Liz Carlyle - 07 - The Geneva Trap (2 page)

There was nothing for it, so he started to swing out to overtake. The road here ran like a causeway on top of an embankment, with the land sloping away to form a steep drop on either side. Mireille would hate this, he thought – his wife had a terrible fear of heights.

He kept his eyes straight ahead as he started to overtake. But as he did so the Mercedes picked up speed; it was taking Steinmetz longer than expected to pass. Then suddenly he saw a shadow coming from the passenger’s side, and he realised that the Mercedes was pulling out on to his side of the road.

Steinmetz hit his horn and jammed on the brakes. But it was too late – the Mercedes’s front wing smashed into the Renault, knocking the smaller car towards the flimsy barrier on the left side of the road. Steinmetz desperately swung the steering wheel to the right, but the Mercedes was still pushing against his car, making a terrible grinding noise of clashing steel. As his car slid left towards the barrier, Steinmetz saw with a helpless sense of dread what was going to happen next.

The Renault hit the thin barrier like a bullet going through a paper bag, and hurtled off the road. The front of the car dipped in the air, lifting Steinmetz up in his seat. The Renault landed and flipped on to its side. It rolled over once, twice, and then a third and final time, until it sat crookedly upright on its one remaining wheel. It had lost both front doors, and its roof was crushed like a concertina.

Forty minutes later, a fireman attending the scene remarked to a colleague that it was a miracle that the car hadn’t caught fire. His colleague looked at the body being removed from the Renault’s front seat, and said softly, ‘Some miracle.’

Chapter 2

Russell White sat in the locker room with his head in his hands. Though he played tennis regularly twice a week, today for some reason he felt exhausted. His heart was racing and he was still breathing fast ten minutes after the game had finished. He must be putting on weight or perhaps it was just his age – forty-five next week. But that wasn’t old. The game on the indoor courts was always faster than on grass, but it would be weeks before the Geneva spring was far enough advanced for the outside courts to be used. He must cut down the alcohol and change his diet.

His tennis partner and colleague Terry Castle emerged, whistling, from the showers. ‘You OK, old chap?’ He nodded and Terry went on whistling as he put on his clothes – the informal uniform of soft wool jacket, open-necked shirt and slip-on shoes which the younger diplomats favoured.

‘If you’re sure, I’ll rush off. Got a meet in twenty minutes. See you back at the Station.’ He slung his bag over his shoulder and strode out.

White watched the younger man go, envying him his lean figure and jaunty attitude to life. He got up slowly, showered and dressed carefully. He himself still favoured the traditional Foreign Office style – a well-cut striped cotton shirt from Hilditch & Key in Jermyn Street, a blue worsted suit made by a tailor he’d been frequenting for years, and polished brogues.

He was standing in front of the mirror adjusting his Travellers Club tie when he saw the reflection of a man in tennis whites emerge silently from between the line of lockers behind him. Something about the man’s sudden appearance made his back crawl. He swung round to face the man, surprised he hadn’t realised there was anyone else in the room. The tall figure had prominent cheekbones and dark hair brushed back from a high forehead. He walked straight towards White, who drew back slightly against the mirror as he approached. The man just brushed by him before turning towards the door to the courts. As he passed he said in a low voice what sounded to White like, ‘I want to speak to Lees Carlisle.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said White to the man’s receding back, wondering if he’d been mistaken for someone else.

The man turned, with his hand on the door, and said again, ‘I want to speak to Lees Carlisle. Only her. No one else.’ Then he left the locker room and the door swung shut behind him.

Russell White stood for a moment, fingering his tie and thinking hard. He could have sworn he’d never seen the man before. What did he want? And who on earth was Lees Carlisle, if that was what he’d said? A woman. He’d definitely said ‘her’. It seemed utterly bizarre.

Unless … it was an approach?

‘Of course it was an approach,’ said Terry Castle, when White told his story. Terry was junior to Russell White in the Service, but he was never slow to offer an opinion. ‘He’s trying to make contact.’

‘Funny way to make it, but you may be right.’ They were sitting in White’s office in the small suite of rooms in the British Mission in Geneva. Though relations between Foreign Office staff and MI6 officers in the Station were excellent, the Station’s first line of communication was to the green-and-white MI6 Headquarters building in Vauxhall Cross in London.

White thought himself lucky to have been left as Geneva’s Head of Station for five years. Though it wasn’t everyone’s ideal posting, he loved it. He loved the old town; he loved the easy access to the countryside and the mountains, where he rented a small chalet, ideal for skiing weekends or summer walking. And he enjoyed the diplomatic round and the ease with which you could pick up gossip or inside information, which could be turned into intelligence reports for home consumption. The Station was regarded as a success and he flattered himself that he contributed a good deal to its reputation. But this style of approach, if that’s what it was, was new to him.

‘Did you recognise the guy?’ asked Terry. ‘He must know who you are. He’s not going to make an approach to just any old Brit.’

‘No. I’m sure I’ve never seen him at the club before. Or anywhere else that I can remember. Pass me the Mug Book and I’ll see if he’s in it.’

Terry reached into the open safe in the corner of the room and plonked a large leather-covered album on White’s desk. Inside, each page held rows of photographs, with identifying captions typed on labels underneath. The people caught on camera, usually without their knowledge, were individuals either known to be or suspected of being intelligence officers. Unsurprisingly, given its importance as an international hub, there were a great many of these in Geneva.

Most nations were represented. Many of the recent photographs were of the Chinese, whose trade delegation had swollen disproportionately in recent years – a transparent cover for industrial espionage. But there were Middle Easterners, Russians, even other Europeans – the Station liked to know its friends as well as its competitors and targets. White leafed through page after page without pausing, then suddenly stopped.

‘Here we go. That’s him,’ he said, jabbing a finger at a black-and-white photograph. He was pointing to a small group of people, some sort of a delegation perhaps, one of the countless number that went in and out of the various international organisations which Geneva hosted, their buildings dotted around the lake. UNESCO, the WHO, the ITO, the UN itself – so much activity, thought White, with so little result.

‘Third chap from the left,’ he said as Terry Castle came round the desk to have a look.

Castle peered at the picture and the caption below it. ‘So, he’s a Russian. Looks it too.’

The man in the photograph was wearing a suit rather than tennis gear, but the receding hairline was in evidence, and the same high Slavic cheekbones. White read the caption aloud. ‘Alexander Sorsky. Second Secretary, Soviet Trade Delegation.’

‘I bet he is,’ said Castle sarcastically. ‘So what does he want to talk to us about? Talk about a blast from the past. It’s just like the old Cold War days, huh?’

White gave him a look. Terry Castle was less than ten years his junior, but he liked to pretend that Russell White was a dinosaur from the pre-
Glasnost
era. White said pointedly, ‘I wouldn’t know. The Cold War was before my time. Anyway, that identifies our mysterious stranger. I’d better get on to Vauxhall pronto.’

‘What about this person he said he wanted to talk to? Are you sure you got the name right? Lees something, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. Lees Carlisle, it sounded like.’ White shook his head. ‘I’ve checked the Service Directory, but there’s nothing that looks at all like it. There’s Lees Armstrong in Bangkok, but he definitely said “her” and it certainly sounded like “Carlisle”. I don’t know who the hell he’s talking about.’

Chapter 3

Geoffrey Fane knew exactly who Liz Carlyle was, and sitting in his third-floor office in Vauxhall Cross, he could look out of his window across the river to the building where she worked. Thames House, headquarters of MI5.

Elizabeth Carlyle – what a pity she insisted on being called ‘Liz’. He had known her for almost ten years and had worked with her on many operations. She was intelligent, incisive, direct – and also, Fane acknowledged, very attractive. He respected her, admired her, and might have felt even more warmly towards her if she had shown any sign of admiring him.

But then women were inscrutable to Fane, and right now deeply annoying. Just that morning a letter had arrived at his flat in Fulham from the solicitors of his ex-wife, Adele. It seemed they wanted to reopen the financial settlement that had already drained his coffers irreparably. In particular, they were making noises about his family house in the Dorset countryside, the house which he and his brother had inherited. Its value, the lawyers were arguing, was appreciably higher than that declared by Fane during the divorce negotiations. It seemed Adele felt she had been cheated.

Bloody women, thought Fane. They always wanted to have it both ways. Some insisted on having careers – Vauxhall Cross now positively swarmed with women, many alarmingly competent, and some nearly as senior as Fane himself. They wanted equal pay and equal consideration, even if half the time they were off on maternity leave. They wanted to be part of things but on their own terms: if you tried to treat them as one of the chaps, they laughed at you. If you treated them like ladies, in the way he’d been brought up to do, complimenting them on their appearance, their clothes or their hair, you risked being accused of sexual harassment.

Not that Adele was like that. In fact, Fane wished she were more of a modern woman with a career of her own. Instead, Adele enjoyed playing the role of a high-born lady in a nineteenth-century novel, content to lie on a chaise-longue all day, nibbling chocolates at someone else’s expense. Fane’s expense for years, until a rich French banker had come along to take her off his hands. After the divorce, Fane thought the problem had gone away for good. But now here she was again, Oliver Twist-like, sayin
g I want some more.

As if that weren’t enough for one day, now there was another woman disturbing his life. Fane looked with irritation at the communication from Geneva that had arrived on his desk a few minutes earlier. It seemed mildly amusing that a woman he knew so well was unknown to the Geneva Station. But he was not amused at all to read that the Russian who had approached Russell White had said he would talk only to her. Fane was always reluctant to hand over a potentially interesting case to the people across the river, but the Russian’s request had been unequivocal – he would only speak to Liz Carlyle. And not even Fane could pretend that Liz Carlyle didn’t know what she was doing.

But why was this Sorsky approaching the British now, and in such a covert way? How did he know Liz Carlyle’s name? He must have been posted in the UK at some stage – but even so how had he come across Elizabeth, and under her real name too? Let’s hope she can provide some answers, thought Fane. Because whatever lay behind the approach, it couldn’t be ignored. After the Cold War ended, relations with the Russian Intelligence Services had thawed momentarily but various events had turned the temperature frosty again. The Russians had reverted to their old tricks: it would be useful to know more about their operations, not least in Geneva.

Fane buzzed his Secretary. ‘Could you do an urgent look up for me on Alexander Sorsky, Second Secretary at the Russian Trade Delegation in Geneva?’

‘Yes, Geoffrey,’ replied a youthful, female voice. Fane knew he could have retrieved the information he needed himself from the database on the terminal on his desk but he was set in his ways, and preferred hard copy on his desk, printed paper rather than a screen. He also liked having young Molly Plum bring the files in. She was sweet and very pretty, and young enough to be his daughter. Better still, she seemed slightly in awe of him, which was not an attitude he was inclined to try and change.

As he waited, he stood at the window, looking out at the Thames, sparkling in a flash of spring sunshine, and thinking about the Cold War; recalling the efforts each side had made to infiltrate the other, and the deep satisfaction he and his colleagues had felt when the Soviet Union had collapsed and the game had seemed over.

Molly came into the room, carrying the cup of tea he always had at this time of the afternoon. ‘The Swiss have reported Alexander Sorsky as suspected SVR, but they haven’t confirmed it. We have no other traces,’ she said as she handed him the cup and saucer.

That was odd. It meant that not only had Sorsky never served in the UK but he also hadn’t crossed MI6’s radar anywhere else in the world. So how did the man know Liz Carlyle? Geneva had sent over a photograph, which Fane now examined. It was a low-resolution snap of a group of people; someone had drawn an arrow over the figure of Sorsky. He had unprepossessing features, was losing his hair, and in general looked more like a junior bureaucrat than an intelligence officer. Well, it took all sorts, as Fane knew. At least he’s not another bloody female, he thought grumpily, as he buzzed his intercom again and asked Molly to tell Liz Carlyle he wanted to come and see her.