Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

Back at her computer, it was a moment’s work to access all the information on the MI6 servers pertaining to the Battersea Mansion House. There was a full set of architect’s plans, a record of police callouts to the building and, of course, a complete list of apartment owners and residents pulled from the Land Registry and council tax records. It was a big tower and a long list, but Alice didn’t have to scan very far down it until a particular name jumped out at her. The penthouse apartment had been bought only six months previously for a sum of £17 million by a certain Boris Rostropovic. Alice recognised the name but couldn’t quite place it. She keyed his name into the database. A photograph of an elderly Russian man appeared. His face was deeply lined, his hawkish eyes hooded. His security services biography, printed below the photograph, was a melting pot of Soviet KGB collusion, post-Soviet asset stripping and personal acquaintance with high-ranking members of Russian administrations past and present. He was your classic oligarch, the type that was buying up high-end property in London by the sackful. And according to the immigration authority records, he had entered the UK on a private Learjet into London City Airport the previous week. So far as Alice could tell, he was still in the country.

Alice sat back for a moment on her office chair, staring at the screen, re-reading the biog and nodding thoughtfully. She wondered what kind of influence he had, that would require the need to put his building on a special CCTV database. More importantly, was it chance that an FSB agent high on MI6’s wanted list had, less than twelve hours previously, been visiting with an individual whose past and present was as murky as Boris Rostropovic’s? Hardly likely. She picked up Poliakov’s file, flicked through it one more time and gazed at the image of Rostropovic that stared out from her computer. Then she picked up her office phone and dialled a number.

Her boss, Maxwell Stark, head of the Russian desk, was clearly still in bed. He was a mild, polite man who nevertheless couldn’t quite hide his annoyance at being woken. It fell from his voice as soon as Alice said Poliakov’s name. She gave him a précis of her investigations and he listened attentively. When she’d finished there was a moment of silence. ‘Good work, Alice,’ Stark said. ‘ Excellent work.’ The sound of his voice almost made her smell peppermint.

‘What’s our next move, sir?’

Another silence.

‘There’s a high probability that we’ll find either Poliakov or Rostropovic or both in the penthouse apartment of the Mansion House,’ said Stark.

‘I agree, sir.’

‘Then we need to make a hard arrest. It’s politically sensitive and Poliakov is a trained FSB agent, so we can’t hand this over to the Met.’

‘No sir.’

‘I’m going to mobilise Hereford. We need an SAS team. Would you be so good as to stay where you are? We’re going to force entry into the penthouse today. I’m on my way in.’

The line went dead.

ELEVEN

Four members of the SAS anti-terrorist team were already on the ground in London. Their base: a run-down flat in Victoria, the look and smell of which hadn’t been improved by the presence of four military guys over the period of the last month. Their names were Bobby Hunter, Mike Cracknell, Dan Finch and Craig Knowles. Hunter was the smallest guy in the Regiment, but what he lacked in height he more than made up for in toughness. He was a broad-shouldered, stocky guy with a square chin and a taste for a fight. When the call came in from Hereford at 08.30 hrs, of the four men in the flat, he was the only one awake. That was the standard operating procedure: one guy on stag at any given time, ready to take instructions and mobilise the unit if necessary.

Hunter was making his fourth coffee of the morning when his phone rang and the terse voice of Ray Hammond, the ops officer back at Hereford, delivered their instructions. ‘The Mansion House, Battersea Power Station. A hard arrest of two Russian suspects.’

‘We could do with more guys, boss,’ Hunter said.

‘There’s another team mobilising from Hereford right now. They’re flying in and they’ll put down in the gardens of the Honourable Artillery Company at approximately 10.00 hours.’

‘Who’s on the team?’

‘Cunningham, Moore, Parsons, Hobbs. While they’re inbound, get your arses down to Battersea and put in surveillance on the apartment block. I’ve uploaded pictures of the two Russkies to the secure server. If you see either of them leaving the Mansion House, follow and apprehend. If not, you’ll force entry into the penthouse at 17.00 hours. Assuming we get the go-ahead from Whitehall.’

Hunter gulped down the rest of his coffee and unceremoniously woke the others. They were sleeping on mattresses in the living room, holsters and personal weapons on the carpet next to them. There was a ripe, male smell in the air. They grumbled at Hunter’s booming voice for only a fraction of second before they realised that he was hauling them out of bed for a good reason. And as soon as he told them the details, they rapidly started to get ready. Each guy put his personal weapon in his waist holster. They fitted their radio packs and concealed earpieces. Hunter sat squat at his laptop and downloaded the images of Boris Rostropovic and Dmitri Poliakov and distributed them to the unit’s encrypted mobiles. Within ten minutes of waking, the guys were ready to go.

They had two vehicles: a black Audi and a midnight-blue Kia. Ordinary cars to look at, but souped up and with toughened glass. Hunter and Cracknell took one, Finch and Knowles the other. The London traffic was slow. It took twenty minutes to get to Battersea Bridge and across the river. They parked up in the shadow of the old Battersea Power Station and put their disabled-driver badges on the dashboards of their vehicles. Then they performed a recce of the Mansion House.

It was a shiny new building in an area still largely under construction. Cranes and scaffolding loomed tall against the grey morning sky, but at ground level many things were finished. Fresh paving and newly planted trees surrounded the office workers walking briskly past, phones to their ears or in front of their noses. None of them paid any attention to four burly men circling the apartment block, identifying exits and planning their observation points. Aside from the main entrance at the front of the apartment building, there was a goods entrance round the back and three further side entrances at irregular points around the building. It was possible for one person to keep eyes on the two side entrances of the western edge of the block. Cracknell positioned himself on a bench in the shade of a plane tree. A service road led to the goods entrance at the back, where a bus stop offered an adequate OP, which Knowles occupied. Twenty metres from the entrance on the eastern side was a busy cab rank, where at any one time there were five or ten people milling around. Finch expertly lost himself in that ever-changing crowd, while Hunter took the front of the apartment building. Here, a coffee shop conveniently faced the entrance. Hunter installed himself at an outside table, ordered a large Americano, and watched.

Hunter had set up OPs in some desperate shitholes in his time. His diminutive stature meant he found it easier than most to conceal himself in muddy ditches in Afghanistan fertilised by the locals’ raw sewage; in wadis in the desert, covered by hessian sacks, where you sweated faster than you could get water into your system; snow holes in sub-zero temperatures, so cold you couldn’t feel your extremities. As surveillance gigs went, this was a peach. A seat. A hot drink. But in a weird way, that made it more difficult. Comfort, he well knew, could make you complacent. An SAS man was trained to thrive in extreme situations. When the elements and your surroundings were against you, it sharpened the mind. Made you more alert. When things were easy, you had to up your concentration. Force yourself to see past the ordinary. Nobody passing the coffee shop would have looked twice at Hunter as he sat facing the Mansion House, sipping his drink. Nobody would have imagined that he was making accurate note of his surroundings with an almost robotic efficiency. He clocked the face of every person exiting the building. The blonde woman in an elegant business suit carrying a burgundy briefcase. The man in his fifties with a deep tan and a v-neck golfing sweater. The teenage girl – an au pair, maybe? – with two kids in tow. The podgy guy in an expensive suit, smaller even than Hunter himself, accompanied by two blondes who almost certainly charged for their services. When his earpiece crackled and Knowles made a lewd comment about a woman he’d seen exiting from the back of the apartment building – ‘I wouldn’t mind seeing her goods entrance . . .’ – Hunter smiled inwardly, but showed no sign that he was in contact with anybody else. The first rule of surveillance: expect counter-surveillance. Hunter continued to sip his coffee and watch.