Hard Cover Page 16

  I figured if they were in no hurry to leave, it was because they were still waiting for confirmation of a location and a time for the meeting.

  Two hours later I got another call from Lindsay. I was back in the car and fixating on a huge mug of fresh coffee. With cream. If nothing else it helped pass the time.

  ‘I’m sending you some co-ordinates from Vale,’ she told me. ‘He told me it’s the information you requested for your meeting.’ Then she added brightly, ‘How are you?’

  How was I? It was an odd question and I sensed the experienced hand of Tom Vale behind it. Brian Callahan might be responsible for running this operation, but I knew Vale would be taking a close interest in the actual mechanics. Me, in other words.

  ‘I’m good. What did he say?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Vale. I know he said something.’

  ‘He didn’t … I mean, not much.’ I could almost hear her confused blush.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘He said the waiting was the most difficult part of an operation and that you might like to hear the sound of a … a friendly voice. It was his idea, I promise. I’m not breaking protocol. And Callahan agreed.’

  I couldn’t fault their interest, I had to give them that. And I knew why it was. The stakes for this assignment must be very high indeed, and that alone would be enough of a driver behind their thinking. Keep the operative active and alert whenever possible; engage and detect any doubts or concerns and give whatever support was available, relaying any relevant information to the Clandestine Service Officer in charge – in this case Brian Callahan. And Tom Vale would be thinking exactly the same. Leaving a field operative in the dark from time to time was sometimes inevitable, especially in a fast-moving scenario when communications were not always possible or advisable. But it isn’t good practice.

  That wasn’t the only reason they might be concerned, however. Although I was in secure and encrypted communication, I’d come through a hard contact with the opposition, and was now having to wait for something to unfold. The succession of adrenalin surge from the fire-fight with the men in the helicopter, then a period of inaction, when I wasn’t sure whether my presence had been detected or the men I’d come into contact with had merely assumed that Gurov was the aggressor, would be an alternate high and low. And for some operatives that was a killer combination, when mistakes could be made and uncertainty would be at its highest. For some it bred a sense of paranoia that could eventually begin to chip away at the mind.

  ‘Tell Mother Goose to stop fussing,’ I suggested. ‘But thank you all, anyway. As soon as I get the co-ordinates I’ll be on my way. Make sure the Pathfinders keep an eye on the target and to watch their backs. I still don’t know how connected the guys from last night are, but I’m pretty sure they’ll be back with extra help and looking for anything out of the ordinary.’

  ‘Copy that.’

  ‘I suppose their toy has camera capabilities – like the one you sent over to watch my back last time?’

  ‘That’s correct. Kind of you to remember.’ The smile in her voice told me she knew what I was referring to. She had taken a shot on enlisting the help of an unarmed, high-altitude drone to give me a picture of everything on the ground while running for the border in Ukraine. It had been a lifesaver in more ways than one and I hadn’t forgotten it.

  ‘Don’t suppose they have any other gadgets on board, do they?’

  ‘You mean lethal ones?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I asked about that. Mr Vale said this one’s too small … but they’re working on it.’ She paused. ‘Do you think he was joking?’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it. If he gets one any time soon, tell him to get it in the air.’

  ‘I will. Stay safe.’

  I waited for the co-ordinates to come through, then fed them into my navigation system. The location was a lake about thirty miles away. Given a decent road, which was doubtful, that meant an hour’s drive. Lindsay’s message said there was a bar at the lake along with a boating and fishing hire store billed as ideal for weekend enthusiasts from the city, so the arrival of a plane wouldn’t stand out. Sedgwick would be there in one hour thirty minutes.

  I made sure the Val was securely out of sight and the pistol close at hand, then set out for my rendezvous.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ‘You’re going out? But it’s so early.’ The voice was soft, feminine and sleepy, and came out of a tangle of bedclothes that, until the early alarm had woken him, Robert Sedgwick had been sharing cosily with Elena Semenova, a young model and marketing assistant. They were in his small third-floor rented apartment not far from the centre of Saint Petersburg, and had been sharing the space for the past three weeks, since meeting at a trade party thrown at the British Consulate in Smolninskiy Raion. It had been lust at first sight in Sedgwick’s limited experience, but it was slowly turning into something deeper.

  ‘I have to. I’m sorry. It shouldn’t be long – out and back today, I hope.’ Sedgwick stepped over to the bed as Elena emerged, hair tousled, and elegantly and unabashedly naked. Blonde and slim, she had enviable cheekbones and the kind of skin most women would have given their right arm for, and which he found irresistible to the touch.

  ‘Where are you going? Anywhere interesting? Oh, don’t tell me – embassy business. I shouldn’t ask otherwise you might have to shoot me.’ She brightened up at a thought. ‘Maybe I could come and keep you company! We could have lunch together.’

  He kissed her back. ‘Sorry – I’d love to but this is strictly business. I have to go talk to a group of officials and believe me, it won’t be fun and could be a long day.’ He was surprised at how easy he found it to tell the small lie, and felt instantly guilty. Elena didn’t deserve lies and he resolved to make it up to her as soon as he could. For now, though, duty called and it was a summons he couldn’t refuse. A short flight to a lake he knew and a meeting with a man whom he had been assured he could trust implicitly, and he could be back here in no time.

  Although as a commercial attaché he wasn’t compelled to become involved in any way in the more clandestine nature of his country’s foreign office, he felt some internal pressure to assist where he could as long as it didn’t get him expelled for ‘activities incompatible with his status’ as a diplomat. In addition, he had been assured that it was his local knowledge only that was required, after which he could leave and return to his normal duties, his brief absence being explained by London to the embassy in Moscow.

  ‘Do you have to?’ Elena murmured softly with a delightful pout, taking hold of his arm and sliding her other hand under his jacket to caress his ribs. ‘I was looking forward to a day in bed.’ She laughed and tried to pull him down, but he grinned back and resisted, much against his better judgement.

  At forty-eight, Sedgwick was divorced and free to play the field. But he was also aware of the dangers inherent in being a diplomat in Russia, and took his position seriously, even if, as he was doing now, he was skating a little close to the edge. He was also realistic enough to question what Elena found attractive about him. He was no real catch – a fact his ex-wife would have been delighted to confirm – and although still upright and in possession of his own teeth, was almost twenty years her senior, a fact he found discomforting.

  He retreated out of range while he still could and picked up his briefcase and a thick jacket he always wore when flying. It was invariably chilly in the plane he used for his regular trade trips. As for the briefcase, it held nothing out of the ordinary, but since receiving the call last night from the man named Tom Vale, whose function he was only vaguely aware of and didn’t wish to pursue too closely, he was focussing on making his day seem outwardly as ordinary and mundane as all his other days.

  Elena looked resigned and shook her head, which had the effect of gently shaking other parts of her body which instantly drew Sedgwick’s eyes. ‘I understand. In that case, perhaps you can bring me a little present to make up for deserting me.�
� She smiled to soften the words and sat back against the headboard, hand folded demurely in her lap, a stance that only served to emphasize her other assets.

  ‘I’m not sure I can do that,’ he murmured, his throat suddenly dry. He tried not to look at her body and failed. ‘Unless you have a sudden desire for freshwater fish or wood carvings. Maybe some bear’s teeth if I can find them?’ He stopped speaking, aware that he had said too much, and walked towards the door before he gave the game away entirely. ‘We can go shopping in the city centre tomorrow, I promise. Will that do?’

  She smiled and blew him a kiss. ‘Of course, my darling. Have a nice day.’ She patted the bedclothes. ‘I’ll be waiting right here when you get back.’

  Sedgwick closed the door of the apartment and hurried downstairs. He had thirty minutes to get to the small airfield where Andrei, his usual taxi pilot, was based, and less than an hour’s flying time to reach the destination of the lake which he would convey to Vale by text once they were airborne. Hopefully, if Vale was right, he could be done with whatever small task he was needed for and be heading back to Saint Pete and Elena by lunchtime. That was, he thought, as he emerged onto a rain-soaked street, if the weather allowed. On the other hand, in his experience, Andrei would never allow a spot of rain to stop him taking to the air and earning a day’s fee.

  As Sedgwick was making his way by car to the small club airfield outside the city, Elena was finding herself at a loss. Her modelling and marketing work were intermittent at best, and she had few friends she could call on at such short notice. The day looked like looming ahead of her with precious little to do. She jumped out of bed and headed for the shower, suddenly resolved to be positive. She would clean and tidy the apartment and have a nice meal waiting for when Robert returned. She wasn’t the best cook in the world, but she was eager to learn and hadn’t managed to poison him yet.

  As she went to step under the spray, she heard her cell phone ringing. She checked the screen and saw it was Monika, a woman of indeterminate years and glacial beauty who was in some way connected with the modelling agency. She hadn’t quite worked out what Monika did there, but she often seemed to be hanging around recently and had always been very pleasant and chatty.

  ‘Hi, Monika.’

  ‘Elena. How are you today? Can you take on a last-minute photo shoot? The model we’d booked has dropped out. An overdose of coke, apparently, stupid girl.’

  ‘Of course. Who was it?’

  ‘Oh, I forget. We won’t be using her again, anyway.’ The comment came as an aside, without emotion, a reminder for Elena of the cut-throat nature of this business.

  ‘Where and when?’

  ‘I’ll text you later with the details. It’s in the city so you won’t have far to travel. I’m surprised you’re not busy cosying up with your new boyfriend.’

  Elena hesitated. She hadn’t talked about Robert to anybody as far as she could recall, although she had a feeling a couple of the girls might have seen her out with him. Still, it was the kind of business where news travelled fast and gossip even faster, and she felt rather proud to be able to say she had a boyfriend – and an English one at that. ‘Actually, no. I was, but he’s had to go out of town today at short notice. A phone call earlier. So suddenly I’m free.’

  ‘Oh, lucky him. Anywhere interesting?’

  ‘No idea. He wouldn’t say, but he took his thick jacket so I know he’s taking an air taxi somewhere. He does that quite a lot, from Morotevo.’

  ‘What, and he didn’t take you with him?’ Monika sounded shocked. ‘Why do men get all the fun?’

  ‘I know. He said it was a boring meeting with a bunch of officials, so he couldn’t take me. He did offer to bring me back a present, though … as long as I liked wood carvings or freshwater fish.’

  ‘Yuk … how romantic. Wood and fish. Sounds like he’s going up north, then. From Morotevo, you say? There’s a flying club there, isn’t there? I always thought I’d like to learn to fly someday.’

  Elena was surprised. She couldn’t see Monika behind the controls of a plane. Somehow the idea of her elegantly manicured fingers coming into contact with a joystick simply didn’t match, but she didn’t say so. ‘What’s this job you mentioned?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry – I’ll confirm you’re doing it and text you with the details. ‘Bye.’

  As Elena got in the shower, she felt a surge of excitement. A modelling job – any job – could be the beginning of something good, and just at the right time. She couldn’t wait to tell Robert all about it – he’d be so pleased for her.

  Barely a hundred yards away, in a small apartment block on the other side of a park, the woman whose full name was Monika Kolokova dialled a number. The apartment she was in had been rented under an assumed name on a short-term lease, unfurnished and bare, save for a camp bed, curtains at the windows and a hanging wardrobe with three changes of clothes. Kolokova was currently dressed in leisure pants and a fleece top, and smoking a long cigarette. She had been awake for several hours, monitoring a surveillance device placed in Sedgwick’s apartment across the way, and needed the nicotine to keep going.

  ‘Yes?’ A man’s voice, matter-of-fact. A voice in the information chain of which she was a simple link.

  ‘The man named Robert Sedgwick is on his way to Morotevo to catch an air taxi north. Very short notice, according to Semenova. He wouldn’t tell her where or why, although that doesn’t normally stop him; the idiot’s like a love-struck calf.’

  The man’s voice remained flat, showing no interest in her opinion. ‘Morotevo. Got it. You can stand down until further notice.’

  Kolokova switched off the phone and began to pack away the surveillance equipment. She made a mental note to arrange a make-do photo assignment for Semenova. She knew a magazine proprietor who would help, no questions asked. No point having told the lie only to have the dumb girl asking questions later when no job materialized.

  THIRTY-SIX

  When Sedgwick arrived at the small airfield outside Saint Petersburg, a single-engine amphibious Cessna was waiting. It was early for the small club field and nobody else was in sight. Most of the pilots here seemed to fly purely sociable hours, and rarely turned up until after nine.

  Sedgwick breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t want to go through the usual range of hearty greetings and questions about where he was going, especially today. At any other time he would have been able to give a thoroughly truthful answer, entirely verifiable and innocent, even boring, and usually concerned with logging, tourism and acquiring licences for inbound trade from the UK and contact details for outbound shipments of wood and other products from this region. By now he was fairly well-known at the airfield and, he suspected, had long been marked down as a bit of an oddity from the British Consulate who liked flying off to talk to loggers, hunters and anybody else with an interest in trade.

  It was a long-term commitment and one he enjoyed, but he always had to question how long it could last. The kinds of trade opportunities to and from here were limited in comparison to manufacturing industries in big cities, and he constantly expected to hear that he was being recalled to perform a more valuable function elsewhere where the potential was much greater.

  He parked and locked his car and walked across to the plane, expecting to find Andrei in the cockpit ready to take off. But the plane was locked. He walked round it, wondering if the pilot was off in the clubhouse, which was an old WW2 structure from the field’s days as a fighter airbase. Just as he was debating ringing the man, he heard a vehicle approaching and saw a car skid to a stop outside the clubhouse. Two men climbed out, one wearing a flying jacket, and walked across to meet him.

  ‘Who are you?’ Sedgwick asked. ‘I was expecting Andrei.’

  ‘Andrei’s sick,’ the man in the flying jacket replied bluntly. ‘I’m the replacement.’ He was a similar height and build to the usual pilot, but younger, somewhere in his early forties, with a sallow complexion and a two-day stubble. He wore hiki
ng boots and jeans, and stared at Sedgwick without an ounce of welcome.

  ‘Sick? What’s wrong with him? I spoke to him last night and he was fine.’

  The pilot shrugged and said nothing.

  ‘Can we get going?’ This was the second man, who was balding, stocky and dressed in work pants and an old combat jacket.

  The pilot looked at Sedgwick and said, ‘Well, are we flying or not?’

  Sedgwick nodded. ‘Of course.’ He felt a tug of concern. It was a familiar feeling in this country when well-laid plans were suddenly thrown into disarray with no real explanation or apology. He thought he’d get used to it over time but he never had. The feeling that any disruption might be deliberate and caused by outside forces never went away entirely, and he knew that colleagues at the embassy and consulate often felt the same way.

  He handed a slip of paper with the co-ordinates to the pilot and climbed on board, strapping himself in, closely followed by the other passenger, who promptly buried his nose in a day-old newspaper. Sedgwick would have preferred to listen to the usual friendly chatter from Andrei about his family in the city, his children and grandchildren – even his exploits as a contract pilot in South America – but that wasn’t going to happen on this trip.

  Five minutes later they were rushing down the runway and lifting into a dull, cloudy sky full of threatened rain. Sedgwick had seen this part of the country too many times to be fascinated by the landscape below, and he soon found the early-morning call from Vale and the trip out here catching up with him. His eyes became heavy and he fell asleep, thinking of Elena.

  At the controls, the pilot levelled out and checked his passengers in the rear-view mirror. Unseen by Sedgwick, he caught the eye of the other passenger, who lifted his eyebrows and went back to his newspaper.