by Mark Dawson
They had agreed to meet at eleven-thirty. Pope found the entrance that led into the hotel garage and then, in turn, to the hotel’s staff entrance. Twelve was waiting for him there.
There were no security staff posted at the garage and they were able to enter without being seen. They found their way inside until they reached the staff door. Pope took out the keycard that he had been given and held it against the reader next to the door; the device emitted a satisfied beep, a light shone green and the lock clicked open. Pope pushed the door and they both made their way inside. There was an antechamber inside the door with a notice board and a vending machine with drinks and snacks. A corridor led away from the antechamber, and, as Pope tested the doors to the left and the right, he found male and female toilets and a small canteen. There were two women in the canteen, smoking cigarettes through a window that opened onto a fetid corner where the big industrial bins were kept.
Pope backed away from the door before the women noticed that he was there and made his way back to the male toilets. There were two rooms for men and two for women, each with a toilet and sink and a storage locker. Pope stepped into the first men’s room. Twelve came in after him and Pope slid the bolt in the lock.
Pope opened the rucksack and took out the hotel uniforms. They both changed. One jacket had been intended for Milton, and Twelve was slenderer than him; the jacket was a little baggy, but it would still serve. Pope took out the pistols and handed one over. Pope put on the shoulder rig, double-checked the load on his weapon and pushed it into the holster, checking in the mirror to ensure that the jacket covered it. It did. Twelve did the same.
Pope took their clothes and stuffed them into the rucksack. He opened the storage locker and left the bag inside.
“Ready?” he asked.
Twelve nodded.
Pope checked his watch: half past eleven. He took a deep breath, slid the bolt back and opened the door. The two women he had seen in the canteen were loitering outside the door to the women’s toilet; Pope nodded as he went by and, before they could speak to him and expose the fact that he spoke no Russian, he was past them and on the staircase that led to the hotel’s public spaces. Twelve followed close behind.
59
There was a service elevator in a separate shaft adjacent to the elevators that the guests used. Pope summoned the car and then he and Twelve stepped inside. The car needed to be authorised before it would move, but all it took was for him to press his keycard against the reader and the buttons for each floor changed from red to green. Pope pressed the button for the tenth floor and stood back to wait for the doors to close. He heard a man’s voice, a shouted request in Russian, and then, even as he willed the doors shut, a hand shot between them and pressed them open again. The man who stepped into the car with Pope was wearing the uniform of hotel security, with faux-military epaulettes and piping along the shoulders of his shirt.
“Zdravstvujtye,” the man said.
Pope had been staring down at his feet; now, though, he glanced up and saw that the guard was looking at him.
“Zdravstvujtye,” Pope said, knowing that his pronunciation was terrible.
Twelve stood there, quietly, and Pope could feel the violence emanating out of him like woozy summer heat.
Pope waited for the man to say something else. He wouldn’t be able to understand him or reply without making it obvious that he did not speak the language – and that, as a staff member in the glitziest hotel in Moscow, would not have been credible. He felt the shape of the gun tucked against his body and knew that there was a good chance that he would have to use it. That would lengthen the odds of successfully completing the operation to such an extent that he would most likely need to abort. And if he did that, if the alarm was sounded, then how would he—
His increasingly gloomy train of thought was interrupted by a chime as the elevator reached the seventh floor.
“Proshchay,” the man said, smiling guilelessly as he stepped through the open doors.
Pope found that he was holding his breath; the doors closed, the lift started to ascend again and Pope exhaled in relief.
“Lucky,” Twelve commented.
Pope knew that he didn’t mean them.
It was a temporary balm. The numbers ticked up through eight and nine and then reached ten. The lift chimed again and the doors parted. Pope and Twelve stepped out. There was a generous lobby, with a lit water feature burbling musically in a sconce, and a corridor stretched away in both directions. The carpet was deep and luxurious, and the door numbers looked to have been inscribed on pieces of polished slate.
Pope followed the signs for room number 1022. His palm itched for the weight of the Sig and he felt the first drops of nervous sweat running down his back. It wasn’t unusual for him to feel anxious at a time like this, and this operation, unlike almost all of the others that he had undertaken since he had joined Group Fifteen, had not received the same degree of planning. Indeed, it was quite the contrary; it seemed as if it had received very limited consideration, and then Twelve had been foisted on him at the last moment and what planning they had done had been disregarded. Intelligence had been received and it needed to be acted upon quickly and decisively; that might have been acceptable if he had been able to take out the targets at arm’s length with explosives or a ranged weapon, but that was not the case. The mandarins wanted to put on a show, to make a point that their counterparts at the Center would not be able to ignore or mistake. It was Pope’s job to make that point, and hang the consequences.
He was nervous.
60
The rendezvous was in Park Presnenskiy, near the children’s playground. It was just before midnight when Primakov arrived, and the only people he saw as he made his way inside were a couple who were evidently the worse off for drink, staggering together arm in arm. He paid them no heed and walked quickly, following the path between a line of oaks to the bench.
PROZHEKTOR was waiting for him.
He sat down.
“My dear Jessie.”
“Hello, General,” she said.
Jessie Ross was fidgeting with her phone, the screen washing blue light up over her face. Primakov had been personally responsible for her recruitment and had kept her file as a project even after his promotion to deputy director. She had been twenty when he had recruited her. They had been fortunate to find her when they did. The recruitment pool for possible Directorate S agents was large: foreign government representatives, businessmen looking to broaden their interests in a country that was encouraging inward investment, scientists, academics, military personnel, and students. It was in this last category that Ross had been found. Her professor had worked for Directorate RT, the KGB’s forerunner to Directorate S, and had continued to work for it after Putin had reincarnated the KGB as the FSB. He had identified her as politically active with socialist leanings and had suggested that she might be ripe for an approach. Directorate S almost always used native Russians; they were more malleable, could be motivated by patriotism and, when things went bad, could be influenced by threats to loved ones who were still at home. One had to be more careful with recruiting foreigners, and the process for bringing Ross aboard had been long and meticulous. The network of agents known as the agentura had become involved in a process of get-acquainted chats. She was studied via agents at the university, by administrative and professorial staff who were friendly to the cause. It was determined that she had the necessary aptitude to facilitate a career in a sensitive area on her return to her country.
Only then had the approach been made. Her professor had been responsible for it and, over the course of a month, he had reeled her in. She had not been won over by politics or ideology; she had shown no interest in either. Rather, she was a product of capitalism in its basest, most brutal sense: she had named her price, and Primakov had decided that they could pay it. The price had gone up over time, but so too had her performance.
She had received additional training that went be
yond the curriculum of her course and had been returned to London with the tradecraft necessary to keep her beyond suspicion. Her subsequent application for work at Vauxhall Cross had been accepted and, to Primakov’s delight, he had found himself with a live asset in the heart of the enemy’s intelligence apparatus. She provided regular reports, using an SRAC relay that was buried in Epping Forest. She had developed an interest in mountain biking and would visit the forest under the pretext of indulging it. The trail she followed passed within fifty feet of the relay, allowing her to transfer her reports without incurring even the slightest scintilla of suspicion. Ross had already more than justified the time it had taken and the expense that had been invested in her recruitment.
Primakov had made the educated guess that Anastasiya Romanova would reach out to her father once she had gone into hiding. Ross had already been assigned to the department responsible for babysitting the traitors who had fled to the United Kingdom, and she had been able to pass Aleksandrov’s file to Vincent Beck. She had lobbied to be added to the trip to Moscow—it was an easy yes given the circumstances—and she had alerted Primakov to the two Group Fifteen headhunters who had arrived in the city ahead of her and the plan that had been conceived. She had given him the opportunity to prevent the assassination attempt on Timoshev and Kuznetsov. She had given him the chance to arrest the headhunters and hand a public relations coup to the president.
He turned to her. “What is it?” he asked.
“You have a problem.”
“With what? The operation—it’s still going ahead?”
“It is,” she said. “But that’s not the problem. There’s been a change of plan.” She took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I only have ten minutes. I’m supposed to be at the hotel. They think I’m getting ready to leave.”
“I don’t understand. Leaving? Where to?”
“Anastasiya Romanova has been in contact with Vauxhall Cross. She couriered a letter to the consulate in Vladivostok.”
Primakov clenched his fists. “Saying what?”
“That she wants to defect. She said that she had asked her father to help, and that the Russians killed him. But she hasn’t given up. She proposed a meeting the day after tomorrow and said that VX should send someone to get her out of the country.”
“Where?”
“Komsomolsk,” she said.
Primakov dug his nails into his palms. “She’s been there all the time?” he said.
“It seems so.”
“What will the British do?”
“They’re sending one of the agents to go and get her—John Smith.”
“Alone?”
“No,” she said. “That’s why I can’t stay. Smith doesn’t speak Russian, so they’re sending me, too.”
Primakov felt the buzz of anticipation; this was better news. “When?”
“We’re booked on a flight in the morning.”
“When and where has she proposed to meet?”
“The railway station. Saturday, at midday.”
“Well done. You must go back to them now. They must not suspect you.”
“What will you do?”
“I will send a team,” he said. “Two of my best men will lead it.”
“What do I do?”
“Whatever they’ve told you. Will you be going to the rendezvous?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I expect so.”
“We will be there. We will arrest them both. If anything changes, you must contact me. Do you understand?”
“Of course,” she said, with a little bite in her voice.
Primakov knew that the British had consistently underestimated her, and that she hated it; he reminded himself not to make the same mistake. She had already demonstrated tradecraft well beyond what he would have expected in one so young and so inexperienced.
“What about me?” she asked him.
“You’ll need to get away. Smith won’t be able to expose you. He will be locked up. They will have given you an emergency exfiltration route—what is it?”
“It hasn’t been mentioned. That might be down to Smith. I have a lot of time with him until the meet.”
“Follow it,” he said. “I’ll see to it that you can leave the country. Tell them that there was an ambush and you managed to escape. They know they have a leak. They will suspect that it is you. They will interrogate you, and it won’t be pleasant. You will have to win back their trust when you return.”
“I can do that,” she said.
“Go back to the hotel,” he said. “We will be waiting at the rendezvous.”
She started to leave, but paused. “Be careful,” she added.
“Of what?”
“Smith. There’s something about him. He makes me uncomfortable.”
“Don’t worry, Jessie,” Primakov reassured her. “He is here, in Russia, far from home. He might be dangerous, but he will be outnumbered. There will be nothing that he can do—you have seen to that.”
She nodded her agreement and, again, he marvelled at her composure. She had the potential to be the most important Russian agent since Philby and the others. She was young and already embedded within the institutions of British intelligence. There had been early successes, most notably her seduction of the private secretary to the foreign secretary, a coup that had delivered strong results before it had been brought to an abrupt end by the politician’s wife. Even with that, Primakov knew that she hadn’t even started to deliver everything of which she would eventually be capable; she could provide him with years of gold-plated intelligence. It would not be a simple thing to protect her now but, even given her potential future value, he was prepared to take the risk that she would be blown. There would be an inquest in London, but Ross was good and Primakov concluded that she stood a decent chance of continuing to fool them.
“Your flight—is it through Vladivostok?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I will send my man to speak with you there. There is a business lounge there—the Laguna Lounge. Two hours before your flight, tell Smith you intend to take a shower. He will meet you then, once you are alone. Yes?”
She nodded.
“Good luck, Jessie. You are doing valuable work. I am grateful—we’re all grateful.”
“Be sure that shows in my next payment,” she said, and, from her expression, Primakov knew that she was serious. She was driven by avarice; Primakov could ignore that when her production was so good.
Ross headed in the direction of the Metro and Primakov went to his car. He took out his phone and called Stepanov.
“Good evening, General.”
“Report, please.”
“The agents are in the hotel.”
“Who?”
“One of the men we have been following and another I don’t recognise.”
“Listen carefully, Major. I need you to abort.”
Stepanov couldn’t hide his surprise. “Sir?”
“Abort the mission. Do not interfere.”
“I don’t understand, sir. They will kill our agents.”
“I know that,” Primakov snapped. “How many men are with you?”
“Just me and Boris.”
“Good. You are not to mention this matter to anyone. Come to Yasenevo once it has been done—tonight. I have something very important that I need you to do for me.”
He ended the call and put his phone back into his pocket.
He knew that he had just signed the death warrants for two Russian heroes, but, at the same time, he knew that it was the right thing to do. The British couldn’t know that they had been compromised, and they would if his chistilshchiks killed their agents before they could carry out their orders. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but swallow it he must. Natasha’s future depended on him silencing Anastasiya Romanova, and Ross had given him his chance to do that. He would salve his conscience with Smith. He would bury him in Lefortovo Prison and let Stepanov have his way with him. They would squeeze every last drop o
f intelligence out of him, try him for espionage and then inter him in the foulest, most unpleasant camp that they could find.
And then, in time, they would take him outside, put him against the wall, and shoot him.
Part IV
Moscow
61
Stepanov had been waiting in the hotel all evening. The surveillance team had reported that the British agent had collected a bag from the locker at Leningradsky station, and then met with another man at the Romanovsky Obelisk. It was clear that the two agents would make their move tonight; as far as they knew, Timoshev and Kuznetsov would be moved elsewhere in short order, and their new location might be more difficult to access.
Mitrokhin had called him two minutes earlier. He had been in the elevator with both of the British headhunters. They were headed to the tenth floor. Mitrokhin was on his way up via the stairs. The plan was for him to wait in the stairwell until the British were inside the room, and, once they were, he would make his way over.
Stepanov was in room 1020. Timoshev and Kuznetsov were in 1022. They had no idea that he was here, nor did they know about the miniature camera that he had installed outside their room while they had been glad-handing the Security Council at the Kremlin that evening.
Stepanov had told Mitrokhin that they were standing down, and that he was not to engage either man. Mitrokhin had asked him to repeat the order, but had not questioned it. He was well trained and loyal, although Stepanov knew that he would be as confused and disappointed as he was. They were abandoning two patriots to their fates. None of it made any sense. He trusted that Primakov would explain himself at Yasenevo.
Stepanov was alone. The room was as neat and tidy as when he had checked in earlier. The bed was still made, the sheets undisturbed, and the glasses on the bedside tables still wore their paper tops. Stepanov’s pistol—an MP-443 Grach—was on the bed, together with his shoulder holster. Mitrokhin carried his own pistol. There were also two SR-3 Vikhrs, short-barrelled carbines fitted with suppressors. The SR-3 was a Spetsnaz mainstay and offered all the firepower they would have needed to take the British agents out.