The Geneva Trap

by Stella Rimington

  Bech and Russell White had met many times before – most recently at an EU meeting on counter-terrorism a few weeks ago. Now, as White settled in his chair, he seemed relaxed, if curious about why he had been summoned. ‘Well, Otto,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Bech ground his teeth. At any other time he would have taken the casual familiarity for friendliness, but today he was not feeling friendly.

  ‘Let me start with these,’ he said shortly, throwing the photographs down on his desk.

  White said nothing as he picked up one after the other of the four enlarged black-and-white stills. Each photo showed a woman sitting on a park bench; in two of them she was talking to a man who was sitting at the other end of the bench.

  As White looked at the pictures, his expression didn’t change. Bech asked, ‘Do you know who that is?’

  ‘Yes. Alexander Sorsky of the Russian Trade Delegation.’

  ‘I was referring to the woman,’ snapped Bech.

  White shifted uneasily in his chair, and it was clear to Bech that, for all his surface calm, the man had been caught by surprise. So the Swiss surveillance hadn’t been detected – by the British at least. At last White spoke. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I want to know why a British woman was meeting Sorsky.’

  ‘Presumably to discuss trade matters,’ said White coolly.

  ‘I don’t think so. There is no British Trade Delegate here called Jane Falconer.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t confirm that, but I’ll take your word for it.’

  Don’t dare play games with me, thought Bech, glaring at White as he struggled to keep his temper. ‘I think you know perfectly well who she is. I don’t, but I know that she flew in last week on a British passport, and the next day flew out – and now she’s back again. As for Sorsky, you know as well as I do that he’s an undercover Russian intelligence officer.’

  White avoided Bech’s gaze, his eyes straying to the window. Then he seemed to decide something. He looked straight at Bech. ‘We had an approach.’

  ‘From Sorsky?’

  White nodded. ‘Though he may just be the messenger. We don’t know for sure yet.’

  ‘So this Falconer woman flew in from London to meet him. Why didn’t you meet him yourself?’

  White put both hands up in a gesture of helplessness. Bech growled, ‘I know, you were only following orders. Aren’t we all? But what did Sorsky want?’

  White sighed. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not authorised to tell you that.’

  ‘I see.’ Bech leaned back in his leather-upholstered swivel chair. He cupped his hands under his chin, looking thoughtful. Then suddenly he leaned forward, his fists clenched. ‘Then I would ask you to contact London and ask for authorisation. You can tell them that we are not at all happy we weren’t told in advance about this meeting – and you were obviously not planning to tell us about it afterwards either. This is Swiss territory, and we expect our friends and allies to act like friends and allies, not to go behind our backs. As it was, you could easily have derailed our own investigation.’

  ‘Into Sorsky?’

  But Bech was not going to be any more forthcoming than White, so he simply said, ‘We will be happy to exchange information once we know it works two ways.’

  ‘All right. I’ll talk to London.’

  ‘Good. And in the meantime, I expect to be kept informed of any developments. Is that clear?’ He was watching White very carefully. ‘I assume another meeting is planned between this woman Falconer and Sorsky.’

  Reluctantly, White gave a small nod.

  ‘When is it taking place?’ asked Bech.

  White was looking very uncomfortable. ‘Tomorrow. I’ll get authorisation to brief you, and in return I must ask you not to repeat your surveillance. It could be very dangerous, not only for Sorsky but also for my colleague from London.’

  Chapter 17

  Another park, another bench. Sorsky was late; Liz had been waiting for almost half an hour, feeling very exposed sitting by herself in Parc La Grange near the shores of Lake Geneva. Summer was still months away and a breeze off the lake lent a sharp edge to the evening air. The sailing boats heading for harbour before sunset were tacking fast.

  She suppressed a yawn. Having got up in London at the crack of dawn to catch an early flight, she was tired now. Still, she could catch up on sleep at the weekend. Unless something happened to detain her here, she would fly back to London tomorrow. She was having lunch with her mother and Edward on Saturday, but otherwise she had the weekend clear. Martin was in Paris; when she had spoken to him earlier in the week they had arranged to meet in two weeks’ time.

  While they were chatting, she’d mentioned the difficulties Edward was having with his daughter.

  ‘Do these commune people have a name for themselves?’ Martin had asked. ‘Or would that go against their anarchist principles?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’ll see if Edward does. Relations with his daughter are a bit tricky at the moment. She doesn’t appreciate that he’s trying to be helpful.’

  ‘Sometimes people of her age don’t want to be helped. But it’s very frustrating when it’s your own child.’ A sigh came over the line, and Liz knew he was thinking of his own daughter. ‘After my divorce Danielle got very upset – but she wouldn’t talk about it. Not to me anyway.’

  Liz knew things had got better since Danielle had gone to the Sorbonne and stopped living with her mother. Martin tried to see her regularly, at least once a month, and recently when she’d changed her digs, she had actually asked him to help.

  ‘I am going to give Isobel Florian at the DCRI a call,’ Martin had said. ‘She’s taken on the job of monitoring violent groups, so she may know something about this lot. I’ll let you know what she says.’

  A man came through the gates of the park from Quai Gustave Ador and Liz’s mind snapped into the present. It was Sorsky all right. In the distance the city’s famous fountain, the jet d’eau, was shooting water high into the air where the lake met its inland river.

  Watching Sorsky coming towards her, hunching his shoulders as he walked, she remembered how he’d looked all those years before. Funny how it came back to her, even though she’d barely known the man. He took the gravel path that would bring him past the bench she was sitting on; he was walking slowly, not looking in her direction. While she waited for him to reach her, Liz scanned the park yet again. Across a broad stretch of lawn two women were sitting chatting together, keeping a casual eye on a couple of toddlers. Near them a gardener was scarifying a patch of grass with a metal rake, its tines flashing whenever they caught the rays of the lowering sun. Late for a gardener to be working, she thought. Further back from the gates, a young couple canoodled on a picnic blanket spread under a large plane tree. It all looked innocuous enough though she knew that any or all of it could be surveillance.

  Sorsky did not seem particularly concerned; he kept walking along the path towards her, but when he arrived at the bench and sat down he was breathing noisily. For a minute or so he said nothing as his breathing gradually slowed. Then, ‘So we meet again, after rather less time than before.’

  He looked weary as he went on, ‘I’m disappointed that I haven’t found out as much as I would have liked.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Liz. She waited for him to say something else. The daylight would soon be gone, and she was afraid the park might close, so trying to push things on she said, ‘When we met last week you said your Station had been asked to try and infiltrate Clarity. But then you were told this had already been done by another country. How did your people find that out?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Sorsky seemed troubled – not as nervous now as he’d been at their first meeting, but somehow weighed down, burdened. He pursed his lips for a moment. Then he shrugged and sighed deeply, as if to say, to hell with it. ‘We were briefed about Clarity two months ago – one of the high-ups flew in from Moscow. But that is not how I learned about this other co
untry.’

  He paused and Liz resisted the urge to press him, since he seemed so fragile. Eventually he started to speak. ‘One night about six weeks ago,’ he began, ‘my section all went out for a night on the town.’

  It was an annual outing, he explained, and they liked to splash out. That night was no exception: Sorsky and four others dined in a fine French restaurant in the old town where they had nothing but the best – foie gras, Chateaubriand, a perfect Camembert, and finally Crêpes Suzette. There was champagne before dinner, bottles of Château Margaux during the meal, and a fine Sauternes with the dessert.

  It was a real blow-out, and by the time the meal ended Sorsky was more than ready to go home, but one of them – ‘I’ll call him Boris,’ said Sorsky, ‘but that is not his real name’ – wanted to go on to a club.

  ‘What sort of a club?’ asked Liz at this point.

  ‘A nightclub. Not a good one.’

  It was called the PussKat Club. You went down some steps, tipped the doorman, signed any name you liked in a book, then went into a cavernous, smoke-filled room, with disco music blaring from speakers in the ceiling.

  The place was full of international businessmen, sitting in little groups on vinyl banquettes, drinking exorbitantly expensive champagne or – in the case of the Russians – bottles of Stolichnaya. From time to time, semi-clad ‘hostesses’ approached the tables, offering lap dances and the possibility of a whole lot more.

  It wasn’t Sorsky’s scene at all and he wasn’t surprised when the others swallowed down their vodka and peeled off home – they were all family men. Sorsky was about to go home too, but Boris refused to leave – he had his eye on one of the women. Sorsky didn’t want to abandon him. Boris had had a lot to drink and was beginning to get aggressive, and Sorsky was afraid that if he stayed there by himself he’d end up either getting fleeced or beaten up by the bouncers, or both.

  Fortunately, after another drink, Boris was starting to flag and when Sorsky said firmly that they should leave, he didn’t argue. Once outside, it was obvious Boris could hardly stand and that Sorsky would have to take him home. Twenty Swiss francs were enough to persuade the doorman to leave his post and flag down a cab at the corner, while Sorsky propped his colleague up against the wall.

  The man lived alone in a new high-rise block on the edge of the financial district and it took only a few minutes to get there, heave Boris out of the cab and into the lift, and then open the front door. Once he’d dumped him on a sofa, Sorsky was ready to go home, but Boris, slightly sobered from the ride, insisted he stay for a drink, and fetched yet another bottle of vodka from the fridge. Sorsky reluctantly joined him, thinking he’d have just one small nightcap and then get out of there. But Boris had found his second wind. Putting on some loud rock music, he suggested, to Sorsky’s alarm, that they phone an agency and get some girls to come over. Sorsky was no prude, but when he found out that the girls Boris had in mind were fifteen years old, all he wanted to do was get out of the flat and go home.

  To distract him from this new idea, Sorsky began talking about work, asking about other postings Boris had had and how they compared to Geneva; telling a few stories of his own about some escapades he’d had when he’d been stationed in the Ukraine in the year the Soviet Union had broken up. Then, with no particular intention but probably because it was at the front of his mind, he found himself mentioning the recent briefing they’d had on Operation Clarity from the Moscow bigwig who’d flown in. He said to Boris that it was all very well being asked to find out more about the British–American defence programme, but the chances of infiltrating it seemed virtually nil. How could they be expected to put an agent in there? Or, even more unlikely, to turn someone who was already working inside?

  Pausing for a moment then, Sorsky turned and looked at Liz. ‘You know the history. In the thirties the threat of fascism was enough to make Communists out of a whole generation of young Englishmen – including many who were working in the very heart of the Establishment. But now the only lever we’ve got is money – blackmail or just pure cash. And first you’ve got to find the person with the right access. The security for a programme like Clarity would be buttoned up tight.’

  He’d said as much to Boris, but his colleague had shaken his head, saying that British security wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. When Sorsky started to argue, Boris cut him off, and it was then that he said something startling – he said that another country had already managed to plant an agent in the British Ministry of Defence. Not in the Clarity programme itself, but close enough. Sorsky remembered the exact words – close enough, Boris had said.

  Sorsky had been astonished by this, and had asked which country had managed this remarkable feat. But by then Boris seemed to be past talking. He was either pretending to be comatose or he really was. After waiting for a short time to see if he’d say any more, Sorsky left the flat and went home.

  His story finished, he leaned back on the bench in silence. Across the lawn the two women were packing up and putting coats on the children. Liz said, ‘So that’s how you learned about the spy?’

  Sorsky nodded. ‘Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to learn anything more.’

  At work the next day, Boris had acted as if their drunken conversation hadn’t happened; when Sorsky had made some passing remark about the infiltrator, he’d just looked blank. He clearly didn’t want the subject brought up again.

  ‘What is Boris’s job?’ said Liz hopefully.

  ‘I’m not prepared to tell you any more about him,’ said Sorsky. ‘Except that his name is not Boris.’

  Damn, thought Liz, they seemed to have reached a dead end. At least Russell White at the Geneva Station should know who Sorsky’s colleagues were and perhaps there would be CCTV outside the PussKat Club which the Swiss could get hold of. It might show who Sorsky left the club with.

  But he wasn’t finished. ‘I have managed to find out something else . . .’

  Liz looked at him. ‘I hope you were careful.’

  He shrugged. ‘Nothing to be careful about – it landed in my lap. You see,’ he said, ‘Boris has a secretary.’ He hesitated. ‘For a time, we were friendly. Not so much any more.’

  A faint flush was settling over Sorsky’s cheeks. You old Russian smoothie, she thought, as a capsule version of the affair ran through her head: the junior secretary, pretty but unsure of herself, falling for the veteran intelligence officer who took such an interest in her when no one else paid attention. The office chats by the proverbial water cooler, then the ‘accidental’ bumping into her outside work; the innocent drink, the second time for drinks (by then less innocent), the invitation back to his place; the initial infatuation of the man followed by gradual detachment; until it was over – the girl/woman left dumped, feeling bruised and used. Could that have happened to Liz herself with the younger Sorsky, if she hadn’t left Bristol when she did?

  Now he was looking mournful, even embarrassed. Finally he said, ‘It wasn’t what you’re thinking. I was in love with her – but she wouldn’t leave her husband. God knows why – the man is obviously a complete pig. But there it is.’

  Liz didn’t say anything. Sighing, he went on, ‘She came to me last week and said she was worried about something Boris was doing. He’d been away – he often travels – and he was supposed to be in Paris, talking to our Station there. Yet Svetlana said she’d found a receipt for petrol on his desk. The petrol station was in Marseilles.’

  ‘Marseilles? What was he doing there?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I do know you don’t drive to Paris from Geneva via Marseilles.’

  ‘He may have had some other reason for going there – to meet a relative or else a source. It could be any number of things.’

  ‘Perhaps. I would have thought the same thing, but then something else happened. It was earlier this week, and this time Boris was supposed to be in Zurich.’

  ‘Don’t tell me he left another petrol receipt lying around,’ said Liz.
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br />   ‘Actually, it was a newspaper. She found it on the floor of his car. He’d given her the keys to have it picked up by a garage. He’d had a little scrape apparently and wanted the paint retouched – Boris loves his car. She was checking to make sure he hadn’t left any personal stuff inside when she found a copy of Marseille Plus. That’s the local paper down there.’

  ‘Couldn’t it have been from his earlier trip?’

  Sorsky shook his head. ‘She’s not stupid. The date was this Monday.’

  Liz nodded. One odd occurrence she could understand – it might just be a change of plan. Two suggested there was something going on. ‘Did she ask him why he was in Marseilles?’

  ‘No, she told me instead. She didn’t want him to think she was prying, and she thought I might know if there was some reason for him to be there. Then she could stop worrying. But I didn’t. He hasn’t said anything about it to any of the rest of us so, whatever it is, he doesn’t want anyone else in the Station to know. That means it must be top-secret – orders direct from Moscow, I’d guess. My one thought is that it may be connected to this Clarity project. From what he said the other night, he seems to know more about it than the rest of us do. He said some other country had succeeded in getting close to it. How did he know? Could his visits to Marseilles have something to do with it?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Liz. ‘But it would help if we knew Boris’s real name.’

  Sorsky shook his head.

  ‘If we knew who he was, we might find out what he’s doing in Marseilles. We could –– ’

  Sorsky cut in. ‘I told you, I’m not here to betray my country or my colleagues. His name doesn’t matter.’

  Liz looked up and saw that the two women and the children had gone. There was no sign of the gardener either. In another quarter of an hour the sun would go down and it would quickly get dark.