Overkill (23 page)

‘It’s a small Russian town in the Komi region, next to a slightly bigger town called Ukhta. It’s about four hundred miles almost due east of Arkhangel’sk. It lies to the
west of the Severnyy Urals, close to the main railway line from Konosha up to—’

‘I’m not going there for a bloody holiday, Richter. Get to the point.’

‘You asked. It’s nowhere. It gets a nil return in the BID (CIS), and as far as we know it has no intelligence significance whatsoever.’

‘Then what was Payne doing there?’

Richter shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The only installation of interest in that general area is the Large Phased-Array Radar at Pechora, but that’s about a
hundred and fifty miles to the north-east. He wouldn’t have been able to leave Sosnogorsk and get up there without attracting attention.’

Simpson picked up his pen and carefully screwed the top back on. Then he unscrewed it and aimed the nib at Richter. ‘Perhaps he did.’

‘Did what?’ Richter asked.

‘Attract attention. Perhaps that’s why they snatched Newman.’

‘You’ve never been in the field, have you?’ Richter asked. In fact, Simpson wasn’t an intelligence professional at all. Prior to his appointment to head the Foreign
Operations Executive, he had been a mandarin, a Civil Service high-flyer. Initially, his lack of a ‘proper’ intelligence background had caused some resentment in both FOE and SIS, but
his obvious competence, and completely ruthless approach to his work, had quickly silenced his detractors.

‘When I said Payne wouldn’t be able to leave Sosnogorsk without attracting attention,’ Richter continued, ‘what I meant was that he wouldn’t have been able to leave
Sosnogorsk at all. He would have had one or more minders assigned to him to ensure that he only saw what the Russians wanted him to see – no more and no less. He wouldn’t even have been
able to leave his hotel room without the
dezhurnaya
reporting it. You can forget about
glasnost
when it comes to foreigners wandering about in Russia, and especially anywhere out in
the bundu. The locals are universally suspicious. Take my word for it, Payne didn’t leave Sosnogorsk.’

‘So what’s your suggestion?’ Simpson asked, looking irritated.

Richter shook his head again. ‘I haven’t really got one, but I do think the visit was significant, and I don’t think it had anything to do with Pechora. The other thing that
bothers me is what he was actually doing, as opposed to what he was supposed to be doing. According to the Moscow Station reports, he went there as a translator to some European
businessmen.’

‘So?’

‘Payne speaks passable Russian. The businessmen were principally British, but there were two Frenchmen and one German in the party. According to his file, Payne doesn’t speak French
or German to anything like the level he would have needed to translate for them.’

Simpson played with his pen for a minute or so, then spoke. ‘I agree. I don’t buy Payne going out as a translator. As Deputy Head of Station he shouldn’t even have left Moscow.
Get on to SIS and find out what he was really up to.’

Anton Kirov

Once again, Captain Bondarev had had to concede that Zavorin’s men certainly knew their trade. The entry to Varna had been as smooth and professional as his own crew
could have achieved, and the loading of the cargo had been accomplished in a much shorter time than he had expected. The
Anton Kirov
had two holds; a large one aft, designed for bulk or
loose cargo, and a smaller, secure, stowage forward. The special cargo – just one large and heavy box – fitted without difficulty into the forward hold. Bondarev noted that Zavorin had
remained on the foredeck throughout loading and had personally supervised the entire operation. Once the cargo hatches had been secured, Zavorin had telephoned the bridge, ordered Bondarev to put
to sea immediately, and had then disappeared for over an hour. Bondarev supposed, correctly, that he had been inspecting the new cargo.

With the
Anton Kirov
heading south again, and Varna becoming only a smudge on the coastline, Zavorin knocked on the captain’s door and entered without waiting for an answer. He
carried two glasses and a bottle of single malt Scotch whisky. Bondarev looked somewhat quizzically at the bottle.

‘I drink vodka,’ Zavorin said, with a smile, ‘but not from choice. Now this –’ he raised the bottle to the light ‘– is a real drink.’ He put down
the glasses, poured two large measures and handed one to Bondarev. ‘As the British say, “Cheers”,’ Zavorin said, and took a sip.

Bondarev sipped, nodded appreciatively, then put his glass down and looked over at the
Spetsnaz
colonel. ‘So, you have your special equipment. Now where are we going?’

‘As planned, Captain,’ Zavorin replied, ‘we will route through the Bosphorus and probably call at Piraeus. I am not sure we will have time to make Tunis, but we will see. A lot
depends upon our departure date from Greek waters.’

He paused and looked thoughtfully at his glass. ‘The deadline is our arrival date at Gibraltar, and I am waiting to have that signalled to me. My guess is we will be instructed to arrive
there in about a week.’ Bondarev nodded, mentally calculating times and speeds. He picked up his glass again and sipped.

In the forward hold, one of the
Spetsnaz
officers, who held a degree in electronic engineering from a West German university, checked that the coaxial cable from the
satellite dish on the bridge roof was securely attached to the high-frequency DBS-band receiver. The dish had been aligned and a test message received from the satellite within fifteen minutes of
the
Anton Kirov’s
arrival alongside the loading jetty.

The officer made a final check of all the connections, then snapped shut his precision toolkit and nodded to two troopers standing beside him. They picked up and replaced the side panel of the
large crate and then dropped the lid back into position. The device was functioning normally, and could be safely left unattended until it reached its final destination.

London

The Foreign Operations Executive officially didn’t exist, and was officially nothing to do with SIS, although in reality its sole function was to carry out deniable
operations on its behalf. The Secret Intelligence Service, popularly and incorrectly known as MI6 – also didn’t officially exist, which meant that Richter worked for a non-existent
organization which worked for another non-existent organization. It was no wonder the manager looked at him quizzically every time he walked into the bank.

MI6 was effectively created in July 1909 on the recommendation of a sub-committee of Haldane’s Committee of Imperial Defence. The intention had been to set up a single Secret Service
Bureau, but this proved unworkable, and by 1910 the present division into MI5 and SIS was already well established. MI5, more properly known as the Security Service, was charged with
counter-espionage within the United Kingdom, while SIS was responsible for running espionage operations abroad.

Since 1910, both organizations have evidenced a marked lack of co-operation with each other, which has on occasion degenerated into open hostility. It was this hostility which was responsible
– at least in part – for the creation of FOE, as a separate and secret executive arm of SIS. Giving FOE the dirty jobs enabled SIS to deny its involvement if an operation turned sour,
and didn’t give MI5 anything to get its teeth into.

In 1994, SIS moved from Century House, an anonymous twenty-three-storey block near the Lambeth North underground station and known to almost everyone as ‘Spook House’, into a new
building on the Thames at Vauxhall Cross, the
avant-garde
design of which has prompted some unkind nicknames – ‘The Aztec Palace’ is perhaps the least offensive. Like FOE,
entry is strictly controlled at Vauxhall Cross, and a similar clear desks policy is applied. SIS also operates a ‘no talking in the lift’ rule, just in case the man in the corner with
the bucket and wash-leather is a Russian Cultural Attaché on assignment, and not Bob the window cleaner.

And like Bob the window cleaner, Richter couldn’t just walk into Vauxhall Cross. The Russian Embassy maintains a watch group whose sole function is to photograph everyone who enters or
leaves the building. They have another group watching the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, another across the road from Thames House, a substantial stone-built 1930s block north of Lambeth Bridge
and the headquarters since the mid 1990s of MI5, others in South Audley Street, Grosvenor Street and Gower Street, where MI5 maintains offices. Further groups watch some of the covert addresses
used by SIS elsewhere in London, and a large team monitors the SIS training establishment at Fort Monkton, near Gosport in Hampshire.

To return the favour, as it were, SIS has permanent watch teams in place outside the Russian Embassy at 13 Kensington Palace Gardens, the consular and trade section at 33 Highgate West Hill, and
others covering the rest of the foreign Embassies in London.

The principal beneficiary of all this activity is of course Kodak, but it means that FOE operatives are forbidden to enter Vauxhall Cross, all other MI5 and SIS buildings, and the American
Embassy, to prevent their pictures from appearing at SVR headquarters in Moscow. That in turn meant that any meetings between FOE operatives and SIS, MI5 or CIA officers had to take place
elsewhere.

And that was why at three ten in the afternoon Richter was sitting in the lounge of the Sherlock Holmes Hotel in Baker Street, looking over a coffee pot, milk jug, sugar bowl, two cups and a
small plate of assorted biscuits at the slightly vacant expression on Piers Taylor’s face. Richter had known Taylor for about eighteen months, and he knew that his expression was wholly
deceiving. Taylor possessed one of the sharpest brains in SIS which was why, at only thirty-eight, he was the Deputy Head of Section Nine, responsible for Russian affairs.

Taylor absent-mindedly plucked a thread from the sleeve of his jacket, glanced round the lounge, which was empty apart from a group of American tourists loudly discussing their theatre-going of
the previous evening, and leaned forward. ‘It was just routine,’ he said, softly.

‘Come on, Piers,’ Richter replied, just as quietly. ‘Deputy Head of Station Moscow doesn’t just wander off halfway across Russia with a bunch of European businessmen on a
whim. He had a reason for going there.’

Taylor shook his head. ‘No, we know why he went there – Newman told him to – but he wasn’t tasked with anything very exciting. I had Payne flown back to London on Monday
to introduce him to his new head and to give him a current briefing. He told me then about the trip to Sosnogorsk.’

‘What did he tell you? I mean, Newman must have given him some indication of what he expected him to do there.’

Taylor nodded. ‘Yes, he did. Newman told him that if anyone approached him and introduced himself as Karelin, Nicolai Karelin, Payne was to give him a one-word message and note the reply,
which should also be a single word.’

Richter waited. Extracting information from Piers was sometimes a long and tiring process. ‘Is there any reason I shouldn’t know what Payne’s message was?’

‘No, no reason. It was
Schtchit.
’ Taylor looked at him. ‘Do you know what it means?’

‘Of course I know what it means,’ Richter said. ‘It’s Russian for “shield”, and it also means the type of double-exposure film sometimes used by GRU
operatives.’ He took a sip of coffee and pondered for a moment. Taylor looked at him in silence.

‘Newman didn’t tell Payne what other action he should take if this Karelin turned up – or even if he didn’t turn up?’

‘No. Just the message he was to pass, and to note the reply. Nothing else.’

‘And did Karelin contact Payne?’

‘Yes.’

Blood out of a stone. ‘And?’ Richter said.

‘And what?’

‘And what was the message this Nicolai Karelin passed?’

‘Not one word, as Newman had briefed him to expect, but two –
Stukach
and
Chernozhopy
.’

Richter thought for a moment. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Do they mean anything to you, because they certainly don’t to me?’

‘Your Russian getting a little rusty, is it?’ Taylor asked, smiling.

‘Piers,’ Richter said, ‘I can read it and translate it, and speak it well enough to get by, but I’m not fluent, and probably never will be.’

‘
Stukach
is Russian slang for “secret informant” or “stool pigeon”, and
Chernozhopy
translates as “black-arses”. That’s a derogatory
term applied to coloured people of all nationalities. About the only interesting thing about it is that the term is most often used by officers of the GRU.’

Richter opened his mouth, but Taylor held up a hand. ‘Before you ask, yes, we have checked them. We ran both words through the computers here.
Stukach
wasn’t listed and the
only code-word
Chernozhopy
we found was the title of an aborted operation run by the Red Army as the Germans approached the gates of Moscow in the Second World War. We’re quite
satisfied that the word was chosen precisely because it was effectively meaningless, but sufficiently unusual not to be mistaken for anything else.’

Piers sat back, as if satisfied. Richter wasn’t. ‘And when Payne got back to Moscow?’

‘Nothing. By the time Payne returned to the Embassy, Newman was already dead.’

‘What conclusion did you and your analysts draw from all this?’

Piers shrugged his shoulders. ‘Most of it was obvious. Payne was tasked with checking all Newman’s files and documents when he got back to Moscow, for obvious reasons. He found
nothing significant, by the way. According to notes in Newman’s work diary and from the station files, Nicolai Karelin is the name of an established British source in the Sosnogorsk area.
He’s a computer operator who used to work at the Pechora LPAR site and passed us some useful low-grade intelligence in the past. According to Newman’s notes, he’s now working on
another project in the area, but we don’t yet know what.’

‘And the code-words?’ Richter asked.