by Tim Stevens
The silence was broken only by the soft rumble of the car’s engine, the hissing of the tyres on the wet road.
*
The hotel room had a free-standing dressing table which Purkiss cleared of its trappings and moved away from the wall so that they could all sit round it.
He opened the laptop. As he’d expected, it was password protected.
Another situation in which Abby’s assistance would have been invaluable.
He glanced at the others. They shook their heads.
‘It’ll have to go in for the experts to have a crack at,’ he said.
Saburova placed the phone she’d found on Donovan’s body on the table. There was no password required this time.
She flicked through the call log. Unfamiliar numbers were listed, with no names attached to any of them.
Purkiss glanced through the list. Most of the numbers were those of mobiles, but one suggested a landline, with a 0151 dialling code.
He recognised it as Liverpool’s.
Asher noted the number. ‘Worth a shot.’ He took out his own phone and called a directory line.
After a moment he said, ‘It’s a company called Arrowhead Shipping.’ He thumbed the title into a search engine.
Purkiss stepped away from the table and rang Vale’s number.
‘Donovan’s home is locked down,’ Vale said. ‘Waring-Jones isn’t best pleased.’
‘They find anyone else there?’
‘No. Just the unconscious guard, and the two bodies. The guard’s been taken to hospital under a security detail.’
‘I’ve a few numbers I’d like you to check.’ Purkiss read out the numbers on the call log on Donovan’s phone. ‘Also this firm: Arrowhead Shipping in Merseyside.’
He rang off, took a walk around the room. He felt despondent, cheated. What had he discovered, really? That Donovan, who was now deceased, had helped Rossiter escape. That the intention had been to execute Rossiter remotely once the prisoner exchange had been effected. Neither brought him a step closer to finding the man.
Purkiss had a sense of time passing, rolling by with the gathering force of an avalanche.
His phone rang.
‘I’m downstairs.’
It was Kendrick.
*
He was dressed all in black, with an outsized windcheater over a sweater and cargo pants. Shorter than Purkiss, his hair was cropped close, which served to emphasize the roughly ring-shaped scar over the right side of his forehead, the discoloured skin in the middle. His right eye was slightly out of kilter with the left at times.
Kendrick bared his teeth in something that didn’t bother to try to be a grin.
‘Where’s the bastard?’ was his opening comment.
He pushed past Purkiss into the room. Took in Asher and Saburova. His stare lingered on Saburova, embarrassingly prolonged.
‘Oi, Purkiss,’ he leered. ‘I don’t do foursomes, but if you and this fella can make yourselves scarce for an hour...’
Kendrick had caught a ricocheting rifle bullet in the right frontal area of his head two summers earlier. He’d survived more or less physically intact, and he was still quick thinking. But his natural boorishness had been exaggerated by the injury. Purkiss had employed him just once since the injury, during the Cronos affair five months earlier, and despite his misgivings about the man’s suitability for this kind of work, he’d been relieved to find Kendrick’s performance solid, if a little rough around the edges.
Purkiss made introductions. He gave Asher’s and Saburova’s names, but didn’t say who they were. Asher shook hands. Saburova gazed at Kendrick as if appraising a zoo animal.
‘So we just wait,’ Asher said. It was partly a question.
‘Not much else we can do.’ Purkiss felt the frustration building within him. ‘Saburova has to lie low. If we go back to Service HQ, we’ll get bogged down in questions about what’s been happening.’
‘I can check in on my side,’ said Asher.
‘No.’ If the CIA became involved, they’d just get in the way.
Purkiss’s phone sounded again.
Vale.
‘Possibly something, John.’ Vale never showed excitement in his voice, but over the years, Purkiss thought he’d learned to tell when the older man was intrigued. ‘Arrowhead Shipping is a small firm handling mainly sea freight, as the name suggests, but also long-distance road haulage. It’s run by a man named Peter Otto.’
Purkiss ran the name through his memory. He drew a blank.
Vale: ‘Peter Otto was formerly known as Pyotr Osip. Until 2001, he was a senior officer in the FSB, and KGB prior to that.’
Purkiss kept his expression neutral, for the benefit of the others. But his pulse ticked upward.
‘Otto – Osip – was a field agent during the 1980s and 90s,’ Vale continued. ‘Our side of Germany during the Cold War, and later in the Levant, Greece and Turkey. He came to Britain in 2003 and became a naturalised citizen four years ago. Set up the shipping business in 2009.’
Purkiss turned away and took a few steps towards the bathroom. ‘Sleeper?’ he murmured.
‘That’s what was suspected, of course. But the surveillance on him revealed absolutely nothing, and after a few years the Service lost interest in him, especially after he moved up to Merseyside. His wife’s from there, apparently. The conclusion was that he was exactly what he claimed to be: a Russian former intelligence officer who’d genuinely retired, and was now enjoying a second career in business.’
‘Worth checking out. Thanks, Quentin.’ Purkiss thought for a moment. ‘Can you persuade Waring-Jones to authorise tapping the shipping firm’s phone line? And Osip’s personal mobile?’
‘I dare say he’ll agree, in the circumstances.’
Purkiss rang off. He walked back to the others.
‘We’re going.’
Asher said, ‘Where to?’
‘Liverpool.’
‘Christ,’ said Kendrick.
Eighteen
Vodovos gritted his teeth against the pain and took another step.
The nurses, or orderlies, or guards, or whoever they were, had watched impassively as he’d swung his legs over the side of the bed. He’d half-expected them to stop him, but apparently they were under instructions to allow the prisoner a little exercise.
Although the agony bolted up his shin and thigh like flame, he forced himself to bear down.
They’d told him it was a glancing wound, a chipping of the tibial bone, but it felt as if his leg had sustained a direct hit. He knew immobility was the enemy. He needed to get back on his feet as quickly as possible, to prevent the stiffening that would inevitably ensue otherwise, the contraction of the ligaments and the sinews which would herald permanent disability.
Also, the exercise forced his mind away from the thoughts which had been demanding his attention ever since they’d brought him here.
The MI6 deputy director, Rupesh Gar, had conducted the initial interrogation. Vodovos thought he had held up well. Name, rank and serial number, or the modern equivalent thereof. That was all he’d offered. Plus, the assurance that he’d speak more freely if and when he was granted a visit by a representative of the Russian government.
So far, they’d stood firm.
Gar had returned with the other man, the tall, unreadable Englishman whom Vodovos didn’t recognise, but who was clearly also MI6. Vodovos found the newcomer unsettling. He appeared affable enough, and was never overtly threatening in his tone. But he’d exuded a subtle air of menace, at odds with his demeanour. And it was after he’d left that Vodovos had understood: he was not going to win this one. He would not be granted his audience with a representative of his own government.
There was no clock in the room in which Vodovos was being held captive. There were no windows through which daylight might give an indication of the time. The effect was disorientating, as it was intended to be. Vodovos had arrived in London at two-fifteen in the morning - he’d glimpsed the ti
me on a digital display at the military airfield through which he’d been rushed - and he estimated that nearly twenty-four hours had passed since then. He’d slept, on and off, partly lulled by painkillers, so an exact assessment was impossible; but his body clock told him he was correct.
So: it was a whole day since the ambush at the prisoner exchange site. A day since Rossiter, the prize Moscow had been seeking for almost three years, had flown the coop.
Vodovos began to wonder if his principled silence, his discipline in refusing to co-operate without the involvement of his own people, was a terrible mistake.
He made it to the wall and slammed against the cold concrete, gasping, his face slick with sweat. His wounded leg pounded as though nails were being driven into it.
He used the wall to manoeuvre himself round.
The two guards, he decided, must have some kind of medical or nursing expertise - this was an infirmary, after all, and he was a patient - but their role was primarily that of a jailer. They would, of course, be under strict instruction to note anything Vodovos said or did, and to convey such data to their superiors.
Vodovos started out on the return journey to the bed. The distance was no more than eight or ten feet, but might as well have been a mile. It would take him the best part of a minute to reach the bed.
A minute in which to weigh up his options, and make his decision.
By the time he collapsed on the bed, the pain in his leg giving way to an intense, seizing cramp, he knew what he must do.
Vodovos twisted his face on the bedspread so that one eye caught the gaze of the guard nearest him, a burly black man with an expression like stone.
‘Bring Rupesh Gar in here,’ Vodovos said, his voice slightly muffled against the blanket but nonetheless audible in the near silence. ‘I wish to tell him something.’
*
Gar appeared ten minutes later. He had lost his tie, and his hair was a little rumpled, but he appeared alert.
Vodovos was propped up against the pillows once more, his injured leg raised to ease the throbbing. He looked pointedly at the two guards.
With a flick of his fingers, Gar dismissed the two men.
After the door had closed behind them, Vodovos said, ‘Who was that man with you earlier? The one asking the questions? The one who threatened my family?’
Gar watched him. There was no depth to the man’s eyes, and at the same time an infinite emptiness.
‘You probably know.’
‘I do not,’ said Vodovos.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because I believe I was supposed to recognise him. I believe you brought him in to... rattle me? Is that the word?’
The pause was so long, and Gar so motionless, that for an instant Vodovos wondered if he was talking to a human being, rather than some new and radical form of artificial intelligence.
Gar said, ‘His name is John Purkiss.’
Yes. The name was known to Vodovos.
It was, in fact, legendary.
Purkiss was the man who had intervened in Tallinn to save the life of the President. He was also now considered to be dangerous, a threat to the Russian State, because of something that had occurred in the late winter of last year, in the Siberian tundra near Yakutsk. Vodovos cursed himself inwardly for not getting up to speed. He’d read the briefings, but hadn’t delved into them in any depth. If he had, he would have seen photographs, and would have recognised Purkiss immediately.
But he knew this much: Purkiss had opposed Rossiter in Tallinn.
And that was all that mattered now.
He heaved himself more upright. The pain howled in his leg, but he controlled it, controlled his reaction to it so that he didn’t even wince.
He said, ‘I have some information I am willing to impart.’
His mouth barely moving, Gar said: ‘Your conditions remain unacceptable. We won’t permit the presence of a representative of your government.’
‘My conditions have changed.’
Gar waited.
‘That man,’ said Vodovos. ‘Purkiss. I will talk to him. Face to face. Nobody else.’
Nineteen
Dawn broke at a few minutes before six o’clock, and the sudden emergence of sunlight over the rooftops made Purkiss squeeze his eyes shut. He felt the grit of sleeplessness, and blinked to clear it.
The offices of Arrowhead Shipping were on an industrial estate near the docks to the west of Liverpool’s Toxteth district. They’d arrived an hour earlier and had settled down to wait. Asher had left his car and gone to find refreshments. He’d reappeared twenty minutes later with a cardboard holder containing cups of hot coffee and a sack of pastries.
The journey up from London would take under four hours, and Purkiss had decided it was pointless to set off immediately. The four of them - Purkiss, Asher, Saburova, and Kendrick - had lounged around the Pimlico hotel room for a while, trying to rest but struggling.
At half past one Purkiss had gathered them together and they’d slipped out via different exits. Kendrick had stopped at a Land Rover and unlocked it with a press of a button.
‘Didn’t know you were driving again,’ Purkiss said.
‘Last few months.’ Kendrick ran a hand over the roof with a lover’s caress.
‘You got your licence back, then?’
‘Mind your own business.’ Kendrick climbed behind the wheel.
Two vehicles were a better idea, anyway, Purkiss thought. It provided greater flexibility.
He got in beside Kendrick, while Asher and Saburova drove ahead.
Purkiss wondered if it was the best arrangement. He didn’t trust either Asher or Saburova, and he was a believer in the dictum that it was wise to keep your enemies, actual or potential, close. Perhaps a combination of him and either Asher or Saburova would have been more prudent.
But he could speak more freely with Kendrick.
‘Who’s the babe?’ said Kendrick, after they’d been driving ten minutes and the river was in sight.
‘FSB. Russian Intelligence. She says she’s a renegade, defying her own people to help bring down Rossiter. She thinks they’re reacting too slowly.’
‘And you believe her?’ In profile, Kendrick looked like a seedy demon. ‘These Russians. We think we’re a clever lot, us Brits, but they’re way more devious than we are. She’s playing you, Purkiss. She’s no renegade. She’s FSB. Their way of getting involved in the hunt, without doing so officially.’
‘Perhaps.’ Purkiss had noticed this about Kendrick. Despite his crassness, his overt disdain for the business Purkiss was in, he’d always displayed an uncommon perceptiveness, something his head injury hadn’t dimmed.
‘What about the fella? The Yank git?’
‘Asher’s CIA. He was sold to me as SIS, but it was thin cover. The Company has an interest in tracking Rossiter down, and the missing scientist, Mossberg, as well.’
‘It’s like a crap joke,’ Kendrick said. ‘An Englishman, a Russian and an American go into a bar.’
‘What’s your impression of Asher?’ said Purkiss.
‘A bit cocky, underneath the dull front.’ Kendrick swerved to cut in front of a car ahead and made an obscene gesture when the other driver tooted his horn. ‘But if he’s CIA, you can’t trust him either. He’ll be looking out for American interests above all else. I saw it in Iraq. They’re friendly, helpful and all that shit, but at the end of the day they’ll throw you to the wolves if it suits their purposes.’
*
While Kendrick dozed behind the wheel of the parked land Rover, Purkiss watched the squat office building. There were no signs of life yet, apart from a uniformed security guard who ambled past from time to time, engrossed in something on his phone.
On the journey up, Vale had called. ‘Waring-Jones has approved the tap on Osip’s personal phone, as well as the land line for the firm. They’re being monitored this end.’
Purkiss had considered breaking in to the office before anyone arrived there, but he d
ecided against it. It was unlikely that they’d find anything of interest, even if they knew what they were looking for.
The Land Rover was parked across the street from the industrial estate, with a clear view of the car park in front. Asher’s car was also in sight, fifty yards away along the street.
At a few minutes before seven o’clock, cars began to pull into the forecourt of the estate. Purkiss watched the occupants as they got out. Vale had sent him a picture of Pyotr Osip, AKA Peter Otto. Osip was in his late fifties, a little jowly, with white hair. None of the first arrivals resembled him; most of them seemed to be clerical staff.
At seven forty-five, a black BMW eased through the gates. The man who got out of the driver’s side was portlier than the one in the photo, but otherwise matched.
Purkiss called Asher. ‘You see him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s go.’
Purkiss had debated leaving Kendrick in the car, but decided that his presence might help unsettle Osip. He saw Kendrick go round to the back of the Land Rover and open the boot.
‘Take your pick.’
Purkiss looked. In a compartment beneath the floor of the boot, a small arsenal gleamed. Three handguns, a Heckler & Koch rifle, and a range of magazine clips.
Purkiss selected a SIG Sauer P226, a pistol he was familiar with, checked the slide, and pushed it into his jacket pocket. He doubted he’d need to use it on this occasion. Purkiss’s intention was to frighten Osip, and then see if the phone tap yielded anything afterwards. Then again, he hadn’t been expecting the shoot-out at Donovan’s house either.
They headed towards the front door of the office building, drawing glances from the staff members still congregating in the car park. Inside, a stark lobby was overseen by a receptionist who appeared to be settling in at her station, and not at all prepared for visitors.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, her accent broad Merseyside. ‘We don’t open till eight –’
‘Mr Otto,’ said Purkiss. ‘We need to speak to him.’
‘He’s not –’
‘Yes, he is here. We saw him arrive.’
