Free SEVERANCE KILL by Tim Stevens Page A

Faces flicked across the display so quickly she wanted to ask the girl to slow the program down. She didn’t, because she knew the software was analysing each face in a fraction of a second, comparing it to the identikit picture, and would stop as soon as there was even a vague match.
    Tamarkin nudged her elbow with something and Krupina looked down, hoping for cigarettes. Instead he proffered a paper plate with a prepackaged sandwich.
    ‘Never got you your order earlier.’
    She ate standing up, watching the monitor, while Tamarkin ran the office, moving from desk to desk, co-ordinating the search for Oleg’s body, listening for any Embassy mutterings. A little after three p.m., twenty minutes into the search, Yevgenia said, ‘Something, boss.’
    Krupia’s attention had been wandering. She leaned on the back of the girl’s chair, peered at the monitor.
    The identikit image was on the left. On the right was the latest in a series of photos of known British, French and German intelligence agents. Known to SVR and FSB.
      Almost by definition the pictures the Russian services obtained of their enemies were less than optimal. They were seldom mug shots, unless the agent had been arrested. More often they were grainy, poorly lit snapshots taken on street corners, in airport queues, at the scenes of crimes. This one was no different. The man in the database photo was of indeterminate age, no younger than thirty. It was a three-quarter view from an angle above the horizontal. The face was looking up and away from the camera. Fair hair, undistinguished features. He was on a street somewhere, on the move.
    Yevgenia tapped keys and another picture replaced the first. This one was clearer. It was a profile view, seemingly close up but probably taken with a zoom lens, of a man leaning on the rail of a boat in bright sunshine. He appeared lost in thought. Hair brown and short, mouth set, eyes hard.
    Yevgenia began to summarise the legend out loud. ‘Martin Calvary. British. First picture taken in September 2009 in Copenhagen, near scene of murder of Gerhardt Kreutzmann. The old Stasi colonel. Second picture a chance sighting on a ferry from Malta to Sicily in March last year. Calvary strongly suspected to have links with British SIS and possibly to be an active agent.’
    ‘Show it to Arkady,’ Krupina murmured. Yevgenia moved the mouse, clicked.
    She touched her phone, connecting her with Arkady. ‘Got it?’
    Krupina waited. The phone had its speaker function switched on so she would hear the reply.
    Arkady said, ‘Yeah. That’s him.’

EIGHT
     
    Bartos shovelled carbonara into his face, an early supper on a heated outdoor restaurant terrace where his status guaranteed him a degree of privacy. Across the table was his brother, Miklos. Thinner than him, with more hair. But not the boss.
    ‘Want me to take over?’ Miklos fingered the stem of his wineglass, the fidgeting betraying his craving for a cigarette. Bartos didn’t allow smoking within ten feet of him and certainly not at the table.
    Bartos sucked up a tube of penne. ‘Not yet. Let’s give the kid a chance to prove himself.’
    ‘So what’s he doing?’
    ‘Checking the hospitals with his guys, to see if this umbrella asshole’s turned up in any of them. He got hit by a tram according to them.’
    ‘Long shot.’
    Miklos was next in line for the top job in the family, unless Bartos hung on in there long enough for his own firstborn, Janos, to become a contender. Then there’d be a battle, and it would be something to behold. Bartos liked Miklos, knew the family and the business would be in safe hands with him in charge. But not yet. Still, he spoke more freely with his brother – about business as well as personal matters – than with anybody else, even Magda.
    ‘So when are you going to approach the Russians?’ Miklos signalled to an invisible waiter behind Bartos: it’s on me . 
    Bartos finished chewing and swallowing before he answered.