Manhunt (30 page)

Simpson turned slightly pinker. ‘It was necessary. You don’t have any idea of the bigger picture.’

‘Of course I don’t,’ Richter snapped, ‘because you didn’t fucking well tell me, did you? And you didn’t even give me a weapon.’

‘No,’ Simpson admitted curtly. ‘And I’ll take that Browning now, thank you,’ he added, pointing to the pistol on the table beside Richter and holding out his
hand.

‘No fucking chance.’ Richter snatched up the weapon and aimed it at the floor, just in front of Simpson. ‘You want this pistol, you come over here and try to take it off
me.’

‘Disarm him,’ Simpson snapped at Dekker.

The SAS officer shook his head. ‘I’ve fulfilled my brief and I’m not getting involved in your domestic, thanks very much. This is your mess, Simpson, so you clean it
up.’

For a few seconds, Simpson alternated his gaze between Richter and Dekker, then it settled on Dekker. ‘I’ll be talking to your superior as soon as I get back,’ he snarled.

‘Help yourself,’ Dekker said. ‘He’s not a great fan of your secret squirrel outfit, so he’ll probably tell you to go screw yourself. I’ll even give you his
phone number, if you want.’

Simpson stood in silence for another few moments, then again studied the wounded man pinned to the floor.

‘You broke his arm,’ he remarked flatly. ‘And what you’ve done to his hand with that flick knife is just plain sadistic. That’s overkill and unnecessary
violence.’

‘What do you mean “unnecessary violence”?’ Richter replied, then leant forward and kicked Stanway sharply in the thigh. ‘This bastard came here to kill me, so what
should I have done? Made him a coffee and then helped him point his pistol at me? I don’t fuck about in this kind of situation, Simpson – anyone who points a gun at me can face the
consequences. And he can still talk, can’t he, which I presume was the point of this whole bloody charade?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? You were trying to flush some rodent out of the woodwork. You had a traitor somewhere within British intelligence but you didn’t know exactly
where. So you spread some story about me, or whoever I was supposed to be, so that he would come after me just to shut me up.’ He kicked Stanway again, and the wounded man moaned in pain.
‘I presume that was the point of all the fannying about with the sealed packet of papers, and my debriefing in Russian with the Chuckle Brothers downstairs.’

For a long moment Simpson didn’t reply. ‘That’s a remarkably accurate assessment,’ he said at last, eyeing Richter appraisingly. ‘You’re not what I expected.
When we recruited you, I assumed you’d just do what you were told.’

‘I do follow orders, when they make sense, but this whole set-up stank from day one. I’ve told you before that I trust you about as far as I can spit a rat.’

‘Good,’ Simpson nodded, ‘very good. I have a feeling you might have a future in my organization, after all.’

‘You can dream on. I’ll be handing in my resignation as soon as I get back to London. I’ll go off and sell insurance or something. At least I wouldn’t have to spend all
my time watching my back and trying to work out what the hell’s really going on, as opposed to what other people tell me is going on. And, most of the time nobody’ll be trying to kill
me.’

Simpson smiled for the first time since entering the hotel room. ‘Your resignation might not be accepted,’ he said, ‘because I seriously think I might be able to use your
talents. Anyway, we’ll talk about that later. Now, who exactly is this man?’ He bent forward to look more closely at the injured man on the floor.

‘His name’s Gerald Stanway,’ Richter said, ‘and he lives in South Kensington, in London.’

Simpson looked surprised. ‘You know him?’

Richter shook his head. ‘Of course I don’t know him. I simply checked his pockets once I’d sort of immobilized him.’

Dekker smiled at Richter’s choice of verb.

Richter picked up a wallet from the bedside table and tossed it to Simpson. ‘I found that in his jacket pocket.’

Simpson flicked rapidly through the contents, before sliding it into his own pocket. He bent over to lift up Stanway’s head by the hair, staring at the man’s flushed and pain-racked
face for a few seconds.

Then Simpson shook his head. ‘Never seen him before in my life.’

‘I have, though,’ Richter explained. ‘He came into the hotel bar earlier today, while I was trying to think up convincing lies for your two blokes about my work at the SVR
headquarters in Moscow. He spoke fluent French to the barman, read a French newspaper, had a drink, and then buggered off. I presume that was his idea of reconnaissance: to eyeball me and check out
any possible opposition. That’s before he came back tonight to make sure I’d never collect my pension.’

‘OK,’ Simpson rubbed his hands together briskly, ‘it looks to me as if we’ve got the result we wanted. Stanway here presumably works for SIS, or maybe GCHQ – but
we’ll soon find out which. I’ll make a couple of calls to sort out a compliant Frog doctor who’ll patch him up enough so that he can travel, then we’ll freight him back to
London and put the screws on him.’

‘I think if you just stepped on his broken arm right now, he’d probably tell you anything you need to know,’ Richter suggested. ‘I’ll do it myself, if you
like.’

Simpson shook his head. ‘I’m sure you’d enjoy it, but I don’t know what questions to ask. The interrogation will have to be done by someone from SIS, and we won’t
necessarily have to resort to physical persuasion. We have an interesting selection of chemical compounds that can loosen any tongue.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘There won’t be any afterwards. The days when former traitors could live out their days in genteel retirement are long gone. Mr Stanway will either die after a short and tragic
illness, or he’ll be involved in a motor accident. Either way, he’s dead as of right now. He just hasn’t stopped breathing yet.’

Simpson’s cool and matter-of-fact tone sent a chill up Richter’s back, and in that moment he realized that he would never, ever, underestimate this man.

‘So what about me?’ Richter asked.

‘Your part of this job is over. Get yourself back to London, back to the office, and then we’ll talk further. Make sure you bring those briefing papers with you. I know the Victor
manual isn’t exactly top secret, but I don’t want to leave a paper trail over here in case the Frogs start getting interested in what’s going on. I suggest you lose the Browning
before you try to cross the Channel, because if you get caught carrying it, I won’t feel any particular inclination to haul you out of the slammer.’ Simpson glanced at the SAS man.
‘You, too, Dekker, you can head for home as well. Thanks for your help.’

‘I didn’t actually do anything,’ Dekker pointed out. ‘Richter here did it all by himself.’

‘Whatever,’ Simpson said, pulling a mobile phone out of his pocket. But, before he could dial a number, the phone suddenly rang. The conversation between Simpson and the caller
lasted less than three minutes. What unnerved Richter was that Simpson switched his gaze directly towards him about half a minute after they’d started talking, and his eyes didn’t leave
him until the call finally ended.

‘What?’ Richter demanded.

‘You’ll be keeping the Browning, Richter,’ Simpson declared, ‘at least for the moment. I’ll see you get a couple of spare magazines and a box of 9-millimetre
ammunition, too. Everything’s changed, and right now you’re the only asset I’ve got here that I can use. And this time,’ he added, ‘it’s for real, so I expect
you to do exactly what I tell you.’

Sunday

Rome, Italy

The mobile phone rang insistently in John Westwood’s hotel room, his brain first weaving the sound seamlessly into a dream before it finally penetrated his
consciousness. Then he grabbed the unit, pressed the green button, and put it to his ear.

‘Westwood,’ he said.

‘This is Richards, sir, and it’s an open line.’

‘Understood. What is it?’

‘We now know how our colleagues from the other side of the street are going to try to find our mutual friend,’ Richards said. ‘And they’re real serious about
it.’

Westwood’s brain did an immediate translation. The Russians had obviously come up with some way of tracking down Raya Kosov.

‘How?’ he asked.

‘You’re familiar with the old expression “button man”?’ Richards asked.

‘Yes. I haven’t heard it for a while, but I know what it means.’

In the days of Al Capone, a ‘button man’ was a hit man, or assassin, employed by the Mob.

‘Well, they’re now claiming that our friend is a professional in that field, and that while she was in Moscow she used her talents on a senior official there. They want to talk to
her real bad, so they’ve asked the locals to give them a hand. There’ll be pictures of her plastered everywhere, and teams at every airport, ferry terminal and railway station in the
whole area, plus search teams covering bus routes and talking to taxi firms. Every registered hotel and rooming house in Italy will be receiving a visit, real soon. Other officers will be stationed
at the toll-booths on all the autostradas in the country, and they’ll be watching or even blocking the main roads. The locals have already made this a priority one task, and they’re
sewing the place up as tight as a drum. If she’s not out of Italy by now, I don’t think she’s ever going to get out.’

‘Understood,’ Westwood said again. ‘I’ll come in later this morning. Keep your ear to the ground. The first sign of our friend, I want to know about it.’

‘You got it.’

Westwood sat on the edge of the bed for a few moments, considering. Then he switched on his laptop, entered the twelve-digit password that gave him access to his files, and looked up a London
phone number. He dialled it and waited a few seconds for it to be answered.

‘This is John Westwood,’ he began. ‘We discussed a certain matter yesterday, if you recall.’

‘And I told you then that we had no idea what you were talking about,’ snapped the man at the other end of the line.

‘I know,’ Westwood’s tone was mild, ‘but now I have some information that may be relevant.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘In case you haven’t already been told, our friends from the north have virtually shut down the country, with the assistance of the local people. They’re watching airports,
ferries, buses and taxis, plus checking the hotels and the main roads. You might want to pass that on to somebody.’

‘Thank you. I’ve noted that, and I’ll pass it up the line. Anything else?’

‘No. But if I hear anything more, I’ll let you know.’

Piombino, Italy

Raya woke early, her eyes snapping open as the first rays of the morning sun lanced through a gap in the curtains. For a moment she had no idea where she was – the
room was completely unfamiliar to her – till she glanced at the shape that lay beside her, snoring gently, and the memories flooded back.

Raya looked at her watch on the bedside table, then slid out of bed and walked into the bathroom. She emerged a few minutes later, her hair still damp from the shower, and dressed quickly. When
she left the room, Mario still lay dead to the world, one arm dangling out of the bed.

Raya smiled at him, remembering the previous night, then walked out of the bedroom. She needed two things: a cup of coffee and then the cyber cafe, in that order.

Ax-les-Thermes, France

‘Just tell me again why it has to be me,’ Richter demanded.

He sat facing Simpson at an outdoor cafe near the casino in Ax-les-Thermes, with the remains of a breakfast of coffee and croissants on the table in front of them. Adamson was sitting at a table
slightly to one side, taking no part in the conversation but just scanning the surrounding area to ensure that nobody was trying to listen in to what was being said. Hughes and Wallis were sitting
in Richter’s hotel room, babysitting a semi-conscious Gerald Stanway, who’d been dosed with drugs to ease the pain and, more importantly, to keep him subdued until a specialist team
arrived from London to take him back for interrogation.

‘Didn’t you understand what I told you?’

Richter smiled at him. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘I understand it completely, but I just like hearing you say it.’

Simpson nodded resignedly. ‘Very well, that call last night – or, rather, early this morning – was from the duty officer at SIS headquarters, Vauxhall Cross. They’d
received an email yesterday evening from a cyber cafe on the outskirts of Rome, with a rather large attachment. The attachment contained a complete listing of every person employed by SIS, their
names and dates of birth, and a short extract detailing the service records and thumbnail photographs of about a dozen of them.’

‘Stanway really screwed you, didn’t he?’ Richter suggested with a grin.

‘This is no laughing matter. I don’t know how long that bastard has been selling our secrets to the Russians, but he’s going to suffer for this. We’ll wring him dry and
then I’ll personally ensure he dies as painful a death as we can arrange.’

‘You never explained to me why they contacted
you
,’ Richter pointed out. ‘I didn’t think your outfit was a part of the Secret Intelligence Service.’

‘It isn’t . . . that’s the whole point,’ Simpson said. He paused for a few moments, gazing at Richter as if deciding how much to tell him. Then he spoke again. ‘I
think I need to explain a few things to you. First, have you ever heard of “The Increment”?’

‘No,’ Richter replied.

‘OK, every now and then, the SIS gets wind of something going on inside Britain that they have particular interest in, but which they can’t investigate directly because they only
have a remit to operate
outside
the UK.’

‘I thought that was what MI5 was supposed to cover?’

‘It is, but the two services don’t have a particularly good working relationship. And often there’s some question about sources or procedures or something and, for whatever
reason, SIS don’t want MI5 sticking their oar in. Or maybe the situation is somewhere abroad, but there’s a good chance it’ll all go tits-up at some point, which would embarrass
SIS and, by extension, the British government.