‘Good,’ Simpson said. ‘Invent some people you work with there, and a few superior officers. The people you’ll be talking to won’t know any better. You’ve still got that perforated plastic card, I hope. That’s something we knocked up here in London, but it’s an exact replica of a Yasenevo building pass. About the only way to tell it’s a fake would be to try to use it to actually get inside SVR headquarters. If you have to, show it to the SIS men, but don’t let them handle it or take it off you. It’s a part of your dowry, and you have to hang on to it.’
‘When do you want me to do this?’
‘I’ll call you in a few minutes. I just have to brief the SIS guys, so make sure you can get back to your hotel within about fifteen minutes. I’ll tell them to approach you, so go and sit in the lounge or the bar, somewhere public. When you’ve finished talking to them, arrange to have a second meeting sometime tomorrow, but not later today. As soon as you’ve finished, call me on this mobile number to let me know how it went, but ensure you’re well away from the hotel, so you can’t be overheard. Take a drive out somewhere, or go down into Ax proper and have a drink, something like that.’
‘Do I get to ask you any questions?’
‘You can ask, but there’s a limit to what I can tell you.’
‘Where are these two SIS officers from?’
‘Paris station, and they’ve been given the other half of the briefing.’
‘Very convenient for you that I just happened to be in the area with that packet of papers, isn’t it?’
‘Not really, no. It was always possible that the man we were expecting to pitch up in France wouldn’t make it, so your journey was always planned to include an exercise scenario as well.’
‘And now you don’t think this anonymous man is going to turn up, is that it?’
‘Right now, Richter, we don’t know. All I can tell you is that we’ve passed on your name and location to him, but the last time we heard from him he was still in Vienna. He could be in Ax right now, or on his way here, or still in Vienna. We just don’t know. We’ve been tracking him using the signal from his mobile phone, but he knows what he’s doing, and only switches it on whenever he wants to make a call.’
‘And the last time he did that was in Vienna, right?’
‘Exactly,’ Simpson said. ‘About two days ago.’
‘And if he turns up, what do I do about it?’
‘We’ve told him that you’re a Russian-speaking British military officer, which is approximately true, and that you’re using the name Anatoli Markov.’
‘Why, though? I mean, why am I pretending to be Russian for this guy? I’d have thought he’d be expecting to meet a Brit.’
‘Local colour, that’s all. He asked that we send out somebody who spoke his own language, and we decided that if you used a Russian name you both could appear more casual at the meeting itself. Two Russian tourists running into each other away from home, that kind of thing.’
‘Sounds like bullshit to me,’ Richter muttered.
It sounded like bullshit to Simpson, as well, but he didn’t say so.
Chapter Ten
‘What was his name and rank?’ Major Yuri Abramov demanded.
He was wearing civilian clothes, and was far from pleased at being summoned to the duty office at Yasenevo on a Saturday morning, on what he knew was a wild-goose chase.
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘You don’t know very much, do you? Somebody called you to verify the identity of an SVR officer. You have no idea of the man’s name or rank, and you don’t even know for sure if he was calling from Sheremetievo. And you think he said my officer was flying to Rome, which is ridiculous. Her travel warrant is for Minsk, and nowhere else.’
But the duty officer stood his ground. ‘No, sir. He definitely said she was flying to Rome. That much I am sure about. And if he wasn’t calling from Sheremetievo, how did he get the number here? It’s unlisted.’
Abramov stared at him for a few seconds.
‘Right, call the Border Guards Directorate at the airport, and we’ll sort this business out once and for all. While you try to track down the man who called you, I’ll collect the book of travel warrants.’
In the small suite of offices where they worked, Abramov unlocked the door of Raya Kosov’s room, and nodded. Everything was neat and tidy, exactly as it had been on every other occasion he’d looked in there. In his own office, he quickly unlocked his safe, pulled out the book he needed, locked up carefully, and returned to the duty office.
The duty officer sat at his desk, with the telephone in his hand. ‘Just a moment,’ he spoke into it, as Abramov entered. ‘The Border Guards’ office at Sheremetievo, sir,’ he informed Abramov, gesturing to the handset.
The senior officer took it and sat down. ‘This is Major Abramov,’ he began. ‘I gather you’ve been enquiring about my colleague Captain Kosov.’ As he spoke, he was flicking through the pages of the book of travel warrants, searching for the one he’d issued to his subordinate. When he found the counterfoil, he noted the number and the details he’d written there.
‘She was issued with a warrant to travel to Minsk,’ he began firmly, but then his voice tailed off as he noticed another counterfoil, from which the warrant had been detached. But, in this case, the counterfoil was blank, and Abramov had always been as meticulous in processing travel warrants as he was with every other accountable item in his charge. He would never have removed one without completing all the details.
In fact, the counterfoil wasn’t entirely blank. There was something written there, in a hand he was entirely familiar with. It was the single word ‘сожалеющий’ — ‘sorry’.
Until that moment, he was convinced it had all been a mistake — probably nothing more than something misheard over the telephone. But the missing warrant, and that one word written by Raya, now suggested a very different possibility.
The Border Guards officer continued saying something, his voice an irritating twitter in Abramov’s ear, but the SVR officer was no longer listening.
‘Wait,’ he interrupted, and turned back to the duty officer. ‘Get onto Minsk,’ he ordered, ‘and tell them to check which hospital Kosov’s mother is in.’ He lifted the telephone to his ear again. ‘Give me the flight details,’ he instructed, and listened for a few moments. ‘Where is the aircraft now? Can you recall it? Right, what time does it land in Rome?’
Less than ten minutes later, Abramov realized he was standing at the epicentre of a disaster in the making. The travel warrant he’d issued for a flight to Minsk hadn’t been used by Raya, or anyone else, but the other warrant from his book had been used for a flight to Rome. The Minsk SVR office had made two phone calls and confirmed that Raya Kosov’s mother was already dead, but what chilled Abramov was that she’d died the very day Raya had told him she was terminally ill, so he now knew, beyond any reasonable doubt, that his subordinate had intended to defect.
And the flight had already left Russian airspace. In fact, it had crossed the Italian border at about the time he was talking to the Border Guards Directorate officer at Sheremetievo, so there was now no way of recalling it.
All he’d been able to do was issue the most specific instructions to the SVR office in Rome, backed up by a full description and photograph of Raya Kosov. Abramov just hoped that would prove enough, because it would take time for their officers in Rome to get themselves out to the airport. And, even then, Raya probably wouldn’t be that easy to spot in the milling crowds of people there.