by Mark Dawson
The John Milton Series: Books 13-15
John Milton Thrillers
Mark Dawson
Contents
Sleepers
Sleepers
Part I
Southwold
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
London
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Moscow
Chapter 17
Southwold
Chapter 18
London
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Moscow
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Winchester
Chapter 23
Southwold
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Winchester
Chapter 26
Southwold
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Part II
Winchester
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Farnborough
Chapter 40
London
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Part III
Moscow
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
London
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Moscow
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Part IV
Moscow
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Aeroflot Flight SU 6281
Chapter 63
Vladivostok International Airport
Chapter 64
Part V
Komsomolsk-on-Amur
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Part VI
Komsomolsk-on-Amur
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Moscow
Chapter 74
Epilogue
Moscow
Chapter 1
London
Chapter 2
Afterword
Twelve Days
I. The Twelfth Day
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
II. The Eleventh Day
Chapter 3
III. The Tenth Day
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
IV. The Ninth Day
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
V. The Eighth Day
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
VI. The Seventh Day
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
VII. The Sixth Day
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
VIII. The Fifth Day
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
IX. The Fourth Day
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
X. The Third Day
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
XI. The Second Day
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
XII. The First Day
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Epilogue
Bright Lights
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part II
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Part III
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Part IV
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Part V
Chapter 85
Part VI
Chapter 86
A word from Mark
Also By Mark Dawson
In the John Milton Series
In the Beatrix Rose Series
In the Isabella Rose Series
In the Soho Noir Series
About the Author
Sleepers
A John Milton Thriller
Sleepers
Readers have contacted me to ask where thi
s book fits into the John Milton chronology. It’s a prequel, taking place immediately before the events in the first book in the series, The Cleaner. Please note, however, that you don’t need to have read The Cleaner in order to enjoy this book.
Happy reading - you’re about to have another unputdownable adventure with Milton.
Mark Dawson,
Salisbury
Part I
Southwold
1
Leonard Geggel spent the drive to Southwold thinking about CHERRY. It had been a year since Geggel’s retirement from MI6 and he hadn’t spoken to his old agent since then. Indeed, they had not parted on the best of terms. Pyotr Ilyich Aleksandrov had always been a cantankerous man, but, as the Russian grew older and more resigned to the fact that he would never be able to return home, he had become more and more frustrated. The two of them had argued during their last meeting. Aleksandrov had said that he needed an increase in his stipend so that he could move to a different house. Upon investigation, Geggel had found that Aleksandrov and his neighbour had fallen out over the folk music that Aleksandrov liked to play late at night as he drank himself into a stupor on the Moskovskaya Osobaya vodka that he had imported from Poland. Geggel had not even taken Aleksandrov’s request up the chain; he knew that it would be rejected and agreed that rejection would have been the right response. He had told Aleksandrov that there was to be no more money, and that he should make it up with his neighbour. The suggestion had provoked a foul-mouthed tirade against him, MI6 and the British state, followed by the angry suggestion that his work was not valued and that he should never have defected in the first place.
That had been the last time that they had met. It had come as a surprise, then, that Aleksandrov had made contact. He had called Geggel on his personal number and insisted that he must come to Southwold at once. Geggel had asked the reason for the urgency, but Aleksandrov would not be drawn on it. Instead, he had reiterated that it was of critical importance and that it simply could not wait. Geggel had reminded Aleksandrov that he was retired, and that it would be more appropriate to contact the woman who had replaced him as his handler. Aleksandrov had dismissed the suggestion, saying that Ross was young and incompetent. There was sexism there, too: Geggel knew that Aleksandrov did not hold truck with the idea that women could run male assets, and that he thought their value in intelligence-gathering was to ‘open their legs and listen carefully.’ Aleksandrov had added that he would only deal with someone that he knew and trusted. That, in the Russian’s world, was as close to a compliment as one would ever likely get, and, after considering the request for a moment, Geggel said that he would come.
In truth, Geggel had been looking for something interesting to take his mind off the mundanities of his forced retirement. He hadn’t wanted to leave the Service, but there had been an unfortunate incident where one of the agents he had been running in Tirana had been blown, and the shit had rolled downhill to him. Geggel still did not understand how the agent had been revealed to the SVR; he had always been scrupulously careful, and the agent—a secretary in the prime minister’s office—had been so cautious that it had been almost impossible to arrange face-to-face meetings. Geggel’s conclusion was that the source had been blown by way of a leak from inside MI6. He had suggested it to his line manager but, after a week of lip service about an investigation that Geggel knew had never got started, it was suggested that the error was down to him and that, perhaps, it was time for him to think about calling it a day.
He had dabbled with lecturing, but teaching others about geopolitical events just reminded him that he no longer had any role in shaping them. He had retreated to his garden, clearing out a messy bed and replacing it with a polytunnel where he could grow vegetables all year long. He had found some peace there, but when he lay awake at night, his le Carrés and Ludlums finally laid down on the bedside table next to him, he would close his eyes and imagine the life that he had once led. There was no point in pretending otherwise: he missed it.
Geggel had been on the A12 for almost all of the journey. It was a poor road, and, as soon as he was beyond Ipswich, it became a single carriageway prone to delays as cars queued behind the tractors that rumbled between the mirror-flat fields that made up the East Anglian landscape.
He looked down at the phone that he had dropped into the cupholder and wondered, again, whether he should call the River House and tell them about Aleksandrov’s contact. He had wrestled with that choice ever since they had spoken and, ultimately, had decided against it. He knew what would happen. The details of the call would be passed to his replacement and it would be she who went to speak to Aleksandrov. Geggel and the old agent disagreed on many things, but they did share some common ground. Chief among them was a disdain for the woman—Geggel remembered her name, Ross—and, more to the point, the things that she represented.
It wasn’t that she was a woman, at least not for Geggel. It was that she was part of the new influx of SIS staff, those who responded to the vulgar advertisements in the newspapers that promised a fulfilling life as a ‘spy.’ Geggel and his old colleagues had shared a laugh over one particular advert that they had seen in the Times. ‘If the qualities that made a good spy were obvious, they wouldn’t make a very good spy.’ The whole thing was preposterous. These bright young graduates, fresh out of university, were selected with psychometrics and then fast-tracked. It was to the detriment of the old sweats who had been there for years and knew how things really worked. The change in culture was the reason Geggel had not fought against his enforced retirement. Aleksandrov had chuckled at Geggel’s annoyance, but had then suggested that he had heard through the grapevine that Yasenevo was not so different, either. The old warhorses, like them, were being put out to pasture in the Center just as they were in Vauxhall Cross. This was a brave new world, moving too fast for them to keep up. Aleksandrov had poured two tumblers of Moskovskaya and they had toasted their obsolescence together.
He continued north, passing the turn for Walberswick, and then approached the road that led to Southwold.
2
Pyotr Aleksandrov glanced out of the front window and looked up at the sky. It was clear, suggesting that the forecast for sunny and warm weather was going to be accurate. He went through to the hallway, collected his jacket, and picked up the briefcase with the documents that he had printed out last night. Anastasiya had emailed him the sample schematics and he was confident that he would be able to parlay them into everything that they needed to bring her safely back to him.