Adrian Magson: Red Station

‘So suddenly I’m a spy? I thought that was Six’s job.’

‘Don’t get precious; you know the score. We’re all in this together. It’s called multitasking.’ He paused, then said, ‘They mention the no-communications rule?’

‘Yes.’ Paulton had made it clear that where Harry was going would be a dead zone. No communication in or out except via his head of station, which was Mace. It included everyone: friends, family, past loves, present colleagues, the press… most especially the press. For the foreseeable future, Harry Tate would be deemed to have dropped off the face of the earth.

‘Make sure you stick to it. Any breach and you’ll be hauled out of here fast.’

‘You man there’s a worse posting than this?’

‘Better believe it. I suggest you take a few days to get acquainted with the town. There’s not a lot on at the moment, so we can spare you for that. The others’ll help.’

‘So what’s special about this place?’ Harry had been trying to think why here, so far from just about everywhere and every conceivable operation MI5 might be involved in. His colleagues were constantly working the drug routes across Europe in their attempt to monitor and identify the traffickers who used various points of entry and arranged staging-posts for their illegal trade. But this seemed an odd place to be watching.

Mace pushed out his chin. ‘There’s nothing special about it. Last bloody thing you could call it. Even the flies feel underprivileged. There’s a saying among the locals that this place was made up of God’s leftovers. Not far wrong, either, although I’ve seen worse.’

‘That still doesn’t tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for.’

Mace grinned. ‘They said you could be a bit churlish.’ He placed his hand flat on the table. ‘There are rumours going around town — well, all over, really — that are causing a bit of bother in political circles. If they’re correct, then we’re all about to be dumped in the kaka.’

Harry resisted the desire to reach across and yank Mace’s shirt collar tightly around his throat. ‘What rumours?’

‘The Russians are coming.’

Mace refused to elaborate further. ‘It’s early days yet,’ was all he would say. ‘No point in going off half-cocked. Let’s just keep our ears and eyes open, shall we?’

Harry left him to his newspaper and walked back to the office. Whatever the rumours, Russian involvement was no surprise — not this close to Moscow’s ragged borders. But he was shocked that London hadn’t briefed him before he came out here.

Unless they hadn’t known.

He was greeted in the office by Fitzgerald. The briefing began with a demonstration of the layout of the building from ground to top floor, using a coloured map showing exits, stairways and a schematic of the alarm system, and the codes to use for out-of-hours working. Before they left the main office, he looked at Harry with a serious expression.

‘Outside of this room, we only talk British Council business. Nothing else. I run regular sweeps, and so far we’ve never found anything. But that doesn’t mean they won’t find a way in. Right?’

‘Sure.’ Harry was accustomed to the paranoia of security people in foreign postings. They had learnt from others’ mistakes over the decades, and nobody took the matter lightly.

Fitzgerald led the way downstairs, talking mundane matters and showing Harry a selection of rooms in the basement for odds and ends of furniture, stacks of leaflets and boxes of promotional literature in several languages. The air smelled of dust and printing ink, and damp cardboard.

‘Our main job here,’ he continued aloud, ‘is to field cultural and educational enquiries, and send out leaflets to interested parties so they can locate contacts and partners. We encourage them to go through their trade delegates in London or the appropriate section of our embassy. There’s a list upstairs of addresses you can give them.’ He beckoned for Harry to follow and moved to a room at the rear, where the walls were lined with metal racks holding more boxes and a selection of conference and exhibition equipment.

He lifted a square of carpet to one side. Underneath was a small metal trapdoor.

Fitzgerald took a metal hook from a nearby rack and inserted it in a slot. He pulled hard and the trapdoor came up revealing a recess dug into the foundations. Reaching down, he tugged hard on something out of Tate’s line of sight. A wooden box slid into view.

Inside, nestling in foam packing, were three handguns, the light gleaming off the oiled metal, and spare clips of ammunition.

He replaced the trapdoor and carpet, then led the way back upstairs. As soon as they were in the main office with the door closed, Harry turned to him.

‘What the hell are they for?’ he demanded. He was aware of Jardine and Ferris watching in the background. They said nothing.

‘They’ve been here from the beginning,’ Fitzgerald replied calmly. ‘The boss said you should know they were there, just in case.’ He turned and beckoned Harry to follow. This room was divided into two offices with glass panelling down the middle. Stuart Mace was sitting on the other side of the glass, talking on the phone. It looked like any bureaucrat’s den, with book-lined walls and filing cabinets, and family photos on the shelves.

‘I’ll take you through our security procedure and protocols,’ said Fitzgerald, moving behind a cluttered desk. ‘Then Rik or Clare will give you a quick tour and drop you off at your digs. You might as well get to know the place.’

‘Just in case?’ said Harry.

‘You got it.’

For the next forty minutes, he listened as he was shown through a succession of procedures, including basic personal safety, building security and local maps. One town map showed buildings marked in red. Most were in the narrow streets on the edge of town to the north, where Harry hadn’t yet been.

‘What are those?’

‘Hostile or possibly hostile locations. My advice is, don’t go there.’

‘Hostiles.’

‘Yeah. This and this,’ he pointed to two buildings closer to the centre, ‘are local security police. They leave us alone most of the time. The others are bandits. Local clans. Don’t mess with them; they have a habit of not returning people who stray into their territory. The cops leave them alone because they’ve got their own private militias.’ He sniffed. ‘It’s the militias in this neck of the woods that control most of what goes on.’

‘What about this place?’ Harry indicated a large red building on the map not far from where they were standing. It was the Palace Hotel.

‘We call it spook central. It’s the only decent hotel in town. The Yanks kip down there along with journos and a few other interested groups like the French, Germans and Russians.’

‘You know any of them — Americans, I mean?’

‘Sure. A couple. Engineers, so they say, although I doubt it. Why?’

‘A man named Higgins was on the flight in. Said he was a journalist.’

‘He isn’t,’ Fitzgerald said shortly. ‘Fat, loud, self-opinionated and sweats a lot?’

‘That’s him.’

‘Yeah. Rik said he’d cadged a lift. He comes and goes, makes a lot of noise about the hard life of a news reporter. Not sure who he’s with, but it’s either CIA or National Security Agency. He might have tagged you but I wouldn’t worry about it.’ He paused. ‘You see anyone else like him?’

Harry thought about the young man at the airport. ‘Not yet.’

Fitzgerald smiled without humour. ‘Don’t worry — you will.’

Next morning, Harry walked to the office to get a feel for the town. The air was colder, with a heavy layer of cloud hanging over the buildings and reducing the sparse colouring to shades of grey. The atmosphere bore a taste of burnt fuel, which he guessed was cheap heating oil or badly maintained vehicle engines.