“Only met him a couple of times, sir,” Ross said. “But that’s my understanding from reading into the file. I believe my predecessor found him difficult.”
“That he did,” Shah said with a smile. “They were quite a pair.” Shah paused as he looked down at his notes. “This is what we have. At approximately five o’clock this evening one of Aleksandrov’s neighbours reported seeing him on the floor of his kitchen. The neighbour’s kids were playing football and the ball went over the fence. The neighbour went and got it and saw him. They called an ambulance which attended at 5.12 pm. The crew broke into the house and found him. He was pronounced dead at 5.16 pm.”
Ross had taken out a pen and was scribbling notes on the back of the briefing document from the car.
“Cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the head,” Shah said.
“Fuck,” Ross breathed to herself, and then, aware that everyone had heard her, she added, “Sorry.”
Shah ignored her and carried on. “The first police officer was on the scene at 5.30 pm. He requested a PNC check on Kovalev. We have an alert on his name, just like we do for all the other defectors we’ve got here, and, in the event that anything happens to any of them, SIS gets pinged.”
“What’s the working assumption?” Milton asked.
“He had no real enemies over here that we could ascertain. He was living a quiet life. We’re assuming that he was assassinated. That’s the only conclusion to be drawn.”
The helicopter raced over the M25 and kept going. Milton glanced around the cabin. Shah was finished, looking at the others just as he was. Tanner was pensive, his hands clasped in his lap. Ross looked both excited and anxious.
“Questions?” Shah said.
“What about Geggel?” Ross asked.
“Who?” Milton asked.
“Leonard Geggel,” Shah said. “He was Aleksandrov’s handler before Jessie.”
“They were friends,” Ross said.
“That might be exaggerating it,” Shah said. “Aleksandrov didn’t have friends. Geggel doesn’t either, to be fair.”
“But it might be worth speaking to him.”
“I agree,” Shah said. “I’ll make sure he’s called.”
“What about the situation on the ground?” Tanner asked.
“The street is locked down. Police are holding it for us.”
“The intelligence assessment?”
“Do you mean who do we think might have done this?”
Milton nodded.
“We don’t have anything concrete yet, but common sense points to Moscow. We don’t know why they’d go after an old hand like Aleksandrov, but it seems most likely.”
“Moscow has form for similar attacks in the past,” Tanner added.
“They do,” Shah said, “and whatever the motive turns out to be, it’s most likely something from Aleksandrov’s past with them.”
“You said we didn’t have anything concrete,” Ross said. “What do we have?”
Shah looked as if he was weighing up whether to say more. “This is classified,” he began, “but it’s relevant and so I’m going to read you in. We think the Russians are operating illegals in London. Have you heard of Directorate S?”
“Sleepers?”
Shah nodded. “SIS has intelligence that suggests we might be looking at multiple enemy assets who may have been in place for years. I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if it was them. We have one man under heavy surveillance—we think he might be a runner for the others. He’s been careful so far, nothing to give us anything to go on, but they’ll know that what’s happened to Aleksandrov will make a lot of noise.”
“Who?” Jessie asked.
“Details are on a need-to-know basis, and it might not be relevant. He’s in London. We have a team on him. We’ll see if he makes a mistake. We see some unusual activity, something out of his ordinary routine—if we see that, maybe we get a break. Maybe.”
Ross was quiet and Milton had nothing else to ask. He had been involved in situations like this before, although never in this country. The facts were essentially fluid in the hours following an incident. Fresh evidence would emerge to disprove previous hypotheses and new witnesses would be found to open up different avenues of investigation. Shah was right; they were better dealing with the incontrovertible basics rather than indulging in speculation that would already be out of date by the time they landed. But Milton agreed with much of the assessment. The Russians had the best motive for taking out a defector whom they would see as a traitor. The Kremlin was most likely.
Milton closed his eyes and tried to blank out the muffled roar of the engine. His hangover ached and he could taste the old vomit in the back of his throat. He didn’t want to be here, but he knew he had no choice. This was already a big deal, and, if they could track down the people responsible, he knew that there was a good chance he would be deployed to bring them in or take them out. The thought of it brought back flickers from the previous night, of Callaghan on his knees begging for his life. It nauseated him, and reminded him that he needed a drink. He would find peace at the bottom of a glass, a means to forget.
Moscow
17
It was eight thirty in the evening when Deputy Director Nikolai Primakov was chauffeured through the Borovitskaya Gate in the western corner of the Kremlin. It had been drizzling intermittently all afternoon, and the wipers of his official BMW scraped as they sluiced the run-off from the windshield. Primakov gazed out of the wet windows as the driver took him past the Grand Palace and the Cathedral of the Archangel, and then turned into the vast open space of Ivanovskaya Square. The chauffeur slowed the car so that he was able to slip it between the narrow walls that offered access to the courtyard of the Senate building. Primakov gazed thoughtfully out of the window as the car drew to a stop. The driver opened his door, collected an umbrella from the trunk, and opened it to offer shelter as Primakov stepped out.
“Thank you,” Primakov said.
He took the umbrella and made his way across the slick cobblestones until he reached the entrance to the building. Primakov was anxious; there was no point in pretending otherwise; the Security Council was one of the most powerful bodies in Russia, and, more than that, today’s meeting would be chaired by the president himself. Primakov intended to present the meeting with a subtly amended version of what had just taken place in the United Kingdom. He knew that there was a chance that the president might see through the tissue of lies that he would weave in order to direct attention away from the real reason for the operation. They all knew it: the president’s intuition bordered on the clairvoyant, and Primakov had seen many men, in situations like this, crumble under the most seemingly benign of questions. He had to guard against that as best he could.
The meeting was held in a vast room that was dominated by a long table that ran down the centre. It was large enough to accommodate forty people, with their aides and secretaries seated at additional tables that were spaced around the walls. The room was opulent, with a magnificent chandelier suspended from the barrel ceiling, and with a series of decorative marble columns spaced around the room. Primakov took his usual seat. He was one of the last to arrive. The president would be last of all, summoned when everyone else was in place, and Primakov looked at his empty chair at the head of the table and felt the usual knot of fear at the prospect of reporting to him. He turned away, looking at the others who had gathered. The attendees were the knyaz’ki, the Kremlin power brokers who exercised total control over the Russian state. There was the Chairman of the Government, the Manager of the Presidential Administration, the Chairwoman of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly, together with the ministers for defence, foreign affairs, and internal affairs and the directors of the external and internal intelligence agencies.