Pandemic

from the doorway of the room. It was an image that he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, would be with him for the rest of his days, no matter what happened now in Italy.

‘No problem,’ he had confirmed. ‘I’ll know him.’

‘Lomas – or the man we believe is Lomas – was spotted eight days ago by a covert operative, one of our watchers, at Rome’s Fiumicino airport,’ explained Giancarlo Perini, a senior operational agent of the SISDE who had flown into Brindisi-Casale an hour earlier by helicopter, specifically to brief Richter.

‘He arrived at the international terminal, Terminal Three. Because he was spotted before he reached passport control, the immigration people were able to record his details. He was travelling on a German passport, in the name of Gunther, and had just arrived on a flight from Geneva. The purpose of his visit, he claimed, was tourism. We checked with Swiss – the airline he was flying with – and learned he has a return ticket to Geneva, due to fly out of Rome in three days. That was when we contacted your Secret Intelligence Service, Mr Simpson.’

Richter glanced over at Simpson and did some swift mental calculations. The timing for this was almost exactly right. As soon as Simpson had been informed by SIS about the possible sighting of Andrew Lomas – who was on the alert list of every Western Intelligence service – he had suddenly, miraculously, changed his mind about Richter’s long-standing request for two weeks’ continuation training on board the Invincible.

‘So where is he now?’ Richter asked, putting the thoughts from his mind.

‘Not too far from here,’ Perini replied, ‘and he’s led us on quite a dance so far. He took a taxi from Fiumicino to the Stazioni Termini – Rome’s main railway station – and there bought a ticket to Naples. One of our men got close enough to him to hear him speaking to the ticket clerk.’

‘Why didn’t he just fly direct to Naples, then?’ Simpson asked.

‘He couldn’t,’ Perini replied. ‘There are no direct flights from Geneva to Naples. They all route through an airport in some other country first, usually Paris or Munich, and our guess is that Lomas didn’t want to risk being spotted either in France or in Germany.’

‘So he’s now in Naples?’

‘No. Let me explain,’ Perini shook his head, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘We got one of our men on to the train that Lomas caught, and briefed watchers to wait for him at Naples. That train makes three stops before it gets there: Latina, Formia and Aversa. Lomas got off at Aversa – the station serving Caserta, a few miles north of Naples. Our man followed him out, and then used his mobile phone to let us know what had happened, but we had nobody waiting at Aversa and the station’s at least a half-hour drive from Naples. That was our mistake.

‘Lomas got into a taxi and our man followed in another, but it was late afternoon and the traffic was very heavy. When he got boxed in, the taxi carrying Lomas slipped away.’

‘We tend to use motorcycles,’ Simpson remarked shortly.

‘So do we,’ Perini replied with a frown, ‘and we had two waiting at the station in Naples, but unfortunately nothing at Aversa. There had been no indication that Lomas realized he was being followed, and we assumed incorrectly that he would proceed to Naples. It was just an unfortunate oversight.’

‘He probably didn’t know he was being followed,’ Richter said sympathetically, ‘but for men like Lomas taking precautions becomes a way of life. He’d probably never buy a ticket to any railway station he was actually intending to use – always for somewhere further down the line, and then get off earlier. So how did you find him again?’ Perini stared at him. ‘You obviously did find him,’ Richter went on, ‘otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here trying to develop a taste for pasta al forno and with a Sea Harrier parked outside that the Royal Navy would quite like to get back safely.’

Perini nodded. ‘Yes, we did find him again. Our man had the registration number of the taxi Lomas hired, and we interviewed its driver. He took his fare to one of the smaller hotels in the centre of Caserta, but when we checked with the hotel reception, nobody resembling Lomas was registered there.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Simpson snorted. ‘As Richter’s already said, Lomas is an accomplished professional. He was a deep-cover illegal in Britain for years, and for at least the last ten of them he was running the head of the Secret Intelligence Service as a source for the SVR. We had no inkling this man even existed until we got to interrogate Malcolm Holbeche. What he certainly isn’t going to do is take a taxi to any hotel that he’s actually staying at. So where did you pick him up?’

‘We had a bit of luck then,’ Perini admitted. ‘We circulated all the hotels in Caserta, searching for a guest who looked like Lomas or who was using the name Gunther. As we had expected, that produced no results, and neither did canvassing taxi drivers and car-hire firms. But, like you, we have watch teams permanently in place around all the foreign embassy buildings in Italy, and three days ago—’

‘Don’t tell me Lomas actually went to an East European Embassy?’ Simpson interrupted.

Perini shook his head. ‘No, and we didn’t expect him to either. But we did wonder if he was in Italy to receive instructions, or perhaps to deliver a report, so we blanketed the whole area. We positioned pursuit crews – on motorcycles, Mr Simpson – outside all buildings known to be used by East European officials and businesses in the Caserta, Naples and Salerno areas. Each operative was briefed to follow any known or suspected intelligence officer, to stay out of sight, and to report any contact with anyone who looked anything like Lomas.

‘For the first few days we used up a lot of petrol and covered a lot of kilometres, and discovered absolutely nothing that we didn’t already know. And then, as I said, three days ago we got lucky. One of our watchers followed a mid-level consular official, believed to be an SVR agent, to a restaurant on the eastern outskirts of Salerno. He went inside and bought a drink at the bar, and appeared to be waiting for someone. Our operative followed him into the restaurant, bought herself a drink and—’

‘A woman?’ Simpson asked, recalling the motley collection of hairy-arsed men employed in the same role by MI5 and to a lesser extent by SIS.

Perini nodded. ‘We have always used women in preference to men. They tend to be more observant, and they can get into most places a lot easier, and with far fewer questions asked, than any man. They are also rarely perceived as a threat. Anyway, our operative sat and sipped her drink and waited. About fifteen minutes later a man entered the restaurant and walked straight over to the bar. He greeted the consular official like an old friend, then they had a drink together and a light lunch.’

‘But it wasn’t Lomas,’ Richter said.

Perini looked surprised. ‘You’re quite right. It wasn’t Lomas. How did you know?’

‘I didn’t,’ Richter said, ‘but from what we know of the man, he always tries to use cut-outs. My guess is that the man the official was meeting was just a go-between sent by Lomas to receive a verbal briefing, or whatever, on his behalf.’

The Italian nodded again. ‘We don’t know what information was exchanged but, when the two men parted, our operative decided to follow the unknown male. It was a good decision – he climbed into a car and drove off, heading east. All the motorcycles our people use are fitted with long-range tanks, which is just as well because he kept on going for over two hundred kilometres. He finally led her to an isolated villa just outside a town called Matera. That’s on the main road between Taranto and Salerno, and about one hundred and twenty kilometres – around seventy-five miles – west of Brindisi. As the man went inside, she stationed herself in a position from which she could cover the front of the villa. She stayed there, tucked behind some bushes on the hillside, for the rest of the day.

‘She had called in a progress report as soon as she reached the restaurant, and another when she got to the villa, but neither her description of the man she’d followed nor the address of the villa meant anything to us, so we did nothing from this end. All our watchers use the latest surveillance equipment, including binoculars fitted with integrated digital cameras. Because she was using one of these devices, as dusk fell she was able to take two photographs through an uncurtained window of the villa.’

Perini opened a manila envelope and slid a number of large black-and-white photographs onto the table in front of him. He separated them into piles, then passed two pictures each to Richter and Simpson.

‘These are enlarged copies of the two photographs she was able to get.’

Richter looked down at them and saw, for the first time, a picture of the face that still haunted his dreams.