The Moscow Cipher
He had to tell Grisha about this. Grisha would know what to do.
Yuri fished out his mobile, then swore as he realised that in his hurry to leave the apartment he’d snatched his regular phone instead of the burner he used to communicate with Grisha. He’d been so busy he hadn’t checked his emails the last two days – and now there was one waiting there from Eloise, his ex-wife.
‘Bitch!’ he yelled out loud when he read it.
In her latest scheme against him, Eloise was now threatening to prevent future visits from their daughter and ending his custody rights, on grounds of poor parenting. Specifically, because for three out of five of Valentina’s last trips to Moscow, he’d failed to turn up to collect her.
Yuri knew he was guilty as charged. But Eloise’s vindictiveness had reached new heights. She couldn’t do this! Then again, Yuri thought angrily, maybe she could. Eloise’s uncle, whom Yuri had always despised, had all the money and power in the world. He was probably a lizard person, too.
The email reminded Yuri that he was due to pick Valentina up at the airport later that day. He’d been so focused on the cipher, he’d nearly forgotten that she was visiting for the next five days. He couldn’t afford another no-show, in case that harpy of a mother of hers made good on her legal threat. The idea of not seeing his beloved kid again for a long time upset him enormously.
As if Yuri’s mind wasn’t already overloaded with stress right now. What was he going to do about his discovery? Forcing himself to think logically, he realised his options were few. If he delivered the decryption and the contents of the tin back to Bezukhov, he’d be signing his own death warrant. People who knew too much were made to disappear just as efficiently as in the days of the KGB. Maybe even more so. But if Yuri chose to deny Bezukhov his prize, he was a marked man. They’d hunt him to the ends of the earth until they found him and put a bullet in his skull.
With shaking hands, Yuri replaced the precious items in the tin, screwed it tightly shut and was about to start the car when his phone rang.
‘Well?’ Bezukhov’s voice rumbled in his ear. ‘Any progress? It’s been days.’
‘It’s you, chief,’ Yuri said, thinking furiously. It was decision time. ‘Well, I, uh, you see—’
‘I told you I expected results.’
‘And you’ll get them. I just need more time, that’s all.’
‘What’s taking so damn long?’
‘It’s been tougher to decipher than I expected. I’ll get there, trust me.’
Bezukhov growled a series of dire warnings about what would happen if he didn’t, and soon, and then hung up.
Yuri started his engine with a rattle and a puff of blue smoke, and sped off. The thought of telling his secret to Grisha terrified him almost as much as letting Bezukhov have it. Grisha would waste no time plastering it all over the internet, and you didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what would happen next.
Yuri couldn’t wait to see what was on the microfilm, the final confirmation as if any were needed. Rushing back to his dingy apartment as fast as his jalopy would carry him, he dived into his desk chair and fired up his PC and scanner. The process of scanning the microfilm was a simple but time-consuming one, for such a small quantity of information. What in the fifties would take up a whole roll of microfilm now used only the tiniest amount of digital storage. But the data itself was even more astonishing than Yuri had anticipated. Everything was in Russian, officially marked with the stamp of a Soviet-era intelligence unit he’d never even heard of. It comprised a mind-boggling collection of detailed instructions and plans, blueprints, case studies and more. Yuri didn’t know whether to laugh out loud, or whimper in dread. He ended up doing both.
Yuri carefully encrypted the file, stored it on a flash drive that he would keep on his person at all times, and erased all trace of it from his computer. Even just walking around the apartment, he felt as though he was carrying a megaton warhead in his pocket.
At times like these, you need the counsel of an especially wise friend to guide you. Yuri swallowed down some coffee and a stale bagel, then ran back to his car and headed to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Malaya Gruzinskaya Street to seek the advice of the wisest friend anyone could wish for, even if He wasn’t always forthcoming with His reply. A while later, Yuri emerged from the church feeling somewhat let down; but there was little time to agonise over it, as he then had to scoot over to the airport in time to pick up Valentina.
Yuri’s twelve-year-old daughter was his pride and joy. So full of light and sharp intelligence, she almost made him forget his predicament as they spent the first day of her visit together. He’d promised her a super-fun time, and it was, exploring the parks, visiting the zoo, cooking lunch together, laughing at Valentina’s hilarious impressions of her teachers, telling jokes, watching a goofy DVD. By evening, Yuri had managed to relax somewhat, and decided what to do. He called Grisha on his burner, but his friend didn’t pick up. Drunk again, no doubt, or working double shifts warning the world of the evil plots being hatched against them.
The following day – still no reply from Grisha and mercifully no more calls from Bezukhov, though that was just a question of time – Yuri took Valentina out for lunch. Nothing expensive, because he had no money. Over a McChicken sandwich meal, conversing in Dutch as they generally did together out of habit from their Amsterdam days, he discreetly raised the subject of her mother’s lawyer. Valentina appeared not to know anything about Eloise’s dirty little schemes, which was just as well. Yuri tried to console himself that it was just an idle threat. Eloise was well known for her manipulative ways, and this kind of emotional blackmail was not beneath her.
It was as they were walking home after lunch that Yuri passed a newsstand, did a double-take at something he’d glimpsed on the front page of the latest edition of Metro Moscow, and went rushing over to buy a copy.
He had to blink several times before he was sure he wasn’t dreaming.
The priest he’d spoken to the day before had been found hanging from a bridge. Suicide.
Yuri stopped breathing. Dirty bastards. If they’d pressed the poor old man for information before they murdered him … if they knew what Yuri had confided in him …
He threw down the paper and instantly glanced around him at the passers-by on the busy street. It all looked innocent enough, but Yuri was thrown into a panic. Remembering to his horror that he’d left the flash drive and tobacco tin containing all the incriminating evidence right there on his desk, he was suddenly terrified. Could they be watching the apartment? Did they know where he lived? Maybe, but it was a chance he had to take. He seized Valentina’s hand. ‘Quickly. We’re going home. No time to lose, Sweet Pea.’ It was a pet name she’d always loved.
‘Why? What’s happening?’ the girl asked, alarmed at the look on his face.
‘To pick up some things, then we’re leaving.’
‘On a trip, like the other time? To see Uncle Grisha?’
‘That’s right, Sweet Pea. You liked that, didn’t you? But don’t say his name, okay? Not until we get there.’
‘Why?’
‘Just because.’
Armed thugs didn’t pounce on them at the apartment, and to Yuri’s immense relief the evidence was still right where he’d left it. He snatched the tin and the flash drive and stuffed them into his pocket. ‘Okay, that’s enough. Let’s go, Valentina.’
‘But my things—’ the girl said, crestfallen.
They could be here any minute. ‘No time, baby. We can pick up anything we need on the way. Come on!’
‘Wait, my phone!’ It was by the bedside in the spare room. Pink, like most everything else Valentina owned.
Yuri was very aware of all the fancy geo-location toys the intelligence services could use to hack and track anyone’s smartphone. For the same reason, he was frightened to bring his laptop with him. ‘No. You have to leave it behind.’
‘But it’s mine.’
‘I’m sorry, baby. I can’t explain why, but you can’t bring it with you. Too dangerous.’
‘Don’t be silly, Papa. How can a phone be dangerous?’
‘It just is. Come on, Valentina!’ Yuri could see she wouldn’t listen. In his panicky frustration, he could think of only one way to end the dispute. He barged past his daughter into the spare bedroom, grabbed her phone, dropped it on the floor and crunched it several times with his heel until it was in bits. Valentina stared at the broken pink pieces, and in disbelief at her normally so placid father for what he’d just done, then burst into tears.
‘There,’ he said, feeling awful. ‘Now you don’t need to worry about your phone any more. Let’s go.’
Yuri Petrov hurried his daughter away from the apartment, knowing he would never return to this place. All that mattered to him now was getting away from here.
Minutes later, the first attempt would be made to snatch them.
Chapter 4
Normandy, France
Several days later
The light summer rain filtered through the oak woodland canopy to fall as drips and splashes to the ground that was soft and spongy with decayed moss and leaves layered season on season for thousands of years. The trees grew thick and wild, blocking out the sunlight; here and there a fallen trunk overgrown with creeping ivy and barbed-wire brambles.
Once upon a time the Neolithic forest had spread far and wide, later to form a battleground for invading Roman legions and the Celtic Gaulish defenders of the land, whose swords and arrowheads still remained buried deep under layers of soil. The areas of woodland that had survived to modern times probably looked no different from when Druids had practised their strange magic and rituals here, and wild boar and red deer and roebuck roamed free, preyed on by wolves, bears and tribal humans.
Today, the prey and predators were of a different kind.
From the green shadows stepped a man. His hair and clothing were wet from the rain, his face streaked with dirt. Alone, unarmed and hunted, he had been evading his pursuers for close to two hours. At times they’d been so close to him that he could hear the rasp of their breath, smell the tang of their sweat. They were all around him, spread out through the acres of forest like a net, and they wouldn’t give up until the fugitive was caught.
He paused, as still as the trees, scenting the air, his acute hearing filtering out the background hum of insects and the chirping of birds for the tiniest sound of his enemies closing in. There; three o’clock from his position, no more than twenty metres away through the foliage: the crack of a twig underfoot, followed by a wary silence. Someone approaching.
The fugitive fixed his enemy’s position and moved on, padding over the rough ground as silently as a hunted animal when danger is near. His pursuers were a dedicated professional four-man team equipped with automatic rifles and sidearms. He was alone and had no weapons other than his wits and experience. Which gave him an edge over his hunters. And as he knew very well, having an edge was everything in war.
He would not be caught. He refused to fail.
The fugitive stalked his way through the trees, pausing frequently to listen and observe. Then he stopped. The man whose careless footstep had given away his position was right there up ahead, just five metres away with his back turned, quite unaware that his quarry was creeping up close behind. His rifle was slanted across his chest, gripped tightly in his gloved hands. Like the fugitive, he was dressed in military disruptive pattern material camo, except the utility belt around his waist held a holstered pistol and a commando knife. He was glancing left and right as he paced slowly between the trees. The stress of the long, gruelling hunt was telling on the man’s tense body language and the rapid rate of his breathing.
The fugitive smiled. Those were good signs. The enemy is at his most vulnerable when he’s nervous. Get him spooked enough, grind down his morale, and he’s ripe for defeat.
All at once, prey became predator as the fugitive suddenly struck out of the shadows. It was all over in an instant: the pursuer down on the ground, face pressed into the moss and leaves, unable to make a sound for the strong hand clamped over his mouth. The fugitive unsnapped the commando knife from the man’s sheath and touched the flat of its blade against the soft flesh of his neck. The words the fugitive whispered into the man’s ear chilled his blood and froze him in mid-struggle.
‘You’re dead.’
The man relented, and the tension went out of his muscles as he realised it was over for him. The fugitive kept the pressure of the blade on his neck as he trussed the man’s wrists one-handed with a thick plastic cable tie. He did the same for the man’s ankles. Then he thrust the knife into his belt and picked up the fallen rifle. He moved on, still listening hard for the crackles and snaps of the remaining hunters moving through the forest.
He could sense them not far away. The map of their ever-shifting positions was like a three-dimensional model inside his mind, marked by the points of an imaginary compass. The nearest one was roughly southwest, less than forty metres off. The fugitive’s nostrils flared and twitched at the scent of him. Lesson number one: don’t wear aftershave when you embark on a manhunt after a seasoned operator.
In less than a minute, the fugitive was right behind his enemy. He touched the barrel of the captured rifle to the man’s back and whispered, ‘Bang.’ The man turned, put up his hands, immediately accepting defeat. Moments later he was trussed, gagged and helpless in the bushes, like his comrade before him. Without a sound, the fugitive dragged his captive over the ground to where he’d left the first one. The two lay helplessly side by side in the leaves, wriggling like caught fish and muttering stifled curses behind their gags. The fugitive left them to resume his stalk. The pursuit had gone on long enough. It was time to end it.
The last two were paired up together, slipping furtively through the trees when a section of shadow to their left seemed to come alive and detached itself towards them. By the time they saw the movement and the gun aiming at them, it was too late to react.
‘Lose your weapons. On the ground. Flat on your faces, arms out to the sides.’
The fugitive secured their wrists behind their backs and relieved them of their sidearms. He left their ankles unbound so that he could march them back at gunpoint to reunite them with their companions. Once all four were lined up sitting on the wet ground he slashed their plastic bonds and they rose warily to their feet, rubbing their wrists and looking up at him with just a little resentment in their eyes. They were unhurt, but thoroughly humiliated and dismayed. They had travelled to this location as a team, in the hopes of demonstrating their skills. This outcome was far from the one they’d anticipated.
The fugitive’s name was Ben Hope. He leaned against a tree trunk, reached into the pocket of his camouflage combat vest for one of the blue cigarette packs he always carried and went through in large quantities, and lit up with a battered steel lighter. As he contentedly puffed the Gauloise, he studied the expressions on the faces of his students and smiled.
‘Don’t feel so bad, boys. Education’s all about making mistakes and learning how to avoid making them again. That’s what you’re here for.’
The location of the training exercise was a place called Le Val, in rural northern France. In some circles it had become a key facility, just about the only place in the world where certain specialist skills could be acquired by those prepared to pay the fee and take the strain. Le Val was jointly owned and operated by Ben and his business partner and longtime friend, Jeff Dekker. It had been steadily growing for some years now, the latest development being the purchase of an additional forty-acre parcel of forest to add to the existing spread of the estate. It had been a huge undertaking to fence off so much extra land to keep it secure from intruders, unwitting or otherwise – but the investment meant Le Val could now offer courses in pursuit and tracking skills on top of all the other educational services they provided to the police, military and private security trainees who came to them from all over the world.
Today’s group were part of a specialist fugitive manhunt agency based in Belgium and affiliated to INTERPOL, seeking a five-day CPD training in the art and science of capturing a fleeing subject in a rural or wilderness environment. The first job of the Le Val Tactical Training Centre was to expose, break down and analyse their weaknesses as a team. That first morning’s session had revealed some issues. Now it was time to start examining what had gone awry.
The post-operation debrief took place in a prefabricated hut in a pretty wildflower meadow close to the edge of the woods, outside which were parked the two long-wheelbase Land Rover Defenders that would later shuttle everyone back to Le Val’s farmhouse HQ. Ben was joined by Jeff Dekker and their business associate Tuesday Fletcher to run through the results of the morning class. The various weaponry – consisting of trainer rifles, pistols and knives that felt and weighed exactly like the real thing but were made of bright blue plastic – were stacked on a table beside them, next to the obligatory canteen of hot coffee brewed up on the military Jetboil stove.
The Belgians were visibly demoralised and exhausted, and so Jeff spared them the scathing criticisms that were half-hanging off his tongue and contented himself with standing against the wall with his arms folded and a sneer of contempt on his face. After half an hour’s lecture detailing the many missteps that had allowed the team’s target to not only evade capture but turn the tables on them, Ben decided they had suffered enough.
‘Okay, folks, let’s break for the day and get some rest. You’ll need it, because tomorrow we’re going to repeat the exercise all over again and see if we can improve on today’s performance. Any questions?’
There was a chorus of groans. One of the trainees complained, ‘If it’d been for real, we’d have had dogs.’
‘It’s a fair point,’ Ben said. ‘But relying on a K9 unit is a luxury you might not always get to enjoy. Imagine the dogs have copped it. Put out of action by pepper spray, wire traps or a bullet. Now you’re on your own. Depending on your own skills. That’s what’s being tested here.’
‘Yeah, but you were an SAS major,’ moaned another. ‘Not even in the same ballpark as most of the crooks we go after. How many guys like you are we ever going to have to catch, in real life?’
Jeff just glared at them and shook his head. Tuesday was having a hard time not laughing – but then, the young Jamaican ex-soldier had a habit of always seeing the funny side, even when he was being shot at.
Ben shrugged and replied, ‘The Roman army used to train their legionaries with lead swords, three times heavier than their regular sidearms. Why? So that when it came to the thick of battle where the metal meets the meat and a man’s nerve is tested like never before, they felt invincible because their issue weapons were like a feather in their hand. If you don’t believe in your abilities, you’re already the loser. Belief is confidence. I want your team to leave here confident that you can catch not just some ordinary Joe, but anyone. Because you never know who you might be sent to take down.’
‘And nobody likes making a total bollocking fool of themselves, now do they, fellas?’ Jeff added, apparently unable to resist getting in some slight dig.
Ben was about to say something a little more reassuring when the thud of a fast-approaching helicopter suddenly rattled the hut’s windows. The chopper wasn’t passing over, it was coming in to land – and that definitely wasn’t part of the day’s schedule.
‘Hello, what’s this all about?’ Jeff muttered.
They stepped outside to find out.
Chapter 5
The afternoon sunlight made little starbursts on the chopper’s shiny red fuselage as it settled down to land in the meadow a little distance from the hut. Ben and Jeff walked out to meet it, both wondering who their unexpected visitor might be. The blast from the spinning rotor blades ruffled their hair and flattened a circle of grass and wildflowers around the landed aircraft. They could see the pilot through the Perspex window, shutting everything down. As the pitch of the turbine began to dwindle and the rotors slowed, a rear hatch swung open and the chopper’s two passengers stepped out.
The first to emerge was an elderly man named Auguste Kaprisky whom Ben and Jeff both knew well, due to the fact that he’d been a client of theirs in the not-so-distant past. Born August Kaprisky in Rottweil, Germany, eighty-two years earlier, he had become a devoted Francophile in his middle age, moved his home and business to Le Mans and suffixed the ‘e’ to his first name to make it sound more Gallic.
Kaprisky might be old, but he was still fit as a fiddle and as mentally sharp as the day he’d wangled his first million, sixty years ago. He was currently ranked fourth on the Forbes list of Europe’s richest billionaires, although aside from his surname and flashy corporate logo painted on the side of the helicopter nothing about his appearance hinted remotely at vast wealth. Tall and stringy in the same tatty old green chequered suit Ben remembered from every time they’d met, he looked more like a hobo clinging on to dignity than one of the continent’s most powerful and influential tycoons.
His co-passenger, awkwardly climbing out of the chopper after him, was a woman a fraction of his age. She appeared expensively groomed and polished, with a mass of long fair hair tied up in an elaborate braid that must have taken a team of top-class beauticians eight hours to perfect. Ben had never seen her before; he wondered fleetingly whether Kaprisky, a widower for many years, might have finally succumbed to the same temptation as so many other fabulously rich old men and got himself a trophy wife.
Whoever she was, Ben noticed as he and Jeff got closer, she looked teary and distraught. The expression on the old man’s face told Ben he wasn’t very happy either. Auguste Kaprisky was known as ‘the man who never laughs’. Come to think of it, Ben had seldom seen even the faintest ghost of a smile bend his lips. Today he looked grimmer than ever. Clearly, this unannounced visit was no social call.
Ben reached him and put out a hand to shake. ‘Auguste, what a surprise,’ he shouted over the diminishing yowl of the turbine. He and his client were in the habit of speaking French to one another, which Ben did fluently. Jeff was still struggling with the language, despite the best efforts of his new fiancée, a local teacher called Chantal.
‘Your staff told me I would find you here,’ Kaprisky shouted back, croaky and throaty. The woman was clutching at her braid to save it from being blasted to pieces by the hurricane. Kaprisky didn’t have much hair left to protect, and probably wouldn’t have cared anyway.
As the four of them moved out of the wind and noise of the helicopter, Kaprisky apologised for turning up so unexpectedly. ‘I hope it’s not inconvenient. I would have called, but—’
‘Not at all,’ Ben replied. ‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’
Kaprisky’s lined face was as hard as concrete. ‘I need your help.’
Didn’t they all.
‘This isn’t a good place to talk,’ Ben said. ‘Let’s go back to the house.’
They climbed into the Land Rovers – Jeff, Tuesday and the four Belgians riding in the lead vehicle and Ben and the visitors following behind as they went bouncing and roaring over the meadows towards the main compound. Ben’s passengers were silent as he drove. He could feel their tension and wondered what this was about, but said nothing.