Overkill

‘Who was Newman’s deputy?’

‘Andrew Payne. He’s alive and well and currently running Moscow Station pending the appointment of a new head.’

Simpson digested this for a moment or two. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Tell me about Sosnogorsk, starting with wherever the hell it is.’

‘It’s a small Russian town in the Komi region, next to a slightly bigger town called Ukhta. It’s about four hundred miles almost due east of Arkhangel’sk. It lies to the west of the Severnyy Urals, close to the main railway line from Konosha up to—’

‘I’m not going there for a bloody holiday, Richter. Get to the point.’

‘You asked. It’s nowhere. It gets a nil return in the BID (CIS), and as far as we know it has no intelligence significance whatsoever.’

‘Then what was Payne doing there?’

Richter shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The only installation of interest in that general area is the Large Phased-Array Radar at Pechora, but that’s about a hundred and fifty miles to the north-east. He wouldn’t have been able to leave Sosnogorsk and get up there without attracting attention.’

Simpson picked up his pen and carefully screwed the top back on. Then he unscrewed it and aimed the nib at Richter. ‘Perhaps he did.’

‘Did what?’ Richter asked.

‘Attract attention. Perhaps that’s why they snatched Newman.’

‘You’ve never been in the field, have you?’ Richter asked. In fact, Simpson wasn’t an intelligence professional at all. Prior to his appointment to head the Foreign Operations Executive, he had been a mandarin, a Civil Service high-flyer. Initially, his lack of a ‘proper’ intelligence background had caused some resentment in both FOE and SIS, but his obvious competence, and completely ruthless approach to his work, had quickly silenced his detractors.

‘When I said Payne wouldn’t be able to leave Sosnogorsk without attracting attention,’ Richter continued, ‘what I meant was that he wouldn’t have been able to leave Sosnogorsk at all. He would have had one or more minders assigned to him to ensure that he only saw what the Russians wanted him to see – no more and no less. He wouldn’t even have been able to leave his hotel room without the dezhurnaya reporting it. You can forget about glasnost when it comes to foreigners wandering about in Russia, and especially anywhere out in the bundu. The locals are universally suspicious. Take my word for it, Payne didn’t leave Sosnogorsk.’

‘So what’s your suggestion?’ Simpson asked, looking irritated.

Richter shook his head again. ‘I haven’t really got one, but I do think the visit was significant, and I don’t think it had anything to do with Pechora. The other thing that bothers me is what he was actually doing, as opposed to what he was supposed to be doing. According to the Moscow Station reports, he went there as a translator to some European businessmen.’

‘So?’

‘Payne speaks passable Russian. The businessmen were principally British, but there were two Frenchmen and one German in the party. According to his file, Payne doesn’t speak French or German to anything like the level he would have needed to translate for them.’

Simpson played with his pen for a minute or so, then spoke. ‘I agree. I don’t buy Payne going out as a translator. As Deputy Head of Station he shouldn’t even have left Moscow. Get on to SIS and find out what he was really up to.’

Anton Kirov

Once again, Captain Bondarev had had to concede that Zavorin’s men certainly knew their trade. The entry to Varna had been as smooth and professional as his own crew could have achieved, and the loading of the cargo had been accomplished in a much shorter time than he had expected. The Anton Kirov had two holds; a large one aft, designed for bulk or loose cargo, and a smaller, secure, stowage forward. The special cargo – just one large and heavy box – fitted without difficulty into the forward hold. Bondarev noted that Zavorin had remained on the foredeck throughout loading and had personally supervised the entire operation. Once the cargo hatches had been secured, Zavorin had telephoned the bridge, ordered Bondarev to put to sea immediately, and had then disappeared for over an hour. Bondarev supposed, correctly, that he had been inspecting the new cargo.

With the Anton Kirov heading south again, and Varna becoming only a smudge on the coastline, Zavorin knocked on the captain’s door and entered without waiting for an answer. He carried two glasses and a bottle of single malt Scotch whisky. Bondarev looked somewhat quizzically at the bottle.

‘I drink vodka,’ Zavorin said, with a smile, ‘but not from choice. Now this—’ he raised the bottle to the light ‘—is a real drink.’ He put down the glasses, poured two large measures and handed one to Bondarev. ‘As the British say, “Cheers”,’ Zavorin said, and took a sip.

Bondarev sipped, nodded appreciatively, then put his glass down and looked over at the Spetsnaz colonel. ‘So, you have your special equipment. Now where are we going?’

‘As planned, Captain,’ Zavorin replied, ‘we will route through the Bosphorus and probably call at Piraeus. I am not sure we will have time to make Tunis, but we will see. A lot depends upon our departure date from Greek waters.’

He paused and looked thoughtfully at his glass. ‘The deadline is our arrival date at Gibraltar, and I am waiting to have that signalled to me. My guess is we will be instructed to arrive there in about a week.’ Bondarev nodded, mentally calculating times and speeds. He picked up his glass again and sipped.

In the forward hold, one of the Spetsnaz officers, who held a degree in electronic engineering from a West German university, checked that the coaxial cable from the satellite dish on the bridge roof was securely attached to the high-frequency DBS-band receiver. The dish had been aligned and a test message received from the satellite within fifteen minutes of the Anton Kirov’s arrival alongside the loading jetty.

The officer made a final check of all the connections, then snapped shut his precision toolkit and nodded to two troopers standing beside him. They picked up and replaced the side panel of the large crate and then dropped the lid back into position. The device was functioning normally, and could be safely left unattended until it reached its final destination.

London

The Foreign Operations Executive officially didn’t exist, and was officially nothing to do with SIS, although in reality its sole function was to carry out deniable operations on its behalf. The Secret Intelligence Service, popularly and incorrectly known as MI6 – also didn’t officially exist, which meant that Richter worked for a non- existent organization which worked for another non-existent organization. It was no wonder the manager looked at him quizzically every time he walked into the bank.

MI6 was effectively created in July 1909 on the recommendation of a sub-committee of Haldane’s Committee of Imperial Defence. The intention had been to set up a single Secret Service Bureau, but this proved unworkable, and by 1910 the present division into MI5 and SIS was already well established. MI5, more properly known as the Security Service, was charged with counter-espionage within the United Kingdom, while SIS was responsible for running espionage operations abroad.

Since 1910, both organizations have evidenced a marked lack of co-operation with each other, which has on occasion degenerated into open hostility. It was this hostility which was responsible – at least in part – for the creation of FOE, as a separate and secret executive arm of SIS. Giving FOE the dirty jobs enabled SIS to deny its involvement if an operation turned sour, and didn’t give MI5 anything to get its teeth into.

In 1994, SIS moved from Century House, an anonymous twenty-three-storey block near the Lambeth North underground station and known to almost everyone as ‘Spook House’, into a new building on the Thames at Vauxhall Cross, the avant-garde design of which has prompted some unkind nicknames – ‘The Aztec Palace’ is perhaps the least offensive. Like FOE, entry is strictly controlled at Vauxhall Cross, and a similar clear desks policy is applied. SIS also operates a ‘no talking in the lift’ rule, just in case the