by Tim Stevens
Purkiss stepped onto the runway.
‘Quentin,’ he said.
‘John.’
There was no handshake. No hello. It wasn’t the way they did things.
The rest of the passengers began filing towards the airport terminal. Vale turned and motioned for Purkiss to fall in step.
‘Passport control’s been taken care of,’ he said. ‘Your luggage will be collected and delivered to you later.’
They headed for a gate in the wall along one side of the runway. A security guard held it open for them.
Vale said, ‘Are you fit?’
It wasn’t small talk, wasn’t an idle query about Purkiss’s wellbeing. Purkiss had spent the last week in the Belgian countryside, not on holiday but being put through his paces with six other people by a former officer of the French Foreign Legion. The man offered a private - and expensive - service for intelligence operatives, security personnel, mercenaries, and anyone else who had requirements which went beyond those available through the normal channels.
The training had been brutal. Comprising all-weather endurance courses, hand-to-hand combat sessions, and simulated interrogation exercises, it had stretched Purkiss to the extremes of what he had considered himself capable of. Once - just once - he’d thought he’d reached his limit, and couldn’t make the cut. But he’d overcome the final barrier his psyche had thrown up. Two of the other people on the course had dropped out, one of them with a broken femur, the other in a state of abject, gibbering panic from which Purkiss doubted the man would ever fully recover.
Purkiss was approaching the end of his fortieth year. He was still young enough to function with a high level of proficiency in his field, but he was at an age where the first slowing of the reaction times began to manifest, where the connections between mental and physical action weren’t made with the same lightning-quick immediacy.
He’d taken a full twenty-four hours at the end of the course to rest, in a tiny cottage near Ghent. He’d slept, he’d stretched and soothed his punished muscles, he’d spent long periods with his mind emptied of all thought.
He ached still, and the horrors to which he’d been subjected danced and cackled on the periphery of his memory, part of his consciousness for ever.
But he felt good. Refreshed. Recharged.
‘Yes,’ he said to Vale. ‘Top condition.’
Vale needed to know that Purkiss was ready, which meant he had work for him.
Vale’s car was parked in a restricted area. A Volvo saloon, it was neither flashy nor decrepit. He got behind the wheel, Purkiss dropping in beside him. The interior smelt strongly of stale cigarette smoke.
As Vale started the engine, he said, ‘We’ve got a problem.’
Purkiss listened, hard.
In the course of the last six years, Vale had sent him to avert an attack on the Russian president. He’d despatched him to the nightmare of the Siberian tundra. He’d even placed Purkiss in the way of an assassin, in order to draw out the ringleader.
But he’d never once described anything as a problem.
When Vale didn’t venture anything more, Purkiss said: ‘By we, I take it you mean the Service.’
Both Vale and Purkiss had previously worked for the Secret Intelligence Service, known more popularly as MI6. Purkiss had left six years earlier. He still wasn’t entirely sure whether Vale was independent of the Service, or employed by them in some capacity. But, as the man responsible for rooting out rogue and criminal elements within SIS, Vale’s troubles often overlapped with those of the organisation.
Vale headed for the exit. Stansted Airport was small, and easy to escape, unlike the tangled nightmare that was Heathrow to the west. Purkiss’s own car was parked here, but he assumed it would find its way back to him in due course.
‘The Service, yes,’ Vale said. ‘But you and I, personally, John. We have a problem.’
So this was it, Purkiss thought. The money had run out. The economic situation dictated that Britain could no longer afford to fund an outfit whose sole responsibility it was to keep the intelligence service clean.
But that didn’t fit, because Vale wouldn’t have taken the unusual step of meeting Purkiss at the airport.
Purkiss sensed that, however much Vale had thought about how he was going to brief Purkiss, he was struggling to choose the best approach.
‘Where are we going?’ Purkiss said.
‘Vauxhall Cross.’
SIS headquarters. Purkiss hadn’t set foot inside the building in more than half a decade.
It was in Central London on the Thames. An hour’s drive away, at least.
Purkiss said, ‘Give me the bare bones. Otherwise we’ll sit like this in silence until I won’t be able to take it any more.’
Without taking his eyes off the motorway ahead, Vale said: ‘Fair enough.’
He paused.
‘Rossiter’s escaped.’
Three
Sir Peter Waring-Jones had been in post for three years. He’d worked his way up the ranks, and served as Deputy Director of the Secret Intelligence Service for a full decade before at last assuming the top job. It served as a neat illustration of his legendary patience.
Purkiss had never met him before. He looked older than he appeared in the few photographs Purkiss had seen of him, and must be past seventy by now. His suit was smart but he wasn’t fussily dapper, and to Purkiss’s relief he wasn’t wearing a bow tie.
Waring-Jones had been a contemporary of Vale’s in SIS, both of them active agents in the nineteen-seventies and -eighties. Nonetheless, Vale never expressed any opinions to Purkiss about the man. Purkiss had always liked that. It suggested discretion on Vale’s part.
Loyalty.
Waring-Jones was already standing when Purkiss and Vale entered. His office was large, and tastefully but not extravagantly appointed. An enormous picture window gave out onto a magnificent late-morning view of the Thames. The double-glazing was deceptively normal looking, but Purkiss assumed it could withstand any onslaught short of a rocket attack.
Another, younger, man rose as they came in. He was Asian, third generation if Purkiss’s memory served him. Rupesh Gar. Thin, intense and bespectacled, as Deputy Director he was the yin to Waring-Jones’s yang, a contrast in age and ethnic background and personality.
‘Quentin,’ said Waring-Jones. His voice was friendly without the overt jocularity Purkiss had been expecting. ‘And Mr Purkiss. Thank you for coming.’
He extended his hand. Both men shook.
Gar stepped forward and they repeated the ritual with him. His intensity was unusual, Purkiss decided. It came from his bearing, his aura. His eyes themselves were so neutral they were almost blank.
Waring-Jones indicated for them all to sit. His desk was vast, and occupied most of one end of the room. But there was a coffee table nearer the door, with easy chairs arranged around it, and it was to these that he directed Vale and Purkiss.
There must have been five hundred books on the shelves lining the walls. Purkiss appraised them quickly. He noted a preponderance of volumes about China. Waring-Jones was a Sinophile, Purkiss knew, and one of the reasons for his rapid rise to the Deputy Directorship had been his extensive knowledge of the country, at a time when it was ascending to world prominence itself.
Tea and coffee were already arranged on the table. Waring-Jones helped himself, gestured to Purkiss and Vale to do the same.
Without preamble, Waring-Jones said: ‘Quentin will have briefed you on the situation. But to save time, I’m going to assume you know nothing.’
He glanced at Gar, nodded.
Gar fixed his gaze on Purkiss. He said, ‘Last night, at a location up in the Highlands, on the Moray Forth approximately thirty miles from Inverness, an incident occurred which has triggered the highest level of alert this country has seen since the London bombings on July seventh, 2005.’
Gar’s accent was cut-glass. He’d been educated at Harrow and then taken a Master’s degree in poli
tics at Oxford, Purkiss knew. But he’d come from unprepossessing beginnings, the grandson of an immigrant shopkeeper from Delhi. His voice was more aristocratic even than Waring-Jones’s.
Which meant it had to be an affectation.
‘During a prisoner exchange, one involving our Service and operatives of the Russian FSB, an attack was launched by an unknown party. Both prisoners involved in the exchange disappeared. All of the personnel facilitating the exchange, on both sides, intelligence operatives and military alike, were killed. All but one. An FSB agent named Stepan Vodovos. He’s at present in our custody.’
As if they’d rehearsed this, Gar glanced at Waring-Jones, who continued: ‘The prisoner exchange was a clandestine one. They always are, of course - they’re not the sort of thing you read about in the paper - but in this case, it was given the green light by the Prime Minister himself, without the approval of the Cabinet.’
Purkiss processed this quickly. For the Prime Minister to sanction an operation of this kind and not seek Cabinet approval first, or at least not inform them, was highly unusual. It hinted at something of a significance Purkiss couldn’t guess at.
‘The parties involved in the exchange,’ said Waring-Jones - he’d been a schoolmaster, briefly, as a young man, and the cadences of his speech gave the impression of a demagogue delivering an address - ‘were on the one hand a Russian scientist, Valeriy Mossberg, a professor of physics, and on the other a British national. Richard Rossiter.’
He paused, as if expecting a reaction from Purkiss.
When Purkiss showed nothing, Waring-Jones gave a tiny nod. Purkiss thought he saw approval in the action.
‘As I don’t need to remind you, Rossiter is a convicted traitor. He was instrumental in the attempted assassination of the Russian president in Estonia in October, two and a half years ago, when his stated aim was to trigger a war between Russia and the NATO countries. He has been in solitary custody at a secret location ever since then. One month ago, it was decided - and I emphasise, gentlemen, that this was agreed at Prime Ministerial level - that Rossiter would be handed over to Moscow in exchange for their scientist, Mossberg.’
Purkiss felt the squirming, howling tangle of thoughts and emotions rising once more from the deeper regions of his psyche, just as they had in the car with Vale. He forced them down once more, slammed them behind a heavy, soundproofed door and locked it.
Waring-Jones said drily, ‘Needless to say, such an exchange of assets is... controversial. It could never be allowed to come anywhere near public awareness. Hence the decision by the PM to bypass Cabinet and sanction the operation alone. The Home Secretary was kept in the loop, as was the Foreign Secretary. But apart from those ministers, only Rupesh and I were privy. Plus, of course, the operatives actually involved in the swap, on the ground.’
He paused again. Purkiss thought he saw the patrician features tighten a fraction, the effortless composure waver for an instant. The man’s knuckles, he noticed for the first time, were distorted by arthritis, and must have been remarkably painful. The fingertips of the right hand massaged the bony protuberances of the left.
As if taking his cue, Rupesh Gar picked up: ‘We transported Rossiter to an airfield near Inverness last night, with an escort of three Service personnel and ten members of the armed forces, hand-picked from a variety of outfits - Marine Commandos, the Parachute Regiments, the Royal Engineers. The arrangement was that the Russian detachment would arrive by similar means, namely a light aircraft. Vodovos, the FSB man we have in custody, was the official contact person from Moscow. He would of course bring along a military escort himself. The exchange was to take place over a handshake - there’s been no paperwork at any stage of this process - and the Russians would return to Moscow with Rossiter.’
Gar broke off. Though his eyes remained blank, it seemed to Purkiss that the enormity of what had happened had struck him anew.
Waring-Jones said, ‘There was a back-up plan, naturally. We had a military detachment waiting half a mile away from the rendezvous point. They heard gunfire, and the sound of a helicopter, and they responded immediately. By the time they reached the site it was too late. The prisoners were gone, and the personnel had been killed.’
He frowned, as if his thoughts were gathering behind the knot of his brow.
‘It’s conjecture at this early stage, but we believe the helicopter employed stealth technology to evade the radar systems and to mask the sound of its approach until it was too close to be intercepted in time. The preliminary forensic reports indicate that the men on the ground were shot by a combination of machine-gun projectiles and small-arms fire. Which suggests either that the helicopter contained gunmen who fired their own weapons, in addition to the hardware integral to the helicopter itself, or that there was a two-pronged attack, with a ground assault as well. Ballistic impressions suggest that some of the men were shot at close range, which would tend to favour the latter scenario.’
Abruptly, Waring-Jones stood up. He clasped his hands together, looked down at Purkiss, and Vale, and back to Purkiss. He was a man who could clearly handle his tension internally, for the most part. But now he needed the release of movement.
‘So,’ he said. ‘We have a clandestine exchange of assets, between Great Britain and Russia. On British soil. The exchange is sabotaged, to devastating effect. Both assets are now missing.’
Through the picture window, the crisp morning sunlight, balanced as it was on the cusp of the winter’s dying bite and the promise of spring, illuminated a police speedboat arrowing down the river under Vauxhall Bridge. The total silence, despite the flashing blue light on the boat’s roof, brought home to Purkiss how insulated they were from the world beyond.
Waring-Jones said, ‘Gentlemen, I’d appreciate your opinions. What, exactly, happened last night?’
*
Purkiss got up and walked towards the window - he was aware of Gar shifting in his chair as he passed - and gazed out at the river and the South Bank beyond.
Without turning, he said: ‘You let Rossiter go.’
From behind him, he heard Waring-Jones’s voice, not yet shot through with an old man’s quaver: ‘Yes. We were releasing him. Handing him over to a captor from whom his chances of escape were even more remote, but... yes. We were letting him go.’
Purkiss raised his head, his back still to the others. He needed fresh air. He needed the smells, the raw and dirty and impure aromas of the city. He needed anything but this dry, quiet, controlled atmosphere that was threatening to stifle him.
‘Why?’ he said softly.
Waring-Jones’s reply came after a few seconds’ delay. ‘You have a personal investment in Rossiter and his fate. I fully understand that.’
‘No.’ Purkiss turned.
The training week in Belgium had sharpened his ability to keep his feelings well away from his face. Even so, it was a struggle.
Gar had risen, too. Purkiss ignored him.
To Waring-Jones, he said, ‘I mean: why? Why did the PM sanction it? The handing over to the Kremlin of a senior SIS operative? You know how much Rossiter has locked in his skull. Decades’ worth of minute detail. The networks along the Mediterranean coast. Our work in the Baltics.’ Purkiss’s mind raced through the catalogue. ‘For God’s sake. He was in Minsk in the early nineties. He’ll have knowledge of the sleepers we left there.’
Purkiss stopped. He knew that if he continued, he’d start climbing the curve towards hysteria.
Hysteria meant loss of control.
Waring-Jones gazed at him. His expression was sombre.
‘I know, Mr Purkiss,’ he murmured. ‘I know it all. The notion of delivering Rossiter to the Russians is as agonising to me as would be the ripping off of one of my limbs.’
He paused, to let his words sink in.
‘So you’ll appreciate that the quid pro quo, the asset which Moscow was giving us in return, was of significantly greater value to us.’
Purkiss said: ‘How?’
> There was genuine regret in Waring-Jones’s voice when he said, ‘I can’t tell you. You aren’t authorised to know.’
Four
The tableau had shifted.
Waring-Jones now stood at the picture window, his head bowed but not quite pressed against the glass. Gar had sat down again.
Vale was pacing the floor in long, slow strides, his back to the rest of them.
Purkiss stood in the centre of the carpet, watching Waring-Jones.
The Director said, over his shoulder: ‘Quentin, you may smoke if you wish.’
Gar glanced sharply at his superior, and then at Vale.
Purkiss expected Vale to decline. But the older man reached into the pocket of his coat and brought out a battered pack and pushed a cigarette between his lips and fired up.
Involuntarily, Purkiss looked at Gar. He saw the tensing of the features, the slight moue of disapproval at the mouth. Vale was committing an illegal act, lighting a cigarette inside a workplace, and the Director of SIS was conniving.
Waring-Jones said, ‘You appreciate the problem we face. Russian intelligence agents and military personnel have been killed on British soil. So have their British counterparts. Two prisoners of the highest importance have disappeared. The Russian government is incandescent with rage. The President has been in almost continuous telephone communication with the Prime Minister since the early hours of this morning. The PM is being accused of sabotaging the prisoner exchange, of behaving in a deliberately provocative manner in order to goad Russia into an aggressive response which will bring the world closer to a conflict which will have dreadful and far-reaching consequences.’
He turned from the window.
‘My question stands.’ He made sure to glance at Vale as well as Purkiss. ‘What happened last night?’
Purkiss said, ‘The Russians.’
Waring-Jones waited a moment. Then he said, ‘Please elaborate.’
‘You’ll have considered it yourself.’ Purkiss felt a flicker of irritation. ‘The Kremlin is behind the attack. They massacred their own people in order both to get Rossiter and to hang on to their scientist, Mossberg. They’re feigning outrage now, just as they did after the Litvinenko murder, but it’s purely for show.’
