Alongside Gorelkin were Lt Votrukhin, the team leader, and next to him, toying uneasily with a sugar bowl, Sgt Serkhov. Gorelkin’s question, however, was addressed primarily to the fourth man at the table, who seemed unaffected by the senior Russian’s rancid mood.
‘We look in all the right places, Sergei.’ George Henry Paulton looked cheerily back at him and tapped the table, commanding attention. ‘You asked for my help in tracking someone down, and that’s what I’m here for.’ He shifted in his chair and gazed out of the window over the morning traffic in Park Lane, across to the green swathe of Hyde Park. He would have preferred being out there, feeling the springiness of the turf beneath his feet and breathing in the crisp morning air, rather than doing a grunt job of looking for some missing woman. But he had to be here with these three FSB thugs instead. It wasn’t the best start to any day, but he’d had little choice when the phone call had come through. There were some people you didn’t say no to. And Gorelkin, an unwelcome echo from his own past which right now he could not afford to be made public, was one of them.
‘Did you know, gentlemen,’ he continued, ‘that London has one of the highest concentrations of CCTV cameras anywhere in the civilised world?’
‘What of it?’ Gorelkin murmured. ‘You British are paranoid. How does that help us with our problem?’
‘Let me give you an example: I could tell Corporal Serkhov here to walk a mile from here in any direction and, given a couple of hours, I could track him every step of the way. I could tell you what he was wearing, what the traffic was like, if the sun was shining — even when he looked rather too closely at a pretty girl along the way.’
Sergeant Serkhov muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath at the implied demotion, but it wasn’t entirely directed at Paulton. As a long-time FSB operative, he had no love of cameras.
‘We have them in Moscow, too.’ Votrukhin put in, sounding almost defensive. ‘Are you saying you can use them to find this woman? That will take forever!’
‘Not all of them, no. Just a few key locations to show us which direction she took, beginning with the area around the hospital. From there we track her progress, playing leapfrog.’
Serkhov looked puzzled, and Votrukhin explained what it meant.
‘It’s quicker than going through them all. Once we have one sighting, there’s a new piece of body recognition software that takes care of the rest.’ He smiled at their doubting expressions. ‘It acts like a template, picking out any figure with similar characteristics, even in a football crowd.’
‘You sound very sure of yourself,’ said Gorelkin.
‘I am. This is my turf, don’t forget. I can use that to my advantage.’
Serkhov frowned. ‘Turf? What is that?’
‘He means it’s his back garden,’ Votrukhin muttered sourly. ‘He knows it like he knows his home.’
‘Quite right, Fyodor.’ Paulton was indifferent to the lieutenant’s tone. ‘I have a feel for this city. I also know how frightened people think. . how they react when they’re on the run. I know all the likely places they’d run to.’ He tapped the table again. ‘But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. You still haven’t told me the name of the person you’re looking for.’
Gorelkin gestured at Votrukhin to go ahead, and the lieutenant said, ‘The name on the hospital chart was Jardine. Clare Jardine.’
A few moments went by, and Paulton felt the air contract about his head as the name came whistling back out of the past. But he kept his face carefully blank as his mind raced over the possibilities. A giant coincidence? Or the playful hand of fate?
Jardine — if it was the same one — was just a name; he’d never had the dubious pleasure of meeting its owner. But clearly something these Russian clowns weren’t aware of was that the woman they had mislaid, the same woman who had been in an adjacent room to where the troublesome Tobinskiy had breathed his final breath, could in all likelihood be a former MI6 operative who had killed her own boss with a concealed knife blade. Given half a chance, she would undoubtedly like to add his name to the list, too, if she ever laid eyes on him. The thought made his bowels twitch.
He also knew that Jardine had helped Harry Tate not so long ago on a job that had very nearly ended with Paulton’s capture. He’d been lucky to escape that by the narrowest margin. Jardine, however, had been shot and very nearly killed by a Bosnian gunman working with Paulton. He hadn’t given a thought afterwards about where she had gone to. Now, it seemed, he had a possible answer. How many Clare Jardines could there be, after all, being treated for gunshot wounds in specialist medical units?
He swore silently while pretending to run the name through his mental database. He could kid himself that if he’d known from the outset who he was being asked to trace, he would have refused to come. But deep down he knew that was a lie. In spite of staying below the radar, Gorelkin had been able to get in touch with him quite easily to make this demand. It would have been simple, had Paulton refused, for the FSB man to have passed on details of his whereabouts to MI5 and MI6, both of which had his name on search-and-detain lists.
In any case, he had to confirm first of all that it was the same woman. Even knowing something deep down wasn’t enough; always check and double-check, a basic rule of intelligence work.
‘Can you do this?’ Gorelkin interrupted his thoughts. The Russian sounded excited. In his senior position in the Division for the Defence of the Constitution, he undoubtedly received a regular flood of information culled from all over the world about new technological advances, much of it aimed at security, surveillance, espionage and law enforcement. He would have heard of this latest digital development, might even have seen it working.
‘I don’t actually have access to it myself,’ Paulton told him smoothly. ‘But I have a contact in the Metropolitan Police who can arrange for a search to be made.’ He rubbed his thumb and fingers together. ‘It would take a small fee, of course, but I’m sure that’s not a problem, is it?’
‘How much?’ Gorelkin’s sour mood had evaporated, as if fanned away by the promise of positive action, and he was now almost jovial, like an indulgent parent being asked for pocket money by a child.
‘It depends how badly — and how quickly — you want to find her.’
Gorelkin gave a cold smile. ‘Very badly and right now. Good enough?’
Paulton nodded and took out a mobile phone. ‘That’s what I like to hear.’ He excused himself and walked away, leaving the three Russians staring at each other.
‘Can we trust this pompous little shit?’ asked Votrukhin sourly. He was still smarting from being held responsible for not seeing a possible threat from the Jardine woman. And now this Englishman with the all-knowing attitude was making the job look like a walk in the park across the way. ‘Where does he get his expertise and contacts?’
Gorelkin looked at him. ‘There was a time, Votrukhin, my friend, when that pompous little shit, as you call him, would have been tracking you right now through this city. He would have had a discreet mobile team around you the moment you stepped off the plane and would have known where you went, who you saw, when you scratched your arse and on which side. And you wouldn’t have known they were there. And all that without this — ’ he waved a circular finger in the air — ‘fancy camera technology. Paulton used to be an operations director for MI5. And he was very good at what he did.’
‘So why is he helping us now?’ asked Serkhov.
‘He’s a capitalist at heart; he joined the private sector. I believe it pays better and he gets to choose what he does.’
‘So we’re paying him?’ Serkhov looked puzzled by the idea. He was more accustomed to telling people what to do; if they complied, which was nearly always, it was because he had the means and information that left them with little choice. Life was simple that way.