told him to take the turning towards Uxbridge. As the taxi left the main road, Richter again checked behind, but failed to spot any sign of surveillance. With no specific destination in mind, he finally decided that one of the hotels near Heathrow would be suitably anonymous. Under half an hour after leaving Northolt, he and Raya found themselves standing in the lobby of a multi-storey airport hotel, as Richter booked them a double room.
Before taking a lift to the fifth floor, Richter peered out through the plate-glass windows lining one side of the lobby. Outside the massive building, cars, minibuses and motorcycles kept arriving and departing. In the end, he shook his head. Trying to look out for surveillance here was completely pointless.
‘Are we safe now?’ Raya asked, as he finally double-locked the hotel room door behind them.
‘I bloody hope so,’ he replied, walking across to a window that afforded him an excellent view of one section of the car park, and of Heathrow Airport itself. ‘I don’t fancy sitting in full view in some restaurant tonight,’ he added, pulling the curtains across and turning away from the window, ‘so would you be happy if we just ordered something from the room-service menu?’
‘As long as I have something to eat, I don’t care,’ Raya replied.
Richter smiled at her, studied the menu, and then picked up the phone.
Five floors below, on the far side of the car park, two men sat in an anonymous dark-blue Ford saloon. One of them was watching the illuminated windows of occupied rooms through a pair of powerful binoculars fitted with a digital camera able to record an image of whatever the user was focusing on. He had just been watching as the light in a fifth-floor room came on and a male figure had walked across to peer out of the window. In that brief period, he had taken half a dozen pictures.
‘Is that them?’ the other man asked, hearing the rapid clicks of digital images being recorded.
‘I didn’t see the girl,’ replied the man with the binoculars, ‘but I’m pretty certain that’s the guy who was with her.’
‘Sounds good enough. You stay here and I’ll go and find a floor plan, so we know exactly which room they’re in.’
He pulled up the collar of his coat as protection against the rain, took a compact umbrella from his pocket, opened the car door and walked swiftly towards the hotel entrance. Five minutes later he was back.
‘You get it?’
‘No problem. They’re in number five one two, and I checked it twice. Getting inside the room isn’t going to be easy, though. The room doors are thick and solid, and they’re fitted with entry card readers that will be difficult to crack. And they’ll have closed the deadlock on the inside, as well.’
‘Not our problem. We picked them up, we followed them, and we know where they’re staying for the night. Now we can hand over to somebody else.’ He pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket and dialled a number. ‘I’ll call it in now.’
His companion nodded, pulling on his seat belt, started the engine and drove away from the hotel.