‘Wyatt has been in place nine weeks. Thus far, he’s had little to report. But he communicated with me via our clandestine satellite link up just minutes before I called you at home. The main satellite dish has been sabotaged, cutting the station off. And the resident doctor was murdered last night, his death made to look like suicide.’
A tiny crease of interest appeared between Rovka’s brows. He sipped his tea. ‘What do you want to ask me?’
‘Director Rokva, something is happening, or about to happen, at Yarkovsky Station. The break in communications can only be temporary, as help will be triggered automatically after forty eight hours of silence.’ Lenilko chose his words carefully. ‘What is the significance of Yarkovsky Station? I mean, beyond the fact that it’s renowned for its research. What might an enemy be doing there? Be willing to kill for?’
Rokva took so long to reply that Lenilko wondered whether the Director was waiting for more from him. At last the small man said, ‘It’s your project, Semyon. We allow independent work by officers of your seniority precisely because we expect you to show initiative, to come up with answers without handholding on our part. Isn’t it your job to find out what is happening at the station?’
In other circumstances Lenilko would have been stung, would have felt rebuked, shamed into silence. But he thought of Wyatt, and of the speed at which events were following one another at the station, and he pressed on, emboldened. ‘With respect, sir, I believe you do know more about Yarkovsky Station and this whole business than you’re letting on. I believe there’s something you want to tell me, but are trying hard not to. You yourself remarked just now on the choice of setting in which you requested this talk of ours to take place. There’s something you need to say.’
Rokva regarded him over the rim of his cup. He finished his tea, replenished his cup from the pot.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yarkosky Station has a significance beyond the scientific research it produces. A significance known to perhaps fifty people. I, and the other directors, am among them. And I believe I’m justified in telling you now, so that you’re included in our number.’
He began.
Lenilko listened. Rokva’s cadences were as lulling as the sea, and as his words took shape, and the full import of what he was saying began to emerge, Lenilko felt himself buoyed as if on the back of some gargantuan, terrible beast rearing from the depths.
When Rokva had finished, Lenilko watched him in silence. He felt stunned. Appalled. Exhilarated.
‘Perhaps you begin to grasp my dilemma.’ Rokva spooned sugar into his cup. ‘Thirty years ago, twenty five, this would have been a clear-cut matter for us to deal with. A case of espionage, to be met with counterintelligence. Now, it appears to be more the province of Counter-Terrorism. Eshman and his crew.’
Yuri Eshman was the Director of the FSB’s Counter-Terrorism Department. The rivalry between it and Rokva’s and Lenilko’s own Directorate of Special Activities was intense and ongoing. Counter-Terrorism saw the Special Activities people as sad, irrelevant relics, a nostalgia club dedicated to fighting old Cold War battles that were long since over. The Kremlin seemed to agree. Annual funding for Counter-Terrorism had soared in the last decade, in contrast to a steady drop in investment for the Counterintelligence Service as a whole and the Special Activities Directorate in particular.
‘However: I resisted taking the case out of your hands and handing it to Eshman,’ Rokva went on. ‘Until now, it has been perfectly justifiable for our service to conduct a deep-penetration investigation into what is happening at the station. But in light of what I’ve just told you, you must see that it’s looking as though we’ll have to concede this one to Eshman.’
No. Under the table Lenilko’s fists clenched.
‘I have the agent in place,’ he said, in tones as measured as he could manage. ‘I have exclusive access. I want to hang on to this one, Director Rokva. I want to see it through. Bring it home.’
‘And I can understand that.’ Rokva nibbled at a tiny biscuit which had accompanied the tea. ‘As I say, I have so far resisted what my head has told me, namely that this entire project should be handed over to Counter-Terrorism. I’m old guard, Semyon Vladimirovich. I cut my KGB teeth on the great, stealthy battles between us and the Americans and British. Chasing a rag-tag mob of terrorists and martyrs was not what I signed up for when I joined as a young man.’ He sighed, raised both palms heavenward. ‘But these are different times. The madmen, the bombers, the kidnappers, they have the upper hand. Our old enemies, our old friends, the sane, clever ones, the ones who were so much like us… they aren’t the threat they used to be. And we’ll have to come to terms with that.’
For the first time since he’d sat down, Lenilko applied himself to his own tea. It was bland and cool and insipid.
‘What are my instructions?’ he said, finally.
‘You are to contact Eshman’s office and inform him of the Yarkovsky Station project. You are to include every last detail of what you have learned. You are to tell him that the Directorate of Special Activities recognises this is a case for Counter-Terrorism, and that you will be on hand to provide advice but will otherwise leave CT to handle it from now on.’
Rokva’s tone was matter of fact, but something in his eyes betrayed regret. Bitterness, even.
Lenilko said, ‘This is wrong, sir.’
‘Quite probably, yes. Morally speaking.’
‘I can’t do it.’
‘You have to.’
‘It’s ours.’
‘Not any more.’
‘For God’s sake, Director.’
It was the first time he’d ever raised his voice to his superior. Lenilko flinched, appalled.
But Rokva didn’t react.
Lenilko held up his hands in apology. ‘That was uncalled for, sir. But…’
He placed his palms neatly on the table, leaned forward.
‘Six hours.’
Rokva raised his eyebrows.
‘Six hours,’ said Lenilko. ‘Give me six hours to prove this is a matter primarily for Special Activities and not for Eshman. If I fail to make my case, I’ll willingly concede defeat. No. I’ll go further. If I’m wrong, I’ll resign.’
Rokva rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t be so melodramatic.’ He placed his hands on the table in a mirroring of Lenilko that was either wholly unconscious or a crude parody. ‘Six hours. No longer. Beyond that, I’ll contact Eshman myself.’
Without warning Rokva rose, signalled somebody behind Lenilko’s shoulder. For an instant Lenilko felt the thrill of primal Russian fear, the abject terror of the hand on the upper arm, the three a.m. knock at the door. But Rokva was probably only giving notice that his car should be brought round.
‘Thank you, Director Rokva,’ Purkiss murmured. ‘Six hours. I won’t let you down.’
Seventeen
Either the quality of the transmitter was lower than Purkiss had expected, or he’d positioned it less than ideally. Because although Wyatt’s voice was unmistakeable, his words were unintelligible.
Purkiss hunched forward over the receiver on the writing table, as if by getting physically closer to it he could somehow boost its power. He pressed the tiny earpiece further into the external auditory canals of both his ears.