Breaking Cover

by Stella Rimington

  There was another scuffing noise and Kevin swung round. It was then he saw the intruder, a good foot or so below his eye line. It was a young boy, maybe ten years old, and five feet tall at most, wearing jeans and a hooded fleece. On his feet were football boots – they had made the strange plug-like marks. The boy turned to face Kevin, with a look on his face that was at once curious and frightened.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Kevin whispered. He was putting the cosh back in his belt, and feeling very stupid.

  ‘Are you Mr Cough?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know… Mr Patrick Cough.’

  Patricov. Kevin sighed with relief. ‘Come with me,’ he said in a whisper, and led the boy out of the room then back through the atrium until they were by the entrance to the building. ‘I’m not Mr Patricov,’ he told the boy. ‘What did you want with him anyway?’

  The boy reached inside his fleece and for a moment Kevin tensed again. But it was harmless – just a shirt. A football jersey, in fact, in the colours of Man United: red and white.

  The boy said, ‘My dad said he was going to buy United. I want him to sign the shirt for me.’

  Kevin nodded, but he was mystified. ‘How did you get into the grounds?’ he asked.

  The boy shrugged. ‘I came through the gate at the back.’

  ‘But you need a code for that. You know, numbers you punch to get in.’

  ‘I didn’t. The gate was open.’

  Kevin thought for a moment. He couldn’t see any point in reporting this, or worse still taking the boy to the house. Reilly would have a fit; the boy would get in trouble, and Kevin would probably get the sack.

  ‘You’d better come with me,’ he said, and the boy’s eyes widened. But gradually he relaxed as they walked down past the tennis court and along by the lime trees. He told Kevin that his name was Brian, he supported Man United (surprise, surprise) and his dad had pointed out the house of ‘Patrick Cough’. The kid added that his bike was hidden in some bushes down the path and that he lived on an estate less than a mile away.

  As soon as Kevin opened the gate, the boy shot off. Kevin watched him disappear into the woods, feeling perplexed. It was bad enough that the kid had got in so easily, though that seemed innocent enough. Karpis’s presence in the pool house, however, didn’t seem innocent at all – Kevin remembered the clothes in the men’s changing room and the sound of talking coming from the women’s. And he also remembered the holster and gun, slung on a hook next to the clothes. Did Karpis have a special licence from the Home Office to carry it? Kevin thought it improbable. Possessing a handgun in the UK would get him arrested. What was he so frightened of that he would take the risk?

  17

  He hadn’t exactly lied to Peggy Kinsolving, Miles Brookhaven reflected; he just hadn’t told her the whole truth. He had gone to the Middle East, as he’d said he would, though only as far as Dubai International airport. There he’d spent three hours wandering round the terminal looking at bling in the vast array of shops. He could have bought a different watch for every minute of the year without making a dent in the stock on display. Not that he was at all interested in watches. He was using the mirrors and reflective glass counters to try and see if anyone was taking a particular interest in him. It was practically impossible – in the constantly moving crowd of assorted races, dressed in everything from jeans and tee-shirts to khandoura and keffiyeh; from mini-skirts and stilettos to abayas, saris, and burqas – to detect a pattern or to remember a face. But after an hour or so of watching, he’d felt reasonably sure he was on his own.

  From Dubai he’d caught a flight on Thai AirAsia, and now he was looking out of the window as the plane began its descent over the unprepossessing approach to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. The city itself sprawled in all directions, and over the tip of one wing he could see the Dnieper River as it flowed south towards the Caspian Sea.

  He had brought with him only a small carry-on bag and after landing went quickly through passport control, where he received a stony look but was asked no questions. Passing through Customs with no delays, he entered the arrivals hall and soon spotted a little moustached man in a shiny grey suit, holding a sign that read M. Laperriere. This was Vasyl, sent by Miles’s colleagues in the Kiev Station.

  Vasyl led the way outside to an open-air car park and indicated his car, an old Impala saloon that was missing a hubcap. Shivering from the cold, Miles got in the back and waited while Vasyl tried unsuccessfully to get the engine to turn over. After several tries he got out and, lifting the bonnet, fiddled around with something. Then he got back in, the engine caught and they set off. Miles wasn’t at all taken in by the pantomime with the engine. He recognised classic Agency training. Vasyl was checking for any other cars hanging back and waiting for them to leave.

  Miles sat sideways in the back seat keeping an eye out of the back window as Vasyl took the E40 heading east, away from the city. After several miles they turned off at the signpost for Voloshynivka, and proceeded down its one commercial street until they came to a municipal park. It looked badly run-down, with muddy paths that must once have been gravelled. In the playground, the solitary swing had lost a rope and its seat dangled upside down, swaying around wildly in the harsh wind.

  Vasyl stopped the car halfway down one side of the park. He pointed ahead with a grunt towards another parked car, a silver Volkswagen Golf. When Miles got out, Vasyl made a sweeping U-turn and parked facing back the way they had come.

  Miles walked to the parked Golf and got in the back where he sat at an angle to a tall man, roughly his own age, who was sitting in the driver’s seat with the engine running.

  ‘Hello, Mac. Fancy meeting you here.’

  ‘Hi, pal. How’s it going? Sorry to fetch you out to this hole but I think it’s important.’ Mac had a pinched, pockmarked face and a throaty voice that always reminded Miles of a tough-guy detective in a Dashiell Hammett novel. There was nothing Bond-like or smooth about Mac. He continued speaking. ‘I’m pretty certain our guy is for real, and he wants to tell his story to someone who knows England.’ Mac gave a shiver, and fiddled with the dashboard control to increase the flow of warm air. ‘Godawful winters they have here. We watched your arrival and you’re clean. Vasyl would have noticed anything on the road.’

  Then he handed a bundle over the seat to Miles in the back. It was a man’s jacket, of thick grey tweed with soft brown leather buttons. ‘It may be a bit big – it’s a size forty-six. I couldn’t find a forty-four. There’s a passport in the inner pocket,’ added Mac. ‘It’s Irish, and you’re Sean Flynn.’

  ‘How imaginative. Next time let’s use Murphy.’

  Mac laughed. ‘Hopefully you won’t be needing it. There’s a wallet, too, with Flynn’s international driver’s licence. Langley had it made up, so the mugshot’s real enough even if the name isn’t. There’s money as well – about four hundred bucks’ worth in the local currency. They’re called hryvnia – you get a little over twenty to the dollar.’

  ‘What about his money?’

  ‘It’s in the usual place.’

  Miles nodded. He took off his own jacket, checking first that it still held his wallet and passport, then he emptied his trouser pockets of loose change and his keys and put them into his jacket pocket. He handed this bundle back to Mac, saying, ‘Look after it. I don’t want to get stuck here.’

  Mac replied, ‘The garage checked out the car yesterday, and it’s good to go. You’ve got a full tank of gas, oil’s fine and the tyres are nearly new. It’s a stick, five-gear. It’ll be dark soon and there’s snow in the east, so take it easy – they don’t plough for shit in this country. Mind your speed: the local cops can be a nuisance, though near the front speeding is taken for granted. I’ve put a map on the passenger seat here and marked the route. It’s a straight shot and your stopover’s exactly halfway there.’ He turned to look at Miles. ‘I think that’s it, unless you’ve got some special requests.’

  ‘Flashlight?�
��

  ‘In the glove pocket.’

  ‘Thermal underwear?’

  Mac just laughed.

  They both got out of the car. ‘Good luck,’ said Mac, but it was understood they wouldn’t shake hands.

  Miles said, ‘Let’s make it the Caribbean next time.’ Then he sat down in the driver’s seat of the Golf. He turned the heater up high and watched as Mac got into the back of the Impala and it drove off, heading for the Embassy in Kiev. Miles gave it five minutes, studying the map, which had the route annotated with a marker pen, then set off himself, heading east and south towards the war zone.

  He drove for five hours, stopping only to eat some fried eggs at a roadside café just before it got dark. The road wasn’t bad, and though it snowed at one point for a little while, the surface had been gritted and the Golf handled well. After the next town he turned on to a side road and followed a winding path, more track than road, until he saw a Cyrillic sign for the farmhouse he was looking for.

  There was a closed gate at the front of the property, with a long chain wrapped around its top bar but no padlock; when he had opened it and driven through, he stopped and closed the gate again, putting the chain back as before. He drove another hundred yards until the track ended in a small farmyard, with a house on the far side. He parked as instructed in its adjacent wooden barn, closing the doors carefully when he left so that his car was not visible from outside.

  The farmhouse front door had a modern keypad and he punched in the numbers: 07/04/76 – Mac’s small homage to America’s Independence Day. Inside the ground floor was unfurnished, except for a kitchen with fridge-freezer, table and a pair of pine chairs. Up the bare wooden staircase he found a bedroom in which a small heater was blowing out hot air. Before turning on the light he pulled the thick curtains tightly across the windows. Then he went downstairs again to explore the kitchen. In the fridge he found beer, wine and vodka as well as some ready-made sandwiches wrapped in cling film, and assorted snacks. He was too tired to eat the sandwiches but he poured himself a generous slug of vodka and took the glass and a plastic carton of stuffed olives upstairs to the warm bedroom. ‘Cheers, Mac,’ he said out loud as he downed the vodka quickly and munched the olives. Then still in his clothes he lay down, huddling under two feather duvets, and fell asleep. He dreamed that he was still in Dubai, looking at watches.

  Miles woke early, while it was still pitch black outside, and got up straight away. He stayed just long enough to eat one of the cling-filmed sandwiches and drink a large mug of instant coffee, into which he poured the cream off the top of a glass bottle of milk. He put the other sandwich in his pocket; he had no idea where his next meal was coming from. Then he made the bed and washed and dried his mug, leaving the sparsest evidence that anyone had stayed the night.

  He drove through sparkling snow-covered fields into the rising sun, heading further east across the vast rolling steppes. There was little traffic at first, but as the morning progressed people were out and about in the small towns he travelled through. When he stopped for petrol (he’d been told to fill up as and when he could) the attendant was friendly but spoke no English. He mentioned his destination, checking he was on the right road, but the man only shook his head. ‘Boom!’ he said, almost wearily. ‘Boom, boom.’

  Soon Miles saw signs of the conflict; a motley mix of army vehicles drove past him, heading away from the fighting. Then he came to a roadblock manned by Ukrainian regulars, who looked at his Irish passport with curiosity then waved him through without asking his business, so he had no need to deploy his cover story that he was a freelance journalist writing human-interest stories about war zones.

  His rendezvous with the source was in a second farmhouse within a dozen miles of the fighting and less than twenty from Donetsk, where the Malaysian airliner had come down. This was a grander affair than his previous night’s lodging. It was not really a farmhouse at all, more an old-fashioned hunting lodge built out of rough stone, with a roof of handmade mocha-coloured tiles. He banged the heavy iron knocker on the wooden door and waited. He felt the familiar stirring of anxiety that always preceded a meeting with a new source. The door was opened by a short, dumpy middle-aged woman dressed in what appeared to be a homespun woollen dress with an apron tied around her waist. She looked so much like the apple-cheeked farmer’s wife from a fairy story that Miles wondered if she could be one of Mac’s colleagues got up as a peasant for the occasion. He found the thought rather comforting.

  She showed him into a long living room, which was warm from a blazing fire at one end. The woman disappeared and returned a moment later with a tray that held cold meats and two large rolls, as well as a glass of steaming tea. She pointed upstairs and put her folded hands against her cheek to indicate that was where he would be sleeping, then she gave a little bob and left the room. A few minutes later he saw her from the window, walking down a path towards another, smaller building a few hundred yards away. He hoped she was going to report his safe arrival to Mac.

  Miles looked around the ground floor and went into the kitchen, which was so spotlessly clean that it was obvious no one had cooked in it for a long time. He searched through the drawers and found a steak knife. It had lost its edge but had a sharp point, so it would do.

  When he went upstairs he discovered that the only bed had been made up, presumably by the woman who had just left. Putting his bag down, he took off his jacket and laid it on the bedspread, pushing back both lapels until its inner lining was fully exposed. He found the central seam and carefully inserted the steak knife’s point into one of the tiny knots, then twisted until it came loose. He repeated the process until the entire line of thread was visible and he could pull the two sides apart with his fingers. The left half of the lining flapped free and he reached behind it, extracting an envelope that was sealed on the back with tape. Ripping it open, he counted the hundred-dollar bills inside; it was all there. He rolled the bills up and put them in his trouser pocket, then went downstairs and back to the living room.

  A man stood by the fireplace. He was holding an automatic pistol. As Miles entered the room, the man turned and pointed the gun at his head.

  18

  ‘You must be Mischa,’ said Miles Brookhaven, standing still in the doorway with his hands held loosely at his sides. It seemed the safest thing to do and he had nothing to defend himself with anyway. If he were wrong about the identity of this man, Miles was probably going to get shot. ‘I’m Sean Flynn. My colleagues in Kiev said you had requested a meeting. It sounded urgent, so here I am.’

  The man stared at him, then lowered the gun. He was dressed in black-and-olive combat fatigues, and was tall and powerfully built, with a rough beard and dark eyes that seemed too small for his face. He jammed his sidearm into the holster at his waist, leaving the butt sticking out. Miles stepped forward and held his hand out. The man shook it with a hard grasp. Miles noticed that the Russian had been eating the rolls and drinking the tea from the tray the woman had brought. ‘I bet that’s cold by now,’ he said. ‘Would you like some more?’

  Again the man stared. Then his face broke into a grin. ‘I have a better idea,’ he said. He went to a knapsack he’d put down on a chair. Retrieving a bottle of vodka from it, he said, ‘You got glasses?’

  Brookhaven laughed. ‘Sure to be some in the kitchen. Wait a second.’

  Thank goodness Mischa spoke decent English – with about twelve words of Russian to his credit, Miles had been worried about how he would communicate with the informant. His request for a translator had been turned down – sending one man close to the war zone was dangerous enough without doubling the risk, and in any case, they’d said, it was not necessary.

  In the kitchen as he searched for glasses he wondered what Mischa had to tell him that could be so important. He had been told that the Russian had been an accidental find, a ‘walk in’, who’d approached the Agency via an American journalist who was one of the first to get to the site of the Malaysian aeroplane cr
ash. Mischa had been there ‘advising’, or more accurately directing the Ukrainian rebels who were guarding the site and disguising what had happened. Miles’s colleagues in Kiev had picked him up and had been meeting him since then in conditions of the utmost secrecy, and at high risk to Mischa himself. He was an officer in a special unit who’d been sent undercover with some of his men to train the rebels. His information about the extent of Russian involvement and the type of advanced weaponry they had supplied to the rebels was proving unerringly accurate, and crucial to the West’s understanding of the situation. His motivation hadn’t been explained to Miles, though money obviously played a large part in it, but the Kiev Station was apparently satisfied that he was genuine and clearly knew a lot more about him than they had thought necessary to tell Miles.

  He returned to the living room with a couple of glasses, to find Mischa staring gloomily out of the window. He nodded as Miles lifted the vodka bottle, then watched as the American poured out two hefty shots of the liquor. ‘Skål,’ said Miles, lifting his glass and trying to lighten the mood.

  Mischa smiled wryly. ‘Cheers,’ he said. He drained his glass in one go.

  Miles followed suit, and almost choked as the fiery liquid went down his throat. He managed to say, ‘You speak excellent English.’

  ‘I was a postgraduate at Birmingham University – in computer sciences.’

  ‘And then the army?’ It seemed an improbable switch, but had to be voluntary. Mischa was a good ten years past draft age.

  The Russian looked at him with amusement. ‘You are wondering how an educated man can end up like this?’ He pointed to his fatigues. ‘I am a technical specialist in advanced weapons,’ he said. ‘Not one of the ranks.’