“You ran him well, Misha. That wasn’t your fault, and neither is this. But you’re burned. It is what it is. You’ve done enough. It’s time to go home, where the president will present you with medals for the sacrifices you’ve made. For the things you’ve done for the Rodina.”
Nataliya nodded decisively and stood. “Fine,” she said.
“I’ll load the car,” Mikhail said.
“I’ll help,” Beck offered.
They made their way upstairs. Beck followed Mikhail into one of the bedrooms. He took down a suitcase from on top of the wardrobe and opened it; it was already packed with clothes.
Beck realised he hadn’t even asked about the operation. “How was this afternoon?”
“They met,” he said. “They talked.”
“Did you hear what they said?”
“No,” he said. “I couldn’t get close enough.”
“And?”
“Aleksandrov is dead, isn’t he?”
“And Geggel?”
“Dead,” Nataliya said, coming into the room.
“Well done. Excellent work. The Center will be pleased.”
Mikhail could be hot-headed, but that was not surprising given the stress that he and Nataliya were under. They had been covert for twenty years. Maintaining their secrecy while undertaking work for the Center was difficult and dangerous. It was claustrophobic. Beck had two main functions: he delivered orders to Mikhail and Nataliya and placated them when they complained about what they had been asked to do. And now a third had been added: get them out of the country before they could be caught.
31
The helicopter swooped low over Winchester and continued to the north. The pilot located a football field adjacent to a sports and social club and descended quickly. As the helicopter settled on its skids, the noise from the turbines dropped from a roar to a whine and then a murmur. Tanner opened the door and hopped down to the grass below. Milton followed. The rotors were slowing down, gradually drooping over the helicopter. Hot exhaust gases vented from the back of the fuselage, causing the air to shimmer in the glow of the helicopter’s range lights.
There was a car waiting in the dirt car park next to the field. Milton and Tanner made their way across to it. The engine switched on and the lights flicked to life. Tanner opened the door for Milton and he got in. There was a woman sitting in the driver’s seat. Milton recognised her.
“Number Ten,” he said.
“Hello, Number One.”
Her name was Conway. Milton remembered her file: she had served for several years in the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, and had extensive experience related to covert surveillance and denied area operations. She had been seconded to the MI6 team in Yemen to train Yemeni forces fighting al Qaeda and to identify targets for drone strikes. She had been tagged as a potential recruit to Group Fifteen by her MI6 handler during that operation, and Milton had been impressed enough during her selection to recommend her file to Control. Her work had been excellent so far: efficient, decisive, and, when the need arose, ruthless.
Tanner stayed outside.
“You’re not coming?” Milton said.
“It’s down to you now,” Tanner said. “It’s your operation. I need to get back to London.”
Tanner slammed the door and slapped his palm on the roof.
Ten pulled away.
Conway drove them into the village and pulled up in the car park of the Itchen Motor Company. Milton and Conway got out of the car and crossed over to the van that was waiting there. Milton knocked on the door, stepped back, and waited until it was unlocked and pulled open. Light shone out of the interior, enough for Milton to see that Michael Pope had opened the door.
“Evening,” Milton said.
Pope reached out a hand and Milton clasped it. “Good to see you,” he said.
Pope shuffled aside so that Milton and Conway could clamber into the van. Milton looked around, blinking to allow his eyes to adjust to the wash of light that was emanating from the various pieces of equipment. Ziggy Penn was sitting at a control desk; he swivelled around in his chair.
“Hello, Number One,” he said. “Shut the door, would you?”
Milton slid the door closed again. Much of the space in the back of the van had been taken up by the equipment, and it was cramped for the four of them.
Ziggy turned to Conway. “Number Ten?”
Conway gave a short nod of acknowledgement.
“Then the gang’s all here,” Ziggy said. “Let’s get down to it.”
“What have you got?” Milton asked.
Ziggy swivelled his chair so that he was facing the console. “Quite a bit,” he said. “I’ve got a drone over the property.”
Milton examined a high-definition overhead image of a house and the surrounding area. It was large, with two wings, several outbuildings and the bright blue square of a swimming pool. The northern boundary of the garden was marked by the curve of a private road that offered access to a collection of similarly large houses. The road that they had taken to get to the van marked the southern boundary.
“The property was last on the market four years ago. I found a cached copy of the plans—here.”
Milton looked at the screen to Ziggy’s left. It was a brochure from a local estate agent advertising a large house. Ziggy swiped two fingers down on the console’s trackpad until he had the plan.
“It’s big,” he said. “Six thousand square feet with the outbuildings. The Land Registry records the sale to the Ryans for just over one and a half million pounds.”
“Business must have been brisk,” Pope said.
Ziggy tapped a finger against the screen. “Three floors, eight bedrooms, three large reception spaces and a cellar. Multiple ways inside. You’ve got doors in through the annex sitting room, kitchen, utility room and study. That’s on top of the front door that opens into the hall.”
“There,” Milton said, turning to Pope and Conway and then resting his finger on the screen. An annex had been built off the eastern wall of the house. There was a double garage, then a bedroom and then a sitting room. “One of us goes in there.”
“I’ll take it,” Conway said.
Milton nodded. “Five—go in through the front door here. Clear the drawing room and the sitting room.”
Pope nodded his agreement.
“And I’ll go in through the study door here and work up into the kitchen. We clear the ground floor, meet in the hall and then take the stairs up. Have we seen any movement inside?”
“Nothing,” Ziggy said. “A couple of lights on, but that’s it.”
Milton paused to give them a moment to suggest a change to the plan, but both Pope and Conway were silent.
He turned back to Ziggy. “What about security?”
“I’ve found an agreement with a firm in Winchester. I got into their files and dug out the contract. The Ryans went for the full package—motion detectors inside the house and access alarms on the doors and windows. The alarm rings a monitoring service and also the local police station.”
“Can you do something about it?”
Ziggy looked almost insulted that the question needed to be asked. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll override it. Just say when.”
“Anything else we need to know?” Milton asked.
“Not from my perspective.”
“Do you have equipment for us?”
Ziggy reached up to the racking that had been installed on the partition that separated the driver’s compartment from the cabin and took down three radios and their accompanying holsters. The units were around five inches by three inches, slabs of metal that were worn beneath their arms. The radios had small control fobs with two buttons. One opened a channel to speak and the other broadcast a solid tone for when silence was required: rapid clicks for target moving, three clicks for yes, two for no. Ziggy gave one unit to Milton, one to Conway and one to Pope. Milton put on the holster, clipped the microphone to his collar and pressed the earpiece into his ear. Pope and Conway did the same.