Tundra (3 page)

Purkiss had unpacked his clothes, two weeks’ worth of heavy-duty woollens which would have to be recycled at least once, before testing the shower. The water had come as a shock, so immediately scalding that he’d had to step out. By working the control knob he’d found a happy medium, and he’d stood under the jets for fifteen minutes, scrubbing away fourteen hours of staleness and grime.

Fatigue would arrive suddenly, and drag him under. But for now, lying on his back on the single bed, Purkiss was wide awake, and able to reflect on the events of the previous seventy-two hours, and in particular those of the last two.

He hadn’t heard from Vale for nearly eight weeks, since just before Christmas and the Hong Kong affair. Vale wasn’t one for New Year’s greetings, or casual contact of any kind. When he’d engaged Purkiss in an operation, he was as close and as affable as a lifelong friend. But in between, he might as well not have existed as far as John was concerned.

The call had come as Purkiss was emerging from Tottenham Court Road Station, into the rain that had shrouded the country almost continuously ever since November. Purkiss pulled his phone from his overcoat pocket and glanced at the caller display.
Name withheld.

It could be only one person.

‘John. Quentin.’

And so it had begun, the familiar rise in tension within Purkiss’s gut as he’d listened to Vale’s precise yet understated pitch. There was no small talk, no exchange of
how have you been
s
.
Not even a coy preamble by Vale along the lines of
I’ve a job you might be interested in
or
are you available at short notice?

Instead, after the two-name introduction, Vale said: ‘I’d like you to go to Siberia.’

‘Anyone I know?’

‘I don’t think so.’

It was by now the standard first question Purkiss asked. Vale called him when a member of the British Secret Service, SIS, needed investigating. Purkiss was former SIS, and might therefore be expected to know at least some of the men and women he was sent after.

‘All right,’ said Purkiss. ‘Rendezvous?’

Vale told him.

Purkiss felt a prickle of anticipation.
An outdoor meeting in the rain.
It practically guaranteed that they wouldn’t be subject to any meaningful surveillance. Which meant secrecy was of the highest importance.

So he’d met Vale in Hyde Park, at the Marble Arch entrance, the vast lawns traversed only by people scurrying towards their destinations and the odd die-hard jogger. Vale was as skeletal as the umbrella he angled over Purkiss’s head, a man in his sixties of Caribbean parentage who oozed the commingled odours of fresh and stale cigarette smoke.

The brusqueness that typified Vale’s initial phone calls was never in evidence when they first met afterwards. The two men walked companionably, like friends catching up after a few months’ separation. Vale asked with genuine interest about Purkiss’s life, about his thoughts in regard to the last two missions he’d been despatched to undertake – in Pakistan and Hong Kong, respectively –  and about Kendrick, Purkiss’s friend who’d caught a ricochet bullet in the head last summer. Purkiss answered straightforwardly. He didn’t ask Vale about himself in return. He’d learned years ago that it was a fruitless task.

They reached the Serpentine. A lone mother attempted to coax her sodden child away from the water’s edge where he was trying to lure the ducks nearer by hurling sticks at them.

Purkiss said, ‘So. Siberia.’

Vale handed the umbrella to Purkiss. He lit up, took a deep drag, breathed a profile of grey smoke into the rain.

‘Francis Wyatt. Does the name mean anything to you?’

Purkiss used a peg system to hold names in his memory, involving concrete images linked to specific letters of the alphabet. He ran through it.

‘No.’

‘Wyatt is former SIS. A veteran field agent, earmarked for control jobs. Senior ones, possibly. But he retired early, at the age of forty-eight. Six years ago.’

‘Which fields?’

Vale played with the cigarette between his thumb and first two fingers. ‘He was active in the mid-nineteen eighties as a postgraduate student in climatology at the University of Warsaw. The Department of Geography and Regional Studies. The product he supplied was superb. First class. He identified the locations of some of the main Soviet tank deployments in eastern Poland, among other data.’

The harassed mother’s exhortations to her toddler were becoming more strident. Vale nodded down the snaking bank, and they began to walk.

‘After 1990, Wyatt was pulled out of Europe. He did some teaching and training here in London, for a while, but he was still a young man, barely thirty, and his talents as a field operative were too useful to waste. He ended up, in the late nineties, stationed in the Levant. Lebanon and Tel Aviv, mostly. He did stints in Turkey. Trips to Teheran. His focus was on the Palestinian groups, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. Once again, excellent, textbook work. With flair. He could have run the Middle East desk within the Service before he was fifty. But, as I say, he chose to leave. And the reason he gave, at the exit interview, was that he preferred to spend the remaining years of his working life following academic pursuits. He had a genuine degree in climatology, and that was what he said was his life’s passion.’

In his pocket, Purkiss felt his phone vibrating. It would be Hannah. He didn’t answer for the moment.

Vale continued: ‘They fought to keep him, of course. Tried to bribe him with every enticement in the book. He could follow his vocation, earn a chair at any university in the world, but he would still be valuable to SIS. The Service would work around him. Yet Wyatt was adamant. He harboured no resentment against the Service, was grateful for their employment and proud of the work he’d done for them. But it was time for him to move on.’

They walked in silence for a minute. Purkiss sifted through the information so far. It was a kind of game they played. Vale relayed facts, and Purkiss absorbed them and searched his memory of Vale’s tone for essentials, for emphasis.

‘Warsaw,’ he said finally.

‘Yes.’ Vale took a satisfied draw on his cigarette. ‘Wyatt was turned by the KGB at some point while he was a student. Probably in 1985 or thereabouts, when he was in his middle twenties. A vulnerable age in this business. Too young to have become entirely cynical yet, but old enough for doubts to have started to creep in.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘There’s no question. For years there were suspicions. Nothing SIS could plausibly act upon, and the intelligence Wyatt was providing turned out to be wholly accurate, but he was kept under watch all the same. Then, in 1999, one of SIS’s Turkish informants obtained photographic evidence of Wyatt meeting a Russian FSB operative in Ankara. The operative had been a KGB officer in Warsaw in the eighties, his time there overlapping with Wyatt’s.’

Purkiss mulled it over. ‘Did the Service pull him in?’

Vale shook his head. ‘You know how it works, John. There wasn’t considered a need to remove Wyatt from active service. He was a first-rate asset, and if he was still dallying with the Russians... well, they were our friends by then, in the Yeltsin days. Things have changed, of course, and it wouldn’t be tolerated now.’

‘But why did Moscow allow Wyatt to relay the kind of information you said he provided? Soviet tank movements and the like? Especially if it wasn’t disinformation, and was genuine, as you mentioned.’

Vale had a way of drawing on his cigarette that made it seem like he was shrugging. ‘Perhaps it cemented his cover. The Kremlin was willing to sacrifice a certain amount of secrecy in order to keep an asset like Wyatt in their fold.’

Again, the two men strolled in silence. Ahead of them the Serpentine’s edge merged with the grey gloom and disappeared.

Purkiss said: ‘So he’s a KGB double. He retires, with honour. Now what?’

Vale took a slow turn, his gaze surveying the environment without appearing to do so. When he spoke, his voice was lower, forcing Purkiss to move closer to hear.

‘Wyatt’s resurfaced. For the last two months, he’s been part of an international research team at Yarkovsky Station in North-Eastern Siberia. But he’s kept up his contacts with Russian Intelligence. SIS has been watching him ever since his so-called retirement. Sometimes he’s disappeared off the radar for a while, but there have been sightings of him in Morocco, in Kiev, even once in St Petersburg. And each time, there have been particular FSB operatives present as well. SIS believes he’s still working for the Russians, but his appearances so far have been too short-lived, too fleeting for anyone to get a handle on. Now, though, he’s stayed put for two months.’

‘And you want me to find out what he’s up to.’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘The day after tomorrow, if possible.’

Purkiss glanced at Vale. The older man had a knack for dry irony, but Purkiss had never known him to make actual jokes.

‘Quentin.’

‘Yes.’

‘This is going to require deep cover.’

‘Correct.’

‘I won’t be able to organise that in two days.’

‘It’s all been arranged. You’ll have credentials that will hold up under all but the most exhaustive scrutiny.’

This was something new. In the past, Vale had left Purkiss to set up his own cover identities, something that had been increasingly difficult in the last year and a half since Purkiss had lost his friend Abby, who’d been a master at procuring forged documentation. For the first time, Vale himself had done the work, or someone associated with him.

Purkiss found it disquieting. It tied him to Vale, and to SIS, in a way he didn’t like.

Vale turned his melancholy eyes on Purkiss, and it was clear he understood.

‘You wouldn’t have been able to do this on your own, John,’ he said. ‘Not gain entry to a facility like Yarkovsky Station without connections at a higher level than, with respect, you have access to. But I know it takes control away from you to a certain extent. And I know how that feels.’

Vale reached inside his greatcoat and produced a clear plastic folder. Inside was a manila packet, sealed and fat.

Purkiss took it.

Vale tipped his head. ‘We’ve some details to go over. Let’s walk.’

*

N
ow, thousands of miles away in the crushing silence of his quarters, Purkiss reflected on the cover Vale had supplied him with. It really was very good indeed.

John Farmer’s history had been elaborated in enough detail to encompass an authentic-sounding lifetime, but it left room for Purkiss to improvise and personalise it. Farmer’s date of birth was close to Purkiss’s own. Their upbringings were similar, as were their respective educational trajectories. Only in their subsequent career paths did they diverge. John Farmer had been a staff reporter on first local, then national British newspapers, before he’d gone freelance. He’d been a regular stringer with Reuters for five years, and had solid references from the agency. Purkiss knew the references had to be authentic, and wondered what kind of influence Vale, or somebody on his behalf, had exerted to acquire them.

The credentials had been convincing enough to persuade the Russian authorities to allow John Farmer entry to Yarkovsky Station for a period of up to two months. The station was, as Vale had said, an international one, and the facilities were technically the joint property of Russia, the United States, Britain, Sweden and the Netherlands. Each of the five nations apart from Holland employed its own citizens currently as staff members on the site. But the station was on Russian soil, and final access was at the discretion of Moscow.

Permission for John Farmer to conduct his interviews, to research his forthcoming article on the work being done at Yarkovsky Station, had been granted nine days before Purkiss had met Vale in Hyde Park.

Purkiss stood up and went to the window. It was blacked out almost entirely by a heavy roller blind, a fine rim of external light marking the edges on either side.
It’s essential during the summer months
, Medievsky had said.
Nobody would sleep otherwise, in the night-time sunlight.
With a finger Purkiss drew back the blind and peered out.

The pocked snowscape stretched into darkness.

He needed sleep. Not just because his body was crying for it like a drowning man clawing for air, but because he had to let his brain rest, process, assimilate all it had learned in the previous two hours since his arrival at the station. But Purkiss knew the visual stimulus beyond his window, the starkness of the alien environment he found himself in, was necessary. It would be a backdrop against which his impressions of the faces, the actions of the ten people he’d met tonight might imprint themselves on his consciousness, so that his sleeping mind could do its work.

Purkiss’s primary conclusion was that two of the staff at Yarkovsky Station overtly disliked him. Ryan Montrose, who had met him together with Medievsky on his arrival. And the doctor, Douglas Keys, who’d barely exchanged a word but had lapsed into sullen silence almost immediately after they’d shaken hands.

His secondary conclusion was that two of them genuinely liked him. Medievsky himself, with his professionally detached manner, yet faint grin and quick look. And Efraim Avner, the joker in the pack, the loudmouth. His interest in Purkiss had come across as completely unfeigned.

The rest of them were an unknown quantity, for the time being at least.

Except Wyatt himself. He’d been the last to arrive, like a great actor sweeping onto the stage after the lesser players had been introduced. His grip on Purkiss’s proffered hand had been neither aggressive nor limply defensive. His manner had been entirely what one would expect from a research scientist greeting a journalist who’d come to popularise his work.

But there’d been a directness in Wyatt’s gaze, something he’d allowed to linger for a fraction of a second too long. And in the final instant, there’d been a recognition there, too, and a kind of acceptance.

Wyatt’s eyes had said:
I know why you’re
really
here
.