Mark Dawson - Sleepers

He needed Geggel’s help to save his daughter’s life. That was why he was anxious. He didn’t know what his old handler would say, and the stakes had never been higher.

Nataliya Kuznetsov watched through the front window. Aleksandrov’s cottage was at number one Wymering Road. The cottage that they had rented was diagonally across the street at number five. The place had been a fortunate find. Southwold was a popular destination for tourists who wished to enjoy its quaint 1950s atmosphere, and while many of the houses and cottages were available for tourists to rent, demand was high. Someone at the Center had found this one on Airbnb and, after sending someone from the embassy to check that it was suitable for their purposes, they had booked it for a month using the credit card in the name of Nataliya’s legend, Amelia Ryan.

An advance team had been sent from Moscow to equip the property. The two technicians were from Line OT, the Directorate responsible for operational and technical support for agents in the field. They had installed tiny cameras in the ground- and first-floor bay windows that provided continuous coverage of the house across the street. They had set up an IMSI-catcher, a complicated piece of equipment that mimicked a wireless carrier cell tower in order to force all nearby cellular devices to connect to it; the catcher allowed them to monitor Aleksandrov’s cellphone. They had located the telecoms junction box and, under cover of darkness, installed devices that routed all voice calls and broadband data to a server that they had set up in the front room.

They had been here for two weeks as the Ryans, here for a break and the fresh sea air. Their marriage was real, but their identities were not. Thomas Ryan’s name was Mikhail and he was from Almetyevsk. Mikhail and Nataliya had met at School No. 101 outside Chilobityevo; the school had previously been known as the Red Banner Institute before it had been renamed the Academy of Foreign Intelligence. They had studied together, had been recruited into Directorate S together, and had been placed in the United Kingdom together as operupolnomochenny , or operations officers. This was just the latest in a long line of operations that the couple had undertaken for the motherland over the course of their decade’s worth of service. It was also, according to their handler, the most important.

There had been plenty of time while they had watched and waited, and Nataliya had used it to become familiar with the old man and his daughter. MI6 had disappeared the spy after his exchange ten years earlier. The SVR had been unable to find him and, given his lack of importance at the time, had decided it was not worth the investment that would have been required to track him down.

But that was before his daughter had gone missing with a terabyte of data on the new Su-58. Anastasiya Romanova, née Aleksandrova, had disappeared and the Center wanted to find her again. It seemed reasonable that she might reach out to her exiled father. Aleksandrov had been located by an SVR mole in MI6 and the two of them had been sent to put him under twenty-four-hour surveillance. They had sat on his phone calls and internet traffic. They had followed him on his daily walks into town and established his routine. They had put a beacon on his car and broken into his house to place miniature listening devices in the front room, kitchen and study. The first week had been a bust, and then the second was the same; it had taken fifteen days before they had lucked out with the interception of an email sent from daughter to father.

They had reported back to Yasenevo and waited for instruction. And then, the following day, they had eavesdropped the conversation between Aleksandrov and his old handler. A rendezvous had been agreed and, after reporting the development to the Center, they had received their orders. They were to observe the meet and then eliminate them both. In the meantime, another sleeper had visited the handler, a man named Geggel, and had pressed a beacon underneath the right-rear wheel arch of his car. Nataliya and Mikhail were able to follow the tracker on an app on their phones. Geggel had set off two hours earlier. Traffic looked clear and he hadn’t stopped en route; they estimated his arrival in Southwold within the next ten minutes.

Nataliya saw movement on one of the two monitors. Aleksandrov had opened the front door and had stepped out onto the street. He paused outside the door, looking left and right, the old spy’s instincts still firing after all these years of inactivity.

Nataliya clipped her microphone to her collar and opened a channel to her husband.

“Aleksandrov is on the move,” she said.

Mikhail’s voice sounded in her earpiece. “ Acknowledged .”

Nataliya watched the screen. Aleksandrov had moved away from the house; she stood and parted the slats of the blind just a little, enough so that she could see him as he walked by the house on the same side of the street.

“Dark jacket, carrying a briefcase. Heading east, into the town.”

Mikhail acknowledged the information. Nataliya collected her jacket from the back of the chair and took her handbag from the table. She unzipped it and checked inside: she saw the dark glint of the pistol with its long, tubular suppressor. She zipped the bag, slung it over her shoulder and made her way to the door.

She stepped outside and looked to the left. Aleksandrov was near the end of the road, just before it took a sharp ninety-degree turn to the left. She let him turn the corner and pass out of view. She would follow as backup, out of sight and able to take up the surveillance when Mikhail called for the switch.

Aleksandrov was an old field agent with experience, but he had lived here—in boredom and safety—for ten years. He didn’t take the proper precautions. He wasn’t especially careful. His tradecraft was lacking. It would cost him.

Mikhail Timoshev was sitting on a bench on the promenade overlooking the sea. A Styrofoam cup of coffee rested on the arm of the bench and he had a copy of the Times on his lap. He looked down at the name that had been scrawled across the top of the front page: RYAN, 5 WYMERING. He had been to the newsagent at the end of the road and requested that a copy be delivered every day during their stay, and the paper always arrived with his name and address on it to help the paperboy remember. He had been Thomas Ryan for so long that he often had to remind himself that that was not his real name.

Aleksandrov’s pattern was usually to go into town at around midday. He would collect a newspaper from the shop on the High Street and then take it to the pier where he would buy a cup of coffee and a cheese scone and find a seat where he could gaze out to sea. Mikhail or his wife would observe him, at a distance, never close enough for him to notice them. Today, though, had been different. Nataliya had reported his route as she tailed him.

He took out his phone and watched the glowing dot that represented the beacon on the bottom of Leonard Geggel’s car. It had followed the High Street and then Queen Street before arriving at the Common. There was a place to park cars there—a line of bays that had been painted onto a wider than usual stretch of the road—and it looked as if Geggel was going to leave his car there.

Mikhail looked down at his paper as an elderly couple walked by, arm in arm. This was what he lived for. The jolt of adrenaline. The anticipation of action. The sudden release after days of careful surveillance. This was his purpose in life. It was what they had been trained to do. He was better at it than at anything else.

“Aleksandrov has gone into the Lord Nelson,” Nataliya said. “I’ll wait outside.”