Overkill (3 page)

Modin intervened. ‘How the SVR gets its answers is none of your concern, Bykov. We use whatever methods seem most expedient.’

‘I question the expediency of using this animal –’ Bykov said to Modin, gesturing at the interrogator, who was sipping his coffee with a pleasant half-smile on his face
‘– on such a sensitive matter. These days the GRU very rarely has to resort to such crude tactics.’

The interrogator put down his cup and interrupted. ‘You miss the point, General. I did not have time for a thorough interrogation – with a resistant subject it could have taken days
or weeks to obtain results with drugs, and you needed answers today. The—’

‘Nonsense,’ Bykov interrupted. ‘You could have—’

‘No, General, I could not.’ The raised voice cut across Bykov’s. The smile had left the grey-haired man’s face, and his blue eyes were steady, bright and totally devoid
of humour or compassion. ‘This is my field. I am the expert, and if I tell you something you should listen, and perhaps even learn.’

Modin leaned back in his chair. Despite the seriousness of the situation, and his deep personal dislike of the interrogator, he was almost beginning to enjoy it.

Bykov was furious. ‘How dare you address me in such a manner? I am a lieutenant general in the GRU—’

‘That is precisely why I can address you like that, or in any other manner that I wish. I am the senior SVR interrogator. Neither you nor any other member of the GRU has any power
whatsoever over me, and I suggest you remember that.’

‘Enough, both of you,’ Modin interjected. He pointed at the interrogator. ‘You. Finish what you were going to say.’

‘Thank you, General. I would be delighted to do so, and preferably –’ he looked sharply at Bykov ‘– without any further ill-informed interruptions.’ He turned
to face the SVR officer. ‘I agree that my methods are crude, but they are rapid, and they do work. All my interrogations have yielded positive results, just as this one has.’

‘Rubbish,’ General Modin said, picking up the clipboard and waving it. ‘There is nothing here that is of the slightest use to us. There is not a single mention of the
project.’

The interrogator smiled. ‘Precisely, comrade. Because the subject did not know the answers to any of the questions you instructed me to ask.’

Modin considered this for a moment. ‘Are you sure – absolutely certain?’

‘Quite certain. If he had known, he would certainly have told me. He would have told me anything. Anything at all.’ The interrogator chuckled and picked up his coffee cup again.

Modin stared at him with an expression of acute distaste, then spoke. ‘Get out.’

The smile left the interrogator’s face for an instant, and his blue eyes stared without expression at Modin. Then he gently placed his cup and saucer on the table, stood up and bowed
slightly to the senior officer, and left the room without a word.

When the door had closed behind him, Modin looked across the table. ‘He would have known, wouldn’t he?’ he asked.

‘Who?’ Bykov was unsure what the SVR officer meant.

‘The Britisher. If anyone here in Moscow had known, it would have been him?’

‘Definitely. In his position, he had to have known. What other reason could he have had for sending his deputy to Sosnogorsk? What other conclusion could we have drawn?’

Modin shook his head. ‘And all for nothing. What a waste.’

There was genuine regret in his voice. Although Nicolai Modin had ordered the termination of many – far too many – men in his long and successful career with the KGB and SVR, he had
always been personally satisfied that each of them had deserved to die. His assiduity in checking and double-checking the details of each case before signing the termination order was not just a
matter of personal pride; it was also the mark of a professional intelligence officer.

There are few rules in the ‘wilderness of mirrors’, as the clandestine world has been aptly named, but one obeyed by almost every intelligence service is that opposition agents are
never terminated without very good reason. This reluctance does not derive from any sense of compassion or respect for human life, but simply from considerations of operational necessity. The
ever-present fear is that even a single execution could lead to an escalating spiral of captures and killings – essentially a private war – something that no service would want. The
fear is so prevalent that, if a termination is thought to be essential, it is not unknown for the deceased operative’s parent agency to be advised afterwards, with an apology and a
justification for the action taken.

Modin had no doubts about the real identity of the man whose body was even then beginning to stiffen in the sub-basement of the building. He knew who he was and the organization for which he had
worked, as he had known since the Englishman’s arrival in Moscow. If the interrogation had produced the answers that both he and Bykov had expected, Modin would probably have regarded the
man’s death as justifiable, but the results the interrogator had obtained worried and concerned him.

The GRU officer, sensing the uncertainty of the older man, spoke again. ‘Minister Trushenko’s orders were most specific, General. We had no option but to obey – to make sure.
It was the only way.’

Modin nodded again. ‘I know. It’s just that sometimes I wonder if we’re right – even if he’s right.’

‘Whatever our personal feelings,’ Bykov said, ‘whatever our private doubts, we’ve gone too far now to stop it. We have to carry it through to the end. We have no choice,
no choice at all. What we’re doing is for the good of Russia, for the good of all Russians.’

Good old Bykov, Nicolai Modin thought to himself. You could always rely on him to quote the party line. He stood up and walked to the window and stared through the bullet-proof glass across
Lubyanskaya ploshchad. Early-morning Moscow was quiet, with little traffic and fewer pedestrians. He looked with a sense of sadness towards the centre of the square where, until the madness of
glasnost,
the bronze statue of the founder of the
Cheka
, ‘Iron’ Feliks Dzerzhinsky, erected by Khrushchev as a tribute to the KGB, had stared with sightless eyes down what
was then known as Marx prospekt towards ploshchad Revoljucii – Revolution Square. They had been better days, but there was, perhaps, just a hope – Modin put it no higher – that
they would return, if the project succeeded. Modin squared his shoulders, wheeled round and strode briskly back to the desk, his uncertainty gone. ‘He’d better be right. You do realize
what this means, don’t you?’

Bykov, who was reading through the notes on the clipboard, looked up and nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It means that the British don’t know, so they can’t have told the
Americans.’

Thursday
Pechora LPAR, Komi District,
Confederation of Independent States

‘Colonel!’ The urgent note in the young officer’s voice brought Vitali Yazov across the darkened room at speed.

‘Yes, Captain? What is it?’ Colonel Yazov asked, leaning over the younger man’s shoulder and looking at the displays.

Captain Kryuchkov shook his head. ‘It’s gone again, sir. A solid but intermittent contact, at high level – not a satellite or debris, as far as I can tell.’

‘From which direction, and what range?’ Yazov asked.

The captain pointed at his screen. ‘There, sir. Almost due north and about five hundred miles out, closing rapidly.’ Kryuchkov had inserted five electronic markers into his azimuth
display, each corresponding to a single contact detected by the LPAR. Each marker showed the time the object was detected, and its estimated height, speed and heading.

The Large Phased-Array Radar, NATO reporting name Hen House, is designed for ballistic missile detection, satellite tracking and battle management. On the northern Russian border LPARs are
positioned at Mukachevo, Baranovichi, Skrunda and Murmansk as well as Pechora. The LPAR is configured to look high, for satellites and intercontinental ballistic missiles, and outwards from Russian
territory, and the contact was only being intermittently detected by its lowest lobes.

Colonel Yazov scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully. ‘First contact over the Kara Sea,’ he murmured, ‘and tracking south.’ He leaned closer and looked carefully at
the calculated speed and estimated height of the unknown return, based upon which lobes of the LPAR had been penetrated. ‘At Mach three and above seventy thousand feet.’

He straightened up, gestured at the LPAR display and issued his instructions. ‘Record any other contacts with that object. Designate it Hostile One and get me a predicted track across the
whole country, immediately. I’m going to talk to Moscow.’

The captain turned round in his seat, surprised. ‘Do you know what it is?’ he asked.

Yazov nodded. ‘Yes. At least, I think I do. But it doesn’t make any sense.’

British Embassy, Sofiyskaya naberezhnaya 14, Moscow

‘I’m sorry, Mr Willis, but I really don’t see what you’re doing here. I can assure you that the Embassy staff are more than capable of handling
matters at this end.’

The man in the crumpled suit looked across the desk. Diplomats were not his favourite people, and diplomats who thought that their abilities were being called into question were even more touchy
than usual. He ran a hand through his unruly fair hair and tried again.

‘I assure you, Secretary Horne, nobody is suggesting that your Embassy staff are in any way lacking. I’m here for just three reasons. I have to ensure that the body of Mr Newman is
returned as rapidly as possible to Britain. I’ve also been asked to collect some of Mr Newman’s personal effects for his family, but the main reason I’m in Moscow is to carry out
an initial investigation into the circumstances of the accident.’ He drew a breath and held up his hand to forestall any protest. ‘There could be some international repercussions,
depending on the degree of culpability of the Russian driver. My company won’t be prepared to make any settlement until this unfortunate accident has been thoroughly investigated.’

William Horne, First Secretary to Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, looked across his polished oak desk, then back to the letter of
introduction he had been given some fifteen minutes earlier. Horne was tall and thin, and a well-preserved fifty-five. A career diplomat, with a fastidious approach to life and total dedication to
his work, he was expecting an ambassadorial appointment the following year. He was keen to ensure the smooth running of the Embassy, and he didn’t like uninvited visitors poking their noses
into things that were none of their concern. The man Willis, he was sure, was trouble of some kind – he had a quality of stillness and menace that Horne found quite unnerving – but he
couldn’t think of a valid reason for having him thrown out. His instinct, however, was perfectly correct.

The man calling himself Willis, whose real name was Paul Richter, knew absolutely nothing about insurance and cared less. He sat patiently, saying nothing, and looking at Horne with disinterest.
Richter was conscious of his somewhat crumpled clothing, the result of hasty packing and a long flight in economy class, which Horne’s professional elegance threw into sharp contrast. Richter
had never been concerned with appearances – his or anyone else’s – and Horne’s immaculate suit and mirror-polished shoes amused, rather than impressed, him. While serving as
an officer in the Royal Navy, Richter had once, and with a certain amount of truth, been described as looking like a badly packed parachute.

Horne removed rimless spectacles from his large and slightly hooked nose and absent-mindedly began polishing the lenses with a spotless white handkerchief. Replacing the glasses, he looked
across the desk again and pursed his thin lips. ‘It is most irregular. There was none of this fuss when the Second Secretary passed away last year – although, of course, he hadn’t
been involved in a road accident.’

‘He also wasn’t insured with my company, sir. We pride ourselves on being as thorough as possible in any case involving accidental death on foreign soil. Unfortunately, there are
other companies that take their responsibilities a good deal less seriously.’ Richter leaned forward, and assumed what he hoped looked like the expression adopted by an insurance company
representative scenting a sale. ‘If you are interested, I—’

‘No thank you, Mr Willis. All my needs in that regard are already satisfied.’ Horne looked at the letter again, then at Richter. ‘Very well. What exactly do you want us to
do?’

Richter smiled. ‘Thank you. I would like sight of Mr Newman’s body – not for identification, as that will have to be done formally by his next-of-kin in Britain – but
simply to confirm that the injuries as stated on the death certificate issued by the Russian doctor are consistent with those on the body.’ Richter leaned forward and lowered his voice
slightly. ‘It is not unknown, Secretary Horne, for some Russian doctors to issue a death certificate without ever seeing the body to which it relates, simply to “oblige” the
authorities.’

‘I’ve never heard of that happening,’ Horne snapped.

Nor had Richter, until he’d said it, but he nodded solemnly. ‘I would also like to inspect the vehicle in which Mr Newman was travelling at the time of his death, and I would like
access to his office and his apartment.’

‘Why do you need to visit his office and apartment?’ Horne asked.

‘Nothing to do with the insurance claim,’ Richter said smoothly. ‘As I said, my company has been asked by Mr Newman’s family to collect some small items of a personal
nature which they would like returned in advance of the bulk of his effects. That’s all.’

‘It is most inconvenient, but I suppose we have little choice in the matter.’

Richter refrained from pointing out exactly how little choice Horne really had and stood up. Horne climbed to his feet, glanced disparagingly at Richter’s rumpled clothing and extended a
professionally limp hand. Richter shook it and looked enquiringly at him. ‘See Erroll. Third door on the right. He will make the necessary arrangements.’