Outbreak, p.26
Outbreak, page 26
Sitting up front, the interpreter asked the colonel a question in Russian and he nodded his assent. He then turned to Luke. ‘This place,’ he said, ‘is called Garage Valley. Also we call it Shanghai.’
‘Garage’ he got – they were surrounded by them – but Shanghai?
‘Why Shanghai?’ Luke asked. The interpreter looked questioningly at his boss, who shook his head. The interpreter shrugged and turned back to face the front.
They had slowed to a crawl now, moving slowly along an unpaved road between two lines of lockups, their wheels slithering through shallow troughs of wet slush. A man in a baseball cap, bomber jacket, boots and cargo trousers appeared, looming close to the windscreen, cradling an automatic carbine. Even from his seat in the back Luke had a good enough view of him to recognize the weapon in his hands: an AKS-74U, a short, stubby version of the Kalashnikov, perfect for close-quarter encounters and part of the chosen armoury of the GRU’s Spetznaz Special Forces.
They stopped.
‘Wait here,’ Colonel Petrov said, in English, before getting out and closing the door behind him. Luke watched him walk off, his greatcoat reaching almost to his ankles, then talk to the man with the carbine. Twice they turned and looked at him as he sat in the back of the car, feeling caged and tense. When Petrov returned he held open the car door for Luke to get out.
‘Okay, you come now,’ he said in English, which made Luke think he understood a lot more of it than he made out. They picked their way through the wet slush, Petrov leading, as the snow fell around them in fat, wet flakes. He turned a corner to see several more GRU men guarding the door to a garage, weapons held in their gloved hands, all eyes watching him. Petrov gestured for him to go in, but for a second Luke hesitated. If this is where I get whacked on the back of the head, he thought, Vauxhall Cross will at least know my location from the GPS tracker in my phone. And that’s a fat lot of use to me right at this moment. But there was no turning back now: he had to see this one through. Luke stepped through the doorway and into the dim interior of the lockup, his eyes adjusting quickly to the gloom. The place smelt awful, damp, musty, decrepit, and there was something else here that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Was it fear? Despair? This certainly felt like the kind of place where someone could disappear without a trace.
And there, in the middle of the room, was the reason. Stripped to the waist, his beltless trousers half falling off his skinny frame, his arms pinned behind his back and attached to a chain that went up to a pulley on the ceiling. Luke could see that, suspended like that, the prisoner was struggling to stand upright on the tips of his toes, in an effort to avoid the agonizing pressure on his shoulder blades. Luke stood stock-still, shocked at what he was seeing. This was like Afghanistan all over again, going into a police station with his patrol and finding some chained-up prisoner half beaten to death in a back room. Luke knew what it was like to be tortured – he’d experienced it first-hand in Colombia – and the sight of this wretched individual, guilty or not, sent shivers right through his body. And this wasn’t just wrong, this was dangerous – for him, career-wise. The Service had strict rules about this sort of thing nowadays. If you witnessed torture you had to leave the scene. No exceptions.
So why wasn’t he turning on his heel and walking straight out? There were other men in the room, bulky figures moving around in the shadows, and he sensed everyone was waiting to see his reaction. Calmly and without emotion, he addressed Colonel Petrov. ‘Let him down, please.’
The colonel was standing with his arms folded across his greatcoat, his legs slightly apart. On hearing Luke’s request he turned towards him with his customary blank expression. ‘You are not in charge here, Mr Carlton,’ he said in English. ‘This is our investigation and you are in Moscow now.’ For several seconds they stared at each other. This was a make-or-break moment in the investigation and both men knew it. Walk out of here and Luke would return to London with mission failure, having learned absolutely nothing. Stay put, cooperate with these thugs, and he might get somewhere, while at the same time leaving his conscience in the gutter.
It was Petrov who broke the silence. He issued a command to a large man in overalls sitting in the corner with his hands on a pulley chain attached to the ceiling. The prisoner was lowered a few centimetres, just enough to stand on the soles of his bare feet. He raised his head, his dank hair plastered over his forehead. He looked up imploringly at Luke, saying nothing.
‘This,’ said Colonel Petrov, indicating the prisoner as if he were just some sort of inanimate object, ‘is our gift to you. This man is a member of Cherny Nozh. You understand what that means?’
‘No.’
‘Cherny Nozh, Mr Carlton, means “Black Knife”. It is an extremist organization here in Russia. We caught him only a few days ago. He is in contact with “extreme people” in your country, in UK, people who are planning something big. How do we know this?’ For the first time Luke saw Colonel Petrov smile. To him, it looked more like a wolf baring its teeth.
‘We know this,’ Petrov continued, ‘because we have been monitoring his communications. And so …’ He stopped speaking as he strolled over to a wooden table and chair placed in the corner of the lockup, beckoning Luke to follow him. Petrov moved casually, like a man who had all the time in the world. There was a laptop on the table and he opened it now, plugging in what looked like a USB device. He entered a series of rapid keystrokes, then issued a command to those behind him, not even bothering to turn round. Luke heard, ‘Razvyazhitye yevo,’ which meant nothing to him, but now there was a flurry of activity around the prisoner. For a moment he thought they were going to start on him again and this time he braced himself to intervene. But instead he saw two guards untie the man’s wrists then put their arms around him to half carry him to the chair, sitting him down in front of the laptop. His head sagged and he kept murmuring something in Russian, but he stopped as Petrov spoke to him at length.
Listening to the Russian, unable to understand a single word, Luke wondered why on earth the Service couldn’t have sent a Russian speaker for this mission. Once more his conscience was stirring. He had been a teenager when Al-Qaida flew those planes into the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001. But he knew that in the panicked aftermath Washington was so convinced another catastrophic attack was coming they went to extreme lengths to uncover any plot, real or imagined. It was a morally dark period of illegal snatching of suspects, who were then transported, cuffed and blindfolded, across the world to secret CIA ‘black sites’, where they were subjected to what was euphemistically called ‘enhanced interrogation’. One man, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was subjected to waterboarding – simulated drowning – at a black site in Poland 183 times. Again, Luke felt a strong urge to get up and leave, and again he stayed. The prisoner in the chair was shaking his head and repeating ‘Pozhaluysta’ over and over again. This, at least Luke knew, meant ‘please’.
‘This man,’ explained Petrov, ‘would like very much to help you.’ Luke gazed at the sorry figure slumped in front of the laptop. He didn’t look like he wanted to do anything of the kind. No, Luke thought, enough of this. He should extricate himself from this whole situation now and bug out back to London without delay. He started to say something, but the colonel cut him off.
‘He has access to the encrypted forum for the people who run WaffenKrieg90. I think you know of this group. As a gesture of brotherly cooperation, we will let you use his identity to contact them. But we expect you to share everything you find with us.’
Colonel Petrov took a pace backwards and for the second time his face showed a trace of a smile. ‘Unless, of course, you disapprove of our methods.’ He shrugged, pulled out a cigarette, lit it and turned his back on Luke. ‘The choice is yours, Luke Carlton,’ he said, facing the bare walls of the lockup. ‘But I can tell you this, you don’t have much time.’
84
Vauxhall Cross
Thursday, 17 March, 1323hrs GMT, 1623hrs Moscow
ANGELA SCOTT WAS not usually one to dodge protocol. A vicar’s daughter who’d won a scholarship from St Paul’s Girls’ School to Newnham College, Cambridge, she had always played by the rules. Now, after years as a career case officer in MI6, she knew full well you didn’t go barging into the Chief’s office whenever you felt like it. You rang ahead, you spoke to his PA, you booked an appointment in his overfull diary and, if you were lucky, he might see you for a few minutes the following week. Yet today she did exactly that. She stood outside the outer door of his office, straightened her skirt, adjusted her hair, took a deep breath, then marched straight through into his carpeted office, just as Sir Adam was finishing a phone call. He looked up in surprise.
‘I’m so sorry to barge in, C,’ she began, ‘but I thought you ought to know this.’ She hoped he wouldn’t notice how tense she was, standing there, balling the fingers of one hand inside the other. Well, if he had noticed, he wasn’t commenting on it: instead he gestured politely for her to take a seat.
‘We’ve had word from Luke Carlton in Moscow,’ she continued. ‘He’s back at his hotel and he’s sent a burst transmission using the quantum key.’
‘And?’ The Chief showed neither irritation nor pleasure at this unscheduled interruption. His years of playing ‘the grey man’ as a junior case officer had clearly stayed with him right through to where he was now, in his late fifties, at the pinnacle of his profession.
Angela shifted her position slightly and tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. ‘Luke says he’s been offered an entrée into WaffenKrieg90. Right into their command circle. Using an adopted alias. The Russians do seem to be playing ball on this one. They’re ready to help us. For once.’
Sir Adam sat back in his chair, pressing his fingers together in a steeple, staring at her with a concentrated gaze. My God, he looks tired, she thought.
‘Is it genuine?’ he asked her at last.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Do you think they’re being sincere, the Russians? I know this has all been signed off at a political level, but still …’ He breathed out hard and shook his head. ‘Maybe I spent too much of my career on the Moscow beat. But if there’s one thing it taught me, it’s never to take anything from that lot at face value. Believe me, Angela, when it comes to the Russians, there is always a hidden game plan. You just have to look for it in the right place.’ He stood up, pushed away his chair and walked over to the window. ‘All right, so go on, tell me, because I’d value your opinion. What’s your evaluation?’
She was ready for this. Angela Scott did not go into meetings unprepared. But still she swallowed slightly before she replied. ‘We’ve red-teamed it, C. We’ve looked at what they might have to gain from taking us down a wrong path.’
‘And?’
‘And our assessment is that, on balance, they have more to gain from working with us than against us on this one. Agent X is a threat to both our nations’ populations. Biological pathogens don’t stop at borders.’ She waited for him to say something, but he kept regarding her in silence so she pressed on: ‘Look, I’m not saying Moscow doesn’t have secrets they want to keep from us on the bio front. Of course they do. Washington slapped sanctions on some of those biological research units in 2020. And let’s not forget there is something of a grey area between state and non-state activities in this sphere. So, I suppose I’m saying yes, it’s a genuine offer, but with caveats.’
Sir Adam nodded, still deep in thought. He frowned as he spoke. ‘I get that. So let me ask you a delicate question.’
She caught herself biting her lip. This sounded like something she hadn’t prepared herself for.
‘I hope you can reassure me, Angela, that this access you say Luke is being offered into WaffenKrieg90 has not been extracted under some kind of duress. Because I don’t need to remind you that the Service cannot afford another scandal like Libya.’
She hesitated for just a second. Luke hadn’t mentioned anything about that, but then again she hadn’t asked him, and Angela knew she should have double-checked. Maybe she had simply been too busy trying to help head off Britain’s first full-scale biological attack in modern history.
‘No. I think we’re clean, C. Luke would have mentioned if that were the case, I’m sure of it.’
The Chief walked over to her. For a moment she thought he was about to lay a hand on her shoulder, a gesture she had always resented as deeply patronizing. But he stood at a respectable distance, facing her as he gave her the green light to go ahead.
‘Good. Well, that’s settled, then. Speak to Thames and get everyone working on Luke’s legend and keep me closely informed. Good work, Angela. Now, if you’ll excuse me …’
Angela had never cared much for lunch in the Service canteen and today, she quickly decided, there was far too much at stake to waste time with something as trivial as eating. After making a couple of calls to Thames House she intercepted the senior liaison officer from MI5 just as he was heading out of his office for lunch and turned him around. By 2.45 p.m. they had pulled together the team, and an hour later, with the help of some of the data mining provided by Cheltenham, they had sketched out a rough outline of the alias Luke would adopt online. He would become ‘Steve Keane’, an imaginary former member of the SRR, the British Army’s secretive Special Reconnaissance Regiment, disgraced and court-martialled the year before for repeatedly racially abusing one of his subordinates. The case had supposedly been hushed up – it had never made it into the public domain – and the mythical ‘Steve Keane’ had disappeared quietly into anonymity in an Oxfordshire village.
Angela knew the next step would be extremely challenging, given the impossibly short time frame. Using the contact details and passwords supplied to Luke by Petrov’s prisoner in Moscow, they now had to get Luke inserted into WaffenKrieg90’s inner circle under his Steve Keane alias. Under normal circumstances this would need months of painstaking work, with no sudden moves that might spook the target. But time was a luxury they didn’t have. Every hour that ticked by brought closer the possibility of what they feared was coming: a deliberate and catastrophic release of Agent X into the general population.
85
Near Braintree, Essex
Thursday, 17 March, 1427hrs GMT
THE BOXES HAD arrived from Cambridge. Stacked in the corner of the room and labelled ‘Garden Supplies’, they contained the last remaining components for what was to come. The big man checked them over himself, taking out a box-cutter knife and carefully slicing open the seals. They were all there, exactly as ordered: the white chem-bio protective suits, the respirators, the masks. Everything needed for the final preparation before the release.
The plan wasn’t perfect, despite all the months of preparation, he’d be the first to admit that. In an ideal world none of them would ever need to be exposed to the agent. There was enough space for all of them up at the Farm in Derbyshire. But volunteers were still needed to drive to the target with what had to be delivered. Lots had been drawn, names had been chosen, Cambridge and Vilnius had been informed, and those who were assigned knew exactly what was expected of them when the day came.
He stood up, hitched up his trousers and breathed out heavily. He smiled to himself. That day, he knew, was coming soon. And the people who ran this country were not going to know what had hit them.
86
Moscow
Thursday, 17 March, 1555hrs GMT, 1855hrs local
NIGHTFALL, AND LUKE was now seriously worried. He had already had a conversation with Petrov’s office, accepting the colonel’s offer of help with the prisoner’s leads into WaffenKrieg90, and had been told that a flash drive would be dropped off at his hotel. But nearly three hours had passed since they had brought him back and Jenny had still not returned from the Ivanovsky Institute. No answer from her phone, no answer from her room when he knocked. He went down to the lobby and asked at Reception if anyone had seen her come in or go out. No one had. Luke had returned to his room and sent off a burst transmission to Vauxhall, using the quantum key, giving a status update, but had decided not to mention her missing status just yet. He would look a fool when she suddenly showed up.
He called Colonel Petrov’s office again, twice, only to be met with platitudes. ‘She is in a secure location,’ they assured him. ‘She will meet you back at your hotel.’ Pacing around his room, grazing unhealthily on packet snacks from the minibar, he kept checking his watch. Jenny had missed the agreed check-in time by phone. That was unlike her. Jenny did not miss appointments.
When the knock on the door came, he answered it immediately, striding quickly across to open it. It was not Jenny. Instead, standing in the doorway was a slender, dark-haired girl in a black, low-cut dress. Silently, she handed him a package. His fingers felt the outline of the contents through the padded envelope. It was the USB from Petrov’s people.
Luke thanked her and began to close the door on her, but she reached out and caught it with her hand. ‘Massage,’ she announced, a trace of a smile playing around her lips.
He thought he might have misheard. ‘Sorry. What?’
‘You order massage.’
She made it sound like a statement of fact rather than a question, but either way, Luke was having none of it. He shook his head. ‘Another time,’ he said firmly, and gently closed the door on her.
Yet another of Petrov’s mind games, he thought, as he put the chain on the door. Or a blatantly transparent attempt to gain some Kompromat on me. Did these people never give up?
He looked down at the package in his hand and gently opened it. The black USB stick fell into his palm. All those names, aliases, passwords that they needed, contained in just this tiny gadget. It would need to be quarantined and screened before anyone could access its contents. Luke had received enough briefings on offensive Russian cyber ops to know it would almost certainly be loaded with the latest most sophisticated malware. But, still, he had got what he had come to Moscow for and he should be feeling a sense of achievement that at last, after all this time in Svalbard, Vilnius and here in Moscow, he was finally making real headway. But if he couldn’t track down Jenny very soon, this whole mission would be called into doubt. He contemplated getting into a taxi and going in person to the Ivanovsky Institute to push for answers, but decided against it.
