Serkhov swore silently and gave up. He’d seen drunks like this too many times to be surprised. Back in Moscow they were a feature of the landscape, high on illicit vodka or samogon, and the cheap chacha as it was known in Georgia, all liable to be dangerously toxic. He placed the heel of his hand on the man’s forehead and slammed his head back against the door. He wished instantly that he could wash his hands and turned away in disgust.
Across the street, Votrukhin watched and shook his head. He placed a mint on his tongue, allowing the sharp flavour to spread around his mouth. Given time, he’d have used more subtle methods and picked their targets more carefully, chatting first to gain their confidence, maybe even buying them a drink or two. But time was something he didn’t have, and subtlety an art Serkhov had never possessed.
They had already handed out dozens of photos in the area, and secured the dubious promises of several illegals to hand out more and spread the word about the missing woman to the north and east. For the most part, that meant waiting to see what came back. But in the meantime, doing something was better than nothing, and might keep Gorelkin off their backs.
He turned and walked along the street, Serkhov following a parallel path on the other side. A street sweeper in a bright orange tabard was scooping up some litter. He stopped alongside him, holding out the still of Jardine taken from the CCTV footage.
‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Have you seen this girl? She’s thought to be in the area. She discharged herself from hospital and could be in danger.’
The man squinted at the photo for a second, then shook his head. ‘No, pal, I haven’t seen her. Like I told the other bloke, there’s a thousand look just like her walk past here every day. Sorry.’
Votrukhin thanked him and was about to walk away when he stopped. ‘The other man? Big with a shaved head?’ If it matched, it would be Serkhov, but he hadn’t been working this area until now — and then only across the street.
‘No. Young guy, spiky hair. Looked like a charity worker but he wasn’t.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Dunno. Something about him. A bit sure of himself, if you know what I mean. I reckon he had copper written all over him. Have you told the cops about her?’
‘Ah, of course. That would be it.’ Votrukhin thanked him and moved away, his antennae twitching. He caught Serkhov’s eye and signalled him to wait, then walked across the street to join him.
‘We have company,’ he announced, scanning the area carefully. ‘A young man with spiky hair, could be police, also showing a photo of Jardine and asking if anyone has seen her.’
Serkhov pushed his lip out. ‘Could it have been one of our drones?’ A name for the more trusted illegals they had recruited to broaden the search across London.
‘No. There’s no way any of them would be mistaken for police — not by a local, anyway.’
‘So who are they?’
‘Security services, I think. MI5, MI6. . even sub-contractors. She disappeared the same night as Tobinskiy died, so it makes sense that they will be looking for her to ask why.’ He felt bad for not dealing with the woman as Serkhov had suggested, when they’d had a chance. Unless they recouped the situation and got to Jardine first, this was going to come back and bite him, he was certain. Team leaders shouldn’t make these kind of mistakes. ‘This is getting too crowded for comfort.’
Serkhov scowled. ‘Do we carry on? If it’s Security, they might spot us before we see them.’
‘We have no choice.’ He fixed Serkhov with a hard stare. Now was not the time for doubts. ‘There might be more of them working the area as a team. Keep your eyes open for anyone flashing photos.’
‘And if they see us first?’
‘Chyornyiy rules, remember? Deal with it.’
TWENTY-FIVE
To Harry, in spite of Fortiani’s beliefs to the contrary, The Grove wine bar looked exactly the sort of place to pick up a spare mobile phone. It was a high-end bistro and restaurant on two floors, standing on a prominent corner spot a few minutes from Victoria Station. One look inside and he’d already spotted several phones prominently displayed where anyone trained in brush-past techniques would scoop them up in an instant. With so much laughter and talk, busy waiters juggling trays of food and drinks, clients coming and going, often from one table to another in pursuit of gossip and connections, it was like an ants’ nest of furious activity.
Just the kind of place Clare would have targeted.
He stood on the corner outside, trying to get a feel for the area. The buildings here were up-scale and neat, the streets open. Not the best place for a fugitive to hide in. While The Grove would have been ideal for a fishing trip, to pick up a mobile phone, Clare would have been looking for somewhere more compact to duck into, with plenty of interconnected run-throughs and preferably without cameras. Victoria was attractive, with thousands of business travellers and tourists to use as cover, but anybody pursuing her would make that the first place to look. And a young woman with a stick would stand out.
He consulted his map and felt his spirits sink. Pick anywhere with a pin. It would take a team weeks to go through the lot.
Rik joined him, shaking his head. ‘Not even any possibles.’
‘Me neither.’
‘We’re not the only ones looking for her, though.’
Harry looked at him. ‘I know. I’ve had a couple of comments. What did you hear?’
‘Four people mentioned guys flashing photos around — photos of a young woman. One said the photo looked like a still from a security camera. No reliable descriptions, but they all said they had foreign accents. A couple I spoke to reckoned they were Czechs or Poles, like illegals.’
‘Or Russians.’
‘Exactly. But the descriptions were of young guys, probably no more than twenty, and not well dressed. The line they were selling said the same thing: the woman had discharged herself from hospital.’
Harry nodded. Any other story would not have elicited the same sympathy or desire to help. But the men doing the asking sounded unusually young. Reliable FSB operators working overseas were usually older, having proved their trustworthiness and picked up a bagful of experience and scars along the way. Twenty was too young.
‘They’ve been clever,’ he concluded. ‘They’re using the street traffic. Doing what we’re doing but on a bigger scale, and using illegals or over-stayers to spread the word. Put out enough photos and someone somewhere will hit pay dirt and get the reward.’
His phone rang and he grabbed it eagerly, hoping it would be Clare.
It was Ballatyne.
‘I’ve spoken to Alanya and checked the operations log. The two men in the Focus were a security surveillance team sent to check her out.’
‘Why?’
‘For the simple reason that she was buddies with Jardine. This business has got everyone in a spin. Deane’s got internal security turning the place inside out for anybody who so much as looked squinty-eyed at Jardine. Alanya happened to be top of the shit list.’
‘Is she all right?’
‘She is now. She thinks you’re midway between Superman and a saint, by the way. Personally I think she’s deluded, but there you go.’
‘It’s a strain, I know. Who’s Deane?’
‘You know I can’t tell you that.’
Harry had a sudden thought. Clare worked the Russian section and Alice Alanya was a Russian language specialist. ‘He’s Head of the Russian desk, isn’t he?’
‘I told you-’
‘I know — you can’t tell me otherwise you’d have to send round one of your hotshots to shoot me. I get that. But who else would have an interest in this Tobinskiy business? Does this Deane know there’s a Russian wet team out there?’
Ballatyne breathed heavily down the phone. It was enough to tell Harry that he was correct. ‘She, actually,’ he said finally. ‘And if she does know she’s not saying. Her name’s Candida Deane. She’s deputy head while her boss is off sick. It’s an open
secret that she’s hoping he stays that way.’
‘So she’s ambitious.’
‘With good reason; from the Russian desk to the upper reaches of the totem pole is an easy stretch. It carries more responsibility, it takes more budget and it has a lot of history. Bets are that she’ll make it, and she won’t care who she burns on the way, me included. I never told you any of that, of course.’
‘She sounds like a toughie.’
‘Like a junk yard dog. She’s not to be messed with, Harry. She’s one of the new breed; all MBAs and focus meetings and barbed wire knickers. But she’s no shrinking violet. She likes to collect trophies and she’s built a team around her who think the same way.’
‘Warning noted. What about that other thing I asked you for? The target.’
A longer silence while Ballatyne played with his conscience, then: ‘Jardine’s target was a woman — a Russian. Her name was Katya Balenkova, and she was a captain in the Federal Protective Service, or FSO.’
‘Is that what I think it is?’
‘Probably. Give me five and I’ll call you back.’
TWENTY-SIX
Lieutenant Katya Balenkova strode through the arrivals hall at Vienna Schwechat International Airport, scanning faces among the groups of meeters and greeters. Most looked local, with a few business types standing around exchanging pleasantries or deep in conversation on mobile phones. While she couldn’t imagine any of them possibly presenting a threat to the three government financial specialists from Moscow coming along behind her, it was her job to ensure that their passage was unhindered and safe.
She dismissed each person quickly, automatically checking body outlines for the bulge of concealed weapons, and eyes for a look too intense and focussed for this place. When she was certain the way was clear, she turned and gave a signal to Bronyev, her FSO colleague. He nodded and herded the three bankers towards the main concourse and exit, where a limousine would be waiting outside.
She felt almost naked without her service weapon, which they were not permitted to carry on flights for obvious reasons. But it wouldn’t be for long; as soon as they reached the city, she and Bronyev would be issued with side-arms from the embassy’s armoury. It would not be a fact made known to the Austrian authorities who, like most countries, would take a dim view of the carrying of guns on their sovereign soil. But the Russian government’s view was that bodyguards without weapons were like bulldogs without teeth.
She stepped back to avoid the senior of the three men, a particularly loathsome bureaucrat named Dobrev, who had been eyeing her openly ever since they had met the previous day. Overweight and pasty, with gelled hair and a heavy gut like excess baggage, he had made no secret of his intentions on this trip, suggesting that a drink at the earliest opportunity once they reached the convention hotel in Vienna would be an excellent way to show his appreciation for her security services. He had ignored Bronyev’s disapproving stare, resting his pudgy hand on Katya’s arm just a shade too long, snuffling pig-like with pleasure and pressing himself against her.
She had resisted the desire to knee him in the balls, and instead feigned a quick move to check out a nearby cab driver loitering for a fare. Having already been demoted from captain to her present rank of lieutenant after getting caught in a foreign espionage sting — although she had been cleared of any deliberate intent by an enquiry panel — dropping a fat banker to the floor with a Grozny handshake would only make things worse. And she had no wish to see what the job felt like at an even lower rank. Probably shepherding local dignitaries in some God-awful backwater in the Urals, just to make them feel valued and important, a small but vital cog in the machine that was the new Russia.
The official driver from the embassy was waiting by his car, a black Mercedes, as arranged. Katya watched from the side as Bronyev ushered the three men out of the main entrance and across the pavement, under the eye of two policemen who knew an official car when they saw one, even though it carried no pennant on its nose to smooth the way. It was all done with much petty fussing by the bankers, keen to have onlookers notice them and wonder at their importance, even if nobody quite knew what they represented.
So different, she thought, to the charges she had once worked with and guarded so assiduously. Diplomats, ministers and military men of the highest ranks, they knew the game and played it correctly. Grandstanding in public was for special days, parades and national celebrations; every other day out in the open, wherever they were, demanded rigorous adherence to protection rules. That meant no wandering off, continuous movement unless told to stop by their guards, and no ostentation likely to attract the attention of political extremist or terrorists.
And at all times, following the advice of their minders.
It was mostly bullshit now, she realised that. In the main, the men — always men — wore civilian clothes, unless on parade or at a function, and were as faceless as the next man, albeit far better dressed. But wearing a fancy imported suit merely made them envied or resented, rarely if ever a target.
Even so, their lofty positions and crucial jobs had made them valued assets and therefore to be protected at all times and by the best in the business. And Katya Balenkova had been one of the finest to graduate from the FSO academy and training centre.
But that had all ended when the British had decided she was a worthy target of a sting — a honey trap, as it had turned out. A visit to London had resulted in a chance encounter with a young woman. The encounter had moved to drinks, to friendship, to meetings. . and eventually, in Brussels, where the other woman had been visiting on business at the same time as Katya herself had been working, something more.
Later, in Frankfurt, the ground had fallen away beneath her feet when the other woman, Clare, had disappeared, hustled away from outside the hotel where they were staying by two men in suits, obviously guards of another kind.
It was when Katya herself had been called in for discussions on her return to Moscow that she had discovered who and what Clare Jardine was.
An MI6 operative.
Now she found herself bored and resentful. Unexcited by the lowly, tedious routine of safeguarding self-important drones like Dobrev, whose biggest threat, apart from her knee, was the copious amounts of drink he consumed; angry at her fall down the career ladder. And emotions like these, in this job, were dangerous. They led to lack of attention and a lowering of one’s guard.
‘You coming?’ Bronyev was standing by the rear of the car, a faint frown on his face.
She nodded and joined him, climbing in the front passenger seat as her position required, and buckling in for the journey.
Bronyev sat in the back, close to the kerb. Younger than Katya and allegedly fresh out of the academy on his first posting, he was cautious and wary. And ambitious, too. But pleasant enough to work with. And he had more conversation than most male FSO members, whose main topics were limited to Spartak or Dynamo Moscow football teams.
She wondered not for the first time if Bronyev had been slotted into the team to keep an eye on her. Unlike many newcomers to the guards, who were usually full of themselves, he was likeable and considerate, and had confessed to wanting to progress in the FSO ranks by getting some solid experience behind him. But right from the start she had noticed signs about him that gave her cause for concern; there were times when his movements were just too practised, like an operative who had gone through the motions too many times before to be a simple newbie. Inexperienced guards betrayed their lack of skill in small ways: moving in a stop-start motion, as if unsure about who was in control of the speed of progress from car to building; standing in the wrong position and becoming a hindrance to their more experienced colleagues’ line of sight; failing to scope the area in a 360? fashion and allowing large gaps to appear in the screen around their charges.
Bronyev, however, made none of these mistakes, and that worried her. She had also caught him watching her, as he had been just now. It wasn’t in a sexual way, which she would have
understood; hell, she might have her preferences which left men out of the equation altogether, but he wasn’t to know that. No, she felt he was watching her for other reasons.
She breathed deeply and watched the neat and ordered countryside slip by outside, trying to relax. Three days here, unless there was a change of programme, and she’d be on her way back home. If he had been put in to check on her, she had better not give him anything to report back on.
TWENTY-SEVEN
It was nearer fifteen minutes before Ballatyne rang again. His voice sounded oddly dead, free of any natural echo, and Harry guessed the MI6 man was in a sanitized chamber with a secure outside line where not even God would hear a word he said.
‘Sorry about that. More information coming in all the time, some of it you need to hear. First things first, though. I hope I never live to regret this, but I happen to think you might be right about Jardine’s original target. But understand this: this conversation is so far off the record, it’s inaudible except to dogs in Outer Mongolia.’
‘I get it.’
‘Balenkova’s job is the equivalent of our own Diplomatic Protection Squad, only her unit’s got much bigger muscles. Their mandate is vast, with some estimates giving them over twenty thousand members, all military trained. Some are formed into regiments, the best being special forces or Spetsnaz equivalents, with others working in outwardly civilian roles. They cover the president and other government officials as well as important installations such as IT centres, public utilities, nuclear sites and weapons storage and production units. They also travel abroad when needed, and there are reckoned to be anywhere between ten to twenty assigned to any major city with a Russian presence. But they’re not just armed guards with attitude; they’re state security by nature and breeding, going back decades.’
‘KGB?’
‘Yes, but also known variously as the Ninth Directorate and the GUO — I forget what that means.’
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