‘Do you have any leads so far?’
‘We got a name of the man who might be running this job. His name’s Sergei Gorelkin. He’s one of the FSB’s senior figures responsible for special operations overseas. He went off the radar in Moscow a few years ago, and it’s thought he went into another department or got demoted. Then he popped up again recently as right as rain. He was seen boarding a flight to Frankfurt several days ago. Two other suspected FSB operatives were identified passing through Paris Charles de Gaulle by a French intelligence officer on his way back to their embassy in Moscow. He recognised one of them from a penetration operation eight months previously by colleagues in the DGSE. All three were travelling under cover names. It’s only a guess but I’d bet my pension they were converging on London.’
‘Did your lady friend on the Russian desk tell you all this?’
‘The Russian desk claims to know nothing about it. I think they’re playing silly buggers and hoping to bag the prize. I got all this through back channels of my own.’
Harry grinned. ‘You’re more devious than I thought.’
‘I have my moments. But if you think I’m devious, Gorelkin’s got a reputation like a box of weasels. He’s old-school KGB and as hard as nails. If he’s over here, it means the Tobinskiy job was given top priority. Gorelkin has a chain of command like everybody else, but it’s known that he takes his orders from the presidential office.’
‘Would their embassy know he’s here?’
‘I doubt it. Whatever Gorelkin’s doing, the last thing Moscow wants is a politically motivated assassination leading right back to their front door.’
Harry digested the information, then said, ‘What about the other two men?’ He and Rik must have come very close to running into them earlier, and he didn’t like the idea of two FSB heavies walking up behind him with orders to kill.
‘The French say they’re specialists. You know what that means.’
‘Killers.’
‘Correct. I don’t have names and only the vaguest descriptions, but I’ll mail those over to you as soon as I have something firm. Why — are you getting nervous?’
Harry told him about the other people hunting Clare Jardine. ‘They’ll spread the net further and faster than we can. Can’t we get the Met involved?’
‘Sorry. No can do. They’re under pressure elsewhere, and this is messy enough as it is. There’s already chatter on the wires about a patient disappearing from the hospital. If we get the plods looking for her, it’ll hit the news before tea time that there’s a manhunt going on. God only knows what the media would make of that.’
‘Clare’s in danger. You don’t think we owe her our full protection?’ Harry tried to keep his tone level. Getting angry at Ballatyne was pointless and would merely make him dig in his heels. And deep down he knew the MI6 man was right.
‘Of course we do. But you’re it, I’m afraid. Five is too busy with other things, and it’s pointless drumming up support with inexperienced officers who wouldn’t know their arse from their knee joint. Jardine knows the score; she’ll keep her head down. If she’s still got the instincts we drummed into her, she’ll call in and ask for help. Smaller is safer, as you know.’
Harry cut the call and found he’d been holding his breath. He was facing an unpalatable truth: as far as the establishment was concerned, Clare Jardine was on her own.
Unless he and Rik could find her before the bogeymen did.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Clare had made a mistake. She had slipped out of the basement flat just before midday, no longer able to stand the enclosed space. All the while she could hear sounds of movement in the rest of the building, and the construction noise further along the street, she was growing more and more convinced that discovery was not far away. In the end she had had to leave, taking the crutch and the mobile in case she couldn’t make it back again. A lesson learned from her former life: never leave behind anything incriminating, never take anything you don’t need to carry.
She had hugged the buildings, moving vaguely away from the direction of Victoria, where she felt sure that SIS watchers for one would be conducting surveillance for her. Where the Russians would be was beyond her; they did not work to the same set of rules as other intelligence agencies, and that was the greatest danger. They could pop up anywhere.
She had walked for twenty minutes, moving slowly in a zigzag pattern, aware that if she continued for long enough, she would end up completing a circle. It was the way that those being pursued often ended up, walking in what they were certain was a straight line, but which eventually drew them back to their start point.
To get her bearings, she had stopped, trying to picture the layout of the streets in the area. The last thing she needed was to walk out into the open, where a woman with a crutch would stand out.
Then a man had turned a corner on the other side of the street, where three streets converged on a small paved triangle containing a cluster of trees and raised flower beds, and a small toilet block. The man was young and thin, with the gaunt, hard looks and fair hair of an east European. Possibly a waiter or kitchen worker — there were plenty of restaurants in the area employing both. He was dressed in jeans, trainers and a bomber jacket, all bearing the creases of long use and not recent purchases.
She moved into the doorway of an upscale carpet shop, with Persian rugs and no prices, and watched the man as he strolled along the pavement. He was acting casual, but scanning the pedestrians around him just a little too intently. Then he’d stopped a postman and showed him a piece of card, asking a question. The postman took the card and held it at an angle as if to catch the light. He shook his head and handed it back.
Clare felt her stomach go tight.
A photo. The man had showed him a photo.
She debated moving away from him. But that would mean walking along a quiet stretch of pavement with little traffic. She would be exposed, her crutch clearly visible. Maybe she should ditch it. It was acting like a beacon to those who knew she had it; and she was certain that her pursuers would by now have a CCTV still of her. It was what she would have done, and all those in the same business. Get a picture and show it around.
But getting rid of the crutch was a non-starter; she needed its comfort and support in a literal sense, as her muscles were still not able to do the job they had been trained to do. Instead, moving as quickly as she dared, she walked towards him, one eye on the man, the other on a small parade of stores eighty yards away, with a cluster of scaffolding rising to the roof tops.
She began to draw level with the man, watching from the corner of her eye as he stopped and put a phone to his ear. He had his back to her, looking at the ground and kicking idly at a small stone or something, distracted. Her nerves were screaming at her to run, to hobble, to do anything to move faster, to get away. All he had to do was look up and turn his head, and he’d see her!
Then she was past the first scaffold poles and beneath a familiar green awning, and ducking through the doorway into the welcome warmth and smells of coffee and amid the noise and comfort of people.
She ordered an Americano from the barista, spilling a few coins onto the counter one-handed, keeping her back to the door and window. Then she took her drink and slid into a corner seat, juggling the crutch awkwardly past two mothers and their toddlers, expensively casual and blissfully unaware as they discussed schools and husbands, and how hectic their schedules were.
Noisy and shouty but great cover. Clare relaxed. Took out the mobile, opened the back and slid the battery back into place, a cautious move against the phone being triangulated and traced.
One could never be too careful.
The phone vibrated in her hand, and beeped loudly, making her jump. An incoming message.