And he lacked the willpower to do so himself.
He shoved it into his pocket after another long moment, along with the burner—picking up his keys and the small pouch containing the larger portable drive the Russian had given him.
The door of his flat, closing behind him, one final time.
And somewhere, off in the distance, another domino began to topple. . .
7:59 A.M.
Roof of the World
Mayfair, London
The sign on the door indicated that the club had closed—finally—two hours before, after another hard night of raucous partying from London’s youthful emigre elite, but signs had never meant a great deal to Alexei Vasiliev.
Nor did they to the two men flanking him as the three of them swept into the desolate club, brushing past security and the loose knots of staff working to clean up the detritus from the previous night’s bacchanal.
His companions were hard, muscled figures—dwarfing Vasiliev’s own slight frame. Mafiya types, former military, most likely.
But there was no question, looking at them, of who was in charge—the easy confidence written in Vasiliev’s features, the smile in his cold eyes. A confidence that, in Russia, was the sole proprietorship of the security services.
As for the men, they had no official links to Moscow—beyond their admittedly dubious immigration status—which made them perfect for Vasiliev’s purposes.
“Roman Igorevich!” Vasiliev bellowed, pausing in the middle of the club’s deserted dance floor. “Where are you, you young idiot?”
Every soul in the place seemed to freeze at the sound of his blasphemy, wide eyes staring at him from all across the open space of the club.
He smiled at the reaction, a hard cruel smile—wheeling on a young woman in a housekeeping uniform, standing a few feet away from him. “Where is Roman Igorevich?”
“H-h-he’s upstairs,” she stammered, clearly torn between her fear for her employer’s son, and fear for the man who now stood before her. “In the lounge. But he’s not to be disturbed.”
Not to be disturbed, the intelligence officer thought, feeling something catch the tip of his dress shoes as he turned away from her—looking down to see a discarded pair of women’s underwear wrapped around the polished wingtip. He kicked it away with a snarled curse, his companions falling in step behind him as he moved toward the stairs. We’ll see about that. . .
The women—most of them still half-naked, their reactions dulled by the after-effects of the night’s revel—scattered like a covey of flushed quail at the entrance of Vasiliev and his retinue, recognizing in their arrival a greater threat than anything their. . .patron could have ever mustered.
Their patron. The room stank of sweat, alcohol, vomit, and urine, Roman Igorevich Zakirov’s lanky body—naked except for an incongruous pair of socks—draped bizarrely over a white couch stained with his own vomit, a contortion made comfortable only by his own unconsciousness.
Expensive bottles of champagne, knocked carelessly on their side, and drug paraphernalia littered the low wooden table in front of the couch—white powder turned to muck in the spilled liquor, soaking a rolled-up fifty-pound note bearing the image of Queen Elizabeth II.
How far have we fallen, Vasiliev mused, his gaze drifting over the young man’s face, the dissolution—the weakness—already indelibly inscribed in his features. He could remember the older Zakirov at this very age, so very many years ago.
So very different than his son.
It was enough to make Vasiliev glad he’d never had children of his own. Not that anyone had ever told him about, at least.
Old age was difficult enough without your legacy being marred by such. . .failures.
It was more than enough to have a protégé, he reminded himself, stooping down at the side of Roman Igorevich, pressing two fingers to the side of his neck. And he was fortunate enough to have that.
There it was. A pulse, still beating strong. The young man’s heart still beat, fortunately or unfortunately—but it was enough for his purposes this morning.
“Get me a bucket of water,” Vasiliev barked, his eyes flickering toward the young employee hovering in the entrance of the lounge, watching them nervously.
His face blanched, fear and indecision playing across his countenance—but fear of Vasiliev won out under the FSB officer’s cold, unyielding stare, and the young man disappeared, returning a few minutes later with the kind of bucket a hotel might use to deliver champagne, filled to near the brim with cold, clear water.
“Spasiba bolshoi,” Vasiliev murmured, dismissing the employee without another word as he took the bucket in his own weathered hands—emptying it over Roman Igorevich’s upturned face and upper body.
The young man moaned and spat reflexively, his eyes fluttering open ever so briefly. Vasiliev stooped down once more, taking the boy’s jaw in his hand, holding it firmly as he slapped him viciously across the cheek, leaving a red handprint against the pale flesh.
“Come now, Roman. . .did you forget what day this is?”
10:44 A.M.
Thames House
Millbank, London
“I saw the news. Am I right to presume that that was him?”
“You are, Julian,” Phillip Greer replied, leaning back in his office chair, his office phone cupped against his ear. The coroner’s photos of Dmitri Pavlovich Litvinov spread out before him on his desk. “They got to him, somehow.”
“I’m sorry.” From most men, the sympathy would have struck Greer as meaningless, but Julian Marsh knew the realities of this world as few others. He knew, keenly, how this felt.
“How did things go with Patrick?” Greer knew the answer before he even asked it—knowing that if Marsh had been successful, the call would have come much earlier. Last night, even.
“About as well as you might expect.” There was a long, awkward pause. “I was the wrong messenger, Phillip. Too much bad blood there, all through the years.”
“You were the only messenger,” the old counter-intel spook replied. He had known it was a lost cause from the beginning. . .there was no convincing someone of Ashworth’s background that history had made its inevitable return. That the world order was nowhere near as stable as he believed. “Let me guess. . .he compared me to Peter Wright?”
“You know him well. I wish I could have done more.”
“There’s little else that anyone could do, Julian.” Except for what we’ve uncovered on MacCallum’s analyst, Greer thought, but he wasn’t about to discuss that over an open line. The dangers, after last night, all too clear. “I appreciate your call.”
He hung up, waiting a second before ringing his secretary. “Rhona, has Mr. Norris arrived for work yet?”
“No, sir—I just checked with Security five minutes ago. He hasn’t entered the building.”
Strange. Had he been warned—had something happened to scare him away? Or was this simply moving forward. . .already. The thought chilled Greer to the bone, and he almost missed his secretary’s next words.
“. . .just received a call from the acting DG a moment ago, sir. He wants you to meet with him in his office at three o’clock.”
11:07 A.M.
Biggin Hill Airport
Bromley, UK
There were at least a dozen business jets and other assorted light private aircraft scattered around the small general aviation airport as the blacked-out Mercedes pulled into the carpark, wings glistening in the morning sun.
The playthings of the rich and famous. Alexei Vasiliev shoved open the door of the SUV almost as soon as it stopped moving. Men far wealthier than he could ever hope to be. More powerful? That remained to be seen.
It was ironic, he thought, turning to pull open the rear door of the Mercedes—a still hung-over, slightly high Roman Igorevich stumbling out, nearly falling before Vasiliev wrapped an arm around his shoulders.
He was only hours away from shattering the UK’s intelligence network in Russia, and it would
all happen here. Here, where once British pilots had risen into the sky to defend their country against another, far different, threat.
Men and women in the operations room, moving countless counters across the great map tables—tracking their efforts to intercept Luftwaffe bombers.
Their finest hour. They had passed a small RAF chapel on the way in—a vintage Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire mounted out front, testament to the England that once was.
And was no more.
Vasiliev turned to find a short, middle-aged man hustling across the burning macadam toward them—sweat beading on his forehead from the exertion in the summer heat, staining the armpits of his dress shirt.
“Mr. Zakirov!” he exclaimed, unnatural cheer in his voice as he reached out, pumping the young oligarch’s hand vigorously. “Richard Carrick, Spectrum Flight Support station manager here at Biggin Hill. It’s so good to have you with us again.”
And that was England today, Vasiliev thought with a smile—eyes masked by his aviators as he listened to Roman’s almost incoherent, fumbling reply. A dying country, prostrating itself before anyone with enough money to ensure its survival for another day.
Gulf sheikhs with ties to terror, corrupt oligarchs responsible for more butchery than most English kings. . .it didn’t matter, so long as the money kept flowing in.
Hastening its death would almost be a mercy. Almost.
Vasiliev took a step forward, placing his hand on the short Englishman’s shoulder—looking down at him. “What Roman Igorevich is trying to ask is, have all the preparations been made for his personal jet to depart from this airport this evening?”
“Of course, of course,” Carrick replied, the ebullience draining from his voice, flinching away from Vasiliev’s hand. “You’ll depart here at 1800 hours according to the filed flight plan. Destination: St. Petersburg.”
“Good, good,” Vasiliev smiled, glancing at Roman. “His father will be glad to have him home.”
12:35 P.M.
Thames House
Millbank, London
“There he is,” Greer said quietly, his hand on the shoulder of the young technician sitting in front of them—his finger pointing at the screen.
Obediently, the technician hit pause, freezing the CCTV footage on-screen, the face of the indicated figure, clearly identifiable.
“That’s Norris,” Darren Roth confirmed, running a hand absently over his dark chin—his eyes narrowing as he stared at the screen. “What does he think he’s doing?”
The footage was two hours old, taken from cameras at the Piccadilly Circus tube station. They’d first picked up the analyst leaving his Edgware flat hours before, the web of cameras thrown out across London and blanketing the Underground, enabling them to track his seemingly aimless progress through the streets to board the Tube at Baker Street, staying on the Metropolitan Line as he crossed London before switching over to Northern at Moorgate and finally to Bakerloo at Elephant & Castle south of the Thames.
And now here he was. . .pacing randomly back and forth across the platform at Piccadilly Circus, approaching the very edge at moments.
As if he intended to hurl himself from it, Roth thought, a sudden chill passing through him. “Is he. . .”
On-screen, Norris moved back from the tracks before he could finish the sentence—disappearing in the crowds of commuters—presumably in the direction of the escalators leading up to the station’s famed circular concourse.
“Switching over to the next camera,” the technician announced, glancing up at Greer in the semi-darkness of the room as he tapped in the command to cycle forward. But Norris wasn’t there, the analyst’s slight figure lost in the crush of people flooding through the station, as they did every day at the Circus.
Simply. . .nowhere to be found.
Roth looked over, his eyes meeting Greer’s. “Should we alert Special Branch?”
“Not at this point.” Greer picked up his jacket, throwing it over his arm—preparing to leave. “We don’t have enough to go on, not yet. Just stay here, do what you can to re-acquire him. And let me know the moment he’s found.”
2:43 P.M.
Temple Church
Temple, London
I should have done it. Simon Norris shuddered, cursing himself, thinking of just how close he had come, moving onto the platform there at the Circus.
Just another step—two, maybe, as the train came rushing into the station. And it would have all been over—the thumb drive crushed beneath the wheels, along with his own mangled body.
But he’d quailed, at the last moment, like he had at every critical moment in his life. He swore, his knuckles whitening as his hands balled into fists—his eyes opening to look down into the mailed visage of William Marshal, lying there eternally in stone effigy on the floor of the old Round Church, as he had ever since the 13th Century. The best knight who ever lived. . .
“You would have done it, wouldn’t you?” he demanded aloud, startling a young Korean woman who stood a few paces away, studying the architecture of the nave. Fallen on his sword.
But of course he would have—for in Marshal’s world, honor had been worth far more than life. A brittle, desperate smile crossed the analyst’s face, never reaching his eyes.
In his own, life was all—brief and fleeting, though it was, and honor? A name, scarce ever spoken.
In another hour, he would leave this church and walk the few blocks northwest to 1 Fleet Street, the old Child & Co., now the London headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
A short walk, that’s all it was. And then his betrayal would be complete—his course irrevocable, once he’d uploaded the Russian’s worm into their network.
But even that was self-deception—his course had been set, long before this. No choice.
Or maybe that was the lie. He felt like he was going mad, the room swimming around him, his eyes flickering up to find more stone faces gazing down upon him, grotesque, horribly distorted visages. Mocking him.
He fell to his knees, his shoulder brushing against the chain which held tourists back from the ancient effigies—feeling as if he was going to retch. Or scream. But finding himself as incapable of doing either as he had been of throwing himself in front of that train.
No way out.
3:24 P.M.
Thames House
Millbank, London
It felt like being summoned before the headmaster, Phillip Greer reflected, waiting in the DG’s outer office. Ashworth was delayed—apparently on the phone with some opposite number in the United States. Perhaps the DCIA, even. Whoever they were, they were more important than Greer, and so he sat—cooling his heels.
There had been no further sightings of Norris on CCTV—not even after feeding his file photos into the OSIRIS network. It shouldn’t be this hard.
The man was an analyst, not a trained field officer, there was no reason that he should be having this much success staying ahead of them. And yet he was.
Greer shook his head. If nothing else, his behavior was serving to confirm that he was their man. Now if they only had time to act upon it. . .
“You can go on in,” Ashworth’s secretary announced suddenly, gesturing to the door. “The DG will see you now.”
With a brief word of thanks, Greer rose, crossing to the door of the inner office and opening it.
“Please, Phillip, have a seat,” Ashworth announced, gesturing to a chair in front of the desk—not looking up from his papers, his pen moving furiously.
Greer took the indicated chair, glancing around the office as he did so. He’d been in this room so many times before, mostly during Julian Marsh’s tenure, but it seemed different, somehow. Changed.
Toward the far end of the room, beyond the bookshelves, Marsh had hung a canvas of George Romney’s Cassandra, the mad prophetess of Troy—granted the gift of seeing the future, yet forever doomed to be disbelieved.
It was no longer there—no doubt taken down by the former DG when he
’d been forced out. Carried home, its prophecy fulfilled at the last. In its place hung another piece of. . .art, Greer supposed, a few abstract splashes of red and black paint against the stark white of the bare canvas.
No doubt Ashworth’s selection, he thought, turning his attention back to the acting director-general. Novus homo.
A new man, indeed.
Even as he watched, Ashworth finished signing the documents, dropping the pen into a golf mug that sat on the desk to the right of his computer. “I had drinks with Julian Marsh last night,” he began at long last, looking up to meet Greer’s eyes. “At The Rag. But you know this, don’t you?”
Greer just stared at him, inclining his head almost imperceptibly forward. “I do.”
“And perhaps you are also aware of the outcome of that meeting?”
Another cautious nod.
Ashworth leaned forward, his fingers tented before him. His eyes taking on a hard cast. “What were you even thinking, Phillip? Showing classified intelligence of this nature to someone outside the community, someone not authorized to receive it. . .I’d be within my rights to cashier you, here and now. Probably should, even.”
“Julian Marsh has served this country for longer than almost anyone in this building,” Greer observed quietly. It was true—Five was known for the youth of its workforce. “My trust in him is implicit.”
Ashworth shook his head. “That doesn’t matter, it wasn’t your decision to make. The rules are very clear, and your breach of them equally so.”
And that was what mattered, in Ashworth’s world, Greer realized, his face an impassive mask. Rules. Order. Results, far less so, as long as the inquiry would show that the procedure followed had been blameless. By the book.
“I knew I needed more evidence before I could make my case to you,” Greer responded after a moment, the silence in the room becoming awkward. “But. . .events forced my hand. So I enlisted the help of a peer. Someone you might be more inclined to take seriously. Someone—”
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