He took out the Browning, slipped across to the staircase rising in one corner of the entrance hall, and began ascending it cautiously, keeping right over to one side, where he hoped the wooden treads might not creak too much. In under half a minute, he’d reached the first-floor landing, and twenty seconds after that he was standing outside a wooden door with the number ‘11’.
Stanway found himself sweating slightly under the stress of what he was planning to do. For a few seconds he just stood there, wiping his hands on his trousers before reaching out for the door handle.
He turned it slowly, and the door swung inwards easily, without even a creak. For an instant, Stanway was puzzled. He’d expected to find the door locked at the very least, and possibly jammed with a chair or something. He looked again at the room number, confirming he’d got it right, then, flicking on his torch, opened the door wide enough to see further into the room. The beam moved across clothes hung over the back of a chair, then a briefcase standing nearby, next over to the bed. It just had to be the right room.
Reaching back, Stanway flicked on the main light and stepped fully into the room, his pistol extended in front of him, as he aimed the barrel at a hunched shape he could see lying under the bedcovers.
Chapter Sixteen
Major Abramov was still imprisoned in the darkened interview room. Sitting on a hard chair, he slumped forward over the table, sleeping fitfully. He felt uncomfortable, exhausted, hungry and thirsty, because he’d had nothing to eat or drink since Zharkov had left him there several hours earlier. That, he guessed, was deliberate, for nobody had entered the room since, or responded to his knocks on the locked door.
Suddenly the silence was broken by the sound of brisk footsteps approaching along the corridor outside. Then the door swung open, the main lights snapped on, and Colonel Yevgeni Zharkov strode back in.
Abramov lurched upright, his aching joints protesting, and leant back again in his chair. Strictly speaking, he should have stood up when the senior officer entered, but he was too far gone to care any more. He still guessed Zharkov would order his execution when all this was over, just because Raya Kosov had worked for him.
‘So have you arrested her?’ Abramov asked, as Zharkov sat down opposite him, looking pleased with himself.
‘Not yet, but we know where she is.’
Abramov immediately doubted the truth of that assertion. If Zharkov’s assassins really had located her, by now she’d either be dead or strapped heavily sedated to a stretcher on her way back to Moscow. Despite his own problems, a tiny part of him still hoped Raya would make it to the West and elude the pursuit. But Zharkov’s next words simply stunned him.
‘And now we know for sure that you’re working with her, because last night she sent you an email.’
‘What?’ Abramov stared at the man. ‘She did what?’
‘I said she sent you an email, but it’s encrypted. So you will now decrypt it for me.’
‘But I—’
Zharkov smiled wolfishly. ‘You’re not refusing to assist us, I hope, Major? After all, if you really are as innocent as you claim, then perhaps this email will prove it and you can go home.’
Abramov knew there was virtually no chance of that happening, no matter what the contents of this message that Raya had apparently sent.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I meant that I might not be able to decrypt it, because I don’t know what code she used. Where did she send it from?’
Zharkov hesitated for a moment, apparently deciding whether or not Abramov could derive some advantage from this piece of information. Then he shrugged and gave his answer.
‘She used a cyber cafe on the outskirts of Rome,’ he said. ‘Now, Major, we will go to your office and see if you are able to decipher this email. But mark my words, Abramov, if you cannot produce the plaintext, there will be only one conclusion we can reasonably draw.’
And that would be confirmation of his guilt, Abramov thought.
As he preceded Zharkov down the corridor, he wondered about two things. First, what cipher Raya had employed, which probably wouldn’t be that difficult to work out, given that there was only a handful in use in the section, email being inherently unreliable and insecure. Second, and far more importantly, what on earth had Raya got to say to him after her flagrant betrayal of both him — and indeed the entire SVR? Was she gloating? Or apologizing? Or was there some other dimension to this entire affair that he had so far entirely missed?
Andrew Lomas was wakened by the ringing of his mobile. He muttered in irritation as he switched on the bedside light, grimaced at the time indicated on his alarm clock, and snatched up the phone.
‘Yes?’ he snapped.
‘Is that Mr Weaver?’ The voice was high-pitched, almost nasal.
‘No, you’ve got the wrong number, you idiot.’
‘Isn’t that seven-five-three-nine-eight-two?’
‘No, it bloody isn’t.’
Lomas punched the button to end the call and then sat upright in bed. There was a pad and pencil beside the clock, and within a couple of seconds he’d written down both the name and number the caller had used: ‘Weaver’ and ‘753982’. The call wasn’t a wrong number. It was a coded message, and it meant he needed to take immediate action.
The name ‘Weaver’ meant there had been a leak of some sort from Moscow Centre — for instance a breach of security, a lost file or a defector — which Lomas thought might well relate to the story of the Russian clerk that had so alarmed Gerald Stanway. Or it might be something completely different, something new. To find out anything more he needed to decode the rest of the message.
Lomas strode out of his bedroom and into the lounge, pressed the button to power up his laptop, then went into the kitchen to make himself some coffee. By the time he got back to the computer, the operating system had finished loading.
He first ran a program that generated spurious information resulting in a false IP address. That was necessary to conceal his physical location from any type of surveillance method in use. He had no idea whether any intelligence service was taking the slightest notice of him, but running this IP program was a sensible precaution. He ran his Internet browser, checking that his apparent location was outside the United Kingdom, and then input a website address from memory. The site was apparently located in Australia, but was actually based in Russia itself. Lomas accessed this site regularly, but usually from a cyber cafe, and only ever visiting that establishment once.
When the homepage appeared on his screen, the site appeared to be very badly designed, and was purportedly intended for hobbyists interested in the manufacture of aboriginal musical instruments. Lomas clicked the centre of the top border twice. Nothing happened for twenty seconds — which was about four times the attention span of the average browser. Then a new page appeared, which simply contained a dialogue box, and nothing else. Lomas copied the six numbers the caller had given him into the box and then pressed the Enter key. There was another delay, this time for only about five seconds, and then the screen cleared.
Lomas leant forward to read the text very carefully. Immediately he could understand why he had received the call. An important officer in the SVR had defected and, through her position at Yasenevo, was ideally placed to reveal the identity, not only of Gerald Stanway, but also of a second penetration agent working inside the SIS — an agent for whom Lomas also acted as a handler.