He looked at the clock. Half past seven. There was no point in heading home now, or even phoning to make his apologies.
Besides, he had another matter to attend to.
Lenilko opened the door of his office, waited till Anna and Konstantin looked his way, and summoned them with a twitch of his head.
They sat across the desk from him, expectant, Anna eagerly so, Konstantin more lugubrious.
Lenilko studied them in turn. The silence drew out. It was a very useful tool, silence.
He said, ‘One of you, at least, knows why I have brought you in here.’
Anna’s face was doubtful. Konstantin’s was curious in a bored way, his usual expression.
Lenilko said: ‘One of you has betrayed me. Perhaps both of you have.’
Was that the slightest movement at the corner of Konstantin’s mouth? Tipping his head back, Lenilko steepled his fingers under his chin and breathed out through pursed lips.
‘Less than one hour ago, I was called in to see Director Rokva. To my surprise, he knew I had identified John Farmer, the journalist at Yarkovsky Station, as Martin Hughes.’
This time there was a definite reaction as the implication sank in. Anna glanced across at Konstantin, her mouth open. Konstantin himself frowned and dropped his gaze, blinking.
‘How did the Director know I had established this connection? How was he aware that not three hours earlier, I and my team of two trusted staff had discovered, through a combination of ingenuity and painstaking plodding, that the journalist John Farmer is the same man as the one who was photographed on the Baltic the morning of the attempt on our president’s life? By what fantastical piece of intelligence work did Director Rokva obtain this knowledge?’
He watched each of them, the tension cranking up so high it seemed to hum in the air. Both met his gaze now, Anna wide-eyed and ashen, Konstantin’s features set in stone.
Lenilko rose to his feet. When they moved to follow suit, he gestured them down with a flick of his fingers. The dynamic was different depending on their relative positions. If he made them stand while he sat, he’d be the boss dressing down his subordinates. Keeping them on their seats while he towered over them turned the scene into one of interrogation.
‘I have two questions. The first: which of you informed Director Rokva of our discovery, behind my back? And the second: why?’
A muscle jumped in Anna’s cheek. Konstantin remained impassive.
Lenilko gave it a full ten seconds.
‘Very well. Both of you, get out. Go home. You will each be subject to a full disciplinary investigation on Monday. But rest assured, you will not be working with me again. Indeed, your careers in the FSB are over.’
‘It was me,’ said Konstantin.
Anna stared at him. Konstantin stood, unbidden, his posture submissive but his chin raised in something approaching defiance.
Lenilko examined him, letting his gaze rove over the man’s face and slowly down his body and back up again. He knew it was one of the most demeaning things one could do to a subordinate. He had been on the receiving end of such treatment himself, as a young recruit.
‘I’m waiting,’ he said.
Konstantin murmured, ‘Director Rokva had a right to know. My loyalty is to you, Mr Lenilko, but ahead of that it is to the FSB. I judged this information to be of sufficient importance that the Director needed to be told of it.’
‘You… judged.’ Lenilko let wonder creep into his voice. ‘And I presume your judgement was that I, your superior, was incapable of making such a decision myself.’
Konstantin had the air of a man standing on the gallows and therefore with nothing more to lose. ‘With respect, Mr Lenilko, your involvement in this project is… complicated. Your decision to share or not to share information is biased. I predicted that you would not disclose the journalist’s identity to the Director immediately, because you were jealous of the case and wanted to continue to conduct the investigation without outside interference. I therefore made the decision to communicate with the Director myself.’
Like all successful people in his line of work, Lenilko had learned over many years to mask his emotions. Not to deny or suppress them, but rather to handle them internally and maintain an outward appearance of calm. He saw his face in the mirror on the wall behind Konstantin, and noted with a detached satisfaction that his features were as smooth and expressionless as if he was asleep. But the rage in him was so intense, so primal, that he feared it would find another outlet through the wall of his chest, erupting like a tormented beast.
‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Take your personal items with you. There will be no disciplinary process. You are summarily dismissed.’
Even at the last, Konstantin’s composure didn’t crumple. He simply bowed his head, turned and left.
Lenilko gazed at the door for a few seconds. He was aware of Anna, still seated, her face in her hands. Her breathing was rapid.
‘Anna.’
She raised her head, her eyes wide but, he noticed, dry.
He stared into them for a long moment.
‘Were you aware of this?’
Her reply didn’t come too quickly, nor was it the grovelling denial it might have been. She said, simply: ‘No.’
After a few seconds more, he nodded.
‘It’s just the two of us now. So you’d better get back to work.’
Fourteen
Four hours’ work, and Purkiss, by nature a patient man, felt frustration boring through him like woodworm.
He was seated at the small table in his room, his laptop open before him. Every so often he got up to stretch, take a turn round the room, or gaze out of the window at the whiteness beyond. The snow had been coming down relentlessly all morning, and Purkiss could no longer make out any horizon at all.
The hard drive he’d cloned didn’t contain a lot of files, which was one reason he’d been able to copy it relatively quickly. Much of what was there was standard fare: word-processing programs with added facilities for the recording of scientific data, protocols regarding safety and maintenance at the station, topographical maps of the surrounding area and of Siberia as a whole.
One folder looked potentially interesting. It was titled Historical, and contained assorted files, both original reports and scanned or downloaded newspaper and journal articles, pertaining to the history of Yarkovsky Station. Much of it Purkiss already knew. Established in 1992, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet order and in a new spirit of international scientific cooperation, it was named after Ivan Yarkovsky, a nineteenth century Russian-Polish engineer who died in obscurity but whose work on the effects of thermal radiation on asteroids was now recognised as of great importance.
There were further lists of research projects carried out at the station, and of publications that had resulted. Purkiss read through the titles quickly. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but nothing seemed remotely controversial. Another file listed the personnel who’d worked at the station over the last twenty-two years and the dates of their tours of duty, as it were. The names meant nothing to him, apart from the most recent ones, those of the staff currently at the station. And, of course, Feliks Nisselovich.
A last subfolder contained files with data on the known history of the region, which included accounts even of Siberia’s prehistory and of the Neolithic archaeological and palaeoanthropological discoveries there. Avner’s field. Most of the data was centred on the last hundred years, as might be expected, and in particular the period since the late nineteen twenties when the young Soviet regime had extended its colossal industrialisation drive into the north. Purkiss felt the torrent of facts and dates blur past his eyes. It was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, except he didn’t even know if a needle was what he was looking for.