For the briefest of instants he’d toyed with the idea of running various evasion manoeuvres, to shake off any tails he might have acquired, but he immediately realized there was no point. First, he wasn’t very experienced in counter-surveillance techniques and had never practised them, and, second, if he was being followed, any such actions on his part would immediately confirm the suspicions of the surveillance personnel. It was far simpler, he’d rationalized, to behave entirely innocently, because all he was apparently doing was going out for a meal in a restaurant, which was something he did three or four evenings every week.
About fifty yards down the street was a small Indian restaurant. Stanway asked for a secluded table for one, and was led towards the back of the room and shown into a tiny booth.
Andrew Lomas was sitting at a table at the front of the restaurant. He was accompanied by his current girlfriend, a thin and somewhat vacuous supposed model named Dawn, who had aspirations towards the theatre and insisted on calling everyone ‘dahling’. Lomas privately thought that she was probably on the game, but he didn’t care much because she made for good, if temporary, local colour, and besides that she was actually quite good in bed. They had been sitting there for a little over three-quarters of an hour before Stanway walked in. Neither man showed the slightest sign of recognizing the other.
The waiter placed a menu on the table and asked Stanway if he’d like anything to drink. He ordered a half pint of lager, glanced quickly at the menu, and decided on a chicken korma with basmati rice. He disliked Indian food, and had no appetite that evening anyway, but he knew he had to order something as he sat there waiting.
Stanway’s lager arrived and he took a cautious sip. It wasn’t a drink he particularly enjoyed, but at least it would serve to take away some of the taste of the korma. Five minutes after his meal arrived, Stanway was prodding unenthusiastically at a small number of yellowish chunks of chicken, when he noticed Lomas stand up and walk towards him, obviously heading for the toilets at the rear.
Immediately, Stanway reached into his inside jacket pocket and extracted the folded sheet of paper. As Lomas approached, Stanway placed it at the very edge of his table, with an inch or so jutting out. The Russian’s right hand just brushed against the side of the table, as he deftly seized the note and continued towards the toilets. Nobody at any of the other tables could have seen or taken the slightest notice.
Four minutes later, Lomas emerged, passing Stanway again, and continued to his own table while gesturing for the bill. The Russian paid right away, helped his girlfriend into her coat, and nodded briefly to the waiter as the two of them left.
Two other men had used the toilet before Stanway finally stood up and made his way to the rear. There were two urinals and one stalclass="underline" he stepped into the stall and locked the door behind him. One reason for choosing this restaurant was that the stall had solid walls and a door that fitted its frame completely. They would never have picked one where the door had a sizeable gap at the top or bottom.
Stanway lifted the seat and stepped up onto the bowl. The toilet had an old-fashioned, wall-mounted cistern — another reason for choosing this restaurant — and his probing fingers quickly detected the paper tucked between the back of the cistern and the wall. He retrieved it, stepped back on the floor, lowered the toilet seat and sat down, then unfolded the paper to read what was written there.
His own printed message occupied the top few lines:
Possible I have been compromised by low-level SVR cipher clerk who has fled Russia. According to high-level 6 briefing, clerk approached Moscow UK Embassy but left before asylum granted. Showed intelligence staff papers listing 6 file names and numbers. Claimed he had other data identifying SVR agent in 6. Latest information suggests clerk escaped to Vienna, still seeking asylum. Check veracity and advise.
Below that, Lomas had written a brief reply in block capitals:
NOTHING KNOWN. IF LOW-LEVEL DEFECTOR, LONDON STATION NOT ALWAYS INFORMED. WILL CHECK MOSCOW CENTRE AND ADVISE.
And that, Stanway thought, as he tore the paper into tiny squares and watched the flush carry it out of sight, was encouraging at least. If Lomas had already known about the defection, Stanway would have been forced to take immediate action to protect himself. The fact that Lomas knew nothing about it suggested that either the clerk was flying a kite, or that he was genuinely low-level with nothing of any significance to trade — and the SVR would know exactly what documents such a defector would have had access to — or else that the clerk simply didn’t exist.
But that scenario didn’t really make sense, for Holbeche — or whoever else had started this particular ball rolling — had to have received some information suggesting that there was a mole inside SIS, otherwise why had he started the witch-hunt? Something or someone had surfaced somewhere, and Stanway just hoped he could rely on Lomas to find out what or who, and quickly.
Chapter Seven
Captain Raya Kosov had arrived at work early that morning. The telephone call from Valentina had started the clock, and she knew she had a maximum of two days before she would have to start running.
Her window of opportunity was very small, and for one very simple reason. Raya Kosov had already said her final goodbye to her mother on her last home leave, three months previously. The call from Valentina had actually informed her that Marisa was dead, not sick, and she knew that the hospital authorities in Minsk would be advising her employer, the SVR, as a matter of routine within the next day or two.
Hopefully it would not alarm Major Abramov if he heard about it before end of work on Friday, because Raya had already told him her mother was very sick. It would not be particularly surprising if she had died shortly after the call Raya received, but he would undoubtedly be suspicious if he checked the time of death and found it actually occurred earlier than the time of his conversation with her.
And the SVR, like the KGB before it, liked to have a lever: a way of keeping all its employees in check. Once Raya’s mother was dead, that lever would vanish, and the very least Raya could then expect was greatly increased surveillance and checking of her movements. Once that happened, her chances of getting safely out of Russia were considerably reduced, and she might not be able to manage it at all.
By Friday afternoon she needed to have completed everything she had to do, and early on Saturday morning she would have to leave her apartment and be en route to the airport. Even if Abramov did try and fail to contact her, just to advise her that her mother had died, he would just assume that she had already left for Minsk. But on Monday morning, when she failed to notify the Minsk SVR office that she was in the city, as Abramov had instructed, the alarm bells would start to ring. And she guessed the hunt would be under way no later than Tuesday.
Richter was up and dressed by seven-thirty, and on the road again an hour later. He picked up the A4 autoroute just south of Verona and turned right for Milan. He planned to avoid Milan itself, but stay on the autoroute circling to the north of the city, then pick up the E62 link running north-east, to join up with the northbound A26.
There were no direct routes from Milan to Geneva, due to the inconvenient obstruction of the Alps, but he had calculated that taking the A26 and then route 33 from Mergozzo would probably be the quickest way. That would take him northwards to Brig, and west to Sierre, where he would rejoin the autoroute system. Then he would continue through Martigny and around the north side of Lac Leman, passing through Montreux and Lausanne to enter Geneva from the north.