Hard Cover Page 4

‘Yes.’ I wasn’t being difficult; this wasn’t a friendly country I was being asked to enter, nor was it a place I could easily blend in and move about at will. Russia is one of the toughest environments for outsiders to move in and possesses several highly efficient government agencies with a wide network of resources to call on. If the Wise Men Thornbury had mentioned were as well placed as she said, they probably had the resources to drop a net on anyone of interest. If they wanted a city or area closed down, they could most likely do it very quickly. I would need to know exactly what was going on around me and have absolute faith in the people I was going to work with.

  Sewell looked hesitant but he could see this wasn’t going his way. ‘Very well. Callahan and Citera. Anything else?’

  ‘No. Anything I need I’ll source myself.’

  ‘Like what?’ Thornbury looked alarmed. I could see by her face that she was trying not to think about things that go bang and the possible consequences of somebody going off on a Rambo-style mission in the Russian heartland. Typical State Department; we want you to do this for us but please don’t make a noise doing it in case we get embarrassed.

  ‘Stuff. A vehicle, clothing … resources.’ When she didn’t lose the frown I explained, ‘I’ll have to go in light, so it’ll be easier to get what I need over there.’

  ‘Are you saying you have contacts there who can do that?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Who are they? Can they be trusted?’

  I smiled and said nothing. Silly question; my life depended on trusting people to do what I wanted and not turn me in, and most of the time they didn’t let me down. Maybe they didn’t have the same ethos in the State Department.

  But she hadn’t finished grandstanding yet. ‘Very well. I have a couple of conditions of my own. Under no circumstances are you to engage in any form of conflict with local forces, nor are you to come to the attention of the authorities. I understand you’re accustomed to operating below the radar, is that right?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Good. Make sure you keep it that way. This mission is of vital importance and I don’t want anybody taking the potential outcome lightly – and that will surely be a bad one if you should allow yourself to be compromised.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s likely.’ Tom Vale looked annoyed, but she waved a dismissive hand as if he were of no importance.

  ‘The White House,’ she continued grandly, ‘wants this to succeed without any unpleasant consequences or adverse publicity. That means nobody can know that the US is involved in any way whatsoever. I hope I make myself clear?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Which would you prefer me to do if I am careless enough to get caught – take a cyanide pill or shoot myself?’

  At that point Jason Sewell levered himself out of his chair and said, ‘I think we’re done here. Brian Callahan will give you a briefing as soon as we’re ready for you to go. Ms Thornbury, may I have a word outside?’

  The way he said it and the look on his face made it an invitation she couldn’t refuse. As he walked out leaving her to trail along behind, I wished I could have been a fly on the wall.

  SIX

  Out in the cool air of the corridor, Sewell waited until they were only a few steps away before turning on Thornbury and fixing her with a cold stare that left her in no doubt about how angry he was.

  ‘Now, listen to me, ma’am. I have great respect for your position and the desires and hopes of the White House in this matter. But let me level with you: you may have an inside track around the Oval Office, but out here in the real world, we treat people a little differently. The man you’ve just spoken to with such disrespect is highly experienced in conducting covert operations in hostile terrain. He knows what the score is and yet he will still do his job. I trust him and so do a lot of other people around here.’

  ‘That’s as may be, but I have a duty—’

  ‘I haven’t finished.’ He waited until she reluctantly clamped her lips shut before continuing. ‘The man sitting alongside him, Tom Vale, who you seem to have ignored as if he weren’t there, has operated undercover himself for over thirty years and has been inside Russia on covert missions more times than you can even begin to imagine. He came to us with this information, so talking as if this is entirely our mission or our doing, is unhelpful in the extreme. In fact it’s downright arrogant. We do not hold the only stick in this corn-beating contest and we need men like Vale to remain onside. Both these men know the consequences and importance of this venture; they’re intelligent and experienced enough to understand without being told like high school kids on a fifty-cent tour of the White House.’ He leaned forward and added softly, ‘If Watchman can pull this off, we will all have cause to be very grateful to him and to Vale. So pissing them off is what we around here call counter-productive. I hope I’ve made myself clear on that.’

  With that, he turned and walked away, leaving Thornbury in stunned silence alone in the corridor.

  SEVEN

  When it was clear neither Sewell nor Thornbury was coming back, I stood up ready to leave. But Tom Vale waved at me to hold on.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ he said. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Marc, I’m not trying to put you off and we’d be crazy to pass up this opportunity of getting some influence over there. But this isn’t going to be a stroll in the park. You know that, don’t you?’

  I nodded. If anybody knew about the risks of operating undercover in Russia, it would be Vale. He’d been there and done that and got the snow on his boots to prove it. ‘That’s why I need Callahan and Citera. They’ll give me the edge I need.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that. I might know of people with some local knowledge. If I can get hold of any useful information I’ll pass the details to Callahan.’

  ‘Thank you. What exactly is your role in this?’

  He smiled. ‘As low-level as possible if I can help it. We call it reciprocal trading. Two heads are better than one and so forth. But it helped that Tzorekov approached us first to test the water, and we brought the State Department and Sewell into the game.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m happy to let him do the running on support; he has the manpower and technology. But the simple fact is, we all stand to benefit by helping Tzorekov succeed.’

  I let that one go, although I knew Vale was being modest. He and MI6 had some very tricky technology of their own, and some extremely capable people using it. But it was good to know he was there in the background if I needed some extras.

  He must have read my mind because he said, ‘Is there anything I can help with? Don’t worry – nobody’s listening, and if they are, what I’m offering isn’t against the rules.’

  ‘Good to hear. I guess, papers. passport, driver’s licence … you know the stuff.’ It was backup material, in case I had to change cover while in the field. Having a fallback position is always good trade craft and a boost to the confidence to know you have it in your back pocket if needed.

  ‘No problem.’ He paused. ‘I’m not going to ask why you haven’t asked Sewell for it; I heard about your last outing with them. A little unfortunate.’

  A little unfortunate. There he was with his understatement again. It had certainly come close to the wire. A leak of information had nearly been the end of me in an assignment in Ukraine, not helped by a crooked senator in Washington who had an agenda against the CIA and an eye for making some quick money out of a bad situation. ‘It’s not Sewell I don’t trust,’ I said. ‘Once bitten twice shy, is all.’

  ‘Fair enough. What level of papers do you need?’

  ‘A working stiff – maybe a low-level or supervisory role. If it’s outside the Saint Petersburg area I’ll need something that allows me to move around in that region. There’s a lot of forest up that way.’

  ‘Sounds good. They’ll be with you by tomorrow morning.’

  I realized by his smile that he was ahead of me; the job had already been done.

  ‘Thank you. Why are you doing this?’
<
br />   ‘Because we owe you. And the people in the Basement would never forgive me if I didn’t make the offer. I can’t extend it to supplying any operatives to come with you, although they’d do it in a heartbeat if I asked them. But I’m sure you know that, anyway.’

  The Basement was a small team of special forces operatives working for MI6 – their hard action branch on call twenty-four-seven and similar to the CIA’s Special Activities Division. I’d helped one of their men and an MI6 officer on a previous job and they clearly hadn’t forgotten it.

  ‘I appreciate that.’

  He seemed to hesitate, then said in a soft rush, ‘Just be careful, Marc. There are some very powerful people on both sides of this argument who want Putin to continue banging the war drum.’

  ‘Why? What do they stand to gain?’

  ‘If it goes too far, not a thing and everything to lose, God help us all. But in the short term, more armaments, increased budgets and a huge increase in military spending generally on all sides.’

  It was crazy, of course, but I knew he was right. All wars, no matter how hot, cold, small or large, meant somebody somewhere stood to make a quick buck.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ Vale continued, with a hand on my sleeve, ‘no general or politician ever considered every consequence of playing this game a shade too far. They all thought they could control it down to the wire – but they never have. And some poor innocent has to pay the price.’

  I thought he was about to say more, but a rush of voices outside the door signalled the approach of visitors, so he merely nodded. ‘Come on, let’s get you an escort out of here.’

  EIGHT

  I thought Leonid Tzorekov looked drawn and tired as he left the arrivals hall at Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo International airport and headed towards the exits. It might have been the lights, which cast a sickly aura over everyone, or maybe now he’d stepped off the plane and had solid ground beneath his feet – Russian ground at that – he was beginning to regret his decision to come back. If he was nervous, though, he was hiding it well enough not to have attracted attention from the watchful eyes of the Border Service personnel. Maybe being an older man, he’d got passed over as a potential threat.

  Seconds later I spotted Arkady Gurov. He was trailing in his boss’s wake by several yards and didn’t look the part of anybody’s bodyguard. But as a former member of Russia’s Federal Protective Service or FSO, he’d have been well-trained in how to keep a low profile and melt into the background. He was pushing a baggage trolley with two bags on it, and I wondered how long he was planning on staying. He moved easily, with a slight spring in his step, and in spite of the flush of other passengers, he was managing to stick close enough to his boss without seeming to be with him.

  Tom Vale had passed me the heads-up about their travel arrangements from Heathrow, which had been via Paris and on separate flights. From there they had gone to Frankfurt, then taken a late afternoon flight to Saint Petersburg. They could have travelled direct but I figured it gave Gurov a greater opportunity of spotting anyone taking too much of an interest in his boss. They were travelling on Israeli passports, which Vale seemed to think was OK with him, and I didn’t bother asking how they had arranged visas; Tzorekov undoubtedly had his own methods of arranging them but it gave me a hint about how long he must have been planning this venture.

  Vale had also told me a little about Gurov’s background. It seemed that several years ago, Tzorekov had paid for an emergency heart operation on Natalia, Gurov’s wife, followed by a lengthy convalescence in a Swiss clinic. She had since died but Gurov had never forgotten it and now seemed welded to Tzorekov for life.

  It said a lot about the bond between them, and the extent to which Gurov might go to protect his boss. It was worth bearing in mind if we ever met up.

  They made their way to a car rental agency and I hung around long enough to see Gurov indulge in a neat piece of theatre. While waiting his turn, he began chatting to an older man – Tzorekov – in the queue behind him, and found they were travelling in the same direction. He offered him a ride, which the old man duly accepted with a lot of nods and smiles. The rental agency lost out on a second deal, but Russians are generally an agreeable and friendly people, especially towards the older generation, and nobody seemed to mind.

  Gurov had bypassed the various family-type sedans on the list and selected a dark green VW Touareg. It was an understandable choice; tough enough for the roads in the region yet not so unusual that it would stand out if they were heading into the back-country around the lakes.

  I’d arrived the day before and had my ride close by, along with a few items I’d arranged through a contact in Moscow before leaving home. On paper Yuri was in the tool and plant hire business, but the bulk of his real turnover was done beneath the counter and had nothing to do with construction work.

  ‘No problem,’ he’d said easily, when I got through. ‘What do you need and where?’

  I’d prepared a list and we negotiated a price and collection point. He expressed neither surprise nor curiosity at my requirements and where I was headed, but I hadn’t expected anything less. He operated in the kind of world where showing too much interest in his clients’ needs was a dangerous way to live. And since most of them lived and worked well outside the law and had their own ways of dealing with loose tongues, he was hardly likely to go telling tales to the authorities.

  Yuri had fixed me up with a collection point in the industrial zone near the docks on the west of the city, where I’d also found a UAZ Patriot pickup with a small logging company’s decals on the door panels. It had a lot of miles beneath the hood and a suitable collection of bruises to the bodywork, but in this region and especially out of the city, it would blend in perfectly. It also had a spare set of magnetic decals in the back and I could change the profile of the car within a couple of minutes if I had to.

  All that, however, would have been wasted if I hadn’t had the right level of paperwork coming through the airport. With modern technology, passing through identity checks on false papers is a high-risk venture. But it’s not impossible if the preparation is right.

  No border force can track a line back from a presented passport if the available supporting documentation is solid enough. For one, hardly anybody carries that much history with them on trips abroad. Even checking with a source-country’s authorities takes time, because most forces don’t have the resources to do it quickly unless they have a specific reason for jumping through all the procedural hoops required. Just ask travellers who have been asked to prove who they are by some picky immigration officer; it’s suddenly impossible to remember dates and details you had at your fingertips the day before.

  But Vale had made sure I wouldn’t have that worry. He’d got me a full, verifiable legend or history, right down to the bits and pieces, like a personal letter from my mother, an unopened utility bill I clearly hadn’t had time to open on my way to catch my flight and a couple of photos in my wallet that were duplicated on my cell phone. The visa was bona fide and had been arranged on a just-in-case basis. I was going to switch to another set of ID once I got moving inside the country, but they’d be good for the duration of my stay here.

  I gave the two Russians a decent lead and followed them out of the airport. They turned onto the main ring road around the city and headed east, crossing the impressive cable suspension bridge over the Neva River. The direction fitted what the CIA analysts had suggested was one likely heading, picked up from a mention of ‘the lakes’ in an intercept on Tzorekov’s phone. The problem was, lakes were numerous to the north of Saint Petersburg, some of them vast, their numbers extending hundreds of miles to the north coast beyond Archangel and the White Sea off the Kola Peninsula. Exactly where these two men were headed was still unknown, because Tzorekov himself didn’t yet know; hopefully that would soon become clear.

  Until then I had to stick to them without being seen and wait for developments.

  As it happened, they didn’t
go far. After a couple of miles they signalled and took an exit ramp. I slowed, keeping a couple of trucks between us, then followed. As I left the ramp I spotted their car pulling into the parking lot of a motel called the Solokna. It looked new and what they like to call boutique.

  I found a spot nearby where I watched them carry their bags inside, then left my car out of sight and walked across the lot until I could see through the main entrance. Tzorekov and his shadow were walking away from the reception desk. I waited until they were in the elevator before booking a front room at a smaller hotel opposite.

  It could have been almost any hotel area anywhere in the world, with lots of parking, exit and approach roads, suitably neat flower beds and that air of anonymity that exists in places where nobody actually lives and the turnover of people is constant and mostly private.

  After checking the room I went for a stroll around the area, fixing my bearings in case I needed to make a quick exit. I was also wary of having tripped an alarm bell somehow on my own passage through the airport, and wanted to make sure I hadn’t picked up a tail. But nobody stood out and I didn’t get that buzz behind the ear when I feel I’m under surveillance.

  Back in the hotel I ordered a meal from room service via the reception desk and settled my bill ready for an early start, then ate with one eye on the parking lot and the Touareg. If Tzorekov and his muscle had a change of plan and made a move, I needed to know immediately, otherwise I’d lose them before we even left the city.

  For now, though, I had a way of controlling that. Once it was good and dark I took a small item from my bag courtesy of Yuri, and made my way across to Tzorekov’s hotel parking lot. The Touareg was parked by a spread of bushes, but they weren’t big enough to shield me if he happened to look out of the window. Fortunately the lighting was spare and if I was lucky I’d be there and gone in a few seconds. Then I had a stroke of luck: a coach pulled into the lot and parked up against the Touareg, effectively blocking it – and me – from the hotel.