this field,” Logan said and pointed casually at the file. “All of that is what, initially, an intelligence agency needs to pay attention to. That is how an alert comes into existence and how ultimately the evidence will be found. This group needs to be on a watch list—at the very least.”
“Bit circumstantial, isn’t it?” Pasconi said.
“Follow every lead, Sandra.” Logan smiled in acknowledgement. “That’s been our country’s mistake in the past. Leaving stones unturned.”
Pasconi looked absolutely furious.
MacLeod put his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together. “Perhaps when you see Burt Miller, you’d tell him that we aren’t exactly idle here,” he said coldly. “And we aren’t exactly stupid. So. If Russia is going to get what it wants with a new president of Ukraine,” he said, “assuming Yanukovich wins in three weeks, then why would it be going to the trouble of stirring things up?”
“Cougar is working with evidence that it is stirring things up,” Logan replied. “Read the report, Sam.”
“Seeing as how you’re just the messenger boy here, perhaps you’d convey my question anyway,” MacLeod said dismissively.
After the meeting had broken up, Logan left the embassy and walked into the freezing night. He decided to continue walking rather than take a taxi. He admitted to himself that pinning the agency’s station chief to the wall like a captured butterfly had caused him a rush of adrenaline-filled satisfaction that came from his resentment at the treatment meted out to him by the CIA ten years before. But this rush was quickly followed by enervation and finally a feeling of emptiness. MacLeod’s parting jibe didn’t help his falling mood. For that was exactly how he felt himself to be—Burt Miller’s messenger boy. While all the time, Burt’s favoured individual, Anna Resnikov, seemed to get all the glamorous, headline-grabbing jobs. One day he wanted to be Burt. But all the glory at Cougar nowadays went to her, his one-night stand in New York two years before, who had then cast him off. Unlike him, Burt treated her as an equal.
Once he had shaken off the hostility and unfrozen the atmosphere of the meeting, in the freezing cold outside he was left with a feeling of deep discontent. Burt didn’t recognise him for the smart agent he’d been and, in that sense, Burt was no different from the CIA.
He walked on, aimlessly at first, trying to digest his sudden dissatisfaction. He guessed that this meeting was only one of Burt’s plays in the country, and that he was just getting into his stride. Indeed, Burt had given him another task to perform in Kiev, one that was more long term than the meeting. Logan’s presence in Kiev on behalf of Cougar was twofold and now he looked at his watch and decided it was time for his second rendezvous of the evening. He turned off to the left and headed for a bar just off Independence Square where he’d planned to meet his recently made Ukrainian contact, Taras Tur. Burt wanted information from the Ukrainian side and Taras was an officer in the SBU, Ukraine’s secret service, who might be willing to accept some extra money for a little work on behalf of Cougar. Logan had met him twice already—they’d drunk and dined and visited a few clubs, two men in their thirties and on the loose. He was a rather formal man, for Logan’s liking, and didn’t enjoy the pursuit of Kiev’s teenage hookers as Logan did, but Logan liked him and felt he was beginning to insert a wedge into Taras’s reluctance to become close to a Western agency. Tonight, he hoped he’d gain a little more leverage.
Taras was Logan’s favourite among the contacts he had attempted to make in the previous few months. There was something oddly honest about him. He treated Logan with respect, was grateful for the material Logan fed him now and again—and at Burt’s instructions—and occasionally bought him lunch or a drink. He was generally a civilising influence in Logan’s resentful life. And so Logan was glad that it was Taras he was meeting now. The Ukrainian would, perhaps, revive his spirits.
He turned on to Dymitrova and walked the short distance to Independence Square. Then he crossed the road that took him into the centre and walked across until he saw the street he was looking for. He crossed this road on the far side from where he’d entered the square and walked up Chervonoarmils’ka and entered the bar that was their prearranged rendezvous. At that moment he noticed his mobile phone had a message. It must have come while he was in the meeting. He sat at the bar and ordered a large Macallan malt whisky and took two satisfying slugs before he turned back to his phone. He opened the message box and read a brief text. It was from Taras. “Not possible tonight,” it said. Damn him, Logan thought, and he finished the whisky and ordered another.
6
HIDDEN IN THE COPSE, Anna had seen the woman an hour earlier and she immediately thought she looked nervous for an operative. She looked more like a teenage girl than a woman. She picked her up as soon as she’d passed the houses from the roadside and entered the fields behind. Anna then watched her emerge wearing different farming clothes, walk up past the copse, and circle back in the direction of the barn. After that it had gotten too dark to see without the night vision binoculars.
She decided to remain in the copse and wait. The woman, this girl, was definitely the courier, but something was wrong. Despite the obvious nervousness of the woman’s movements, it was the change of clothes and the surreptitious way she moved through the field that gave her away. She must be very inexperienced. Was this the best the agent could do?
The other thing wrong was that she was very late. She should have been here earlier in the day, made the drop, and departed long before there was any chance of a crossover. That was not good, it was highly unprofessional, in fact. There should be no possible identification between the person making the drop and the one doing the pickup. But against that, Anna knew she wouldn’t have long to wait now before she made the pickup. The less time a drop was left in place, the better.
At six thirty she walked carefully over to the side of the copse nearest the barn. There were no lights in that direction, but she knew from the reading on the binoculars that she was just under a quarter of a mile away and only open land with two ditches in between separated her from it. She would give it an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Let the woman make the drop and get clear. Maybe the courier would return by the same route she had come or, more likely, she would return by a different route, perhaps straight down the track that connected the barn with the road. Neither of them should see the other. But Anna decided she would leave at least an hour before she moved.
She listened again. The copse was quiet, the birds had stopped singing, but there was the sound of traffic from the road below. She sat on some dry wood and waited. Once she thought she heard the low growl of a military truck, but it could have been a commercial vehicle.
Just before seven o’clock—she remembered later that she’d checked her watch—Anna heard the sound of a diesel engine starting. It was unmistakably a diesel engine and seemed to be coming from the direction of the barn. Then she saw a bright light coming from the barn and after that she heard the truck engine she’d heard before, the deep, growling truck engine. She was sure now it was a military vehicle. Suddenly the barn was ablaze with light, through what looked like half of an arched doorway. Then she saw a truck’s lights swinging fast off the road and heading up the hill along the track towards the lighted barn. Anna ran out of the copse and, crouching low in the darkness, headed towards the barn. When she was just over a hundred yards away, she sank down into a shallow ditch and caught her breath. As she looked over the lip of the ditch, three things happened simultaneously. She saw a big vehicle—the truck she’d heard—pulling up outside where the blazing light came from the barn. Its engine died, but the headlights stayed on; she heard shouting and curses coming from inside the barn; and finally she heard a shot.
She ran back to the copse. She turned and saw the shadows of men in the truck’s lights. She heard orders being snapped out. Taking the night vision binoculars from her pack, she picked out Russian soldiers. She was certain they were Russian. They were Airborne judging from their caps, but the
