There was a bar in the departure lounge and Ross led the way across to it. She ordered two bloody Marys, and, without asking if Milton wanted one, slid a glass across the pitted surface of the bar and waited until he picked it up.
“Cheers,” she said. “Here’s to unexpected trips to places no one should be asked to visit.”
There were no other travellers within earshot, and Milton forgave her the indiscretion. He touched his glass to hers, put it to his lips and knocked the drink back in one thirsty gulp.
Ross did the same, then set the glass back on the bar and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Another?”
They had forty-five minutes before they needed to go to the gate and Milton knew that a drink would help him to sleep on the plane.
He was tempted, sorely so, but raised his hand. “Too early for me,” he said, thinking back to the meeting in Islington and knowing that there was no way on earth he could ever share with them the circumstances of this latest temptation. And then, thinking about that, the prospect of another became difficult to dismiss and, with the surety that this would be the last, he changed his mind, told her “Why not?” and waited for the bartender to prepare a second round.
Aeroflot Flight SU 6281
63
The Aeroflot flight took off on time. Ross put on her eye mask, reclined her seat and went to sleep.
Milton was tired, too, but not quite ready to follow her example. He opened his carry-on and took out his tablet. He opened his mail server and selected the encrypted file that he had requested from Ziggy Penn before they had left the embassy. It was Jessie Ross’s MI6 personnel file. Milton was uncomfortable that he knew so little about her. They were travelling to an isolated area with limited consular assistance, and he wanted to understand her better. He would have preferred to travel alone, but, despite his misgivings, he could see the good sense in having her along. She spoke perfect Russian and had experience travelling in the area. Just as importantly, being part of a couple with reason to be there made it slightly less likely that he would attract the attention of the authorities.
He read. Ross had been born in Portsmouth. Her father was a gas fitter and her mother worked in the reception of a local accountancy firm. Ross had studied at a local comprehensive, where she had developed a particular aptitude for languages which had, in turn, led to her taking a degree in Russian. She reported that she had enjoyed the course, and especially the year she had spent at the British Council in St Petersburg. The year had allowed her the latitude to travel across the country, from east to west; her Russian had become more natural and she had learned about the culture and expectations of Russia that were to become important later in her career.
She had graduated and taken a job as a researcher at Cambridge University. Transcripts of her interview with the SIS recruiter were appended to the report. She had said that she found academic work to be too dry for her tastes, and she’d found it difficult to acquire the funding to make the trips back to Russia that would enable her to further her practical research. After she had been turned down for a grant that would have allowed her to study for a year in Moscow, she had decided that she would leave and look for a job in management consultancy. It was a fortunate coincidence that she had seen the advertisement for SIS intelligence officers as she was looking around. She had applied, and, after a comprehensive background check—the fruits of which Milton was reading now—she had been accepted.
Her first posting had been as a report officer with responsibility for Russia and the former Eastern Bloc countries. R-Officers were tasked with meeting agent runners, often in the field, to discuss the intelligence that had been provided by their agents. She was required to assess the quality of the intel, corroborate it by way of second sources, and contextualise it for onward delivery to her superiors and politicians. She had developed a solid reputation and was quickly fast-tracked and given responsibility for briefing ministers on Russian affairs.
Milton flicked on and found, to his surprise, that there was a blot on her otherwise immaculate copybook. It was reported that she had had an affair with the private secretary of the foreign secretary. The man was married, and, it was reported, had chosen his wife over his mistress. The wife had found Ross and had instigated a brawl that had led to the wife’s eye socket being fractured. The police had been called and Ross had been arrested. Her career, although tarnished, was her saviour: she was heavily involved in analysis of a failed Islamic plot to bomb the New York subway and it was decided at a ‘senior level’—Milton knew that euphemism most likely meant the management tier at VX, perhaps even Benjamin Stone himself—that she should be released so that she could continue her work. The story of the affair had been kept out of the newspapers and Ross had been put back to work.
Milton flicked on. Ross had applied to become an agent runner. The psychiatrist who had assessed her suggested that the reasons for her desire to switch roles were obvious: she wanted the chance to prove herself after the reprimand that she had earned thanks to the affair. Furthermore, her former lover was now being groomed for high office, with much of his success being attributed to his reputation as a loving husband and doting father. Ross was asked about her feelings for the man during her psych evaluation and had replied that she was disgusted by his duplicity and the willingness of the government to cooperate in the pretence. She said that she wanted to get as far away from him as possible, and that “Russia was a long way from Whitehall.”
Ross had been given a diplomatic legend and was assigned to Moscow Station. She had taken over the running of existing agents and developed new ones, including several promising leads into the lower levels of the Kremlin. And then she had returned to London. The affair had left her pregnant; she had given birth to a son and said that she wanted to bring him up at home. She had replaced Leonard Geggel, taking on the responsibility of looking after the defectors who had come to the United Kingdom for sanctuary during and after the fall of the Wall.
Milton was impressed. He glanced over at her, sleeping in the seat next to his. She had only just turned thirty, and she had packed a lot into her career so far. This, though, was something that she had never done before. Running agents was one thing; not without danger, but nothing compared to the risks that the agents themselves took. Ross didn’t have the insulation of diplomatic protection now. She was not riding a desk at VX, nor even in the protected environment of Moscow Station. This was an active operation, conducted in one of the most heavily surveilled countries in the world, against an opponent with thousands of agents in the field, an enemy that already had blood on its hands. This was real, and dangerous, and with an outcome that Milton could not predict.
Vladivostok International Airport
64
Ross stretched out her legs. She and Smith had found two empty seats in the Laguna Lounge. They had already been waiting for four hours, and there was another eight still to go. There was a TV on the wall and it had been tuned to RT, the Russian state broadcaster that could be relied upon to run the government line. They had watched three hourly bulletins so far, and each had opened with footage from Southwold. Ross had translated for Smith, explaining that the anchors were decrying the slanderous accusations being made by the British government, and suggesting that they look nearer to home for the guilty parties. Smith gave a weary shrug, said that he wouldn’t expect anything else and then concentrated on the copy of Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit that he was reading on his phone.