The Blind Spy (38 page)

Now, from across the huge, polished wood desk in the deck-wide operations room of the
Cougar
, Burt stood, hands in the pockets of immaculately ironed white trousers, a cigar blowing its occasional, arcane signals from an anchor-shaped ashtray next to him, and with the air of a man who directed events rather than being directed by them.

Logan had been urged by a butler to sit in a chair on the far side of the table where he now half slouched, sipping a glass of water and contemplating how this approach from Taras Tur had suddenly and, perhaps, fortuitously, put him at the centre of events. Burt turned from studying some papers Logan couldn’t see and rested his eyes for a minute on his brilliant, if sometimes wayward operative.

‘Do you believe him?’ Burt asked mildly. ‘That’s what I want to know. What does your instinct tell you, Logan? How could this SBU officer possibly know the identity of our agent?’

As Logan looked back into Burt’s eyes he saw they contained an expressionless stare that was unusual for him, but there was none of the hostility he’d received at their last meeting. Burt was the picture of calm, his genial self apparently unruffled by the prospect of time trickling away towards the deadline.

‘I don’t know if we can afford not to believe him,’ Logan replied. ‘It seems he has all the cards. We disbelieve him at our peril.’

‘But that isn’t the same thing,’ Burt replied with what seemed to Logan a deliberately exaggerated patience, like a long-suffering schoolteacher’s. ‘It’s not the answer to the question I asked you, in fact. Never mind “affording not to”. Do
you
believe him?’ he repeated. ‘That’s what I most want to know. You were there, my boy. As always, I value your judgement of human character.’

Logan thought for a moment about his meeting with Taras and the two times he had met the Ukrainian before. If you forgot he worked for a foreign intelligence service, Taras was an honest man, at least in Logan’s opinion. He found he liked him, despite his recent – and out of character – aggression towards him at the meeting in the car. There was a quality of innocence in Taras that, perhaps, reawakened some lost innocence of Logan’s own. But if it did, he drove it underground again; it was too painful to look in the face. Nevertheless, Taras’s obvious sincerity had made Logan feel connected in a way that he hadn’t felt when he’d met Taras on previous occasions. In fact, in his opinion – and now he thought about it more closely – Taras seemed to be operating at a personal level rather than being the dumb automaton of the SBU. Logan didn’t understand why he thought that – or why the Ukrainian would be acting outside the parameters of his job at all. It was just an instinct. There was something about Taras’s brand of anxiety in the car that went beyond the regular strictures of a job and into the realms of the personal. It was a fine distinction, but it made all the difference.

‘If I
had
to say one thing or the other,’ Logan said carefully, ‘I’d have to say I believed him. He knows, though God knows how he knows.’

‘Good,’ Burt said and stood up to his full five feet nine inches, his eyes alight with possibilities and a beaming smile fixed once more on his chubby face.

Why the news that a Ukrainian spy knew the identity of one of Burt’s Russian agents in Moscow should make Burt content, however, Logan couldn’t fathom.

‘Good?’ he queried, in genuine incomprehension. ‘How is it good?’

‘We know where we stand,’ Burt said. ‘If you’re right – and I trust your instincts – we know what’s happening. Let’s say he knows exactly who our agent is. That’s very valuable to him. And it’s valuable to us that we know it about him. We can use this Taras, perhaps.’

Logan didn’t ask Burt how he intended to do that, when the boot seemed to be firmly on the other foot. Taras was in a winning position, in Logan’s view.

‘Are you going to let Anna make the contact with him, then?’ he asked.

Burt stroked his chins. ‘We must,’ he said at last. ‘We must treat it as good fortune. We must see what happens when they meet.’

‘But revealing the agent’s identity is going to be a threat he’ll always be able to hold over Cougar’s head,’ Logan said. ‘Not just this time. If we deal with him now, he can use the threat again and again.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Burt said, and he evinced an almost complete lack of concern at the prospect. Then he turned to Logan. He looked at him for a long time until Logan began to feel uncomfortable. ‘Logan, I’m going to ask you something very important,’ Burt said. ‘A change of plan. It’s something of personal importance to me, not just to Cougar’s business. I want you to go down there, to Sevastopol. I can’t withdraw Larry to brief him, he’s needed there, on the spot, looking after Anna’s back. So I want it to be you, Logan. Let’s say I want it to be you anyway, Larry or no Larry. This could be the most important assignment of your life.’

‘She won’t like it. Neither will Larry. You know that. Neither of them trust me.’ Logan’s voice betrayed some bitterness, despite his attempt to be unemotional.

‘Maybe they won’t. She doesn’t trust you, that’s true. But she has her reasons. Here’s a chance to start rebuilding that trust. Look at it that way.’

‘What’s she doing in the Crimea?’ Logan asked bluntly.

‘That I can’t say,’ he replied. ‘It’s unimportant. It’s not relevant,’ he added, correcting himself.

‘I’m not in the need-to-know loop, you mean.’

Burt raised his eyebrows slightly, but his voice was regulated, friendly, paying Logan compliments he hadn’t paid him in some time. ‘Look, Logan. I’m doing everything possible to square a complicated situation. You can help me. I will value it highly.’

‘Theo wants Cougar out of the area completely. You know that. We shouldn’t be there at all.’

‘I’m glad you said “we”,’ Burt replied slyly. ‘Theo will also want to be squared about the situation – and other things – shortly. But we’ll come to that later, when this is over.’

‘They’re going to board the
Pride of Corsica
by force,’ Logan said.

‘I had heard. Who’s they?’ Burt said, ignoring what the CIA chief wanted Cougar to do, to vacate the Crimea and leave it free for the CIA, the Russians, the Brits … anybody, it seemed, as long as it wasn’t Cougar.

‘Us – the CIA, the Russians and the British. It’s going to be a joint assault team just like the recce was.’

‘Of course,’ Burt said, and appeared deep in thought. ‘The Russians have got the CIA and the British involved in a joint operation.’ He looked back at Logan. ‘That’s the way they’d do it,’ he said mysteriously. ‘Do we have a date for this assault?’ Burt asked.

‘No,’ Logan said. ‘Not as far as I know.’

‘Then I’ll speak to Theo,’ Burt replied. He looked hard at Logan again. ‘You think you can do this right?’ he said. ‘Meet with Larry and Anna? It’s you who will pick up Taras’s message at this drugstore in Sevastopol, then relay it to Anna. I don’t want her walking into an ambush, so it has to be someone else. You’re ideal, Logan. You’ve always been one of the best.’

‘Why wouldn’t I be able to do it?’ Logan said, ignoring more of Burt’s easy flattery. ‘It’s just being a messenger boy, isn’t it? Just the usual job of Burt’s bagman.’

Burt leaned down to the table, putting his big hands palms down flat against the surface. ‘It may be the most important thing you ever do for Cougar, Logan. For me, too. And certainly for Anna. Not to mention our agent in Moscow, of course, whose life may well depend on it.’ Burt surveyed Logan once again, before continuing. ‘But it also may be the most important thing you ever do for yourself. Think about that. Understand where your best interests lie. This may well be a moment of truth for you. You understand the importance of this? It’s not just conveying a message to Anna so that she can meet the Ukrainian. It’s about the implications of the message and the actions that will follow. In my opinion, we’re nearing the point of explosion.’

‘If you say so, Burt,’ Logan replied and stood up to peel off the top of a cold beer that was standing in an ice bucket.

‘At times like this,’ Burt said, ‘we all behave in character, no matter what happens.’

Logan had no idea what he meant by this, but he automatically felt himself under some critical glare and it made him defensive.

‘When do I go?’ he asked.

‘At once,’ Burt said. ‘Talk to our travel people, they’re expecting you.’ He handed Logan a ship phone. ‘Get a flight to Odessa, then a flight to Simferol. A car from there.’ He took out a pen and wrote a coded number on a scrap of paper. ‘This is Larry,’ he said, indicating the number. ‘I’ll tell him you’re on the way.’

‘I’m sure he’ll be delighted.’

Logan took an afternoon flight from Athens to Istanbul and then connected to a flight for Odessa. He checked into a small hotel on Odessa’s waterfront, drank at several bars along the strip that were just waking up for the summer, chatted to two pretty teenage girls who said they were dancers, slept a little, and took the first flight to Simferol on the following morning. From there it was a long taxi ride to Sevastopol.

Somewhere in the city, he thought as the old Mercedes approached the edge of town, somewhere, he knew that Taras would be waiting for him, and for Anna too. He’d have left his communication at the drugstore by now. It was already two days since their meeting in the car and they had twenty-hours before he blew the whistle on Cougar’s Moscow agent.

When he’d paid off the car and found a suitably wide open space away from buildings, he contacted Larry on the coded number Burt had given him and heard the sour tone in Larry’s voice. Logan felt his hackles rise immediately. Larry had briefed against Logan to Burt, ever since it had been discovered that Logan had sold Anna down the river two years before. When they met on this sticky afternoon in Sevastopol – the heavy air seemed to stretch from Greece all the way to the southern borders of Russia – Larry was terse, monosyllabic, and conveyed an almost tangible sense of disgust.

‘Just pick up the message,’ Larry said. ‘Then come straight back. And give it to me.’

‘I’m to give it to Anna,’ Logan replied. ‘Those were Burt’s orders.’

‘Then they’ve changed, Logan. She’s not available. And anyway, she doesn’t want you anywhere near this.’

And so at four o’clock in the afternoon – and with fifteen hours now remaining – Larry and a surveillance team reconnoitred the street outside the drugstore on Ochakovstev. It seemed to be clear, according to the watchers’ signals.

Then one of the team entered the store and took up a position at the back as Logan entered. Logan walked to a dilapidated booth with a barred window over it and asked for the pills being held for Stanislas Lavrov, the name Taras had instructed him to say. The grouchy woman behind the counter eyed him warily and took off her glasses as if to distance herself from the significance of what she was doing, but she handed over a packet, sealed at the top. From its sound as Logan picked it up, it seemed to contain pills. Logan paid her more than the cost and left.

He walked out on to the bright street and saw the sea arcing away below him. The warships of the two fleets were tied up against quays, or hung at anchor close-to, or lay dotted in the bays that disappeared into the slight haze that deepened with distance.

And fifty miles off the coast was where the
Pride of Corsica
rode the sea lanes that led towards the south of the Black Sea and on to the Mediterranean. When he was finished here, Logan thought, it would be time to rendezvous with the teams for the assault on the ship. They were gathering at Burgas in Bulgaria from where the
Mira
had also set out. By now, Theo had arranged everything, with the Russians’ guiding hand behind it all. It was being billed in Washington as a joint, international effort in counter-terrorism.

Logan looked up the road in both directions. The watchers would be out there, but they were well concealed. He turned to the left and walked briskly down a slight hill before catching a bus to the rendezvous Larry had given him.

The holiday villa Larry had taken for two weeks under the name of Philip Ames and Family lay in some hills to the east of the city. The team had all arrived there before Logan: Larry, his ‘wife’, a former CIA veteran called Lucy, and their two ‘children’ – stretching it a bit, in Logan’s mind, for Grant and Adam were in their early twenties, though dressed like teenagers they could have passed for a lot less. It was Adam who let Logan in and he stepped into a thinly furnished room with cheap red floor tiles and bars on the windows – against normal, opportunistic thieves, Logan assumed, rather than Ukrainian security agents. Larry was in a kitchen at the back, making coffee in a machine whose red light flickered on and off with the failing electric current only to receive a sharp slap from Larry when it was off. Larry turned with his hand already out and Logan hated him for the insulting peremptoriness of the gesture.

‘Here,’ he said, as if he couldn’t care less, and handed over the package from his pocket.

At that point, Anna walked into the room.

‘You got it?’ she asked.

Logan nodded. He couldn’t wait to get out of here now. The atmosphere of criticism that seemed to him to be aimed unfairly in his direction was beginning to stifle him.

Anna took the package from Larry’s hand and opened it. She extracted a small piece of paper from among the pills and held it towards the light from the kitchen window.

‘It’s a number,’ she said.

‘Bastard.’ Larry hit the coffee machine again. ‘He wants you to call about a meeting, not just meet.’

‘It seems so,’ she said.

‘You’d better do it far away from here,’ Larry said. ‘I’ll send Adam and Grant with you. Best to go up in the hills. Here.’ He gave her a phone – one of many mobile phones – which he took from a cupboard. ‘Chuck it as soon as you’ve used it.’

‘It’s OK, Larry. I know what to do.’

Anna looked at Logan now. ‘And you, Logan?’ she said. ‘You’re done here. Best to make yourself scarce.’