Presence of Mine Enemies

by Stephen England

  Then everything had begun to collapse, the ground giving way all around them as the USSR entered freefall. First they had lost their apartment, such as it was—then Sasha had lost his job. And as the impotence sank home, he’d watched his brother change.

  Slowly, at first, then more rapidly as the months and years went by—addiction, an avalanche gathering momentum as it raced downhill. Threatening to crush everything in its path. All the dreams.

  His brother had spent more of the ‘90s in prison than out, a record of addiction and arrest which had very nearly jeopardized Grigori’s own dreams of becoming an FSB officer.

  They hadn’t spoken in more than a decade.

  And yet here he was, all the same. Kolesnikov leaned back into the plush pillows, picking up the surveillance photo of Gamal Belkaïd and holding it up to the light.

  Said bin Muhammad Lahcen had been a known entity—someone they could do business with. Someone happy to accept help, without asking too many questions of the hand that fed him.

  This man. . .was an unknown.

  But that didn’t change the job he had come here to do.

  10:37 P.M. British Summer Time

  Thames House

  Millbank, London

  It was quiet in Phillip Greer’s office, almost painfully so—the outer office long since deserted, the building nearly so, save for the night watch manning Five’s operations center on another floor, the armed security personnel making their rounds.

  That left the two men alone, sitting there in the quiet. Each lost in his respective thoughts.

  There simply wasn’t much more to be said. Greer glanced over to where Darren Roth sat in a chair facing the desk—the former Royal Marine’s fingers tented before him as he gazed off into space.

  Roth had arrived at Thames House nearly two hours before, having run a ninety-minute surveillance detection run through the twilit streets of London, losing his Russian friends in the process.

  It hadn’t been that much of a surveillance team—only two operatives that Roth had made. Possibly three.

  Fairly small-scale. Or conversely, very large, Greer thought dubiously—knowing all too well that the more people you could put on the ground, the fewer of them your target was likely to see.

  But Roth would know that as well, and the man was good at his craft.

  The phone on Greer’s desk began ringing abruptly just then, its harsh jangle shattering the silence.

  Greer picked up the receiver, listening for a few moments before answering with a curt, “Thank you.”

  “We’ll have access in five minutes,” he announced, turning toward an expectant Roth. “And then we’ll know.”

  “If the cameras can tell us.”

  “They will,” Greer replied quietly. Cameras covered London like a blanket, and nowhere was thicker with them than the Underground. “We need to see who the target of the surveillance operation was—him, or you.”

  What the cameras couldn’t tell them was what any of that would actually mean—whether Litvinov had chosen to play them false, or was simply running his own game, covering his tracks with his own side, best he could.

  Greer leaned back in his chair, running endless scenarios through his head, examining them from every angle.

  As one of the original officers from those years in Vienna, he knew Dmitri Pavlovich better than probably anyone else still remaining in the Service.

  But that had been very many years ago, and life changed men, for better or worse. Often both.

  Had he pushed the man too hard? Asked him for too much, too fast? More questions, with no more answers than any of the rest.

  A message popped up on his computer’s center screen, giving him the access he had requested, and he typed in the password, waving Roth over to look as he began pulling up CCTV footage from the Circle Line.

  Hours’ worth of it, streaming over the screens, beginning at Blackfriars and working from that point, forward and back. Pausing as Roth identified faces, as they searched for repeated sightings in the crowd. Anomalies. Patterns.

  An hour later, Greer leaned back from the computer, his eyes grave, his glasses riding low on the bridge of his nose. The conclusion, by now, inescapable.

  “They were there for you.”

  Chapter 17

  7:51 A.M. British Summer Time, July 11th

  Embassy of the Russian Federation

  Kensington Palace Gardens, London

  “Your message sounded. . .urgent, Dmitri,” Valeriy Kudrin said, waving Litvinov to a seat in front of his desk. The remnants of the rezident’s breakfast were still scattered on a plate to one side of his computer keyboard, a rather large piece of a muffin distending his cheek. “Did something happen with your asset? My men reported no problems that they were able to observe.”

  Did something happen? Litvinov found himself unable to respond for a moment, remembering the cold shudder that had gone through him, unfolding that piece of paper to see Vasiliev’s name printed thereon.

  He had wanted to run, wanted to leave the train and vanish, into the night. But he had known, even then, what he knew now. That there was only one way to handle this. Only one way out.

  “He’s a dangle.”

  8:53 A.M.

  A terraced house

  Islington, North London

  “Hold still, Richard, you’re spilling it on yourself.” Maggie Forster sighed heavily, noting the look of bewildered disbelief on her husband’s face as she reached over to wipe the spilled porridge from his shirtfront.

  He’d always detested porridge, his whole life—said it brought back bad memories of his childhood, growing up the son of working-class parents in Sheffield.

  This past year, as he slipped deeper into the grip of Alzheimer’s. . .it was the only thing he would eat for breakfast. And now, the last few days, he seemed incapable of holding his spoon level as he brought it to his mouth.

  Maggie daubed away the mess, suppressing another weary sigh as she rose to wash the cloth in the sink. The screen of the phone charging on the counter lighting up with an incoming message.

  No name, a blocked number—but she knew who it was, a chill running through her body as she glanced at the preview text. Have you seen the news?

  She glanced back at her husband as she swiped her thumb over the screen, tapping in a brief, one-word response. No.

  What did it mean? It seemed as though an eternity came and went in the forty seconds that passed before the mobile vibrated once more in her hand, the second message just as brief as the first. BBC One. Now.

  A small television sat in one corner of the kitchen, and she reached for the controller on the counter, a dark fear clawing at her heart. A premonition of evil.

  She filtered through the channels until she found BBC One, turning up the volume just in time to hear the newshost say, “. . .where securities trader Gennady Natashkin was found dead last night after an apparent fall from the balcony of his Moscow apartment. Police are investigating the incident, but there are no reports of. . .”

  The blood seemed to freeze in her veins, her fingers trembling around the controller as she muted the telly once more. She’d heard all she needed to.

  “Richard, dear,” she began, forcing an unfelt calm into her voice, “I may need to go out this morning. Will you be all right?”

  He looked up at the sound of her voice, an utterly baffled expression on his face—porridge dripping once more from his chin onto the stained shirt. “I’ve met you before, somewhere. . .haven’t I?”

  Maggie swore softly under her breath as she turned away, too distracted to feel the sorrow those words normally brought. Her mobile was in her purse, hanging behind her coat on a hook at the top of the steps, and she retrieved it, dialing a number from memory.

  “Julian,” she announced as the other end was picked up, “we need to meet. This morning.”

  7:55 A.M. British Summer Time

  Embassy of the Russian Federation

  Kensington Palace Ga
rdens, London

  Kudrin stopped chewing, his face frozen in an expression of surprise and disbelief. “What did you say?”

  Good. That had gotten his attention. Litvinov took a deep breath, steadying himself. “I’m saying that there is another agenda at play with this purported ‘walk-in’—some effort at provokatsiya on the part of the British security services. This man Roth is not as he seemed, at first glance, or even the second.”

  The expression of dismay on the rezident’s face would have been comical, had the situation not been so serious. His own danger, so very great. You shouldn’t have been so quick to take credit with Moscow, Valeriy. . .

  “B-b-but the intelligence—the documents you were given. That all checked out, it was all legitimate, it—”

  “Was clearly something the British were willing to sacrifice to advance their interests, whatever those might be,” Litvinov finished grimly, his gaze never wavering. “But last night, the information he gave me was patently false, and could only have been designed to trigger a reaction from our service—that’s the only logical interpretation that can be placed upon it.”

  So close to the truth. And yet so very far.

  “What was it?” Kudrin demanded, his voice a harsh, almost desperate rasp.

  The moment of truth. Or rather, of lies.

  “It was some nonsense about an illegal operation we are purportedly running in this country, involving one of our officers. A man named Alexei Vasiliev.”

  Even as he watched, the color seemed to drain from the rezident’s face. He reached out, clawing wordlessly for the receiver of the phone on his desk, calling his receptionist in the outer office. “Ensure that Dmitri Pavlovich and myself are undisturbed for the next hour. No interruptions—none, for any reason. Spasiba.”

  Kudrin replaced the phone in its cradle, seeming to consider his next words very carefully. “There is something you need to understand. . .”

  9:36 A.M. Central European Summer Time

  The warehouse

  Liège, Belgium

  He could still see flecks of his own blood, staining the warehouse floor beneath where the chair had sat. A grim reminder of the cause of the pain that still wracked his body—purplish bruises discoloring the flesh.

  And a suggestion that Belkaïd’s men could be careless. Worth knowing.

  But this morning, there was little other hint of what had gone before, Harry thought, moving across the warehouse at Belkaïd’s side—the two of them flanked by a pair of the trafficker’s men, armed, presumably. As near as he could tell, Belkaïd himself carried no weapon.

  The massive doors at the eastern end of the warehouse were open, the bright rays of the morning sun spilling inside around the bulk of a box truck backed into the building, its rear door lifted. Men clustered around like bees swarming a hive, off-loading boxes and stacking them off to one side.

  “Consumer electronics,” Belkaïd announced proudly, gesturing to one of his bodyguards to slash open the nearest box. He reached inside the ripped cardboard, retrieving a slim white phone and handing it to Harry.

  “The newest iPhone. Or rather, a counterfeit so close that not even an Apple executive could tell the difference.” He waved a hand to the truck. “A thousand of them—just arrived from China. On the streets of Brussels, of Paris, of Marseilles, they’ll bring three to four hundred euros apiece. What do you think?”

  Harry looked up, his gaze drifting idly over the truck, the boxes full of counterfeit phones being off-loaded for storage.

  “I think that I see here being piled up the good things of this world.”

  He heard an audible gasp from one of the bodyguards, saw Belkaïd’s face color at the accusation implicit in the words. The timeless warning of the Prophet, in one of the Makkan surahs, that such “good things” would divert the faithful from the true path.

  The path of jihad, as a man like al-Almani would interpret that particular passage.

  “Everything in its time, brother,” Belkaïd replied, bridling his temper with a visible effort.

  “Time?” Harry demanded, knowing that he was treading on dangerous ground—knowing all the same that he must sell this. His cover must be believed. And this was the only way. “We had a caliphate—for the first time in a century, we had a place that the ummah could truly call their own, a place where God’s laws were enforced on earth as they are in heaven. We had it, and we lost it, because some still believed it wasn’t time.”

  The older man met his gaze, their eyes locking across the few feet of warehouse floor. “And yet here you stand, among us.”

  His glance flickered to his bodyguards, standing there a few feet away on either side. “Perhaps my men were not wrong to ask—how is it that you are still alive, when everyone around you died back in Sham? Whatever the dream of caliphate meant to you, you don’t seem to have been willing to die for it.”

  “It was not my choice,” Harry returned steadily, his eyes never leaving Belkaïd’s face. “Abu Omar always believed that those of the faithful in Europe should have been returned to the West to continue the war as soon as they were trained—not expended on the battlefields of Syria. I was to be sent back, even before I was wounded. Once that happened, I was no longer able to protest the decision.”

  “And so you’ve returned, alone,” Belkaïd said, a touch of irony in his voice, “to carry on the war.”

  “Insh’allah,” Harry replied, hearing the sound of voices from the rear of the warehouse behind them—turning to see a blindfolded Marwan and Reza being led into the building. The girl, just visible behind them. “And here are the soldiers Allah has seen fit to give me.”

  9:05 A.M. British Summer Time

  Embassy of the Russian Federation

  Kensington Palace Gardens, London

  “. . .so you understand, then, why it is imperative that you continue to develop this asset.”

  Litvinov nodded, still struggling to process everything that he had been told in the space of the previous hour. The enormity of it all.

  Influence operations were nothing new, of course—he was as familiar with them as any career Russian intelligence officer. But this. . .someone had, somehow, put their foot into it, in a major way. He wondered idly if they remained in the employ of the service.

  Or if they were still alive.

  “Of course, Valeriy,” he replied, mastering himself with an effort. “I will make every effort to learn whatever else Mr. Roth can provide us related to what the British know about our operations.”

  “Make this a priority,” Kudrin warned sharply, glancing across the desk. “I was wrong to suggest that you should hand your contact off to another officer at the earliest opportunity. We must not—we dare not—run that risk. If the British are watching this operation Vasiliev is running, if his contact inside the Security Service is already under surveillance—it could destroy everything. We need to know, one way or the other. As soon as possible.”

  “I understand,” Litvinov responded, rising from his chair, the meeting clearly reaching its end. “I’ll set up another meet with him as soon as it’s safe to do so. . .we must be careful not to cross paths too often. If he has himself somehow fallen under suspicion, the digital trail we both leave behind, wherever we go, could give them a dangerous amount of insight.”

  Kudrin’s voice arrested him where he stood. “Some risks are unavoidable, Dmitri Pavlovich. Find out what he knows.”

  10:23 A.M. Central European Summer Time

  The warehouse

  Liège, Belgium

  “. . .and Aryn, have you heard from him?” Harry asked, his eyes fixed on Marwan’s face as their small group stood off in one corner of the warehouse. Alone, for the moment, but still under the watchful eye of Belkaïd’s men.

  A nod. “Late last night,” the young man replied, seeming ill at ease. Unsure of himself. It was an unfamiliar look on him, but perhaps he was still sorting out where he fit into the hierarchy, now that Belkaïd dominated the picture. Perhap
s they all were. “After you made contact. He should be arriving here in Liège soon, on the bus.”

  “His mother is dead,” he added, after an awkward pause.

  Shock and unfeigned sorrow flickered across Harry’s face. “I am sorry. She was a righteous woman.”

  Belkaïd appeared at his elbow before he could say another word, a curious smile playing across the trafficker’s face as he looked from one to another.

  “I’m glad to see the mujahideen reunited,” he said, a mocking edge to his voice, “though I understand there yet remains one more?”

  Another nod from Marwan. “He’ll be here on the noon bus.”

  “Good,” Belkaïd replied. “Then Ibrahim can go to meet him. And then we can discuss what it is that I need you all to do. . .for me.”

  9:27 A.M. British Summer Time

  Embassy of the Russian Federation

  Kensington Palace Gardens, London

  “Make sure you have those reports to me by the weekend,” Litvinov admonished, turning away from the young SVR analyst as they parted in the corridor. “Make it a priority—we need to understand what the British are doing if we’re to find a way to counter them.”

  He pushed open the door of his office as the analyst’s footsteps retreated down the hall, favoring his own secretary with a perfunctory nod as he crossed the outer office.

  It was only after the door of the inner office closed behind him that Litvinov let out the breath he’d been holding, seemingly, ever since his meeting with the rezident had begun.

  It was simply. . .unfathomable, all of it. He knew the Kremlin had become audacious in recent years—there were times when it even seemed as though the Centre was using the UK as a test bed, to see just how far the West would allow them to prosecute their operations with impunity.