Tundra

by Tim Stevens

  Why had Keys been in the infirmary at that hour of the night? It was possible he’d gone for a heroin fix, but it seemed an odd time for an addict to need one. No: Purkiss thought Keys had been lured there. Either someone – Wyatt – had summoned him, citing acute illness, or whoever it was that had leverage over Keys, that knew about his addiction, had demanded a meeting there.

  Wyatt remained the most likely perpetrator. But Purkiss was aware of the dangers of dismissing other possibilities out of hand, no matter how fanciful they seemed. It was plausible that one of the others was blackmailing Wyatt, and had met him in the night to issue further threats and to question him about what he had told the journalist Farmer earlier that evening. An argument might have intensified into a physical struggle, and the killing may have been an unintended consequence.

  There was the other matter of the disrupted communication with the outside world. It could turn out to be the result of weather damage to the satellite dish. But Purkiss knew that was a coincidence too far. Somebody – and this time Wyatt was the only plausible candidate – had sabotaged it, either the dish itself or some other component in the communications chain. Medievsky had said the dish was located forty kilometres to the west of Yarkovsky Station. Wyatt could have taken one of the snowmobiles in the dead of night, either before or after he’d killed Keys, and made the round trip in an hour, assuming the weather and terrain permitted it.

  Once again, the reasons for the sabotage weren’t clear. Sooner or later, contact would be re-established, not least because the outside world would start to get suspicious and investigate. It suggested again that Wyatt was buying time, or more accurately borrowing it. Which meant he had something pressing on his mind, some action or event.

  But by breaking the line of communication with the outside, Wyatt was cutting himself off as well. Two explanations came to mind. Either he was operating entirely independently, and had no need to keep in touch with anyone beyond the station. Or, more likely, he had some other method of contact, perhaps a link via a second satellite dish which was unknown to Medievsky and the others.

  Purkiss suspected the second, which was why he’d planted the surveillance device in the ceiling above Wyatt’s room. It was a long shot. Wyatt might not even be communicating from his room. But Purkiss’s options at this point were limited.

  He hadn’t brought any kind of weapon to Yarkovsky Station, not least because he wouldn’t have got it past the several airport security checkpoints he’d passed through on the journey from London. The surveillance equipment was more easily smuggled, and from the outset Purkiss had been looking for an opportunity to use it.

  He found Montrose in the main laboratory with Budian, both of them working at separate desks. Montrose glanced up as Purkiss put his head round the door. The harsh light from overhead flashed off his spectacles.

  ‘Dr Montrose. Ryan. Could I have a word?’

  He’d expected reluctance, but Montrose stood up immediately and came over, his face grim. ‘What is it?’

  ‘In private?’ Purkiss murmured, glancing over at Budian, who didn’t look up. She still looked ashen. Next to Avner, she seemed to be taking Keys’s death more badly than any of them.

  Montrose led the way down the corridor to his own office. Inside, after he’d closed the door, he said again, ‘What?’

  ‘I’m at a loose end here now,’ said Purkiss. ‘I can’t continue with the interviews, not after what’s happened.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You’re in charge of the station in Oleg’s absence. I wanted to ask if I could be of some use.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I have some IT skills. Let me use one of the computers, see if I can work on the internet connection.’

  ‘It’s the satellite system that’s down. The dish, probably. The fault’s not with the computers.’

  Purkiss pulled a flash drive from his pocket. ‘I have a program on here that runs an advanced diagnostic check on connection problems. It’s worth a try, even if only to confirm what we already suspect.’

  Montrose peered into Purkiss’s face. ‘Why didn’t you mention this earlier?’

  Purkiss glanced away in embarrassment. ‘To tell you the truth, I didn’t think of it. I’d forgotten I had the program with me. It was only a few minutes ago, when I was working on my laptop and inserted this drive for something else, that I noticed it.’

  Montrose took a step back. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Why?’

  Montrose blinked, as if he hadn’t been expecting Purkiss to question him. ‘Because there’s classified data on these machines. We can’t have some journalist accessing them.’

  ‘So find me a spare. A PC that’s linked up but doesn’t have anything on it I shouldn’t be looking at.’

  Montrose hesitated. Purkiss could almost hear the calculations gong on in the man’s mind. If Purkiss succeeded, Montrose could share the credit for it. It would be one in the eye for Medievsky.

  Purkiss shrugged. ‘Look, it was just a thought. Forget it.’ He turned for the door.

  Montrose opened it, jerked his head. ‘Come with me.’ His face was impassive, but Purkiss knew he’d won.

  Back in the laboratory, Montrose indicated a desktop computer that looked at least five years old. ‘That one doesn’t get used much.’

  Purkiss seated himself at the office chair and started up the computer. He said, ‘You can watch over my shoulder if you want. Make sure I’m not stealing anybody’s secrets.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  The computer took an age to boot, the back-and-forth whirring cutting through the silence of the laboratory. Purkiss waited patiently. He’d noticed the two USB ports on the body of the unit as he sat down.

  At last the desktop presented itself on the monitor, together with a prompt for a username and password. Montrose said: ‘Avert your eyes,’ and reached in past Purkiss. He tapped on the keyboard.

  Purkiss looked again after a safe interval. The wallpaper was a motif featuring the flags of the five nations participating in the Yarkovsky Station project. He plugged the flash disk into one of the USB ports.

  The disk held a number of files, all of them titled with obscure monikers. He selected one and opened it.

  The program began its search. He saw the hourglass freezing, heard the renewed churning of the moving parts within the computer. The machine’s age would buy him some time.

  Purkiss sat back in the chair. ‘It’s going to take a while.’

  Montrose said nothing.

  He watched, poised at Purkiss’s shoulder, until the moment had stretched out to an unbearable length. With a sigh, he walked slowly away, back over to his own work station.

  Purkiss kept his position, leaning back into the support of the chair in a posture of bored waiting.

  His left hand crept into the pocket of his trousers and felt for what was inside. Carefully, his eyes on Montrose’s back, he extracted the end of the lead, inserted it into the second USB port. He shuffled slightly so that his leg was raised, his foot propped across his other knee beneath the desk, obscuring the wire which snaked into his pocket.

  Purkiss reached out a hand, as surreptitiously as he could, and clicked on the menu on the screen. With the fingers of his other hand he rubbed his eyes, sighed in exasperation.

  The window came up within ten seconds: Copying contents.

  Cloning a hard drive wasn’t difficult, but the speed of the reproduction was dependent on several factors, among them the specifications of the parent drive and of the device to which it was being copied. The portable hard drive in Purkiss’s pocket was brand new, and had a memory which was an order of magnitude greater than that of the computer on the desk in front of him. The computer, on the other hand, dated back to the end of the last decade. It had a processor which might as well have been powered by steam technology, and a memory capacity of similar vintage.

  The bar crept across the window. Download 11% complete.

  It stayed stuck t
here.

  Purkiss called up the software he was running from the flash drive. The program had finished. He started it again.

  The minutes on the wall clock ticked by.

  At his own workstation, Montrose raised his head and stared at Purkiss, his eyes obscured by the light off his glasses. Purkiss waved his hand at the monitor in front of him, raised his eyebrows.

  The window read: Download 87% complete. Again it had stopped.

  Purkiss leaned back in his chair again, stretched, closed his eyes in mock frustration. When he opened them, Montrose had risen and stepped out from behind his desk.

  Purkiss glanced at the display on the screen. Download 92% complete.

  He thought: come on.

  Montrose made his way across the floor. He was ten paces away. Five.

  Download complete.

  Purkiss pulled the lead from the USB port and slipped it into his pocket in one fluid movement as he stood up. He shook his head.

  ‘No good. It’s found nothing.’

  Montrose crowded in alongside him, gazing at the screen. The program from the flash disk had run its course again. Please contact your service provider, was its sheepish advice.

  Without ceremony Montrose withdrew the flash disk, prompting an angry message on the monitor about failing to eject properly.

  ‘Hey.’ Purkiss watched Montrose stride over to his own computer and insert the flash disk. He sat and explored what came up for a minute while Purkiss stood by, feigning exasperation.

  ‘What, you think I copied something?’

  Montrose ejected the disk and tossed it to Purkiss. He looked put out.

  ‘As you said. It doesn’t hurt to check.’

  Purkiss sighed. ‘Well, I’ll get out of your way.’ He nodded to Budian and left the laboratory.

  He had no idea if there’d be anything of use on the cloned drive in his pocket. It had been a spare computer, after all, and it was too much to wish for to expect it to hold clues as to what was going on at the station. What Wyatt was intending.

  But it was worth a look, because Purkiss didn’t have a vast number of options.

  Thirteen

  Lenilko’s office wasn’t grand, but one of the privileges of his rank within the FSB was the view from his window. Across Lubyanskaya Square, almost submerged as it was beneath a sea of snow, the lighted façade of Detsky Mir, the great toy department store, drew his eye.

  He gazed through the window, and gave up trying to ignore the voice of his conscience. He’d done the wrong thing.

  Right up until the very moment Wyatt had said down the line: ‘What is it?’, Lenilko hadn’t been sure how he would answer. He’d rung the satellite phone and, as expected, it had gone to voicemail.

  ‘Call me,’ he said tersely.

  He had no idea when Wyatt would check for messages, but he knew the man would call back as soon as he received it. The rule was that Lenilko didn’t initiate contact. If he did, it must be for a reason of the most pressing importance.

  Lenilko had tried to distract himself with work, but it was a lost cause. When the phone rang thirteen minutes later – he’d been watching the clock – Lenilko snatched it up and thumbed the receive button.

  Wyatt: ‘What is it?’

  And Lenilko said the words he now regretted. ‘John Farmer, Martin Hughes, is untouchable.’

  Wyatt waited, and Lenilko explained. When he mentioned the man’s real name – John Purkiss – he sensed rather than heard Wyatt’s sigh of recognition.

  ‘Purkiss. Yes. I’ve heard of him. Five, six years ago he left the Service. His fiancee, another operative, was murdered by a colleague.’

  Lenilko took this in. ‘He must be a current agent still. His identity will have been expunged from the MI6 records.’

  ‘Why, do you think?’

  ‘It’s unusual. He might be in deep cover within MI6. I don’t know.’ Lenilko closed his eyes. ‘In any case, my instructions are clear. You’re to keep your hands off him.’

  There was a pause on the line.

  Wyatt said, ‘Your instructions. Does that suggest you don’t agree with them?’

  ‘They are my orders, and therefore your orders,’ Lenilko said thinly.

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Any developments?’

  ‘No,’ said Wyatt. ‘It’s gone midnight here. I’ve been taking apart the damaged snowmobile, the one Farmer – Purkiss – was riding. There’s nothing to find; it’s too wrecked.’

  ‘Then I’ll leave you be,’ said Lenilko. ‘And remember. Untouchable.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Beyond the window, the haze of snow was letting up, allowing the night sky to seep through more blackly.

  By conveying to Wyatt the orders he’d been given by Rokva, the Director, Lenilko was doing the correct thing. The disciplined thing. He was being a loyal, trustworthy senior FSB officer, one who bowed to the superior knowledge of those who had a far better grasp of the big picture than he did. He was doing his duty for Mother Russia.

  But, if the situation were viewed differently, he was betraying not only his agent, Wyatt, but the State to which he had sworn his loyalty, too. He was granting a blanket protection from interrogation and harm to a known British agent operating in close proximity to one of his own men. Inevitably, he was compromising his man’s safety. And without knowing what Purkiss’s motives were for being at Yarkovsky Station, he had to assume the man was a member of the opposition.

  By allowing Purkiss to retain his untouchable status, Lenilko was, potentially, aiding and abetting an enemy of the Russian state.

  Lenilko turned from the window and looked at the picture of Natalya and the twins on his desk. Once, he’d have been able to share his dilemma with her. He’d have curled up beside her on the sofa with a glass of Georgian red and batted the broad principles back and forth, without going into the specific, she taking the devil’s advocate role and he arguing against the points she made, until he came to his decision. Now, the twins were her life, and she and they were increasingly dwindling within his, and there would be no further such sharing of his problems.

  He looked at the clock. Half past seven. There was no point in heading home now, or even phoning to make his apologies.

  Besides, he had another matter to attend to.

  Lenilko opened the door of his office, waited till Anna and Konstantin looked his way, and summoned them with a twitch of his head.

  They sat across the desk from him, expectant, Anna eagerly so, Konstantin more lugubrious.

  Lenilko studied them in turn. The silence drew out. It was a very useful tool, silence.

  He said, ‘One of you, at least, knows why I have brought you in here.’

  Anna’s face was doubtful. Konstantin’s was curious in a bored way, his usual expression.

  Lenilko said: ‘One of you has betrayed me. Perhaps both of you have.’

  Was that the slightest movement at the corner of Konstantin’s mouth? Tipping his head back, Lenilko steepled his fingers under his chin and breathed out through pursed lips.

  ‘Less than one hour ago, I was called in to see Director Rokva. To my surprise, he knew I had identified John Farmer, the journalist at Yarkovsky Station, as Martin Hughes.’

  This time there was a definite reaction as the implication sank in. Anna glanced across at Konstantin, her mouth open. Konstantin himself frowned and dropped his gaze, blinking.

  ‘How did the Director know I had established this connection? How was he aware that not three hours earlier, I and my team of two trusted staff had discovered, through a combination of ingenuity and painstaking plodding, that the journalist John Farmer is the same man as the one who was photographed on the Baltic the morning of the attempt on our president’s life? By what fantastical piece of intelligence work did Director Rokva obtain this knowledge?’

  He watched each of them, the tension cranking up so high it seemed to hum in the air. Both met his gaze now, Anna wide-eyed and ashen, Konstantin’s features set
in stone.

  Lenilko rose to his feet. When they moved to follow suit, he gestured them down with a flick of his fingers. The dynamic was different depending on their relative positions. If he made them stand while he sat, he’d be the boss dressing down his subordinates. Keeping them on their seats while he towered over them turned the scene into one of interrogation.

  ‘I have two questions. The first: which of you informed Director Rokva of our discovery, behind my back? And the second: why?’

  A muscle jumped in Anna’s cheek. Konstantin remained impassive.

  Lenilko gave it a full ten seconds.

  ‘Very well. Both of you, get out. Go home. You will each be subject to a full disciplinary investigation on Monday. But rest assured, you will not be working with me again. Indeed, your careers in the FSB are over.’

  ‘It was me,’ said Konstantin.

  Anna stared at him. Konstantin stood, unbidden, his posture submissive but his chin raised in something approaching defiance.

  Lenilko examined him, letting his gaze rove over the man’s face and slowly down his body and back up again. He knew it was one of the most demeaning things one could do to a subordinate. He had been on the receiving end of such treatment himself, as a young recruit.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ he said.

  Konstantin murmured, ‘Director Rokva had a right to know. My loyalty is to you, Mr Lenilko, but ahead of that it is to the FSB. I judged this information to be of sufficient importance that the Director needed to be told of it.’

  ‘You... judged.’ Lenilko let wonder creep into his voice. ‘And I presume your judgement was that I, your superior, was incapable of making such a decision myself.’

  Konstantin had the air of a man standing on the gallows and therefore with nothing more to lose. ‘With respect, Mr Lenilko, your involvement in this project is... complicated. Your decision to share or not to share information is biased. I predicted that you would not disclose the journalist’s identity to the Director immediately, because you were jealous of the case and wanted to continue to conduct the investigation without outside interference. I therefore made the decision to communicate with the Director myself.’