“And then?”
“And then, once you’re back in London, you signal the Center that you’re fine, you haven’t been compromised and that you’re awaiting instructions.”
“And the Center wouldn’t think that I’ve been blown? Or that I tipped you off?”
“Why would they? You’ve never played them before. You’re an agent at VX, in the heart of the secret service. They’ll look for reasons to believe that you’re clean. You’re the golden goose. They’ll hate even the thought that they might have lost you. And why would they think you’ve been blown? They have no reason to think that you’ve been exposed. You did your part—you led them to Romanova, just like you promised, but we were wise to it. They know we have a source—they’ll think BLUEBIRD tipped us.”
“As simple as that?”
“It can be. It’s up to you—you just need to be yourself, as if nothing has happened.”
Milton knew how that would be done: she would be provided with a stream of legitimate intelligence that she could leak, nothing too compromising, yet valuable enough to keep the Center’s interest piqued. A promotion would follow, placing her in a more senior role, putting temptation in front of Russian noses, everything sharpened with the promise of more to come. The Center would be greedy, rapacious, and fed enough intelligence to ignore the nagging feeling that perhaps they should be more circumspect with their once golden girl. She would have to be convincing, but she had already demonstrated that she could do that; she had fooled British intelligence for years.
“They’re not stupid, Smith,” she said.
“You need to be persuasive. You do that, maybe things start to look a little better for you and your family.”
“What’s this?” she said, her lip curling. “A carrot to go with the stick?”
“No. SIS is going to be hard to win over. Raj Shah is unhappy. The mandarins had to be persuaded that I shouldn’t just plug you here and now. You’ve got a lot to do before they think about rewarding you. But the status quo can be maintained in the meantime. You can go home to your son. Your parents get to keep their house. The account in Zurich, the one the SVR has been paying into—VX might even consider the possibility that you can keep that. But that’s all up to you.”
She looked away and clenched her jaw. “How did you know? About me—how did you find out? Who told you?”
“Does that make any difference?”
“Was it BLUEBIRD?” she asked.
“Did the Center ask you to find him?”
“Or her,” she corrected. “They asked. But I never could.”
“How you were found out doesn’t matter,” Milton said. “You were found out.” He looked at her. “What do you want to do?”
“What choice do I have?”
Milton shook his head. “You don’t.”
She stood, gathered the sheet around her, and sat back down again. All the warmth from last night was gone now, replaced by bitterness and resentment. Milton wondered whether she ever had liked him, or whether she was just an accomplished and convincing actress. He knew: she was playing him. He was old enough and jaded enough not to take it personally, but, despite that, he still felt a tinge of regret.
“Fine,” she said quietly. “What do you need me to do?”
“I have some questions about the rendezvous this morning,” Milton said. “I need to understand what the SVR is planning to do.”
“There’s a man,” she began. “His name is Stepanov. He works for Primakov—I think he does the kind of thing you do. He’s going to be waiting. He said that he’ll have a small team. They have orders to arrest you and Romanova.”
Milton sat down in the chair opposite her. He needed to get all the information he could as quickly as possible. What happened next—whether they went ahead or bailed—would depend upon what he learned.
69
Stepanov and Mitrokhin sat in the car, both of them staring through the windshield at the men and women who made their way to and from the railway station. It wasn’t a busy station, stuck at the end of the line in a district of Russia that had very little to offer unless one worked in aviation. Stepanov was alert, fortified by a cup of strong coffee that he had bought from a vendor as he scouted the terminus on foot half an hour earlier. He watched as a family made their way through the tall doors and into the pink-painted building. Others dawdled, perhaps surprised by the heat that was unusual for this part of the country. Stepanov had started to sweat the moment he had stepped out of the air-conditioned cocoon of the car, and now his shirt was wet and perspiration ran down his forehead. It felt like bathing in warm water. He was glad to be inside again.
He looked at his watch. “Five minutes,” he said.
“Do you think she will come?” Mitrokhin asked him.
“They will,” he said. “If not today, then tomorrow. Perhaps she just watches today. Either way, if she is here, we will take her.”
Both men were armed. Their MP-443s were on the backseat, but they had chosen to carry the two SR-3 Vikhrs. The carbines offered the mix of power and portability that they needed. They did not know if the British agent was armed, but it didn’t matter; he would be badly outgunned.
Stepanov looked out of the windshield again. He picked out the other agents that he had selected for this detail. They were from Directorate S, their discretion assured. The old man in the cloth cap sitting on the bench was a retired agent. He had been picked because he had worked for Stepanov for years and because his age meant that he could blend into the background without arousing even the first shred of suspicion. The couple sitting on the grassy knoll listening to music? They had flown in from Moscow yesterday. The bum slumped against the building, seemingly drunk? He had served in the Directorate as an illegal in Greece and Macedonia. There were six of them in total, heavy coverage on the location that Romanova had chosen for the rendezvous.
Stepanov looked at his watch. Two minutes to midday.
“Come on,” Mitrokhin said under his breath, unfolding the buttstock of the Vikhr and flipping up the rear sight.
“Be patient,” Stepanov said. “She will come. We just need to wait.”
He looked at his watch again.
Milton drove the hire car to the railway station. Ross was next to him, staring out of the window and saying nothing. Milton knew that he was taking a risk. And not just a small risk. The RV point would be heavy with SVR or FSB agents, a trap waiting to snap shut as soon as Anastasiya Romanova raised her head above the parapet. His fate was now tied to Ross’s and, more specifically, to the mole within the SVR who had exposed her. He was relying on the hope that the information that had been supplied to him was accurate, and that the plan that had been concocted would work. If it did not—if BLUEBIRD had been compromised, or if Ross was preparing something unexpected—then Milton’s future would be bleak: weeks of interrogation in the Lubyanka, a show trial to demonstrate Britain’s perfidy, and then a short and unpleasant existence in a Siberian camp.
He glanced across at Ross now. She was still staring out of the window, biting down on the corner of her lip. What was she thinking? Was she weighing up the choices, assessing the benefits and disbenefits of one of them over the other? There was no way of knowing, and that made Milton uncomfortable. Ignorance was dangerous.
The Russians had mounted an elegant operation, and Ross had been at the heart of it. She had been persuasive and Milton had harboured not even the faintest suspicion that she might have betrayed them. She had shown nothing to suggest it, and the intelligence that he had received from BLUEBIRD during their layover in Vladivostok had taken him completely by surprise. But that intelligence was categoricaclass="underline" she had been a Directorate S sleeper ever since her recruitment as a student in Moscow ten years before. BLUEBIRD had only just learned of Ross’s treachery and he had taken a significant personal risk to deliver it in person. He had waited for Ross to leave Milton; it was ironic that Ross had chosen that moment to meet with Stepanov.