by Alex Dryden
CHAPTER SIX
HIDDEN IN THE copse, Anna had seen the woman an hour earlier and she immediately thought she looked nervous for an operative. She looked more like a teenage girl than a woman. She picked her up as soon as she’d passed the houses from the roadside and entered the fields behind. Anna then watched her emerge wearing different, farming clothes, walk up past the copse and circle back in the direction of the barn. After that it had got too dark to see without the night vision binoculars.
She decided to remain in the copse and wait. The woman, this girl, was definitely the courier, but something was wrong. Despite the obvious nervousness of the woman’s movements, it was the change of clothes and the surreptitious way she moved through the field that gave her away. She must be very inexperienced. Was this the best the agent could do?
The other thing wrong was that she was very late. She should have been here earlier in the day, made the drop and departed long before there was any chance of a crossover. That was not good, it was highly unprofessional, in fact. There should be no possible identification between the person making the drop and the one doing the pick-up. But against that, Anna knew she wouldn’t have long to wait now before she made the pick-up. The less time a drop was left in place, the better.
At six-thirty she walked carefully over to the side of the copse nearest the barn. There were no lights in that direction, but she knew from the reading on the binoculars that she was just under a quarter of a mile away and only open land with two ditches in between separated her from it. She would give it an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Let the woman make the drop and get clear. Maybe the courier would return by the same route she had come or, more likely, she would return by a different route, perhaps straight down the track that connected the barn with the road. Neither of them should see the other. But Anna decided she would leave at least an hour before she moved.
She listened again. The copse was quiet, the birds had stopped singing, but there was the sound of traffic from the road below. She sat on some dry wood and waited. Once she thought she heard the low growl of a military truck, but it could have been a commercial vehicle.
Just before seven o’clock – she remembered later that she’d checked on her watch – Anna heard the sound of a diesel engine starting. It was unmistakably a diesel engine and seemed to be coming from the direction of the barn. Then she saw a bright light coming from the barn and after that she heard the truck engine she’d heard before, the deep, growling truck engine. She was sure now it was a military vehicle. Suddenly the barn was ablaze with light, through what looked like half of an arched doorway. Then she saw a truck’s lights swinging fast off the road and heading up the hill along the track towards the lighted barn. Anna ran out of the copse and, crouching low in the darkness, headed towards the barn. When she was just over a hundred yards away, she sunk down into a shallow ditch and caught her breath. As she looked over the lip of the ditch, three things happened simultaneously; she saw a big vehicle – the truck she’d heard – pulling up outside where the blazing light came from the barn. Its engine died, but the headlights stayed on; she heard shouting and curses coming from inside the barn; and finally she heard a shot.
She ran back to the copse. She turned and saw the shadows of men in the truck’s lights. She heard orders being snapped out. Taking the night vision binoculars from her pack, she picked out Russian soldiers. She was certain they were Russian. They were Airborne judging from their caps, but the spetsnaz disguised their identities with the blue Airborne caps and epaulettes. Either that, or they wore the uniforms of units stationed nearby. She couldn’t see any other insignia from this distance. Did they have dogs? She watched the uniformed men fan out. Some were highlighted against the light of the barn, others faded into darkness on either side. Through the binoculars she could see they were facing her and were starting to walk slowly in the direction of the copse, towards her. Then torches were switched on and now she could see the positions of all the men from the torches they carried. A line of soldiers, maybe twenty or thirty. They were beginning to make a sweep across the fields towards where she was hidden.
From the edge of the copse nearest to the barn, she watched their slow progress from four hundred yards. As she was about to make her retreat, there was suddenly the sound of another military vehicle and she looked down towards the end of the track from the barn where it reached the road. Two military jeeps were racing up the track and a truck swung in after them and stopped. It turned square on to the track and blocked the exit to the road. The jeeps raced on, lashing their gears until they slid to a violent halt next to the first truck beside the barn. Eight soldiers jumped out of the jeeps, weapons drawn. There was shouting and she heard the sound of small machine guns being armed. The new arrivals were levelling their weapons at the Russians outside the barn – two officers, she guessed; they were spetsnaz, that was unmistakable now that she studied them through the binoculars.
The line of soldiers halted their advance, then turned raggedly, the torches swinging around in the darkness. Anna watched the men from the jeeps. They wore green-grey uniforms and had Ukrainian insignia and shoulder patches. There was evidently a disagreement. The Ukrainian officer in charge was shouting at his Russian counterpart. ‘Illegal, illegal’ – she picked out the single word repeated. Russians making covert operations on Ukrainian territory, that was what he meant. It wasn’t the first time. Tensions were high outside the barn, but they were high wherever Russian troops and naval personnel were situated on Ukrainian soil. This looked like an illegal Russian intelligence operation. And the Ukrainian officer was making threats of arrest, despite being outnumbered six to one.
Anna ran through the low scrub trees until she’d reached the far end of the copse. Returning to the road was out of the question. Now both sides would have it covered. She would have to head higher up, away from the town. She remembered roughly where the courier’s route had been on this side of the copse and thought she would follow it before the soldiers found it, if they returned. There was still a chance of completing the pick-up. If the courier had followed the rules, she would have left the drop hidden somewhere while she reconnoitred the barn. Unless her arrest was, in fact, her second visit to the barn. But now, did she even have time to save herself, Anna wondered, let alone look for a small bag hidden in the darkness?
The land was soaked with rain on the far side of the copse. Her feet sank into it, it was almost marshy here. Her footsteps would be found, but she could also find the courier’s steps too. With no light, she crept low over the grass until she found the indentation she was looking for, a footstep that led up the hill. She followed, placing her feet as well as she could in the courier’s steps. She went in a wide circle, at an angle to the hill, until the steps turned straight upwards, then back around above the barn.
She stopped and watched the soldiers’ lights. They’d returned to the barn and there seemed to be a stand-off between the Ukrainians and Russians. She watched through the binoculars as the Ukrainian commanding officer spoke into a radio. Calling for back-up, she supposed. But they were all below her now. And there were no dogs that she could hear.
She reached a sandy part of the hill where there were low, scratchy bushes. The footsteps were going in all directions. Had the courier stopped here? To find a place to stash the fertiliser bag while she made a reconnoitre, perhaps? But she saw nothing in the scrub, feeling with her hands in the darkness. The bag of fertiliser wasn’t there. Had the courier taken it with her already to the barn? She looked down the hill again. The soldiers were still facing each other. And then she saw other vehicles arrive at the foot of the track – more Ukrainian jeeps, she guessed. Internal security. The truck that blocked the track pulled back and let them through, then blocked the track again.
They were too busy with each other to find her footmarks soon, or the courier’s tracks she had followed. Maybe the Ukrainians would order dogs to be brought up, once the dispute was resolved. She had a little time, and
a little space to manoeuvre. There was no cover for the courier to hide anything, except a tree she saw in the distance, maybe a hundred yards away, at the level of the hill she was on. She felt a great urge to get away. But first she went towards the tree and found the courier’s footsteps again. It wasn’t the direction the courier would have taken to the barn. Up in the crook was a plastic sack that looked grey in the darkness. Standing on a knot in the tree, she snatched it and ran now, up the hill until, higher up, she could find rocks to obscure her tracks.
As she fled through the rocks, she knew that if the courier hadn’t been late, it would have been her the Russians caught in their lights.
Anna smelled the sea before she saw it, and heard the persistent, low roaring noise the sea makes even in the calmest conditions. She guessed she was roughly a mile away from the rendezvous, but then there was the cliff to descend before she could make the beach and she had no idea how long that would take. It was nearly twenty-four hours since she had escaped from Sevastopol and the time for the rendezvous was approaching. But if she didn’t make the time agreed with Burt at their briefing, then Larry and the others would activate the plan to get her out off the beach on the next day, or the one after that, and at the same time.
She looked down the long slope of a hill that fell away gently to some high, sharp cliffs that flanked a small cove. She was roughly halfway between Sevastopol and Yevratoriya. In the gathering darkness, the walls of the cliffs where they curved around and away from her were a shade lighter than the fields above them and the sea below, and she knew she was in the right place, even if the GPS hadn’t told her so. There was no road to this place, that was why they’d picked it. It was isolated from people. She’d walked through the night and all that day after the pick-up. As the crow flies, it hadn’t been so bad. Tonight would be the first chance of rescue.
Overnight on the long walk away from the city, she had fished out the thick plastic envelope from the plastic bag of fertiliser, thrown the bag away, and stashed the envelope in her jacket. She had enough food for three days, maybe four if she eked it out. That was so she could go underground in the event of trouble and there’d been nothing but trouble since she’d arrived at Odessa. There was more than one opportunity for a rescue and it could be days before they felt they could come in. She looked out to sea now. The fog had lifted, that was a pity. Maybe they would wait for more bad weather to arrive. Maybe they would wait until the sea cut up again, or maybe there wouldn’t be time for that. All she could do was to make the rendezvous, then her fate was in their hands.
When it was completely dark, she descended the hill slowly, watching all the time. If her arrival had been known, and the drop itself was known, would they also know the fall-back plan for her ex-filtration from the country. It didn’t matter, either way there was no other chance now. She’d seen Ukrainian soldiers combing the outskirts of Sevastopol, and the ports and other exit points would be heavily guarded.
As she descended she thought about the stand-off between the Russian and Ukrainian military at the barn and wondered what the Russians had told the Ukrainian government – an escaped prisoner from their naval base, perhaps? But there was only the woman – a girl, really, from what she’d seen. And the Russians were unlikely to be believed in the highly tense atmosphere that existed in Sevastopol. It depended who had gained the upper hand at the barn. If it was the Ukrainians, then they would want to know the identity of the courier, once she was revealed to them, as much as the Russians did. The Russians would try to concoct a story that made the Ukrainians seek common cause with them, perhaps, or just curious enough to heed their requests for a search of the city and its environs. It depended on those few seconds at the barn – with diplomacy the Russians might have convinced the Ukrainian military to work with them. No doubt the spectre of terrorism would be invoked, the convenient lie for all unwelcome events.
She reached the top of the cliffs and now clearly heard the waves breaking two hundred feet below. There was an old path fit only for animals, she’d been told in the briefing. But nobody had actually seen it. It was said to have been there for more than two and a half thousand years, since the Greeks occupied the peninsula. Suddenly it sounded uncertain to her, unplanned. They hand’t even known for sure where it began its descent from the top of the cliffs.
She decided to walk to the left along the cliff edge first. It was pitch-dark now, the sea blacker below except where the waves broke. She didn’t know if she’d see the path even if it was there, and she couldn’t risk using a light. So she walked carefully, stopping often to study a change in the shades of darkness that might reveal the existence of the path. After an hour, examining every possible opening and once almost falling over the cliff, she thought it couldn’t be on that side. She walked back to the centre of the cliffs where she’d started and began again, this time pacing slowly to the right. She was losing valuable time just finding the path – if it existed at all. But she was calm, as she always was in any extreme situation – calmer in those circumstances, if anything. Even the prospect of being left alone on foreign soil and with half an army out there looking for her wasn’t enough to drive fear into her thoughts. Everything – as long as you were free – had a solution.
After twenty minutes searching on the other side to the right, she saw a break between two rocks. The ground was overgrown, but they’d said the path was unused. That was its advantage. Carefully, she dropped down between the rocks and saw a tiny ledge. Below her and the ledge she saw the white crests of the waves rolling on to the beach. It looked like a sheer drop, but she edged out along the ledge and then saw that the lighter streak widened down below. There, ahead of her, she saw a snaking, sandy-looking area that might indicate a way. It seemed to wind its way past other rocks and stones and that was a good sign.
She crept ahead using the narrowest of footholds, in almost complete blindness. The sound of the waves was beating in time with the blood in her head. But once she’d reached the furthest point of the ledge she saw a step off it on to small stones where nothing grew. She looked down on to another almost sheer drop. Below her, another lighter-shaded and twisting shape of what seemed to be a path wound around the near-vertical cliff face. In the darkness it was like a loop that appeared and disappeared in ox-bow curves. This must be it, she decided, but even a goat would have trouble traversing it.
She slid and climbed, mostly backwards and using her hands against the cliff face, for over an hour. She clutched on to the jagged edges of rocks when she felt herself going, until finally she stepped out on to a shingled beach. The salt smell of the sea hit her first and then the smell of seaweed and tar filled her nostrils. She slumped down on the pebbles, exhausted suddenly. Her heart was racing. She didn’t know how she’d made it.
Her watch said it was eighteen minutes after midnight. She wanted to sleep. She was hungry. But she put away her fear. Fear was the enemy. From a pocket in her jacket she withdrew a keysized plastic tool and flipped a switch. A tiny beam lit beyond the edge of the beach where the water broke. She flashed it three times in a south-south westerly direction, then three times in a south-south easterly direction. She repeated it twice more and sat down to wait. If the Russians or the Ukrainian coastal patrols were looking for her out there, they would see it too. She was getting colder. And she wondered if she’d be able to get back up the track if Burt’s team didn’t come.
As she waited, she cast her mind back to the scene at the barn once again. There’d been the shot. She’d thought about that at first, wondered who had fired it, until she’d seen what followed. For before the Ukrainian jeeps had arrived and before she’d turned up the hill to escape the soldiers, she’d watched a body being carried from the barn; two soldiers, one holding the arms, the other the legs. She’d seen the courier’s long hair – a woman’s hair – hanging down and dragging along the earth. She’d looked like a dead deer being carried on a pole. It could only be that the woman had killed herself. They would certainly have
wanted her alive. But she was certainly dead from the way they carried her like a hunted animal and if she were dead, it meant the agent was safe. The courier had sacrificed herself to save the agent, even though she didn’t know it. She wondered if the Ukrainian officer had demanded to look inside the truck and what he would do when he saw the body of the courier.
As Anna sat, numb, and listened to the surf, she wondered for the first time about the courier; she’d been a young woman. Anna thought about her young life, her past, what the mission had meant to her. It seemed she’d been a novice from everything Anna had seen. Perhaps it was her first time. Anna felt a deep, wrenching sadness at the waste of life. And she wondered what it was the agent had told her to ensure that she’d killed herself: that this was a KGB operation, certainly; that it was for her country, for the new Russia – that would have been his message to disguise the truth. It was not for the courier to know that she was delivering material that might damage her country. The young woman undoubtedly believed she’d been delivering a package for her bosses in the KGB, not for a Western intelligence agency.
And then, when she’d been caught at the barn, she’d shot herself. There seemed to be no other explanation. Her captors certainly would have wanted her alive. But the agent would have made as sure as was possible that she didn’t allow herself to be taken alive. The agent had deceived her well – so well that she was dead by her own hand. Anna sat and thought again about the young woman; first deceived into delivering material that was treasonable, then deceived into taking her own life in order to protect the agent. Unlike the detached, clinical thoughts she’d had for the two men she’d killed the previous day, Anna now felt a deep compassion for the young woman, duped by all sides, and a friend to no one. She’d been everybody’s fool. Something Finn had once said to her came into her mind. ‘If there were no spies, there’d be no need for any spies.’ It was true. The facet of espionage that troubled her most was that it existed entirely for itself and was self-fulfilling. Finn, too, had died for that, for the pursuit of an uncertain goal in the small bubble of an alternative, fake world.