‘Oddly enough, no,’ Koslov said, ‘though we know he did fly out of Russia that same day. The van was located later that afternoon a few streets away from the apartment that Pavlov occupied on the outskirts of Moscow, so clearly he had used it to drive from the dacha but only to return to his home, because he had things to do before he fled the country.’
‘Like what?’
‘We presume he changed into civilian clothes and picked up whatever else he thought he needed, but we also know that he spent some time, probably over an hour, in his apartment making sure that when he left the building he didn’t look much like Dmitri Pavlov. We found hair clippings that suggest he used a trimmer to cut off most of his hair, just leaving a crew cut, and then did his best to change the colour of what hair he had left to blond. Our investigators found empty bottles of a kind of specialized bleach designed to lighten hair colour.’
The minister, like almost everyone else around the table, looked puzzled.
‘Why would he have wanted to change his appearance?’ he asked. ‘If he didn’t look like his passport photograph, then he would be more likely to be stopped at the airport.’
‘Exactly,’ Koslov said, ‘but he knew what he was doing. We think he then took a taxi or more likely the metro to Belorussky Station and then the Aeroexpress train out to Sheremetyevo Airport. Traffic on the streets of Moscow at that time of day would have been extremely heavy, and that would have been his fastest route. But however he got there, we do know that a man answering Pavlov’s description took a Finnair flight west to Bergen via Helsinki. The total journey time would have been about five and a half hours, with almost two hours on the ground at Helsinki. The timing means that when the SVR duty officer finally stepped through the front door of this dacha, Pavlov was probably already sitting in the transit lounge at Helsinki, waiting for the flight to Bergen to start boarding.’
‘And are you sure that it was him?’
‘The cameras at Sheremetyevo are not the best, but the images were clear enough. We ran a facial recognition program on the still images that compares those facial features that cannot be changed, things like the distance between the pupils of the eyes, the height and width of the head, the shape of the ears and so on. We compared those to Pavlov’s official photographs, and we are quite certain of our identification, despite his lighter hair colour, blue contact lenses and fuller face. He was probably using pads inside his cheeks to give his face a rounder appearance, to match his new passport photograph.’
‘And the name in this passport?’
‘He was using a Norwegian passport,’ Koslov replied, ‘in the name of Viktun Larsen. Larsen is the fourth commonest surname in Norway. Hence the change of hair and eye colour, to give him a more Scandinavian appearance.’
‘Does Pavlov speak Norwegian?’ Again it was the minister who asked the obvious question.
‘Not as far as we know, but more to the point nor do the customs and immigration officials at Sheremetyevo. We have interviewed the men who were on duty, and they reported that the man claiming to be Viktun Larsen spoke a few words to them in a language that they did not recognize but which they assumed was Norwegian, and then he switched to English, a language that they did share, and which didn’t surprise them. Almost all Scandinavians speak at least some English.’
‘And were you aware that Pavlov spoke English?’
Koslov nodded.
‘According to his service records, he took a course in English a few years ago and reached a high intermediate standard in the language. That means he’s virtually fluent.’
‘Should that not have aroused suspicions at a much earlier date?’
‘As far as I am aware, Minister,’ General Yasov interjected, ‘knowledge of the English language is not yet a crime in Russia. In fact, quite the reverse. Many members of the armed forces, and particularly people in the intelligence and counter-intelligence services, are encouraged to become proficient in English because it is the language of our most likely enemy, America.’
The minister looked unconvinced. And even more irritated.
‘So what was the next event in this catalogue of cock-ups? Is Pavlov still in Bergen? Have you killed him yet? And if not, why not?’
‘The trail went cold in Bergen, because it looked as if Pavlov had gone to ground there for a couple of days, and it took rather longer than that to find out where he went,’ Koslov said. ‘Obviously we can’t be completely certain what happened, but we believe that he most likely had several different escape routes planned, probably all involving a flight out of Russia and possibly to or through one of the Scandinavian countries. Because he had obviously been discovered in the act of planting his recording device or doing something else that aroused his companion’s suspicions, we think he got to Sheremetyevo Airport as quickly as he could and before his crime could have been detected, which was why he smashed the keys in the locks, so he knew we wouldn’t be able to get inside and find out what had happened very quickly. And once he got into the departures area, he bought a ticket on the first available flight heading west, which happened to be going to Bergen via Helsinki.’
‘But he had a Norwegian passport,’ the minister said, somewhat wearily. ‘Are you suggesting it was just a coincidence that he used a forged or stolen or even a genuine Norwegian passport to fly to Norway?’
‘No, Minister, quite the reverse. A lot of westbound flights from Moscow route to Scandinavia, so giving him a Norwegian passport to use to get out of Russia would make sense from the point of view of whatever government Pavlov approached to offer his treacherous services.’
‘So you know that he flew to Helsinki, and on to Bergen after that. Then what happened? Where did he go and what did he do?’
‘While he was in Helsinki, he drew the maximum amount of cash he could from his bank account here in Moscow, obviously so that he could not be traced by tracking his credit card expenditure once he got to Norway. In Bergen, as I’ve said, he dropped out of sight for two days, so he probably found a cheap hotel and paid cash for a room. Obviously we had immediately dispatched a GRU recovery team – Spetsnaz troopers – to find Pavlov and bring him back to Moscow, but Bergen is quite a big place and they had no idea where to even start looking. They checked a few of the lower-priced hotels, just in case they got lucky, but saw no sign of him. As it turned out, that wasn’t surprising, because they were looking in completely the wrong place.
‘The next time Pavlov surfaced was when he used his Absolut Bank MasterCard to try to buy a ticket from Bergen to Paris with Air France. That didn’t work, because he’d already reached his credit limit. We didn’t,’ he added, ‘block his card because we were hoping to track him if he used it. To add an extra layer of complication, the attempted booking was apparently made from Spain, so obviously Pavlov was using a VPN – a virtual private network – to hide his location. At that point, we had no idea where he really was, but his last known location had been Bergen, and so that’s where the recovery team remained. They were already covering the airport, but because of the attempt to book a flight to Paris, they increased their presence there. But, as I said, they were looking in the wrong place, because on the third day Pavlov used the Larsen passport again and flew up to Longyearbyen, but from the Gardermoen Airport in Oslo, not Bergen. We now think he had probably only been in Bergen for a few hours, just long enough to get from the airport to the railway station and get on the first available train leaving for Oslo.’
‘So the recovery team members were behind Pavlov – quite a long way behind him, in fact – the whole time,’ the minister said. ‘It sounds as if he knew exactly what he was doing.’
Chapter 11
Thursday
Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen, Svalbard Archipelago
‘Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?’ the woman standing behind Richter said quietly, as he turned around.
‘That’s a very old joke, Carole-Anne,’ he replied, ‘but in this case it’s also
true. It isn’t a pistol, and I’m really pleased to see you. I’m surprised, but I’m delighted you’re here.’
Carole-Anne Jackson stood looking at him with a broad smile on her face, sizing him up. Her long black hair was pulled behind her head and held in place with a plastic clip, and her face was just as Richter remembered: pretty, almost elfin features and dark brown eyes that a man could lose himself in.
‘It’s been a while,’ she said, ‘but you still look pretty much the same – scruffy and untidy.’
‘Thanks for that,’ Richter replied. ‘You’re the same but different. New hairstyle?’
‘I’m surprised you remember. I had it short in Dubai, just because it was so hot out there. Now I’m growing it longer.’
She led the way to a low table tucked away in a corner of the lounge and bracketed by two chairs. A dark blue puffa jacket was lying across the seat of one of the two easy chairs, and a functional-looking female handbag sat on the other. A coffee pot with all the trimmings and two cups and saucers were on the table.
‘You were expecting me to get here, then,’ Richter said, passing the handbag to Carole-Anne and sitting down.
‘Of course. You’re very competent. I’d have been amazed if you hadn’t turned up.’ She poured coffee into the two cups and slid one across the table to Richter. ‘You still take it black, no sugar?’ she asked.
He nodded.
‘You have questions, I guess,’ Carole-Anne said, smiling at him.
Richter glanced around before replying, but there was nobody within earshot.
‘You bet I do,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘First, why the codes and stuff? You could have just written a note giving your name, a time and a place.’
‘Where would be the fun in that? Two reasons. First, I know Richter’s not that common a name, but I needed to be sure that you were the man I thought you were, hence the code. If you were just some Brit on a vacation, you’d have read it, had no clue what it was about, and trashed it. If it was you, you’d have worked out what it said.’
‘It took a bit of time, but I did. I was halfway through the first five groups when I guessed what the plaintext had to be: MINUS WHIPS CHAINS LATEX LEATHER. I remembered what you said to me when we were over in Dubai, that you didn’t do whips or chains, latex or leather, and that pretty much identified you straight away. No other woman I’ve met has ever said anything like that to me.’
‘Really? You need to get out more, Paul. Meet more people.’
‘Right. But I have a few more questions for you, not just that one.’
Jackson nodded.
‘I know, and before you ask me anything else, you need to tell me one thing. Are you here on vacation, or is this a business trip? And you know what kind of business I mean.’
‘This is strictly professional,’ Richter said. ‘Believe it or not, on the rare occasions when I get time to take a holiday, I tend to head south, not north, and certainly not this far north. I assume you’re also here in some kind of official capacity?’
‘You assume correctly. And that’s the other question. I don’t need to know all the details of your briefing, obviously, and you wouldn’t tell me if I asked, but before we go any further I do need to know why you’re here. Is it an executive role, meaning that you’re here with a team of people to do a specific job, or something advisory, or maybe just surveillance? A one-word answer will do.’
‘I can do better than that,’ Richter said. ‘The one word that covers my briefing is "surveillance," and what you’re looking at right now is the entire British contingent. It’s just me, Carole-Anne, and I’m unarmed and travelling on my own passport, which should tell you just how important this particular job is in the eyes of my masters.’
‘Are you still working for that strange outfit in west London?’ Jackson asked, sounding relieved at his response.
Richter nodded.
‘Until someone offers me something better, I am. In fact, that’s unfair. I enjoy what I do, and Richard Simpson may not have the sunniest disposition in the world, or even in this galaxy, but he is good at what he does and he always watches my back. So I suppose I’m there for the long haul. And you? Did you get any flak over what happened in Dubai? We left quite a mess behind.’
‘We did,’ Carole-Anne agreed, ‘but we also left the Burj Al Arab still standing, the Saudi royal family more or less intact, and saved the Dubai authorities billions of dollars of assets, and they were very complimentary about what we did to stop those two attacks. More importantly for me, they conveyed their grateful thanks to my boss over at Langley, and that did me no harm at all. I’m still in the Directorate of Operations, which is why I’m here in Svalbard, but I got kicked up a grade more or less instantly, and I’m now a Chief Special Agent, which means you have to call me ma’am.’
‘Don’t hold your breath waiting for that. So what exactly are you doing here?’
Jackson didn’t reply for a few moments, just looked across the table as Richter took another sip of his coffee. Then she appeared to come to a decision and gave a slight nod.
‘I’ll get to that in just a moment. First, the ground rules. This is my operation, and what I definitely don’t need is you coming in and trying to take over.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Richter said. ‘I think you know me well enough to trust my word. I’m here to observe, nothing more, unless you tell me there’s something I could help with. I don’t know how big your team is, but if you need an extra pair of eyes, I’m right here. Just use me as another body.’
‘I might do that,’ Jackson said, ‘because we are pretty stretched and probably outnumbered. Now, does the name William Duke mean anything to you?’
‘Not a great deal,’ Richter replied, ‘because he doesn’t actually exist, or not the William Duke you’re talking about, anyway. But I do know a bit about Walter Burdiss.’
‘That figures. OK, that pretty much had to be the case, otherwise you being up here wouldn’t make any sort of sense, and that means we’re on the same side, kind of.’ Just as Richter had done, she scanned the room just in case anyone had moved close enough to them to hear what she was saying, then continued. ‘What’s your tasking, exactly?’
Richter shrugged.
‘It’s all pretty vague. Briefly, Walter Burdiss had a layover in London before he came up here, and that raised a flag at Legoland because your Company didn’t tell us anything about him or his mission, but we already knew who he was. He was put under routine surveillance until he flew up to Norway, and the next thing we heard was that he’d been killed. Some of the wheels at Legoland decided it was worth trying to find out what had happened to him, but they didn’t want Langley to know that they knew who he was, or that they had any interest in him. So, as usual, they passed the buck sideways and it ended up on my desk. I’m here to observe and report back, but under no circumstances am I to make contact with any of the CIA agents known or believed to be here on Svalbard.’
‘It’s a bit late for that, Paul.’
‘I know, but if you don’t tell anyone, nor will I.’
Jackson nodded, took a last drink from her coffee cup and then replaced it on the saucer. Then she looked again at Richter and seemed to come to a decision.
‘Are you cold?’ she asked. ‘I think it’s cold in here. More importantly, I don’t think we should be getting into a deep discussion about this matter sitting here in this hotel lounge. We need to find somewhere a lot more private.’
‘You have somewhere in mind?’
‘You bet I do,’ Jackson replied, and stood up. ‘Follow me.’
Three minutes later she closed and locked the door of her large and comparatively luxurious bedroom at the Radisson Blu and turned to face Richter, who was standing expectantly at the foot of the wide double bed.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she demanded. ‘The bed’s there, the sheets are clean, and I’m ready, so get your clothes off. We can pick up exactly where we left off in Dubai, because I never d
id make it to London to spend any time with you, and last time you came across the pond I was stuck down in South America.’
‘I thought you were cold,’ Richter said, a smile on his face as he took off his jacket.
‘I still am,’ Jackson said, peeling off her slacks, ‘and I need a little friction to warm me up, so let’s get to it.’
* * *
Half an hour later, they lay side-by-side in the bed under the duvet, both staring up at the ceiling.
‘I didn’t expect anything like this,’ Richter said. ‘Not up here in the frozen north.’
‘Nor did I,’ Jackson responded, ‘so let’s just make the best of it.’
Richter turned slightly in the bed to face her.
‘I do have one other question,’ he said, ‘about the note you left me.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘I flew into the airport here at lunchtime today. I wasn’t delayed too much going through passport control, and then I took the shuttle bus straight to the hotel. I checked in, dumped my stuff and had a quick lunch, and I was heading back to my room when the receptionist gave me your note. Encrypting that stuff must have taken you a few minutes at least, so how the hell did you track me down so quickly?’
Jackson grinned at him.
‘Modern technology and the power of the mighty greenback,’ she said. ‘The governor here on Svalbard takes his orders from Norway, obviously, and according to the people who gave me my orders, somebody fairly high up at State in Foggy Bottom managed to persuade the Norwegian government to give us access to certain information. That information included the passenger lists for all inbound and outbound flights to and from Longyearbyen. The data for today’s incoming SAS flight popped up yesterday on my laptop over there, along with the list of related hotel reservations.’ She pointed at a silver grey Dell on the desk on the other side of the room. ‘And when I scanned the list of names, British passport holder Richter, Paul, just jumped right out at me. So I knew that a man named Paul Richter was flying in today, and all I had to do was make sure it was the right man named Paul Richter. I’m glad,’ she added, ‘that it was. And I obviously had plenty of time to work out and prepare my little coded message to you.’
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