along their projected flightpath. The order to scramble Typhoons from RAF Leuchars would only be given when the planes entered Britain’s ADIZ — and if the Recognised Air Picture ever reached Air Command at High Wycombe, something that Marchant hoped Myers was about to prevent.
He looked at his watch again, and then his mobile rang. It was Myers, unbearably nervous, calling from an unknown mobile number.
‘It’s done,’ he said. ‘You’ve got two minutes.’
78
Thirty thousand feet above a roiling sea, two MiG-35s turned sharply to the south, their cockpits winking in the evening sun. As they began their descent towards the waves far below, both pilots knew that they were taking an unprecedented gamble, but they had been assured their presence would not attract the usual RAF escort. So far they had been left alone, apart from requests for identification from commercial air-traffic control on the ‘guard’ frequency, which they routinely ignored, a brief visit from two Norwegian F-16s, and a mid-air rendezvous with an Ilyushin IL-78 refuelling tanker.
At 1,500 feet they levelled out and took another, far graver risk. Within the next five seconds they would be entering Britain’s national air space, where they could be legitimately shot down. They set a course for Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, twelve nautical miles away. Then, after wishing each other luck, both pilots hit their afterburners and accelerated to Mach 1.
In Alnwick, on the other side of the country, the Aerospace Battle Manager on duty at RAF Boulmer froze as he watched the two primary traces on his radar. The Russians were ten miles off the north-west coast, and closing. He had already rung through to Air Command at High Wycombe when the planes first entered the UK’s ADIZ, picked up by the radar head at Benbecula off North Uist, but his was a lone voice. The Russians weren’t showing up on Air Command’s real-time Recognised Air Picture for the sector. On his word, High Wycombe had brought two Typhoon crews at RAF Leuchars to cockpit readiness, but they were reluctant to scramble them until they had more concrete data.
‘The skies above the Outer Hebrides are showing clear,’ his opposite number had insisted.
Clear? He smacked the side of his radar screen in frustration. What the hell was going on? A terrorist strike? Two pilots trying to defect? It didn’t make any sense. He was used to long-range Russian bombers — most recently a TU160 Blackjack — keeping him busy on their eleven-hour flights around the Arctic. Usually, they would head for the North Pole and then hang a left just outside the Scandie’s ADIZ radar coverage and head down between Greenland and Iceland, skirting Britain’s ADIZ.
Both sides knew the game. The Russian pilots liked to test the range of Britain’s radars at Saxa Vord, Benbecula and Buchan, waiting for a response, which would often be intentionally delayed to confuse them. Moscow was also keen to measure the Quick Reaction Alert Force’s response, and the RAF was happy for the practice, shaving a few seconds off every time. There was no real animosity. (On one infamous occasion, an RAF pilot had held up a Page 3 girl in the cockpit, prompting his Russian counterpart to moon from a window of his bomber in response.)
But this time was different.
79
‘Any sight of the Sibe?’ a birder in a bobble hat asked no one in particular. The men, more than fifty of them, and a handful of women, were standing in the evening light on a cliff in Stornoway, looking down across Broad Bay, where a group of seabirds were riding on the water. Some of the birders were using digiscopes mounted on tripods, others were looking through telescopes. All had binoculars — Zeiss, Swarovksi, Leica, Opticron. Marchant had given a precise grid reference of where the bird had last been seen, knowing that the modern twitcher’s armoury also included hand-held GPS units.
‘Not a squawk,’ someone else said. ‘Time to dip out. They’re all common eiders.’
‘And no sign of the stringer who phoned in the sighting.’
‘I saw someone earlier with a nine iron.’
‘The closest we’re going to get to a Steller is in the pub. Anyone coming?’
‘Hold on,’ an older man said, adjusting his binoculars.
‘What are you seeing?’
‘Christ. To the right of the big rock, two o’clock.’
As one, the group of birders raised their magnified gazes out to sea.
‘What the — ’
Three seconds later, the two MiG-35s swept in low over their heads, forcing the group to duck and cover their ears. A couple of them remained upright, taking photos as the planes disappeared into the distance.
‘No sign of any Steller’s eiders, but we’ve just been buzzed by another Sibe — a brace of MiG-35s!! Beautiful-looking birds, particularly in supersonic flight. Take a butcher’s at the photos below if you don’t believe me.’
Marchant read the chatroom message, smiled and sat back, glancing around the Internet café in Victoria. On his walk over from Vauxhall he had been aware of a tail, possibly two, but he had no desire to shake them off. He thought at first that they were Russian, but then began to think they were American: the dispatch cyclist, the woman at the back of the 436 bendy bus, a tourist taking photos on the north towpath. Either way, they were too thorough to be Moroccan, and it would have taken hours to lose them. Besides, their presence was reassuring, evidence he was attracting attention, arousing suspicion.
He wasn’t sure if it was the Bombardier he had drunk at the Morpeth Arms on the way, or a sense of professional satisfaction, but he felt a wave of happiness pass through him as he stared at the photograph on the computer screen. It was a good one, visual proof that he had done what had been asked of him. He was tempted to intervene, but he knew that he should let the web take its own viral course. The pilots would already have reported back, and Primakov would be relieved that he had passed his final test.
Then he thought again about the doubters in Moscow. According to Fielding, Primakov’s superiors would be analysing his every move. If they had been listening in on his last fateful meeting with Prentice, they would know he was about to resign. But had they heard? And was that enough? An MI6 agent on the eve of defection would be keen to embarrass the Service as much as possible. Marchant didn’t know how or when Primakov intended to exfiltrate him, just that it would happen quickly. Primakov had promised a heads-up if he could manage it. Marchant realised how impatient he had become, how keen he was to meet with Dhar, talk about their father. The waiting game had gone on long enough.
He sat forward, copied the image of the MiGs and attached it to an email. Then he sent it to as many news desks as he could remember from his brief stint with I/OPS, writing ‘MiG-35s over Scotland’ in the subject box. He wasn’t as careful as he would normally be on the Internet, but that was the point. He wanted to force Primakov’s hand, get himself out of the country as soon as possible. Dhar wouldn’t wait for him for ever.
After he was done, he glanced at his watch. Lakshmi had asked him on a date. The invitation bore all the hallmarks of a trap, but he had to go. He hadn’t seen her since the Madurai débâcle. He just hoped nobody would get hurt.
80
Fielding stood at the window of his office and looked towards Westminster. A tugboat was towing a string of refuse barges down-river. He knew it was a gamble, but he couldn’t afford anyone to suspect that Marchant’s actions, whatever he was up to, had been sanctioned by him. If the Russians detected Fielding’s touch on the tiller,
