The Blind Spy

warmth on the side of his face. “Then I’ll stay, too,” he said. “Until it’s finished. We’ll take our chances together.”

She studied his face. It was a new experience, to feel a man looking at her when he couldn’t see her with his eyes. She felt the novelty of being next to a man who didn’t see how she looked but only felt her as a woman through some power that was inexplicable to her. The feeling was good and it made her strong. Her usual distrust of a man’s motives in her presence was entirely absent. It was as if the twenty-odd years since their last meeting at an orphanage in Damascus had never existed. A feeling of comfort, simplicity, inevitability even, invaded her mind and she didn’t resist it. There was nothing about Balthasar that aroused her suspicions or defensiveness. It was the most natural feeling she ever remembered happening, more so even than with Finn, whose early relationship with her had been one of recklessness. There was no recklessness about sitting beside this man. She felt that they had been destined to meet again.

“Why, Balthasar?” she asked him. “Why now? After doing so much destruction to Russia’s enemies, why did you decide to come over now?”

He didn’t speak for a moment. Then he said, “The necessities of acting for oneself develop only over time. At first, events and other people dominate our lives. It was the same with you, I believe. We do a job—it doesn’t matter what the job is, even. It’s a life moulded to other people’s rules. And, like you, I was good, very good, at my job. That made me question it less. And I didn’t stop to ask whether I believed in what I was doing. The job was too exciting,” he admitted. He bent his head. “That perhaps is the most shameful excuse, the compulsion of excitement. But when you’ve done the same thing for many years, it suddenly loses the compulsion. You become a machine. If you’re lucky or merely not entirely stupid, you begin to question the machinelike qualities of who you’ve become. Suddenly, it’s as if the child in you returns, the voice that speaks for itself and not for others. You want that again and not the machine.” He turned towards her. “And then treason is easy,” he said. “People become traitors to their country for many reasons; excitement plays a part in that, too. But with me it was the futility, the futility of doing something I didn’t want to do and had never really wanted to do. I will do this one thing for the West, be a witness to what is happening here. But I’m not changing sides, just being on my own side.”

He stopped and by now the sun had broken over the bays below them.

“You have a plan, Anna. I know it,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell me what it is or do I have to tell you?”

She laughed. “I’m sure you have a very good idea, Balthasar.”

“You’re right.”

“If the Russians are planning to blow up one of their own ships, why don’t we do it, too?” she said. “But with a ship that really matters to them.” She stood up. “It’s time to get some sleep. We only have a few hours now. Then we’ll explain to Larry and the others. After that I have to make everything right with Taras. I need his help.”

They descended into the canyon along a pathless scree slope that finally brought them up above the camp and then followed the stream until they saw tents. But it was Larry who saw them first and who looked with alarm at the presence of Balthasar.

“It’s okay, Larry,” she said. “We’ll all work together until we get out of here. Where’s the Cougar?”

“It’s to the west of the Crimea. About sixty miles away. Along this coast between here and Odessa.”

“Good. Wake me in a couple of hours.” She looked at Balthasar. “You can sleep where you wish,” she said.

The invitation wasn’t lost on him or on Larry, who turned away in confusion and perhaps frustration.

“I know,” Balthasar stated.

Anna laughed. “Of course. Of course you know,” she said.

Balthasar followed her into her tent.

After two hours, Larry called through the flap of the tent and she emerged first. Balthasar followed a while later. Lucy and Adam were making breakfast over a charcoal fire, reduced to ashes in order to limit the smoke. They ate in silence and then Anna laid out the plan.

“This depends on Taras?” Larry said and failed to conceal his deep scepticism.

“It does,” she replied impassively.

“You trust him that much?”

“I believe what he says about this, yes.”

“Why?”

“His interests coincide with ours. If he helps us, we help him. Don’t forget, he has to believe what I told him, too. There’s a mutual gain.”

“Well, okay,” Larry said. “We don’t have nearly enough ammunition. Not for what you’re planning.”

“I think plenty will become available,” she replied.

34

AT FIVE MINUTES PAST TWO on the morning of May 1, when darkness was reaching its greatest intensity over the sea, the American frigate Lafayette was exactly fifty miles to the west of the Pride of Corsica and on a bearing of thirty-nine degrees. The engines were now idle and rubber boats were being lowered from stanchions on the deck into the calm waters. In each boat there were eight marine commandos and there were five boats in all. Four helicopters waited, with airborne commandos milling around them, waiting themselves for orders to board. They would leave when the boats were well on their way.

The majority of the boats were manned by British Special Boat Service teams and it was the British who had the command of the operation in a compromise between Moscow and Washington. One boat was under the individual control of Russian special forces and another under American control, but the operation was planned by the British and all were agreed that the British should command the assault, from the sea and the air. At sixty knots—which it was agreed could be achieved in the calm waters—the boats would reach the Pride of Corsica in just under an hour. The helicopters’ departure was timed to be ten minutes before the boats reached the target vessel and the assault would come from the sea and air simultaneously. Three boats were to approach the starboard side of the target, drawing any fire in the priceless seconds before they boarded. The other two would remain out of sight and below radar and approach the port side as the choppers swooped in. The plan was to split the defenders’ attention three ways.

The boats began their rapid passage across the black waters, planing at speeds that sometimes went over the required sixty knots and sometimes under, but always maintained as close to the average they were aiming for as possible. When they judged they were within ten minutes of the strike, there would be a radio call to the Lafayette and the helicopters would leave.

The British teams were made up mainly of M Squadron members, the SBS maritime counterterrorism squadron, of whom the Black Group provided one officer and three men and there were two members of 14 Intelligence Unit, briefed on what to look for, assuming the assault was successful. They were all trained in multiple weapons use and hand-to-hand fighting at the highest level and were all practitioners of Brazilian jujitsu.

It was two days after the new moon, and the darkness and below-the-radar approach of the rubber boats enabled them to reach within two hundred yards of the Pride of Corsica before anyone onboard the ship saw them. The boats swerved violently in seesaw motions over the remaining distance to avoid providing a steady target, and as soon as they’d drawn aside—so far without a shot being fired—pulleyed abseil equipment was fired over the decks of the vessel and the first four-man team shot to the deck level. The other two boats attacked simultaneously from the port side and then the helicopters were heard and the deck was suddenly flooded with intense spotlights that blinded the defenders and left the attackers for the moment in shadow.

Lines fell from the helicopters and marines abseiled down in seconds. The defenders had drawn towards the bow of the ship, up towards the bridge, when the helicopter and boat teams opened an intense burst of fire that