Matthew Dunn - Sentinel

The FSB officer carefully extinguished his cigarette and seemed deep in thought. Fixing his gaze directly on Sentinel, he said, “Not all is lost.”

“You found something in the archives?”

Borzaya nodded. “Something very bad.” He looked at Will. “If you intend to take what I say back to London, you need to leave this room right now.”

Will shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere until Khmelnytsky’s stopped.”

“Stopped from doing what?” Borzaya glanced at Sentinel. “I know you want to find him, but you’ve not told me why.”

Sentinel responded, “For your own safety.”

Borzaya laughed, clearly not buying Sentinel’s explanation as to why he was seeking Razin.

“What did you find in the archives?”

Borzaya darted a look at Will. “Leave or stay?”

Will held his gaze. “I’ll stay.”

“I hope it’s the right decision.” Borzaya lit another cigarette and gazed toward one of the hotel room windows. “There are tens of thousands of KGB files in the FSB and SVR archives. It would take years to read them all.”

Sentinel snapped, “But you didn’t need to read them all. I gave you a very specific task.”

“You did.” Borzaya looked mischievous. “ ‘Find me evidence of an MI6 security breach.’ Still, I was lucky.”

“Why?”

The FSB officer shrugged. “The files you asked me to read are still highly classified. I’d have needed to explain what my interest was in them to get permission to read them.”

“Why were you lucky?” Sentinel repeated.

Borzaya smiled. “One of the files was missing. I thought that was curious, so I checked the registers to see who’d last read the file.” He blew out smoke. “You remember that idiot Filip Chulkov?”

“I do.”

Will glanced at Sentinel. “Chulkov? Was he one of ours?”

Sentinel shook his head. “No. He was an FSB officer. Murdered two years ago. Case unsolved.” He looked back at Borzaya. “His name was in the register?”

Borzaya nodded. “The man was a moron, but he did have clearance to read the files.” He chuckled. “Senior management probably gave that clearance to him because they thought he was too stupid to understand anything he read.” His expression changed. “I spent the last two days checking lesser classified files to see if any of them cross-referenced to the missing file. Finally I found one. It contained a brief KGB report, dated 1987, saying that a young Moscow-based MI6 officer might be worth approaching. That report showed the MI6 officer’s name in full.”

Sentinel looked totally focused.

Borzaya eased back in his chair. “I looked into Chulkov’s death. The reports included a list of the officer’s cell phone records on the days preceding his death. All of the numbers dialed looked normal-calls made to FSB, SVR, and GRU colleagues, to senior military men, and certain politicians.” He smiled. “I can see why none of them were considered suspects.”

Will’s mind raced. “One of the calls was to Taras Khmelnytsky.”

“Correct, Mr. Bancroft.”

“And who was the junior MI6 officer?”

Borzaya looked at Sentinel. When he spoke, his words were measured and tense. “Everything must be kept in this room.”

“It will be.”

Borzaya looked away again, deep in thought. After twenty seconds, he nodded slightly and said, “In the late eighties he was undercover as second secretary in the British Embassy in Moscow. The KGB found out that he was having an illicit affair with a Soviet diplomat, something that was completely forbidden in those days.”

“Well, they obviously recruited him, or why would they have such a classified file on him?”

“Maybe.”

“You have doubts?”

Borzaya shook his head. “I think the KGB got something out of him. But I found out the officer short-posted. Why would he run back to London midway through his posting if he was a KGB agent? They would have encouraged him to stay in Moscow for a full tour so that they could get everything out of him.”

Sentinel said, “He ran away from them.”

“I agree.”

Sentinel lowered his head. “It’s a shame we don’t know what he told the KGB.”

“We do know. It was clear in the file I read. The officer was deemed of interest because the KGB thought he could tell them the location of the various MI6 safe houses in Moscow.”

“Safe houses?”

“Safe houses.”

Safe houses, like the one where Sentinel was caught before he was put in the Lubyanka for six years.

Sentinel stood and walked to the window. With his back to Will and Borzaya, he said, “I’d always thought it was an agent who’d betrayed me to the Soviets, not a serving MI6 officer.” He slowly turned and looked directly at Borzaya. “Who is he?”

Borzaya tapped his hand three times on his knee. “He’s-”

Tap, tap.

“Nothing must go to London. You’ve given me your word.”

Tap.

“I’m in enough danger without you using my name as part of an investigation.”

He lifted his hand up again but held it in midair.

“The traitor is the current MI6 Head of Moscow Station.”

Borzaya had left the hotel room fifteen minutes before. Will and Sentinel were sitting in a different part of the suite facing each other, mugs of black coffee on the floor between them.

“Let’s think through the possibilities.” Sentinel took a swig of the drink; his expression remained one of anger but also of focus. “The MI6 officer gets approached by the KGB and is told that they’ll reveal his affair to British authorities unless he cooperates. He should have told them to go to hell, but he’s young and scared.”

“So he gives them the location of the houses and then flees to London before they get their hooks further into him.”

“Normally”-Sentinel placed his mug down-“the KGB would’ve pursued him and tried to run him out of London, but-”

“The Soviet Union collapses, the Russian element of the KGB is transformed into the SVR, agendas change, and somewhere during that process the MI6 officer falls through the cracks.”

Sentinel nodded. “Or a decision is made that he’s of no further use to the revamped Russia-too junior, too out of reach.”

“Either way, they went after you and got you at one of your safe houses.” Will tried to picture that moment. Even for a veteran like Sentinel, it would have been a terrifying experience.

Sentinel looked away for a moment; his next words were quiet. “I heard them come into the building, looked out the windows, saw that I was completely surrounded, and knew that all was lost. So I put-” He sighed.

“You put your handgun to your head but couldn’t pull the trigger.”

Sentinel kept staring at nothing. “To this day, I still can’t decide which of the two was the more cowardly.”

Will leaned forward. “You can’t think that way. It was an uncertain situation.” He had no idea what he’d have done in similar circumstances.

“The situation was very certain. I had too many secrets and the knowledge of too many Russian MI6 agents who would have been executed if I’d buckled under torture.”

“But you kept your mouth shut.”

“I knew that if I told them what they wanted to know, I’d be walked out into a courtyard and executed by firing squad.” Sentinel gripped his hands together. “The only reason I managed to keep my mouth shut was that I steadfastly refused to let the Russians do to me what I couldn’t do to myself.” He looked at Will; his demeanor changed. “Back to work. Let’s fast-forward to two years ago. Razin was now one of my agents and had decided that he must know the identity of my other agents.”