Manhunt (12 page)

For the briefest of instants he’d toyed with the idea of running various evasion manoeuvres, to shake off any tails he might have acquired, but he immediately realized there was no point.
First, he wasn’t very experienced in counter-surveillance techniques and had never practised them, and, second, if he was being followed, any such actions on his part would immediately
confirm the suspicions of the surveillance personnel. It was far simpler, he’d rationalized, to behave entirely innocently, because all he was apparently doing was going out for a meal in a
restaurant, which was something he did three or four evenings every week.

About fifty yards down the street was a small Indian restaurant. Stanway asked for a secluded table for one, and was led towards the back of the room and shown into a tiny booth.

Andrew Lomas was sitting at a table at the front of the restaurant. He was accompanied by his current girlfriend, a thin and somewhat vacuous supposed model named Dawn, who had aspirations
towards the theatre and insisted on calling everyone ‘dahling’. Lomas privately thought that she was probably on the game, but he didn’t care much because she made for good, if
temporary, local colour, and besides that she was actually quite good in bed. They had been sitting there for a little over three-quarters of an hour before Stanway walked in. Neither man showed
the slightest sign of recognizing the other.

The waiter placed a menu on the table and asked Stanway if he’d like anything to drink. He ordered a half pint of lager, glanced quickly at the menu, and decided on a
chicken korma with basmati rice. He disliked Indian food, and had no appetite that evening anyway, but he knew he had to order something as he sat there waiting.

Stanway’s lager arrived and he took a cautious sip. It wasn’t a drink he particularly enjoyed, but at least it would serve to take away some of the taste of the korma. Five minutes
after his meal arrived, Stanway was prodding unenthusiastically at a small number of yellowish chunks of chicken, when he noticed Lomas stand up and walk towards him, obviously heading for the
toilets at the rear.

Immediately, Stanway reached into his inside jacket pocket and extracted the folded sheet of paper. As Lomas approached, Stanway placed it at the very edge of his table, with an inch or so
jutting out. The Russian’s right hand just brushed against the side of the table, as he deftly seized the note and continued towards the toilets. Nobody at any of the other tables could have
seen or taken the slightest notice.

Four minutes later, Lomas emerged, passing Stanway again, and continued to his own table while gesturing for the bill. The Russian paid right away, helped his girlfriend into her coat, and
nodded briefly to the waiter as the two of them left.

Two other men had used the toilet before Stanway finally stood up and made his way to the rear. There were two urinals and one stall: he stepped into the stall and locked the door behind him.
One reason for choosing this restaurant was that the stall had solid walls and a door that fitted its frame completely. They would never have picked one where the door had a sizeable gap at the top
or bottom.

Stanway lifted the seat and stepped up onto the bowl. The toilet had an old-fashioned, wall-mounted cistern – another reason for choosing this restaurant – and his probing fingers
quickly detected the paper tucked between the back of the cistern and the wall. He retrieved it, stepped back on the floor, lowered the toilet seat and sat down, then unfolded the paper to read
what was written there.

His own printed message occupied the top few lines:

Below that, Lomas had written a brief reply in block capitals:

And that, Stanway thought, as he tore the paper into tiny squares and watched the flush carry it out of sight, was encouraging at least. If Lomas had already known about the defection, Stanway
would have been forced to take immediate action to protect himself. The fact that Lomas knew nothing about it suggested that either the clerk was flying a kite, or that he was genuinely low-level
with nothing of any significance to trade – and the SVR would know exactly what documents such a defector would have had access to – or else that the clerk simply didn’t
exist.

But that scenario didn’t really make sense, for Holbeche – or whoever else had started this particular ball rolling – had to have received some information suggesting that
there was a mole inside SIS, otherwise why had he started the witch-hunt? Something or someone had surfaced somewhere, and Stanway just hoped he could rely on Lomas to find out what or who, and
quickly.

Thursday

Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi Headquarters, Yasenevo, Tëplyystan, Moscow

Captain Raya Kosov had arrived at work early that morning. The telephone call from Valentina had started the clock, and she knew she had a maximum of two days before she
would have to start running.

Her window of opportunity was very small, and for one very simple reason. Raya Kosov had already said her final goodbye to her mother on her last home leave, three months previously. The call
from Valentina had actually informed her that Marisa was dead, not sick, and she knew that the hospital authorities in Minsk would be advising her employer, the SVR, as a matter of routine within
the next day or two.

Hopefully it would not alarm Major Abramov if he heard about it before end of work on Friday, because Raya had already told him her mother was very sick. It would not be particularly surprising
if she had died shortly after the call Raya received, but he would undoubtedly be suspicious if he checked the time of death and found it actually occurred earlier than the time of his conversation
with her.

And the SVR, like the KGB before it, liked to have a lever: a way of keeping all its employees in check. Once Raya’s mother was dead, that lever would vanish, and the very least Raya could
then expect was greatly increased surveillance and checking of her movements. Once that happened, her chances of getting safely out of Russia were considerably reduced, and she might not be able to
manage it at all.

By Friday afternoon she needed to have completed everything she had to do, and early on Saturday morning she would have to leave her apartment and be en route to the airport. Even if Abramov did
try and fail to contact her, just to advise her that her mother had died, he would just assume that she had already left for Minsk. But on Monday morning, when she failed to notify the Minsk SVR
office that she was in the city, as Abramov had instructed, the alarm bells would start to ring. And she guessed the hunt would be under way no later than Tuesday.

Northern Italy

Richter was up and dressed by seven-thirty, and on the road again an hour later. He picked up the A4 autoroute just south of Verona and turned right for Milan. He planned
to avoid Milan itself, but stay on the autoroute circling to the north of the city, then pick up the E62 link running north-east, to join up with the northbound A26.

There were no direct routes from Milan to Geneva, due to the inconvenient obstruction of the Alps, but he had calculated that taking the A26 and then route 33 from Mergozzo would probably be the
quickest way. That would take him northwards to Brig, and west to Sierre, where he would rejoin the autoroute system. Then he would continue through Martigny and around the north side of Lac Leman,
passing through Montreux and Lausanne to enter Geneva from the north.

South Kensington, West London

The phone rang just as Stanway was about to leave for work. He strode across the lounge and picked it up. ‘Yes?’

‘I wonder, sir, if you have ever considered the benefits of installing full double-glazing in your property?’ a male voice said. ‘If I could just take five minutes of your
time, I can—’

‘No, thank you,’ Stanway snapped, and replaced the telephone handset. He had no idea if his phone line was tapped, though in view of what Holbeche had said it quite probably was, but
he was sure that incoming call would have been safe enough. After all, everyone received junk phone calls in the same way everyone received spam emails. He had kept the line open only long enough
to hear the actual number the caller had given as part of the spiel: ‘
five
minutes’.

That was another simple code that Lomas had instructed him to remember, right at the start of their professional relationship. Each of the digits from one to ten had a different meaning.
‘Five’ was perhaps the simplest, signifying ‘no change, no news, or nothing to report’, so obviously Lomas hadn’t found out anything from Moscow overnight.

In this case, no news, Stanway mused, might well be good news. Moscow knew exactly how valuable he was to the SVR, and he was quite sure that if anything had happened that could threaten his
position at Vauxhall Cross, they would very quickly do something about it. Also they would be certain to keep his case officer, Lomas, fully informed.

In any case, Stanway knew Lomas would be getting back to him soon, and that this time they would have to actually talk. It would take more than a brief exchange of written messages in a
third-rate Indian restaurant, but Stanway realized the strong possibility that he, and everybody else employed in the higher echelons of SIS, would soon be under physical as well as electronic
surveillance, if not already. He felt reasonably certain that he hadn’t been followed to the Indian restaurant the previous evening but, until the present situation was resolved, any further
direct physical contact between himself and Lomas would be extremely ill-advised.

The best option was the telephone but for obvious reasons not his home landline or his regular mobile. When he had visited the newsagent the previous evening, he had also purchased a cheap
pay-as-you-go mobile phone. That was ideal: no name, no address, no contract, just a phone with a number that only he knew. The SIM card inside the phone was good for twenty-five pounds’
worth of calls and, once he’d used up that credit, he could top up the card at almost any newsagent. Or he could simply buy another phone.

Lomas had two unlisted contact numbers that Stanway had memorized and, once he knew Lomas had received a reply from Moscow, he would be able to call him without any danger of interception
because nobody in the British security establishment had any idea that Lomas even existed. Stanway knew that for a fact, because he himself was in the ideal position to know.

Of course, he wouldn’t be so stupid as to call Lomas directly from his apartment. As well as bugging his telephone line, it wouldn’t have surprised him if ‘The Box’ had
also managed to sneak an infinity transmitter into his property somewhere, which would relay all his conversations, not just his telephone calls, to a nearby surveillance vehicle. If they had, the
last thing he would do was try to find it and remove it, since that, to the suspicious eyes of the Security Service, would be tantamount to an admission of guilt.

He would just wait and act perfectly normally, and obviously for the moment Moscow would have to wait for any further data from him. In fact, Stanway wondered if it might now be time to call a
halt to his operations, at least on a temporary basis. He had already ransacked the SIS database, picking out files dealing with any matters Lomas had told him the SVR had an interest in, and his
production of the file structure of the London Data Centre System-Three computer had seemed the next logical step.

As a Deputy Head of Department, who was subject to positive vetting every two years, as well as an annual polygraph check, all of which he had invariably sailed through, he enjoyed virtually
unrestricted access to all files on the linked databases maintained by GCHQ at Cheltenham, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the London Data Centre and, of course, the SIS. He could even access
a limited number of files on the Security Service database, which he did on a regular basis merely to ensure that no hint of Andrew Lomas’s existence had been detected.

The actual mechanism he used for copying the files was as simple as it was elegant. Because of his position as a Deputy Head, his personal computer at Vauxhall Cross was not subject to keyboard
logging or other forms of detailed surveillance. The machine itself was pretty much a standard IBM. At Vauxhall Cross the electronic security is embedded in the building itself, which is
essentially a huge Faraday Cage, allowing no electronic emissions either in or out. The computer was fitted with a DVD-ROM drive – a read-only unit – but not a CD or DVD burner which
would facilitate the copying of data, a serial port, one parallel printer port, one Firewire and two USB ports.

When Stanway had first begun copying classified files on behalf of the SVR, he had used a number of different ways of getting the copies out of the building, all of them somewhat risky, but with
improvements in technology had come a safer and more reliable method. Stanway only wrote with either a fountain pen or a pencil and, just over three years earlier, Lomas had presented him with a
new pen specially created to a most unusual design.

Slightly longer and fatter than most pens, it somewhat resembled a Mont Blanc. Above its 18-carat gold nib was a chamber designed to hold a normal ink cartridge, revealed by unscrewing the nib
assembly, and above that was another chamber which was wide enough to accommodate three other ink cartridges at the same time. This was accessed by unscrewing a cap at the top of the pen, which
would allow the cartridges to be tipped out. It was of a somewhat eccentric design but still a fully functional pen, though it had one modification not visible to the naked eye.