was was ticked, accompanied by the
signatures of two senior SVR officers. The Russian word translated as ‘full’ or ‘complete’, and meant that the interrogation was to be terminal. Their instructions were that
the subject would die on the table.Tuesday
Moscow
Colonel Yevgeni Zharkov was seated on an upright wooden chair. His hands rested on his lap, his wrists bound together with steel handcuffs, as he stared across the table at his accuser.
General Morozov stared back at him, his expression sombre and almost sad. ‘Of all the officers in my department, you are the last I would ever have suspected of treacherous activities. I always believed that I could rely upon you absolutely and unreservedly, but I suppose that just proves that nobody can ever be considered beyond suspicion.’
Zharkov shook his head wearily. ‘As I keep trying to explain to you, General, I have done nothing wrong. My loyalty to you and to the SVR has never wavered, and I’m wholly innocent of the ridiculous charge that I’m now facing.’
‘Don’t try and play the innocent with me, Zharkov!’ Morozov roared, his voice filling the interrogation room. ‘The evidence against you is overwhelming and unarguable. The two keys for the building and the apartment where you’d hidden that computer were found in your office, hidden in your own desk. Both keys had your fingerprints on them, and alongside the computer were found pens and pencils from which our technical staff have also recovered your fingerprints.’
‘But I tell you I’ve never been inside that apartment, and I have never seen that computer before. Or those keys, or anything else. Somebody is clearly attempting to frame me.’ Zharkov’s voice remained strong, but was now tinged with desperation. ‘Just look at that telephone number which Abramov found on a call diverter in the Lubyanka.’
‘It was the number of your own apartment,’ Morozov reminded him.
‘I know, and that’s the point. Why on earth would I reprogram a call diverter to dial my own number? It would be like waving a flag to admit my guilt straight away. But if somebody else wished to cast suspicion on me, it would be an obvious clue to plant. And why would I leave evidence as incriminating as those two keys in my own office, when I could just as easily hide them in my apartment or in my car – or anywhere else?’
Morozov glared at his subordinate. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘let us assume for the moment that you are an innocent victim of some complicated conspiracy. If that is the case, who is orchestrating it? And why? What could be their motive? And why have they picked on you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Zharkov replied desperately. ‘I have no idea who would want to do this to me. All I do know is that I’m innocent, entirely innocent, of these charges.’
General Morozov continued to stare at him, then dropped his eyes and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Zharkov, but this matter is now out of my hands. I have received my orders, and you are to be taken for interrogation to the Lubyanka. You will know, as well as I do, exactly what that means. If there was anything I could do to prevent that I would, but my orders are unequivocal.’
On the other side of the table, Colonel Zharkov turned white and began quivering with fear. ‘No, General. No, please . . . Please, anything but that.’
Morozov’s eyes hardened as he studied the terrified man in front of him. ‘Earlier today, Major Abramov said something interesting to me. He told me that when you began investigating the defection of Raya Kosov, you seemed very reluctant to even consider the allegations she had made about there being a traitor here at Yasenevo. He also claimed that you would only begin such an investigation if Kosov told the same story after you had her strapped to a table in the Lubyanka basement, with electrodes hitched to her genitals. It sounds to me as if you’re happy enough to inflict pain on a helpless subject, but have no stomach for enduring the same yourself. That is not an attractive trait in any man.’
Morozov pushed back his chair to stand up, then he walked over to the door and opened it.
‘He’s all yours,’ the general said to the two men waiting outside.
Hammersmith, West London
‘Now, before you wet yourself with excitement, Walters,’ Richard Simpson said, ‘there’s an urgent matter we need to discuss with Ms Kosov first.’ He switched his gaze to the Russian girl. ‘Richter has already told me that you knew of two people in the SIS who were regularly passing information to Moscow. We now know that Gerald Stanway was one of them, of course.’
‘Yes,’ Raya agreed. ‘The most prolific source we had in your SIS was code-named Gospodin. I checked his file, and found that one of the earliest entries was the initial contact report, which mentioned the name “Stanway”. He originally walked into our Paris embassy wearing a basic disguise, requested a meeting with one of the SVR officers there, then explained who he was and what he wanted. At first, they didn’t take him too seriously, but Moscow Centre assigned a case officer – an illegal – to handle him in London, and then assessed the value of the material he supplied them. They probably expected it to be low-grade rubbish or even disinformation, but then discovered that it was actually the real thing.’
‘When was that?’ Masterson asked. ‘When did Stanway make that approach?’
‘I was appointed Deputy Computer Network Manager at Yasenevo eight years ago,’ Raya replied, ‘and one of my first jobs in that position was to handle the material that source Gospodin had just started sending us. I remember that he was very prolific.’
‘Jesus wept,’ Walters muttered. ‘So that bastard has been working for the Russians for eight years. God knows how much information he’s betrayed in all that time.’
Raya smiled at him. ‘Luckily,’ she said, ‘I know exactly what he sent to Moscow.’
There was a short silence as the men sitting around the conference table absorbed this information. Then Simpson uttered a single word. ‘How?’
‘I was effectively running the Yasenevo network. I was creating directories, deciding on the encryption routines and protocols, and implementing the access level to be applied to every file. And, as I said before, I already knew, long before I arrived at Yasenevo, that one day I would be defecting to the West. So right from the start I made sure that I assembled a dowry which would interest either the British or the Americans. I put a very simple routine in place.
‘The files Gospodin supplied were in English, of course, and each was stored in encrypted form on our database, in the same language, together with a translation into Russian that we had prepared in-house, as well as a short summary of the file contents. Because they were your own files, I knew there would be no point in making a copy of any of those files to show you, so I simply recorded the name and reference number of every file that source Gospodin forwarded to Moscow. I have that list safely on my hard drive as well.’
Simpson shook his head. ‘Stanway, it seems, was the most damaging penetration we’ve ever faced,’ he said. ‘But thanks to you, Raya, at least we’ll soon know exactly what secrets he betrayed. And that’s one of the most important things you have done for us.’
Raya nodded and smiled. ‘It wasn’t only files from your SIS,’ she added. ‘A short time ago, I was instructed to create a new directory to handle some additional material from source Gospodin. These new files needed a brand-new directory because they came from a different organization, and the name I was told to give to that directory was Zakoulok.’ She paused and looked around expectantly.
Simpson looked blank. ‘I don’t speak the language,’ he said.
‘Zakoulok means “back alley” in Russian,’ Richter informed him, ‘but I don’t know if that’s significant, or even relevant.’
‘Oh, it’s relevant all right,’ Masterson said. ‘Zakoulok is a slang term used by the Russians, in some of their signals and cryptograms, to refer to the Foreign Office in Whitehall. The name refers to that arched courtyard entrance leading to the FCO off Downing Street. It seems Stanway must have decided to start ransacking the FCO files as well.’
‘That makes sense.’ Simpson nodded. ‘And you did the same with these new files, Raya, as you did before? So we will be able to identify exactly what information Stanway transmitted?’
Raya nodded again. ‘Of course. If you’ll allow me access to the laptop again, I’ll give you all the directory listings right now.’
Walters spun the laptop round and slid it across the table. Raya again connected her concealed hard disk and a few minutes later pushed the computer back towards Walters.
He scanned the listing and shook his head. ‘There are hundreds of file names here,’ he said, ‘so Vauxhall Cross is going to have to run a major damage-limitation exercise. I’m not familiar with most of these subjects, but it looks to me as if Stanway probably betrayed almost every ongoing SIS operation there is.’
‘And that isn’t your only problem,’ Raya said. ‘Source Gospodin sent us a lot of information, but essentially all he did was copy files. There was a second, much older, penetration at SIS. And that one was at a much higher level.’
She gestured for Walters to slide the computer back towards her. For a few seconds, Raya’s fingers flew nimbly over the keyboard, then she passed the machine back to him again.
‘That,’ she said, ‘is a recent copy of a file called “Appreciation”, which is held in a top-secret directory at Yasenevo, named Zagadka or “enigma”. I was puzzled by the directory, because no new material had been added to it for over five years. But, despite that, the “Appreciation” file was being accessed on a regular basis by SVR Directorate heads. When I studied the file myself, I realized why. There was a second source, here in London, who in the past had supplied Moscow with copies of classified files, much as Gospodin was doing. But for some time he’s been doing something almost as damaging, and maybe even more damaging.
‘This source – and I don’t even have a code name for him, let alone his actual name, because his identity was kept that secret – has been providing the SVR with a regular summary of SIS policy and general strategy. And also, when he felt it necessary, with precise details of particular operations. My assessment is that he must be a very senior officer within the organization. I reckon Stanway was certainly damaging, but this other person is more dangerous by far.’
The Lubyanka, Moscow
Yevgeni Zharkov was powerfully built, and was now literally fighting for his life, so it took three burly SVR guards to manhandle him into the basement interrogation room at the Lubyanka, strip the clothes from him and get him strapped onto the table. Only then did the interrogators finally approach.
‘You know why you’re here,’ one of them said, gazing down at the man who was still vainly struggling against the leather straps that held his naked body in position.
Zharkov shouted something unintelligible, and the interrogator stepped back and looked at his companion.
‘I gather he’s a senior officer in the SVR,’ he said, glancing down at the information sheet he’d been given half an hour before.
‘He’s also a traitor,’ the other man declared, ‘and we need to get every scrap of information out of him before he dies.’
The first interrogator nodded, and inspected the foot of the information sheet, where the Cyrillic word was was ticked, accompanied by the
signatures of two senior SVR officers. The Russian word translated as ‘full’ or ‘complete’, and meant that the interrogation was to be terminal. Their instructions were that
the subject would die on the table.
The two interrogators stepped to one side of the room and donned waterproof aprons over their white coats. Then they sat down in a couple of chairs to await the arrival of one other man.
Five minutes later, the door opened and a doctor stepped inside. He was carrying a small bag of specialized drugs and other equipment, and glanced quickly at the table where Zharkov was still struggling against his bonds. He, too, then pulled on a waterproof apron, before he nodded to the two interrogators.
One switched on the overhead camera and microphones, announced his own name and rank, followed by that of his companion and the doctor, and finally the name of the man who lay on the interrogation table. The other attendant wheeled over a cart on which were laid out the tools. These included the generator and leads, and the pliers and knives and saws and steel bars and acid they would use to do the job.
And then it began.
Hammersmith, West London
Simpson left the debriefing session just after eleven that morning, leaving Walters and Masterson to continue their questioning of Raya. They stopped for lunch just after midday, then returned to the conference room.
Simpson reappeared just after the four of them had sat down again. ‘Right,’ he began. ‘Walters, I want you and Masterson to go through that Appreciation document and see if there’s anything in it that would help us to identify our man. I’m thinking about stuff like assessments, obviously. If there’s some piece of information in the file that only Malcolm Holbeche or William Moore could possibly have known, for example, that would obviously tie one of them down. I don’t think you’ll find anything like that, because whoever it is that’s been betraying us for twenty years is obviously no amateur. But maybe you’ll turn up some dates: for instance a date when information was sent to the Russians at a time when one of the people at the top of the SIS either couldn’t possibly have known the information, or couldn’t have sent it because he was in hospital or something.’
‘So who do you suspect, sir?’ Walters asked.
‘Right now, I don’t know,’ Simpson replied, ‘I frankly can’t believe it’s Holbeche, because he’s the man who’s been coordinating and directing this entire operation. But what worries me is that he was the only person at SIS who knew exactly where Richter supposedly planned to stay overnight in Italy. Or, to be absolutely accurate, he was the only person at SIS to whom I mentioned Lodi. But, on balance, I suspect that he either briefed somebody else, or inadvertently let that information slip out. The problem is that if Holbeche is the traitor, I can’t tackle him directly about it without revealing my suspicions. I’m still working on a way to either confirm that it is indeed him or else somehow prove that it isn’t.’
‘I don’t think I can help you identify him,’ Raya said, ‘because he’s not been sending actual files to us, only general information about SIS policy and direction. And I suppose almost any of the senior officers you have there would have sufficient access and clearance to do that.’
‘Can you follow the money?’ Richter asked. ‘If this guy is being paid by Moscow, is there any way you can trace the funds?’
‘He might not actually be on Moscow Centre’s payroll,’ Masterson said. ‘If he’s motivated primarily by ideology, there might be no money trail for us to follow. And even if he’s a mercenary traitor, the funds will probably be paid into some offshore tax haven, or maybe a Swiss bank account.’
‘Stanway was certainly in it for the money,’ Simpson remarked. ‘I had a call from one of his interrogators, and apparently he’s singing like a caged canary. Mind you, they’ve been using a certain amount of chemical stimulus on him to loosen his tongue. We now even know the name of his handler, and we’ll be paying him a visit any day now, once he’s properly identified.
‘Stanway knew only his handler’s name, Andrew Lomas, and had no phone number or address for him. They communicated by chalk marks on walls and other old-school spy craft. Whenever they had to talk directly to each other, it was always from one public phone to another. But Lomas did have an unregistered and untraceable mobile phone for emergencies only, and we’re checking that one now against the home and mobile numbers of all the senior SIS officers, just in case one of them ever called it. And we’re waiting for the call records for Stanway’s mobile as well.’
About an hour later, one of Simpson’s men entered the conference room, carrying several sheets of paper. Walters broke off his study of the Appreciation file, and he and Masterson joined Simpson at the end of the table to study the data they had so far obtained. Richter peered over Walters’s shoulder as the three men examined the phone records.
‘That’s the mobile that Stanway claims Lomas uses,’ explained Simpson, pointing at one page.
‘Is there any correlation?’ Richter asked.
‘Not that my people have been able to spot.’
Richter nodded, his eyes never leaving the pages spread out on the end of the table. The data had already been scanned, in an attempt to identify any of the senior SIS officers who might have been called by Lomas, but nothing had been found.
‘One thing I notice from this,’ Richter said, pointing at the same sheet, ‘is that Lomas hardly ever made or received a call using this mobile, but he did so yesterday. Somebody called him during the afternoon. But what number is that?’
‘Not one of our suspects,’ Walters said. ‘That letter “P” besides the entry means the calling number was a public phone, so it could have been absolutely anybody.’
‘Can you get the records for that public phone as well?’ Richter asked.
‘Yes, of course.’ Simpson nodded. ‘If you can give me a good reason, that is.’
‘Just a hunch right now,’ Richter said. ‘And can you also get the location of the mobile at the time when the call was received, the numbers and call records of any public landline phones near that location, and also the location of the public phone the call came from? And find me a decent-sized London A–Z, please.’
Ten minutes later, the same man reappeared with another half-dozen sheets and the map book.
Richter took them from him, and ran his eyes down the list of numbers. Then he compared the position of the public phone from which the call to Lomas’s mobile had been made with one of the pages in the A–Z, and checked some of the other data on the lists. Then he sat back with a slight smile.
‘What is it?’ Simpson demanded.
‘Three things,’ Richter said. ‘First, the public phone box is just around the corner from the Russian Embassy. Second, when Lomas received the call, he was standing here.’ He pointed to a spot in the Shepherd’s Bush area. ‘He was then right beside a public phone box and, if you look at the records, about fifteen minutes before that, somebody had used that public phone to call the Russian Embassy. I’ve never been a big fan of coincidence, and I realize I’m quite new at this game, but I’ll bet Lomas made that first call, and then whoever he spoke to at the embassy trotted outside the building to find a public phone, and called Lomas’s mobile.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Simpson said, ‘but I’m not sure how that helps.’
‘That’s the third thing. It was raining yesterday afternoon, as I recall.’
‘So?’
‘When Moscow found that Raya had done a runner, I’m sure Lomas was given a whole list of instructions and orders to follow. He’s too experienced a professional to use a phone that could be traced to him, which is why he used a public phone box to contact the Russian Embassy. I’m wondering if he could also have contacted his – what do you call it? – his agent-in-place from the same phone box, simply because it was raining and it would have saved him having to walk around looking for another one to use. I think it might be worth checking these phone records against the numbers you have for the SIS officers.’
Simpson rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then nodded. ‘Do it,’ he instructed Masterson.
Within a couple of minutes Masterson muttered an exclamation, and ran a green highlighter along a line on one of the mobile-phone records.
‘Somebody called this mobile from that phone box just after Lomas finished his call. The call was probably innocuous in nature, just in case anybody was listening in, but my guess is it was Lomas, as the case officer, telling his asset to either lie low or maybe get the hell out of town.’
Simpson looked down at what his officer had found, and nodded. ‘That was good work, Richter. I’ll get the wheels in motion.’
‘Who is it?’ Richter asked.
‘Holbeche,’ Simpson replied shortly, and walked out of the room.
Heathrow Airport, West London
A grey-haired middle-aged man clutching a briefcase and a carry-on bag joined a short queue at the Business Class section of the Air France check-in desk. He was still waiting in line when two other men appeared beside him.
‘Not flying the flag today, Malcolm?’ Richard Simpson asked.
‘Hello, Richard,’ Holbeche replied. ‘No, I couldn’t get a seat on BA. The bloody flight’s full, so I’m having to go with the French. I’ve a bit of business to take care of over in Paris. I didn’t expect to see you here.’
‘I’m sure you didn’t.’
‘Is there a problem?’
‘Yes, there is,’ Simpson replied. ‘We know that Andrew Lomas called you yesterday afternoon, and I guess he told you to run.’
‘Andrew Lomas?’ Holbeche paled slightly. ‘I don’t think I know him.’
Simpson shook his head regretfully. ‘Oh, I think you do, Malcolm. After all, he’s been your case officer for probably twenty years. We know that now, because of the information Raya Kosov brought out of Moscow. And I also know that you’re not really going to Paris. Or at least that’s not your final destination. I guess there’s an Aeroflot out of Charles de Gaulle later today, heading for Sheremetievo, and you’re already booked onto it.’
Holbeche said nothing, and Simpson nodded.
‘Now, we can do this the hard way or the easy way,’ he said. ‘The easy way is for you to simply turn around and walk out of the terminal with the two of us.’
Holbeche lowered his head, then reached inside his jacket and pulled out a 9-millimetre Glock 26 subcompact pistol. He aimed the weapon directly at Simpson’s stomach and smiled bitterly.
‘Did you really think you could get onto an aircraft carrying that?’ Simpson asked, apparently unfazed by the threat.
‘With my diplomatic passport and a carry permit issued by the Metropolitan Police, it wouldn’t have been difficult,’ Holbeche said. ‘Now get the hell out of my way, Simpson.’
‘I’m sorry, Holbeche, but you’re going nowhere.’
Two other men appeared behind Simpson, each holding a semi-automatic pistol aimed at the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service. A couple of passengers standing nearby suddenly noticed the drawn weapons, and a woman began screaming. Instantly, it seemed, chaos erupted in that particular section of the terminal. People were running and shouting, desperate to get away from these armed men standing near the Air France desk. But Holbeche, Simpson and the two other men remained stationary, seemingly oblivious to what was going on all around them.
Holbeche ignored the two armed men confronting him, and stared only at Simpson. ‘I’ve had a good run, Richard,’ he said. ‘Twenty-odd years – nearly a quarter of a century – working my way up through the ranks in the service, and at the same time cementing my position as the most important single asset the SVR has ever had. Did you know that they’ve already made me an honorary general at Yasenevo?’
‘But now it’s all over,’ Simpson snapped. ‘You’ve nowhere to go.’
‘I suppose you’re planning a trial to be held, in camera, so that no one will ever know just how thoroughly compromised British intelligence has been. And I’d be pensioned off, stripped of my knighthood, questioned for months by one of those slimy reptiles that you employ. And then I’d end my days in contented obscurity somewhere. Not a bad deal really.’
Simpson shook his head. ‘As I said to Richter only last week, the days when traitors to Britain could get just a slap on the wrist are over, at least as far as I’m concerned. After we’ve questioned you and we’ve milked you dry, I’ll make sure that you die, and preferably painfully. You’re a dead man walking, Holbeche. You just don’t know how long you’ve got left.’
Holbeche shook his head. ‘That’s never going to happen, Simpson. You know it and I know it.’
Quite deliberately, he raised the Glock to point it at Simpson’s head, and the beginnings of a smile appeared on his face.
The two men behind Simpson fired instantly, the two shots so close together that they sounded almost like a single report.
Holbeche was knocked backwards by the double impact of two 9-millimetre bullets smashing into his chest. He staggered backwards, the Glock tumbling from his hand.
Simpson stepped forward, picked up the weapon, and then knelt down beside the fallen man to feel for a pulse in his neck. Then he stood up and turned to face the men who’d just fired the fatal shots.
‘Good shooting,’ he said. ‘I’m going back to the office now. I’ll have a D Notice issued within the hour to cover this, so if the Met plods give you any trouble, refer them to me.’
Then Simpson turned on his heel and strode away.
Hammersmith, West London
The questioning continued through the afternoon, as Raya answered queries about various aspects of the SVR files she had copied from the Yasenevo database.
She was now sufficiently comfortable talking to Walters and Masterson that, when she left the conference room with Richter late that afternoon, she allowed the two men to retain her CD player and transfer all of her files onto the laptop for further analysis.
They met Simpson out in the corridor, heading back towards the conference room.
‘Any news?’ Richter asked.
Simpson nodded. ‘Holbeche has resigned, permanently. We caught him trying to board a flight to Paris, and he admitted to me that he was a Russian mole.’
‘And he resigned?’ Richter asked.
‘In a manner of speaking, yes. He pulled a gun on me and a couple of my men took him down. He was dead before he even hit the ground.’
‘So that’s it? We can all relax?’
‘Yes, that’s it. Holbeche is dead and Stanway’s busy telling us everything he knows. We’ve now found and eliminated two very costly and dangerous penetration agents inside the SIS and, thanks to Raya here, we’ve obtained enough high-quality data about the SVR to keep our analysts busy for years to come. All in all, it’s a good result.’
They all continued down the hallway towards the building’s main doors, where they paused. Simpson shook hands with both of them.
‘Don’t worry about gaining asylum, Raya,’ he said. ‘As soon as we’ve finished this debriefing, I’ll ensure that we find you a new identity and somewhere decent to live. In the meantime, are you still happy hanging around with Richter?’
Raya nodded. ‘Perfectly, thank you. Tonight, we’re going out for a traditional English meal.’
‘Good. Just make sure he takes you to a reasonable restaurant, and doesn’t try to make you pay half the bill.’
London
It was a reasonable restaurant. In fact, it was the oldest privately owned restaurant in London, Rules in Covent Garden. Richter had been lucky to find a table, because usually there was a waiting list. It served classic English food: no fancy bits, no nouvelle cuisine thankfully, just good solid food perfectly cooked. Raya opted for the fish and chips served, of course, in a copy of the Financial Times, while Richter chose one of his favourites, steak and kidney pudding – not pie.
Afterwards, they found a taxi in Bedford Street and, about half an hour after they’d left the restaurant, they walked into the lobby of their hotel near Heathrow and went straight up to their room.
They’d only been there about ten minutes when the phone rang, and Richter answered it.
‘Mr Wilson?’ Richter had chosen a fairly simple alias. ‘This is the reception desk downstairs. I have a Mr Simpson here to see you. Can you come down?’
‘What’s it about?’ Richter asked.
There was a pause and a muttered conversation in the background, then the female receptionist returned to the phone.
‘He says something’s come up about today’s briefing, and he needs to see you. It will only take a few minutes.’
‘OK, I’ll come down.’
‘How did he know we were staying here?’ Raya asked.
Richter smiled at her. ‘I haven’t known Richard Simpson very long, but I do know that he’s always very well informed. We could have been followed by one of his men that first night, when we drove here from Hammersmith. Anyway, I won’t be long. Just keep the door locked until I get back.’
Richter checked the Browning was loaded, just in case, replaced it in his shoulder holster, then let himself out of the room.
As he emerged from the room and started walking down the corridor, a door further along opened and a man with black hair and almost black eyes stepped out. The door was marked ‘Chambermaid – Staff Only’ and in the small room behind it, a blonde-haired Polish girl lay helpless on the floor, her wrists and ankles secured with wrapping tape and a rough gag covering her mouth. She was still unconscious from the blow she’d received to the back of her head about five minutes earlier.
The man pulled the door closed, checked that it was locked, and then walked unhurriedly along the corridor to Richter’s room. He paused at the door and glanced in both directions. A few seconds later, a second man, similar in appearance, strode briskly down the corridor towards him. The first man nodded, then used the master key card he’d taken off the chambermaid to open the door in front of him. They both stepped inside the room and closed the door behind them.
‘Where’s Mr Simpson?’ demanded Richter, who had arrived at the reception desk to find no sign of the man he had come down to see.
The receptionist looked slightly flustered. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Wilson. He received a call immediately after I finished talking to you, and I think he stepped into the coffee shop to take it.’ The receptionist pointed towards the open double doors to one side. ‘He should still be in there, I think.’
Richter nodded his thanks, and walked through into the coffee shop. There were perhaps a dozen people in there, sitting at tables, but no sign of Richard Simpson.
He felt the first faint prickle of unease, and strode back out to the reception desk. The receptionist was talking to a middle-aged American couple. Richter simply and unceremoniously elbowed them aside.
‘This man Simpson,’ he demanded, ‘was he about five-eight, slim build, pink complexion?’
‘No, sir,’ the girl replied. ‘He was about six feet tall with dark hair and he—’
But Richter was already moving, running across the lobby to the bank of lifts. The doors of one were just closing, but Richter thrust his arm through the gap and forced them open again.
On the fifth floor he sprinted down the corridor, the Browning already in his hand, safety catch off and his finger on the trigger.
The room door was closed, he could see that as he approached. He pulled the key card out of his pocket with his left hand, thrust it into the slot, pushed open the door and stepped into the room, holding the pistol out in front of him.
But, before he could locate a target or pull the trigger, he felt a sudden stabbing pain in his right side as the twin darts from a Taser penetrated his skin. He shot a glance to his right, straight into a pair of dark, almost black, eyes set in a face that was memorable chiefly because of its ordinariness. He tried to swing the Browning around, but he was a lifetime too late.
Around 120,000 volts of electricity coursed through his body, and Richter tumbled backwards, rendered instantly unconscious.
The Lubyanka, Moscow
A little over four hours after they’d started work on Yevgeni Zharkov, the two interrogators stepped back from the table. The colonel had at last slipped into a comatose state where what little sanity remained within his conscious mind was finally and mercifully put beyond their reach.
‘I’m not even certain he was guilty,’ one of the interrogators observed. ‘He never changed his story, not once.’
‘Maybe he wasn’t. But we’ll never know now, that’s for sure.’
They glanced back to watch as the doctor prepared a lethal injection. He found a vein on Zharkov’s left arm, which the interrogators had broken in two places during questioning, and slid the needle into it. As he depressed the plunger, the colonel’s body arched upwards and his face contorted in a sudden rictus of pure agony. Then Zharkov slumped back onto the table, finally feeling no more pain.
‘One of these days,’ the first interrogator remarked, hanging up his blood-splattered apron, ‘I really must find out what he puts in that syringe.’