The Director had approved the operation with the caveat that Aleksandrov’s death must also serve as a warning to anyone else who would be foolish enough to cross the Rodina in this way. They hadn’t tried to hide it. It was obvious to anyone with even the slightest passing interest that Aleksandrov had been killed because he had tried to cross the motherland. His death would prevent the spread of the information he was trying to sell while serving as a warning to others on the consequences of greed.
22
Primakov and Natasha lay together in bed, the blinds open so that they could drink in the night-time view of the city. The lights atop towers and cranes sparkled across the horizon, and buildings were crushed together in the oxbow curve of the river. The view always reminded Primakov of how much Moscow had changed in the years since he had first arrived here. The last decade had seen an especially rapid transformation as capital flooded in from newly liberated markets, the president’s cronies first in line to shove their snouts into the trough. Primakov had no problem with that. He was a pragmatist. He understood how the system worked and knew that he stood to benefit by demonstrating his fealty and effectiveness to those above him. His policy had been successful so far, and he was keen to ensure that it continued to be so.
Natasha had taken him straight to bed, and it was only now that she asked him about the events that he had set in train for her.
“How did it—” she began.
“It’s done,” he said, gently talking over her anxiety.
“The father?”
“Dead. The message will be unambiguous.”
“But there’s nothing on the news.”
“I doubt the British are ready to go public yet. They will. And when they do, she will know that it was her fault. She’ll stay quiet and, in the meantime, we’ll track her down. She can’t hide forever.”
Natasha rolled onto her back, stared up to the ceiling and exhaled. “I wish this was finished. Worrying all the time—it’s exhausting.”
He stroked her hair. “It’s nearly done,” he said. “There’s something I didn’t tell you: Directorate X traced the IP address for the email she sent to her father. She used an internet café in Komsomolsk. They have CCTV. We have a picture of her paying her bill.”
“She’s still there?”
“She’s changed her hair, but it looks like she is too frightened to travel. I have two men I trust in situations like this. They will find her.”
Primakov had been thinking of sending Stepanov and Mitrokhin. He could have spoken to Nikolaevich at the FSB, but he would have needed a pretext to ask for help that would still hide the real reason for the request. Nikolaevich was a wily old fox, and he could make things uncomfortable for Primakov if he joined the dots between Romanova and Aleksandrov. Far better to send his best men. Stepanov had an excellent nose, and people tended to give Mitrokhin what he wanted to know. They made an effective team.
Natasha rolled over again and draped her arm across his chest. “Can you stay tonight?”
“Perhaps. Let me check.”
He realised that he hadn’t turned his cell phone back on again after deactivating it for the council meeting. He got up and went to the chair where he had left his clothes. He took it out of his jacket pocket, pressed the button and waited for it to boot up. It buzzed in his hand with a series of incoming messages. One of them was marked urgent, and, with a feeling of unease, he scrolled down and tapped his finger on it.
“What is it?” Natasha said.
His face must have given him away. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just information on the operation. But I need to go back to the office.”
“What information? Something is wrong?”
“Please, Natasha, don’t worry. Everything is as it should be. But there are some things that I need to do. Perhaps I will be able to return later.”
He dressed quickly, then excused himself and went down onto the street. He wished that he had his car, but he didn’t, and he did not want to call his driver to pick him up from the park. Instead, he followed the street to Strogino Metro station. He took out his phone as he waited for a train to arrive and read the message for a second and then a third time. It was from the Center. EUREKA had filed an urgent report to the London rezidentura earlier that evening. Vincent Beck, the agent runner responsible for the sleepers in the United Kingdom, was reported as being compromised. EUREKA’s order had been passed to Directorate S and, in his absence, his deputy had given the order to exfiltrate both Beck and the illegals who had mounted the operation against Aleksandrov. Beck was on his way to the agents now and the process to bring them out had been initiated.
Primakov put his phone away and tapped his foot impatiently. There was no knowing what the British would find if they were able to capture and interrogate Beck or his agents. He had read Beck’s zapista confirming that the operation had been successful, but the message was cursory and no substitute for the more detailed report that would follow in due course. It left him with questions: had the assassins spoken to Aleksandrov before they killed him? Had they been able to eavesdrop on any conversations between Aleksandrov and Geggel? If they had, what had they heard? Had they reported anything else to Beck? What would the British discover if they captured the old man and interrogated him? Perhaps they would find out that Aleksandrov was not selling the identities of SVR agents. Perhaps they would know that Aleksandrov was working with his daughter, and that it was the schematic of the Su-58 that Aleksandrov was dangling in order to persuade them to get her out. If the truth was ever uncovered, it would eventually make its way back to the council and the president. His lies would be revealed.
That could not be allowed to happen. There was a gust of wind as the train rumbled out of the mouth of the tunnel. Primakov waited for the doors to open and then stepped aboard.
The agents couldn’t be captured. That would herald disaster. He had to bring them home.
Winchester
23
Vincent Beck hoisted his case onto the seat next to him and gazed out at the landscape as it raced by the windows on either side of the train.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the call. The source of the information that had led to the warning was not clear. Beck had known that Mikhail and Nataliya would be compromised at some point—it was inevitable, given the nature of the work—but the call had still come as a shock. Still, he thought as he headed out of London, they had had a good run. They had been operational for ten years and they had done good work in that time. There had been a number of impressive coups for which they—and, he supposed, he—could claim credit. They had nurtured relationships with men and women inside the intelligence community; they had seduced or blackmailed senior figures within British and American corporations that had led to a flow of top-secret patents and designs; and they had been able to remove troublesome individuals who would have been better advised not to work against the Rodina. One oligarch had been funding opposition parties; he had ended up dead of a suspected heart attack. Another had opened proceedings against an oil company tied to the interests of the president; he had been killed in a fiery wreck after his supercar’s brakes had failed on the M25. Still others had been silenced after they had been blackmailed with evidence of their sexual peccadilloes and perversions, that evidence collected during honeytraps filmed in hotel rooms equipped with a barrage of secret cameras.