Стелла Римингтон: The Moscow Sleepers

What looked like a family group – three people with a couple of children – was just going into the hospital when a man emerged. It must be Ohlson; he fitted the nurse’s description. The man paused just outside the doorway, lighting a cigarette. Boyd recognised the move; he was looking for surveillance, although he seemed more interested in people on foot than the parked cars. Boyd slid down in his seat; he had a couple of discreet mirrors inside the car for just this sort of situation.

Having apparently decided the coast was clear, Ohlson walked directly towards the blue Volkswagen Passat with the Canadian number plates. Boyd photographed him as he did so. The car started up and drove straight towards the nearest exit, turning on to the highway. He was sorely tempted to follow but restrained himself. Single car surveillance was almost impossible without either losing the target or being spotted, and this guy was a pro. Boyd knew he’d be out on his ear if he let himself be spotted by Ohlson, which would be a lousy end to his career after seventeen years with the Bureau, half of them in his native Vermont.

He was the senior resident agent in Burlington, Vermont, which was not a Field Office since Burlington was deemed too small to support one. So Boyd had to report to the SAC, Special Agent in Charge in Albany, New York, across the waters of Lake Champlain. This rankled with him, as it would with most Vermonters, who resented the dominance of their bigger and more populous neighbour.

But it was not through the Albany Office that the Petersen job had come in. It was a SAC in FBI Headquarters in Washington DC who had contacted him a month or so ago. He had been frustratingly vague about just what Petersen, the Swedish lecturer at the University of Vermont, was suspected of. But it was Top Secret so Boyd guessed it was espionage. All Boyd was to do was to look out for any visitors he had and get their details, but he was not to do anything to alert them to his presence. Then he was to contact Washington immediately. Not Albany, but FBI Headquarters in Washington. That was all he had to do. No more than that.

As the Passat disappeared into the distance, he shrugged, accepting he would probably never find out what was going on, and drove back to his office to pass his observations, photographs and the address that Ohlson had written in the visitors’ book on to Washington.

In London the rain was steady and unceasing, as it had been for much of the preceding week, and it remained unseasonably cold. Peggy Kinsolving picked up her telescopic umbrella as it came through the outside scanner and opened it carefully so as not to shower herself and the security guard with raindrops. Then, head down, she ran up the steps of the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.

As she sat in the lobby waiting to be collected, she wondered whether visiting the Embassy would be less or more hassle when it moved to its new premises in Wandsworth on the south bank of the Thames. More, she thought gloomily. She’d seen computerised images of what it would look like – a huge rectangular glass box on a circular island. She imagined the discomfort of getting there on a day like this and shuddered. It would be OK for MI6 she mused; they were practically next door.

In her present job in MI5’s counter-espionage branch, Peggy was the main liaison on espionage with the CIA Station in the Embassy in Grosvenor Square. At least once a month she met the Station Head, Miles Brookhaven, to exchange information on current trends and cases. Peggy looked forward to these meetings, not least because she got on well with Miles. He’d been Head of Station for just about six months and was unusually young for the post. He was regarded by Peggy and her colleagues as a breath of fresh air after his predecessor Andy Bokus.

Bokus had always made it very clear that he disliked London and the Brits. In particular, he disliked his opposite number in MI6, Geoffrey Fane. The feeling was mutual and each man had set about further annoying the other by becoming almost a caricature of himself. Bokus had adopted an exaggeratedly boorish manner, playing up his humble immigrant background, while Geoffrey Fane, appearing as an archetypal English gentleman in his old school tie, three-piece suits and polished brogues, had patronised the American. It was a game observers suspected they both enjoyed, but it had made collaboration difficult, and Peggy and her boss Liz Carlyle were relieved when Bokus left and was replaced by Miles.

In contrast to Bokus, Miles was an Anglophile, having spent a year as a boy at Westminster School. He had been posted to London several years previously as a junior officer at the CIA Station. He was rumoured to have done stellar work in the Middle East, in the course of which he had been badly injured; it was assumed that the plum London posting was something of a reward.

Up in his office on the third floor, Miles was gazing out of the window as Peggy and the secretary who had gone down to collect her arrived in the CIA suite of offices.

‘Come in, Peggy. Call this a summer?’

‘Well, you look pretty summery,’ Peggy replied. Miles was casually dressed in a khaki cotton suit, striped Brooks Brothers tie and cherry-coloured penny loafers. His hair had been cut, making him look even more boyish than usual.

‘I’ve been spending a few days with my mother. She goes to Chautauqua every year. It’s an old cultural centre up near Buffalo. The weather up there can get pretty warm in summer. I just got back this morning.’

‘You should have postponed this meeting,’ said Peggy. ‘You must be tired and I haven’t got anything urgent to report.’

‘But I have something for you,’ he replied. ‘It seems to be connected to that case we shared earlier in the year. Those two Russian Illegals; it was a pity you sent them quietly back to Russia. I would have liked to see them prosecuted, though I’m sure it’s not diplomatic to say so.’

‘I agree,’ said Peggy. ‘Though I probably shouldn’t say so either. But the FCO didn’t want to worsen relations with the Russians. I don’t suppose we would have learned much more than we know already, even if we had put them on trial.’

Miles said, ‘I’d like to ask Al Costino to join us. You know him, don’t you?’

‘Of course,’ Peggy replied. Costino was the Senior FBI Agent at the Embassy and a regular contact of MI5 on counter-intelligence and terrorism matters.

‘He can tell you what his head office has just learned.’ Miles reached for the phone on the table and punched in an extension number. ‘Hi, Al,’ he said. ‘We’re ready for you.’

Unlike Miles, Al Costino was dressed conservatively in a dark flannel suit, white shirt and the blandest brown tie. He had short dark hair and a broad pair of shoulders that testified to a lot of hours spent in a gym. From his features – he had a square slab of a face with a dimpled chin and, even this early in the day, a five o’clock shadow – you would have placed him on the other side of the law, a ‘heavy’ from central casting. But his face changed as he grinned at Peggy, holding out an enormous paw of a hand.

‘Good to see you, Peggy.’

Sitting down heavily on a two-seater sofa, Costino looked towards Peggy. ‘I bring news from Bureau HQ and it’s hot off the press. So hot in fact,’ he said to Miles, ‘that Langley hasn’t even been told yet. It’s about this man we’ve been watching in Vermont.’

Miles turned to Peggy. ‘Do you remember that when our Russian source Mischa told us about the two Illegals who had been sent here to UK, he also said that there was another one in the States? But that this other one wasn’t in play because he was seriously ill and about to be admitted to a hospice?’