He opened a desk drawer and took out a small key.
“This opens a locker at Leningradsky railway station. The locker is number 537. You can get there from here on the Metro. Everything you need is there. There are two uniforms for the hotel and a keycard. You must go around the back of the building. There is a passage that leads to the staff entrance. The card will open the door. You will go inside, through a lobby area, and then you will find the staff canteen and bathrooms. You won’t be challenged there. You and your colleague should get changed into the uniforms and then you will be able to make your way to their room without issue.”
Varlamov had been working on the basis that there would be a two-man team and hadn’t been updated since the recent change to the plan.
“What number room are they in?” Pope asked him.
“1022. The tenth floor.”
“What about the equipment?”
“There is a bag inside the locker,” he said. “It is all there.”
Varlamov got up, taking a moment to stretch out his shoulders. “Is there anything else?”
The monitor flicked across to its screensaver: a horizontal tricolour of green, white and red. The Chechen flag. There was almost always a personal reason—a family reason—why men and women decided to take such great risks to work against the state. Pope guessed that Varlamov had plenty of reasons.
“No,” Pope said. “That’s all I need.”
The old man leaned back against the wooden slats of his chair. “My people have a saying: Oyla yocuš lettarg ka docuš vella. Look before you leap. Be careful. They do not know you are coming, but Moscow is a dangerous city. They have eyes everywhere.”
Pope took the old man’s hand; his skin was leathery and the bones felt brittle beneath. “Good luck,” he said.
“And to you.”
Pope turned around and opened the door to the office. He slipped the key in his pocket and started for the street. He had plenty to do.
55
Stepanov was in one of the surveillance cars that was responsible for tracking the British spy. They were passing by the warehouse just as the man came out onto the street.
His driver reached down to the radio and opened the channel. “He is on the street again,” he reported.
“Go around,” Stepanov said to the driver. “He will go back to the Metro. I want one more look at him.”
The operation had proceeded smoothly. The surveillance team was large; Stepanov had counted eight cars, and there were more agents on foot. Ground units were arranged in several layers, able to swap in and out seamlessly. Foot assets waited ahead of the British agent along likely routes, and teams matched his progress on parallel flanks. There was nothing to suggest that the target had noticed that he was being watched. Primakov would be pleased.
The driver spoke into the radio again. “Alpha team: stay on Varlamov,” he said. “Find out where he goes. He is to be kept under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Beta team. Stay on the British agent.”
“Understood,” the leader of the second team radioed back. “What are the rules of engagement?”
Stepanov took the microphone. “This is Major Stepanov,” he said. “Follow him, but you are not to intervene under any circumstances. You only move against him with my express permission. Is that clear?”
“Very clear, Comrade Major.”
Stepanov was careful. He had advanced to his present position through a combination of planning, political acuity and ruthlessness. He was not old enough to remember the days of the KGB, but he had heard stories of how it had been from his uncle and his father, both of whom had served with distinction. He knew that he was as guilty of romanticising the agency as the ex-spooks who recalled it with such fondness, but he liked to think that advancement then had been more honourable and straightforward than had been the case during his own rapid rise to the top. The Kremlin today was a nest of vipers. The desire to please the president had bred an atmosphere of poisonous treachery, of risk assessments, of “optics” maintained by duplicitous press secretaries, an environment that favoured promotion by way of back-stabbing rather than merit. It was not what it once was. That was a cause of regret for him. At least the comrade general had given him the opportunity to indulge the strategies that had served his predecessors well for so long.
The driver looped around and they went past the warehouse in the opposite direction. It was a short drive to the Metro, and Stepanov saw the Englishman making his way along the sidewalk toward the entrance to the station. The man had conducted an impressive counter-surveillance routine; he wouldn’t have risked the meet unless he was satisfied that he was clean, and that assumption was reasonable. But the surveillance team was expert and they swarmed around him like bees around a honeypot. There were enough of them that they could duck in and duck out, varying the followers so that the subject continued to be blissfully ignorant of the true situation.
Stepanov expected him to return to the city and meet with his colleague. They would equip themselves and then prepare to put their plan into effect. Timoshev and Kuznetsov would be oblivious, nothing more than the bait used to lure the enemy into the trap.
Stepanov was confident that he could leave the surveillance detail to maintain their coverage. He told the driver to provide regular reports, and then indicated that he should stop alongside a cab rank. He got out of the car and then slid into the back of the taxi at the front of the queue.
“Where do you want to go?” the driver asked him.
“The Four Seasons,” he said, and settled back as the car pulled out. He took out his phone and sent a text to Mitrokhin, telling him to meet him at the hotel in an hour.
Stepanov closed his eyes and started to work through the list of things that they needed to do. They were going to be busy for the next few hours.
56
Pope rode the Metro to Leningradsky station. He spent the journey thinking about the operation, and the alterations that had been rendered necessary by the change in priorities. It would have been a straightforward job with Milton; they had worked together before, and Pope trusted him implicitly. But Twelve was different. He was new to the Group, stepping up from the reserves to replace the unfortunate Ten. Pope had known nothing about the agent—even his or her gender—until Tanner had forwarded him a brief précis from his file. Twelve’s history was impressive, but it didn’t carry the same weight as would personal experience gained in the field together. Pope would proceed with more caution than usual.
The train arrived at the station and Pope disembarked. He took the escalator up and into the station, made his way to the left luggage facility and found locker 537. He took the key from his pocket, put it into the lock and opened the door.
There was a leather backpack. He opened the backpack inside the locker so that he could examine it without being observed. There were two bundles of clothes, neatly folded, jackets and trousers that looked like the uniform one might expect a hotel porter to wear. Pope saw the logo of the Four Seasons on the lapel of one of the jackets. There were two Sig Sauer P224s, together with two boxes of ammunition and two suppressors. There was an envelope. He pushed his finger inside the flap and slid it along, opening it. The envelope contained a keycard that was also marked with the Four Seasons logo, a wedge of high-denomination banknotes, and two wallets with bank cards and other IDs in the name of two fresh legends, one for him and one meant for Milton. There were passports in the same names, with their pictures on the photo pages.