Several times he sucked in water instead of air and was left spluttering and coughing in an attempt to clear his lungs.
When he finally beached himself on a stony, muddy stretch of the shore that was covered in bird droppings, Severinov collapsed and lay there motionless.
He felt furious with himself for not anticipating better, furious that he had let his guard down on the side of the lock, and furious that he had not kept the ship’s officer at a distance while examining the papers. It had been deeply unprofessional. He knew that in his KGB days, he would have fired a subordinate for such an operational failure.
That was quite apart from the fate of the two policemen who had boarded the ship and appeared to have vanished completely. Severinov suspected he knew exactly what had happened to them: either Johnson or the Russian crew members had probably shot both of them and thrown them overboard.
Severinov swore to himself.
Eventually he turned to see what progress his friend and colleague Pugachov was making.
The FSB officer was still floundering thirty meters offshore, but his slow doggy paddle was pulling him incrementally nearer with every splash.
After another few minutes, Pugachov collapsed onto the mud bank next to Severinov.
Neither man spoke for a couple of minutes. Finally, Severinov hauled himself to his feet and stared at the thick pine forest that lay ahead of him. His body was shivering uncontrollably.
“Come on, get up. We’ll die of hypothermia if we stay here. We need to get through this shit and get to the highway. We need to call the border guards—stop that bastard Johnson.”
He reached down, grabbed Pugachov beneath the armpits, and pulled him upward.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Saimaa Canal
It took more than twenty minutes before the distant hum of the Sanets’ diesel engines turned into a throatier roar. Johnson, in his darkened hiding place, felt the ship begin to move, and finally it was on its way out of the Pälli lock, heading northward toward Finland.
However, Johnson knew from his conversations with Oleg that there was still a stretch of more than two kilometers of canal that ran immediately next to the highway inside Russian territory, and then at least three kilometers of open water where the canal fairway ran into and through Lake Nuijamaanjärvi until they reached Finnish waters, roughly halfway across the lake.
Johnson glanced at his watch and fingered the small hole at the top of his right ear, as he sometimes did when feeling anxious. Katya, next to him, had remained completely silent as they waited.
Despite the challenging swim and passage through the forest that they had given Severinov and Pugachov, he remained concerned that the two men would reach the highway and get an alert to a Russian Border Service patrol vessel before they could reach the Finnish border control point at the Nuijamaa customs quay on the northwest side of the lake. However, they had no choice but to release them at the point that they did.
The unknown factors were Severinov’s and Pugachov’s swimming abilities and resilience in extremely cold water.
After Oleg sent a crewman down from the bridge to open the hatch for them, Johnson and Katya climbed out into the changing room but left the hatch door open in case they needed to make a hasty retreat in the event of such an interception.
Johnson glued himself to the porthole on the port side of the boat, while Katya kept watch on the starboard side.
Now Johnson guessed that the ship was back up to the maximum permitted speed of nine kilometers per hour. He glanced at his watch, willing the ship—and the time—to go faster.
Fifteen minutes later, Oleg opened the changing room door. He gave a faint smile. “I think you are safe now,” he said. “We are over the borderline, and we are about to reach the Finland customs quay at Nuijamaa.”
It was only then that Johnson felt confident enough to emerge onto the deck. By the time he did so, the Sanets had slowed to a crawl as it approached the customs quay, a long, slim concrete jetty that protruded out into the lake and was clearly marked by signs along the fairway.
“Thank you for what you have done, but I am worried about you,” Johnson said to Oleg. “You will have to return to Russia. What happens then, given the incident at Cvetotchnoe lock?”
Oleg gave a slight shrug. “You do not need to worry about me,” he said. “I’m done with Russia.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I am leaving. My other five ships are all out too, once the Osa is through customs control.” He pointed toward the second of his timber ships, which was visible half a mile or so behind them, forging its way toward Nuijamaa. “My other ships are all operating in Finland. I set up a company there some time ago and have registered the boats there. I do most of my business in Finland and in Norway now. I do not like the Russian business environment, and I don’t like the leadership. What happened to my friend Gennady was the incident that finally decided everything for me. I can look after myself in Finland—I’ll be fine. I’ve been preparing for this for a long time, offshoring all my assets and so on. All this just means accelerating my exit slightly but that’s not a problem.”
That explained that, then, Johnson thought. He had been wondering what Oleg’s motivation was, apart from assisting the daughter of an old friend.
He pulled his Heckler & Koch from his belt and handed it to Oleg, along with the spare magazine and the suppressor that Katya had given him. Katya did the same with her gun.
“There you are,” Katya said. “Two thank-you presents from us. You deserve much more, but it’s all I have. My father would have been very proud of you for all the help you have given us.”
“And we can’t take those guns through customs very easily,” Johnson said.
Oleg accepted the two weapons, giving a slight snort and a thin-lipped smile as he eyed the suppressors. “You think we are assassins?” he asked. But he pushed all the weaponry into a cupboard and closed the door.
Two uniformed officers, one from Finnish customs and one from passport control, boarded the ship as soon as the crew had moored. After shaking hands with Oleg, who they appeared to know well, they began checking the crew and passenger list that he had handed over.
To Johnson’s relief, his US passport in the name of William Cadman merited little more than a passing glance. As an American citizen, he didn’t need a visa for entry into the EU, provided he stayed less than ninety days.
Katya too passed through without challenge. Her precaution in obtaining a Schengen visa well in advance had proved a valuable one.
After the officials had departed, Johnson turned to Oleg and thanked him once again. The Russian shipowner had saved their skin—there was no doubt about that.
“Where are you going to now?” Oleg asked.
“We need to get to Lappeenranta Airport,” Johnson said.
“The canal goes to Lappeenranta and into Lake Saimaa. We can take you.”
Johnson shook his head. He had seen enough of the Saimaa Canal, and grateful though he was for the escape from Russia that Oleg and the Sanets had given him, he knew that the FSB would have agents inside Finland that they could deploy. He guessed that by now, either Severinov or Pugachov or both would have reached the highway and found a way to call or get messages to FSB headquarters.
“We will both take a taxi from here. Tonight we will stay in a hotel, and then tomorrow morning we can fly out.”
The city of Lappeenranta was only about half an hour’s drive from Nuijamaa. Johnson had used his phone to check flight departures, and although Lappeenranta was one of Finland’s smaller airports, it did have flights to Berlin.
Johnson and Katya shook hands with Oleg, then walked toward a line of taxis waiting outside the passport checkpoint.
Suddenly Johnson felt extremely tired. After only a couple of hours’ sleep the previous night and a stressful, long journey that had lasted almost the entire day, he needed a bed.
But before he could think about bed, h
is concern was to get safely to a hotel. Lappeenranta was only thirty kilometers from the Russian border and though they were undoubtedly far safer here than inside Russia, he knew that it would be a potentially fatal error to become complacent.
Johnson needed to be as sure as he could that there was no surveillance tracking them before they checked into a hotel. He therefore instructed their taxi driver to take a circuitous route around the fringes of Lappeenranta.
They started with the airport, which had busy highways running parallel to the single runway on either side, less than five hundred meters away.
They then drove through the city’s two universities and paused for a while next to a marina filled with yachts and boats on the edge of Lake Saimaa. Twenty minutes later, they stopped again in a drive-through burger restaurant’s car park next to a mall, where they got out and wandered in and out of a few shops. But there was no sign of any surveillance, no repeating faces or cars, and nobody sitting in parked cars or loitering on motorcycles.
After fifty minutes and another stop at a cell phone store to buy two burner phones and SIM cards, one for himself and the other for Katya, Johnson was satisfied. He told the driver to take them to a hotel he had found online, the Original Sokos Hotel Lappe, in the city center.
Johnson and Katya checked into adjoining rooms at the hotel, a modern two-story building that was tucked away in a pedestrianized plaza that also housed the town hall, government offices, and a police station.
After showering, Johnson used one of the burner phones to book two seats on a budget flight leaving the following morning for Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport.
For the first time since his arrival in St. Petersburg two days earlier, Johnson felt safe enough to call Vic and Jayne to update them, again using the burner. He kept it brief and gave only vague details of their hotel and flight plans. Johnson also sent a text message to each of his children and to his sister, Amy, to let them know he was safe and that he would call and have a proper conversation as soon as he was able to do so.
There came a knock at Johnson’s door. It was Katya, also freshly showered, and carrying a bottle of Moskovskaya Osobaya vodka that she had procured from room service.
She entered Johnson’s room and poured two large glasses of the vodka.
“Za tvajo zdarovje,” she said, raising her glass. “To your health.” She downed the measure in one gulp and smiled. It was a broad, white-toothed smile, and Johnson realized that it was the first time he had seen her smile since he had met her, next to the bloodied body of her mother outside her apartment in St. Petersburg.
Johnson returned the toast. He badly needed a drink, and Katya yet again had gone up in his estimation, even if he would have preferred to be having a drink with Jayne in that moment.
“I owe you,” he said. “I doubt I would have gotten out of St. Petersburg without you.”
Katya nodded. “We Russians have our uses,” she said, smiling again as she poured out another two measures. They sat on armchairs on either side of a small table next to the hotel window. Outside on the plaza a few tourists were taking photographs in front of the town hall. This time she sipped her drink more slowly.
“What will you do about your mother and your brother?” Johnson asked.
Her smile vanished. “I have just spoken to my brother,” she said. “He is at the Black Sea, waiting for a boat to take him to Istanbul. He will ask someone to arrange things for my mother’s funeral. He is safe.”
Johnson looked at the floor. Both Katya and Timur had been forced to leave their homeland because of his arrival in St. Petersburg. Now, with the blood of an FSB officer and two policemen on her hands, she would not be able to return. That was for certain.
“There is another thing,” Katya said as she took another sip of her vodka. “I think it is now safe for me to tell you.”
Johnson glanced at her. “The name, you mean? The Nazi’s son?”
During the entire escape from St. Petersburg, he had constantly worried that something might happen to Katya before she could give him details of her father’s contact in the Stasi.
“Yes. His name is Ludwig.”
“Ludwig? And what is his last name?”
“Helm. Ludwig Helm.”
Johnson felt his face muscles tighten. “And he is definitely ex-Stasi?”
“Yes, I already told you that.”
“Why ‘the Nazi’s son’? Was his father in the SS?”
“I have no idea. My father never gave me details. It must have been for the obvious reason, I guess.”
“Do you have his contact details?” Johnson pressed her.
Katya shook her head. “Unfortunately not. Only the name.”
Johnson exhaled sharply. The trip to St. Petersburg had not gone according to plan, and he had several times wondered whether it would be worth all the hassles and dangers.
Now all he had was a name. It didn’t seem like much.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
London
It had taken a long time for Shevchenko to be certain she was black. A protracted surveillance detection route had taken her up and down the Bakerloo line, along Oxford Street with its crowds of tourists and shoppers, and eventually into Covent Garden. After emerging into the Strand and walking through the Savoy hotel, where she exited via a rear door and ended up on the Embankment, she finally felt secure enough to make her way back to the safe house in the St. John’s Wood apartment building in a taxi.
As was usually the case, ANTELOPE had arrived well before her. But then, her agent wasn’t under the same surveillance pressures; nobody from MI6 was attempting to follow ANTELOPE every minute of every hour.
Shevchenko held up a hand in apology and removed her jacket. “I am sorry I am so late. They are watching me even when I clean my teeth now. Probably even when I change my knickers. I have to be careful.”
ANTELOPE gave a slight smile. “In that case, let’s hope they don’t catch up with me. I’d better buy some new underwear, just in case.”
Shevchenko inclined her head in acknowledgment of the joke as she sat in an armchair opposite ANTELOPE, but she didn’t laugh. “You must be very careful.”
ANTELOPE was a prize asset in Western intelligence, and the last thing Shevchenko wanted, having done all the hard work in getting the agent established, was for the entire operation to be blown through some careless mistake.
But the fact that ANTELOPE was feeling somewhat disgruntled and unappreciated at work had opened the door for Shevchenko to work her magic.
That was why a campaign that had lasted many months eventually bore fruit: ANTELOPE decided to take the money on offer. The decisive factors when recruiting assets in foreign intelligence or military organizations had remained remarkably constant: unhappiness for whatever reason in a work situation, the lure of a numbered bank account in Zürich, and the prospect of an early, very comfortable retirement.
“Now, what have you got for me?” Shevchenko asked.
ANTELOPE handed a micro SD card to Shevchenko and explained that it contained a number of top secret NATO documents that had been circulated late the previous evening.
One document detailed how three French navy vessels were under orders to proceed immediately to the Black Sea as part of the reinforcement of NATO positions following the annexation by Russia of the Crimean Peninsula.
One of the vessels was the intelligence collection spy ship the Depuy de Lôme, which was expected to pass through the Bosporus Straits within the next couple of days. The ship, equipped with satellite communication interception technology, would be capable of collecting intelligence and electronic data transmitted well into Russia once she had reached her destination, the report indicated. The ship also had a helicopter landing pad that might be used to operate small intelligence-gathering drones.
The Depuy de Lôme would be joining another French vessel the Alizé, which was an auxiliary support ship for divers and was primarily used b
y the French intelligence agency, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the DGSE, which was France’s equivalent to the SVR or CIA.
The third French vessel, a destroyer, was the Dupleix, which was also expected to arrive in the Black Sea over the following few days.
Shevchenko listened to ANTELOPE’s summary and leaned back in her chair, deep in thought.
“Is there any update on the timing of the US destroyer’s arrival, the Donald Cook, in the Black Sea?” Shevchenko asked.
“No, nothing yet. I will tell you if I hear any more on that.”
“Fine. This seems to me like a significant buildup of NATO military capability,” she said. “Sending two spy ships and a destroyer is a provocation, particularly when you look at what the Americans are also doing in that region.”
“No doubt Washington, London, and Paris think invading the Crimea and taking it off the Ukraine is a provocation.”
Shevchenko ignored the comment. “The president will be furious. I will transmit a short summary to Yasenevo and the president’s office immediately after we have finished here, and then the entire set of documents can go via the usual route as quickly as I can arrange for my illegal to collect the SD card.”
“Good,” ANTELOPE said. “There will almost certainly be a constant stream of these NATO military updates coming through during the next few weeks.”
“Indeed,” Shevchenko said. “Which is why I have this for you. It came a few days earlier than I expected. You can send the next batch of documents yourself.”
She reached into her bag and removed a slim cardboard box that she opened and handed to ANTELOPE. Inside was a circular silver SRAC transmitter receiver.
“Thanks. That’s good work,” ANTELOPE said. “Now I need to know exactly where the base station is.”
Shevchenko took out her phone and opened a maps app set to satellite mode, then showed ANTELOPE the precise location of the SRAC base station in Regent’s Park and described the landmarks on the street and in the park to look out for when identifying where it was. That gave ANTELOPE the option to drive past the SRAC base station, which was the safest option, or operate on foot.
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