Simon Rubner entered the room and sat down opposite him. “You wanted to see me, Mr. Schreiber.”
Kurt placed the cap over the nib of Will Cochrane’s gold fountain pen and put it on top of the list of people he wanted dead. “What is the situation on our perimeter?”
“We think there’s about fifteen of them on at any one time. At least double that number in total. All are armed, they’ve got sophisticated surveillance equipment, fast vehicles, and they look professional. They don’t seem concerned that we know they’ve surrounded our place.”
The old man waived a hand dismissively. “They want us to know they’re watching us.” He removed his glasses and polished the lenses. “Yevtushenko?”
Rubner ran fingers through his short beard. “We’re trying to force food and water down his throat. It’s not easy. His health’s deteriorating; he’s petrified.”
The former Stasi officer smiled. “Of course he is.” He became motionless, deep in thought. “Are matters progressing in Russia and the United Kingdom?”
Rubner nodded. “Cochrane’s sister and her two guardians have moved location. We’re watching them.”
“The guardians?”
“A husband-and-wife team: Alfie and Betty Mayne.”
“Their backgrounds?”
“Both ex-army, though they’ve been out for a very long time. God knows, Cochrane could have chosen better foot soldiers.”
“They’re not foot soldiers and that is precisely why he chose them. He trusts them more than anyone else to protect his sister. And that means they are very valuable to him.”
“Do you want us to kill the target?”
Kurt thought for a moment. “Not yet. We don’t know if Cochrane’s still after us, so his loved one can still be used as leverage.” His expression turned cold. “What about the SVR officer?”
Simon Rubner spoke quickly. “Mikhail Salkov’s wife and children have been located and approached. We’ve explained to the wife the seriousness of her family’s predicament. That happened twenty hours ago. Almost certainly she’s communicated the approach to her husband.”
“Of course she has.” Kurt Schreiber glanced toward his study’s window. “He’s still out there?”
“On and off. But he always keeps men on the perimeter.” Rubner walked to the window, looked out of it, and folded his arms. “The wife and children have moved locations. We’ve kept them under observation. What do you want us to do?”
“The tactic against Mikhail didn’t work. Kill his family.”
“Yes sir.”
Kurt asked, “Is everyone ready?”
“Your men here and beyond the perimeter are primed. Mikhail’s men will be taken completely by surprise.”
“What time?”
“Three A.M.”
“No survivors.”
“Yes, Mr. Schreiber. I estimate that the convoy will be leaving here a few minutes later.”
Kurt picked up the two sheets of paper containing the codes. “Good. Don’t let me down, Simon.”
Kurt placed the sheets alongside each other.
“What do you want us to do with Yevtushenko?”
“You’re still keeping him in shackles?”
“He’s chained up in the basement. But even if he wasn’t, I think he’d be too weak to escape.”
Kurt looked around. “This place has served us well, but after tonight it will be compromised. We’ll change our base of operations to one of the other German locations.” He smiled. “You’ll kill our unwanted guards; we’ll depart in convoy; Mikhail’s reinforcements will arrive sometime thereafter, but by then we’ll be long gone; they’ll search the farmstead and they’ll find Yevtushenko.”
“Alive or dead?”
“Alive. But I wonder what the Russians will do to him, given that his theft of the paper has ultimately led to the massacre of their colleagues?”
Rubner felt a moment of unease. Though he was no stranger to death and violent acts, he took no pleasure in them. Kurt was very different. The former Stasi officer reveled in seeing others suffer. “They’ll tear him apart.”
“Precisely.” Kurt looked sharply at the former Mossad officer. “All that matters is that you get me safely to the Black Forest tomorrow. In forty-eight hours, Kronos will be let loose. Then everything will be different.”
Twenty-One
Betty Mayne tried to imagine how Sarah Cochrane felt. During her service as an operative in Fourteenth Intelligence Company and her subsequent deployment by Will and others in MI6, she’d done a lot of protection work. It had taught her that the emotions felt by those in her care varied enormously depending on the circumstances of the threat against them, what types of person they were, how much freedom of movement they were given, what age they were, their gender, and, crucially, how long they’d been kept under protection. But over time, there were common patterns of behavior. If the duration of protection was longer than a week, the sequence was often absolute fear and confusion, open hostility toward the guardians, resignation to the situation, rebellion toward the protection detail, reckless behavior, confrontation, then resentment. The sequence was very different from patterns of behavior displayed by hostages. But sometimes the people Betty had protected had tried to hide their emotions by acting as if they were fine or resigned to their situation. Then they might try running away in the dead of night. Fortunately, she’d been wise to their playacting and had stopped them from making an idiotic mistake. She’d quickly learned that for the sake of their safety, it was vital that she never trust the people she protected.
But Sarah was different. Since she’d been in Betty and Alfie’s care, she’d gone deeper and deeper into her shell-barely speaking, getting out of bed only at her husband’s insistence, struggling to eat, her appearance deteriorating. She wasn’t pretending, Betty was sure of that. Instead it seemed that she was in some kind of trauma that was the result of something far bigger than her current circumstances.
They’d arrived in the Scottish Highlands three days ago, having left their previous location in the West Country’s Dartmoor within thirty minutes of receiving a call from Joanna. Located on the shores of Loch Damph in the Northwest Highlands, the large four-bedroom hunting lodge would ordinarily have made a stunning holiday retreat. It was surrounded by mountains, had a stream that ran through a copse at the back of the property, was located at the end of a mile-long track beyond which it took twenty minutes to drive to the nearest residence, and had recently been renovated and extended to include a big dining room and conservatory, a gun room, and a double garage containing a walk-in freezer for hanging deer.
Betty had chosen it not only because it was isolated, provided an excellent view of anyone driving toward the house, and was very difficult to access on foot from other directions, but also because she thought the location would change Sarah’s mood. It hadn’t. If anything she’d grown even more withdrawn.
From the kitchen fridge, Betty withdrew bacon, venison sausages, eggs, mushrooms, and roasted potatoes left over from last night’s meal. She doubted Sarah would eat much, but that wouldn’t stop her cooking for everyone. At 1:00 P.M. exactly, they would all sit down around the kitchen table with food in front of them. And at 7:00 P.M. they would sit at the conservatory dining table to eat their dinner. When not on the move, routine was essential. It helped to normalize each day.
She walked out the kitchen door to fetch the men. Alfie was walking toward her, down one of the mountain slopes. The former SAS sergeant looked much more at home in the wilds of Scotland than he had when they’d collected Sarah and James from their elegant London home. Dressed in hiking gear, he was striding and leaping over the uneven and frozen ground with the vigor of a man half his age. He’d been checking his traps-primitive alarm systems made out of wire and empty coke cans that if walked into would trigger sufficient noise to be heard from within the house. They knew the alarms were effective. It was the off-season of the tightly regulated deer-hunting calendar; at this time of the year, deer would often come down from the mountains to seek shelter in the valley and to eat food that was left for them by the estates’ gillies. Last night, Alfie had jumped out of bed three times because of the noise of cans rattling against each other, only to discover that each time his traps had been triggered by large red deer.