Jessie fished her briefing pack out of the seat back and started to leaf through it. It began with an MI6 summary of CHERRY’s case file. It had been signed off by ‘LG’; Jessie knew that was Leonard Geggel, her predecessor. CHERRY had a reputation for surliness, and, as she flicked through the reports that had been filed by Geggel—a man famed within the River House for a similar level of crabbiness—she saw repeated references to how unhappy the retired spy was.
CHERRY’s given name was Pyotr Ilyich Aleksandrov, although they had resettled him as Vladimir Kovalev. He was born in St. Petersburg in 1950, had served in the Soviet Airborne Troops and had then been co-opted into military intelligence. An impressive career had followed, and he had been a prize catch when he had been turned by Geggel while he was operating out of Athens Station. Aleksandrov had allowed them to mine a rich and valuable seam of information; he had reached the rank of colonel in the GRU and provided MI6 with lists of active Russian operatives and other organisational information. He was venal, as was often the case, and jealous of the perceived lifestyles of his counterparts in London and Langley. More than that, though, was a feeling of underappreciation that had quite clearly been with him all his life, a feeling that had not been assuaged since his defection.
Aleksandrov had had a good run. He had lasted nine years before he was blown and would have lasted longer if it were not for the unwise extravagance of spending some of the £100,000 a year he earned from MI6 on a brand-new BMW. The FSB had investigated him, then arrested him, and after a two-week spell in the bleak dungeons of the Lubyanka, they had broken him and extracted a confession. He was convicted under Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code for high treason in the form of espionage and sentenced to thirteen years in a high-security detention facility, whilst also being stripped of his military rank and decorations.
His liberation had come with the capture of a cadre of Russian spies in New York. An offer had been made to exchange the Russians for five double agents who had been working for MI6 and the CIA. The offer had been accepted and, on a snowy bridge in Prague in a scene reminiscent of exchanges in the depths of the Cold War, the swap was made. Aleksandrov had asked for asylum in the United Kingdom and MI6 had acceded to his request.
But his useful years were long past. Aleksandrov had been out of the game for years and hadn’t been able to offer them anything useful since he had been exchanged. He was old and washed up, homesick and embittered by every slight and grievance that demonstrated, he argued, that MI6 was ungrateful and had forgotten the service that he had provided.
And now he was dead.
15
Milton flicked through the briefing pack, but, after a moment, he found that his attention drifted back to the woman whom they had picked up. She looked frazzled, as if she had only very recently been woken up, and he got the distinct impression that she—like him—was only really pretending to study the notes. She bore the very faint smell of alcohol and sweat, and that reminded Milton of his previous lost night, his memories sunk somewhere within his blackout, the evidence of his misdeeds in the aching of his ribs.
“Here we are,” the driver said.
They were in Battersea, the curve of the river ahead of them. The heliport was a commercial operation, but SIS occasionally chartered flights that took off from here. HQ was just up the road, after all, and they had no facilities of their own. A wire mesh gate was rolled out of the way and the driver took them all the way out to the landing pad. There was a helicopter waiting for them. It was an AS365 Dauphin, one of the Airbus line that was typically used as a medium-distance executive shuttle. Another car was waiting alongside the AS365. It was similar to their own, one of the MI6 pool cars that ferried staff around the country on occasions like this. Milton opened the door and stepped out, the wind from the river tousling his hair.
The rear door of the second car opened and two men stepped out. Milton recognised the first: it was Tanner. He had never seen the second man before. He was middle-aged and Asian, slightly overweight and dressed in a tatty suit that was beginning to look a little shiny at the elbows and knees.
Milton left Ross in the car and went across to Tanner.
“Evening, Milton,” Tanner said.
“Evening.”
“We need to get going,” Tanner said. “We have a major situation. Did you read the file?”
“Yes,” Milton said. “It’s just background. I’ll need more than that.”
“You’ll be read into it properly in the air.”
Milton turned and gestured back toward the car. Jessie Ross was making her way across to the second man. She called out to him; it was evident that they knew each other. “You know her?” he asked.
“She’s MI6,” Tanner said. “An agent runner.”
“The other guy?”
“That’s Raj Shah. Runs counter-intelligence.”
Milton nodded over to where Ross and Shah were talking. “Do you know anything about the girl?”
“Probably not much more than you,” he said. “She’s young. File says she’s ambitious. She’s been overseeing Aleksandrov and the other ex-pat Russians who’ve ended up here.”
Milton was going to say something else when Tanner glanced over his shoulder; Ross and Shah were on their way over to them.
She strode ahead of her boss and went to Tanner. “Hello,” she said.
Tanner put out his hand. “David Tanner,” he said.
“Jessie Ross. SIS. You work with Mr. Smith?”
“I do.”
“Military liaison?”
“That’s right. Better to have something and find you don’t need it—
“—than not have something and find that you do. I know. He said the same thing.”
Shah took Milton’s hand. “I’m Raj Shah. Good to meet you.”
“And you, sir,” Milton said.
The pilot jogged out from the ready room and indicated that they should get into the cabin. “We’ve got clearance,” he said.
Tanner opened the door and held it for Ross, Shah and Milton to embark. The interior was plush: four leather seats faced each other in opposing rows, with small tables separating each pair. There was fake wood panelling, overhead reading lights and wide windows on both sides of the cabin. Tanner climbed in awkwardly—he had lost half of his leg to an IED outside Kabul—and then pulled the door shut. They put on the headsets that rested above the seats.
“Strapped in?” the pilot radioed back.
“Good to go,” Tanner said.
“Flight time is thirty-five minutes,” he said. “I’m going to push it.”
16
Raj Shah spoke loudly, having to compete with the sound of the engine despite the headphones that they were all wearing.
“All right, then. I’ll assume you’ve read into the file. This is a very fast-moving situation, and it’s evolving all the time. What we know now will likely be out of date by the time we land, but I’ll do my best.”
The helicopter banked sharply as the pilot curved around onto a new vector, racing low across the city.
Shah waited until the helicopter had straightened out again and then continued. “Pyotr Aleksandrov has been living in Southwold for ten years, for almost as long as he’s been in the country. We gave him a new legend: Vladimir Kovalev, retired businessman, came here to marry an English woman now deceased. All fairly standard. He’s not been operational since he’s been here. He’s consulted for us now and again, and he’s done some work for OpSec and Intelligence companies in the city, but nothing of particular importance. His knowledge of the SVR is historic. He’s been spending his time writing a history of Soviet military intelligence, from what I’ve been led to believe.” He turned to Ross. “That, and moaning about how badly he’s been treated since we brought him over.”