‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Richter asked.
‘Nothing at the moment. The Frogs and the Eyeties can simply wait until we’re sure of exactly what happened, and what Miss Kosov here has brought with her out of Moscow. If your data is valuable enough, we’ll tell them to sod off, and deny any suggestion that a British subject was involved. If we don’t like your dowry, then we might just throw you back.’
For a few moments Raya just stared at him. ‘I don’t think I’m going to like you,’ she said.
‘I don’t give a toss whether you like me or not. All I’m interested in is what you can give us, now you’re finally here. In view of the pile of shot-up cars and wrecked aircraft Richter and Dekker managed to leave across Italy and France, I hope you haven’t just brought us a few ordinary old files, from whatever section of Yasenevo you worked in.’
Raya smiled slightly. ‘I’ve done a little better than that,’ she said. ‘I was employed as the Deputy Computer Network Manager for the SVR, and in my bag here I have a CD player that’s been modified quite a lot. I took out most of the existing works and replaced them with a half-terabyte-sized hard disk. It’s full of files that I copied from the Yasenevo database, and I think you’ll find that what I can offer is essentially a snapshot of virtually all of the SVR’s current operations. And if you’re not interested, Mr Westwood here has already made me a counter-offer.’
‘That,’ Simpson muttered, unconsciously echoing Westwood’s remark earlier, ‘is the holy grail. You’re most welcome, Miss Kosov.’
Raya favoured him with a sharp look. ‘And just so you don’t get any sneaky ideas — because you look like that kind of person — the hard drive is password protected, and the gateway program includes an auto-destruct routine that will wipe the entire drive if an incorrect password is entered more than three times.’
Simpson didn’t look particularly impressed by this warning. ‘We have computer experts who would be able to crack that.’
‘I doubt it,’ Richter interrupted. ‘In case you hadn’t realized it, Raya is an expert too. But aren’t we all supposed to be on the same side here?’
Simpson rubbed his hands over his face. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s been a very long day. Right, let’s get Ms Kosov settled in one of our safe houses, and we’ll start analysing the data in the morning.’ He turned to her with a slight smile. ‘I’m sorry if we got off on the wrong foot, but I’ve spent most of today fielding angry calls from senior officials from both the French and Italian intelligence services. In fact, it hasn’t been the best day of my life so far, not least because I was worried that Richter wouldn’t get you out of Italy in one piece.’
‘I’m sorry, Simpson,’ Richter again intervened, ‘but we’ve no intention of going to a safe house. Until we’re certain that the leak’s been plugged, we’re doing our own thing. That means Raya and I will find a hotel somewhere and check in as Mr and Mrs Smith. I’ll call you at Hammersmith in the morning.’
Simpson glanced from Richter to Raya, and then back again. ‘Have you two become what the modern idiom refers to as an item?’
Richter shook his head. ‘That’s none of your fucking business.’
‘It might be, if it clouds your judgement.’
‘It won’t,’ Richter said sharply. ‘You just tell me where and when, and I’ll make sure we’re there for the debriefing. And, just so you know, I’m hanging on to the Browning in case your little mole hunt takes you longer than you think. So I recommend you don’t send anybody to follow us, because I’d hate to end up shooting one of your lot by mistake.’
Evening traffic in West London is almost always heavy, and that night was no exception. Despite the rain, when their taxi emerged from the gates of RAF Northolt it joined a long stream of vehicles heading west. In those conditions it was almost impossible to tell whether anything might be following them. Richter did his best to check, turning to look behind at regular intervals, but all he could see was a forest of headlights following and of red tail lights preceding them.
He instructed the driver to just head west first, then told him to take the turning towards Uxbridge. As the taxi left the main road, Richter again checked behind, but failed to spot any sign of surveillance. With no specific destination in mind, he finally decided that one of the hotels near Heathrow would be suitably anonymous. Under half an hour after leaving Northolt, he and Raya found themselves standing in the lobby of a multi-storey airport hotel, as Richter booked them a double room.
Before taking a lift to the fifth floor, Richter peered out through the plate-glass windows lining one side of the lobby. Outside the massive building, cars, minibuses and motorcycles kept arriving and departing. In the end, he shook his head. Trying to look out for surveillance here was completely pointless.
‘Are we safe now?’ Raya asked, as he finally double-locked the hotel room door behind them.
‘I bloody hope so,’ he replied, walking across to a window that afforded him an excellent view of one section of the car park, and of Heathrow Airport itself. ‘I don’t fancy sitting in full view in some restaurant tonight,’ he added, pulling the curtains across and turning away from the window, ‘so would you be happy if we just ordered something from the room-service menu?’
‘As long as I have something to eat, I don’t care,’ Raya replied.
Richter smiled at her, studied the menu, and then picked up the phone.
Five floors below, on the far side of the car park, two men sat in an anonymous dark-blue Ford saloon. One of them was watching the illuminated windows of occupied rooms through a pair of powerful binoculars fitted with a digital camera able to record an image of whatever the user was focusing on. He had just been watching as the light in a fifth-floor room came on and a male figure had walked across to peer out of the window. In that brief period, he had taken half a dozen pictures.
‘Is that them?’ the other man asked, hearing the rapid clicks of digital images being recorded.
‘I didn’t see the girl,’ replied the man with the binoculars, ‘but I’m pretty certain that’s the guy who was with her.’
‘Sounds good enough. You stay here and I’ll go and find a floor plan, so we know exactly which room they’re in.’
He pulled up the collar of his coat as protection against the rain, took a compact umbrella from his pocket, opened the car door and walked swiftly towards the hotel entrance. Five minutes later he was back.
‘You get it?’
‘No problem. They’re in number five one two, and I checked it twice. Getting inside the room isn’t going to be easy, though. The room doors are thick and solid, and they’re fitted with entry card readers that will be difficult to crack. And they’ll have closed the deadlock on the inside, as well.’
‘Not our problem. We picked them up, we followed them, and we know where they’re staying for the night. Now we can hand over to somebody else.’ He pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket and dialled a number. ‘I’ll call it in now.’
His companion nodded, pulling on his seat belt, started the engine and drove away from the hotel.
Chapter Twenty-Six
At Simpson’s insistence, Raya Kosov’s initial debriefing was held at the FOE building in the backstreets of Hammersmith. The reason, as he explained when Richter phoned in that morning, was because he wanted the location to be both totally secure and completely under his control. Although FOE had access to safe houses in several different parts of London, nowhere else would offer the same level of security and, until the second traitor working for the Russians within the SIS was identified, and apprehended, he was unwilling to place Raya at risk by meeting anywhere else.