Manhunt (16 page)

She walked straight over to his desk and looked down at the computer. The screensaver was displayed, and Raya knew this machine would be password-protected. She could of course have accessed her
master password list before she left her office, but she had no interest in what was on the hard drive: all she needed to do was shut the computer down. She bent down, eased the computer system
unit out of its slot beside the desk, then reached behind it to pull out the power lead.

Immediately the screen went blank, and the fans inside the system unit stopped whirring. Raya opened her briefcase, pulled out the toolkit and selected a cross-head screwdriver. She swiftly
removed the six screws that secured the unit’s cover, and lifted it off. The next logical step was to insert the new RAM chips, but there were a couple of things Raya needed to do first. The
removal of the cover would provide her with an unarguable reason for being in the man’s office.

Standing upright again, she gazed down at the desk. There were no papers or files on it, but Raya would have been amazed if there had been. Two telephones flanked a simple desk set comprising
vertical pen and pencil holders as well as shallow trays holding paper clips, staples, erasers and other oddments. The only other thing on the desk was a water glass, half full. She looked
carefully at the pens and pencils, and smiled in satisfaction.

Raya selected two pencils and a single ballpoint pen from their holders and placed them in a pocket in her briefcase, taking care to only touch them with her plaster-covered finger and thumb.
She carefully opened the new packets she’d brought with her, and replaced the two pencils and ballpoint with new ones.

Then she turned her attention to the water glass. She took the rubber bulb, puffed some fine grey powder on to the glass, brushed it gently and looked at it carefully. Three or four slightly
smudged fingerprints were revealed. She pulled a length of sticky tape off the roll, taking care to only touch the very ends of it, and carefully applied it to the glass, before lifting off three
of the prints.

Raya reached into her pocket and pulled out the two keys contained in tissue paper, unwrapped them and dropped them on the desk. She pushed the keys into position with the plaster-covered tip of
her right forefinger, then laid the tape over the keys, sticking them firmly to it. Still holding the tape by the ends, she knelt down beside the desk, rolled over on to her back, and slid
underneath. She reached up and stuck the tape at the back of the lowest desk drawer. She wriggled out, reached into her briefcase for the scissors and carefully cut off both ends of the tape where
she had touched it.

Only then did she remove the plasters from her finger and thumb and put them in her pocket, and use a tissue to clean the powder off the water glass. She next looked inside the computer system
unit, to check the type of RAM chips fitted there. She slipped on the earthing wristband, opened the box of memory chips, selected the correct type and expertly slotted it into place. In less than
three minutes, she’d replaced the cover and packed everything she’d brought with her back into the briefcase. She then reconnected the power lead and switched on the computer. As usual,
the operating system began a scan of the hard drive, because the computer hadn’t been shut down properly. Raya checked to ensure that it had started up, then took a pencil and scribbled a
note to advise the colonel that she had upgraded his computer. She left the paper prominently in the middle of the desk, and took a last glance around to ensure she’d left nothing else in the
office. Finally she let herself out into the corridor, locked the door behind her and walked away.

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

The computer on Gerald Stanway’s desk emitted a soft double-chime, to indicate receipt of an email message. Normally he ignored such alerts, preferring to check his
messages every half-hour or so but, since news of the defecting Russian had reached London, he’d started reading each email as soon as it arrived, just in case it contained any new
information.

Opening his email client, he scanned the latest arrival in his in-box. The message was internal, its origin Holbeche’s office at Vauxhall Cross, and it was the first communication Stanway
had seen that gave him any additional information about the clerk. The email was classified Secret, had a limited distribution – Heads and Deputy Heads of Departments only – and for the
most part didn’t provide a great deal more information than had already been disseminated. But what it did contain was more or less what Stanway had been expecting, and fearing.

He glanced at his watch. It was early Friday afternoon and, if the update was accurate, he had until Sunday to recover this situation. He knew he’d have to do something about it himself,
because it was clear, from what Lomas had told him, that Moscow either knew nothing about this defecting clerk or, more likely, knew exactly who the man was but wasn’t planning on doing
anything about him.

It was, of course, certainly possible that the defecting clerk knew nothing about Stanway, or might not even exist – for it was conceivable that SIS or The Box, having received
intelligence suggesting there was a mole somewhere in the security establishment, were using the story of a defecting clerk as an attempt to flush out the traitor. But Stanway wasn’t prepared
to take that chance.

He sat silently at his desk for a few moments, working out possible timings and routes. He would have to travel by car, simply because he would definitely need to carry a weapon. Getting a
pistol onto an aircraft was possible if you knew what you were doing, especially something like a disassembled Glock because of its mainly non-metallic construction, but it was always dangerous.
Driving through one of the channel ports in a car, especially for a traveller leaving the United Kingdom, was as near risk-free as made no difference, the English authorities taking almost no
interest and the French less.

Stanway was too cautious to do anything more than read the email. If Holbeche had set some kind of a trap, his keystrokes – and those of every other senior SIS officer – would be
scrutinized. If the courier was real, and Stanway’s plans for the weekend came to fruition, the same process would be applied
after
the event.

But he had a Filofax at the back of which were several maps, none particularly detailed, but the one covering Western Europe was clear enough to show him where Ax-les-Thermes was located, and
the size of the symbol suggested it was a fairly small town. Hopefully, finding the clerk wouldn’t be all that difficult: after all, how many renegade Russians could there be hiding out in a
small French spa town?

Moscow

Raya Kosov cleared her desk and checked out of Yasenevo as early as she could, catching the first available coach back to Moscow. She got out at her usual stop, near the
Davydkovo station in south-west central Moscow, and headed off towards her small apartment, as usual. But the moment the sound of the coach’s noisy diesel engine had faded, she retraced her
steps, crossed the road and descended into the Moscow underground system.

When the train arrived, Raya entered a half-empty carriage. She ignored the empty seats and stood beside the door, because she didn’t have far to go. As the train moved off, accelerating
rapidly into the tunnel, she pulled a pair of thin leather gloves from her pocket and slipped them on.

Two stations later she stepped out, climbed back up into the streets of Moscow and walked a few hundred yards down the road to a small apartment building. She glanced around briefly, took out a
keyring and unlocked the street door. There was no lift, but the apartment was on the first floor, at the rear, so it was only a single flight of stairs.

Raya unlocked the door and entered. An estate agent would probably have described the flat as furnished, but that was stretching the truth. There were some chairs, a table and a bed, but that
was pretty much it. The bed was unmade, and in fact there was no bedding anywhere in the apartment. Or towels, clothes, crockery, or cutlery, for that matter. Absolutely the only thing that
suggested occupation was a desktop computer resting on the plain wooden table pushed up against one wall. Incongruously perhaps, bearing in mind the air of desertion in this apartment, the PC was
switched on, its system unit humming quietly though the screen was blank. Power cables were connected to a socket on the wall, and a thin cable ran from the modem to an adjacent telephone
point.

Raya pulled a chair up to the table, moved the mouse and pressed a button on the front of the screen. She waited until it had flickered into life, navigated to a particular directory and opened
it, checked the names of the files listed, and then switched off the monitor.

She opened her briefcase, laid the pencils and ballpoint pen she’d taken from the office at Yasenevo on the desk, and stood up. She glanced carefully around the apartment, checking that
she’d not left anything behind, then walked out, locking the door behind her. Less than three minutes had elapsed since she’d first entered the building.

Half an hour later, Raya was sitting in her own apartment, mentally running through her checklist for the very last time. The following morning she’d be leaving Moscow, and she anticipated
that, no later than forty-eight hours after that, the dogs would be let loose to find her and haul her back.

Ax-les-Thermes, France

The Hostellerie de la Poste stood at the northern end of the town of Ax-les-Thermes – which was actually more like a big village – where the N20 road runs
briefly through the countryside before entering the smaller community of Savignac-les-Ormeaux.

Richter arrived there early in the evening and found the establishment without difficulty, mainly because the road ran right beside it. A comfortable-looking stone building, probably about two
hundred years old, the hotel was set back a little way from the road, a terrace running along the front and faded shutters adorning the windows above it. Some kind of plant which Richter thought
might be wisteria – but his knowledge of botany was virtually nil – was making a determined effort to reach the roof on the right-hand side.

There was a car park at the rear of the building, accessed through a stone archway guarded by tall steel gates. Their paint flaking and metal rusty, they now stood wide open. He swung the Ford
through the entrance and parked it in a vacant space immediately behind the hotel itself.

Richter unlocked the boot, pulled out his bag, headed through to reception and checked in. He first tried out his Russian on the proprietor, to no avail, then switched to very basic schoolboy
French. The hotel sleeping accommodation was on two levels, and he chose a room at the rear on the first floor and overlooking the car park. There he dropped his bag on the end of the bed and
glanced round. The room could only be found in France, for the wallpaper, in a spectacularly garish floral pattern, covered not only all four walls but also the ceiling, and was also virtually a
match for the counterpane on the small double bed. But it was clean, at least, and a quick exploration of the bathroom proved that everything worked there and the water was hot.

Dinner was already being served so, without unpacking his bag, he washed his face and hands, and went downstairs to the dining room. He chose the
menu touristique
, because it offered a
cassoulet as one of the main courses, ordered a bottle of still water, and settled back to enjoy it.

After he’d finished eating, he picked up his coffee and found a seat on the terrace outside. After checking that nobody could hear him, he pulled the mobile phone from his pocket and
dialled the number Simpson had given him earlier.