The Moscow Sleepers

by Stella Rimington

  The next morning at nine o’clock Liz was in Geoffrey Fane’s office in Vauxhall Cross, drinking coffee and sitting on one of the button-back leather chairs that Fane had somehow ‘acquired’ at the time of a Foreign Office refurbishment. She looked across at Fane, sitting opposite her in a similar chair; in the clear light coming in through the tall windows she could see that he looked surprisingly scruffy.

  Fane was a man who prided himself on his appearance. Liz knew him well; she had worked closely with him for years and had made something of a study of him. He was a man of well-cut three-piece suits, crisp shirt cuffs showing at the wrist and striped, old-school regimental and club ties. His customary stance at meetings was to lean back languidly in his chair with his long legs stretched out in front of him and his perfectly polished brogues on show.

  Now something was different. The clothes were the same but the posture was wrong and the suit, rather than enhancing his lean figure, seemed to be hanging off him. It was as though he had shrunk. Liz was concerned. In her own way she was fond of Fane, though her feelings were different from his for her. She would be sad if anything were to happen to him.

  ‘Are you all right, Geoffrey?’ she asked. ‘You look tired.’

  He looked at her sadly and sighed. ‘I had HR up to see me yesterday.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Liz cautiously.

  ‘Apparently, I could take my pension any time. First I knew of it. I said to them, “Is this your way of getting rid of me?”’ Fane gave a small laugh, but he was watching Liz for her reaction.

  She didn’t have to feign her surprise. ‘I would never have guessed, Geoffrey. Anyway, there can’t be any question of your going. You’re absolutely essential.’

  Fane smiled sadly. ‘It’s kind of you to say so. But what if I wanted to go?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake. You can’t want to go. Why would you?’

  Fane sighed again, a long thoughtful exhalation. ‘I’m starting to question myself, Elizabeth, in a way I never have before. The whole business with Jasminder Kapoor shook me, I have to admit. I keep thinking I could have handled things better.’

  Liz said firmly, ‘That’s a perfectly natural response. Anyone who wasn’t upset by what happened would be a monster. But you did nothing wrong. Nothing. In fact, I thought you handled the situation most sensitively.’

  ‘Really? Then why did she do what she did?’

  ‘Oh, Geoffrey,’ said Liz, realising how much he was still upset. ‘No one can take responsibility for other people’s actions. She just did not have the strength or the confidence to handle the situation she found herself in. Don’t forget, you didn’t think she was the right person for the job in the first place, and she wasn’t. If anyone’s to blame it’s me, for putting her name forward for the post.’

  Fane sighed again, but did not disagree.

  Liz said, ‘You didn’t put a foot wrong: you were firm but never unkind; you made it clear to her that you wanted the truth because we all needed the truth. And that is what you managed to get from her. You should have no doubts, and absolutely no guilt about the way you dealt with Jasminder Kapoor.’

  ‘That’s kind of you, Elizabeth. As you know,’ he said, with something approaching his usual wolf-like grin, ‘I don’t customarily go in for so much self-analysis but it’s just the combination of realising I’ve reached pensionable age with my lingering doubts over the way I behaved towards that poor woman that has upset my equilibrium.’

  Liz was relieved to see that by now he was sitting up on his chair and the long legs were back, stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankle in a familiar pose. ‘So, let’s hear what happened at your meeting with Mischa. What did he have to say?’

  ‘Well, Geoffrey, that’s why I asked to see you this morning. Because I’m worried about what he said – worried for Bruno, in particular.’

  ‘Well, my dear girl, why didn’t you say so at once, instead of going on about me?’

  Liz ground her teeth but said nothing.

  ‘Come on – out with it. What did he say?’

  So she told him how Mischa’s position seemed to have changed. Instead of reporting snippets of information that he picked up from his brother Boris when he was drunk, he now seemed to be delivering messages from him. Boris was not supposed to know anything about his contact with Liz and yet somehow Mischa knew that Liz had been identified from the photograph taken in the headmaster’s study at Bartholomew Manor school. Even more importantly, Mischa issued a warning that no one should try to recruit his brother.

  ‘He seemed to think that the Americans were alongside Boris, but he must have meant Bruno. It was definitely a warning. If I have been recognised from the photographs taken at the school, then perhaps Bruno has been identified too? If so, he is in real danger.’

  ‘I think that’s very unlikely,’ said Fane. ‘His cover is excellent and his disguise means he looks very different from the Bruno you know. So even though the Karpis couple recognised you from the photograph, I don’t see how they could have connected the man who is living in Moscow with the Bruno who interrogated them in England with you.’

  ‘Well, you say that, but Bruno is in contact with Mischa’s brother, Boris. How careful has he been? Maybe Boris suspects that this Englishman who has suddenly appeared in his life is not what he says he is. Boris is an intelligence officer – he’s trained to recognise another, and it’s possible that Bruno’s enthusiasm has got the better of his caution.’ She paused and Fane said nothing. ‘It is possible, isn’t it, Geoffrey? We’re talking about Bruno Mackay. He takes risks, doesn’t he?’

  ‘That’s true – up to a point. But he is very experienced. He doesn’t make stupid mistakes.’

  ‘But supposing Boris had become suspicious. It would be natural to check out this new British acquaintance against whatever data bank they have and if the Karpises, who have recently returned from working in Britain, are around to be consulted, as they obviously are, then they would have been. A careful study of the man in Moscow could have seen through the disguise – you know it could, Geoffrey.’

  Fane was looking less sure of himself. ‘Tell me again exactly what Mischa said.’

  ‘He said the Americans must not approach his brother. It was a warning. It sounded like a threat.’

  ‘If Bruno has been identified, why did he refer to the Americans, not the British?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Liz was becoming exasperated. ‘But it was clearly a warning. Maybe they don’t know it is Bruno, but whether they do or not, they know there’s an intelligence officer in contact with Boris and to my mind that makes Bruno’s position very dangerous. If he is moving in to make a pitch at Boris I think he risks being arrested.’

  Fane reached over to his phone. ‘I’m getting Bruno’s support team up here to tell us exactly what the state of play out there is.’

  Liz listened while Fane spoke to someone called David and asked him to come up to his office immediately and to bring Charlotte. Fane put down the phone and sat gently tapping the desktop with the rubber end of a sharply pointed pencil. In a few minutes there was a knock on the door and a stocky, dark-haired man came in accompanied by a middle-aged woman with her glasses dangling on a cord round her neck. David and Charlotte were introduced and Fane asked Liz to tell them about her meeting with Mischa.

  ‘So,’ said Fane when Liz had finished, ‘what is the current situation with Bruno and do you agree with Liz that he’s in danger?’

  Charlotte spoke first. ‘Bruno has a lunch date with Boris in two days’ time. It’s at Boris’s invitation and Boris’s choice of restaurant. Bruno has asked permission to use this opportunity to make a first pitch at Boris. He intends to offer him the opportunity to write background papers on the economic and political situation in Russia for Bruno’s investment company.’

  ‘Of course,’ chipped in David, ‘there’s no doubt that Boris will recognise that as the first step in a recruitment approach.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fane. ‘It�
�s certainly not the first time that card has been played.’

  There followed a heated discussion between Charlotte, who thought Boris was quite capable of looking after himself and should carry on, since the potential prize of an FSB officer in place in Moscow was worth the risk, and David, who was inclined to feel he might be walking into a trap. Throughout, Geoffrey Fane was attempting to unravel the mystery of why Mischa had issued the warning in the first place and what it all meant, questions Liz was happy to say she was unable to answer.

  Eventually everything seemed to have been said and they all fell silent, looking towards Fane to make a decision, if one was to be made. He stood up and walked slowly over to the long windows looking out over the Thames towards Parliament. Liz held her breath. She was quite sure that Bruno should be got out as quickly as possible.

  Finally, Fane turned around and said, ‘It’s too risky. He must not go to that lunch. Activate his escape plan. Can we get him out before the lunch date?’

  ‘Should be OK,’ replied David. ‘We’ll alert the Moscow Station right away. They know what to do. It’s all in place.’

  ‘Bruno will be very disappointed.’

  ‘So will we all, Charlotte,’ responded Fane. ‘But we’d be more than disappointed if he got arrested and charged with espionage. Think how you’d feel then.’

  37

  In his Moscow flat, Bruno was humming softly to himself as he got ready to go out. It was a habit he had developed when he was quite young. Faced with a difficult situation or a time of particular tension, he would quietly hum a tune. He was never aware of choosing which tune to hum – something just came into his head – but as the product of an English public school and therefore a regular attender at church services when he was young, he found that the tune was very often a hymn. Today it was a carol, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, that, when he thought about it, was particularly appropriate for Moscow in autumn.

  He opened the wardrobe door and contemplated his rack of ties. What was appropriate for this lunch, a lunch that he hoped would mark the next stage in his cultivation of the FSB officer? Today he planned to offer Boris consultancy work for his mythical investment bank. Boris had invited him this time, which Bruno saw as a good sign. He must be keen to continue the relationship, which he surely must have recognised as connected in some way with intelligence gathering. So, what was the right tie? Something bright, confident and slightly flashy.

  His hand was on a yellow and blue one when he suddenly changed his mind and decided not to wear a tie at all but to go in an open-necked shirt instead. That would look insouciant, he told himself. He was assessing the result in the mirror when his phone buzzed. It was a share update; he got them all the time. This one read: BG +1.15%.

  Bruno stopped humming. A cold wave washed up from his stomach and his mouth went dry. This was his alarm call. His emergency escape plan had been triggered by London and 1.15 was the pickup time. Coupled with his shock, he felt intense disappointment. He was going to be denied his chance to have a go at suborning Boris Bebchuk, the man he had been patiently cultivating for weeks.

  But there was no arguing. The whole thing had been rehearsed to a boring extent before he left home. Although it was real, it was no longer boring – rather alarming, in fact, if exciting too. Bruno loved a challenge and this was certainly going to be that. As he set about his preparations for departure he wondered what had happened to trigger this dramatic reaction from his colleagues in London, though he had little enough time to waste it speculating.

  He went into the bathroom and crouched down beside the bath, sliding back a small part of the panel with a slight click, revealing a concealed safe. Bruno tapped in some numbers and the door swung open. He took out a packet of documents, locked the safe and replaced the panel. Putting the packet on the table, he opened it and extracted a Canadian passport in the name of Brian Anderson, Civil Engineer, born in Montreal. There was also a wad of bank notes made up of Canadian dollars, US dollars and Russian roubles, together with an assortment of credit cards, club membership cards, and all the assorted documentation that a Canadian engineer travelling abroad would be expected to possess. He laid it all out on the table, then he reached for his phone and dialled Michelle.

  ‘Good morning, darling,’ he said. ‘It’s such a lovely day and I know it’s half day at the school. I was wondering if I might come with you to pick up Sergei. Perhaps we could stop at the park on the way home. I’m an expert at pushing a swing. That is, if you haven’t made any other plans, of course,’ he added, hoping she hadn’t.

  But she was clearly delighted. ‘What a lovely idea! No. We had no plans. We were going to come straight home but that’s a much better suggestion.’

  ‘Great. That’s a date then,’ he said. ‘I’ll knock on your door in twenty minutes.’ He felt rather ashamed of himself, but reflected that the French were on the same side, so even though she didn’t know it, Michelle was serving her nation.

  His next step was to change out of the clothes he had chosen so carefully for lunch with Boris into something more suitable for playing in the park – and for the journey he was about to undertake. Fifteen minutes later, he emerged from his flat wearing jeans, trainers and a leather jacket over a sweatshirt. The documents and cash were stuffed in his pockets. He was carrying a small bag containing his laptop and his British passport. He slammed the door shut with a slight sigh of regret. He had been so near, he reflected, to pulling off a massive coup, recruiting a FSB officer in place. But it was not to be, so, lighting a cigarette, he set off to collect Michelle.

  At twelve minutes past one, Bruno drove Michelle’s car into the park with Michelle and her son sitting in the back seat. He pulled up just behind a muddy BMW with two men inside. He put on the handbrake and turned off the engine. Then, leaving the key in the lock, he grabbed his bag off the seat beside him and got out, saying, ‘Just got to do something. Back in a minute.’

  Then he broke into a run towards the car in front, where he opened the rear door and climbed in. The BMW accelerated away and disappeared from view, leaving Michelle and her son open-mouthed.

  Across the city in a restaurant near Lubyanka Square, Boris Bebchuk was sitting by himself at a table by the wall. The dining room was panelled in dark wood, a red carpet covered the floor and the heavy wood chairs were upholstered in red plush. The effect was formal, gloomy and old-fashioned. It was a place used mainly by government officials to entertain and impress foreign visitors. It also had special facilities, which was why Boris had chosen it for meeting Bruno. Many of the tables were fitted with concealed microphones, including the one at which Bebchuk was sitting, and there were concealed cameras scattered around that could photograph guests to order.

  Bebchuk was sipping sparkling water and looking at his phone. A table for two near the door was occupied by a pair of young men. Neither was eating, and they didn’t seem to have much to say to each other; they spent most of their time looking at their phones.

  At one thirty, Bebchuk seemed to make a decision, for he stood up and walked towards the door of the restaurant, exchanging a few words with the two men as he passed. He left the restaurant and shortly afterwards they too got up and departed. The waiters exchanged knowing looks and reset the tables for the next customers. Clearly, something had gone wrong.

  38

  When her husband Owen first took early retirement from his job at the Costco warehouse in Halesworth, Agatha Jones had been worried how they would make ends meet. They had moved from Southwold to this village three years before, and were happy here, but they still had a small mortgage on their cottage, and life never seemed to get any cheaper, even for an elderly couple with simple needs. She herself still worked part-time at a bakery in Wangford, and she had wondered if she should ask to do more hours.

  But it turned out there was nothing to worry about. Between Owen’s Costco pension, the state pension and Agatha’s wages, they got by quite easily. They were even thinking of taking one of those Saga cr
uises they’d read about in the Saturday Telegraph last winter, though admittedly it would only be a short one – perhaps to Scandinavia or the Scottish islands.

  So money was not a problem, but Owen’s retirement was still turning out to be a bit of a trial. The problem was that he had never been a man for hobbies – unless you counted reading the paper and watching the news as ‘hobbies’ – and even now that he had all the time in the world, what he didn’t seem to have was any interests. He didn’t read books, he didn’t like to garden, he didn’t listen to music; the only thing he seemed to do was be under foot all day long. And it was driving Agatha mad.

  Fortunately, she had her work, which got her out of the house, and her sister Maudie, who lived in Southwold still, was always happy to give her a cup of tea when she’d finished her hours at the bakery. The two of them had never been close, but anything was better than going home to find Owen dozing on the sofa with the television on.

  Then there was her neighbour, Miss Girling. Funny how even now they’d got to know each other quite well, she was still ‘Miss Girling’ to Agatha. When they’d first arrived, Agatha had found her a bit offputting – it hadn’t come as a surprise to learn she was some kind of schoolteacher. But once Owen had retired and Agatha had found an almost desperate need to get out of the house, she had made a concerted effort to get to know her neighbour better, and had partially succeeded. She wasn’t altogether sure how much Miss Girling enjoyed her visits, at least at first, though it seemed a good sign that recently she’d begun to talk about the school where she worked – there had been a change of ownership, it seemed, and not one Miss Girling was happy with.

  The students nowadays were all foreigners, and strange ones at that. What had been a school for boys and girls from local well-off families was now, according to Miss Girling, becoming a repository for immigrants. Agatha had enjoyed hearing about the children. You saw such terrible things in the news – all those people drowned trying to cross the sea in little boats, all that bombing and people getting their heads chopped off. It was a terrible world and she was pleased that at least some of the poor children had made it safely to Suffolk, even if the school was not as nice as it used to be.