Address?
He gave him details of a private residence in Barnes, London, omitting that it was an operational cover premise and run by a young woman who would collect his mail and forward it on to a post office box run by MI6.
Contact details?
A BlackBerry cell number and e-mail address were supplied. He added that he was traveling on business at present in Europe and would not be back in London for several weeks. Could all documentation requiring signatures be couriered to the Hotel Otrada in Ukraine?
Of course. They can be there tomorrow, and subject to our receiving them a day later, the company’s memorandum and articles of association and certificate of incorporation can be drawn up the same day.
The partner explained that he’d need a?1,000 down payment to be formally engaged and gave Will the firm’s bank details. The man sounded delighted that he’d secured a new client and concluded that he was sure this was the start of a long business relationship.
Will ended the call and got back onto the Net to find another website. Thirty minutes later, he’d spoken to a manager at Servcorp, a company specializing in providing office space and other facilities, including telephone receptionists and individual phone lines with divert-to-cell capabilities. After agreeing on a monthly price for the deal and promising to send copies of the company documentation once it came through in the next few days, Will gave the woman his bank details. Thomas Eden Limited now had an address in Canary Wharf, London, and would seem legitimate to anyone who checked up on the company.
He made a final call to the Hotel Otrada, advised the receptionist that he’d be back at the hotel the next evening, and asked if there was anyone he could speak to about getting some business cards made. After being transferred to the concierge, he was told that it would come with a charge but was no problem. Will gave the man the company name, the Canary Wharf address, and all the contact details. Design? Will didn’t care. Maybe plain white card with blue lettering and numbers.
Pouring himself a mug of black coffee, he turned off the computer and stretched his aching back muscles. He swiveled his chair to face the sumptuous bedroom. Five-star hotel rooms. He’d stayed in thousands of them but hated them all because they reminded him of his transitory existence and dislocation from a normal life.
He lay down on the double bed. In two hours, he needed to leave. Maybe that would give him enough time to get the rest he needed, though he didn’t know if he could sleep. He moved his arm to the empty side of the bed, smoothed his hand over the quilt, and let it rest there.
P etrin Gardens was one of Prague’s largest parks and usually very popular, but now it seemed almost empty of people. It was dusk, a thin layer of snow carpeted the park’s ground and trees, and the temperature was well below zero. Will walked through the place, using his BlackBerry sat nav, until he found the lamppost. He checked his watch. Twenty-three minutes ahead of schedule. Looking ahead along the tree-lined footpath, he saw that it curved out of view approximately two hundred feet away. Checking his watch again, he waited for the second hand to reach 12 before beginning to walk at a normal pace. He turned the corner and saw a prominent tree. Reaching it, he stopped and looked at the second hand. It had taken him fifty-three seconds to walk the distance. Turning toward the hidden lamppost, he wrapped his arms over his chest, shivered a little from the cold, and waited.
Brush contacts rarely took place with people you knew. Today, Will had no idea if his contact was male or female, young or old. For that reason, timing had to be precise down to the second.
Alistair had been exact with his instructions: 1639hrs, Latitude 50?4'58.73'N, Longitude 14?23'58.19'E.
He looked around. The park was heavily wooded; no one else was on the path. He stayed like that for twenty minutes, only occasionally checking the time. But as the moment to move grew closer, he kept his eyes fixed on the illuminated surface of the watch.
Thirty seconds before moving.
Twenty.
Ten.
Now.
He moved, resisting the urge to walk faster. Nearing the bend in the path, he deeply hoped that the contact would be experienced in this drill and that he or she had remembered to synchronize their watch with the online atomic clock before coming here. Turning the corner, he saw that there were three people on the path, two quite close to each other, the other closer to him. He ignored them for now, focusing only on maintaining normal speed, knowing that keeping that pace was extremely hard to do when you’re conscious of it.
He reached the nearest person but made no attempt to get close to him. Too bad if the man was the contact; he was beyond the lamppost and out of position. But the two people ahead of him were not. He tried to establish if they were together but couldn’t be sure. The darkness hid their features.
He got closer and could now see that the two people were not side by side as he’d previously thought; one was slightly ahead of the other.
Thirty feet from the lamppost. The man in front was too close to it. But maybe he’d got his speed wrong by half a mile an hour. Soon he was beyond the lamppost and walking toward Will. They passed each other. Nothing happened. Will kept walking.
He was ten feet from the lamppost.
So was the old woman whose features were now vivid under the light’s glow.
Older people walked at a more consistent speed than the young. They were a good choice for brush contacts.
He kept to the right-hand side of the track so that he’d be passing directly alongside the lamppost. By contrast, the woman was on a route that would take her a body width away from it.
Five feet. The woman’s arms were by her sides.
Three feet.
The lamppost. They were directly alongside each other. The woman lifted her arm ever so slightly. A tiny package was in her hand.
Then it was in Will’s hand.
Will kept walking as he secreted the alias passport containing the Russian multientry visa into a pocket.
O ne hour later, he entered Bunkr Parukarka bar. It had been difficult to find, hidden away in Prague, and as he walked down the winding metal staircase to the converted 1950s nuclear bunker, he wished he’d not worn a suit. The walls were covered with ghetto graffiti, industrial rock blared out of the windowless basement bar, and twenty-something clubbers eyed him with looks of suspicion, no doubt wondering if he was a secret policeman.
He ordered a beer and took a seat at a low table. The place was not full-it was too early in the evening- though it still felt claustrophobic and intense. After removing his tie and jacket and undoing a couple of his top shirt buttons, he stretched his legs out, took a big gulp of beer, ruffled his hair, and tried to do anything to make him look unlike an on-duty cop.
Looking around, he wondered why Krystof had chosen this place to meet. The former Bezpecnostni Informacni Sluzba intelligence officer, now private investigator, was in his midforties and would have as little in common with these kinds of bars as Will.
Krystof was five minutes late. That wasn’t unusual; sometimes he could be hours late. At the far end of the cavern, a band was setting up its instruments. Judging by the look of them, whatever they were going to play later that night would be loud and angst-ridden. Will took another swig of beer and looked at the groups of people scattered around the bar. Some were long-haired Goths, others bohemian slackers; all of them looked totally comfortable in their surroundings. He’d never experienced that kind of belonging or cultural rebellion, and for a moment he felt envious of the strangely pretty people around him. But then he wondered if he did have something in common with these men and women. Perhaps they were happy here because normal places made them deeply unhappy.
Krystof emerged at the bottom of the staircase, dressed in a worn brown suit with his tie loosened and top button open. Cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, he stopped at the bar and leaned across it to say something to the barman before walking over to Will’s table. Though the bunker’s lighting was dim, Will could see that the Czech was unshaven and had dark bags under his eyes.
Will stood, held out his hand, and said in English, “We could have met somewhere else.”
Krystof shook his hand. “Where’s the fun in that, David?”
