A Darker Place by Jack Higgins

see,” she said. “Does that give you a problem?”
    “I don’t know, that’s why I mention it. I’d appreciate your opinions, so just think about it. We’ll leave it at that for the moment.”
     
     
    KURBSKY HAD MADE his call from an old ruined chapel in the wood beyond the orchard. It had a distant view of the house to one side of the track, and he’d been able to keep an eye out for the three young men as they approached, searching for him.
    “Where is the bastard?” Kokonin was saying.
    “He’s playing with us, I’m sure of it,” Ivanov told him.
    Kurbsky let them pass and vanish into the wood and lit a cigarette. So the enterprise was afoot. It struck Kurbsky as ironic that Ferguson and company were going to such trouble to extract him and to protect his identity when his own people were aware of everything—his new identity, where he was living.
    But that, of course, would depend on him. What if he kept his identity completely to himself? Thanks to the mobile phone, the greatest invention of all time in some ways, he could receive encrypted calls from people who did not know where he was. He could also make calls that could not be traced.
    So he, who had been a prisoner of his own people, was now in a strange way free to do what his people wanted or to refuse. It was absolutely beautiful, and then he remembered Tania at Station Gorky and realized that his thoughts of freedom had only been an illusion.
    There were voices down below on the track, and he emerged from the ruins and ran down the hill and confronted them. “Were you looking for someone?”
    They seemed put out, then Ivanov laughed. “Damn you, you’ve been playing with us again.”
    “Well, there isn’t much else to do round here, but there’s Paris to look forward to. Great chambermaids at the Ritz. You never know, you could get lucky.”
    They smiled at that, but Ivanov said, “Chance would be a fine thing. One of us has always got to be on guard in your suite.”
    Kurbsky, who had expected such a thing, said amiably, “And how are you going to manage that?”
    “I have to work out a rota,” Ivanov said.
    “Well, that’s okay. It means that when one of you is busy watching me, the other two can play.” He grinned. “I’m starving. Lunchtime, lads, so race me back.” He ran away from them very fast.
     
     
    THE ONE TIME he was assured of total privacy was when he stayed in the house, using the bar facilities or the gymnasium and swimming pool or the extensive library, which included computers. Luzhkov had provided him with codes offering access to classified GRU information, and after lunch he sat down, brought up a screen, and accessed the British Security Services.
    There was plenty of history there—the traitors who had worked for the KGB, for instance: Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and many, many more than the general public in Britain had probably ever known about. One thing wasn’t there, though—nowhere in the files was there any mention of General Charles Ferguson and his organization. The security force known in the trade as the Prime Minister’s private army simply did not exist.
    He tried another approach, accessing individuals, and struck it lucky. The George Cross Database came up with Major Giles Roper. It was all there, the George Cross and Military Cross, his service in Ireland, the Portland Hotel bomb, the final explosion that had left him in a wheelchair. Apparently, he now worked in the computer industry.
    “Computer industry, my arse,” Kurbsky said softly. “But what a man.”
    But that was all he could find on Ferguson and his crew. For want of something better to do, he tapped in “Monica” and reviewed her life. Her photo was excellent, and he smiled. A remarkable lady, and he liked her.
    Finally, he typed in “Svetlana,” something he had never done, and was amazed at the wealth of information. There was an early photo from the Moscow days of her and Kurbsky and Tania, his father in KGB