COUNTER STRIKE

 

A BLACKHAWK NOVEL

 

 

Copyright © M.F. Kelleher 2025

First Edition

 

The right of M.F.Kelleher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or transmitted into any retrieval system, in any form, or by means without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any authorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

 

ISBN. 9798267628099

Cover artwork by Claire Meczes

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

The moon is low in the sky as Gabby Lane looks out across the English Channel. Up here on the top of the cliffs the wind buffets her face and blows her dark hair making her brown eyes water.

The call from Sir Bernard Mackintosh, Head of MI6 Global Operations had come twelve hours ago as she was in her flat in Berlin. The news out of the blue was that Alexei Orlov, a senior officer in the SVR, Russia’s secret service, wants to defect.

Orlov has been visiting London over the last week and during a meeting over lunch with Agent Talgarth, an MI6 spy posing as a journalist, the Russian had talked about defecting for the first time.

Within half an hour of that discussion Agent Talgarth had submitted her report to MI6 HQ. Within another hour after that, the British listening station GCHQ had formed a special operations group for all communications concerning Orlov.

Sir Bernard had called Gabby in the early afternoon and told her that she is leading on this operation. An armoured Range Rover was sent to pick her up and deliver her to Berlin Brandenburg Airport where the British Airways London flight was held to let her get on board.

Another Range Rover was waiting at Heathrow with two Metropolitan Police outriders to get her to the MI6 HQ at Vauxhall Cross by 5pm.

By the time she arrived, two banks of desks in the London Control Centre on the second floor had already been requisitioned for what had been named by then as Operation Carnforth.

The weight of the importance of the defection of Orlov was evident to everyone when the MI6 Director General, known as C, had appeared in the room to be personally briefed on the latest developments.

Agent Talgarth had been used as the go-between with Orlov in the following hours as the June daylight faded across the city. Using the cover of a follow up meeting to approve her newspaper article, she had met Orlov in the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane.

The late-night emergency gas repairs on Reeves Mews directly behind the hotel were fictional and manned by MI6 agents who had blocked off the road and were waiting, ready to load their cargo into a bullet-proof Volvo XC90 as soon as he appeared at the trade entrance on Park Street.

At 10:23pm, Orlov was bundled out of the hotel and into the Volvo.

Now, Gabby turns her head back towards the land on top of the White Cliffs. It’s the headlights of the Volvo with Orlov inside that she can see half a mile away bobbing along the road towards her.

The wind is more blustery as the car stops and an MI6 agent in the front passenger seat steps out to open one of the rear doors.

Gabby has never met Orlov but she has spent two hours watching surveillance videos about him earlier today. He is an ordinary looking man with black hair, not tall or particularly short. When he shakes her hand, his pale blue eyes don’t display any fear or concern, she notices.

Agent Talgarth is quite a different matter. As she emerges into the night on the top of the cliffs with her light brown hair tied back in a ponytail, she has to unfold her long legs to get out of the car. Her eyes betray excitement more than fear, although both are present.

Orlov is keen to know more about what’s going to happen. Despite his clothing being scanned on the journey down here for any bugging devices, Gabby declines to go into details about the plan just yet until she understands more about what he expects and why he’s decided to make this move.

Within five minutes, above the sound of the wind, the buzzing of a light aircraft rolls in across the water and a Cessna CJ4 appears a mile off shore. It circles once then comes in from the west and slowly descends towards the grass on the cliff top.

The amount of space to land is severely limited and the pilot has to use every trick he knows to slow his airspeed before the wheels touch the soil and the plane comes to a standstill thirty feet from a sheer drop down the cliff onto the rocks below.

As he starts to taxi the Cessna around to be ready for take-off as quickly as possible, the sound of rotors rises in the sky behind them. Gabby looks up and can see a red Robinson R44 helicopter travelling at speed in their direction.

“Back in the Volvo!” she shouts to Talgarth and the women both grab one of Orlov’s arms then start to run the fifty feet across the cliff to the car.

The first burst of automatic fire comes a second later and before they’ve reached safety.

“Keep going!” shouts Gabby. The agent in the front seat bundles out and opens the door of the Volvo. Gabby and Talgarth have to nearly drag the Russian across the ground to get him to move faster.

They reach the car and push him inside before both follow him in.

A second burst of fire rains down from the hovering helicopter and the MI6 man is caught before he can take cover. He falls onto the bonnet then tumbles earthward and hits the grass.

“Have you only got handguns?” says Gabby to the driver.

“Three SA80s in the side compartments, ma’am.” He refers to the standard British automatic weapon.

Gabby raids the store and pulls out one of the guns. In the last half minute, the helicopter had flown out north and is now on its way back. Gabby opens the door and watches the craft as it approaches. It’s lower this time, hoping for more impact from its attack.

When it’s fifty feet above her head, Gabby opens fire. She can hear the bullets pinging against the metal underbelly and she keeps firing. She sprays the main rotor and the tail and doesn’t damage them enough to stop the machinery but she does enough to make the pilot fly off on another loop to escape her firepower.

The sound of a second helicopter makes her swear under her breath. The Volvo door opens and Talgarth gets out with another of the SA80s.

“Aim for the rotors, Talgarth,” she shouts as the engine noise builds from the two machines in the air.

The second pilot is more of a risk-taker and comes in low, but this proves to be his fatal mistake as Talgarth gets a clear shot into the side of his craft. He slumps forwards and the helicopter lands at speed, carving out a long furrow in the grassland as it’s forced to come to a halt.

“We can use that, ma’am,” shouts Talgarth, and they both look at the grounded helicopter.

“With me!” shouts Gabby. The two spies run towards the downed Robinson R44. Talgarth pulls the pilot out of the seat and jumps in. She turns the key to prime the fuel then starts the rotor. The first helicopter is back for another run at the Volvo as Talgarth raises her flying machine off the ground.

They head out east then turn back towards the first helicopter. Gabby leans against her straps and pushes the muzzle of the SA80 out of her side window. Talgarth flies directly for the other craft then turns away at the last moment and Gabby pulls the trigger. The other craft takes evasive action and pulls up and out of range.

Talgarth is coming around again when they see the helicopter turn south across the English Channel and they give chase.

With every second, the distance between the two is closing. Talgarth’s piloting skills are better than their quarry’s and she reduces the strike distance to the helicopter’s tail in front. Out here, half a mile from the White Cliffs, the night air is colder and it cuts into Gabby’s face as she leans out to take aim.

She knows the SA80 can fire 400 metres but she waits until they’re well within range before squeezing the trigger. Her bullets make contact with the rear rotor and she can see sparks in the night. Talgarth pushes the helicopter faster to further reduce the distance. Gabby fires again and sparks appear for a second time as the rotor gets showered. As they’re both wondering if they have done enough, smoke starts to billow out of the helicopter ahead and it begins to curve in the air on a descent into the water.

They watch it plummet then hit the English Channel below them before the night is filled with the oranges and reds of its fuel tank exploding.

“Back to land, Talgarth,” she says.

They reach the cliff top and land near the Volvo. The injured agent is still on the ground where the driver has been trying to help him.

“Report it in Oberon,” says Gabby, referring to the MI6 operations system. “You’ll need to take him back to London and get a recovery team out here to clean up.”

“I’ll go back with him,” says Talgarth.

“No, you’re with me and Orlov. He needs protection and you’ve been useful.”

The Russian is helped across to the Cessna and loaded into the plane as the Volvo bumps away over the grass to the road.

They take off into the night and head for France. Gabby goes forward to talk to the pilot about filing a new flight plan for their destination and the Cessna turns eastwards.

She comes back into the cabin and sits opposite Talgarth. “What’s your name?” she says.

“Ivy Brown, ma’am.”

“Well, Ivy. You’ve been seconded onto Operation Carnforth.”

“Where are we going?”

Gabby drops her voice as Orlov is only ten feet away and watching the lights on the sea below them.

“Amsterdam,” she says. “We’ll take him to a safe house in the city centre.”

“How did they know we’d be there on the cliffs?” says Talgarth, flicking her eyes to Gabby.

“All spy agencies leak Ivy, and they each have a different way of dealing with it. The French tend to kill their leakers, the Italians imprison them and we let them go on leaking but give them false information so they become unreliable sources for their foreign paymasters.”

“Do you know who leaked this time?”

“I don’t, but London will be following up.”

“What happens after we get to Amsterdam,” says Talgarth.

“I’m only going to tell you our plans piecemeal, that way you’re protected.”

“If I’m tortured, you mean?”

They lock their gaze for a moment. “Just for your protection,” she says quietly.

The sound of Orlov’s voice comes across the cabin.

“I’ve heard of you,” he says. Gabby walks over and sits in the seat next to him. “I’m honoured to have one of MI6’s best agents looking after me.” His accent has only the merest trace of the Moscow of his youth.

“What made you defect, Alexei?”

“My life was at risk. I’ve been in the SVR since its inception and was even in the KGB for a year before it was dissolved. But long service doesn’t carry any guarantee of avoiding a sell-by date.”

“After we get you settled, you’ll be interviewed over the course of several weeks by MI6.”

“I look forward to it.”

“Was there anything that made you decide now, that the time was right?” she says.

“Something came into my possession that gives me a bargaining chip,” he says. “Something that the West will value.”

“Are you looking for an unusual deal of some kind?”

“Just freedom, a cottage in Devon, roses to prune.”

“But in exchange for everything you know,” she says. “That’s the deal. You don’t need a bargaining chip. Your knowledge is your side of the agreement.”

“I have access to x-ray scans for the T-99, the new secret Russian battle tank. It has the highest security around it, no details are discussed apart from in the design centre in Moscow and the discrete production plant in Nizhny Tagil.”

“You can talk about that in the interviews.”

“Take this,” he says and hands her a key with the number seventeen on it.

“What is it?”

“The key to an airport locker in Prague. You’ll find a sample of the scans, so you know I’m serious. I need money for them. I’ll be a wanted man, I’ll need security and I’ll need to maintain the lifestyle that I have in Moscow. My wife and children will need to be extracted from Russia. I’ll need them with me.”

“It’ll all have to be discussed,” she says.

The lights of Schiphol Airport blaze on the horizon ten minutes before the Cessna lands on the runway and the pilot taxis to an unmarked white hangar on the southern perimeter of the site. As they approach, the vast doors start to slide open and as soon as the plane is inside, the doors are rolled shut again to keep out the night.

“MI6 Processing Centre 23,” says Gabby to Talgarth as the door to the plane is opened from the outside.

Vast arc lamps make it feel like daytime inside the hanger. Despite it being nearly 4am, there are twenty people waiting for their arrival including David Averill, the MI6 Head of Station based in the British Embassy in Amsterdam.

Gabby discusses the events in Dover with Averill as the Russian is taken to a team of doctors who have set up a medical tent along one side wall. Orlov is asked to undress and given paper overalls to wear while he is put through a series of scanners to detect any unwanted items either attached to or embedded inside him. After a CAT scan he is loaded into an MRI machine.

After forty minutes, Gabby walks to the medical team.

“Did you find anything?” She addresses the leading doctor, Professor Daan De Jong.

“He has a damaged right knee from an old injury, and he has some MRI shadows but nothing significant for a man of fifty-five.”

“Any tracking devices?”

“There’s a tube under the skin of his left arm.”

“Can you remove it?”

“We’ll operate. The team is prepping the temporary theatre in the back of the tent.”

“Do you know what’s inside it?”

“It’s microscopic, an electronic gizmo. The MRI will have disabled it, but we’ll get it out anyway.”

A nurse pulls the side of the tent open and tells De Jong that they’re ready. Orlov is led away and Gabby lets the medical team get on with their work.

Dawn has started to inch up above the capital of The Netherlands as Gabby, Orlov and Talgarth are driven out of the airport compound in a dark blue Mercedes GLS SUV with an MI6 field officer at the wheel and a second agent next to him. They are followed by an identical vehicle containing three armed security.

The convoy heads east then tracks north into the centre of Amsterdam.

As the vehicles turn into Spuistraat next to the neo-Gothic bulk of the Catholic Dominicuskerk, the whole area is plunged into darkness. All of the lights on the buildings and streetlights extinguish instantly.

“Is that a power cut?” says Gabby.

But before anyone answers, a black van with darkened windows pulls out in front of them from one of the parking places alongside the kerb.

“We have company,” says the driver.

At that moment, an ear-splitting explosion echoes around the tall town houses on the street. Gabby looks back and their protection vehicle is a ball of flame.

A second black van accelerates from behind, around the burning Mercedes and pulls up ten feet away.

“Stay in the vehicle,” says the driver and he and the front seat passenger step outside, unholstering their handguns as they do so.

All the doors on the black vans open at the same time and four men emerge, two from each vehicle.

The MI6 driver fires at one man. He hits his leg and the man staggers against the side of his vehicle but a second man draws a knife and comes for the driver, swinging the blade to within an inch of his face. The attacker pushes again and the blade draws blood on the driver’s cheek.

The other agent is attacked by the two men from the black van behind them. One grabs his arms and the other repeatedly punches him in the stomach until he collapses.

“I’m not having this,” says Gabby, and she pushes out into the fight. She kicks out at one attacker, hitting his legs then high kicks to his torso. She grabs for his knife but he’s too quick and brings it down on her hand, cutting a slice of skin. Her fingers tighten and she lands a punch onto the side of his head. He is off-balance and crashes to the ground but another man comes for her. She kicks him too and he lashes out and lands a fist to her nose breaking the skin and showering her cheek with blood. She draws her Smith & Wesson but another fist impacts her stomach, she is winded as the pain pushes up into her muscles and she loses grip of her handgun.

Talgarth emerges from the Mercedes and fires at one man. He falls onto the roadway before another man gets a clean and hard punch to her face to stop her.

One of the attackers stops at the rear door next to Orlov and fires at the window, showering the Russian inside with glass shards.

Gabby pushes through her pain and runs at him, but not before the attacker reaches inside the SUV, unlocks the door and grabs Orlov. The other attackers join him and form a protective ring around Orlov with their handguns drawn.

They drag the Russian to their van and throw him in through a side door.

Gabby retrieves her handgun but the attackers keep their weapons trained on her as they get back inside the rear vehicle.

She fires into the tyres but only hits one before the black van screeches away into the dawn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

Gabby spends the next morning in the communications room of Delta Six, the MI6 safe house on Spuistraat in central Amsterdam that had been prepared to shelter Orlov before his kidnap.

It is only a two minute walk from the site of the attack and Agent Talgarth, who had been unconscious after the fight, was carried up to Delta Six by the two injured agents who had been in the SUV with them.

Fire tenders had arrived within ten minutes to quench the flames from the burning Mercedes, and Gabby had called London Central Control to report the kidnapping of Orlov and ask them to liaise with the Dutch authorities to suppress any investigation of the van bombing.

Sir Bernard calls an urgent meeting with Gabby and everyone manning the Carnforth Special Operations Room in London to explore every detail of what happened at dawn this morning.

The satellite feeds of the attack are pored over with a fine tooth comb. Every vehicle movement is checked and double checked to see where the weaknesses had been. One key mistake is discovered - the Mercedes that exploded was in the maintenance garage immediately before being allocated to be part of the convoy from the airport. When the CCTV footage from the garage is played on the video link, one of the maintenance engineers can be seen spending far too long under the vehicle. Calls are made and the man is arrested by Dutch Police. He confesses that his family was threatened to make him plant the bomb.

The more uncomfortable finding is that the MI6 plans to move Orlov must have been leaked. David Averill, Head of MI6 Dutch Station immediately leaves to detain and question everyone who had been in the Processing Centre at Schiphol Airport when the Russian came through in the middle of the night.

Talgarth appears at the door to the comms room with two mugs of coffee as the video call ends.

“How are you feeling?” says Gabby.

Talgarth nods. “Bruised but I’ve had worse.”

“We were unlucky.”

“What happens now?” says Talgarth.

“The tracker we injected into Orlov’s arm at the airport was disabled an hour ago. GCHQ are busy trying other ways to locate him,” says Gabby.

“Won’t the kidnappers just kill him?” says Talgarth. “If the Russians found out about his plans they’d just want to shut him up, wouldn’t they?”

“They didn’t kill him when they attacked, so there’s a reason they kept him alive. Usually senior spies have some insurance mechanism - sensitive information that will be released online automatically unless he manually and personally stops it in some way.”

Talgarth drinks coffee.

“Orlov will have a huge range of knowledge because of his senior role in the SVR and his career over the years,” says Gabby. “If he’s been collecting material to protect himself that could be a goldmine for us too.”

“What did he say he wanted when you talked to him in the plane?” says Talgarth.

“Like every traitor, he wanted to trade his freedom for information but for as little information as possible, so he’s always got something up his sleeve if things go wrong later, or if he’s snatched back by the Russians.”

“What do you mean if he’s snatched back? Haven’t they just done that?”

“We don’t know who the attackers were,” says Gabby. “They weren’t using Russian weapons. The knives were CACs which are French. The guns were Glocks, and they’re Austrian. Neither is commonly used by the Russians.”

“Who else could it have been?”

“Anyone with a vested interest or someone who can use him to their advantage,” says Gabby. “Nothing is as it seems in espionage. He very readily gave me this key.” She holds up the locker key. “The reason for that isn’t clear.”

“He said that it’s so we can see a sample of the x-ray scans.”

“Maybe,” says Gabby. “The scans may be real or maybe a trap. Something doesn’t add up. Like I said to him as we flew from Dover, he doesn’t need the scans to gain his freedom, so why talk about them? He said he wanted money for them, maybe that’s true or again it could be a trap in some way.”

“What’s our next step?” says Talgarth.

“We’ll leave here in an hour to fly to Berlin, I’ll pick up my car and we’ll drive to the Czech Republic. Then find out what’s in the locker.”

*

The clock on the dashboard of Innessa Orlova’s silver Aurus Komendant SUV shows that there’s five minutes to go before the end of lessons today in the Lomonosov School on the outskirts of Moscow.

She has only picked up her children from here a few times before, normally the chauffeur does that job. But today she told him that she would drive here herself and that he was to stay in their home in central Moscow.

Innessa pushes her blonde hair away from her face and her grey eyes squint slightly as she looks out to the school gates for any signs of her family. She had insisted with Alexei that the children go to this school to give them the necessary grounding for the privileged life they are destined for. As a well-connected man in the Russian Government, Alexei had been a good choice of husband for her. Her mother had always told her that marriage isn’t a love match but a strategic move to gain the best position you can. Her mother had approved of Alexei, but she’ll be angry now when she finds out what’s happened.

She can see her dark-haired children emerge from the school and walk towards her.

The car door opens and sixteen year old Lidiya throws her bag into the foot well, just beating her brother to the front seat who sits behind them.

“How was school?” says their mother. The daughter doesn’t answer as she is on her phone.

“Only a week to go, Mama,” says Maksim. “Then university in the autumn.”

“I’ve got some news,” she says and waits for her daughter to look up. “Lidiya!”

“What?”

She looks at each of them and their expectant eyes.

“We’re going away.”

Lidiya screws up her nose.

“We’re going now, driving to Prague.”

“What are you talking about, Mama?” says the girl.

“Your bags are in the back. We’ll be meeting Papa there.”

“You’ve lost me, Mama. I’m not going anywhere!”

“We’ll be on the road for twenty-four hours.”

“Mama, look at me,” says Lidiya, putting her hand on her mother’s face. “What’s happened?”

The mother looks sad before she says. “Papa’s gone.”

“He’s left you?” says Lidiya.

“Gone to England.”

“You just said he’s in Prague.”

“He’ll meet us there,” says Innessa.

“What do you mean, he’s gone to England?” Lidiya is getting more frustrated. “He’s on a business trip isn’t he? Like he always is, selling his technology stuff, or whatever he does.”

“He works for the Government.”

Her daughter’s face continues to be a mixture of confused and angry.

Innessa sighs. “He’s in the security services, we couldn’t tell you.”

“Papa’s a spy?” says Maksim.

“We couldn’t tell you,” she repeats.

“Why are you telling us now?” says Maksim. “Has he gone to England and he’s not coming back?”

The mother’s eyes are watery.

“Mama, it’s OK,” says Lidiya.

“He’s defected, hasn’t he?” Maksim’s voice has hardened from the back seat. His mother looks at him in the rear view mirror.

“What’s that mean?” says Lidiya.

“He’s a traitor,” says her brother.

“Is he, Mama? Is that what he's done? Sold himself?”

A solitary tear runs down Innessa’s cheek. “They were going to kill him if he’d stayed.”

“Because?” says Maksim.

“He talked to someone, a woman. He told her things that he shouldn’t have.”

“Was he fucking her, Mama?”

“Lidiya!”

“Was he?” The daughter’s eyes showing realisation. “He fucked some woman and talked, and now he’s run, is that it? Is that what Papa’s done? The moral, upstanding, judgemental father of ours?”

“Don’t be hard on him, Lidiya.”

“I’m not going to Prague or anywhere, Mama.” Lidiya reaches for her school bag at her feet and pulls the door handle with her other hand.

“They’ll kill you!” Innessa’s voice rises on the air. Her daughter stops with one leg ready to step outside, then her mother is quieter. “They’ll kill all of us if we stay.”

Lidiya looks at her mother, then back at her brother.

“We can come back one day,” says Maksim to his sister. “Nothing ends, Liddy.”

For five seconds, the daughter doesn’t move, half in and half out of the car. In a no-man’s-land. Then she pulls the door shut and Innessa starts the engine.

They cross the border into Belarus at Krasnaya Gorka as the sun starts to set on the horizon ahead of them. The children eat the food that their mother packed and then they sleep, but Innessa drives on in the darkness.

She gets fuel in the middle of the night at a deserted petrol station just inside Poland then has to stop and sleep for half an hour near dawn. They drive on passed Katowice, Ostrava and Brno before starting the long, dead flat drive north on the E50 highway to Czechia’s ancient capital city.

The silver SUV finally comes to a halt outside a large house in the central and upmarket Smíchov District.

The building is a white rectangle with a red roof and a central courtyard. The grounds are surrounded by the Kinsky Gardens on the lower slopes of Petřín Hill with views down to the Vltava River that cuts through the heart of Prague.

There’s been little conversation on the twenty-four hour journey despite all three of the Orlov family wanting, more than anything, to talk. As they step out onto the driveway, the front door opens and a young woman wearing all black walks out to them. She is slight, with clear, dark eyes and brown hair worn in a ponytail.

“I’m Veronika, madam,” she says in Russian. “I’m your house keeper.” Lidiya guesses her age to be late twenties and wonders if this is the woman who her father slept with.

Innessa introduces the children and Veronika insists on them all leaving their bags in the car as Samuel will bring them in later, but she doesn’t explain who he is.

The place has eight rooms and Veronika has made up three of the beds for them on the sunny side of the property. Food is laid out on a vast round dining table that can seat twelve. They start to eat and the sun streams in through enormous bay windows that look out to the gardens.

When they are alone, Lidiya can’t wait any longer to ask the questions inside her head.

“What’s going to happen to us, Mama? Is this our house now? What about my friends? Will I never see them again?”

“We’re safe here, Lidiya, that’s all I know. That’s all Papa said to me.”

“Will he be here?”

“Yes, he’ll be here.”

“When?”

“We’ll just have to wait,” says Innessa.

“Can I go to town?” says Lidiya.

“Not on your own,” says her mother. Lidiya looks across at her brother. “Stay here today, you’ll need to rest.”

“Then we’ll go tomorrow,” says Lidiya. “I’m not staying cooped up here because Papa’s a traitor.”

*

It’s a beautiful July day in Wiltshire as Captain Tom Beecham drives in through the gates of Tidworth Camp, the home of the British Army’s Royal Tank Regiment.

Today marks three years since Tom walked through these gates for the first time. Since then, he has led exercises on Salisbury Plain to recreate attack formations that would be used in battle, he’s been trained in tank warfare strategies, and he’s been part of the officers group as they have trained and led their soldiers.

What his commanding officers don’t know is that thirty-two years ago in a poor suburb of Moscow, Tom Beecham was born with the name Dmitry Belyakov.

His father was already absent by the time Dmitry had found his mother’s lifeless body on an August morning in their flat on Zelenogradskaya Street. The boy had been sent to the Moscow Orphanage No.1 which, at the time, was badly organised and poorly funded, but it taught him how to fight for what he thought was important.

When he was sixteen, a kind-looking man in his sixties had visited the orphanage and taken away Dmitry and four other boys in his large grey car that afternoon. The boys were given beds in an ex-KGB building on a quiet Moscow side street called Malyy Ivanovskiy Pereulok near the centre of the city and only twenty minutes from the Kremlin.

The old man was called Colonel Golovkin and he became a father figure for the five boys. The Colonel had rooms at the end of the corridor where their dormitory was, and they would all eat together in a large, bright dining room on the southern side of the building with the housekeeper Mrs Romanova. Every day at nine, the boys started their lessons, taught by an array of different people whom the Colonel personally knew.

In the first year, Dmitry and his peers were taught mathematics, biology and art. In the second year, the boys were told that each of them would be taught in one of the key European languages. Dmitry’s lessons were in the English language and from then on he followed the British education examination system. A woman from the Russian State Opera taught them about pronunciation until they each sounded like a native speaker of their allocated Western European country.

Two and a half years after arriving, the boys finished their time with the Colonel and the old man organised a ceremony on their last day.

“Dmitry,” he had said. “Take this.” The man handed him a British passport. Dmitry had opened it and read the name Tom Beecham for the first time.

“You are Tom now. Dmitry no longer exists. You have a place at Oxford starting in September to study History and Politics.”

Golovkin had turned to a set of suitcases piled up on a side table and picked one of them up.

“Take this, inside it are photographs and souvenirs of the childhood that you would have spent in England if Tom had been real.”

After the ceremony, the Colonel had talked to each boy separately with more details about the job that they now had as sleeper spies for Russia.

Dmitry has not forgotten the words the Colonel said as he finished. “Remember Russia when you are deep inside England. But when the time comes for you to act, we’ll contact you. Until then, live your life as Tom Beecham.”

A week later Tom moved into a rented flat in Shoreditch in London’s East End, having memorised his life story on the journey from Moscow. He went up to Balliol College in Oxford that autumn and spent three years being an Englishman before going to Sandhurst to be trained as an army officer.

He had married Lara when they were both twenty-nine and they had rented flats until they bought the cottage in Salisbury’s Trinity Street last summer.

“Captain Beecham!” It’s a voice he knows. He turns and salutes Major Davies.

“Tom, briefing at fifteen hundred hours.”

“What’s it about, sir?”

“New hardware talk from that female major in DI.” He refers to the Defence Intelligence Corp within the British armed services. “The Russians have got some new battle tank planned. She’s going to brief us.”

The meeting room in the main building of Tidworth Camp has twenty chairs laid out in classroom style as Tom arrives at 3pm.

Major Carol Jardine from DI talks about the latest information they have on the new Russian tank, which DI have code-named the R-17 for a reason that escapes Tom.

He drives out of the gates of Tidworth at six and reaches Trinity Street half an hour later. He changes out of uniform and pours himself a gin. Lara is out with her girlfriends for a drink after work, so he’ll buy a curry from the place on the corner in a while.

He sits out on the back patio in the warmth of the sun.

Tom’s not sure if he hears the first knock on the door, but he does hear the second one. When he opens the door, he sees a man he doesn’t know.

“Can I come in?”

“Sorry, who are you?” says Tom.

The man smiles. “it’s time to talk, Dmitry.”

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

“You’d better come in,” says Tom and he leads the man outside to the back of the house where his drink is still on a side table. He indicates one of the other patio chairs for the man and they both sit.

The man has grey hair and his face has been damaged at some stage. Tom can see at least one scar on his skin. The man’s eyes are deep blue like the sea, and his black suit has a pinstripe that is almost invisible.

“Who are you?” Tom repeats.

“Major Ilyin.”

What do you want?”

“It’s time, Dmitry.”

“I’m Tom now, Colonel Golovkin told me. Dmitry no longer exists.”

“We’ve been watching you.”

Tom can’t think of any response.

“We’re pleased. You’ve positioned yourself far better than we ever thought you would, Dmitry,” says Ilyin.

“I just told you!” Tom’s voice starts to rise but he throttles it back even before he’s finished speaking.

The major doesn’t falter. “There’s a prototype British battle tank, the Challenger 4,” he says. “We want it.”

“I can’t steal the plans, I’d be seen.”

Ilyin waits for more as he’s starting to wonder why this Russian boy is being so spiky.

“The foothold that I’ve established inside the British Army would be lost.” Tom blinks too many times.

“We don’t want the plans, Dmitry.” Ilyin’s eyes are steady and his body is still.

Tom takes a deep breath.

“We want the prototype.”

For a second, Tom can’t work out what the man means, and his brain rolls through possible explanations before reality dawns.

“I can’t. You mean?” is all he says.

The Russian does open his eyes wider now to acknowledge what is in Tom’s mind.

“Steal the actual prototype?”

The two men are silent for a moment before the Major says. “You have the opportunity as you are on manoeuvres with it every week. You’ve been trained to drive it. We’ll be there with transport in a warehouse, you just need to drive it in and we’ll take it away.”

Ilyin smiles now, for the first time.

“They’re sixty six tonnes. You can’t just put it on a trailer.”

“They’ll be a team of ten to dismantle it before we take it away. Then you travel to the Ural Mountains and re-assemble it.”

“No!” Tom is becoming more adamant. “I’m not leaving the UK.”

“The only reason you’re here, Dmitry, is to help Russia.”

“I’m Tom now!” He says the words with underlining.

Ilyin screws up his features. “This is not a choice I’m offering you, it’s an order. You’re part of the Russian military. I’m your commanding officer. Are you saying that you will not comply with a direct instruction?”

Tom stands and pours another gin, but only for himself.

He takes a large mouthful as his mind tries to find a way through this mess.

He turns back to the Major. “Lara’s pregnant. I can’t leave her.”

“We know,” says Ilyin. “We follow her too.”

“There must be something, some way that I can help without having to travel to Russia. It would be the end of my life here,” he says. “The British Army would know I’d travelled to the Urals, everyone knows that’s the place where Russian tanks are manufactured. I’d be arrested as soon as I bought a ticket with my British passport. MI5 must check on the travel plans of all army officers. They’d find out straightaway.”

“We can spirit you out of the country and cover your tracks.”

“What about a remote meeting on a video feed?” says Tom, sitting back down opposite the man. “I can advise your engineers down the line. There must be a covert video link somewhere in the UK that I could use?”

It’s the major’s turn to take a deep breath. “Maybe,” he mumbles. “I’ll talk to Moscow, but you’ll be meeting the chief engineer from the tank factory in two days, Adrik Vesna. He’s in the UK at the moment.”

“Where are we meeting?” says Tom. “I’d need to book my army leave to go anywhere.”

“Someone will contact you.” They both stand up and Major Ilyin holds out his hand. For a second, Tom considers not shaking it but then feels that, on balance, he needs this man to be on his side.

As the Russian slips out into the night on Trinity Street, Tom can see the lights of Lara’s car turning the corner.

*

As soon as Lidiya has finished breakfast she is itching to get out of the house and explore Prague. Her brother seems to suddenly slow down and she ends up shouting at him before they crash out of the front door and their mother watches them go.

It’s a half hour walk over the river on the Legion Bridge then further eastwards towards the city centre. She wants to go to Wenceslas Square and see the shops and they go into a dozen before the pull of the National Museum at the end of the street is too much for Maksim to resist.

“Don’t tell Mama that I let you wander about on your own,” he calls as he walks away.

After another hour, Lidiya orders a matcha in a coffee shop and waits in the queue as the drinks are being made before the girl behind the counter calls out her name.

As she steps back out to the street, she hears a voice speaking Russian.

“You’re from Moscow,” he says and she turns. The boy has brown curly hair and honest eyes. “My family’s from Dubrovka.” He refers to a suburb of Moscow. “Do you live here?”

“On holiday,” she says, smiling.

“How long for?”

“A couple of weeks.”

He’s holding a coffee. “Want to go and drink these somewhere?”

They sit on the steps of the National Museum and talk about their lives. He’s called Radek and is her age. He grew up in Prague after his father’s job moved to Czechia when Radek was ten, but he goes to Moscow every summer to see his cousins.

“What do you want to do after you leave school?” he says.

“The Sorbonne in Paris and travel the world.”

“I’m going to be a billionaire.”

“Doing what?” She smiles in the sun.

“Does it matter?

“Yes it does! That’s like saying you want to be a celebrity. Money and fame are consequences of what you do, not the reason.”

She impresses herself with her own succinctness.

As they finish their drinks, she sees Maksim at the doorway of the museum.

“I need to go.”

“Meet me tomorrow, up by the castle,” he says. “Do you know where it is?”

“Of course,” she lies.

“I’ll put my number in your phone,” he says and she unlocks the device and hands it to him. Lidiya can see Maksim starting to walk down the steps of the museum.

Radek finishes typing and she grabs the phone.

“Bye.” She walks away. Before she reaches Maksim she looks back, but the boy has gone.

*

The taxi from Berlin Brandenburg Airport drops Gabby and Talgarth at the end of a street in the Moabit District to the north-west of the city centre. Gabby presses a code into a keypad that is set into the wall next to a steel door.

They drop down a staircase inside, below the street level.

Talgarth can see that this is a parking garage. There are enough spaces for twenty vehicles but only three are occupied. The first vehicle is an ambulance and the second is a police car.

“What is this place?”

“It’s a Catharsis depot,” says Gabby, referring to the MI6 Catharsis Emergency Service that provides field agents with immediate help when they need it, whether that be rescue, body disposal or decoy operations.

Beyond the police car is a red Aston Martin Vanquish.

Gabby flicks a key fob in her hand and four lights flash on the car.

“This is mine,” she says.

At the top of the ramp to the street, Gabby turns south towards Prague.

They cross the border into Czechia on the European Route E55 near Altenberg then eventually turn west at Nová Ves to reach Prague’s Vaclav Havel Airport in the late afternoon.

The place is a modern cathedral of steel and glass.

Gabby leads them across the concourse in search of the lockers. They find one block of lockers but these start at the number fifty so they continue to explore. At the far end of the departures area, a long corridor leads to a plate glass window, and here are the lockers they need.

Gabby pushes the key labelled 17 into the lock. She twists her wrist. The only thing inside is a fat manila envelope and she picks it out and stuffs it inside her jacket.

At that moment, the first bullet smashes the plate glass window beside them. Gabby and Talgarth immediately dive to ground to find any sort of cover and pull out their M&P9 handguns.

“It came from the car park over there!” shouts Gabby. “With me!”

They jump through what remains of the window.

As the two spies start to run, a second shot comes.

“Separate!”

They diverge across the roadway and both find cover behind cars parked nearby. They can hear the noise of people shouting behind them in the terminal building.

Gabby can see Talgarth across the tarmac. She indicates that they’ll both attack the sniper’s position at the same time. She counts down with her fingers and they rise from their crouched positions.

Gabby reaches a door to a stairwell that leads to the upper stories of the car park. She raises her gun so the muzzle is vertical and begins to climb the steps.

The shots came from the second floor, so when she reaches it, she eases open the door from the stairs to catch a view of the parking spaces beyond. The place is half full with vehicles left by their owners before catching their flights to Europe and beyond. Gabby moves out from the doorway, silently placing one foot in front of the other as she keeps her eyes watching every corner for signs of the attacker.

There’s the sound of a door closing from across the floor and Gabby can see Talgarth at the far end near a second exit staircase.

They wait in the light, listening for the shooter to show themselves or attempt an escape.

The first noise is a screeching of tyres on concrete.

A blue Audi TT accelerates out of a parking space and spins for the exit. Talgarth opens fire and shatters a side window but the car doesn’t slow. Gabby’s Aston is one floor below, she hares down the stairs, slams through the door from the stairwell and runs to the car. She pushes the start button and the V12 powers up. Her phone has already synched into the car’s communications system and she says. “Call Talgarth.”

A ringing tone sounds in the speakers as Gabby starts to accelerate.

“Ma’am?” Her voice is in the car.

“Go to the ground floor, I’ll pick you up outside.”

She pushes down the ramp of the car park. Talgarth is by the road and Gabby barely stops to give the woman just enough time to get in.

The Audi is a hundred yards in front but the Aston makes quick work of closing the gap. By the time the cars arrive at the junction to the motorway, the spies are twenty yards behind. The Audi doesn’t go onto the motorway but stays on a long, curved access road that turns north towards open fields. Gabby pushes down on the pedal and starts to overtake the Audi but their quarry pushes on faster too.

Both vehicles hit 90mph on a straight stretch but she has more power. As she pulls up alongside the Audi, the window starts to roll down, and a Zastava M19 handgun appears.

Shots ring out.

Gabby pushes her foot all the way down and reaches 110mph to get out of the firing range of the handgun.

Then she brings the Aston over, cutting across the Audi’s path. The car is pushed off the tarmac and onto the grass verge. As it reaches the field beyond, the Audi rolls and continues to roll. Gabby slows and turns back then pulls over onto the verge. She and Talgarth get out and jump across into the field.

The Audi is on its roof but there’s no sign of the driver.

They draw their handguns and run swiftly along each side, checking the doors and windows in case the driver has a weapon ready.

But no shots come.

Gabby crouches down. The driver is inside, hanging from his seatbelt, and not moving.

The door is jammed. “Fatality. Call emergency services,” she says and Talgarth puts her mobile to her ear.

When the police and fire crew arrive, Gabby explains their status under international law as protected individuals given that they’re members of a state security service.

The fire crew flip the Audi and cut out the driver who has ID on him in the name of Miloš Cermak.

“Local lad,” says the fire chief. “I know his family.”

When the women return to the Aston Martin, Gabby extracts the envelope from the locker out of the glove box. Inside are x-ray scans of metal components that could be parts of a tank, and there’s an old cassette tape.

“Does this show Orlov was telling the truth?” says Talgarth.

“We’ll have to get a specialist to check it over. We can go to the embassy in town and upload these into the Oberon system then GCHQ can have a look. Maybe the Embassy will have a cassette machine too.”

The British Embassy in Prague is inside the historic Thun Palace in the Malá Strana district of the city. As the two women sit in the Aston Martin outside the vast gates to the building, the wood and steel slowly swings open and Gabby drives into the courtyard beyond.

A short man is waiting for them, looking nervous, as they step out.

“Major Lane?” he says. “I’m Ralph Boyd, the Third Secretary here.”

“And what’s your MI6 job title, Ralph?”

“Junior Case Officer, ma’am.”

“We need a few things, Ralph,” she says. “Access to your secure comms room, a cassette player and somewhere to stay for the night.”

The entire palace is full of elegant furniture and moulded ceilings. Ralph directs them to the communications suite and Talgarth sets about getting the x-ray images to London.

Bedrooms are found on the top floor of the palace that have views over the whole city and dinner is served in a room that is fifty feet long and dominated by an enormous table.

They’re finishing their food when Ralph appears with a dusty, old cassette player in his hand and a look of pride on his face.

“It was down the back of the shelves in our storeroom. I can’t guarantee it will work.”

He plugs it into the mains by a large oak sideboard and lights come on. They gather around.

Gabby has the tape in her back pocket and slips it inside.

When she presses play, there’s only silence at first. Then a conversation starts on the tape between two men. They are speaking Czech and it sounds as though the recording was made covertly.

“Can you translate, Ralph, please?”

He hovers near the machine. “They’re speaking Czech but have strong Russian accents,” he begins. “The first man is talking about long term spies that have been planted in different countries in Europe including the UK.”

Talgarth glances at Gabby as they listen.

“He’s also saying that they’ve been there fifteen years. The other guy is saying well done and he’s asking what the plan is for them.”

“The first man’s not going to tell him,” says Ralph, continuing his translation. “The fewer people who know the better,” he says, but he can say that they’re excited particularly as one of the sleepers is right at the centre of the British Army in a barracks in Wiltshire.”

There’s laughter on the tape. They listen on but there’s no more of significance before the recording ends.

“I’m classifying what you have both just heard as Top Secret,” says Gabby looking at Talgarth and Ralph. “That means you must keep it confidential unless given an express order to the contrary. Do you understand?”

They both nod, silently. “I’ll go and talk to London, and we need to alert the European intelligence agencies and MI5. This needs to be stopped, and urgently.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

The message from Sir Bernard’s office had come through at the start of day saying that he needs to talk.

Gabby has to commandeer the video suite inside the embassy and force a booking to be cancelled of the Czech/British Business Development Group that was due to take place. As the Ambassador and Head of MI6 Prague Station are both away, she is the most senior person on site, so no one complained but their polite feathers were ruffled.

She walks out to her Aston and pulls an attaché case from the boot. She locks herself in the video suite and punches in the code to unlock the case.

It contains a Security Pack No.5 the guts of which is a black box that takes the output from a communications suite like this and bounces it via encrypted satellite to the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross by the River Thames.

She logs in and hits the call button.

“Hello Gabrielle,” says Sir Bernard. She can see that it’s sunny in London behind him through his office window.

“Hello sir.”

“We have some new intelligence on Orlov,” he says. “Tech Branch have been tracking him. Whoever did the snatch are highly professional and know how to cover their tracks. All of the traffic and CCTV cameras in Amsterdam were damaged by an electromagnetic pulse from a few seconds before the attack, that’s what made the lights all go off. By the time everything came back on, the attackers had disappeared.”

“An e-bomb, sir,” she says, referring to a portable EMP Device.

Sir Bernard looks up at her image on the screen over the top of his glasses.

“There are only three individuals in Europe that we know of who can source an e-bomb of that scale,” says Gabby. “Have MI6 resources been deployed to track potential suppliers?”

“Not yet,” he says. “It’s all hands on deck to help MI5 with their operation to find the Russian mole in Wiltshire from your cassette tape.”

“I can find the e-bomb suppliers, sir.”

“There’s a higher priority task for you, Gabrielle,” says Sir Bernard. “We had a sighting of Alexei Orlov at dawn today.”

“Where is he, sir?”

“Prague.”

“He’s here?” Her voice doesn’t hide her incredulity. “Where?”

“The sighting was at an old industrial area by the river, called Libeň.”

Gabby pulls up a street map of Prague on a second screen beside her.

“The images are grainy, let me show you,” continues Sir Bernard as a poor quality video starts to play on the main screen before her.

“They’re from a security camera on the opposite side of the road. He arrived at an address and as he stepped out he looked across in the direction of the camera, as you see.”

“Sir, I want to bring in Talgarth to this conversation, as she’ll be with me to go and search this place.”

She collects the woman and they sit in front of the video screen.

“Can you play it again please, sir?”

The two women intently watch the frames click by in front of them.

“Here’s the van arriving,” says Talgarth. The black vehicle from the Amsterdam attack appears on the right hand side of the screen and pulls up in front of what had been the entrance to a warehouse but is now graffiti-strewn lap boarding.

They watch two men get out and remove a padlocked chain from the fencing boards which hinge open to create a gap wide enough for the van to slip inside.

The vehicle stops and one of the men walks back to close the fencing back up.

“Despite the poor video,” says Sir Bernard. “The AI Bots from GCHQ have identified six positive touch-points on the face of the man who’s about to appear. They ran that against the MI6 Watch List Library and got a match for Orlov. Here he comes.”

One of the men opens the rear door and a figure steps out. There is less than a second when the figure looks back at the road. The video freezes and the image pixels start to be enhanced as the software sweeps across the screen. Gradually, the face of Alexei Orlov becomes clearer.

“That was four forty-six this morning.” Sir Bernard’s voice comes from the speakers in the room.

“We’ll pay them a visit,” she says.

“There are only two of you, Gabrielle. I would suggest reconnaissance at this stage and wait for more resources before we go in.”

“Of course, sir. We’ll just go and have a look for now.”

They end the call and Talgarth turns to Gabby. “I can go and sit outside in an unmarked car if we’re only watching them.”

“We’re not just watching them, Talgarth.”

“But you just said…”

“I know what I just said.” Gabby smiles. “We’re attacking them, Ivy, you and me. And we’re going to do it now.”

*

Early morning rain patters against the windows of the house in Prague and Lidiya has been moody all morning, culminating in a big argument with her mother when she bans the girl from posting anything on her social media.

Lidiya storms out of a side door and into the gardens.

She runs to take shelter in a white metal pavilion that sits at the back of the lawn near a line of trees that run from here to the edge of their land.

Lidiya longs to be back in her bedroom in their house in Barvikha, the suburb that she likes to call Moscow’s Beverley Hills. The memory makes her scared that maybe she’ll never see her home again.

She couldn’t sleep last night and had padded across to her brother’s room next to hers in the middle of the night. When she pushed the door silently open in the moonlight, she could see Maksim was awake too, sitting by the window, looking out at the city.

They’d sat there for two hours watching the lights and the occasional plane in the sky and talked about their childhood together. Every memory they could find, every time they felt happy or sad or proud or distraught. They hadn’t talked like that for five years, back when they were still both children in their minds. She’d forgotten the feeling of freedom that she felt when she was small but talking to him had reminded her of a time when she had nothing to worry about.

Suddenly, someone steps into the pavilion and she jumps out of her skin.

He hadn’t seen that she was in here and he stops when he sees he’s not alone either. The boy is not much older than her, she thinks, and she likes his black curly hair and blue eyes that never stop moving.

“You’re Samuel, aren’t you?” she says.

He nods without words.

“Are you spying on us? Reporting back to someone about what we’re doing?”

“No.” His eyebrows pull together.

“Why are we here?”

He shakes his head and turns to look at the rain.

“You don’t say much, do you?”

Lidiya waits for him.

“What were you doing in the garden?” she says.

“Cutting the Linden Trees.” She looks baffled, so he adds. “The white flowers.”

“You been here long?”

“Two weeks.”

“Did someone invite you?”

“Major Ilyin.”

“Who’s that?”

“Just someone.”

“How do you know him?”

“Veronika knows him,” says Samuel.

“Is Veronika your girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Did she sleep with my Papa?”

“Ask her.”

“I will.”

“How long did the Major say you’d be here?”

“Three weeks.”

“And then what?”

“I won’t be needed after that because you won’t be living here anymore.”

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know, just not here.”

The sky has become more stormy over the last few minutes and she looks up at the clouds. “I’m going back inside,” she says. “Meet me here tomorrow at the same time.”

He doesn’t answer before she steps out into the rain.

*

 

The conference room on the third floor of MI5 headquarters is full of chatter. On Millbank, the road between this building and the River Thames, the traffic is nose to tail, which is usual for a Wednesday.

While most of the six field agents around the table know each other, they have never all met in person before today. They are aware that something big has happened as all of them have been pulled off their live operations to attend this meeting at short notice.

When the door opens at the far end and Connie Barratt, the Head of MI5 Operations, walks in with her assistant the conversations fade away to nothing. Her blue business suit and dark hair frame hazel eyes which have a tendency to shift between kind and powerful depending on her mood.

“Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen.”

Her assistant Isobel pours out a cup of coffee and puts in near a green upholstered wooden chair at the head of the table.

Connie drops into the chair and pauses, then starts the meeting.

“We received information yesterday that demands we act immediately to address a breach in our security structure,” she begins. “I’ve spoken about long-term foreign assets in the UK before to some of you, and we know, of course, that many embassies have staff who may, from time to time, be involved with security activities that they won’t share with us. We know they do that and we do the same to them.”

She takes a mouthful of coffee and flicks her gaze to the faces around the table.

“But what has happened is more serious than that. After the incident a few years ago, you’ll know that we sent a selection of Russian diplomatic staff away because their behaviour was outside of the agreed ways of working between ourselves and foreign security services.”

Eyes in the room exchange glances.

“Now we have received intelligence that there is a long-term Russian asset inside the British military. We know the asset is in an army camp in Wiltshire but we don’t know which one. GCHQ have trawled the communications and online traffic into and out of the Wiltshire sites. They haven’t found any patterns of activity that look immediately suspicious, so either the asset is an inactivated sleeper or sophisticated enough to work undetected.”

Connie continues. “All of you are going in under cover to be civilian personnel working with the various battalions across the county.”

She opens a folder in front of her and reads.

“These are your allocations: Cathy, you’ll be at Bulford, Max at Larkhill; Terry at Warminster; Lilian at Boscombe Down; Lee at Corsham; and Emma, you’ll be at Tidworth Camp.”

Isobel walks around the table and places bound documents in front of each agent.

“These papers contain the information about your cover lives and about the military establishments that you’ll be inside,” says Connie. “There are profiles of the senior officers and the clerical staff who will be your work colleagues. All of this information must be read and memorised immediately. Then each of you will have a face to face briefing with an officer from MI5 Comms Branch to test your knowledge of what you’ve read before the end of today. Finally, I will have a one to one with each of you before you leave and travel to your locations.”

She pauses. On the faces around the room are a range of emotions from trepidation to concern.

By mid-afternoon, Connie starts her interview sessions and the final one is with Emma Dudley, Agent Loxby.

“Come in, Emma.” Loxby sits down opposite Connie and the sun catches her pale green eyes.

“How are you?”

“Well, ma’am.” She pushes a brunette hair off her face.

“The Comms Branch chap said you were excellent in the debrief on your cover life. Tell me about her.”

“I’m Millie Butler,” says Loxby. “I grew up in Norfolk and my parents are both lecturers. I’m single, twenty-five, and I love cars and fashion. I wanted to be a doctor but didn’t get the grades for medicine at uni.”

Connie smiles at her. “Only the Commanding Officer at Tidworth, Colonel Andy Moore, knows who you are,” she says. “You’ll be covering for his secretary Sally in his personal office.”

Loxby nods.

“Sally’s mother is unwell, thanks to us dropping LT-9 into her tea in a tea shop two days ago. The daughter’s been given two weeks off. The LT-9 will make her feel exhausted for ten days then be untraceable in her system. That’s how long you’ve got to seek and locate any sleeper.”

“Right.”

“Once you get to the camp,” says Connie. “You’ll need to manage Moore’s expectations. He has some ideas about testing his officers to see if the mole is inside Tidworth. You’ll have to tread carefully. He’s more senior than you of course, but he’s not trained in espionage operations like you are. Ultimately, it’s your call.”

“Will there be support for me?”

“You know you can call the MI5 Ops Control anytime night or day.” Connie smiles then picks up a pen and notepad on the desk. She writes then tears off a sheet and hands it to Loxby. “This is my number in case you need extra backup. This operation is of extreme significance to UK security, we can’t fail or be seen to fail.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Any more questions, Emma?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Good luck.” Connie smiles again and Loxby returns it.

By 7pm, Loxby is sitting outside Colonel Moore’s office in the main building at Tidworth. On the wall by the door is a plaque that reads Commanding Officer, Royal Tank Regiment, in black letters.

Finally, the door opens. Moore is tall, tanned and sandy haired with bright blue eyes. “I think I need to call you Millie, don’t I?” he says and offers his hand to shake.

They go inside and he closes the door.

“It’s after six, so there’s no tea, only beer.” He disappears into his secretary’s office and reappears with two bottles of lager. He holds one up looking quizzically at her and she nods. Moore pulls out a bottle opener from his desk and levers off the tops then hands one over. He indicates the chair in front of his desk for Loxby.

“So, we have a Russian somewhere, do we?”

“Possibly,” she says. “You know the officers here. Do you have any suspects? Anyone who might be worth looking into further?”

He shakes his head. “They will all have been vetted during their time at Sandhurst, so if one is a foreign agent, they’re very good at covering their tracks. Your chaps in MI5 do reviews of the officers too from time to time and nothing’s been flagged.”

“How much of the information here is classified Secret or above?”

“A fair chunk,” says Moore. “Any military plans will be kept within a small cadre of the most senior officers. Even the plans and objectives for exercises on Salisbury Plain are confidential.”

There’s a knock on the door. “Yup?” he calls out and it opens.

A blonde woman with dark eyes walks in. She has her hair in a ponytail.  “Sorry, Colonel, I was just locking up. I didn’t know if you were here.”

“Just finishing, but good timing,” says Moore. “Let me introduce the two of you as you’ll be working together.”

“This is Millie Butler, she’s covering for Sally whose mother’s unwell.”

The women smile at each other and Loxby puts out her hand.

“This is the secretary to my second in command – and her husband’s one of our best tank commanders. Millie, this is Lara Beecham, the wife of Captain Tom Beecham.”