read the title, which Anna had already studied while he was displaying his relaxed self-assurance and opening the champagne. “This one, the sheet on the left, is what exists already. Port facilities, refuelling capacity, open water anchorages, quays and dry docks, as well as land transportation to and from the port.” He walked eighteen inches or so to the right and the next page. “And these two,” he said, reading the Russian Cyrillic writing on the legend at the top of the second and third sheet, “these two are the proposed developments, signed and sealed by the Ministry of Defence in Moscow, approved by the navy and the security services, rubber-stamped unseen by the Russian parliament, and ultimately ordered by Czar Vladimir Putin. So what do we see?”
Anna stayed on the stool. She knew Burt and knew she was expected to join the little dramas in which he chose to perform. But to her, the drama of the plans in front of them seemed overblown. They were plans of a relatively minor Russian naval military installation and commercial port on the far side of the Kerch Straits and across the Black Sea, to the east of the Crimea on Russian territory. Novorossiysk was just a Russian port, that was all, across the water from its old possession, Ukraine. She wondered how the plans could possibly have been worth the death of a courier, an innocent, deceived courier at that, not to mention her own near capture and the execution that would inevitably have followed back in Moscow.
“Well?” Burt said almost gleefully.
She got up from the stool now and, walking up to the table, leaned forward to study the drawings.
“They’re architectural engineering plans that show proposed extensions to what’s already there at the port,” she said. “The proposition seems to be a deepening of the harbour. Most of the quays and loading facilities look like they’re being upgraded, there are new oil storage tanks, two new roads leading in to the port, and an upgrade of the rail track.” Anna looked more closely. “I guess it’s an expansion of the port by maybe twenty percent.”
“Exactly. Twenty, maybe thirty, percent,” Burt said. “And that’s not enough, is it?” He beamed at her triumphantly.
“Enough for what?” she said.
But Burt wasn’t going to be drawn on this point, not yet in any case. He ran his finger down the lines of the drawings as if he were studying some old masterpiece and trying to judge its origins. He was a collector of art, mainly modern British art in the past few years. That suited his general Anglophilia, which he had developed over forty years before as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. But at his other homes in the United States—Anna remembered seeing a Picasso sketch hanging in a bathroom, a Turner on a staircase, and one old master she couldn’t recall in a study somewhere that was reputed to have cost Burt sixty-five million dollars.
“Tell me about Novorossiysk, Anna,” he said.
Anna returned to her seat on the stool and gave him a brief description. “It’s a southern port of Russia’s on the Black Sea. A warm-water port, one of very few Russia possesses, and therefore strategically important. Russia’s and, before that, the Soviet Union’s Mediterranean fleet has used it more or less in its present form for more than fifty years, though it was always second to Sevastopol in Ukraine. Sevastopol’s always been the big base. Until the Soviet Union collapsed, Sevastopol had a hundred thousand men stationed there. Now it’s more like forty thousand. The Russian Mediterranean fleet has been largely inactive since the 1990s. Many of its ships are going out of date, rusting away, and being decommissioned. But now Putin wants to expand it again, to patrol the Mediterranean, go up against America’s Sixth Fleet once more. Novorossiysk was—is—mainly a commercial port, with some Russian navy facilities. In the days of the Soviet Union, it was the main exporter from the southern republics. But oil and gas were its main exports. And that’s been on the increase. Oil and gas from the Caspian. Now that’s being diverted into pipelines, so the importance of Novorossiysk will undoubtedly decline. There isn’t much else that Russia exports from there. Some timber, foodstuffs from the southern republics. That’s about it.”
“It’s in decline as a commercial port, then,” Burt said. “And as an alternative? Is it an alternative to the Russian Black Sea fleet’s base in Sevastopol?”
“It could be, but unlikely.”
“After the upgrade that these plans demonstrate, perhaps?”
“Yes, but it would need more development than these plans show. Besides, Sevastopol has a natural deep- water harbour, bays five miles deep. It’s one of the best harbours in the world.”
“Exactly,” Burt said again. “And that’s what makes these plans so interesting. They’re just what I expected.”
Anna got up from the stool again and walked to the far end of the room. She looked out at the Thames through one of the wide panoramic windows, two of which flanked the porthole that was really just for show, it seemed. She began to tot up what Burt had spent on this operation in the previous days: the freighter that was presumably hired, Larry and the others in the boat, a helicopter to Turkey, then the private flight to London. And herself, of course. She didn’t take into account the death of the courier; it was unquantifiable. Yet all this money and the girl’s death had been for a few drawings of port improvements at Novorossiysk. None of it made a great deal of sense to her.
“Larry treat you all right?” Burt said.
“He was on time,” she replied.
“He’d never be late for you, Anna.” Burt grinned. “Even on a windswept beach in the Crimea. None of us would be.”
He seemed to enjoy her coolness, she thought. The perfect complement, perhaps, to his own flamboyance. He’d as good as said so when he’d made her a director of Cougar. As a former KGB colonel in special forces and in the highly secret Department S, she’d caused quite a stir inside Washington’s beltway. Specialist magazines had wanted to write her profile, though largely, it appeared, in order to show pictures of her. Burt paid them not to by taking several large and expensive corporate advertising spots.
“It was a wise move to come out off the beach,” Burt continued. “Much better than risking the border posts.”
Was this remark disingenuous? she wondered. Did he really think she’d have risked so much in order to rendezvous with a boat on hostile territory? She turned towards him, but all she saw was his big beaming expression.
“It was the only choice,” she replied. She looked across the room at him and held his eyes. He looked back at her with a quizzical expression now. “There’s a leak, Burt,” she said. “They were following me from Istanbul. On the ferry. They also knew about the pickup. They had the barn staked out. That’s why the courier killed herself.”
Burt raised his eyes and looked at her. “You didn’t mention this to Larry.”
“No.”
“And you still got the goods,” he said in admiration. He always focused on the positive, sometimes to the point of foolish optimism, she thought. Once again, the courier’s death went unmentioned.
“There’s a leak, Burt, perhaps at Cougar,” she repeated firmly. Then she looked straight into his eyes until he could no longer return her gaze with equanimity.
“They were there? On the boat from Istanbul?” he said, seriously now.
“More important, they were there at the barn. They knew everything about my movements from the start. It was only because they wanted me alive that I got out at all. They could have taken me anytime.”
Burt picked up a phone and immediately connected with a switchboard. “Get me Bob Dupont. In here.” He replaced the phone. “We’ll see what Bob has to say. I had no idea, Anna. This is serious. I’m sorry.”
“Never be sorry,” she said, repeating one of his own maxims.
He grinned at her.
Bob Dupont, Burt’s head of internal security, entered the operations room a few minutes later. Tall, silver haired, his running joke at Cougar was that he was the only person in the company who was older than Burt. He greeted Anna, nodded at Burt, and came over to the table. He looked down at the drawings. Burt poured him a glass of champagne that he didn’t touch. Dupont didn’t drink, Burt knew that perfectly well. Sometimes Anna thought that Burt just liked to have two glasses available for himself, even though he didn’t drink them. Life is about expansion, he liked to say.
“I went to Novorossiysk over forty years ago,” Burt said as Dupont studied the plans. “Twenty-eight years old, just married, and working for the agency.” He grinned at Anna’s questioning look. “Before you were born,” he said to her. “The height of the Cold War.”
“These are what Anna’s returned with?” Dupont asked.
“That’s right,” Burt answered. “And only I knew what the delivery consisted of. Not even Anna.” He walked
