by Chris Ryan
It was cold in the early morning, so Jamie was pleased with the hooded top he wore underneath his coat. It kept him warm as well as going some way to concealing his face. Even so, he had to stamp his feet as he waited. They arrive between eight and ten in the morning. It meant he could be waiting for some time. Jamie didn’t mind. Quite the opposite. He was excited. His fingertips tingled. He was looking forward to executing the first part of his assignment. He thought about the people who were always so quick to think the worst of him. Mum. Dad. Even Kelly. If they could only see him now. His mouth was dry with the thrill of it.
He took a seat on a bench on the opposite side of the road, making sure that he had a clear view of the embassy. Removing his mobile phone, he started fiddling with it to blend into the background. Just some kid obsessed with texting, people would think. He continued to wait. Now and then he would put one hand into his pocket. The Colt was there and he would grip it. It felt good.
No more than twenty-five metres to the main entrance, he calculated. It would be fine.
He waited some more.
In the event, it was just after nine when a car pulled up outside the embassy. It was chauffeur driven, but it wasn’t a particularly grand or impressive vehicle – a bog-standard Renault Laguna. Its hazard lights flashed as it double parked, while the chauffeur stepped out and opened the back door. Two men emerged. They were both rather fat, one clearly older than the other. As they squeezed through the parked cars, on to the pavement and up to the steps of the embassy, it was the older man who took the lead, walking with a kind of brusque impatience. The second man followed several steps behind. His gait was a little less ostentatious and he carried in his right hand a quite ordinary-looking briefcase.
Jamie raised his camera, zoomed in and started to snap. He managed to take a substantial burst of photographs before the younger of the two men stopped, turned and looked behind him. Through the zoom of the camera, Jamie saw that the man was staring straight at him.
He felt his blood freeze. He lowered the camera and instinctively pulled his hood down. If they see you, don’t panic. Just walk away. They’ll assume you’re the Press. He turned heel and walked to the end of the road. Adrenaline surged through him. Any moment now, he thought to himself, I’m going to feel a hand on my shoulder. They’re following me.
He upped his pace.
Jamie turned the corner, into the busy main street. He ran across the road, ignoring the beeps from the cars, which had to brake and swerve to avoid him. On the opposite pavement he stopped and looked back.
No one.
He grinned as he felt a sudden exhilaration. It had gone well. He put his hand over the screen at the back of the camera and flicked through the images he had taken. They were good. He’d got what he wanted. That evening, having changed his clothes and therefore his appearance, he would repeat his performance, this time outside the Georgian Orthodox Church further west of here, where he had been told these two men worshipped regularly. From a randomly chosen Internet café he would e-mail the best of his photographs to the address he had been given.
And then he would lie low and wait. Wait for another package, and for the opportunity to carry out the second part of his instructions.
*
Dolohov’s wounds were bad. He kept asking for vodka, but Sam refused to give him any. He needed to use the alcohol to keep the stumps disinfected, a rough and ready way of stopping his captive from developing fever, but the best he could come up with. Dolohov managed not to scream when he plunged the wounds into a bowl of vodka, but that was more out of exhaustion, Sam sensed, than bravery. He found codeine in the bathroom cabinet and kept the Russian dosed up on that. It was hardly going to remove the pain, but it would take the edge off for as long as the supply lasted.
They sat in silence, Dolohov still restrained by the electrical flex. It was clear that the Russian knew how close he had come to death. When he had uttered Jacob’s name, a madness had come over Sam. He knew what people looked like when they thought they were about to die. Dolohov had that look.
But Sam had calmed himself at the last moment. And he had done his best to keep calm during the slow hours before morning. Apart from during Sam’s painful makeshift medical attentions, the two of them had sat in silence, Dolohov obviously trying to manage the pain and Sam trying to manage the implications of what he had just learned.
After Bland had collared him and spun him the MI6 line, Sam had simply not believed him. There were too many things that just didn’t add up and Jacob’s parting words had never been far from the front of his mind. But Dolohov had no reason to lie to him. On the contrary, he had every reason to tell the truth. What was more, Dolohov did not know Sam’s name. He did not know his relationship to Jacob. Bland might have been playing mind games; Dolohov almost certainly wasn’t.
And then there was the evidence of the laptop. It was Jacob’s – at least, it had been taken from Jacob’s things – and he had e-mailed details of the dead red-light runners to someone. Whichever way he looked at it, Dolohov’s story stacked up.
Except for one thing. If the Russian was telling him the truth, his brother was no longer the man he once knew. He had become someone else.
Sam turned to the big windows at the end of the room and parted the curtains. The low, crisp sun of dawn shot in. Sam winced, but did not move the curtains. The morning sky was red and scudded with lean pink clouds. There was a chorus of birdsong. In Kazakhstan it would be later in the day, but the same sun would be shining down. Shining down on Jacob. What would his brother be doing now?
What the hell would his brother be doing?
Treason. It’s not a terribly fashionable word is it? Bland’s voice was as clear in Sam’s head as if he were actually there. I would say, in circumstances such as this, that a man might become bitter.
Sam found himself having to control his anger again.
They’ll tell you things, Sam. Things about me. Don’t forget that you’re my brother. Don’t believe them.
How could he forget that? How could he believe them? Jacob was his brother. He deserved the benefit of the doubt. But he also had some explaining to do. For a moment, Sam considered contacting Bland again, telling him what he knew. But he put that thought from his mind. The memory of the Spetsnaz troops in Kazakhstan, of Craven’s death, was still fresh. Nobody had yet explained to him with any degree of satisfaction how the Russians knew they were coming. The Regiment had been expected and in Sam’s book that meant one thing: a tip-off. Go singing to MI6 and the chances were that every word of his conversation would end up on a transcript roll somewhere in Moscow. He shook his head as he continued to look out at the night sky.
Sam needed to see Jacob. Face to face. To ask him the questions that needed asking. His brother deserved that at the very least. And mole or no mole, he needed to do it without the interference of MI6. They would be heavy handed in their questioning. They would more than likely torture him to get the truth. They would do to Jacob what Sam had done to Dolohov, or something like. And he wasn’t prepared to let that happen.
He turned to Dolohov.
‘Can you contact him?’ he asked abruptly.
Dolohov, bleary eyed, raised his head. Jesus, he looked like shit. ‘Who?’ he demanded.
‘Jacob Redman.’
Momentarily, a wily look crossed Dolohov’s face. It disappeared as soon as it had arrived, to be replaced by that sombre expression; it did not, however, go unnoticed by Sam.
‘Yes,’ Dolohov replied. ‘I can contact him.’
‘How?’
‘By e-mail.’
Sam nodded. He thought for a while longer before speaking again. ‘Do you often contact him?’ he asked.
Dolohov gave him a contemptuous look, as though it were a stupid question. ‘It has never happened yet.’
‘But if you asked for a meeting, would he come?’
Dolohov shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He could be anywhere in the world.’ A pause. ‘But yes, I think
he would come. I am a man of a certain importance.’
Sam approached the chair. ‘I’m going to untie you,’ he said. ‘I’ve got your gun and mine. One of them will be pointing in your direction all the time.’
The Russian sneered.
‘I mean it, Dolohov. You won’t even be able to take a shit without me being there. Just in case you had any plans to play silly buggers.’
‘To play what?’
‘Just do what you’re told, Dolohov. If you want to make it through the day, that is.’ Sam walked round to the back of the chair and untied the flex. It fell from around Dolohov’s body. The Russian raised his arms and for the first time looked at his hands. They were a mess. The skin was stained and smeared with blood and the stumps where his fingers used to be glistened painfully. Dolohov looked bilious.
‘Count yourself lucky you didn’t go the way of the red-light runners, Dolohov,’ Sam told him, pointing his gun nonchalantly in the Russian’s direction. ‘But there’s still time, so let’s not fuck around. Where’s your computer?’
Dolohov looked towards the main doors of the room, out on to the hallway. ‘In my bedroom,’ he said.
‘Get moving.’
The Russian pushed himself weakly to his feet. He was unable to walk in a straight line as he staggered out of the room with Sam following behind – close, but not too close. The guy was a trained assassin, after all.
The bedroom was large and high-ceilinged. It was dominated by a big iron bed with an elegant patchwork quilt. There was a fireplace in this room, too; and next to it, against the wall, a large oak desk with a laptop computer neatly placed upon it.
‘Sit down,’ Sam instructed. ‘Open up the computer.’ Dolohov did as he was told. Sam paused as a thought hit him. ‘If you send e-mail from here, is it secure? Can anyone tap in?’
Dolohov shook his head. ‘Of course not. I have a virtual private network. I can communicate with Moscow, or anyone, without the risk of my communications being intercepted.’ He placed his wounded hands flat on the table. ‘I assume from your question,’ he said shrewdly, ‘that you are not involved with the security services.’
Sam remained dead-eyed. He put his gun against the back of his captive’s head. ‘Just do what you’re told, Dolohov. Write it now. Request a meeting. As soon as possible.’
He watched as Dolohov slowly and painfully used one of his remaining fingers to type a message. With each stroke of the keyboard he winced, leaving a moist trail of red where the stumps brushed against it. The message was short and to the point. MEETING NEEDED. URGENT. REVERT WITH TIME AND PLACE. DOLOHOV. The Russian slid one finger over the mouse pad, inserted an e-mail address into the address field, then directed the cursor towards the send button.
‘Stop,’ Sam said.
Dolohov froze.
‘Put your hands on the table. Both of them.’
Sam removed the gun from the back of Dolohov’s head, walked round to his side and pressed the weapon against the back of the Russian’s right hand. Dolohov looked up at him in horror.
‘You think I’m stupid?’ Sam growled.
‘What do you mean?’ Dolohov’s voice was little more than a breath.
‘I think you might have forgotten something,’ Sam pressed; and from the way Dolohov jutted out his jaw involuntarily, he could tell his suspicion was on the money. Dolohov would have some way of raising a distress signal in a situation like this. A phrase to be inserted into any communication or, more likely, a phrase to be omitted. ‘Are you going to alter that message so that it doesn’t raise any alarms?’ Sam demanded. ‘Or are you and I going to start talking about how useful your thumbs are again?’ He pressed the gun down harder. ‘It’s up to you, Dolohov. But I think you know I’m not fucking around.’
A pause. And then, slowly, Dolohov’s free hand slid once more to the keyboard. At the beginning of the e-mail he typed an extra sentence: ALL IS WELL AT THE UNIVERSITY. His breath was shaking as he waited for further instruction from Sam.
Sam gave it a few seconds. Then he raised the gun and put it to the side of Dolohov’s head. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said, his voice grim.
Dolohov’s body slumped. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. Either he was a brilliant actor, or Sam had scared all the remnants of duplicity out of him.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Send the thing.’
It looked to Sam as if it took all of Dolohov’s energy to raise his hand again. But he did it and with what looked like a superhuman effort, he moved the cursor once more to the send button.
And then he clicked. The window disappeared. The e-mail was sent.
It could be an hour before they received a reply. It could be a day. It could be a week. All they could do now was wait.
NINETEEN
FSB Headquarters. Moscow.
In the era of Communism, the huge, austere yellow-brick building on Lubyanka Square had housed not only the offices of the KGB, but also their prison. Many people who came to the attention of the secret police could expect to end up in this building, where torture and forced interrogation were commonplace. Not far from the centre of Moscow, it served as a constant reminder that the state would accept no dissent. Now, however, its reputation was less severe. It was still an administrative building, and no doubt it harboured many ghosts for those Muscovites who still remembered those dark days, but people could now walk past it without feeling a nervous chill that was nothing to do with the weather. Without feeling that the building itself was watching them.
Jacob Redman, emerging from the car that had been waiting on the tarmac for him at the airport, looked up at it. The car’s windows were tinted, so he squinted as the bright daylight hit his eyes. He’d managed to get some much needed shut-eye on the plane that had transported him directly from Baikonur to Moscow, under the watchful eye of the two Russian soldiers that had accompanied him. Even now they were escorting him from the car up to the main entrance of the building that now housed part of the FSB’s offices. Jacob walked briskly and with purpose. The heels of his shoes echoed on the hard floor of the cavernous entrance hall, which still bore signatures of its past – a lack of natural light and a kind of facelessness that hid the terrible things that had once gone on here. A suited official recognised him immediately and, with a nod first at Jacob and then at the two soldiers – an indication they were no longer required – he led the Englishman silently up three flights of stairs, along a corridor, which Jacob knew looked like every other corridor in this building, until they reached a door. The suit knocked, then held the door open and Jacob walked in. The door was closed tactfully behind him.
It was a large office, more comfortable than might perhaps have been expected given the basic nature of the rest of the building, but hardly luxurious. Thin carpet tiles on the floor. A leather sofa, but old. And a functional desk in the centre of the room, behind which sat a man. Nikolai Surov was a thin, sallow-faced man with sharp eyes and perfectly white hair. It was impossible to judge his age. Fifty? Sixty? Seventy? Any of these were possible. He was reading a report of some description; as Jacob entered, he raised his eyes. There was no expression in them, but that was usual. Jacob had met the director of the FSB enough times to know that he played his cards very close to his chest.
Surov indicated a chair on the opposite side of the desk. ‘Sit down,’ he said. His English was thickly accented, but very good. Jacob took a seat as Surov laid his report on the table and gazed at him with his inscrutable eyes.
‘We had not expected to see you in Moscow for a long time,’ Surov said finally.
‘Thanks for the warm welcome.’
His sarcasm was lost on the director. ‘They did not offer you a shower and some clean clothes at Baikonur?’
Jacob was unshaven and dirty. ‘I guess they must have forgotten their manners. They told you what happened at the training camp?’
Surov nodded. ‘How can you be sure it was the SAS?’
‘I recognise their handwriting.�
�� He hadn’t mentioned Sam in his report. There were some things the man sitting opposite him didn’t need to know. ‘What happened to your Spetsnaz boys who were supposed to be keeping watch in case something like this happened?’
‘Dead,’ the director said shortly. ‘Along with all the recruits. Your former colleagues did their work well.’
Jacob remained stony-faced. ‘I told you a four-man unit wouldn’t be enough.’
The director appeared not to hear. He sat silently for nearly a minute before he spoke again. ‘Your agent in London…’ He scanned his desk for another piece of paper. ‘Jamie Spillane?’ His rendition of the name, couched as it was in his thick Russian accent, made it almost unrecognisable.
Jacob nodded.
‘He has been activated. We have supplied him with what he needs. You are sure he is…’ Surov’s eyes narrowed. ‘You are sure he is fitted for the task?’
‘As well as any of them,’ Jacob said shortly.
‘He will be discreet?’
Jacob shrugged. ‘Who knows? As discreet as any of them can be. Once you hand him over to the Georgians, he can be as indiscreet as he likes.’
‘And you are confident he believes he is working for MI5?’
‘He has no reason not to.’
‘Good. This is a very important operation for the continuing security of the Russian people. There will be a medal for you.’
‘I’m not interested in medals. Just the money.’
Surov nodded. ‘There will be that, of course. The assassination will be the last operation for your students. Now that the British know what is happening, I am ordering the immediate elimination of all unactivated agents in the field.’ He smiled. ‘All except Jamie Spillane, of course.’