“I think you should.” A Russian man’s voice.
From behind Will.
Will froze.
Footsteps crunching over gravel.
The lawyers were now looking over Will’s shoulder toward the sounds.
Mikhail came alongside Will and put his handgun against the MI6 operative’s head. The big SVR officer smiled, though he looked menacing and focused. “And after you’ve pulled your trigger, maybe I should pull mine, because following you here was my last
fucking
lead.”
Will remained motionless, his gun still flush against the president’s head. “Lower your weapon, Mikhail.”
The Russian frowned. “How do you know my name?”
“Mikhail Salkov, I know all about you. We got you on your overseas postings.”
“Very clever,” he huffed. “Still, makes no difference given where you’re now standing.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. Make these men talk, or you’re of no further use to me.”
Will smiled. “You followed me after my team and your men attacked the convoy. You watched me leave the Auguststrasse apartment and tailed me to the airport. And this morning, you observed me briefing my team on the outskirts of Berlin.”
“An informed guess. You never spotted me.”
“If that’s true, then I wouldn’t have needed to cover my back tonight. Would I?”
Mikhail frowned again.
Will called out, “Have you got him?”
Roger jumped down from the wall, his pistol aimed at the center of Mikhail’s head. “Yeah, he ain’t going anywhere.”
Will nodded at Mikhail. “I’ve been looking out for you since we attacked the convoy. I spotted you three times. And I suspected you might break cover this evening.”
“You want me to drop him?” Roger was very still, his finger poised to pull back the trigger.
“Gentlemen!” Albert Metz placed a frail hand over Will’s forearm. “Who are you?”
Speaking quickly, Will answered, “I’m an MI6 officer. The Russian is an SVR operative. We’ve been working the same operation, from different angles. Is Schreiber the high-value witness?”
“I can’t answer that!”
“What’s this about?” Mikhail nudged his muzzle against Will’s temple.
At first, Will didn’t respond, his mind racing. He was in no doubt that Mikhail would pull the trigger if it helped him get closer to the missing paper. But if the Russian shot him now, he’d achieve nothing. Moreover, Will had witnessed him risk his life to protect others in Gdansk. The man wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer. He made a decision and told Mikhail about the ICC’s interest in Schreiber and the witness being protected in the Netherlands. “Do you know who the witness is?”
“No. But he won’t be Kurt Schreiber.”
“Why not?”
Mikhail was silent.
“What’s on the missing paper?”
More silence.
“You told the Pole you saved in Gdansk that we must all try to get the paper, that it’s lethal. Even though my superiors think I’m crazy for doing so, I’ve been trying to help you.”
“This is a
Russian
operation to retrieve
Russian
property.”
“This
was
a Russian operation that failed.”
Anger flashed across Mikhail’s face. “You’ve no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“From where you’re standing, do you really think you have the upper hand?”
“I’m not talking about me, you idiot! Schreiber sent out a dummy convoy. That means he’s now loose.”
Roger called out, “We’re running out of time!”
But Will remained still, keeping his eyes on Mikhail. “Kurt Schreiber orchestrated the theft of the paper?”
Mikhail nodded. “He’s behind all of this. He’s gone to the Black Forest, but I don’t know where.”
“The paper?”
Mikhail hesitated.
“What’s on it?”
Mikhail muttered, “You’re right—this has been a fucking failure. And there’s nothing more we can do.”
“The paper!”
Mikhail stared at him. “It’s one-half of a military grid reference. Schreiber’s theft of it must mean he’s got the other half of the paper. It pinpoints a DLB in the forest. He’ll have used it to activate an assassin.”
A realization struck Will. “An assassin, code name Kronos.”
“How do you know that?”
“Am I right?”
Mikhail sighed. “I don’t know his identity, but that most certainly is his code name. He’s Russia’s most deadly assassin and it appears that he’s been activated to . . .”
“Stop a high-value witness from opening his mouth in The Hague.” Will looked directly at Metz. “Correct?”
“Lower your weapons.” Metz spoke with a commanding voice. “If we’re to talk, we can’t do so like this.”
Will hesitated, then pointed his gun at the ground.
But the SVR officer kept his weapon in place against Will’s head.
“Gun down. Let’s hear what they have to say.”
“Not while your American friend’s still aiming at me.”
Will shouted to Roger. “Lower your weapon. For now.”
Roger did so.
Van Acker’s eyes were wide, and sweat and rainwater were dripping down his face.
Mikhail smiled, then flicked his gun’s safety catch on and took a step back. “Let’s hope you both have something of value to say to us.”
The president of the court slowly exhaled. “The witness came to us six months ago and said that he needed to testify under oath to his knowledge of a secret pact between Russia and the United States. He gave us the names of everyone who was directly involved in the pact.”
“What pact?”
Metz shrugged. “We don’t know. Despite our numerous attempts to get him to tell us more, the witness has consistently refused to say anything further until he is under oath in a televised courtroom. He’s said that he’s only got one chance to tell the world about this pact, that in doing so he’s probably signed his own death warrant, but that he has to keep his mouth shut before then because he trusts no one, including”—he nodded toward van Acker—“ ‘pencil-pushing bureaucrats’ like us.”
The prosecutor added, “We agreed to his terms, set up a date for a hearing, and have kept him under high security ever since.”
“Where?”
“None of your damn business. He made it very clear to us that powerful men would do everything they could to stop him from speaking at the hearing.” Van Acker’s expression was now hostile. “The most powerful and ruthless of them all is Kurt Schreiber. We alerted Interpol so that they could search for him. But our witness never mentioned this assassin, Kronos. How much of a threat is he?”
Mikhail answered, “He’s the most dangerous threat there can be.”
Will turned to the lawyers. “What kind of security have you got around the witness?”
“World class!” Van Acker pointed at Will. “We’re very used to protecting high-value targets.”
Will frowned. “What are the points of vulnerability?”
Van Acker was about to reply, but Metz interjected. “Long-range sniper rifles, surface-to-surface missiles, airborne assaults, covert infiltration, overt land attacks using dozens of men—our specialists have considered every possible means of attack against people in our care. The witness is in a very safe place.”
Will muttered, “There must be a way Kronos can get to him. You need to let me speak to the witness’s security team.”
Metz glanced at van Acker, looked confused, then returned his attention to the intelligence officers. “If what you say is true, this places us in a very grave situation. We’ve given the witness our word that we will protect him.”
“Let me make an independent security assessment.” Will spoke imploringly. “Bring me in on this.”
Metz bowed his head.
“Please!”
The court’s president eventually looked up. “Providing you can supply me with letters of authority from your premiers, I’m willing to bring
both
of you in to help stop Kronos.”
Will and Mikhail answered simultaneously, “No!”
“It’s both, or nothing. Neutralizing the Kronos threat must be coordinated. I can’t have one of you running around doing things that could compromise the witness’s security.”
Will felt overwhelming uncertainty, and he knew Mikhail would be feeling the same way. “Men with our respective backgrounds don’t like working together.”
“Then grow up and overcome your differences.”
Will glanced at Mikhail; the man was staring back at him. He turned back to the lawyers. “Our hands can’t be tied.”
“I’m afraid they’ll have to be. You can’t interfere with the protection of our witness.”
Will shook his head. “I don’t intend to. Kronos’s objective is to kill your witness. Our objective will be to kill the assassin before he does so.”
S
ixty minutes later, Will and Mikhail were standing facing each other in Alexanderkazerne. Roger had left them a few minutes earlier after Will had instructed him to rejoin his colleagues in their hunt for Rübner’s family.
A fine rain continued to wash over Will’s face as he stared at the SVR officer. “Every instinct I have says we shouldn’t be working together.”
“I feel the same way.”
Will pointed at him. “If you do anything that could compromise my work, I won’t hesitate to deal with you.”
Mikhail patted the part of his overcoat concealing his gun. “Likewise, if you fuck up, I’ll
deal
with you.”
The two officers were silent for thirty seconds.
Then Will asked, “If Kronos was employed by the Russians, why did you try to stop his activation?”
Mikhail shrugged. “We don’t know why Kronos was deployed. But I knew that we didn’t want the activation code to get into Schreiber’s hands without authority from the Russian premier, because there was a note to that effect on the paper. That was my only lead. I had Schreiber’s location, so I tried to intercept the paper before it got to him.”
“How did you know where he was?”
“We’ve been tracking him for years. He moves around a lot, but so do we.”
“Where was he?”
“In a farmstead in Lower Saxony. I have assets there in case any of his men return, though I’m doubtful they’ll do so.” He thought about the men who’d died there and of his four-man team of professionals who been slaughtered by the convoy. He wished he could write to their families, explain how brave they’d been, but that would be impossible.
“Does he have a base of operations in the Black Forest?”
“No. But he does have five other bases in Germany. As soon as the paper was stolen, I got assets to watch all six properties. When he was spotted in Saxony, I diverted resources to that location.”
“He must now be at one of his other locations.”
Mikhail felt frustrated. “He’s not, and that means he has another base that I don’t know about.”
Will moved right in front of him. “Is Lenka Yevtushenko alive?”
“That information’s none of your concern.”
“He did something stupid. But he doesn’t need to be hurt because of what he did.”
Mikhail wondered why the British man cared. “He breached the SVR’s trust in him. He’ll be taken back to Moscow and disciplined.”
“So he’s alive?”
Mikhail stared at him for ten seconds. “Yes. He’s in bad shape, but I’ve ordered my men to patch him up. They wanted to kill him, because they lost friends and brothers at the farmstead.” He sighed and looked away from Will. “He
was
very foolish and he’ll have to account for what he did. But that will be done in the proper way.”
“Let him go. He’s got a woman and child to look after.”
Mikhail laughed. “He should have thought of that before he stole the paper.”
“I believe he did think of that. Schreiber blackmailed him and no doubt would have also given him a financial incentive to do the job. Yevtushenko was faced with the choice of imprisonment in Russia, or stealing the paper and setting up life with Alina and Maria.”
“Blackmailed him?”
Will hesitated, didn’t know if he should give Mikhail information that could either persuade the SVR spycatcher to his way of thinking or make matters worse for the defector. “Yevtushenko had been working for the CIA. Schreiber found out and used that information to get him to steal the paper.”
Mikhail’s expression darkened. “In that case, I’ll take him back to Russia not only to face the charge of stealing secret intelligence. He’ll also stand trial for being a CIA agent.”
Disappointment hit Will. Telling Mikhail the truth had been the wrong decision. “To what end?”
Mikhail moved closer to him, his eyes cold. “Against my better judgment, I’ll get the authority from my premier to work with you and the Dutch. But Yevtushenko is a Russian matter. We will severely punish him and nothing you can say or do will stop that from happening.”
A
lfie Mayne unloaded the last of the cases from the car’s trunk and carried it toward the vacation home. Located on the Isle of Wight’s stunning and rugged southwest coast, and overlooked by a down named after the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whose magnificent mansion turned hotel was toward the top of the hills, Alfie had chosen the place because it was not only remote but had been the place his cash-strapped mum and dad had brought him on vacation from their south London council apartment when he was a kid. He remembered building sand castles on the beach, tossing crab lines into rock pools, eating cheese sandwiches that had been contaminated with sand, breathing the farmland smell around the trailer site they’d always stayed at, and drinking tea out of a flask with his mother while his father had tried to repair their worn-out old Morris Minor car on the side of a country road.
The ex-SAS sergeant wished his parents had been able to afford to stay in the large house he was headed toward; not for his benefit—he loved the excitement of sharing a trailer with his parents and waking up to the smell of wild mushrooms and bacon being cooked in the kitchenette—but for his parents, who’d never stayed anywhere more plush than places that called themselves bed and breakfasts but were really cheap rooming houses.
He placed the case down in the hallway and turned to face the cliffs and the beach beyond them. At age seven he’d run along the same beach, laughing so much his stomach hurt, as his father chased him wearing rolled-up trousers and a knotted handkerchief on his head while pretending to be the ghost of an ancient pirate.
It was a lifetime ago.
He walked into the four-bedroom home, past one room containing Betty, who was singing to herself while she unpacked clothes, and another where James was on the phone to his law firm, coaching someone on the wording of a legal report. In the living room, Sarah was sitting on the sofa, her knees bunched under her chin as she stared out of the window. She’d barely spoken during the drive down from Scotland, aside from telling Alfie that she wished he wouldn’t smoke in the car and could he please wind up his window.
He sat next to her. “Going to drive into Ventnor this afternoon. There’s a lovely fishmongers on the harbor there. Everything they sell is fresh off the boat, same-day catch. Fancy joining me for a spin?”
“No thanks.”
“Got something better to do?”
Sarah did not answer.
Alfie followed her gaze toward the window. Outside, waves were crashing over a beach that looked considerably less appealing during winter than it did during his summer vacations here. “My old man died out there when I was fourteen. Heart attack. Think all that rationing stodge he grew up on finally took its toll on the poor bugger. My mother never got over it, but she hung on in there until the day I joined up with the army. Then she let go. Funny, isn’t it? When they’re around, we think everything will be like that forever. Then they’re gone and you’re left with silly regrets.”
“Regrets?”
Alfie shrugged. “Few hours before he collapsed, me dad asked me to go fishing with him, just like we used to do when I was younger. I said no ’cos I was more interested in watching the pretty girls on the beach.”
Sarah looked at him. “Is this another of your little pep talks?”
Alfie kept his attention on the beach. “Dunno, petal. I guess being here just reminds me of stuff.” He glanced at her. “Given what he does for a living, it’s only a matter of time before your brother’s killed.” He returned his attention to the beach and quietly said to himself, “Yeah, should’ve gone fishing with you, Dad.”