Manhunt (10 page)

‘In for a penny,’ Richter muttered. He extracted the other envelope and ripped it open.

Its contents were a surprise. They comprised half a dozen sheets of folded A4 size paper, closely typed, and at the top of the first one the title ‘SVR Briefing’. He scanned the
pages, but didn’t bother reading them, deciding that he would do that later. Also in the envelope was a beige-coloured plastic card, one end of which had an apparently random series of holes
punched into it. There was nothing else on the card apart from a small black-and-white photograph of a man that Richter recognized immediately – because it was of himself – along with
the name ‘Anatoli Markov’ in Cyrillic script.

It was just as Richter had suspected. Collection of this package was just a ruse, despite Simpson’s insistence on its importance, and Richter now knew that he was being set up for
something. The only thing in doubt was exactly what Simpson had planned for him.

Hammersmith, London

The call from Vienna had been routed to the Hammersmith building switchboard from the SIS headquarters at Vauxhall Cross, simply because the man in Austria was an SIS
asset and that was the only number he had. The message the caller had to pass on was simple enough – just a confirmation that the package had been collected – but he had also received
specific instructions not to communicate with anyone except Richard Simpson.

Simpson wasn’t worried, but he had been getting slightly concerned as time had passed without receiving news from Austria, so he snatched up the internal phone the moment it rang.

‘Simpson,’ he said.

‘It’s Gunther,’ the voice replied, using the agreed recognition name. ‘Your man was late.’

‘How late?’

‘An hour or so. He was not driving a car, but arrived on foot. And he then sat in a cafe across the road, watching the house for about half an hour, before he came over and knocked on the
door.’

For a few moments Simpson said nothing, thinking the situation through. ‘You confirmed his identity?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I checked his passport. And he took the package.’

‘Thank you. That’s what matters,’ said Simpson and disconnected. He next made a swift call to a number in Vienna, and listened with obvious dissatisfaction to the reply he
received. Three minutes later he dialled the number of Richter’s mobile phone.

Austria

Richter was back on the road, again cruising at a steady one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour, when his mobile phone rang. He reached over to the passenger seat,
picked up the phone and answered it. ‘Richter.’

‘Having fun?’ Simpson asked.

‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ Richter replied. ‘Why?’

‘We gave you a number of very specific instructions before you left London. One of the first of those instructions told you to collect a hire car from Hertz at the airport. I’ve just
checked. The car’s still there, and you never appeared. Why?’

‘I got a better deal from Avis.’ Richter swung the Ford off the autoroute and into the next rest area. ‘I’m saving you money,’ he added as he braked the car and
switched off the engine.

‘Don’t get smart with me,’ Simpson snapped. ‘Do you think this is some kind of a fucking game?’

‘Right now, Simpson, I have no idea what this is. What I do know is that I trust you about as far as I can spit a rat, and that’s not a hell of a long way.’

‘I told you all you needed to know, Richter, and none of it was difficult or dangerous. Why the hell can’t you just follow your orders?’

‘I
am
doing what you told me, but I’m also following Frank Sinatra. I’m doing it my way. I’ll make it to the rendezvous on the date you specified, with the
package, but how I get there is my business. If you need me, you can call me, OK?’

‘No, Richter, it’s not OK. We expect—’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Richter interrupted. ‘Face facts, Simpson. I’m here, I’ve got the package, I’m in a car somewhere in Austria –
and I’m going to get to the rendezvous on time. There’s nothing you can do about it, short of flying some other mug out here to take over from me.’

For a few moments Richter assumed Simpson had rung off, but then he heard a snarl through his earpiece. ‘Right, Richter, you listen to me. You keep the mobile switched on. You get to
Toulouse by the date I told you. You do the job we’re paying you to do, because if you don’t, I’ll find you and I’ll make you wish you had.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ Richter said. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes, the package you’re carrying is sealed, for a good reason. Make sure it stays that way until you hand it over.’

‘Why do you think I wouldn’t?’

‘You’ve broken every other rule, Richter. Why should I expect you to obey this one?’ Simpson rang off. Richter grinned, snapped the phone shut, and glanced over at the
passenger seat, where the brown paper wrapping of the package still gaped open. He started the engine, checked his mirrors and accelerated away, heading for the Italian border.

Wednesday

Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi Headquarters, Yasenevo, Tëplyystan, Moscow

The call reached Raya Kosov a little after four in the afternoon. Normally calls originating through the civilian telephone system were rejected by the Yasenevo
switchboard, but this caller had not only known Raya Kosov’s name but her extension number, so it was put through after the operator had checked with the internal security section and
switched on the tape-recorder. Raya had been expecting it, expecting it for a long time, but it still gave her quite a shock.

The caller identified herself unnecessarily because Raya had known her since childhood, and her message contained all the code phrases they had arranged between them nearly five years
earlier.

‘Hello, Raya, it’s Valentina. I’ve got some very bad news, I’m afraid. Your mother’s very sick again, and she’ll have to go back into hospital, perhaps for
the last time. I know you’re very busy, but if you could possibly get away for just a few days and come and visit her it would mean the world to her. You know how much she misses
you.’

‘Oh, Valentina,’ Raya replied, her voice suddenly choking with emotion, and it was some seconds before she could form another sentence. She swallowed and tried again.
‘Valentina, I’m so sorry to hear that. Look, tell Mama I will try to get some time off. I’ll call you about it tonight.’

‘Thank you, Raya. It would mean so much to her.’

‘Goodbye, Valentina.’ Raya waited until she’d put the phone down before she gave way to tears.

A perfectly innocuous, if sad, exchange which the internal-security section played back almost immediately. After confirming that the call had originated in Minsk, where officer Kosov’s
elderly mother was known to live, the duty security officer transcribed the call, logging its date and time and the originating number, but took no further action.

Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London

Gerald Stanway sat at his desk, staring at his computer screen, but his mind was miles away. The briefing that Holbeche had given the previous afternoon had stunned and
worried him. Worse, it had frightened him, and he’d suffered a sleepless night because of it.

What was worrying him most was the story about the clerk. It sounded too pat, too convenient, that this unnamed man should have reappeared in Vienna – the town itself was almost a
spy-fiction cliché, for God’s sake – with some kind of information that might directly implicate him. For Stanway had no doubt at all that, if this clerk really did exist, he
– Stanway – was the ‘leak that could be identified’, as that bumbling old fool Holbeche had put it.

Gerald Stanway had been guilty of passing classified information to anyone who was prepared to pay for it – the Libyans, the Iraqis, the Iranians and, even for one brief period, the IRA;
though his principal customer had always been Russia – and he had been doing so for the past dozen years. He regarded himself as a businessman selling a commodity – in this case
information – that was in high demand. He had neither morals nor scruples about what he was doing, regarding his employment by the SIS as nothing more than a convenient and unrivalled source
of information.

Two months earlier, he’d managed to gain access to the London Data Centre’s System-Three computer system, which had greatly increased the scope and reach, and potential profit, of
his activities. He’d already provided his Russian controller with numerous files that he’d managed to copy from the system, and had finally simply taken a snapshot of the entire
directory structure, which he’d offered to the Russians as a shopping list, from which to choose the files they wanted to see.

The days when SIS officers were exempt from the payment of income tax were long gone, and nowadays officers receive an index-linked salary based upon the fairly modest scales set by the
Treasury. Stanway’s lucrative activities as a mole allowed him to enjoy a lifestyle that was opulent rather than comfortable but, unlike Aldrich Ames, he had always been more than happy to
explain to anyone curious enough to ask exactly how his wealth was earned.

He had realized, right from the start of his information-broking ‘career’, that the principal danger of his being detected would probably not come from anything as mundane as a spot
check as he left Vauxhall Cross, but far more likely from the Inland Revenue. That was possible if he suddenly began spending money he couldn’t account for – and Stanway had every
intention of spending his money.

The occasional sale of information to minor nations like Libya had been paid for in cash, money that he kept in a safety-deposit box at his bank, to be spent gradually and discreetly, usually in
buying readily convertible assets, like paintings, antique furniture, good-quality diamonds, watches and the like.

But his first and best customers were the Russians, and with them he had developed a payment system that seemed foolproof, or at least as foolproof as any system ever could be. With a genuine
inheritance of over half a million pounds, after tax, from an aunt some ten years earlier – he’d barely known she was alive, and her death came as a shock mainly because he had been
named her sole beneficiary; he had decided to sell his small flat in Islington and buy a larger property in central London. Property prices had been on the rise, as usual, but he’d made an
offer on the whole of a large terraced house in South Kensington which had been newly converted into four luxury apartments.

Even after selling his own flat, he had still been three hundred thousand pounds short when his offer was accepted, and so when he’d approached the Russians, he’d simply suggested
they might like to underwrite his mortgage for him. He’d taken out the necessary loan with his regular bank and one month after he’d made the first payment, the Russians had begun
paying an almost identical amount into an account in his name in the Cayman Islands. Statements of that account, to confirm the payments made, were sent to a post box which Stanway had rented in
London. The Russians were, in other words, buying his new property for him.

Stanway moved into the best of the apartments, the one on the top floor, and advertised the other properties for rent. Finding suitable tenants within the month, the rent he received from them
was more than twice what he was paying for his mortgage, and he had been able to increase the rent every year while his mortgage payments stayed more or less the same. Suddenly Stanway was a rich
man.

Then, after he assessed that the value of the information he was passing to the Russians had increased sufficiently, he suggested a further payment mechanism. As a result, the Russians set up a
dummy company in London and took out a ten-year lease on Stanway’s personal apartment, at some fifty per cent over the market rate, this extra percentage being in compensation for the
inevitable inconvenience that would be caused if and when the lease was executed. Written into the lease was an agreement that Stanway would vacate the premises within twenty-eight days after
receipt of a written notice to allow the director of the dummy company – who, of course, didn’t actually exist – to occupy the premises on demand.

Within two years of beginning his treacherous activities, Stanway’s declared income from his property speculation – and obviously not including the monies steadily accumulating in
his account in the Cayman Islands – was more than three times his take-home pay from SIS, and he was able to account for every penny of it to the Inland Revenue.

After returning home the previous evening, Stanway had taken a walk, as he often did. Despite his fondness for good living, considering himself both a gourmet and a wine expert, he had always
been careful to keep himself fit. He had even converted the smallest bedroom in his apartment into a gym, where he exercised every morning before his shower or bath, and he frequently walked or
jogged along the streets of South Kensington in the evening.

That night, however, he had put on some casual clothes and just walked. His route had taken him into a newsagent’s in Gloucester Road, where he browsed for about ten minutes, before
emerging with a carrier bag containing a copy of
The Times
, a wine magazine and a small cardboard box, and heading on into Harrington Gardens. At the second crossroad he had turned left into
Collingham Road. Outside the church on the west side of the street he had apparently stumbled on an uneven paving slab, dropping the carrier bag, and had to put his right hand against the wall to
steady himself as he felt his ankle for damage with his left hand. Then Stanway had retrieved the bag and walked on, limping slightly.

A keen observer might have noticed that, after Stanway had removed his hand from the wall, a small chalk circle was visible on the stonework, which hadn’t been there before.

Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi Headquarters, Yasenevo, Tëplyystan, Moscow

‘This is not a good time, Raya,’ said Major Yuri Abramov, looking across the desk at his deputy, who was standing respectfully at attention in front of
him.

‘I appreciate that, Major,’ Raya said, ‘and I am also very aware that you will not be in the office every day next week. But my mother has not been in good health and, if my
aunt Valentina is right, she may well be dying.’ Raya was very aware that she was addressing her superior officer and, though she’d spent some minutes in the toilet composing herself,
she still couldn’t stop the tears. She turned away quickly and reached for a tissue.