“He’s a nobody at the Russian Federation’s permanent mission in Geneva.”
“Interesting. What does he really do?”
“He’s a Moscow Center hood.”
Gabriel stared at the screen. “What’s a Moscow Center hood doing in the lounge bar of the Schweizerhof Hotel, twenty feet from MI6’s Vienna Head of Station?”
Lavon switched the shot to Camera 9, the widest in his arsenal.
“I don’t know. But we’re about to find out.”
20
Schweizerhof Hotel, Bern
There are numerous methods for a paid or coerced asset of an intelligence service to communicate with his controllers. He can leave coded messages or film at a drop site or in a dead-letter box. He can surreptitiously hand over intelligence in choreographed encounters known as “brush contacts,” send messages over the Internet using encrypted e-mail, via satellite using a miniature transmitter, or by ordinary post using tried-and-true methods of secret writing. He can even leave them in ordinary-looking false objects like rocks, logs, or coins. All of the methods have drawbacks and none is foolproof. And when something goes wrong, as it did in Vienna on the night of Konstantin Kirov’s attempted defection, it is the asset rather than the controller who almost always pays the ultimate price.
But when asset and controller are both known or declared officers of their respective services, and when both are holders of diplomatic passports, there is a far less perilous option of communication known as the casual contact. It can occur at a cocktail party, or a reception, or the opera, or a restaurant, or in the lobby of a luxury hotel in sleepy Bern. A certain amount of impersonal communication might be involved in the foreplay—a newspaper, for example, or the color of a necktie. And if the controller were so inclined, he might bring along a pair of bodyguards for protection. For even the lobby bar of a Swiss hotel can be a dangerous place when the secrets of nations are changing hands.
For the better part of the next five minutes, no one seemed to move. They were like figures in a painting—or actors on a darkened stage, thought Gabriel, waiting for the first burst of light to animate them. Only Eli Lavon’s watchers stirred, but they were in the wings. Two were sitting in a parked Škoda in the Bahnhofplatz, and two more, a man and a woman, were sheltering beneath the arcades. The two in the car would follow Dmitri Sokolov. The ones beneath the arcades would see to Boris and Natasha.
Which left only Alistair Hughes, who was supposed to be in Vienna getting an early start on his weekend. But he was not in Vienna; he was in Bern, twenty feet from an undeclared SVR officer. It was possible the two were already in contact via a short-range agent communication device—a SRAC, in the jargon of the trade. It acted as a sort of private Wi-Fi network. The agent carried a transmitter; the controller, a receiver. All the agent had to do was pass within range, and his message moved securely from one device to the other. The system could even be arranged so that no action, no incriminating press of a button, was required on the agent’s part. But the agent could not carry the device forever. Eventually, he would have to remove it from his pocket or his briefcase and plug it into a charger or his personal computer. And if he performed this act within range of a camera, or a watcher, he would be exposed as a spy.
Gabriel, however, doubted that Alistair Hughes was carrying a SRAC device. Keller and Eli Lavon had seen no evidence of one in Vienna, where Hughes had been under near-constant physical and electronic surveillance. What’s more, the very point of the system was to avoid face-to-face encounters between an agent and his controller. No, thought Gabriel, something else was taking place in the lobby of the Schweizerhof Hotel.
Finally, at 4:24, Alistair Hughes signaled for the check. A moment later Dmitri Sokolov did the same. Then the Russian hauled his considerable bulk out of his chair and, buttoning his blazer, traveled the twenty feet separating his table from the one where Alistair Hughes was affixing his signature to a room-charge bill.
The shadow of the SVR officer fell over Hughes. He looked up and, frowning, listened while Sokolov, in the manner of a headwaiter explaining the specialties of the house, delivered a short tableside homily. A brief exchange followed. Hughes spoke, Sokolov responded, Hughes spoke again. Then Sokolov smiled and shrugged his heavy shoulders and sat down. Hughes slowly folded his newspaper and placed it on the table between them.
“Bastard,” whispered Christopher Keller. “Looks like you were right about him. Looks like he’s spying for the Russians.”
Yes, thought Gabriel, watching the screen, that was exactly what it looked like.
“Excuse me, but I believe I am addressing Mr. Alistair Hughes of the British Embassy in Vienna. We met at a reception there last year. It was at one of the palaces, I can’t remember which. They have so many in Vienna. Almost as many as in St. Petersburg.”
These were the words Dmitri Antonovich Sokolov spoke while standing at Alistair Hughes’s table, as faithfully recalled by Yossi Gavish and Rimona Stern. Neither could make out what was said next—not the brief exchange that occurred while Sokolov was still standing, and not the longer one that took place after he sat down—for both were conducted at a volume better suited for betrayal.
The second exchange lasted two minutes and twelve seconds. For much of that time, Sokolov was holding Hughes’s left wrist. The Russian did most of the talking, all of it through a counterfeit smile. Hughes listened impassively and made no attempt to reclaim his hand.
When Sokolov finally released his grip, he reached inside the lapel of his blazer and removed an envelope, which he slid beneath the copy of theFinancial Times. Then he rose abruptly and with a curt bow took his leave. With Camera 2 they watched him climbing into the back of the Audi. Gabriel ordered Lavon’s watchers not to follow.
Inside the hotel, Boris and Natasha remained at their table. Natasha was speaking in an animated manner, but Boris wasn’t listening; he was watching Alistair Hughes, who was staring at the newspaper. At length, the Englishman gave his wristwatch a theatrical glance and rose hastily to his feet, as though he had stayed in the lounge too long. He left a banknote atop the bill. The newspaper—and the envelope tucked inside it—he took almost as an afterthought.
Leaving the lounge, he bade farewell to the hostess and made his way to the lifts. A door opened the instant he pressed the call button. Alone in the carriage, he removed Dmitri Sokolov’s envelope and, lifting the flap, peered inside. Once again, his face remained impassive, the professional spy’s blank mask.
He returned the envelope to the newspaper for the short walk down the corridor, but inside his room he opened the envelope a second time and removed its contents. He scrutinized them while standing in the window overlooking the Old City, unintentionally shielding the material from both concealed cameras.
Next he went into the bathroom and closed the door. It was no matter; there was a camera there, too. It peered judgmentally down on Hughes as he wet a bath towel and laid it along the base of the door. Then he crouched next to the commode and began burning the contents of Dmitri Sokolov’s envelope. Once again, the camera angle was such that Gabriel could not clearly see the material. He looked at Keller, who was glaring angrily at the screen.
“There’s a British Airways flight leaving Geneva tonight at nine forty,” said Gabriel. “It arrives at Heathrow at ten fifteen. With a bit of luck, you can be at Graham’s place in Eaton Square by eleven. Who knows? Maybe Helen will have some leftovers for you.”
“Lucky me. And what do you want me tell him?”
“That’s entirely up to you.” Gabriel watched as Alistair Hughes, MI6’s Vienna Head of Station, burned one last item—the envelope with his fingerprints and the fingerprints of Dmitri Antonovich Sokolov. “He’s your problem now.”
21
Schweizerhof Hotel, Bern
