Chapters (124)
- Cover
- About the Author
- Acclaim for Frank Gardner’s Luke Carlton thrillers
- Also by Frank Gardner
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- 109
- 110
- 111
- 112
- 113
- 114
- 115
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
The large TV screen on the wall flickered into life and there, rather too close to the camera, was the face of the Moscow station head. Close enough, Luke noted, to see his wispy, receding hairline and the network of spider veins across his cheeks. Luke could also just make out the walls of the Box behind him, the secure fibreglass cage in Britain’s Moscow embassy where the most sensitive conversations were conducted inside an electro-magnetic shell, impervious to penetration by hostile intelligence agencies. No preambles, he launched straight in. Yet the man’s lips were moving noiselessly: there was no sound.
‘Miranda?’ Sir Adam swivelled in his chair. ‘Can you fix the audio, please?’
Flustered and clearly embarrassed, she moved quickly to her laptop and a moment later sound filled the room, as clear and as sharp as if the Moscow station head were sitting among them.
‘Our sources here have informed me,’ he began again, ‘that on Friday afternoon – that would be four days after the Svalbard outbreak – a certain Colonel Arkady Petrov was summoned to the Kremlin. Petrov, as some of you know, is the GRU’s senior serving scientist on their chem-bio research projects.’ A long pause. ‘Which was one of the contributing factors towards our belief that Moscow was behind this.’
‘And your conclusion now?’ The Chief spoke into a desk mike.
‘We don’t have de visu reporting on who was in that meeting or what was discussed. But …’ Another long pause.
Luke leaned over to the director on his left and whispered a question. ‘De visu? What does that mean?’
‘It means “eyes-on”, as you military types would call it.’
‘But what?’ The Chief was prompting the Moscow station head.
‘But we’re hearing from an additional source that this Colonel Petrov may be in difficulty with his bosses. It looks like he may have a rogue operator on his hands.’