Typically, the tickets Simpson had told him to book for each leg of the journey were for seats in the economy section – cattle class, in the vernacular – of the aircraft, offering both minimum dimensions and minimal comfort. When he’d queried this, Simpson had pointed out that he was supposed to be a tourist on a budget trip to Svalbard, and that meant he was required to live his cover right from the start, just in case any of the opposition – whoever that might be – were able to observe him. Climbing out of the first-class section of one of the aircraft – assuming that they even had one, because aircraft used on short-haul flights frequently didn’t – might possibly have raised eyebrows and caused questions to be asked. And, Simpson had added, apparently trying to make a very weak joke, it was always statistically safer to sit at the back of an aircraft, because it was very rare for pilots to reverse them into anything.
The aircraft on the final leg, to Svalbard, was about half full, as far as Richter could tell, and most of the passengers, from what he could hear of their accents, were probably Norwegian, or certainly some flavour of Scandinavian, though he heard the unmistakable mid-west nasal twang of a couple of Americans sitting about half a dozen rows in front of him, and the equally unmistakable accents of a group of six Russians occupying the seats on the other side of the aisle. Richter’s Russian was almost fluent, and he leaned back in his seat as far as it would go, closed his eyes and concentrated on what they were saying, just in case they were in some way relevant to his current mission. That proved to be remarkably unedifying, four of them being engaged in a discussion about the latest mining techniques, which meant that Richter could understand what they were saying but didn’t really know what they were talking about. The two sitting furthest away from him had clearly formed a kind of splinter group, and their subject of choice was vodka: which were the best varieties and why, and, far more importantly, which stores in Moscow or wherever they came from offered the best deals. None of them sounded like SVR or FSB agents. On the other hand, if they were SVR or FSB agents, they would be extremely unlikely to make that blatantly obvious in the passenger cabin of a Scandinavian aircraft.
In the end he gave up listening, pulled out his mobile phone and started reading one of a handful of books he’d downloaded before he left London in anticipation of what he expected to be a potentially boring and ultimately pointless mission.
When the SAS Boeing 737-800 touched down at Svalbard Lufthavn at 12.53, 13 minutes later than its scheduled arrival time, the pilot fighting a gusty crosswind all the way on final approach, it was obvious to Richter that it was a very small airport. A runway and a control tower and not a great deal else. As one of his flying instructors had joked when talking about Roborough airport near Plymouth, where in his day Royal Navy pilots underwent a basic flying grading while studying at the Britannia College in Dartmouth, it wasn’t so much an airport, more like a right of way in a field. Svalbard Airport looked very much the same, albeit with a proper runway rather than the grass strip at Roborough that he remembered so well, and more than anything else it reminded Richter of Port Stanley Airport in the Falkland Islands, which he had flown out of in a Harrier on a few occasions when the carrier Illustrious had been working in that part of the South Atlantic in the years after the conflict with Argentina. Even the terrain was somewhat similar to the Falklands, as far as he had been able to tell as he’d looked out of the window at Svalbard as the aircraft turned base leg to line up for its final approach.
The airport didn’t, obviously, run to boarding gates or walkways or escalators or any of the other mechanical devices intended to whisk passengers from aircraft to terminal and vice versa. Instead, a set of motorized steps were driven up to the port side fuselage door of the Boeing 737 a few minutes after it came to a standstill, and the cabin crew opened the door as soon as the steps were in position. Richter was almost the last passenger to leave the aircraft – people who rushed to get to the exit door as soon as they could, in his experience, just ended up standing around and waiting for a lot longer beside the luggage carousel and didn’t get out of the airport any faster – and he walked down the steps and onto the tarmac behind the last couple of dozen passengers heading for the terminal. They were all wearing precisely the kind of clothing that Arctic explorers would recognize immediately, which was just as well, bearing in mind where they were.
Both the runway and hardstanding were slick with moisture, and the black rock and soil of the surrounding hills and mountains were streaked with patches of white and brown snow. It made him feel cold just looking at it, though the foul weather gear he’d purchased in Oslo was keeping him warm and comfortable, despite the ambient temperature, which was distinctly on the chilly side. Overhead, the sky was covered with a thick layer of sullen dark grey clouds that promised rain, and probably lots of it. But nobody ever went to Svalbard because of the weather.
The wheels of his carry-on case slipped and skidded over the surface of the hardstanding, and after a few feet he decided it was easier to pick it up and carry it. There was a longish queue at passport control when he entered the terminal, and Richter took his place uncomplainingly at the end of the line. Svalbard is owned by Norway, which is a part of the Schengen Area, but that only applies on the mainland, and all new arrivals in Longyearbyen have to show a passport or some other acceptable form of visual identification to be allowed entry. Norwegian citizens, the most frequent visitors, normally just produce their national ID cards.
Conscious that he was, after all, supposed to be just a tourist, Richter did his best to look as if he wasn’t looking around, except with the casual interest that might be expected from a Brit visiting Svalbard for the first time. There were a lot of people in the terminal building – or a lot relative to its size, anyway. Most of them were standing and talking in groups, and none appeared to be taking the slightest interest in him. He glanced at all of his fellow travellers, and the other people in the building, but none of them looked even slightly suspicious. Of course, because he didn’t really know what he was looking for or why he was there, he really had no idea what sort of ‘suspicious’ behaviour he should be expecting.
His passport – his own, because Simpson had seen no good reason to provide him with a false identity – was scanned by a cheerful-looking young man wearing a Norwegian uniform who looked quite astonishingly Scandinavian: white blonde hair, pale complexion and startling blue eyes.
‘Velcome to Svalbard,’ he said. ‘Enjoy your holiday.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Richter replied, unconsciously repeating the last thing he’d said to Richard Simpson back in Hammersmith.
Twenty minutes later, he’d collected the small suitcase that contained everything else he thought he’d need for a week in the frozen north and was waiting in line to board the local shuttle bus that would take him the two miles or so from the airport south-east to the town of Longyearbyen and the hotel he’d booked. As far as accommodation was concerned, he hadn’t had that many options, but eventually he’d settled on the Basecamp Hotel, which sounded nicely adventurous. He’d chosen it first because it was located pretty much in the centre of the settlement, which might be convenient for his tasking and, second, because almost everywhere else had been sold out. Despite being right out in the middle of nowhere, and halfway to the North Pole from London, Svalbard clearly had attractions of its own.
Everything in Norway is notoriously expensive, and the same definitely applied in Svalbard. Simpson had told him to book everything himself to maintain his cover, and then to reclaim the money from the cashier once he got back. The return economy flight had cost Richter about £300, and if he’d wanted anything to eat or drink in the air he would have had to buy it on the aircraft, so he hadn’t. His hotel room had cost him over €2,500 for a nine-night stay, just in case it took longer than he’d expected to do his ‘keep an eye on our friends and enemies’ bit, but at least that price included breakfast.
At the hotel, he checked in, dumped his bags on the bed, took
off his foul weather clothing and threw some water over his face to try to freshen up, then quickly unpacked. The room was cosily rustic, with wood everywhere – floors, walls and ceiling. It was like living inside a tree. But despite its basic construction, the room was big, with a single bed and a pair of bunk beds, a table and a couple of chairs, all made from wood, obviously. More importantly it was warm, he had really good strength on the Wi-Fi signal on his phone and all the bathroom fixtures and fittings were completely modern. Richter guessed that the philosophy of the Basecamp Hotel was to create a kind of outback or frontier feel to the building, but to also provide all modern conveniences, which would be more or less essential in a place as remote and bleak as Svalbard.
He walked down to the bar-cum-dining room, where about 20 people were sitting at long wooden tables with plates of food in front of them. He glanced at the offerings on the menu, made his choice, told the waiter his room number, then picked a seat and sat down. While he was waiting, he glanced again through the orders he had been given, which he had scanned and stored in a hidden and encrypted directory on his mobile phone.
Steve Barber, according to whatever intelligence source Legoland had managed to tap into, had been booked into either the Basecamp Hotel or the Radisson Blu Polar Hotel – the source hadn’t been able to confirm either, which possibly meant the man had been seen in both buildings – which was about halfway between where Richter was sitting and the North Pole Expedition Museum, at the north-eastern end of Longyearbyen. As Richter was already in one of the two possible locations, it made sense to observe his fellow guests, just in case he got lucky and identified Barber. He had a physical description of the man, and a somewhat blurry image of his face, and guessed that the American probably wouldn’t prove too difficult to track down in such a small place. If he didn’t see him in the Basecamp Hotel, he would just try the Radisson and the other main hotel, the Svalbard, and keep checking the three buildings until he found him. Then he’d try to keep tabs on Barber and anyone else who was with him and presumably worked for the CIA.
As he’d done on board the aircraft, Richter tried listening in to the conversations that ebbed and flowed around him, hoping to pick up the sound of American voices. But although he heard echoes of conversation carried out in a number of different languages, some of them in English, none of them were in American English. So he ate his lunch, which was both tasty and predictably expensive, and then left the dining room. His vague plan was to return to his room, pick up his outdoor gear and wander over to the Radisson and sit in the lobby or somewhere with a coffee and a newspaper, and hope that Barber came past him or appeared in the room and could be recognized.
But when he walked past the reception desk, the pretty young girl sitting behind it called him over.
‘Mr Richter?’
He nodded, changed direction and strode over to where she was sitting.
‘Yes?’
She reached below the countertop and took out a white sealed envelope with the name ‘PAUL RICHTER’ handwritten on it in blue ink, and handed it to him.
‘This arrived for you a few minutes ago,’ she said. Her English was fluent, but it clearly wasn’t her first language, and he guessed that she was probably Scandinavian, from her colouring.
Richter took the envelope and looked at it with interest. The only person who knew he was on Svalbard, and which hotel he would be staying in was Richard Simpson, and if he had needed to send an important message, he would have done so by a suitably worded email, or sent him a text or, if it had been really urgent, simply called him. So what he was holding didn’t really make any sense.
‘Who left this?’ he asked.
‘I really don’t know,’ the girl replied. ‘I had to leave the desk for about a quarter of an hour and when I got back ten minutes ago this was waiting for me on the counter. It was obviously hand delivered. Were you expecting a message?’
‘No,’ Richter replied frankly, still studying the envelope. ‘But I suppose I’ll find out who sent it when I read whatever’s inside it. Anyway, thanks for giving it to me.’
He walked back to his room, closed and locked the door and sat down on the bed.
The envelope was thin and somewhat flimsy, and clearly didn’t contain very much, perhaps just a single sheet of paper. Or even a half sheet. What he was more concerned about was who had left it, and what their intentions might be.
He was very aware that substances sealed inside an envelope could be used for assassination purposes, by including things like weaponized anthrax or other biological or chemical weapons that could be deployed simply by the envelope being opened. The bedside lamp in the room had a fairly powerful bulb, and the first thing he did was switch it on and hold the envelope right beside the glass of the bulb while he tried to see any indication of shapes or shadows inside it, shapes that might reveal the presence of an object rather than just a sheet of paper.
He could see nothing. He laid the envelope flat on the table and ran the tips of his fingers over every part of it, feeling for any kind of inclusion. The only thing he could detect was an absolutely straight line of thickening, exactly the kind of line that would be produced if a piece of paper had been folded in half to make it fit inside the envelope.
It looked as if absolutely all the envelope contained was a folded sheet of paper.
There was one more check that he could make. He took out his phone, dialled the covert number for Hammersmith, and then went through the usual challenge and response routine that was necessary to prove that he hadn’t simply dialled a wrong number. Two minutes later he heard Richard Simpson’s unmistakable voice in his ear.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve cracked it already, Richter,’ he snapped.
‘No, and before you say anything else this is an open line.’
Calls from mobile phones can be monitored by both official and unofficial sources, and Richter was very keen not to say anything that would be compromising to either him or to the mission, just in case the room had been wired for sound or the call was being recorded.
‘Understood.’ Simpson was instantly all business. ‘What do you need?’
‘Nothing at the moment. But I do have a question. I understood I was the only representative up here, but I’ve just received a message at the hotel, hand delivered and addressed to me by name.’
‘That’s a statement, not a question,’ Simpson pointed out, ‘but it was my understanding that you were flying solo. Who was it from?’
‘I don’t know. I wanted to check with you before I opened the envelope, just in case it was from one of our Friends.’
The capital F on the last word was quite obvious to both of them. In the murky netherworld inhabited by members of the intelligence services, a Friend was an agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service. Because the original tasking given to Richter had come from the avant-garde building situated at Vauxhall Cross on the Thames, as far as he could see the only people who could possibly know that he was in Svalbard were those who worked at Legoland. And in his view, if the SIS had sent someone up to Longyearbyen to mount surveillance, despite the misgivings they had expressed to Simpson, then he would be quite happy to pack his bags, catch the next flight south and leave them to it.
‘Definitely not,’ Simpson said. ‘Our colleagues from that company were quite specific that they would not be travelling north. And in any case, although they asked for someone to represent them in your present location and for this piece of business, they have no idea who I sent. I have no clue who sent you the message, but it has to be someone who’s recognized you, and that might mean you’ve been spotted by one of our competitors. I leave it to you to take the necessary precautions.’
‘Right,’ Richter said after a moment. ‘That’s all I needed to know.’
That wasn’t what he had hoped to hear. He had previously been involved in operations against the intelligence organizations of Russia, principally the GRU, the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye or Main Int
elligence Directorate, the foreign military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, and the SVR, Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, the country’s external intelligence agency. The latter had been created in December 1991 as the lineal descendant of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, and still occupied the KGB’s headquarters building at Yasenevo just outside Moscow.
‘There are no strings I can pull in Svalbard, Richter,’ Simpson said. ‘If you think you’ve been compromised and you can’t take care of it, about all we can do from here is get you on the next flight off the archipelago. And you could do that faster yourself.’
Richter didn’t respond for a few seconds while he made a decision.
‘This doesn’t make sense,’ he said, almost thinking aloud. ‘The worst case scenario is that somebody from one of our competitors could have recognized me and might be planning some kind of hostile takeover or whatever you like to call it. But in that case, they’d hardly send me a note telling me that that was their intention. Whatever this is, it’s something different.’
‘It’s your call,’ Simpson said, ‘but if I were you, I’d check that nothing nasty was likely to pop out of the envelope, and then I’d open it.’
‘I’m just about to do that,’ Richter replied.
Chapter 8
Thursday
Rublevka, Zhukovka, outskirts of Moscow, Confederation of Independent States
The dacha was owned by the SVR, the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, but unusually it had never been allocated to a single individual senior officer, probably because it wasn’t quite big or impressive enough for the kinds of intimate gatherings most high-ranking officials liked to enjoy, when they would do a little overtime entertaining one or more of their mistresses, or perhaps sample the professional services of a bevy of carefully selected and fully trained prostitutes.
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