The worst of the weather, the seemingly unrelenting darkness, the paralysing cold, the constant sleet, wouldn’t hit until December or January, after which it would linger well into March. But the murk usually descended by the end of November.
One month. Already it was chilly, the sunlight grudging and slanted, the pavements slippery with thin rain by the afternoon. Grabasov wasn’t a native of Moscow, and he knew that only true Muscovites could tolerate the city all year round. But he’d learned to live with being there, because necessity demanded it.
He was a man of average build, stocky, running slightly to heaviness around his neck and his waist. Recently he’d had to start wearing spectacles for reading. He supposed he couldn’t really complain, at the age of sixty-seven. But the Moscow diet, the stodge and the pickled foods, were slurrying his arteries in a way he could physically feel. He knew he needed to watch himself, and his health.
A man in his occupation, in modern-day Russia, had greater things to worry about than death because of ill-health, even with the average Russian male life expectancy as low as it was.
He made his way up the escalator of the Metro station. As ever, he marvelled at the ornate décor lining the ticket hall, great Soviet symbols hewn in bas-relief in the walls. The Moscow Metro was one of the great showcases of the Stalin era, and even though the trains were stiflingly hot and didn’t always, or even often, run to schedule, the network was aesthetically one of the most impressive and striking he’d seen in any city in the world.
Once he was above ground and had forced his way through the throng in the ticket hall, he found a relatively secluded stretch of pavement and took out his cell phone.
The voice at the other end said, ‘Da.’
Grabasov said: ‘Oracle.’
The man’s tone shifted immediately to one of deference. ‘What are my orders?’
‘He is likely to arrive at Frankfurt Airport within the next twenty-four hours. I need the departure lounge watched, and especially the ticket desks for Turkish Airlines.’
‘Just one man?’
‘Probably.’ Grabasov turned away as a group of people hurried by him towards the Metro Station. He wasn’t being surveilled, he was certain of it, but in Moscow today, just as it had been in Soviet times, you could never be quite sure that the seemingly innocuous commuter bustling past wasn’t eavesdropping. ‘But be alert to the possibility that he may have company.’
‘What status do you wish us to impose?’
Grabasov said, ‘Termination.’
The man at the other end, whose own code name was Artemis, said, ‘Understood.’
‘Be discreet,’ said Grabasov. ‘But not unnecessarily so. If it comes down to a choice between your actions being observed, and his escaping, go for the former.’
‘Yes sir.’
Artemis waited for Grabasov to end the call, which he did.
He glanced down the street in both directions. Nobody was lingering in the vicinity. He could have waited until he returned to his office before calling Artemis, but Grabasov was a man who believed that the best time to set a plan in motion was immediately. It could always be modified once it was in progress, but sometimes it couldn’t be initiated if it was left too late.
He returned to the Metro station and descended once more. A man in Kyrill Grabasov’s position was entitled to a chauffeur, and indeed he had two of them, at his beck and call around the clock. But there were times when he preferred to do his thinking while lost in the hubbub of the city, among the rest of the populace. It was a habit he’d cultivated years earlier, in another life, and it died hard.
His office was five stops and a change of Metro lines away. Half an hour’s journey, which gave him plenty of time to reflect on what he’d learned. Even as his mind worked, his senses reached out to his fellow passengers, sitting with their legs pressed together or standing with hands gripping the leather straps hanging from the top of the carriage to protect them from the swaying and lurches of the train. Any one of them, young or old, male or female, well-dressed or scruffy, might be the agent who would bring him down. He could never lose sight of that possibility. Would never do so.
He’d felt the text message hum as it arrived in the phone in his pocket just as the train had passed above ground between one tunnel and the next. Taking care not to react too hastily, he’d pulled out the phone and looked at the screen.
The message read: Target not in London. Took 11.47 flight BA 3224 to Rome 25/10.
Grabasov, the Oracle — which seemed a bitterly ironic moniker now — had been duped.
The last message he’d intercepted from Vale’s phone had been to John Purkiss, two days earlier. It specified a time and location in London, and a name which Grabasov hadn’t recognised. The message, murmured in Vale’s trademark tobacco-roughened baritone, had been terse, and had instructed Purkiss — John, as Vale called him with familiarity — to identify the man with the given name, and capture and interrogate him. The identity of the man, and the reasons Purkiss was to question him, weren’t of interest to Grabasov. What mattered was that they provided a place and time where Purkiss would be found.
The date and time specified had been four p.m. On Tuesday 28th October. Yesterday. Grabasov had instructed his London contact, the man who’d intercepted Vale’s phone call, to wait for Purkiss at that location. The man had reported back at five-thirty p.m. There was no sign of Purkiss. No sign of anybody else. The location was a stretch of walkway beneath Waterloo Bridge on the north side of the Thames. Grabasov trusted his man, trusted that he hadn’t been observed. Purkiss simply hadn’t turned up. Nor, apparently, had the person he was supposed to be taking in for interrogation.
Vale had hoodwinked them. He’d made a faked phone call. Which meant Purkiss was somewhere else at that time. Grabasov had no way of knowing where.
And now his man, the one who’d waited for Purkiss, had given him a lead. Purkiss had travelled to Rome four days ago. Grabasov would need an updated report on how exactly his man had discovered this, but it could wait. His man had probably obtained the passenger lists for every flight out of London within the last week, as a starting point, and had gone through them painstakingly. Either he’d discovered Purkiss’s name on one of the lists, or he’d noticed one of Purkiss’s known aliases listed.
Either way, the lead was a tenuous one. If Purkiss had indeed flown to Rome last Friday, he could be anywhere by now. He might even have returned to London.
So pursuing him wasn’t a realistic option. But ambushing him might be.
Grabasov’s office was on the eleventh storey of an 18-floor tower block in the Presnensky district of Moscow. It was the city’s financial powerhouse, dominated by the mighty skyscrapers of the International Business Centre, which were among the tallest buildings in Europe.
He ascended the elevator after passing through the security checks with obsequious greetings from the various personnel stationed at each one. Grabasov despised the fawning, the combination of terror and hopeful wheedling in the eyes that darted quickly away from his, but he recognised these as essential aspects of the Russian power dynamic that was played out daily, here and in countless other locations throughout the city and the country as a whole. He responded in kind, displaying neither friendliness nor hostility.
He was the boss, and he expected deference. It was not to be rewarded with a smile.
The elevator was smooth and slick up until the eighth floor, when it caught and stalled. This had happened a few days ago, and before that last week. There was obviously some flaw in the mechanism, and despite himself Grabasov felt a profound irritation. How could a body of staff so desperate to make a favourable impression upon him allow such a simple problem to go uncorrected?