“Put them on channel two,” Ziggy said. “Usual protocol. Comms check when you’re outside, please.”
“You’re monitoring signals?”
“Yes,” Ziggy said. “Calls and data going into or out of the house.”
“And the police frequency?”
“I’ll let you know if there’s any chatter.”
“Weapons?” Pope asked.
“Over there.”
There was a large canvas flight bag pushed up against the partition that divided the cabin from the front seats of the van. Pope stooped down to collect it, dumped it on a seat and unzipped it. He took out three UCIWs, the compact variant of the tried and tested Colt M-16. It was 22 inches from front to back and weighed less than six and a half pounds. Each weapon was equipped with a red dot sight on the front accessory rail and Surefire suppressors. Pope handed one to Milton and the second to Conway and took the third for himself. He reached into the bag again, collected six thirty-round standard M-16 magazines and handed them around.
Milton ejected the seated magazine and checked it with the two spares, pressing on the top rounds with his thumb to ensure that they were charged, then pulled back on the charging handle on the top of the upper receiver to ensure that there was a round in the chamber. He released the handle so that the bolt carrier group could travel all the way forward and hit the forward assist to ensure that the weapon was good to go. He slid the original mag back into the magwell, giving it a tap on the bottom so that it was engaged, and then pulled it down to check that it was properly seated. He put the spares in his pockets, one left and the other one right.
“Ready?” he said.
Pope stood, ducking his head against the low ceiling. “Ready.”
Conway nodded.
“Let’s go get them.”
32
Pope pulled the handle and slid the door back. All three of them jumped down. Milton closed the door and turned to the road and the property beyond. They crossed over to the pavement on the opposite side. There was no need to say anything else. They all knew what they had to do. The three of them were experienced operatives, well equipped and benefiting from the fact that the Russian agents inside the house should be oblivious to the danger that they were in.
Milton pointed to the left and held up two fingers. Pope and Conway nodded their acknowledgement, turned and jogged away in that direction. Milton waited until they were out of sight around the bend and then turned and made his way to the east, looking for a spot where he could scale the wall without being seen. It didn’t take long to find. There was a stretch of fence that had collapsed. A large tree had pushed through it, splintering the boards. The wall was lower here, too, and the gap was open apart from the bushes and small shrubs that were spilling out onto the pavement.
Milton’s radio crackled. “Group, Group,” Ziggy said. “This is WATCHER. Requesting comms check. Over.”
“WATCHER, WATCHER,” Milton said. “This is One, strength ten. Over.”
Pope’s voice came over the radio. “WATCHER, WATCHER. This is Five. Also strength ten. Over.”
“WATCHER, WATCHER. This is Ten. Strength ten. Over.”
“Group, Group,” Milton said. “Synchronise watches. I have twelve-fifty-seven in three… two… one… synchronise. Over.”
Conway and Pope both radioed back that they had the same time.
“Group, Group, I’m going into the garden now,” Milton said. “Radio when you are in position and ready to breach. Out.”
Milton walked past the opening in the fence, turned back and then dawdled in front of it, holding the compact machine gun to his side as he waited for the car he had heard approaching to carry on by. Headlights lit up the buildings on the other side of the road as the car hurried around the bend, its taillights disappearing as it went on its way. Milton took a breath, clambered onto the low wall and forced his body into the slender gap with a brick pier on one side and vegetation on the other. He found a crease between the branches and pushed through it as quietly as he could.
33
Nataliya opened the wardrobe all the way, unhooked the metal rail that held her dresses, and deposited it, and the clothes, on the floor behind her. She pressed her right hand against the edge of the rear panel, pushing it back enough so that she could slide the fingers of her left hand beneath it. She yanked, hard, and worked the false panel away so that she could get to the void behind it. She took out a bag full of banknotes in all denominations and two passports issued in the names of their emergency legends. She handed Mikhail one of the passports and he flicked through it to refresh his memory: he was to be Johan van Scorel and Nataliya would be his girlfriend, Francine Claesz. They were Dutch, from Rotterdam, and they had been in the United Kingdom for five years.
She and Beck descended the stairs to the ground floor. There was enough moonlight from outside for them to navigate around the island.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Beck asked her.
“I’m fine, Vovochka,” she said, using the diminutive of Vladimir, his real name. “A headache. Nothing more.”
“I would like you to see a doctor,” he said.
“And how am I going to do that?”
“When you get to France. I will arrange for someone to be there.”
“I’d rather just get back home. It’s been a long time.”
Mikhail came back from the garage.
“The bags are loaded,” he said. “Are we good to go?”
“We are,” Beck said.
“Where are we going?” Mikhail asked.
“There’s an airfield at Popham. There’ll be a pilot with a light aircraft waiting for us.”
“And then?”
“France. Calais. We’ll drive to Charles de Gaulle and fly to Moscow via Luxembourg. Everything being well, we’ll be back in Yasenevo by this evening. Any issues with that?”
“None,” Mikhail said. “All good.”
“Let’s get going.”
Conway and Pope moved briskly. The streets were quiet, but that was both a blessing and a curse: on the one hand, there would be no one to witness them breaking into the property; on the other, any passing police patrol would immediately consider the two of them, out late in this kind of rich residential area, as suspicious. There was the small matter of the submachine guns, too; they both carried them held against their bodies on the side farthest from the road.
The road to the north of the property was The Paddock. It was marked ‘Private Road – Residents Only,’ but there was no one around to notice them as they jogged along it and followed the fence that marked the boundary of the target address. Tall leylandii had been planted to restrict the view over the fence, but one of the trees was sickly and had died back. Conway put her hands on the lip of the fence and, after taking a breath, she put her foot against Pope’s linked hands and allowed him to boost her up and over. She was in the garden, hidden from view by a line of shorter shrubs that had been planted in front of the leylandii. Conway crouched down low and scoped her immediate surroundings: she saw a large outbuilding and then, beyond that, a courtyard and the garage block. She looked up. The sky was black, and if the drone was up there, she couldn’t see or hear it.