He opened the laptop. As he’d expected, it was password protected.
Another situation in which Abby’s assistance would have been invaluable.
He glanced at the others. They shook their heads.
‘It’ll have to go in for the experts to have a crack at,’ he said.
Saburova placed the phone she’d found on Donovan’s body on the table. There was no password required this time.
She flicked through the call log. Unfamiliar numbers were listed, with no names attached to any of them.
Purkiss glanced through the list. Most of the numbers were those of mobiles, but one suggested a landline, with a 0151 dialling code.
He recognised it as Liverpool’s.
Asher noted the number. ‘Worth a shot.’ He took out his own phone and called a directory line.
After a moment he said, ‘It’s a company called Arrowhead Shipping.’ He thumbed the title into a search engine.
Purkiss stepped away from the table and rang Vale’s number.
‘Donovan’s home is locked down,’ Vale said. ‘Waring-Jones isn’t best pleased.’
‘They find anyone else there?’
‘No. Just the unconscious guard, and the two bodies. The guard’s been taken to hospital under a security detail.’
‘I’ve a few numbers I’d like you to check.’ Purkiss read out the numbers on the call log on Donovan’s phone. ‘Also this firm: Arrowhead Shipping in Merseyside.’
He rang off, took a walk around the room. He felt despondent, cheated. What had he discovered, really? That Donovan, who was now deceased, had helped Rossiter escape. That the intention had been to execute Rossiter remotely once the prisoner exchange had been effected. Neither brought him a step closer to finding the man.
Purkiss had a sense of time passing, rolling by with the gathering force of an avalanche.
His phone rang.
‘I’m downstairs.’
It was Kendrick.
He was dressed all in black, with an outsized windcheater over a sweater and cargo pants. Shorter than Purkiss, his hair was cropped close, which served to emphasize the roughly ring-shaped scar over the right side of his forehead, the discoloured skin in the middle. His right eye was slightly out of kilter with the left at times.
Kendrick bared his teeth in something that didn’t bother to try to be a grin.
‘Where’s the bastard?’ was his opening comment.
He pushed past Purkiss into the room. Took in Asher and Saburova. His stare lingered on Saburova, embarrassingly prolonged.
‘Oi, Purkiss,’ he leered. ‘I don’t do foursomes, but if you and this fella can make yourselves scarce for an hour…’
Kendrick had caught a ricocheting rifle bullet in the right frontal area of his head two summers earlier. He’d survived more or less physically intact, and he was still quick thinking. But his natural boorishness had been exaggerated by the injury. Purkiss had employed him just once since the injury, during the Cronos affair five months earlier, and despite his misgivings about the man’s suitability for this kind of work, he’d been relieved to find Kendrick’s performance solid, if a little rough around the edges.
Purkiss made introductions. He gave Asher’s and Saburova’s names, but didn’t say who they were. Asher shook hands. Saburova gazed at Kendrick as if appraising a zoo animal.
‘So we just wait,’ Asher said. It was partly a question.
‘Not much else we can do.’ Purkiss felt the frustration building within him. ‘Saburova has to lie low. If we go back to Service HQ, we’ll get bogged down in questions about what’s been happening.’
‘I can check in on my side,’ said Asher.
‘No.’ If the CIA became involved, they’d just get in the way.
Purkiss’s phone sounded again.
Vale.
‘Possibly something, John.’ Vale never showed excitement in his voice, but over the years, Purkiss thought he’d learned to tell when the older man was intrigued. ‘Arrowhead Shipping is a small firm handling mainly sea freight, as the name suggests, but also long-distance road haulage. It’s run by a man named Peter Otto.’
Purkiss ran the name through his memory. He drew a blank.
Vale: ‘Peter Otto was formerly known as Pyotr Osip. Until 2001, he was a senior officer in the FSB, and KGB prior to that.’
Purkiss kept his expression neutral, for the benefit of the others. But his pulse ticked upward.
‘Otto — Osip — was a field agent during the 1980s and 90s,’ Vale continued. ‘Our side of Germany during the Cold War, and later in the Levant, Greece and Turkey. He came to Britain in 2003 and became a naturalised citizen four years ago. Set up the shipping business in 2009.’
Purkiss turned away and took a few steps towards the bathroom. ‘Sleeper?’ he murmured.
‘That’s what was suspected, of course. But the surveillance on him revealed absolutely nothing, and after a few years the Service lost interest in him, especially after he moved up to Merseyside. His wife’s from there, apparently. The conclusion was that he was exactly what he claimed to be: a Russian former intelligence officer who’d genuinely retired, and was now enjoying a second career in business.’
‘Worth checking out. Thanks, Quentin.’ Purkiss thought for a moment. ‘Can you persuade Waring-Jones to authorise tapping the shipping firm’s phone line? And Osip’s personal mobile?’
‘I dare say he’ll agree, in the circumstances.’
Purkiss rang off. He walked back to the others.
‘We’re going.’
Asher said, ‘Where to?’
‘Liverpool.’
‘Christ,’ said Kendrick.
Eighteen
Vodovos gritted his teeth against the pain and took another step.
The nurses, or orderlies, or guards, or whoever they were, had watched impassively as he’d swung his legs over the side of the bed. He’d half-expected them to stop him, but apparently they were under instructions to allow the prisoner a little exercise.
Although the agony bolted up his shin and thigh like flame, he forced himself to bear down.
They’d told him it was a glancing wound, a chipping of the tibial bone, but it felt as if his leg had sustained a direct hit. He knew immobility was the enemy. He needed to get back on his feet as quickly as possible, to prevent the stiffening that would inevitably ensue otherwise, the contraction of the ligaments and the sinews which would herald permanent disability.
Also, the exercise forced his mind away from the thoughts which had been demanding his attention ever since they’d brought him here.
The MI6 deputy director, Rupesh Gar, had conducted the initial interrogation. Vodovos thought he had held up well. Name, rank and serial number, or the modern equivalent thereof. That was all he’d offered. Plus, the assurance that he’d speak more freely if and when he was granted a visit by a representative of the Russian government.
So far, they’d stood firm.
Gar had returned with the other man, the tall, unreadable Englishman whom Vodovos didn’t recognise, but who was clearly also MI6. Vodovos found the newcomer unsettling. He appeared affable enough, and was never overtly threatening in his tone. But he’d exuded a subtle air of menace, at odds with his demeanour. And it was after he’d left that Vodovos had understood: he was not going to win this one. He would not be granted his audience with a representative of his own government.
There was no clock in the room in which Vodovos was being held captive. There were no windows through which daylight might give an indication of the time. The effect was disorientating, as it was intended to be. Vodovos had arrived in London at two-fifteen in the morning — he’d glimpsed the time on a digital display at the military airfield through which he’d been rushed — and he estimated that nearly twenty-four hours had passed since then. He’d slept, on and off, partly lulled by painkillers, so an exact assessment was impossible; but his body clock told him he was correct.