by Mark Dawson
Shcherbatov was sixty-two and in excellent shape. He ran five miles around the SVR’s indoor track in Yasenevo every morning and made it his habit to complete at least one marathon a year; he could still cover the Moscow course in under four hours. His exertions had kept him trim and supple. One of his few weaknesses was vanity, and that he could still turn the heads of the women under his command was important to him. He was not wearing his uniform when he came into the room where Milton and Anna were waiting for him. He was wearing a black sweater and jeans.
“Captain Milton,” he said. “I am Pavel Valerievich Shcherbatov. It is good to meet you.”
He extended his hand and, after a short pause, Milton took it. His shake was firm and Milton could feel how powerful his grip could be; it was a strangler’s grip.
“I admit I know much about you, Captain. You can be sure I will not underestimate you.”
Milton held onto his hand for a moment longer than was necessary and then let go.
Shcherbatov smiled at that, unfazed. “We have Department of Analysis and Information in Moscow. They have attributed many kills to you. I have worked with the most dangerous assassins in Russian Federation and, before that, Soviet Union. You are as dangerous as any of them.”
Milton shrugged off the praise. “I’m afraid I don’t know very much about you, colonel.”
“Call me Pasha,” he said. “Please. No need for formality.”
“That’s alright. I’d prefer colonel, if you don’t mind.”
“Very well, Captain Milton. But I must ask: are you sure you do not know me?”
Milton looked at him again. “No, sir. I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Your memory is poor, Captain Milton. You do not remember our previous meeting? Surely ten years is not so long that you would forget?”
Now he did pause and Shcherbatov noticed his renewed interest. “Why don’t you help me out?” he suggested.
“In career, how many targets escaped you?”
“Not many,” he said, although he had made the connection now. “There was one, right at the start.”
“I believe I am fortunate enough to say I am only man you were sent to kill who got away.” He smiled benignly at him. “We were going to see your Control. You and another agent attacked car. I escaped. You did not shoot me. Do you remember now?”
“I never knew your name,” he said.
“I am sure you did not. I believe I was SNOW. My companion, Anastasia Ivanovna Semenko, was DOLLAR. She was not as fortunate.”
Milton flexed, sensing the unsaid threat in Shcherbatov’s words.
“Do not concern yourself, Captain. I do not seek revenge––at least not from you. You were following orders. You are soldier. I understand how that works.”
He didn’t relax. “So why am I here?”
“Because I have something for you to do.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, colonel. I’m out of the game. I’m not interested.”
“Then I must ask you––why did you come?”
“I didn’t have a choice.” He turned to the girl. “Your comrade dragged me here. She says you have a friend of mine.”
“Indeed we do. Captain Pope.”
“That’s right. I came to persuade you to release him.”
“Perhaps. But we need you to do something for us first.”
“I don’t––”
He raised his hands to interrupt him. “You have retired. We know this. But it is not a violent thing. We want you to find something for us. Information. You can get it.”
“What information?”
“In good time, Captain Milton.” He turned to the girl. “Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko––you leave us now, please.”
“Yes, colonel,” she said, dipping her head and then exiting the room, closing the door behind her.
“I hope she treated you with respect, Captain Milton. We do respect you. Your work is well known to us.” Shcherbatov got up, took another log from the store and dropped it onto the fire. “Your friend, Control, has he ever mentioned me?”
Milton shrugged. “Why would he?”
“Because he and I know each other very well.”
He shook his head. “If he has, I don’t recall it.”
“Let me tell you story, Captain Milton. Many years ago, I travel to London for interesting assignment. I am sent with female agent, Anastasia Ivanovna Semenko. It is proposed that we pose as couple. She is to work as independent contractor in arms industry, I am lawyer. I land in London, find flat, establish necessary contacts. Nastya joins me and we grow close. What was supposed to be fiction became truth. It is inevitable, yes, you must have experienced this?” Milton eyed him, steely, said nothing. “The interesting assignment: Russian intelligence has suggested that there is senior English spy who is vulnerable to blackmail. We hear from colleagues in Tehran and Baghdad that he has sold information to both regimes. He sells information to Israel, too. The man is venal, so they tell us. So we think perhaps we can trap this man, use him for our purposes?”
Shcherbatov stood close enough so that the fire could warm his legs. Milton watched him hawkishly.
“This official––I see you realise it is your Control. Nastya make contact with him through intermediary. She say she has transaction to put to Damascus but she is finding difficulty in proving she is”––he searched for the right word––“legitimate. Control say that he can arrange introduction. He vouch for Nastya, in return for percentage of deal, of course.”
Milton kept on staring at him.
“All the time, we are gathering evidence. He is very careful. No phone calls, no emails. But we build case against him. We have photographs of him meeting Nastya. We can demonstrate payment of funds he demands. Eventually we have enough to demonstrate good sense in his working with us. Alternative would not be good for him. There is meeting. He is surprised to learn he has been tricked and it does not go well. There is a second meeting. It goes better. He says he will think about proposal. We make progress, I think, and then he suggest third meeting to discuss matter properly. It is to be on Embankment. Next to river and Houses of Parliament. You know the rest, Captain Milton. My Nastya is killed and I am fortunate to escape.” He smiled as he spoke, the smile of a friendly uncle. It was a practiced expression, the instant smile of a politician or a salesman, a mask hide his true feelings. It was a good mask, honed by experience, but Shcherbatov could not disguise the glitter of hatred in his eyes. “Ever since then,” he continued, “I watch his career. And I wait.”
Milton frowned. “You had the evidence against him. Why not use it?”
“We lost evidence. We have copies of photographs, of course, but they are insufficient on their own. A man and a woman meeting in a park. What is that? We had financial information on portable drives, but they were taken when we were attacked.”
Milton scowled dubiously. “You didn’t back it up?”
“Of course. But Control sent other agents to take backups. Four Russian agents killed, evidence lost. God takes care of man who takes care of himself, Captain, and Control is clever man.” He put his hands together and steepled his fingers. “There is Russian proverb: ‘every seed knows its time.’ I have waited ten years for chance to settle old score. Now I have that chance. Can you see why I wanted to speak to you now? You are perfect. He hates you. You hate him. I hate him. We have something in common.”
“I doubt that.”
“Control is common enemy. We have similar experience. We know he is ruthless. He has taken things that are important to us. My Nastya. Your liberty.”
Shcherbatov was still standing, the flames still warming his legs, and he looked down at Milton, unmoving in the armchair. There was a set of antique Russian dolls on the mantelpiece and the colonel took the smallest and turned it between his thumb and forefinger.
“You haven’t told me what you want me to do,” Milton said.
“We have found someone who has information we lost. You will acquire it.
We will put information into public domain and result will be his disgrace. He must be humiliated. And then, when he has been stripped of everything”, he snapped his fingers, “then you know what comes next. We have our own cleaners, as you know.”
“Even if I could get the information, why would I do it?”
“Maybe you talk to Captain Pope. Ask him what he thinks.”
Chapter Nineteen
SHCHERBATOV LED the way into the hallway and then through a narrow archway, down a narrow flight of stone steps. The temperature dropped quickly away from the warmth of the fire. The stairs were dank and the steps were slick with frozen mildew and Milton braced himself with one hand against the icy stone wall. They reached what he guessed was the cellar and Shcherbatov pulled down on a drawstring, lighting the single naked bulb that was suspended overhead. Milton blinked at the light, taking in the medium-sized room. It was constructed in the foundations of the dacha, maybe four metres wide and five metres long, with rough stone walls and a concrete floor. The bulb was the only illumination and it wasn’t strong enough to dispel the shadows around the edges of the room. Metal bars had been fitted halfway into it, flush to the floor and the ceiling and reaching all the way across. The ironwork looked substantial. There was a doorway in the middle of the bars, the door secured with a bolt that was itself fastened by a industrial padlock.
Milton took a step forward.
The cell, for that was what it was, was furnished with a simple cot and a bucket. The cot was covered with a dirty blanket and, beneath that, Milton could make out the shape of a man’s body.
“I leave you to talk, Captain Milton. Come upstairs after.”
Milton turned to him but he was already climbing back to the ground floor.
Milton paused at the edge of the cage and looked at the man inside. He was lying towards him and, even in the dim light, and with the shadowed grid from the bars that fell across his face, Milton recognised Michael Pope.
“Pope,” he said. “Pope, wake up.”
The man stirred on the cot.
“Wake up, Pope.”
His voice was weak and uncertain: “Who is it?”
“It’s John.”
“Who?”
“John Milton.”
“Milton?”
“It’s me, Pope. Come on, wake up.”
“Milton?” Pope repeated, his voice sluggish and slurred, as if his mouth had been stuffed full of cotton wool. “What? What are you doing here?”
“I’m going to get you out.”
Pope didn’t register that. “Didn’t expect to see you again.”
“Wasn’t planning on it. Not after last time.”
He chuckled: a weak, low sound. “Sorry about that.” He made a whooping, hacking sound that Milton guessed was an attempt at laughter.
The last time. Nearly seven months ago in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Pope had led the team that had been sent to track him down and bring him back. The orders had been equivocal about how they did that, dead or alive, and Pope had intervened to prevent Callan from making sure his return flight was in a body bag.
Milton stepped right up to the bars and took one in each hand. Pope shuffled around so that he could lower his legs to the floor and he sat up, slowly and unsteadily. The light fell on him more evenly and Milton could see the damage that the Russians had done. He had been badly beaten: his right eye was swollen shut and his left was blackened; there was a purple welt all the way down the side of his face, striated with the pattern that the sole of a boot might make; his chin had been split open and sutured back together again in a quick and ugly fashion.
“How’d I look?” he said.
“Not great,” Milton admitted. “How’d you manage to get in a mess like this?”
“Shouldn’t have happened, should it? Got sloppy.”
Milton yanked at the bars as hard as he could: they were fitted well and there was no give in them at all. “You think?”
Pope held a hand up against the contusions on his face and smiled ruefully through the wince of pain. “He tell you what happened?”
“Just that they arrested you. What were you doing?”
He took in a deep breath, as if steeling himself. His voice, when it came again, was reedy and soft. “Control sent me after him.”
“Shcherbatov?”
Slowly and with evident pain, he stood and walked to the bars. Each step forced an exhalation of pain. “He was in Monaco.”
Milton hushed him and pointed up to the ceiling.
“They’re recording alright,” Pope said. “But no need to worry, I told them everything already.” He laughed again, and then coughed some more. “So I got the file. Don’t know what went wrong. The infiltration … all messed up. They were waiting for me. Took me somewhere, knocked me out. Then I’m in a concrete room in the Lubyanka, strapped to a table with a bag over my head.” He coughed again, hacking hard. “Don’t worry. I’m okay.”
“You don’t look it.”
“What’s a little waterboarding between friends?”
Milton looked at him anxiously. He wasn’t okay. Far from it. Every cough seemed to end with him swallowing back fluid, as if his lungs were waterlogged. He was feverish, sweating and shivering simultaneously. Milton had seen plenty of men with pneumonia and that was what it looked like to him. Christ, he thought. Pneumonia. If he had that he wouldn’t survive a week in the north.
“What about you?” Pope wheezed out. “What are you doing here?”
Milton told him about his arrest, about Anna breaking him out and about the proposition she had put to him. “You need to keep it together, Pope,” he said when he was finished. “I’m going to get you out.”
“Don’t be an idiot, John. That’s not your job any more.”
“What else am I going to do? Leave you to rot?”
He looked at him, his eyes burning beneath their rheumy film. “You leave it to the diplomats. I do a little time, they swap me for someone we nabbed that they want back. You know how it works. You can’t do anything,” he coughed, “and we both know you can’t trust them.”
“I know that. But I can listen.”
“To what?”
“To what he has to say.”
Chapter Twenty
SHCHERBATOV WATCHED as Milton came back into the sitting room; it was almost dizzily warm compared to the frigid cellar. A silver platter had been left out on the table: a tea pot, a samovar of hot water and two cups. The civility was a stark contrast with the cold and the darkness below. Milton knew that Shcherbatov was making a point: it had been necessary to take him down there in order to underline the point he wanted to make. Pope’s future would be unpleasant and short if he did not cooperate. Shcherbatov poured tea into the cups and topped it up with hot water from the samovar. He left a cup on the table within Milton’s reach and took his to the opposite armchair.
“Do you like tea, Captain Milton? It an English passion, yes? This is Russian Caravan blend: oolong, keemun and lapsang souchong. It has malty, smokey taste. Very nice, I think.” Shcherbatov sipped his tea carefully, watching Milton over the lip of the cup.
“He’s ill,” Milton said. “He has pneumonia.”
“He will be cared for.”
“Like you’ve cared for him already?”
Shcherbatov waved that off. “He will be cared for properly. You have my word.”
“Nothing happens to him,” Milton said.
“Or?”
“Let’s leave that unsaid, shall we? I’d rather be civil. But you know what I’m capable of.”
Shcherbatov smiled his best, conciliatory smile. “I understand you are angry, Captain Milton, but there is no need. We are friends. You help us, he is returned to you.”
His voice was cold and blank. “Who is it you want me to find?”
“Member of team responsible for the attack. Intelligence says this agent has means and opportunity to assist. We want you to find agent, find proof of Control’s corruption, and bring proof
to us. If you do that, Captain Pope will be released. If not”, he spread his arms and left a pause, “if not, Captain Milton, your friend has long and unhappy stay in Siberia.”
“Who is the agent?”
“Her name is Beatrix Rose. At the time of attack she was Number One.”
Milton’s eyes narrowed and he clenched his jaw; Shcherbatov noticed. “And you know where she is?”
“We do,” Shcherbatov confirmed. “Hong Kong.”
Chapter Twenty-One
THE CAB drew up to the rank outside the terminal at Sheremetyevo airport. Milton got out and collected his new suitcase from the trunk. It had been waiting in his room for him, together with its contents, when he had returned to the Ritz-Carlton after the long drive back south yesterday afternoon. There was another new suit, three plain white shirts, underwear, two new pair of shoes.
He had a little time to kill and he would have appreciated the chance to speak to Anya Dostovalov again but he decided against it. He had lost his tail easily enough the first time around, and it would be tempting fate to think that they would not have boosted his detail now, especially since he knew now what they wanted him to do. He was not prepared to risk compromising her anonymity just to salve his unease. Instead, he did as he was told: he stayed in his room, ordered room service and was in bed and asleep by eleven. He had a feeling he might need his sleep.
Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko was waiting for him inside the terminal.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m coming with you.”
“That’s not a good idea.”
“It’s not up for discussion. The colonel wants me to come.”
“To keep an eye on me?”
“You can understand that he doesn’t trust you, Captain?”
“You’ll get in my way. You’ll make it more difficult.”
“We’ll just have to manage.”
Milton thought about insisting but he knew there was little point. If she had a ticket for the same plane to Hong Kong that he did, there would be nothing he could do to stop her getting onto it. It would be easier to get rid of her on the other side.
