Evgeniy Koroleg was in an early-morning meeting listening to plans for the replacement of a new gas pipeline damaged by the fighting in southern Ukraine, when he felt his cell phone buzz in his breast pocket. He signalled for the others to continue and took the call. It was Broz Scechin in London.
‘Yes. Speak.’ At least this promised to be a little more interesting than engineering problems and broken gas pipes.
‘Tzorekov has already left London.’
‘What?’ Koroleg spoke more sharply than he’d intended, and noted the sudden lull in conversation around the table. ‘Wait one minute,’ he told Scechin, and made a rolling motion with his hand to continue without him and stood up and left the room. Whatever else he did today, this would take priority.
Once he was back in his office he kicked the door shut and demanded, ‘How did you not know of this before?’
‘He laid a false trail,’ said Scechin. ‘He even fooled his office staff. He claimed he had a bad back and said he was working from home. But I now know he travelled from London Heathrow to Paris, then to Frankfurt and on to Saint Petersburg, arriving yesterday evening.’
‘How?’
‘I discovered the ruse when a security cop at Pulkovo thought he recognized Arkady Gurov leaving the arrivals hall. He knew of Gurov from a few years ago – they served together for a while. He had no reason to suspect Gurov of anything but reported it on his daily log as a sighting of interest, as he was required to do.’ He added slyly, ‘I took the precaution of having Pulkovo security office send me their daily summaries along with passenger lists and reports for the past three days.’
Koroleg ignored the hint for praise. The man was doing what he was paid for. ‘And?’
‘Gurov wasn’t listed.’
‘Of course he wasn’t. The man’s not an idiot – he’ll be using false papers. Give me a minute.’ He took a tour of his office to think, this time ignoring the view across Kutuzovskiy Avenue. This news had suddenly shrunk his world to a bubble within his office, pushing out all other thoughts. Where Tzorekov went, so did Gurov, he knew that. And what might have been a vague plan, an idle boast in the mind of an old man with mawkish dreams of his homeland and maybe an egotistical sense of his own position in the world, had now morphed into a reality he didn’t want to contemplate. Yet he had to face up to it. There was too much to lose if he ignored it.
Arkady Gurov. He’d never met the man, but knew enough about his background from the extensive file he’d had built on Tzorekov and his entourage. Attached like a limpet to his boss’s every move, he was almost the antithesis of the public perception of hulking KGB/FSB officers. Slim and boyish, almost effete, he looked unobtrusive and could no doubt slip by unnoticed in a crowd. Yet more by luck than skill, he’d been spotted by somebody who knew him. He swore, forgetting he was still holding the phone.
‘Sir?’
‘If Gurov is here, then Tzorekov is, also. They will have been on the same flight. If not, he won’t be far behind. Find out what names they were using. Check the passenger lists from Heathrow through Paris to Frankfurt and Pulkovo and pull up any names appearing on all four.’ He knew it might be a wasted exercise, since both men had probably switched to fresh papers by the time they left the airport. But any action was better than none.
‘Yes, sir. Anything else?’
‘No. Nothing. Thank you, Scechin. Good work.’
He disconnected and this time went to the window, finding the breath sticking in his chest. Solving problems involving hundreds of miles of pipelines, of contracts and schedules and workforces in hazardous areas – all that was relatively simple compared to what he knew lay before him. Scechin had done as much as he was able in providing this information; but now Koroleg needed some bodies closer to home to do a different kind of job. This matter was in danger of getting beyond his means to deal with. He dialled a number and waited. It was picked up and a man’s gravelly voice answered.
‘You’re not calling me to discuss the weather, I trust?’
‘No. I’m not.’ Koroleg breathed more easily now. The man on the other end of the line was a fixer by nature and an industrialist by chance. Built like a bear and twice as tricky, Victor Simoyan was one of the new breed, like Koroleg, who had found fortune inside the country rather than seeking more by taking their wealth outside. Simoyan ran one of the fastest-growing armaments development companies in Russia, and had the ears of those who mattered. If there was a person who shared Koroleg’s own fears about the danger Tzorekov represented, Simoyan was one of them. A sudden reversal in the race to build more arms would see his fortunes crushed in more ways than one. He had invested heavily in new manufacturing facilities and there were rumours that he had been forced to borrow heavily from some highly questionable sources, of the kind who would not wait long for loan repayments to be made, no matter how well-connected the borrower might be.
Dead was dead, even in a fancy suit and a big office.
The positive side to Simoyan was that he had, over the past years, harvested connections running deep inside the military and intelligence world, and made no secret of his belief in taking action and not leaving matters to chance. Koroleg’s reach by comparison was far more commercial by nature, while Simoyan could get things done that required an entirely different kind of contact.
‘Well, don’t keep me in suspense, Evgeniy. I’m not getting any younger.’
‘The problem I told you about? It’s arrived.’
‘What?’ Simoyan swore beneath his breath and Koroleg heard a chair creak as the big man sat forward. ‘That’s not good. Where is he?’
‘That I don’t know. He was at Pulkovo yesterday evening with a man named Arkady Gurov – his security man. They could be anywhere by now.’ Like heading for the lakes, he thought, and maybe one lake in particular. He wondered where Putin was and made a mental note to check the president’s itinerary over the next few days. Surely the man couldn’t possibly think of meeting with Tzor—
‘It’s true, they could be,’ Simoyan agreed pragmatically, interrupting his thoughts. ‘But all is not lost. They must have hired a vehicle from the airport. I’ll have someone pull up the security videos from the rental agencies. That will tell us when and the plate number. He could have purchased a map – you know how sketchy satellite signals can be. It might give us a clue where he went.’
It was something Koroleg should have thought of; he could have used Scechin. But he was happy to let Simoyan deal with it; the man was clever and knew all the tricks. Thinking of ways of gaining access to information was as normal as breathing for him, and he would know who to go to without wasting time. If Tzorekov or his minder had hired a car, pictures of one or both will have been on a hard drive somewhere, waiting to be accessed.
Damn. Could it really be this simple? Was it a problem solved?
‘I’ll get a team together,’ Simoyan continued. ‘I take it we want him found, right?’
‘Found, yes.’ Koroleg felt almost breathless at the speed with which things were moving. From hearing the information provided by Scechin just minutes ago, to now hearing that a team would be assembled. A team … to do what? He really didn’t want to think about that side of things, although he knew they would all have to, eventually. ‘We should tell the others. Get their opinions first.’
‘Share the responsibility, you mean?’ Simoyan chuckled, and Koroleg had an instant image of the man, larger than life in his vast office, already building a picture of what had to be done and who he could trust to go with him. Simoyan could read minds like no other and understood the psychology of covert groups and the way they thought.
‘It makes sense. You and I are not the only ones who would be affected by this.’
‘What – that a certain person might be persuaded to have a reversal of attitude? Damn right we’re not.’ Simoyan cleared his throat as if dislodging Putin’s name where it had got stuck. ‘Very well. I will call them together for a video conference tonight – no, this afternoon. Make sure you come. I’ll get Solov to attend in person as well; we need him to influence any doubters.’ Simoyan’s office was in an old printing works in the Mozhaysky District a few miles away in the suburbs. It was neither smart nor especially prestigious, but it was his own fiefdom where he liked to hold court and pretend he was a man of the people. It was also far enough out of the city to remain off the radar of news media and security people alike, especially useful for gatherings of the kind Simoyan was now planning.
‘What is this team you talk of?’
‘Four men should do it. I’ll get them on standby. I know a few good men who are looking for work.’ He grunted. ‘Don’t worry – they’re highly trained and know what to expect. They’re also trustworthy as far as it goes and … untraceable.’
‘What does that mean?’ Koroleg sometimes found Simoyan’s convoluted way of expressing himself like listening to experimental music: painful and impossible to fully comprehend, and in the end, being not much wiser.
‘It means what it says; they will do the job and disappear.’
‘But we haven’t decided anything yet.’
‘Not yet. But we will, once I’ve spoken to the others. All we need to do then is give them the green light and let them loose.’