The Fox

by Frederick Forsyth

  But he had used a standard Soviet infantry rifle. Since then, impressive advances have been made in sniper rifles and the latest, the Orsis T-5000, can bring down a target which to the naked eye is out of sight. The one Misha chose was carefully packed under his personal supervision, with scope-sight and ammunition, ready to be transmitted by diplomatic bag, unexaminable by British customs and lead-lined in case of X-ray cameras used by Britain’s MI5, to the Russian embassy in London.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE TWO RUSSIAN sleeper agents did not need to meet. One was the meeter and greeter and host at the safe house, a rented flat in the suburban town of Staines. The other was the scout and guide.

  Misha flew in from Poland on a Polish passport, perfect in every detail. Speaking with a Slavic accent and hailing from a fellow member of the European Union, there was no hold-up at Heathrow. At customs, his valise was not even examined.

  If it had been opened, the customs officer would hardly have been alerted. A tourist and keen birdwatcher would have brought with him rustic clothing in camouflage design, scrim netting, hiking boots and a water canteen. Several bird books and binoculars completed the disguise of a harmless twitcher. But it all went through untouched.

  Outside the custom hall, in the concourse, the greeter was waiting in the right jacket and tie, with the right meaningless exchange of phrases. And his car was in the short-stay car park. The greeter was, to all intents and purposes, a British citizen with flawless English. Only in the moving car with the windows closed did the two speak Russian. Misha was installed in his Staines apartment within two hours of landing.

  An hour later the greeter had phoned the headquarters of Russian TV, the English-language broadcaster of pro-Russian propaganda, spoken to the right technician and used the right sentence. At the embassy, Stepan Kukushkin was informed the shooter was in place, waiting for his rifle. Using the usual diplomatic codes, he in turn informed Yevgeni Krilov of the safe arrival of the killer. Misha had been told not to leave his flat, which he had no intention of doing, as he was watching football on TV.

  The scout did not have such a frictionless routine. He motored out to Chandler’s Court to see how best he might infiltrate the sniper into the forest. Cruising past the barred entrance, he saw the barrier rise to permit the entry of a pantechnicon bearing the livery of a well-known removals company. This intrigued him. Who was moving? One of the chemists in the government laboratories, or someone from the manor house?

  He spent the night at his own home two counties away, but was back at sunrise, on foot with car parked out of sight. Another huge removals van, same company but different number plate, was easing out of the estate on to the road through the village. He ran for his car and caught up with the lorry as it turned on to the M40 motorway, heading north. He followed it through Oxford, then broke off, drove back south and reported to his handler.

  The following day, the Russians got lucky. A third pantechnicon came out of the estate and also headed north. This time, it was followed. At the first pitstop for the truck drivers, at a motorway service station, a radio-tracker device was attached under a rear mudguard, undetected.

  It led them on an exhausting 450-mile haul to the wilds of Inverness-shire in the Scottish Highlands, and to the sprawling estate of Castle Craigleven. Through the usual cut-outs, the Moscow agents reported back to Stepan Kukushkin. He realized that, by the grace of a deity in whom he did not believe, the Kremlin’s operation had been saved by the skin of its teeth. The birds had flown, but at least he knew where they had gone.

  With some relief, he was able to tell his superior, Krilov, that he had caused his agent to scout the Chandler’s Court site just in time to spot the departure of the target, and he was happy to claim credit for having ascertained where the boy and his entourage had gone. Far from being cancelled, Misha’s operation would be only slightly delayed.

  Kukushkin’s territory was the entire United Kingdom but his only permanent operation in Scotland was centred on the Royal Navy nuclear submarine base at Faslane on the river Clyde, but that was nowhere near Inverness. However, tourists from the south visited the Highlands and the sleeper he was using as his scout would have to join them. The man was authorized immediately to purchase a camper van sufficient for two. That at least would avoid sudden hotel bookings in a landscape where strangers might be noticed.

  Two days later, the Rezident of the SVR had the package containing the sniper rifle delivered to Misha. The scout had introduced himself at the Staines rented flat and both scout and sniper set off for Inverness.

  For safety, Misha did not do any driving. He had no British licence. The scout, whose British name was Brian Simmons, ostensibly a freelance taxi driver based in London, had impeccable paperwork and drove all the way. He clocked just over 500 miles and took thirty hours, including a night in a roadside lay-by.

  It was on a bright mid-October morning that the harmless-seeming camper van entered the Craigleven estate and they saw the roofs of the castle. Now, Misha took over. He was concerned only with distances and angles. Two public roads traversed the estate and they motored down them both, examining the castle from all angles. It was clear the south wing was inhabited by guests.

  There were living rooms on the ground floor and on the south face picture windows offering access to a spread of lawns. These ended with a near-precipice where the ground fell away to a deep glen with a stream at the bottom. Beyond the burn the ground rose again to towering, forest-clad hills. The valley was, at a point opposite the lawns, a thousand yards wide.

  Misha knew already where he would have to establish his invisible sniper nest: on the face of the mountain opposite the lawns and the bedroom windows three floors above them. Sooner or later, a gangling blond boy would appear at one of the windows … and die. Or he would join others on the lawns to take a coffee in the sun … and die.

  The Orsis T-5000 is a remarkable weapon, capable of blowing away a human skull at 2,000 yards with its .338 Lapua Magnum rounds. In the calm conditions of the glen, with almost no windage, a mere 1,000 yards offered a no-miss guarantee.

  Misha ordered his fellow Russian to drive on, round the curves and out of sight of the castle. In a lay-by he stepped out of the camper van with his equipment and literally disappeared into the forest across the valley.

  The sniper had no intention that anyone would see him from that point. He would live in the forest for as long as it took, something to which he was wholly accustomed. In the van he had changed into his streaked camouflage one-piece coveralls. In a sack at the small of his back were iron rations, a canteen of water and multitool cutters. A combat knife in camouflaged sheath was strapped to one thigh.

  His rifle was shrouded in camouflaged sackcloth and his pockets held spare ammunition, though he had no doubt he would need no more than a single shot, and that was in the breech already. He had not washed, nor cleaned his teeth, for two days. In his calling, soap and dentifrice can kill you. They stink.

  The surface of his uniform was covered in small cloth loops. These would be studded with sprigs of surrounding foliage when he had chosen his LUP – the lying-up position from which a sniper fires. He began to move silently through the forest towards the face of the mountain he knew overlooked the ravine facing the south wing of Castle Craigleven.

  The agent who had driven the motorhome up from the south watched his charge disappear into the forest and could do no more. The phone once more cutting out intermittently, he informed Kukushkin in London and the chief of the SVR in Yasenevo. From then on, both senior spymasters were helpless.

  Neither could know exactly where the sniper was, what he had seen in the forest nor what he was doing. They knew only that he was a skilled and experienced wilderness dweller, wily as a wild animal in his own environment and the best marksman in the Spetsnaz.

  When he had finished his mission Misha would abandon his rifle, revert to being a harmless birdwatcher, emerge from the Scottish forest and call using a few coded wor
ds for transport. Until then, it was a waiting game.

  Captain Harry Williams of the Special Air Service Regiment was not a sniper, but he had been in combat and well trained on the Regiment’s preferred long-shot rifle, the Accuracy International AX50 with its Schmidt and Bender scope. That same morning, he was installing himself and his men in their quarters above the computer team in the south wing of the castle.

  His close-protection team had been reduced to him plus three – one sergeant and two troopers. Sir Adrian had assessed the risk to his teenage charge after the move north as minimal. No one had any idea they had been seen moving out of Warwickshire. In their isolated Highland castle, it appeared that peace reigned supreme. So, on the second evening, Captain Williams borrowed the unit’s jeep and motored down to the only village on the estate. This was the hamlet of Ainslie, two miles away.

  There were no more than fifty houses, but at least there was a kirk, a small corner shop and a pub. The social life of the village was clearly dependent on the third. Harry Williams was in jeans and a plaid shirt. No uniform – no need. The locals knew the laird had guests, although he and her ladyship were not present. The drinkers at their tables had lapsed into silence. Strangers were rare. Williams nodded in greeting.

  ‘Evening, all.’ He sounded like a policeman on TV. There were a dozen nods. If he was one of the laird’s invited, he was acceptable.

  The drinkers were scattered around the single room but there was one sitting alone at the bar, as if lost in thought. There was a spare bar stool. Williams took it. They exchanged glances.

  ‘Nice day.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘You a single-malt man?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Williams caught the eye of the bartender and nodded towards the man’s glass. The barman took a fine Islay single malt from his whisky array and poured a measure. The man raised an eyebrow.

  ‘And the same for me,’ said Williams. His new companion was much older, nudging sixty at least. His face was tanned with wind and summer sun, wrinkled, laughter lines at the corners of his eyes, but not the face of a fool. Harry might have weeks to spend at Craigleven. He just wanted to make friendly contact with the locals. He had no idea it was about to pay a huge dividend.

  The two men toasted and drank. Now Mackie began to suspect that the laird’s guests might not be mere tourists. The man sitting beside him reeked of soldier.

  ‘You’ll be staying at the castle?’ he said.

  ‘For a while,’ said the soldier.

  ‘Do you know the Highlands?’

  ‘Not well, but I’ve taken salmon on the Spey.’

  The ghillie was a shrewd ex-soldier. He knew how many eggs made a dozen. The man he was drinking with was not a regular infantry officer on leave. He was lean and hard, but most of the laird’s other guests seemed to be civilians. So this one was their protection.

  ‘There’s another stranger just moved into the forest,’ he said conversationally. The soldier stiffened.

  ‘A camper? Tourist? Birdwatcher?’

  Mackie slowly shook his head.

  In seconds Harry Williams was out of the bar, speaking into his mobile phone. The man at the other end was his sergeant.

  ‘I want everyone away from the windows,’ he ordered. ‘All curtains drawn. All sides. I’ll be back shortly. We’re all on alert.’

  As chief gamekeeper, like his father before him, on the laird’s estate, Stuart Mackie was much concerned with vermin and the control of them. Inverness is the home of the red squirrel, but the vermin grey version was trying to move in and he was concerned to stop them. So he set traps. When he caught both types he liberated the reds and put down the greys.

  That morning he had been tending his traps when he saw something that should not be there. His eye had caught a flash of white in a wall of green. It was a twig, fresh cut at a slanting angle, the white inner wood glinting in the morning light. He examined the cut. Not broken, not snapped, not ragged. Sliced as by a razor-sharp knife. So … a human agent. A stranger in his forest.

  A man in the forest cuts a branch, even a twig, only because it is in the way. But a twig cannot be in the way. It can be pushed aside. So the foliage was needed for something, and there is only one thing that could be. Camouflage.

  Who needs camouflage in the forest? A birdwatcher. But the twitchers, with their field glasses and cameras, lust for the rare breeds, the exotic. This was Stuart Mackie’s forest and he knew the birds. There were no rare ones. Who else hides himself beneath camouflage in the forest? In his youth, Mackie had served in the Black Watch regiment. He knew about snipers.

  Harry returned to the bar and ordered two more single malts, though he never touched his own.

  ‘The people I and my men are protecting are very valuable,’ he said quietly. ‘I think I may need your help.’

  Stuart Mackie sipped his replenished glass and made a speech.

  ‘Aye,’ he said.

  Now it was dawn again and Mackie stood in the forest silent as a tree, watching, listening. It was the creatures of the forest he was observing. He knew them all. Occasionally, he moved, soundlessly, a few yards at a time, close to the steep slope that ran down to the stream flowing along the bottom of the glen. A thousand yards across the valley was the south face of the castle, the windows, the lawns.

  It was the fawn that gave him the tip. The little roe deer was also moving through the undergrowth, looking for a tuft of fresh grass. He saw her; she did not see him. But she jerked up her head, turned, sniffed and ran. She had not seen anything, but she had smelt something that should not be there. Mackie stared where the deer had pointed.

  Misha had found a perfect nest. A jumble of fallen logs and trunks, a tangle of branches on the slope facing the south aspect of the castle. His loupe-shaped range-finder had told him a thousand yards, half the lethal range of his Orsis.

  In this camouflage-striped jungle clothing, flecked with twigs and leaves, he had become almost invisible. The stock of his rifle was snug in his shoulder, the metalwork shrouded in hessian sacking. He lay motionless, as he had through the night, and he would not move a muscle, or twitch, or scratch for hours yet to come, if need be. It was part of the training, part of the discipline that had kept him alive in the undergrowth of Donetsk and Luhansk as he had picked off Ukrainians, one after the other.

  He had seen the little roe deer. She had been ten feet away when she spotted him. Now there was a squirrel, scampering towards his netting. He had no idea another pair of eyes fifty yards along the slope was looking for him, no inkling another motionless figure as skilled as he was in the forest.

  Stuart Mackie tried to see what the deer had been pointing at. Further down the scree, a jumble of fallen trunks. Nothing moved … until the squirrel. It was hopping over the pile of logs and fallen branches. Then it too stopped and stared. It too ran to save itself, emitting a chatter of alarm calls. At two-feet range, it had seen a human eyeball. Mackie stared. The logs were still and silent.

  Oh, he was good. But he was there. Slowly, a shape amid the foliage. Pine and broadleaf twigs drawn through loops on the camo jacket. Beneath them, an outline, shoulders, arms, a hooded head. Crouched behind a tree trunk, hessian sackcloth over dull metal, nothing to gleam in the morning light.

  Mackie slipped silently away, memorizing the spot. Behind a stout oak he pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and tapped in the memorized code. Across the valley in the castle, a connect, a whisper.

  ‘Stuart?’

  ‘I have him,’ the ghillie murmured back.

  ‘Where?’

  Harry Williams was in a top-floor room on the south face. The windows were open but he was back in the recess of the room, invisible from outside in the daylight. He had his Zeiss field glasses to his eyes, his phone to his ear.

  ‘See the white rock?’ asked the voice down the line.

  He scanned the mountain face across the glen. One white rock, just the one.

  ‘Got it,’ said Captain Wil
liams.

  ‘Ten feet above it. Track fifty feet to your left. A jumble of fallen tree trunks. Hessian sacking, extra foliage.’

  ‘Got it,’ Williams repeated.

  He disconnected and laid down the binoculars. He shuffled on his knees to the upended armchair and the rifle laid across it, took the stock into his shoulder and squinted down the Schmidt and Bender scope-sight. The cluster of fallen trunks was as clear as through the Zeiss. A tiny adjustment. Clearer still. Could have been ten yards away.

  Hessian sacking – no place in a forest – and deep in the sacking a hint of glass. Another scope-sight, staring at him. Somewhere, an inch above the glass, invisible under the hood, would be the squinting face of the marksman.

  Down below he heard voices. The computer technicians, picture windows being opened. He had warned them to stay away from the lawns and keep the curtains closed, but someone was coming out for a breath of air. It might be Luke. No time for mercy. The trigger of the AX50 was under his forefinger. A gentle pressure. A slight thump in the shoulder.

  The .50 cal. round crossed the valley in three seconds. The Russian saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing. The incoming slug flicked off the upper surface of his own scope-sight and went into his brain. Misha died.

  Inside the castle, Luke Jennings was not moving towards the lawns. He was in the computer centre, staring at his screen. Dr Hendricks crouched beside him. They had been up all night. For the Fox there was no night or day, just the flickering ciphers on his screen and the keys under his fingertips.

  Nine time zones to the east, in a cavern beneath a mountain far north of Pyongyang, the technicians guarding the secret of Kim Jong-un’s missile programme suspected nothing. They did not realize their firewalls had been penetrated, their access codes conceded, their control yielded to the high-functioning brain of a blond English boy far away.