The John Milton Series Box Set 4 Read online

  He opened the briefcase and withdrew one of the pages, looking at the technical drawing and daydreaming for a moment. He had long since given up the possibility that he might be reconciled with his daughter. They had parted on such bad terms. He had been in the gulag for four years, and his ex-wife had spent that time dripping her poison into Anastasiya’s ear: he was a traitor, he was selfish, he was greedy, he cared only for himself. He had seen her once after his unexpected release and had offered to bring her with him to the west, but she had refused and, at the culmination of the argument that followed, had told him that she never wanted to see him again. Her recent email had come out of the blue, and had allowed him to dream of a reconciliation.

  He just had to persuade Geggel to help him.

  He slid the schematic back into the case and closed the clasps. He zipped up his jacket, opened the door, and stepped out onto the street. He was surprised to find that he was nervous. This was not the first time that he had met with Geggel to sell intelligence. They had done it for ten years, and it had made him several hundred thousand pounds and had secured this life, shabby and tedious though it might be. He was well acquainted with Geggel; his old runner was the nearest thing that he had to a friend. But times had changed. Aleksandrov was no longer operational and Geggel was retired. They had argued, too. He didn’t know how the meet would play out, and that made him feel unsettled. He reminded himself that he hadn’t arranged this rendezvous for his own benefit. He was doing it for Anastasiya. She was in hiding, somewhere between Lake Baikal and the Pacific, and Aleksandrov knew that the FSB’s bloodhounds were out looking for her.

  He needed Geggel’s help to save his daughter’s life. That was why he was anxious. He didn’t know what his old handler would say, and the stakes had never been higher.

  3

  Nataliya Kuznetsov watched through the front window. Aleksandrov’s cottage was at number one Wymering Road. The cottage that they had rented was diagonally across the street at number five. The place had been a fortunate find. Southwold was a popular destination for tourists who wished to enjoy its quaint 1950s atmosphere, and while many of the houses and cottages were available for tourists to rent, demand was high. Someone at the Center had found this one on Airbnb and, after sending someone from the embassy to check that it was suitable for their purposes, they had booked it for a month using the credit card in the name of Nataliya’s legend, Amelia Ryan.

  An advance team had been sent from Moscow to equip the property. The two technicians were from Line OT, the Directorate responsible for operational and technical support for agents in the field. They had installed tiny cameras in the ground- and first-floor bay windows that provided continuous coverage of the house across the street. They had set up an IMSI-catcher, a complicated piece of equipment that mimicked a wireless carrier cell tower in order to force all nearby cellular devices to connect to it; the catcher allowed them to monitor Aleksandrov’s cellphone. They had located the telecoms junction box and, under cover of darkness, installed devices that routed all voice calls and broadband data to a server that they had set up in the front room.

  They had been here for two weeks as the Ryans, here for a break and the fresh sea air. Their marriage was real, but their identities were not. Thomas Ryan’s name was Mikhail and he was from Almetyevsk. Mikhail and Nataliya had met at School No. 101 outside Chilobityevo; the school had previously been known as the Red Banner Institute before it had been renamed the Academy of Foreign Intelligence. They had studied together, had been recruited into Directorate S together, and had been placed in the United Kingdom together as operupolnomochenny, or operations officers. This was just the latest in a long line of operations that the couple had undertaken for the motherland over the course of their decade’s worth of service. It was also, according to their handler, the most important.

  There had been plenty of time while they had watched and waited, and Nataliya had used it to become familiar with the old man and his daughter. MI6 had disappeared the spy after his exchange ten years earlier. The SVR had been unable to find him and, given his lack of importance at the time, had decided it was not worth the investment that would have been required to track him down.

  But that was before his daughter had gone missing with a terabyte of data on the new Su-58. Anastasiya Romanova, née Aleksandrova, had disappeared and the Center wanted to find her again. It seemed reasonable that she might reach out to her exiled father. Aleksandrov had been located by an SVR mole in MI6 and the two of them had been sent to put him under twenty-four-hour surveillance. They had sat on his phone calls and internet traffic. They had followed him on his daily walks into town and established his routine. They had put a beacon on his car and broken into his house to place miniature listening devices in the front room, kitchen and study. The first week had been a bust, and then the second was the same; it had taken fifteen days before they had lucked out with the interception of an email sent from daughter to father.

  They had reported back to Yasenevo and waited for instruction. And then, the following day, they had eavesdropped the conversation between Aleksandrov and his old handler. A rendezvous had been agreed and, after reporting the development to the Center, they had received their orders. They were to observe the meet and then eliminate them both. In the meantime, another sleeper had visited the handler, a man named Geggel, and had pressed a beacon underneath the right-rear wheel arch of his car. Nataliya and Mikhail were able to follow the tracker on an app on their phones. Geggel had set off two hours earlier. Traffic looked clear and he hadn’t stopped en route; they estimated his arrival in Southwold within the next ten minutes.

  Nataliya saw movement on one of the two monitors. Aleksandrov had opened the front door and had stepped out onto the street. He paused outside the door, looking left and right, the old spy’s instincts still firing after all these years of inactivity.

  Nataliya clipped her microphone to her collar and opened a channel to her husband.

  “Aleksandrov is on the move,” she said.

  Mikhail’s voice sounded in her earpiece. “Acknowledged.”

  Nataliya watched the screen. Aleksandrov had moved away from the house; she stood and parted the slats of the blind just a little, enough so that she could see him as he walked by the house on the same side of the street.

  “Dark jacket, carrying a briefcase. Heading east, into the town.”

  Mikhail acknowledged the information. Nataliya collected her jacket from the back of the chair and took her handbag from the table. She unzipped it and checked inside: she saw the dark glint of the pistol with its long, tubular suppressor. She zipped the bag, slung it over her shoulder and made her way to the door.

  She stepped outside and looked to the left. Aleksandrov was near the end of the road, just before it took a sharp ninety-degree turn to the left. She let him turn the corner and pass out of view. She would follow as backup, out of sight and able to take up the surveillance when Mikhail called for the switch.

  Aleksandrov was an old field agent with experience, but he had lived here—in boredom and safety—for ten years. He didn’t take the proper precautions. He wasn’t especially careful. His tradecraft was lacking. It would cost him.

  4

  Mikhail Timoshev was sitting on a bench on the promenade overlooking the sea. A Styrofoam cup of coffee rested on the arm of the bench and he had a copy of the Times on his lap. He looked down at the name that had been scrawled across the top of the front page: RYAN, 5 WYMERING. He had been to the newsagent at the end of the road and requested that a copy be delivered every day during their stay, and the paper always arrived with his name and address on it to help the paperboy remember. He had been Thomas Ryan for so long that he often had to remind himself that that was not his real name.

  Aleksandrov’s pattern was usually to go into town at around midday. He would collect a newspaper from the shop on the High Street and then take it to the pier where he would buy a cup of coffee and a cheese scone and find a seat where
he could gaze out to sea. Mikhail or his wife would observe him, at a distance, never close enough for him to notice them. Today, though, had been different. Nataliya had reported his route as she tailed him.

  He took out his phone and watched the glowing dot that represented the beacon on the bottom of Leonard Geggel’s car. It had followed the High Street and then Queen Street before arriving at the Common. There was a place to park cars there—a line of bays that had been painted onto a wider than usual stretch of the road—and it looked as if Geggel was going to leave his car there.

  Mikhail looked down at his paper as an elderly couple walked by, arm in arm. This was what he lived for. The jolt of adrenaline. The anticipation of action. The sudden release after days of careful surveillance. This was his purpose in life. It was what they had been trained to do. He was better at it than at anything else.

  “Aleksandrov has gone into the Lord Nelson,” Nataliya said. “I’ll wait outside.”

  “Geggel is here,” he reported. “If they’re meeting there, he’ll come this way. Stand by.”

  Mikhail took a sip of his lukewarm coffee and replaced it on the bench next to him. He held the paper up, flipping the pages, and, as he did, he saw Geggel. Mikhail looked down, glancing up just as the man went by. It would have been possible for Mikhail to reach out and take the sleeve of his overcoat if he had so chosen. It was definitely him. They had been given a photograph of the old SIS spook and there was no question that it was the same man: six feet tall, mousey hair, old acne scars on his cheeks, heavy black spectacles.

  Mikhail took another sip of his coffee, shuffling around in his seat just a little so that he could observe Geggel as he proceeded to the north. He waited until he was at the junction with East Street before he collected the coffee and stood up. He dumped the cup in the bin, folded the newspaper and stooped to pick up the plain leather bag that he had placed next to the bench.

  “I’m on the move,” he said into the microphone.

  He followed Geggel northwest as he climbed East Street. He reached a pub—the Lord Nelson—and stopped outside the entrance. Mikhail paused alongside a van with two kayaks strapped to its roof, conscious that he wouldn’t be able to wait for long if he wanted to avoid being made as a potential tail. Mikhail and Nataliya had not lasted as denied area agents for as long as they had without being careful. Their normal operating procedure would call for them to abandon a mission if they received even the slightest hint that they might have been compromised, but the orders that Vincent Beck had passed on from the Center had been different. They had authorisation to take greater risks than would otherwise have been the case.

  Dealing with Aleksandrov was important enough to justify risking their exposure.

  Geggel opened the door to the pub and went inside.

  Mikhail updated Nataliya and followed.

  5

  Geggel made his way into the pub. It was an old building, with plenty of character. The bar was to his left, complete with rows of pumps carrying the idiosyncratic badges of the ales from the local Adnams brewery: Ghost Ship and Old Ale. Metal tankards and glass pint pots were hung from hooks on the ceiling, and the two members of staff—a man and a woman—passed around each other with difficulty in the cramped space. There was a door to the kitchen and the day’s menu was written out on blackboards that were screwed to the wall. Drinkers conversed at the bar and diners had taken all of the chairs around the pub’s few tables.

  Aleksandrov was waiting at the bar. He acknowledged Geggel and waited for him to come over.

  “Pyotr,” Geggel said.

  “Leonard. Thank you for coming.”

  “It’s been a while.”

  “You still like ale?

  “Of course.”

  “Go and get a table. I’ll bring one over and we can talk.”

  Geggel slid between the clutch of drinkers waiting to be served at the bar and crossed the saloon to a table that had just been vacated. He took a seat against the wall so that he could look into the room—old habits died hard—and waited for Aleksandrov to come over with their beers. The Russian set the glasses down on the table and dropped into the other chair.

  They touched glasses and then drank. The ale was hoppy and not unpleasant.

  “How are you?” Aleksandrov said once they had finished their first sips.

  “Can’t complain. You?”

  Aleksandrov sat down. “I am very well, thank you. How is retirement?”

  “Truthfully? A little boring. I miss our work.”

  Aleksandrov laughed. “As do I,” he said. “I miss my country, too. But I will never be able to return.”

  Geggel’s heart sank; had he come all this way to suffer one of Aleksandrov’s rants? The Russian had been prone to black moods and had made it his habit to regale Geggel with wistful tales of the glory days of the Rodina and what he had sacrificed for British intelligence whenever they met. Geggel had eventually concluded that Aleksandrov believed MI6 were obliged to provide him with a sympathetic ear to listen to his complaints. Their meetings had quickly become tiresome and Geggel had not looked forward to them. But he had blanked out those memories after he had received Aleksandrov’s cryptic telephone call. He had been too excited to allow the past to dampen his enthusiasm.

  “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you,” he said, trying to move the conversation along.

  “I was not expecting that I would have to call.” Aleksandrov took another long swig of his beer. “You are wondering why I did not speak to your replacement?”

  “Not really,” Geggel said. “I know you didn’t get on with her.”

  “She is a baby,” he grumbled. “She does not take me seriously. She does not know the work that we did together.”

  “How could she? She was still in school.”

  “Precisely,” the Russian said, slapping both hands on the table. “That is precisely it. How old is she? Thirty?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She has no experience. She does not value the intelligence that I provided. The risks I took, the price I paid—she has no idea. All I am to her is an old spook. Washed up and irrelevant, sent to this place to be forgotten until I die.”

  Geggel knew he needed to wrestle Aleksandrov back to whatever it was that he wanted to talk about, or he would lose half an hour to a sullen tirade.

  “Well, Pyotr,” he said, “I’m here. I came when you asked and I’m listening. What can I help you with?”

  The Russian’s mood changed as at the flick of a switch. “No, Leonard, it is the other way around.” His lips turned up in a self-satisfied smirk. “It is I who can help you.”

  The pub was busy. Mikhail had found a space at the bar where he could watch Aleksandrov and Geggel. He had hoped he might be able to hear them, but the noise in the room—the sound of conversations competing with the commentary from the football that was showing on the room’s single television—made that impossible. The two men leaned across the table, their faces just a few inches from each other, Aleksandrov punctuating the conversation with excited stabs of his hand. He reached into the briefcase that he had brought with him, took out a piece of paper, laid it on the table and then drilled his finger against it. Mikhail clenched his jaw with frustration. He had orders to find out what they might discuss, and now they were going to have to find that out with a much less elegant solution.

  “You want a drink?”

  He turned around. The publican was looking at him.

  “I’m sorry,” Mikhail said with a smile.

  “You want to watch, you’ll need to buy something.”

  It took Mikhail a moment to realise that the man meant the television and not the clandestine discussion that was taking place at the table.

  “Pint of bitter,” he said.

  “Which one?”

  There were half a dozen pumps, each advertising a different beer. Mikhail picked one at random, gave the man a ten-pound note, collected his change and then sipped at the warm, flat beer. I
t was not to his taste at all. He kept watching, observing, looking for anything that might be helpful, but it was no use.

  He took out his phone and put it to his ear, pretending to make a call. He spoke into the microphone instead.

  “It’s too busy. I can’t get close enough.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  He took a moment, watching as Geggel said something and Aleksandrov reached across the table to take his hand.

  “The orders are clear. One each, then meet at home once it’s done.”

  “Copy that.”

  6

  Aleksandrov reached down for a briefcase that had been resting against the chair legs. He entered the combination on the locks that secured the two clasps and popped the lid open. He reached inside and took out a single sheet of paper. He handed it across the table and Geggel looked at it. It was some sort of schematic.

  “What is this?”

  “You’ve heard of the Su-58?”

  “The aircraft? I know the Su-57. The new fighter Sukhoi was working on—they shelved it.”

  “The Fargo,” Aleksandrov said with a nod. “No. That was a distraction. All the while, they were working on the 58. NATO doesn’t even have a designation and now they have completed a successful design.” He laid a finger on the paper. “That is a schematic of the underside missile port. The Su-58 can be equipped with the new variant of the Ovod cruise missile. Sukhoi were given the task of producing a plane that could shoot down the Americans’ F-22s and F-35s. They have succeeded.”