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  Because of the heat, most of the buildings are open sided and only a chain-link fence separates them from the open tarmac beyond. Someone had wandered around the building and was standing beside the chain-link looking in. Irvine walked over. At that moment boarding was called and the passengers began to stream toward the airplane.

  “All right,” said Jason Monk through the wire. “When and where?”

  Irvine drew an airline ticket from his breast pocket and pushed it through the wire.

  “Providenciales-Miami-London. First class of course. Five days from now. Time to clear things up here. Be away about three months. If the January elections take place, we’re too late. If you’re on the plane at Heathrow, you’ll be met.”

  “By you?”

  “Doubt it. By someone.”

  “How will they know me?”

  “They’ll know you.”

  A ground crew attendant, a young woman, tugged at his jacket.

  “Passenger Irvine, please, boarding now.” He turned to head for the plane.

  “By the way, the dollar offer still stands.” Monk produced two formal letters and held them up.

  “What about these?”

  “Oh, burn them, dear boy. The file wasn’t forged but they were. Didn’t want a chap who folds, don’t you see.” He was halfway to the aircraft with the attendant trotting beside him when they heard, a shout from behind.

  “You, sir, are a cunning old bastard.”

  The woman looked up at him, startled. He smiled down.

  “One does hope so,” he said.

  ¯

  ON his return to London Sir Nigel Irvine threw himself into a week of extremely high-pressure activity.

  With Jason Monk, he had liked what he had seen, and the narration of his former boss Carey Jordan had been impressive. But ten years is a long time to be out of the game.

  Things were very different now. Russia had changed out of all recognition from the old USSR that Monk had briefly known and duped. Technology had changed, almost every place name had reverted from its Communist designation to its old pre-Revolutionary name. Dumped into modern Moscow without the most intensive briefing, Monk could become bewildered by the transformation. There could be no question of his contacting either the British or American embassies to seek help. These were out of bounds. Yet he would need some place to hide, some friend in need.

  Other things in Russia remained much the same. The country still had its huge internal security service, the FSB, inheritor of the mantle of the KGB’s old Second Chief Directorate. Anatoli Grishin might have left the service, but he would assuredly have maintained contacts within it.

  Even that was not the principal hazard. Worst was the pandemic level of corruption. With virtually limitless funds, which Komarov and therefore Grishin seemed to have from the Dolgoruki mafia that underpinned their drive for power, there was no level of cooperation from the organs of state that they could not simply buy by bribery.

  The plain fact was, hyperinflation had driven every employee of the central government into moonlighting for the highest bidder. Enough money could buy complete cooperation from any state security organization, or a private army of Special Forces soldiers.

  Add to that Grishin’s own Black Guard and the thousands of fanatical Young Combatants, plus the invisible street army of the underworld itself, and Komarov’s henchman would have an army out to track down the man who had come to challenge him.

  Of one thing the old spymaster was certain: Anatoli Grishin would not long be ignorant of the return of Jason Monk to his private turf, and he would not be pleased.

  The first thing Irvine did was to assemble a small but trustworthy and thoroughly professional team of former soldiers from Britain’s own Special Forces.

  After decades fighting IRA terrorism within the United Kingdom, declared wars in the Falklands and the Gulf, a score of undeclared wars from Borneo to Oman, from Africa to Colombia, and deep-penetration missions into a dozen other “denied territories,” Britain had produced a labor pool of some of the most experienced undercover men in the world.

  Many of these had left the army, or whatever other service they had been with, and parlayed their strange talents into a livelihood. The natural areas in which one could find them were bodyguard work, asset protection, industrial counter-espionage, and security consultancy.

  Saul Nathanson, true to his word, had caused an untraceable deposit to be established in a British-owned off-shore bank where banking secrecy was trustworthy. Or demand by an innocent-sounding code word in a harmless telephone call, Irvine could transfer what he needed to the London branch for immediate use. Within forty-eight hours he had six younger men at his beck and call, two of them fluent in Russian.

  There was something Jordan had said that intrigued Irvine, and in pursuit of this lead one of the Russian speakers flew to Moscow with a bundle of hard currency. He would not return for two weeks, but when he did his news was encouraging.

  The other five were sent on errands. One of them went to America with a letter of introduction to Ralph Brooke, chairman and president of InTelCor. The remainder went looking for the various experts in a variety of arcane areas that Irvine felt would be needed. When he had them all busy on his behalf, he addressed the problem he wished to handle personally.

  During World War II, fifty-five years earlier, returning to Europe after convalescence, he had been attached to the intelligence staff of General Horrocks, commanding XXX Corps as it pushed up the Nijmegen road in Holland desperately trying to relieve the British paratroopers holding the Arnhem bridgehead.

  One of the regiments in XXX Corps was the Grenadier Guards. Among its youthful officers was a certain Major Peter Carrington; another, with whom Irvine had much to do, was Major Nigel Forbes.

  Upon the death of his father, Major Forbes had acceded to the hereditary title of Lord Forbes, premier lord of Scotland. After a number of calls to Scotland, Irvine finally tracked him down at the Army and Navy Club in London’s Piccadilly.

  “I know it’s a long shot,” he said when he had reintroduced himself, “but I need to conduct a little seminar. Rather private, really. Very private.”

  “Oh, that kind of seminar.”

  “Exactly. One is looking for somewhere out of the way, a bit off the beaten track, capable of hosting about a dozen people. You know the Highlands. Anywhere you can think of?”

  “When would you want it?” asked the Scottish peer.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Ah, like that. My own place is no good, it’s rather small. I long ago made over the castle to my lad. But I think he’s away. Let me check.”

  He called back in an hour. His “lad,” son and heir Malcolm, bearing the courtesy handle Master of Forbes, was in fact fifty-three that year and had confirmed he was leaving the following day for a month in the Greek islands.

  “I suppose you’d better borrow his place,” said Lord Forbes. “No rough stuff, mind.”

  “Certainly not,” said Irvine. “Just lectures, slide shows, that sort of thing. Every expense will be fully covered, and more.”

  “All right then. I’ll call Mrs. McGillivray and tell her you’re coming. She’ll look after you.”

  With that Lord Forbes put down the phone and went back to his interrupted lunch.

  It was dawn on the sixth day when the British Airways overnight from Miami touched down at Heathrow’s Terminal Four and decanted Jason Monk among four hundred other passengers into the world’s busiest airport. Even at that hour there were thousands of passengers arriving from various points on the globe and heading for passport control. Monk had been in first class and was among the earliest to reach the barrier.

  “Business or pleasure, sir?” asked the passport officer.

  “Tourism,” said Monk.

  “Enjoy your stay.”

  Monk pocketed his passport and headed for the luggage carousel. There was a ten-minute wait until the bags rolled off. His own was within the first twenty. He walk
ed through the Green Channel and was not stopped. As he emerged he glanced at the waiting crowd, many of them chauffeurs holding up cards with the names of individual passengers or companies. Nothing said “Monk.”

  With people coming up behind him he had to move on. Still nothing. He moved along the twin lines of barriers that formed a passageway to the main concourse and as he emerged a voice in his ear said: “Mr. Monk?”

  The speaker was about thirty, in jeans and tan leather jacket. He was short-haired and looked extremely fit.

  “That’s me.”

  “Your passport, sir, if you please.”

  Monk produced it and the man checked his identity. He had ex-soldier written all over him, and looking at the hammer-knuckled hands holding his passport, Monk would have taken any bet the man’s military career had not been spent in the paymaster’s office. The passport was handed back.

  “My name’s Ciaran. Please follow me.”

  Instead of heading for a parked car, the guide took Monk’s suitcase and headed for the courtesy shuttle bus. They sat in silence as the coach took them to Terminal One.

  “We’re not going to London?” asked Monk.

  “No, sir. We’re going to Scotland.”

  Ciaran had their tickets. An hour later the London-Aberdeen businessmen’s flight took off for the Highlands. Ciaran buried himself in his own copy of the Army Quarterly and Defence Review. Whatever else he could do, small talk was not his forte. Monk accepted his second airline breakfast of the morning and caught up on some sleep lost across the Atlantic.

  At the Aberdeen airport there was transportation, a long-base Land Rover Discovery with another taciturn ex-soldier at the wheel. He and Ciaran exchanged eight syllables, which seemed to rank as a pretty long conversation.

  Monk had never seen the mountains of the Scottish Highlands, which they entered after leaving the airport on the outskirts of the east-coast city of Aberdeen. The unnamed driver took the A96 Inverness road and seven miles later pulled off to the left. The signpost said simply: KEMNAY. They went through the village of Monymusk to hit the Aberdeen-Alford road. Three miles later the Land Rover turned right, ran through Whitehouse, and headed for Keig.

  There was a river on the right. Monk wondered if there were salmon or trout in it. Just before Keig the vehicle suddenly pulled off the road, crossed the river and went up a drive. Around two bends the stone bulk of an ancient castle sat on a slight eminence looking out over the hills. The driver turned and spoke.

  “Welcome to Castle Forbes, Mr. Monk.”

  The spare figure of Sir Nigel Irvine, a flat cloth cap on his head, white wings of hair blowing on either side, came out of the stone porch.

  “Good trip?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Tiring all the same. Ciaran will show you to your room. Have a bath and a nap. Lunch in two hours. We’ve a lot of work to do.”

  “You knew I was coming,” said Monk.

  “Yes.”

  “Ciaran made no phone call.”

  “Ah, yes, see what you mean. Mitch there”—he pointed at the driver unloading the suitcase—“was also at Heathrow. And on the Aberdeen plane. Right at the back. Got through Aberdeen airport before you, didn’t have to wait for luggage. Reached the Land Rover with five minutes to spare.”

  Monk sighed. He had not spotted Mitch at Heathrow, on the plane. The bad news was, Irvine was right; there was a lot of work to do. The good news was, he was with a rather professional outfit.

  “Are these guys coming where I’m going?”

  “No, ‘fraid not. When you get there, you’ll be on your own. What we’re going to do for the next three weeks is try to help you survive.”

  Lunch was a kind of minced lamb covered in a potato crust. His hosts called it shepherd’s pie and soaked it all in a spicy black sauce. There were five at the table: Sir Nigel Irvine, the genial host, Monk himself, Ciaran and Mitch, who always referred to both Monk and Irvine as “Boss,” and a short alert man with thin white hair who spoke good English but with an accent Monk recognized as Russian.

  “There will have to be some English spoken, of course,” said Irvine, “because not many of us speak Russian. But for four hours a day, minimum, you will be speaking Russian with Oleg here. You have to get back to the point where you can actually pass for one.”

  Monk nodded. It had been years since he had spoken the language and he was going to discover how rusty he had become. But a natural linguist never forgets and enough practice will always bring it back.

  “So,” his host continued, “Oleg, Ciaran, and Mitch here will be permanent residents. Others will come and go. That includes myself. In a few days, when you’re settled, I’ll have to fly south and get on with ... other things.”

  If Monk had thought some consideration might be given to jet lag, he was mistaken. After lunch he had four hours with Oleg.

  The Russian invented a range of scenarios. One minute he was a militiaman on the street, stopping Monk to challenge his papers, demand where he had come from, where he was going and why. Then he would become a waiter, seeking details of a complicated meal order, an out-of-town Russian asking directions of a Muscovite. Even after four hours Monk could feel the sense of the language coming back.

  Hauling on fishing lines in the Caribbean, Monk had reckoned he was pretty fit, despite a thickening of the waistline. He was wrong. Before dawn the next morning he had his first cross-country run with Ciaran and Mitch.

  “We’ll start with an easy one, Boss,” said Mitch, so they only did five miles through thigh-deep heather. At first Monk thought he was going to die. Then he wished he would.

  There were only two staff on duty. The housekeeper, the formidable Mrs. McGillivray, widow of an estate worker, cooked and cleaned, accepting with a disapproving sniff the series of experts coming and going with their English accents. Hector looked after the grounds and the vegetable garden, motoring into Whitehouse for groceries. No tradesman ever called. Mrs. McGee, as the men called her, and Hector lived in two small cottages in the grounds.

  A photographer came and took a range of pictures of Monk for the various identification papers being prepared for him somewhere else. A hair stylist cum makeup man appeared, skillfully changing Monk’s appearance and showing him how to do so again with minimum materials and nothing that could not be easily bought or carried in luggage without anyone suspecting the true use of the item.

  When his appearance had been changed, the photographer took more pictures for yet another pazport. From somewhere Irvine had obtained the real things and the services of an engraving artist and calligrapher to alter them to the new identity.

  Monk spent hours with a huge map of Moscow, memorizing the city and its hundreds of new names—new to him, anyway. Maurice Thorez Quay, named after the dead French Communist leader, had reverted to its old name of Sofia Quay. All references to Marx, Engels, Lenin, Dzerzhinski, and the other Communist notables of their day had vanished.

  He memorized the hundred most prominent buildings and their locations, how to use the new telephone system, and how to hail an instant taxi by waving down any driver anytime anywhere and offering him a dollar.

  There was a screening room, where he sat for hours with a man from London, another Russian speaker but an Englishman, looking at faces, faces, and more faces.

  There were books to read, Komarov’s speeches, Russian newspapers and magazines. Worst of all, there were private telephone numbers to memorize, figure perfect, until he had fifty of them stored away in his head. Figures had never been his forte.

  Sir Nigel Irvine returned in the second week. He appeared tired but satisfied. He did not say where he had been. He brought something one of his team had purchased after scouring the antiques shops of London. Monk turned it over in his hands.

  “How the hell did you know about this?” he asked.

  “Never mind. My ears are long. Is it the same?”

  “Identical. So far as I recall.”

  “Well, it s
hould work then.”

  He also brought a suitcase, created by a skilled craftsman. It would take an ace customs inspector to discern the inner compartment where Monk would conceal two files: the Black Manifesto in its original Russian, and the verification report that authenticated the manifesto, now translated into Russian.

  By the second week Jason Monk was feeling fitter than he had in ten years. His muscles were hard and his stamina was improved, though he knew he would never match Ciaran and Mitch, who could march on hour after hour, through the barriers of pain and exhaustion into that limbo near death where only the will keeps the body moving.

  Halfway through that week, George Sims arrived. He was about the same age as Monk and a former Warrant Officer (One) of the SAS Regiment. The following morning he took Monk out onto the lawn. Both men were dressed in track suits. He turned and addressed Monk from four yards.

  “Now, sir,” he said in a lilting Scottish accent, “I would be most grateful if you would try and kill me.”

  Monk raised an eyebrow.

  “But dinna fash yoursel, for you’ll not succeed.”

  He was right. Monk approached, feinted, and then lunged. The Highlands turned upside down and he found himself on his back.

  “A wee bit slow to block me there,” said Sims.

  Hector was in the kitchen depositing some fresh-dug carrots for lunch when Monk, upside down again, went past the window.

  “What on earth are they doing?” he asked.

  “Away with you,” said Mrs. McGee. “It’s just the young laird’s gentlemen friends enjoying themselves.”

  Out in the woods, Sims introduced Monk to the Swiss-made Sig Sauer 9mm automatic.

  “Thought you guys used the Browning thirteen-shot,” said Monk, hoping to demonstrate his inside knowledge.

  “Used to, but that was years ago. Changed to this over ten years back. Now, you know the two-handed hold and the crouch, sir?”

  Monk had had small arms training back at the Farm, Fort Peary in Virginia, when he was a trainee with the CIA. He had been at the top of his class, the inheritance of hunting with his dad in the Blue Ridge Mountains as a boy. But that too was a long time back.