appears to commute to the town of Plesetsky where he is staying in a house. He doesn’t travel every day. Sometimes he overnights at the mine. We don’t know how long these circumstances will continue. Therefore it has been decided that we should act as soon as possible.
‘And so,’ Sumners expressed with theatrical fatigue, as if he had finally reached the point of his presentation. ‘The operation. You will of course present the details but while I’m here I’ll provide the general outline. We are going to pay Mr Binning a visit. We are going to find out where our tile is. We are going to find out as much as we can from Binning about the operation, the players, et cetera, et cetera. And then we are going to terminate Mr Binning.’ Sumners looked directly at Stratton as he said it.
A phone console buzzed and displayed a flashing red light. Mike quickly answered it. ‘Okay,’ he said before replacing the receiver. ‘Your guest has arrived,’ he said to Sumners.
‘You can bring him down.’
Mike excused himself from the briefing.
‘The task is being offered to you, Stratton,’ Sumners said, examining the screen without looking at him. ‘I assume you will take it and do a good job. I think you owe us that much.’
Stratton didn’t respond immediately, not even with his facial expression. His crime as he saw it had been to use government property to try to rescue an old friend. He’d do it again if he had to. Binning stealing the tile and everything else had nothing to do with him. Sumners had chosen to put it in a manner that suited his own mean streak. He was being a prick as usual, and this time for an audience. Yet Stratton realised his own suitability for the operation. For a number of reasons. He knew Binning for a start. Bringing in other players would only increase the number of people who knew about it. This entire affair had to be kept as secret as possible. Yet somewhere within him he knew that wasn’t enough. There had to be something else, some other, more substantial reason why he had been selected. He couldn’t think of it at that moment. He might never know. But of course he would do the op. In fact, he was looking forward to it. As usual Sumners was trying to wind him up and Stratton would not dignify the attempt with any sort of reaction.
But Sumners wasn’t finished yet. He had his little ace to play. ‘You won’t be going alone, of course. I need someone to keep an eye on you.’ The MI6 man looked towards the back of the room, waiting for the visitor to arrive. As he did so Mike stepped through the black curtains and Jason Mansfield walked in behind him. There was an air of authority about him.
Stratton looked around and could not believe his eyes. He looked at the CO for a reaction. The man was far too professional to give him one.
Stratton’s head was filled with questions that he couldn’t ask. Dominated by one in particular: what was a civilian with no experience in this kind of operation doing here? Yet it was pointless to complain. The decision had been made at a very high level. This was an extremely sensitive operation with many potential repercussions if it went wrong. He decided to keep his mouth shut and wait for the rest of the briefing.
Jason came over to Stratton, wearing that same supercilious smile he’d worn when they’d first met. It was as if he had been cleansed of the past and everything was the same between them. ‘Good to see you again, Stratton. You all healed up?’
Stratton remained sitting and looked up at the man. ‘I’m fine,’ he replied dryly.
Jason leaned down and spoke softly. ‘You don’t look pleased to see me.’ He stood upright and said, as if for the room’s benefit, ‘Hopefully this won’t be as vigorous as our last adventure. ’
The man was talking like he’d been doing it for years and that they were old operational buddies.
‘This is the SBS CO,’ Sumners said.
Jason took the CO’s hand and shook it. ‘Good to meet you. I’ve been looking forward to visiting Poole for such a long time and to meet the people who play with the toys I make.’
Stratton cringed. Any positive feelings he’d developed about the man after his actions on the platform withered.
‘Have they sorted you out a room in the mess?’ the CO asked.
‘Yes, thanks. Very comfortable.’
‘Good. Right, then. Shall we get on with the detailed briefing? You both have an early start tomorrow and we’ve got a lot to cover.’
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Sumners said. He took a black woollen overcoat off the back of a chair and pulled it on. ‘Don’t be offended if I don’t wish you luck, Jason.’ He wrapped a scarf around his neck. ‘I never do. Don’t believe in it . . . which is something of a surprise after witnessing Stratton’s activities all these years.’
Jason made a poor effort of trying not to smirk, as if he was in the know.
Sumners nodded farewell to the CO and ops officer and headed for the curtains. Mike escorted him out.
The CO leaned close to Stratton. ‘You have my sympathy,’ he whispered. The comment had a calming effect, no doubt its intention.
‘Gentlemen,’ announced the operations officer. ‘If you would like to be seated, we will proceed.’
Jason sat beside Stratton and took a notebook from a pocket.
The ops officer saw him scribble a couple of lines on a page. ‘You can take notes of the briefing, Mr Mansfield, but nothing leaves this room.’
‘I fully understand, Captain,’ Jason said, with barely a glance at the officer. ‘I have a photographic memory. All I need do is write down the relevant data and then I can immediately dispense with it.’
Stratton glanced round at Mike who had returned in time to hear the comment. The sergeant major grinned broadly at his friend, knowing how painful this was for him. He pointed to Jason and gave the thumbs-up, mouthing the comment ‘Top man.’ He then pointed to Stratton and mimicked a wanking motion.
Stratton faced the front. He felt inclined to agree with his old friend concerning the latter gesture.
14
Stratton sat in the train, looking out of its window as it clattered through a vast countryside, the view an endless portrait of winter, black leafless trees and hedges the only contrast to a frozen white backdrop. Long icicles, pointing at steep angles towards the back of the train, had formed along the outside edge of the glass. The flat and featureless land stretched to the horizon, punctuated occasionally by small rustic villages on one side or the other, some like cosy straw hamlets while others were more modern, concrete and drab. Passing through one small town, Stratton saw a man standing in the road with a goat on a leash. The man watched the train. He looked cold and hungry. It all seemed so isolated and vacant. So many miles of empty and seemingly untouched land.
He had been staring outside for hours and his eyes began to ache. He looked back inside the carriage. It was the image of uncomfortable sparseness, communist-inspired, as if nothing had changed since the fall of the Wall a couple of decades earlier. Short, stubby icicles hung from the centre of the ceiling along the length of the long carriage. A handful of people occupied the pewlike bench seats, each of them silent and unsmiling. A man snored intermittently in the row beyond Stratton’s, an empty vodka bottle in his hands, although he could hardly be heard above the clatter of the wheels. He had joined the train at Moscow with a full litre and within an hour had drunk it and fallen unconscious. He wasn’t the only heavy drinker on the train. Boozing seemed to be a national pastime.
Jason sat across from Stratton, in the corner, staring out of the opposite window. He had kept to himself since they’d caught the plane at Heathrow. Stratton assumed it was a reaction to being ignored since they’d left Poole. But then halfway through the flight he had leaned over and quietly apologised for his stand-offishness and explained why he’d been aloof. Jason had done some kind of one-day MI6 course on travel security as preparation. He had learned how best to act when travelling in potentially hostile environments. Stratton knew what such courses consisted of. They were pretty much advice for beginners - comprehensive but common sense and rather obvious to someone at Stratton’s level. He had on occasion been asked to instruct MI6 and MI5, teaching various operational procedure lessons. Jason would have done the usual hotel, office and home security course. He might have sat through a presentation on anti-surveillance techniques by foot and by vehicle: how to detect if he was being being followed, how to prove it, and what to do and what not to do about it. The man had clearly absorbed it all and was living the role. All he needed now was the experience.
When they’d landed in Moscow his arrogance had extended to taking over the travel procedures by suggesting they move separately. It was as if Stratton had never done it before and Jason had become his mentor.
