The Trinity Six (32 page)

Chapter 54

Fifteen minutes earlier, Alexander Grek had pulled his blue, C-Class Mercedes into a vacant parking space on the corner of Tite Street and Royal Hospital Road and made a call on his mobile phone. Karl Stieleke had picked up and informed Grek that he was less than a quarter of a mile away, walking down King’s Road half a block behind Holly Levette. She was on her way back from an audition and had just gone into Marks & Spencer. Stieleke anticipated that she would be home within ten or fifteen minutes.

Three days earlier, the two men had broken into Holly’s apartment and conducted a two-hour search for any trace of the documents that had purportedly been sent to her late mother, Katya, by Robert Wilkinson. Grek had been acting on instructions from Maxim Kepitsa, who had himself been tipped off about the relationship between Wilkinson and Levette by Sir John Brennan. Grek and Stieleke had looked on every shelf, in every drawer, under every carpet and inside every cupboard of the apartment, but had found no sign of any material relating to Sergei Platov or the KGB. They had subsequently put a tap on Holly’s T-Mobile account and overheard a fraught telephone call from ‘Sam’, logged that afternoon at 1521 hours and traced to a phone box near Cromwell Road.

‘Sam’ had made reference to a ‘tape or cassette’ apparently stored in the basement of Holly’s building. It was the one place that Grek had not thought to look. He would now wait for Holly to search the basement and to obtain the tape, then follow her to the Donmar Warehouse. This would lead him to ‘Sam’, who was the final link in the chain. Grek suspected that Sam would turn out to be the same man who had shot Nicolai Doronin in Berlin. An eyewitness in Vienna had provided a description of ‘an Englishman in his early forties’ who had been sitting with Robert Wilkinson at the Kleines Café. Grek suspected that this was also ‘Sam’. Once he had been eliminated, Grek assumed that Kepitsa would consider the ATTILA case closed. He was not aware that Gaddis had entered Holly’s building less than an hour earlier.

Looking up, he saw Holly coming down Tite Street carrying a shopping bag full of M & S groceries. Stieleke was on the opposite side of the road, following her at a distance of about forty metres. Grek watched as Holly took out a set of house keys and walked into the lobby of the building. Stieleke moved past her, walked up to the Mercedes, opened the passenger door and stepped inside.

‘Will she get the tape?’ he asked.

‘She will get the tape.’

Chapter 55

‘Any chance of explaining to me what’s going on?’

Holly was trailing Gaddis as they walked up the stairs to her apartment. Two steps below the third-floor landing he suddenly pulled her towards him and moved his head against hers so that he could whisper into her ear without risk of being overheard.

‘Listen to me,’ he said. She was trying to wrestle free of him but he held her body tight against his own. ‘Don’t say anything. Don’t talk when we get into the flat. Go across the room, draw all the curtains like it’s a normal evening and switch on the radio. Put it on as loudly as possible without pissing off your neighbours. The disk I found in your basement is a recording of Sergei Platov attempting to defect to the West in 1988. It was filmed by Bob Wilkinson. Bob is dead. He was assassinated in Vienna. Your apartment may be under observation by MI6 and the Russian FSB. I am so sorry. Do not say
anything
when I let go of you.’

She pushed away from him, her eyes flooded by tears. ‘Bob?’ she mouthed and he suddenly saw an older woman’s face in Holly’s, the face of her mother, the face of Katya Levette. He pressed a finger against his mouth, shaking his head, imploring her not to speak. He looked across the landing at the door of her flat. He nodded to her, encouraging her to take out her keys and to open the door. Holly did so and crossed the room, switching on the radio as Gaddis had asked and drawing the curtains. Gaddis double-locked the door behind them, went to the television and saw the DVD player on the ground. There was a newspaper discarded on the sofa. He took a pen out of his jacket pocket and wrote on a corner of the front page:
Do you have any blank DVDs?

Holly’s head was tilted to one side, as if evaluating Gaddis anew. He realized, sooner or later, that they would have to speak, so he whispered to her, not knowing who was listening or what, if anything, they could hear.

‘The disks you use to make your showreels,’ he said. ‘I need to make copies of this disk.’

She nodded. ‘Sure. I have loads.’

Her eyes were heavy and he said: ‘Don’t worry,’ reaching out and holding her hand. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’

‘I’m not worried,’ Holly said, and pulled her arm away.

Gaddis took the disk out of the plastic folder and inserted it into the DVD. Within a few seconds, he saw what he had dreamed of seeing. Sitting on a wooden chair in a well-lit German suburban living room was the young Sergei Platov. It was unmistakably the same man: Gaddis had seen dozens of photographs of the Russian president in his youth while researching
Tsars
. Platov was wearing a white shirt, a striped tie and his full lips glowed under the unforgiving glare of a bright overhead light. His carefully combed hair was parted on the left-hand side and he appeared calm and relaxed. There was a small glass of water in front of him. Gaddis heard a voice on the tape.

‘So, let’s start talking. Could you identify yourself, please?’

It was Wilkinson. The accent was unmistakable. As if to confirm this, Holly, who was looking over Gaddis’s shoulder at the screen, said: ‘That’s Bob’s voice’ and put her hand on the nape of Gaddis’s neck.

Platov began speaking in Russian. ‘My name is Sergei Spiridonovich Platov. I am a major in the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti. I live at Radeberger Strasse with my wife and daughter. I am one of eight KGB officers based in Dresden under the control of Colonel Anatoly Lubkov. I work on political intelligence and counter-intelligence.’

‘What is your official cover?’ Wilkinson asked. He had not appeared on camera and Gaddis suspected that he would not do so. Platov took a sip of water.

‘I am Deputy Director of the Society of German–Soviet Friendship. My work entails forging links between the KGB and the East German Stasi.’

‘Could you confirm the name of this Operation?’

‘LOOCH,’ Platov replied, without hesitation.

Gaddis briefly looked away from the screen as he tried to recall the details of the plan. ‘Looch’ meant ‘beam of light’ in Russian. The operation had entailed the KGB building a network of informers in East Germany who would continue to provide information to Moscow Centre in the event of the Communist regime collapsing. MI6 had learned about LOOCH in 1986; Wilkinson was clearly evaluating Platov’s willingness to give up state secrets.

The interview continued for what Gaddis estimated was at least another two hours: he forwarded the disk several times and saw no change either in the set-up of the camera or in Platov’s preternaturally calm demeanour. But there was no time to watch it. He ejected the disk and turned to Holly.

‘Can you burn this on to your laptop, make copies of the film?’

‘Rip, not burn,’ she said and smiled. He saw that she had already retrieved the laptop from her bedroom and booted it up.

‘I’d need three DVDs, minimum.’

She shrugged, as if this was the easiest thing in the world, and Gaddis felt a surge of gratitude towards her. ‘Might take an hour to do that many copies,’ she whispered. ‘Depends how long the film is.’

They worked out that the Platov interview lasted just under two hours. It took almost exactly as long as Holly had predicted to rip the three copies on to blank DVDs. They spent the intervening period talking in the bathroom about what had happened in Berlin and Vienna. Gaddis had switched on the taps and put the radio on the floor to give the impression that Holly was having a bath. He told her about the threat to Min. He also revealed everything about Edward Crane. Throughout, she reacted as a true friend: her only thought, seemingly, was for Gaddis’s safety and wellbeing.

‘I need you to do something for me,’ he said, as the last of the disks was finishing.

‘So what else is new?’

‘The woman who lives downstairs in flat five—’

‘Mrs Connelly.’

‘How well do you know her?’

‘Quite well. I shop for her every now and again. Why?’

‘I want you to go down there and to stay with her until I come back. It’s not safe for you to go outside any more and it’s not safe for you to stay here when I’m gone.’

He saw fear flicker in her eyes again, the same look that she had given him when he had told her about Wilkinson.

‘Tell her you have a power cut. Fuse box. Ask if you can sit with her until your boyfriend gets back at nine. Thank her for the flowers, too.’

‘What flowers?’

‘It’s a long story. I pretended to be delivering a bunch of flowers so that I could get into your building. She buzzed me inside. Give me your mobile as well.’

‘Why?’

‘Just give it to me.’

She passed it to him from the back pocket of her jeans. Gaddis was thinking of Tanya, of microphones and triangulation signals, as he pulled off the casing and removed the battery.

‘Better this way,’ he said.

The last of the three disks was complete. He retrieved it from the laptop and gave it to Holly. The other two, as well as Wilkinson’s original, were in the inside pocket of his coat.

‘Why have you given me this?’

‘Hide it in Mrs Connelly’s flat. Hide it somewhere that nobody would think to look. And tell nobody that you’ve been to see her. If something happens to me, but
only
if something happens to me, get the disk to the BBC, to ITN, to Sky. Get it out on YouTube. Do you understand?’

‘I understand.’ She reached out and touched his face. ‘I’m worried about you.’

‘Don’t be. I’m sorry I dragged you into this.’

‘You didn’t,’ she said. ‘Bob should never have sent Mum the disk without telling her what was on it.’

Gaddis hesitated. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Where are you going now?’

He took two envelopes, a biro and a book of stamps from her desk. ‘I need these. I have to talk to Tanya. I need her to get a message to Brennan and the FSB. But please don’t worry. You’re safe now. Just make sure you go to Mrs Connelly. If she’s not there, try any of your neighbours, even if you’ve never spoken to them. But don’t leave the building unless you have to. I’ll come back here as soon as it’s done.’

Chapter 56

‘Des’, the veteran of Tanya Acocella’s Berlin surveillance operation against POLARBEAR, had been watching Holly Levette’s apartment – at Tanya’s request – for almost six hours. As luck would have it, he was parked no more than fifty metres from Alexander Grek’s blue C-Class Mercedes, which had pulled up on the corner of Tite Street and Royal Hospital Road a little after half-past four. About twenty minutes later, a Slav in his late twenties had opened the passenger door of the Mercedes and stepped inside. Des had noticed that the Slav had followed Holly down Tite Street, so he was keeping a close eye on the vehicle as the sun set over Chelsea. The two men seemed unusually preoccupied by activities in the third-floor window of Miss Levette’s apartment.

Des had started his shift before midday, so he had also noticed Dr Samuel Gaddis getting out of a taxi at about four o’clock. Recognizing his old mark from Berlin, he had immediately telephoned Tanya.

‘Strange thing just happened,’ he said. ‘You remember POLARBEAR?’

‘I remember POLARBEAR.’

‘Well, he just walked into Tite Street. I thought you said you had him under lock and key in a safe house?’

Tanya, who was in the middle of a four-hour meeting with Sir John Brennan at Vauxhall Cross, had sworn silently into the telephone and reassured Des that she would ‘cut off Sam’s balls’ when she saw him.

‘That might hurt,’ he replied. An hour later, he rang back with an update.

‘POLARBEAR’s been in there for a long time. Curtains are closed now, radio on, doubtless he’s making sweet love to sweet Holly Levette.’

‘Holly’s there as well?’

‘Yeah. Showed up about quarter of an hour ago.’

Des wondered if Tanya had developed feelings for the redoubtable POLARBEAR. Did he detect an undertow of jealousy in her voice? ‘One other thing . . .’ he said.

‘Tell me.’

‘Holly was being followed down Tite Street. Foot surveil-lance. Caucasian male, late twenties, winner of the Dolph Lundgren lookalike contest. We’ve also got a Mercedes parked across the street with a view of Holly’s sitting room. Dolph and another man sitting inside.’

‘FSB?’ said Tanya.

‘FSB,’ said Des. ‘I ran the numberplate. Vehicle is registered to the Russian Embassy.’

Chapter 57

Tanya had been led to believe that her meeting with Brennan would be a private affair. When Des rang the first time, she had just finished informing her boss that she was shielding Gaddis at her house in Earl’s Court ‘until we can work out how to protect him’. Brennan had reacted calmly to the news, just as he had seemed almost indifferent to the revelation that Acocella had activated two separate networks in Austria and Budapest in order to finesse Gaddis’s exfiltration from Vienna.

But the appearance of Maxim Kepitsa, shortly after Des had telephoned a second time, had taken Tanya by surprise. Up until that point, she had been prepared to give Brennan the benefit of the doubt. After all, Wilkinson’s assassination at the Kleines Café could have been a coincidence; she had no evidence that her boss had tipped off the FSB about Wilkinson’s movements. But Kepitsa’s demeanour, and his seedy bear-hug with Brennan shortly after he strode into the room, stank of a stitch-up.

‘Mr Kepitsa has come here today to help us try to piece together what may have happened in Vienna,’ Brennan began.

‘Is that right?’

Tanya remembered what she had said to Gaddis on the way back from Gatwick.
I didn’t apply for this job so that my boss could toady up to the Kremlin and put innocent lives at risk.
It was straightforward, really. She didn’t want to be answerable to a man who was prepared to overlook the cold-blooded murder of at least two British citizens in order to preserve the status quo of Westminster’s relationship with Moscow.

‘Here’s where we are on this thing,’ Brennan continued. ‘Our government has civilian and state contracts with Russia worth many billions of roubles. These would be severely compromised by any change of leadership in the Kremlin.’

‘You think?’ It was one of the least credible theories Tanya had heard during her entire career at Vauxhall Cross.

‘You know, Tanya, as well as I do, that the man most likely to succeed Sergei Platov in the event of any Russian election is in every way antagonistic towards Great Britain, the United States and to the entire European project. It would hardly be in our best interests to encourage such a man into power.’

That was the second least credible theory that Tanya had heard during her career at Vauxhall Cross. Nevertheless, Kepitsa was nodding vigorously in agreement. Tanya suddenly became aware of what Brennan was up to. It was obvious. Why hadn’t she realized it before? Platov
knew
that Brennan had the master tape of his defection. SIS had been using it as leverage against him for years. Whenever Moscow became too heavy-handed, Brennan would simply apply the thumb-screws of 1988. Stay away from our natural gas. Have a quiet word with the Iranians. Why get rid of a Russian president over whom SIS exercised such immense control?

‘What we propose to offer Doctor Gaddis is the sum of one hundred thousand pounds, which is more or less what he requires to extract himself from a mountain of personal debt.’ Brennan was pacing the room now, occasionally touching the spine of a volume by Sir Winston Churchill. ‘In return for this, he will agree to cease all enquiries into, and academic publications on, Edward Crane and the agent known as ATTILA. He will also choose to forget, of course, that Mr Platov, in a moment of youthful indiscretion, offered his talents to SIS during what was, after all, a very difficult time in the history of his country.’ Kepitsa coughed. Brennan caught his eye and offered the Second Secretary a reassuring smile. ‘Maxim, for his part, will ensure that rogue elements within the Russian state apparatus, who may have believed, however misguidedly, that they were operating on the wishes of Mr Platov, will be brought under the formal control of the FSB. In short, they will be ordered to cease all activities against Doctor Gaddis, who is, after all, a British citizen and an academic of not inconsiderable reputation. What we want, after all this hoo-hah, is a little peace and quiet.’

Tanya looked across at Kepitsa. He was a small thug of a man, not unlike Platov, she concluded. He was wearing an expensively tailored suit which still managed to make him look shifty and cheap.

‘So Mr Kepitsa knows about the tape?’ she asked.

‘What tape?’ Brennan was looking worried.

‘Platov’s interview with MI6 in Dresden. It was recorded. It was filmed by Wilkinson. He sent a copy to Katya Levette. Gaddis is in Tite Street as we speak trying to retrieve it from Holly’s basement.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Kepitsa, touching a spot on his chin.

‘Oh, it’s quite simple.’ Tanya suddenly felt liberated, a puppet severing her strings. ‘You see, Gaddis knows that you’ll try to kill him unless he has an insurance policy. You murdered his friend, you murdered Calvin Somers, you murdered Benedict Meisner and you murdered Robert Wilkinson. You can walk out of this room and reassure us that peace will reign and that the FSB bears no grudge against Gaddis, but, let’s face it, the evidence is against you. Your organization has a historical tendency to shut people up when they know too much or say the wrong thing. And Gaddis knows too much. He knows, for example, that the so-called saviour of modern Russia is just a power-hungry thug who was prepared to betray his country at its most desperate hour.’

Kepitsa looked imploringly at Brennan, as if it was beneath his dignity to be insulted quite so brazenly, particularly by a woman. Brennan was on the point of obliging him when Tanya cut both men a look that would have frozen the Neva.

‘The insurance policy is the tape,’ she said. ‘I assume that Doctor Gaddis has already made plans to have the film shown on every news channel and on every website in the civilized world should anything happen to him. If, on the other hand, you leave him in peace, he will go back to work at UCL and forget that he ever met any of us.’

Brennan spoke first. ‘What about Crane?’

‘Gone. Forgotten. It’s too late for that. Crane will remain a myth.’

Kepitsa stirred once again. He appeared irritated that Brennan had not leaped more robustly to his defence. Opting to fight his own battle, he rose to his feet and directed his attention towards Tanya. It was to his considerable disadvantage that she was at least five inches taller than he was.

‘Let me be clear about something, young lady. I would ask you formally to withdraw the accusation that my government would be in any way responsible should anything happen to Doctor Gaddis. As far as the FSB is concerned, British journalists and academics may write what they like about Russia and its politicians. We would not consider Doctor Gaddis an enemy of the state simply because he has written a book—’

Even Brennan looked uncomfortable at the effrontery of the lie. Tanya was grateful for the opportunity to skewer Kepitsa on his hypocrisy.

‘So it’s OK for
British
academics, is it? But as soon as you have a Russian academic, a Ukrainian journalist – say, a Katarina Tikhonov – then it’s a different story. You murder people like that, don’t you, Mr Kepitsa? You poison them. You send thugs to gun them down in their homes. You allow them to rot in prisons and deny them basic medical care. Isn’t that the case?’

The Russian was already reaching for his briefcase. Tanya expected him to say: ‘I have heard enough of this’, but instead he opted for the more tried and tested: ‘I have never been so insulted in my life.’

‘Oh, I expect you have,’ she said. ‘Just before you go, Max, do tell Sir John why you have two surveillance operatives sitting in a Mercedes, registered to the Russian Embassy, looking up at Holly Levette’s apartment as we speak? Tell him that. I’d like to hear your reasoning. I thought Doctor Gaddis was just a harmless British academic? If that’s the case, why are you taking such an unusual interest in his private life? Is it the tape? Are you trying to get to it before he does?’

‘Is this true, Maxim?’ Brennan asked.

Kepitsa turned for the door.

‘This meeting is concluded,’ he said, shooting Brennan the look of a deceived man already plotting his revenge. ‘The next time I come to visit you, John, I expect to be treated with a good deal more respect.’