“I think I might have seen this vehicle. There have been very few cars passing today, and I was out on the forecourt, filling a customer’s car. There was a gray Lada—it was the only one of that description I have seen today. It was going quite fast along here from the Vyborg direction. It braked hard just near the entrance, and I thought it was coming in for fuel.”
“Did it come in?” Severinov asked. He clenched his fist on the counter as his adrenaline began to pump a little.
The man shook his head. “No. It didn’t come in. But it did turn off the highway—it went down the lane opposite.” He pointed toward the track that led off the main highway through some trees. “I remember it because it braked so hard, and then the tires squealed a bit as it accelerated down the lane. It seemed to be in a real hurry.”
“Thank you. That is very helpful,” Severinov said. “Do you have cameras on the forecourt that might have captured the car as it passed?”
“There are no cameras here,” the man said.
“What is down that lane?”
The man shrugged. “Nothing. Only the canal lock.”
“The canal lock?”
“Yes, the Saimaa Canal. It’s the Brusnitchnoe lock.”
“Ah yes, of course,” Severinov said. He knew about the canal but had not realized they were so close to it.
He glanced at Pugachov and inclined his head toward the Mercedes outside, indicating they should move.
They hurried back to the car and seconds later were speeding down the lane toward the canal.
Severinov leaned forward in his seat as Pugachov braked to a halt a few meters before reaching the movable bridge that spanned the water.
To his left was a deep canal lock from which an enormous ship carrying a load of timber logs was exiting in a northward direction. To his right lay a lake and a jetty from which a similar ship, also carrying timber, was edging slowly forward, clearly preparing to enter the lock.
“Why would Johnson and the girl come down here?” Pugachov asked.
Severinov turned to his colleague. “I don’t know. But can you get checks done on whether anyone in Yezhov’s circle has anything in this area—property, boats, whatever. Anything that might be a hiding place. And get the police patrol officers off the highway and down here instead. We might need them.”
“Good thinking,” Pugachov said. He reached for his radio and pressed a couple of buttons, which triggered a series of crackling static noises until he managed to get a connection to Fedot once again. Then he issued a series of staccato instructions, including a call for the police patrols that had gone toward the Vaalimaa border crossing to be sent back to Brusnitchnoe instead. “This is extremely urgent,” he added before ending the call.
Severinov gazed at the departing timber ship, which was now gathering speed away from them along the canal after exiting the lock. A slight wake from its bow was breaking against both banks of the canal. It dwarfed a couple of smaller leisure boats that were coming toward them in the opposite direction.
“The canal runs from here into Finland, doesn’t it?” Severinov asked.
“Yes, correct,” Pugachov said.
“You don’t think Johnson might try and get over the border by boat, do you?”
Pugachov shrugged. “Don’t know. If it was me, I might think about it. But he’s not going to get on these big ships—they’re commercial, on-board security is tight, and they are very slow. More likely to be a small, faster boat that will get him there at speed. Like those ones.” He pointed toward the leisure craft beyond the lock.
“A boat might be easier than going by car,” Severinov said, “but if they are doing that, a small boat might not necessarily be the best. They’d be too exposed. It might be easier to hide on a large ship.”
He thought furiously for a few moments. Had Johnson come down this lane to hide somewhere or to jump on a boat? If it was the former, then it was simply a staging post before trying to get over the border, either by land or water; he was convinced of that. If Johnson planned to jump on a boat, then either the whole canal needed to be shut down to traffic or search parties needed to be sent aboard the various boats and ships using it.
Behind them came the whining sound of powerful car engines being thrashed in low gear. Severinov turned around to see two police patrol cars pounding down the lane behind them. They screeched to a halt just behind Pugachov’s Mercedes.
“At least we’ve got reinforcements now,” Severinov said. “I suggest we wait and get feedback from Fedot before we decide our next step. But he needs to hurry. Time is short. Give him half an hour, then call again and put a bomb under his ass.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
London
The surveillance team, labeled B1, that Nicklin-Donovan had convened to tail Shevchenko had started early that morning, forcing Jayne to get up earlier than she would have liked and make do with a quick coffee and a banana for breakfast.
She then rushed to join Nicklin-Donovan and the B1 team’s leader, Gary Bennett, in a safe house—actually an apartment—on the ground floor of a building on Rossmore Road, a few blocks away from the Baker Street underground station and Regent’s Park.
Bennett had been on the team running surveillance on Shevchenko previously, and it made sense for him to stay there, providing continuity; it didn’t matter if the team leader was unchanged, since he never went on the street.
They listened on a secure link as continual updates came in from the surveillance team. A middle-aged woman wearing a business suit and constantly checking her phone had tailed Shevchenko as she left her apartment in Dorset Square, three blocks from the safe house.
Then a fake London taxi had followed Shevchenko as a driver ferried her to the Russian embassy at Kensington Palace Gardens.
Shevchenko disappeared into the embassy and the B1 team went into standby mode, waiting in nearby parks, stores, and coffee shops.
Jayne took the opportunity to retreat to a corner of the room and check the GPS tracker monitor app on her phone.
Where are you now, Joe?
To her astonishment, the monitor was showing that Johnson was no longer in Bolshoy Prospekt. Instead, the blue dot was located right in the middle of a waterway, the Saimaa Canal, about eighty miles northwest of St. Petersburg, and was moving very slowly.
Jayne swore to herself. Was this good news or bad? She knew of the Saimaa Canal from her time in Russia, but she had never had a reason to visit it.
She wandered over to Nicklin-Donovan to show him the tracking app; he scrutinized the phone screen and scratched his head, ruffling his neatly parted hair.
“What the hell’s he doing there?” Nicklin-Donovan said. “And presuming that he’s not swimming, why and how is he on a boat?”
Jayne shrugged. “He’s got to be heading for the border with Finland—there’s no other logical explanation.”
“So, it’s definitely gone tits-up in St. Petersburg, then.”
It was a statement of fact, not a question. Jayne didn’t reply.
She didn’t need to. There was no doubt now—Johnson had run into trouble. If the meeting with Varvara Yezhova had gone according to plan, he would have been on a flight from Russia’s second-largest city back to Berlin by now.
Still there was no message. He had obviously taken the view that communications were too risky. Jayne had been toying with the idea of sending him an encrypted text but decided against it.
She was hoping that Nicklin-Donovan would not raise the topic of her personal relationship with Johnson again. She had found it awkward when he had done so the previous day, and now she wanted to focus on doing all she could to preserve Johnson’s security. She didn’t want to feel mentally distracted by having to navigate around his questioning.
The truth was, the fact that Johnson was in danger was crystallizing the feelings she had toward him: she realized he meant a lot to her. On waking that morning she had found herself wondering how
she would feel if he didn’t come back. It was an outcome that seemed very difficult to contemplate at this stage.
Now, after several more hours with no communications from Johnson, those feelings were even more magnified.
Bennett called from across the other side of the room. “She’s on the move, leaving the embassy again by car.”
Jayne and Nicklin-Donovan walked over and listened to the voice feed coming over Bennett’s squawk box as one of the team, traveling in another fake taxi and using a hidden microphone taped to her bra, very briefly described how the Russian was being transported back to her apartment the way she had come earlier.
Shevchenko then jumped into her black BMW 5 Series sedan and drove northwest around Outer Circle, the street that ran around the fringes of Regent’s Park, to a newsstand in St. John’s Wood, where she parked, went inside, and bought some cigarettes. She then drove back the way she had come, parked her car, and walked to the Baker Street underground station, where she made her way inside.
“Why did she drive to buy cigarettes?” Jayne asked. “She could have got the embassy driver to stop somewhere, or she could have bought them in a kiosk at the underground since she was heading there in any case.”
“Good question,” Nicklin-Donovan said.
“There’s got to be a good reason,” Jayne said. “If we’re following her in a car, I’d like to get some video analysis of her journeys, even if it’s from some distance behind. Is she dropping data somewhere with an SRAC? Is there something going on at the news kiosk? Or is it simply that she gets her favorite Russian cigarettes brand there?”
“Yes, worth a try to see if we can spot anything,” Nicklin-Donovan said. “We’ve got video recordings but haven’t had them all analyzed yet. I’ll get the team to finish that work as quickly as possible.”
He turned to Bennett. “Gary, can you do that?”
Bennett nodded. “Sure.”
“Thanks,” Jayne said. “I’d like to see the videos, especially if there are any anomalies showing up. Variations in driving speed, unexplained stops, and so on.” Any of those might signal that she was depositing data into an SRAC—Jayne had used similar systems herself before.
They listened to the feedback from the surveillance team for a few more minutes as they described her movements to the southbound Bakerloo line platform at Baker Street.
“She’s definitely on an SDR,” Nicklin-Donovan said quietly, when the squawk box went briefly silent. “I’ve seen from previous surveillance operations that her starting point is sometimes Baker Street. Paddington station is another favorite because it’s large and complex.”
Jayne nodded. “Yes, it’s easy to jump on different lines, take different exits, walkways, staircases.”
Sure enough, Shevchenko spent the next hour and a half taking a variety of underground trains, walking around stations, and ducking into shops and cafés.
The three people tailing her changed appearances on several occasions, using props in their bags, backpacks, and pockets.
Eventually, however, Shevchenko somehow evaded her tail in Covent Garden amid the plethora of shops with multiple entrances, walkways, and crowds of tourists.
According to the B1 team, Shevchenko had given no sign that she had detected coverage, but then again, Jayne wouldn’t have expected her to do so even if that had been the case. She was too much of a pro.
It wasn’t a good start for B1. The slightly embarrassed Bennett tried to shrug it off. “She’s just damn good. It seemed so natural that she just melted into the crowds. But better we lose her than get too tight, in which case she actually knows she’s being tailed and completely changes her approach.”
“She knew,” Jayne said. “She must have.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Nicklin-Donovan said. “She doubtless assumes she’s under constant surveillance, until she gets to the point where she thinks for certain she’s not. There’s a difference between assuming and knowing.”
“We’ll do better next time,” Bennett said, turning and looking over his shoulder at Jayne, his lips pressed together. “We just need to get lucky once. She can’t afford to ever make a mistake. I’m going to get some computer analysis done overnight on her previous runs—there may be a trend in her movements.”
“Yes, good idea,” Jayne said. She placed her hands on her hips, surprised they hadn’t done that before. “Maybe it’s best not to rely on luck. And we don’t have long to play with. We know she’s headed back to Moscow in five days.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Saimaa Canal
As it happened, it was only twenty minutes before Fedot came back onto the radio. His team had discovered that Gennady Yezhov’s comrade who owned the Lada Kalina also had a small holiday dacha near to the Saimaa Canal, just two or three kilometers away from the Brusnitchnoe lock.
“It is in the middle of some woodland, down some dirt tracks, according to the satellite map I’ve just been looking at,” Fedot said. He gave Pugachov the coordinates.
“That’s got to be it,” Severinov said. “There’s no other reason he and the girl would have headed this way otherwise. Let’s go check it out.”
Pugachov asked the two officers in one of the police cars to follow him, then drove over the movable bridge that spanned the canal and, using his satnav to guide him to the spot identified by the coordinates, set off along the lane with a screech of tires.
After a kilometer, he turned down a dirt track into the woods and eventually took a right. After a few hundred meters, they came across a wooden shack, set in a clearing amid the trees.
“This is it,” Pugachov said. He braked to a halt, as did the police car following behind him, and climbed out of the car.
The shack appeared deserted, with closed shutters and curtains, although a chair on the veranda and a pile of firewood hinted at recent use. The only audible sound in the woods was birdsong.
Pugachov instructed the two police officers, both of whom were armed with GSh-18 semiautomatic 9 mm pistols, to check out the house while he and Severinov watched.
One of the officers began kicking at the door with his heavy boots. It burst open on the third attempt, slamming back on its hinges and shattering one of the panes of glass. However, the two men reemerged from the shack a few minutes later to report that the house was completely unoccupied, with no sign that anyone was currently using it.
“There’s no food, no milk, nothing, not even a cigarette butt, sir,” one of the officers said.
Severinov indicated toward the garage. “Can you get into that too?” he asked.
The officer nodded. He walked to the car and returned with a crowbar, which he used to wrench off a large padlock that secured the large double doors at the front.
He swung open one of the doors, and there inside was a gray Lada Kalina. Next to it, on the left, was a boat on a trailer.
Severinov swore and went to feel the Lada’s hood. It was still slightly warm. He was not surprised to see the car, but while the two police officers immediately began combing through the vehicle, his mind was focused entirely on where Johnson and Katya Yezhova had disappeared to. There was no sign of them.
He walked from the garage back to the dirt track that ran past the property and looked in both directions.
It was then that he noticed twin sets of bicycle tire marks in the dirt just off the side of the track. Upon closer examination, it was clear that they had either gone to or come from the garage. Yet there were no bikes in the garage.
“Leonid, come here. Look at these,” he called to Pugachov. He pointed to the tire tracks. The two men followed the tracks for a short distance along the dirt track.
“They’ve headed back toward the lock on bikes,” Severinov said. “I think they’re on a boat, my friend. Where else would they go on bikes? There’s nowhere else around here. They’re not going to cycle to the border, are they?”
Pugachov shook his head. “Maybe, but I doubt it
.”
“So they’ve dumped the car, and they’re getting on a boat. That’s my view,” Severinov said. “We need to get all northbound boats stopped and searched. Let’s get this canal closed down—I want it locked up tighter than a duck’s ass.”
Pugachov took out his phone, dialed a number, and walked away along the track, deep in an animated and heated conversation with someone, who Severinov assumed was at FSB headquarters. At various points during the conversation, he heard Pugachov swearing at whoever was on the other end of the line.
Eventually, the FSB chief returned, his face flushed and his black eyes glittering. “The damned idiots at the Border Service and customs control are refusing to shut the canal. They have told me it’s the Finnish authorities who decide that—they operate the canal. But if we can identify which ship or boat Johnson and the girl are definitely on, they will ask the Finns to stop it. Otherwise they say their checks are more than tough enough—they are looking out and say there is no chance of them getting through undetected. Their argument is that they have a long queue of traffic coming through in both directions, and they can’t afford to shut down. It would cause chaos.”
“They will have to,” Severinov said. “It is critical.”
“No chance,” Pugachov said. “They say they have had this situation before, most recently four days ago, and the transport minister has instructed them to keep the canal open. They say if we want to override it we will have to contact the Kremlin.”
Severinov stood motionless. That meant Putin’s office. Given his current relations with Putin and Medvedev and the specific instruction he had received not to involve them in his task of eliminating Johnson, that was one route pretty much closed off to him.
“Listen. If they are on a boat, which we don’t know for sure, I think we can head them off ourselves,” Pugachov said. “The highway follows quite close to the canal almost all the way up to Nuijamaa, although in some parts it is farther away. But we should be able to get to some of the locks farther north and catch them. We can drive faster than they can sail.”
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