‘Thank you, Mario,’ she murmured on opening them again.
The young Italian turned to face her. ‘For what?’ he asked. ‘I’ve driven you about a dozen kilometres, that’s all.’
‘That’s enough,’ said Raya. ‘You’ve helped me more than you can ever know.’
He eased his foot slightly off the accelerator. ‘Are you… I mean, do you want me to stop and let you out somewhere here? Not at Civitavecchia?’
‘Absolutely not.’ Raya shook her head. ‘We have a deal… an arrangement, you and I, and I always keep my promises.’ She reached over and squeezed his thigh gently. ‘Actually, I’m looking forward to it.’
‘Good, so am I,’ Mario said, grinning. ‘You’re beautiful, Raya, and I feel so lucky to have you here with me.’
‘How lucky?’ Raya asked. ‘I was just wondering if we could change our arrangement slightly. How about making a weekend of it and going a bit further north? I’d love to visit the Ligurian coast, for instance.’
For a moment Mario paused, then he smiled again. ‘I don’t have to even think about it. One night with you would be fantastic, Raya. Two nights would just be twice as fantastic. You’re on.’
She settled back in her seat, feeling finally at ease.
A few minutes later she suddenly sat forward and glanced around.
‘Something wrong?’ Mario asked.
‘No,’ Raya assured him. ‘It’s just that there are a couple of things I have to do. Can you stop somewhere that might have a shop selling mobile phones, and at an Internet cafe?’
‘You can use my mobile and laptop when we get to a hotel, if you like?’
Raya shook her head firmly, as she felt in one of her pockets for the slim shape of a USB memory stick.
‘Thank you, but I need a mobile of my own — and I must use an Internet cafe. I have to send off a couple of emails, but they won’t take long. And wherever we stop for tonight, there must be a cyber cafe nearby. That’s because I’ll have to send another email first thing in the morning.’
Adamson had managed to find a vantage point from which he could clearly see the front of the Hostellerie de la Poste. It was an area of rough ground lying about three hundred metres down the road, and was surrounded by bushes and undergrowth in which he’d been able to conceal the Renault Laguna so that it was now completely invisible from the road. The disadvantage was that it would take him a few minutes to get the car back onto the road along a rough track.
He had already spent an almost terminally boring evening, sitting motionless in the car with all the lights off, staring out at the front of the hotel through a pair of binoculars. But at least he’d had the foresight to buy some sandwiches and half a dozen cans of soft drink in the town, before finding somewhere to park. He felt guilty about Colin Dekker with each mouthful he took, but not guilty enough not to eat and drink.
The SAS officer was still in the same position, hidden up on the slope and covering the rear of the hotel with his rifle, and if Adamson was bored sitting in a comfortable car with food and drink to sustain him, God knows how Dekker was feeling.
The Hostellerie de la Poste seemed to be doing reasonable trade that Saturday night. In the early evening, about a dozen cars had turned up there to disgorge couples or families, but by nine-thirty all but one of the vehicles had departed, since the French tended to eat early. Just after ten, a couple walked out of the hotel and soon the lights of the final vehicle were switched on, and Adamson heard the engine start. Two minutes later the hotel car park was empty — apart from a small white Renault van, parked well over to one side. It had been in the same spot all day, so Adamson guessed it belonged to the owner of the hotel.
‘Sierra, this is Whisky.’
‘Go.’ Dekker still sounded bright and alert, despite his circumstances.
‘The last vehicle’s just left. The front door’s now closed, and the lights in the bar and dining room are out. Where’s target Romeo?’
‘The same place he was the last time you called. He’s up in his room. The light’s on but the curtains are still open.’
‘Is he in bed?’
‘I can’t see the bed from here,’ Dekker replied, ‘but I don’t think so. He went into the bathroom wearing just his underwear, a few minutes ago. Then he came out, but the last time I saw him he was wearing a shirt and trousers.’
‘You think he’s intending to go out somewhere?’
‘No chance. I’m sure that pink bastard Simpson’s ordered him to stay put there tonight, just to give Gecko the best chance of finding him. I doubt if Romeo knows what’s really going on, but I think he’s probably expecting trouble, and doesn’t want to get into a fight while he’s still half-naked. Wait one…’
There was silence on their radio link for a few seconds, then Dekker spoke again.
‘I’m beginning to like this guy,’ he said. ‘Now he’s dressed himself all in black — black jeans and a black polo-neck sweater — so he’s definitely prepping for trouble. And he’s just come to the window, opened it wide and had a look out. He stared straight towards me, waved, and then gave me a thumbs-up.’
‘He knows where you are?’ Adamson was incredulous.
‘He can’t possibly know for sure,’ Dekker replied. ‘I guess he’s just taken a good look at the terrain behind the hotel, and worked out more or less where I would have to be hidden. He may be only an amateur at this, but he’s got talent, that’s for sure.’
‘You’re still OK up there?’ Adamson asked, not that there was much he could do about it if Dekker wasn’t.
‘A piece of piss, this, compared to what we have to do at Hereford.’
‘Food and drink?’
‘Don’t worry about me. I’ve got water and chocolate, so I’ll survive. Right, the window of the room is still open, but he’s just switched off the main bedroom light. There’s a dimmer light still on — maybe the bedside lamp. He’s left the curtains open so I can still see inside the room. And the open window means that, if I do have to take a shot, the glass won’t deflect it. And I think our friend Romeo knows that, too.’
‘So now we wait,’ Adamson said.
‘Exactly. Now all we do is wait.’
George Edwards returned to Richards’s office just over an hour later, this time with a broad smile on his face and a sheet of paper in his hand. He strode across to the desk and laid the paper in front of his superior officer. It was creased and crumpled, but the text and photograph were clear enough.
‘Our guys mugged one of them?’ Richards asked.
‘No, sir, we used a dip — a pickpocket. The Russian never even knew he was there.’
‘So who is she?’ asked Westwood, moving over to the desk to stand beside Richards.
‘According to this, her name’s Raya Kosov,’ Richards explained, studying the photograph of a pretty, blonde-haired woman of about thirty. ‘The rest of it’s all about her physical description, but nothing about who exactly she is or where she works. Not that I would have expected there to be, of course.’
‘OK,’ Westwood said, ‘put her name on the wire over to Langley. Mark it “Flash” on my authorization, and let’s see if we know anything about her.’
The answer came back to them in under ten minutes, when Edwards returned to the office with a database printout that had just been transmitted to Rome from CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia. A total of eight women named ‘Kosov’ having a first name beginning with the letter ‘R’ were listed on the CIA’s database as possibly working in the Russian government and intelligence organizations. The information had been culled from numerous sources, many of them in the public domain, and was just a small part of the regular background information every intelligence organization collects about both hostile and friendly states. Three of these women were called ‘Raya’, but the first names of the other five were unknown.