Manhunt (11 page)

Major Abramov wasn’t a hard man. Like Raya Kosov, he’d been recruited by the SVR for his computer-system management skills, not for any kind of old-style KGB toughness. He stood up,
walked round his desk and put an arm around his subordinate, pulling her close to him. ‘Sit down, Raya,’ he murmured softly, and led her the few paces towards a chair.

In a couple of minutes, she felt able to speak, and to face him again. ‘I’m so sorry, sir,’ she stammered. ‘I don’t know—’

‘Raya,’ Abramov interrupted, ‘please don’t distress yourself. Your feelings are entirely natural. Look, you’re owed a week’s leave and, frankly, I
wouldn’t want you here working on the system in your present emotional state. Is there anything major that you have to get done this week?’

Raya shook her head. ‘Nothing that won’t wait, sir. I’ve a few basic housekeeping jobs to do, but I can get those out of the way by Friday.’

‘Right,’ Abramov said, ‘do whatever you feel you need to do by the end of work on Friday. If there’s anything you haven’t managed to finish, let me know and
I’ll take care of it on Monday. You can sort out your travel arrangements tomorrow, and then fly to Minsk on Friday evening or Saturday morning. I’ll authorize an airline ticket for
you. Don’t forget to check in at the local SVR office when you get there. I’ll call ahead to let them know you’ll be in the city.’

‘Thank you, Major,’ she murmured.

‘But what you must do, Raya, is get back here by Friday next week, because I will be away almost all of the following week, and I’ll need to do a full handover before I leave at the
end of that day. If there’s even the slightest possibility of your being delayed, you must let me know immediately.’

‘Of course, sir,’ Raya said. ‘There’ll be no problem, I’ll make sure of that. And thank you so much.’

Three minutes later she closed Abramov’s door behind her and headed back to her own office, with a slight smile brightening her face despite the red-rimmed eyes. She had a lot to do and
very little time to do it in.

South Kensington, London

Andrew Lomas had been born Alexei Lomosolov, in Kiev in 1963. After showing considerable promise at school, he had been recruited by the KGB before he was even twenty.
He’d then attended language courses, and quickly became fluent in English.

His talents had led to him being selected to undertake lifestyle training at the KGB’s Balashikha special-operations school east of Moscow – where Yasser Arafat had been a pupil
once, when the Russians had decided to groom him for future leadership of the PLO. Amongst other training included at Balashikha, the KGB provided facilities which precisely duplicated communities
in various target countries. In the English facility, to which Lomosolov was sent, only English was ever spoken. Radio and television programmes were the genuine article, recorded and then
re-broadcast over the local network; newspapers and books were English; the meals and drinks they were served were exactly what one would expect to find in an English home, pub or restaurant; and
even the furniture and fittings had been purchased in London stores. It was the closest the KGB could get to providing an English environment without actually being in England itself.

Lomosolov had spent six months living and working there. The day he arrived the commanding officer had summoned him to his office and addressed him in English. On that occasion, he had explained
the purpose of the facility, how it worked and what they expected from him. But he had finished with a warning: the only absolutely unbreakable rule there was that any student heard speaking a
language other than English, for whatever reason and in any circumstance, would be instantly dismissed.

Lomosolov had been assessed as one of the top three students in his intake, and was advised by the commanding officer that he would be one of only two students selected to take the final
examination. All the others would remain at the facility for a further two months, before being assessed again. When he’d asked what the examination consisted of, Lomosolov had simply been
told to wait and see.

Late in May 1985, he was told to report to the facility’s English pub. Not knowing what to expect, he pushed open the door and walked in, hailing the barman cheerfully, as he always did,
ordering a pint of bitter. Sitting in an armchair at a small round table near the bar was an elderly man, who was clearly frail and not in the best of health. He was nursing a whisky, and smiled as
the young man approached him. His face was faintly familiar to Lomosolov and suddenly, with a jolt that was more shock than surprise, Lomosolov recognized him.

Harold Adrian Russell (‘Kim’) Philby was then seventy-three years old and not merely a major general in the KGB but a living legend whose name and exploits were spoken of in reverent
whispers. Suddenly Lomosolov realized that this encounter had to be his final examination. Those thirty minutes or so spent talking to Philby, before the facility commanding officer arrived, had
been the most difficult of Lomosolov’s short career, and when he was told to return to his quarters, he had no idea whether he had passed the test or failed.

Once Lomosolov departed, Philby had gestured for another Scotch and settled himself back into his seat as the commanding officer sat down opposite him.

‘Well, Comrade General?’

Philby had smiled. ‘The first student, Nabokov, is very good. He would pass as an Englishman in any circumstances I can imagine.’

‘And the second one, Lomosolov?’

Philby had smiled more broadly, before replying. ‘I’ve been coming here for, what, almost twenty years to assess your students, Colonel, and never before have you tried this stunt.
I’m surprised at you.’

‘Tried what?’

‘You know perfectly well.’ Philby wagged a finger. ‘Where did you find him? What is he, some English student you’ve recruited? The son of an English defector? What I do
know is that he’s not merely a Russian impersonating an Englishman. He is genuinely an Englishman.’

The commanding officer had shaken his head. ‘I’m afraid you’re wrong there, General, and there’s been no trickery. That young man was born Alexei Lomosolov in Kiev
twenty-two years ago, the only son of two good Russian citizens named Andrei and Katerina Lomosolov.’

A little over eight months later, following an intensive six-month course in tradecraft and agent-handling, Alexei Lomosolov had arrived in London. He was carrying a genuine
Canadian passport in the name of Andrew Lomas, and took out a lease on a small apartment in West London.

If anybody asked him, he explained that he was employed as a ‘creative consultant’ – which could mean pretty much whatever you wanted it to mean – for a graphic-design
company based in Liechtenstein. The company actually existed, and his monthly commission cheques bore the company logo and contact details, but it was simply a KGB front: a device which allowed
Lomosolov to receive a regular supply of clean funds to support his lifestyle.

In fact, after a period during which he established himself in London, Lomosolov’s – or rather Lomas’s – real job was acting as a case officer for a number of other
agents in Britain, two of whom were employed within the security establishment. One of these had been operational even before Lomosolov himself arrived in Britain, but the other had been supplying
information for a much shorter period of time. This man was code-named
Gospodin
, but Lomas knew, from his pre-departure briefings in Moscow, that his real name was Gerald Stanway.

Their actual meetings were very infrequent, normally never more than once every three months. Lomas’s principal task in servicing Stanway was simple enough: he merely cleared one of the
current fifteen dead-drops whenever he received notification that Stanway had deposited some material. The routine for that was simple enough as well.

Each evening, Lomas walked from his apartment in Harwood Road, not far from Fulham Broadway Underground station, and through the streets of London, following a variety of routes as he mingled
with the homeward-bound commuters, just another face in the thousands. Whichever route he took, he always walked down Collingham Road, and every time he passed the church he looked at the wall.

He also checked five other locations during his walk, but the church wall was always the last one. He frequently found marks at the other five places, too, but he’d never seen one on the
church wall. This was because the first five indicated which dead-drop Stanway had filled, but the last one was reserved for emergency use only.

Lomas was so used to passing the wall and seeing nothing there at all that he’d actually taken three steps past before he registered that the chalked circle was even there.

He stopped so abruptly that the woman walking behind him, carrying four bulky carrier bags, cannoned into him. She cursed under her breath as she stepped around him. Lomas muttered apologies
before briskly retracing his steps. He checked the street carefully for possible witnesses, before approaching the mark on the wall. As he drew level with it, he reached up and swiftly drew a cross
within the circle, then stepped away quickly and carried on down the street, mentally planning the fastest route back to his apartment.

Austria

Richter pulled off the A2 autoroute and into a service area a few miles north of Wolfsberg, and filled up the Ford’s petrol tank. It was still well over half full
but he always liked to have plenty of fuel, just in case. He was actually stepping through the entrance of the cafeteria in search of something to eat when his mobile phone rang again. He turned
round immediately and went back outside, before pressing the button to answer.

‘What now, Simpson?’

‘How did you know it was me?’

‘As far as I know, nobody else has this number.’

‘Right,’ Simpson snapped, ‘where are you?’

‘Austria, and about to sample a genuine Austrian motorway sandwich. Where else do you want me to be?’

‘Geneva – and as soon as possible. Is that going to be a problem?’

‘No,’ Richter replied. ‘As long as you don’t stop the credit card or cancel my passport, I can go anywhere at all. But I won’t make it today. It’s now gone
three, and I reckon I’m still about three hundred kilometres from the Swiss border – and also on the wrong side of the Alps. Whereabouts do you want me to go in Geneva?’

‘At the moment,’ Simpson said, ‘we don’t know, so just check into a hotel somewhere near the city. And make sure you leave that mobile switched on.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of doing anything else,’ Richter said.

‘Call me when you stop somewhere tonight, and also when you reach Geneva. I’ll give you my mobile number.’

Richter noted the number, terminated the call, and turned back towards the cafeteria door.

South Kensington, London

The moment Gerald Stanway reached home he changed into a tracksuit and trainers, then headed down the stairs and out into the street, before jogging off on his usual route
around the quieter local streets. He passed the circle which now contained a chalked cross, giving it the briefest possible sidelong glance, and continued on around the block. Fifteen minutes
later, he was back in his apartment and standing under a stinging-hot shower.

As he dried himself, he glanced at the wall clock, mentally calculating times and distances. Dressed casually in flannel trousers, open-necked shirt and lightweight jacket, he went into the
lounge and called a cab. Like most residents of central London, Stanway had long accepted the fact that owning a car in the city was a complete waste of time and money. He travelled everywhere by
tube, bus or cab, and if he had to drive anywhere outside the city, he would call up Hertz or Avis and have them deliver a car to his flat.

Entering his study, he sat down at the computer and opened up Microsoft Word. A fresh empty document appeared automatically, so he typed a few lines of text, read through what he had written
twice, and then clicked on the print icon. The laser hummed for a few seconds and then spat out a single sheet. Stanway knew that the output from a laser or ink-jet printer was completely anonymous
and untraceable, unlike that produced by any kind of typewriter.

Having once more read the text as hard copy, he nodded and folded the sheet twice. He next clicked the cross in the top right-hand corner of the Word window, and selected ‘no’ when
the program asked if he wanted to save the open document. He definitely wanted no record of what he had just written anywhere on the hard disk.

Outskirts of Verona, Italy

It was seven-thirty local time when Paul Richter pulled the Ford off the A4 autoroute at San Martino Buon Albergo, one of the longest place names he ever recalled coming
across. He’d crossed the Italian border at Arnoldstein, where the A2 autoroute transmuted into the A23, and swung south towards a stretch of the Mediterranean that his new road map called the
Golfo de Venezia.

Finding a small hotel on the edge of Verona, he parked the car at the rear of the building and climbed out. He plucked his overnight bag from the boot, then recovered the briefcase, which now
contained the opened packet he’d collected in Vienna and not much else, from the back seat, before he headed around to the hotel’s reception to check in.

As soon as he was settled in his room, he called Simpson.

‘It’s Richter.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Two gentlemen.’

‘What . . .? Are you drunk?’

‘No, I’m perfectly sober – in fact, I’m a teetotaller. I’m now in a hotel on the outskirts of Verona. As in “Two gentlemen of Verona”. You’ve
heard of this bloke Shakespeare, have you?’

‘Don’t try to get clever with me, Richter. When I ask you a question, just give me a straight answer, OK?’

‘I’ll bet you were the most popular boy in your class at school, weren’t you?’

‘Don’t be impertinent. When do you think you’ll reach Geneva?’

‘Probably mid-afternoon tomorrow. Any further instructions?’

‘Nothing yet. Just call me when you arrive.’

London

The cab arrived twenty minutes later, and Stanway told the driver to take him to Tottenham Court Road, near the Goodge Street Underground station. He paid the driver, then
headed towards a nearby side street.