“Who the hell’s he?” Monk called after him. The old spymaster’s voice came back through the deepening dusk.
“Oh, him. That is Colonel Anatoli Grishin.”
¯
PROVIDENCIALES Airport is not the world’s greatest aviation terminal but it is a pleasant place to arrive and depart, being small enough to process passengers without much delay. The following day Sir Nigel Irvine had checked his single suitcase, was nodded through passport control, and sauntered into the departure area. The American Airlines plane for Miami was waiting in the sun.
Because of the heat, most of the buildings are open sided and only a chain-link fence separates them from the open tarmac beyond. Someone had wandered around the building and was standing beside the chain-link looking in. Irvine walked over. At that moment boarding was called and the passengers began to stream toward the airplane.
“All right,” said Jason Monk through the wire. “When and where?”
Irvine drew an airline ticket from his breast pocket and pushed it through the wire.
“Providenciales-Miami-London. First class of course. Five days from now. Time to clear things up here. Be away about three months. If the January elections take place, we’re too late. If you’re on the plane at Heathrow, you’ll be met.”
“By you?”
“Doubt it. By someone.”
“How will they know me?”
“They’ll know you.”
A ground crew attendant, a young woman, tugged at his jacket.
“Passenger Irvine, please, boarding now.” He turned to head for the plane.
“By the way, the dollar offer still stands.” Monk produced two formal letters and held them up.
“What about these?”
“Oh, burn them, dear boy. The file wasn’t forged but they were. Didn’t want a chap who folds, don’t you see.” He was halfway to the aircraft with the attendant trotting beside him when they heard, a shout from behind.
“You, sir, are a cunning old bastard.”
The woman looked up at him, startled. He smiled down.
“One does hope so,” he said.
¯
ON his return to London Sir Nigel Irvine threw himself into a week of extremely high-pressure activity.
With Jason Monk, he had liked what he had seen, and the narration of his former boss Carey Jordan had been impressive. But ten years is a long time to be out of the game.
Things were very different now. Russia had changed out of all recognition from the old USSR that Monk had briefly known and duped. Technology had changed, almost every place name had reverted from its Communist designation to its old pre-Revolutionary name. Dumped into modern Moscow without the most intensive briefing, Monk could become bewildered by the transformation. There could be no question of his contacting either the British or American embassies to seek help. These were out of bounds. Yet he would need some place to hide, some friend in need.
Other things in Russia remained much the same. The country still had its huge internal security service, the FSB, inheritor of the mantle of the KGB’s old Second Chief Directorate. Anatoli Grishin might have left the service, but he would assuredly have maintained contacts within it.
Even that was not the principal hazard. Worst was the pandemic level of corruption. With virtually limitless funds, which Komarov and therefore Grishin seemed to have from the Dolgoruki mafia that underpinned their drive for power, there was no level of cooperation from the organs of state that they could not simply buy by bribery.
The plain fact was, hyperinflation had driven every employee of the central government into moonlighting for the highest bidder. Enough money could buy complete cooperation from any state security organization, or a private army of Special Forces soldiers.
Add to that Grishin’s own Black Guard and the thousands of fanatical Young Combatants, plus the invisible street army of the underworld itself, and Komarov’s henchman would have an army out to track down the man who had come to challenge him.
Of one thing the old spymaster was certain: Anatoli Grishin would not long be ignorant of the return of Jason Monk to his private turf, and he would not be pleased.
The first thing Irvine did was to assemble a small but trustworthy and thoroughly professional team of former soldiers from Britain’s own Special Forces.