Raya glanced out of the window, back towards the terminal itself, and what she saw made her realize she was still a long way from safety.
Outside the Hostellerie de la Poste, Stanway climbed back into the Peugeot, started the engine and drove away, heading north and away from the town. This manoeuvre allowed him a second opportunity to take a look at the Renault Laguna, still parked in the lay-by.
The fact that the car was still there was confirmation of his suspicions that the man sitting inside it was a surveillance officer. Stanway decided to drive a few miles up the road, find somewhere for an early dinner or just buy a snack, and then return to the town in a couple of hours. Then he’d have to find a suitable vantage point from which he could see the Hostellerie de la Poste clearly. Ideally, he hoped he’d be able to spot the fair-haired man leaving the hotel, because then he could follow him and take him down. But, realistically, he knew he’d probably have to tackle him in his hotel room.
‘Sierra, Whisky. The unidentified male who arrived in the Peugeot has just left, going north.’
‘Copied. No change at the rear of the building. No sightings of anyone.’
In the driving seat of the Renault Laguna, Adamson stretched his cramped limbs and shuffled the papers on the seat beside him. Whatever was going on inside the target hotel, he hoped somebody would appear soon, because he was getting extremely bored, and God knows what Dekker felt like, lying motionless under some bush up in the copse, staring at an unchanging scene through the telescopic sight attached to his rifle.
‘We will have to talk again, and soon,’ Hughes said, as the three men stood up. ‘Later this evening, perhaps? Or over dinner here?’
‘No.’ Richter shook his head. ‘Tomorrow, please.’
‘Very well, then. We’ll see you here, in this room, at ten tomorrow morning, agreed?’
‘Agreed.’ Richter shook hands with the two men and walked out of the bar and up to his bedroom.
The discussion had been quite draining, partly because he hadn’t spoken Russian very much over the last couple of years, and had found it quite hard work just to keep up with Hughes. But the more difficult task — despite the SVR crib sheet Simpson had supplied, and Richter had memorized — was that the SIS man’s questioning had forced him to invent more and more detailed stories about his work in Moscow. He’d been approaching the point where he was likely to trip himself up because he’d forgotten the answer he’d given to an earlier question. And Wallis and Hughes would certainly pick up any errors he made, because both had been making copious notes throughout the interview.
He just hoped Simpson would be satisfied with what he’d done and now call a halt to the whole pointless charade.
‘What do you think?’ Wallis asked, as he and Hughes ordered drinks from the bar.
‘I’m not convinced. He looks the part — I’ve met quite a few blond-haired blue-eyed Russian men — but there’s something about that man that doesn’t quite ring true. A couple of times he gave slightly different answers to the questions I asked him, but that could be just a minor misinterpretation.’
‘He also refused to give us any information at all about this mole he claims to know about in London.’
‘Yes,’ Hughes agreed, ‘but that didn’t really surprise me. He’d know that data would be the clincher, so I wouldn’t expect him to even talk about it until we’d lifted him. No, it’s more his whole manner. I’ve debriefed half a dozen defectors over the years, and every one of them spent most of his time looking over his shoulder, metaphorically speaking. Markov just sat there, looking perfectly comfortable with the situation, and quite calm. That’s what bothers me: his whole demeanour is wrong.’
‘And that’s what you’ll tell Simpson?’
‘That’s my assessment, so that’s what I’m going to tell him,’ Hughes confirmed, taking his mobile out of his pocket.
‘Not over the phone,’ Simpson warned, as soon as he answered the call. ‘Meet me outside the casino in ten.’
‘I think he’s a plant,’ Hughes said, once he and Wallis sat down opposite Simpson at a table outside a cafe situated on the west side of the main road that ran through the centre of the town.
‘Why, precisely? Justify that.’
‘He’s giving the right answers, but he seems too comfortable. He’s not worried enough. The data he’s supplying is superficial, and just sufficiently detailed to be believable. So I think he could be part of a deception operation being run by the SVR. I recommend we either assume he’s SVR and sweat him, subject him to some hostile interrogation, or just throw him back.’
‘Good deduction,’ Simpson observed. ‘In fact, Anatoli Markov is as English as you are. His real name’s Paul Richter, he’s ex-Royal Navy, and he’s never even been to Russia.’
Hughes stared at him. ‘Then what the hell are we doing wasting our time like this?’
‘This is important, so shut up and listen. There’s a hell of a lot you’re not aware of. You’re right, this is a deception operation, but we’re running it, not the Russians.’ In brief sentences he then explained how Richter was just a decoy playing the part of a defecting Russian cipher clerk.
‘Why choose us?’ Wallis asked.
‘Because neither of you has the level of access needed to obtain the kind of data Gecko is trying to sell to the Russians. Also you’re based in Paris, not London, so for both reasons I’m satisfied you’re clean.’
Hughes nodded. ‘So what happens now?’
‘Richter has a packet of papers with him, which you probably saw — and that’s the real bait.’
‘What’s in it?’ Wallis asked.
‘Most of the sheets in the packet are blank, but the first few pages are copies of an extract from a Russian maintenance manual for the Victor III submarine. Technically, they’re classified Secret, but in fact there’s nothing in them that we haven’t known for years. The papers are just a decoy, something we could safely give Richter to carry, and something that the target, Gecko, can focus on. I hope Gecko will believe that those documents contain enough evidence to identify him, because that’s the story we’ve disseminated. I told you not to take the packet, because that would mean Gecko would come after you, and not Richter. In fact, he’d probably come after you and Richter.’
‘So all we’ve really been doing here is fingering Richter.’
‘Exactly. That’s why you’ve been speaking Russian. I want Gecko to be certain that Richter is the defecting clerk, so that he’ll act.’
‘And if he decides to do that while we’re with Richter tomorrow?’
‘Trust me, he won’t. He’ll want to eliminate Richter sometime when he’s alone.’
‘Do we know who this target is?’ Wallis asked.
Simpson stopped and stared at him. ‘Of course we don’t know who the fucking target is,’ he snapped. ‘If we did, none of this charade would be necessary. We’d just have picked him up and shoved him in the slammer.’
‘Sorry, I meant do you know which division Gecko works for, anything like that? SIS or GCHQ, maybe?’
‘No, not yet. We’ve no idea who he is except that he’s someone highly placed in the security establishment. Now, what you did today was start talking to Richter, the kind of initial meeting we’d do for real in the case of a defection, and I didn’t brief you about it beforehand because I wanted you to handle it as realistically as possible. And it needed to be realistic in case anyone was watching you. Was there anyone else in the hotel when you talked to him?’