Dekker turned enquiringly to Richter.
‘That means they’re fully armed,’ he said, ‘just in case the Frogs decide their best interests might be served by having a couple of Mirages pop up beside us, to try to make us land at some French military airfield.’ Richter glanced at Westwood. ‘A U2, this Lear, and now a couple of F-16s? This has not been a cheap exercise for you. Why are you so interested in Raya here?’
Westwood shrugged. ‘Mainly, I suppose, we got interested because the Russians were so keen to get you back, Ms Kosov. You simply had to be important because of the size of the operation they’ve mounted to find you. And I’m very glad they didn’t succeed. The British, of course, denied all knowledge of your existence, and that was why I knew they were deeply involved.’
‘So what’s in it for you?’ Richter asked.
‘I work for the CIA, as I’m sure you know. Ideally, we’d like to debrief Raya ourselves, back at Langley, but now we know that’s not going to happen. So our next best option seemed to be to help you get her out of the clutches of the thugs that Moscow sent after her, and then ask politely if we can share her material.’
Westwood turned to Raya. ‘So who are you, exactly?’ he asked. ‘Our Moscow people first identified you a long time ago, but you haven’t popped up on our radar for quite a few years. We guessed you’d been recruited by one of the organs, like the SVR, and that’s why you seemed to vanish.’
‘She’s just a clerk,’ Dekker said, holstering his pistol and peering out of the window at the fast-receding ground. The Lear was climbing rapidly. ‘Goes up bloody fast, doesn’t it?’ he added.
‘Like a fart in a bath,’ Richter remarked. ‘Like Colin said, Raya’s a clerk.’
‘No, she isn’t,’ Westwood said firmly. ‘And Colin here is who, exactly?’
‘Our guardian angel. He’s the man with the long rifle to make sure the bad guys keep their distance.’
‘Sounds reasonable,’ Westwood said. ‘And what about you? I presume you’re the guy who was flying that little puddle-jumper you stole in Italy?’
Richter nodded and introduced himself. ‘I’m ex-military,’ he finished, ‘and I kind of got suckered into this by taking a job that looked too good to be true. Which it was, of course.’
‘So you’re not SIS at all?’
‘No, Mr Westwood,’ Raya chipped in, ‘because that was one of the conditions I insisted on. There are at least two SIS officers on our Moscow payroll, and the one thing I wasn’t prepared to risk was one of them being sent to meet me. That would be a sure and certain way of ending up back in Moscow. So I wanted London to send out somebody completely unconnected with SIS and I ended up with this character, who’s so far proved quite good at keeping me alive.’
‘OK.’ Westwood nodded. ‘Now we know who we all are, but no way is Ms Kosov just a clerk. Almost the entire Russian Embassy staff were out on the streets of Rome looking for her, plus a minimum of fifty experts flown in specially from Moscow to help. They wouldn’t do all that for a defecting clerk, so just who the hell are you, lady?’
Raya glanced at Richter, then nodded. ‘You may have just saved all our lives,’ she said, ‘so I think you at least deserve to know this. I was the Deputy Computer Network Manager at Yasenevo.’
‘Holy shit,’ Westwood muttered. ‘Or maybe I should say the holy grail.’ He glanced from Raya to Richter, and back again. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘don’t take this the wrong way, but I owe it to my bosses to at least make you an offer, just in case you might be interested. Whatever the British have agreed to pay you we’d double it at a minimum. You can have a new identity in the States, as part of the Witness Protection Program, and live wherever you want. This aircraft could take you to Virginia right now.’
Raya gazed at him for a long moment, then shook her head. ‘There’s more than one motive for betraying your country, Mr Westwood. Money doesn’t interest me. I have a very different reason for being here.’
‘And that is?’ Richter asked.
Raya smiled at him. ‘All in good time, Paul. Let’s get somewhere safe — somewhere really safe, I mean — and then I’ll answer all of your questions.’
‘Our playmates have just arrived,’ the captain announced over the cabin broadcast system.
As he made the announcement, there was a sudden roar audible even over the noise of the Lear’s engines. Richter changed seats and peered through the window. One of the F-16s was just passing down the starboard side of the Lear, at the same level and maybe eighty metres away. Clearly visible on the rudder were the ‘AV’ letters that identified it as being based at Aviano.
‘Now,’ Richter said, leaning back in his seat, ‘when I see a Fighting Falcon out there instead of an Aermacchi, I actually do feel safe. Just you make sure the jet jockeys driving this thing know we’re heading for London, not Langley, Mr Westwood. Because, you’re right, it was me flying that Piper Arrow over the Alps, and I’m perfectly capable of driving this executive knocking shop as well.’
Yuri Abramov stood at the rear of Colonel Yevgeni Zharkov’s spacious office and stared around.
Members of the search team the general had sent in were busily opening doors and drawers, looking for anything that might be construed as incriminating. As Abramov watched, one of the men pulled a drawer completely out of the desk, the more easily to inspect its contents. As he lifted it up, another investigator spotted a metallic glint from the drawer’s underside, and muttered an instruction.
Working together, the two men swiftly removed the contents of the drawer and stacked them on the desk. Then they turned it over to inspect the base. Immediately, Abramov saw precisely what had attracted their attention. Secured to the underside of the drawer, with clear tape, were two flat keys. This find alone was enough to convince the searchers that they were onto something. If these keys were innocent — if they merely fitted a lock in the colonel’s apartment or something in his office — then why were they hidden?
They studied the keys closely, then one of the men made a call. A few minutes later General Morozov himself appeared.
‘Leave them where they are,’ he instructed. ‘I will invite Colonel Zharkov to explain what they are used for, and why he felt it necessary to conceal them.’
Then he turned to face Yuri Abramov. ‘I hate to admit it,’ the old man said, ‘but it looks as if you were right and Zharkov is playing some kind of a dirty game.’
‘Have you questioned him, sir?’ Abramov asked.
Morozov nodded. ‘Yes, but he merely claims somebody is trying to set him up. And there is one thing he’s saying that makes sense. You found his apartment number on the call diverter recovered from that office in the Lubyanka. Zharkov’s point is that the only reason for setting up such a diversion would be to link a computer terminal, here at Yasenevo, with another computer inside his apartment, so as to enable files and data to be sent out of this building. And because the call would apparently terminate in the Lubyanka itself, no suspicion would be aroused that anything was wrong.’
‘That was exactly what I thought, sir,’ Abramov agreed.
‘But Zharkov doesn’t own a personal computer, and claims he has never had such a machine in his apartment. Of course, it’s possible that he may have secreted it somewhere else, if he became concerned that questions might be asked of him. What I would like you to do, Major, is examine that call diverter and see if there are any other numbers on it that you might be able to recover. Can you do that?’
‘It depends on the way the diverter functions, but I will do my best.’
‘And do it right now,’ Morozov instructed, ‘before I ask Zharkov to explain what we’ve just found here.’