For the first time in his life, Ed Travis knew what it felt like to be utterly alone. And helpless.
SIXTEEN
I watched through the door panel as Grey Suit left the room and walked away down the corridor. He was followed by Travis, who was being hustled along by one of the soldiers, with the others falling in behind. Travis looked pale and uncomfortable, and it was clear he was apprehensive about what was going to happen to him.
The last two to leave were the corridor guards. They exchanged a look of confusion and shrugged, before trailing along in the wake of the others, their presence no longer required.
I gave it a few seconds and went into one of the rooms overlooking the front of the hotel. I flicked back a corner of the curtain and waited.
The road outside was busy with traffic, most of it military of one sort or another. A group of militiamen dressed in ill-fitting combat tops and boots, heavily armed and openly confrontational, was standing out in front of the building, watching what was going on and looking as if they wanted to defend their right to be there. I could feel the tension in the air from up here, and wondered how long this could continue before somebody squeezed a trigger and it all blew to hell.
It wasn’t long before the four men and Travis walked out of the entrance and across to a military UAZ jeep. The militiamen turned and watched, but made no move to stop them. As they did so, the blanked-out truck I’d seen earlier started up, belching grey smoke from its exhaust, and the troops standing at the rear jumped aboard.
I hurried downstairs. I had to get to the car and follow them.
I walked out of the front entrance just as Grey Suit was giving instructions to a junior officer in the passenger seat of the truck.
Obluskva Street, 24d. Kyiv’ski District. Five minutes drive. Wait at the end of the street and don’t go in until given the order.
I’d heard that kind of instruction before. They were planning a raid.
Obluskva. The name was familiar but I couldn’t immediately figure out why. Was that where I’d picked up the Toyota? No. It had been too dark to see street signs. I let it go. Wherever these guys were going, I had to be there too. I had no clear plan in mind, but somehow I had to get Travis out of their hands.
I walked away with a silent apology to Yuriy and his staff problems, and hurried back to the car, where I fed the name of Obluskva into my cell phone and started the engine.
There was a bleep and I looked at the screen. The word Obluskva had come up showing a hyperlink to a document contained in the cell phone’s system. I tapped the screen.
It brought up a cross-reference to one of the addresses from Langley.
It was the local CIA cut-out.
SEVENTEEN
I had one advantage over Grey Suit and his men, and that was where I’d left the Toyota. It was just outside the growing snarl-up of traffic that was already bringing the airport to a standstill. I reached the exit road without a problem, and spotted the jeep and the blanked-out truck caught up in a mess of military vehicles, with soldiers and militiamen arguing over who had the right of way. If I was correct about the identity of the soldiers in the truck, the militiamen were in for a rough time if they pushed too hard.
I silently wished them a long and enjoyable stay and called up Langley.
‘Go ahead, Watchman.’ The woman’s voice answered.
I said, ‘Tell Callahan there are troops on the way to the Obluskva Street address in Donetsk. They look like special forces. They’ve got Travis with them.’
‘Wait one.’ There was a click and Callahan came on.
‘I hear you. Go again?’ He sounded calm but I could sense his tension all the way down the wire.
I told him what I’d seen and asked, ‘Does Travis have the cut-out list?’
‘What? No. He was told to wait until he was contacted. Why do you ask?’
‘Because they’re heading for the first address on the list.’
‘It’s a coincidence. It has to be.’ But he didn’t sound convinced. ‘That’s crazy … there’s no way—’ He stopped dead, then said, ‘Stay on the line.’
He was gone two minutes, while I continued to head as fast as I dared for the Kyiv’ski District. If I could get there ahead of the troops, I might be able to give whoever was at 24d a warning to get out. Cut-outs, although part of a carefully built network, usually worked in isolation, known only by their handler. It was a matter of basic security: the less they each knew about others in the network, the less likely they were to give them away if they got picked up and questioned. But sometimes it was inevitable that one would come to learn the identity or location of another, by accident or instinct. If the person at 24d Obluskva was in that category, it would be a potential disaster for others along the line if he or she got picked up and grilled.
Callahan came back on. He sounded royally pissed. ‘The State Department gave Travis the first address. Worse, they sent it by SMS in plain text. They had no right but they did it anyway. Seems they didn’t have complete faith in us to keep him safe and wanted some control over what happened.’
I let it go by. The question of inter-agency jealousies and mistrust wasn’t my problem. But the fact that they’d given out the address unencrypted showed a serious lack of judgement and lousy security. Handing over such a delicate piece of information to an untrained civilian in the first place was about the most dangerous thing they could have done. They might as well have broadcast it over 24 TV, the Ukraine news channel.
Unless the address had been leaked by Travis himself somehow, then it must have been picked up and read by the authorities, who would have been sifting the airwaves for all communications from separatists and outside parties interested in the unfolding calamity. It wouldn’t have taken long for somebody to have asked why a Donetsk address should suddenly pop up in a text message from outside the country.
‘If they have one could they have the others?’
‘No. We made sure of that. Each one will be given a rendezvous point where Travis is to be delivered along with a contact code and time, but that’s it. The next in line will receive a message with that same RV and contact code, and will take over from there.’
It sounded a little vague to me, but I knew it had worked in the past. But when it came to protecting a network, any way of isolating individual members while having them come in contact with each other for an exchange was fraught with danger. ‘So who does the messaging?’
‘We do. As soon as we know the handover is imminent, we set the message in motion. Where are you right now?’
I gave him my location and where I was headed, but not what I was planning to do. The simple truth was I hadn’t yet decided on that myself. I clicked off and concentrated on driving. I had a germ of an idea but putting it in action would all depend on circumstances and opportunity.
Starting a shooting war in a city street is not to be recommended. The potential for collateral damage — that anodyne term used by the military, politicians and media to mean innocent bystanders — is huge and real. Add to that the opposition — in this case a truckload of special forces with itchy fingers — and anything could happen.
But you can’t always control these things.