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“Good luck, Boss,” they said.
It was an uneventful flight. No one knew that he looked nothing like the Jason Monk who had flown into Terminal Four nearly a month earlier. No one knew he was not the man on his passport. He was nodded through.
Five hours later, with his watch adjusted three more hours forward, he approached passport control at Sheremetyevo Airport, Moscow. His visa was in order, apparently applied for and granted at the Russian Embassy in Washington. He was passed through.
At Customs he filled out the lengthy currency-declaration form and humped his single suitcase onto the examination table. The Customs man looked at it, then gestured to the attaché case.
“Open,” he said in English.
Nodding and smiling, the eager American businessman, Monk did so. The officer poked through his papers, then held up the laptop. He looked at it approvingly, said, “Nice,” and put it back. There was a quick chalk mark on each case, and he turned to his next customer.
Monk took his bags, passed through the glass doors, and emerged into the land to which he had sworn he would never return.
PART 2
CHAPTER 12
THE METROPOL HOTEL WAS STILL WHERE HE REMEMBERED it, a big cube of gray stone facing the Bolshoi Theatre across the square.
In the reception area Monk approached the desk, introduced himself, and offered his American passport. The clerk checked a computer screen, tapping in the numbers and letters until the confirmation flashed up on the screen. He glanced at the passport, then at Monk, nodded, and gave a professional smile.
Monk’s room was the one he had asked for, acting on the advice of the Russian-speaking soldier Sir Nigel had sent to Moscow four weeks earlier on a reconnaissance trip. It was a corner room on the eighth floor, with a view toward the Kremlin and, more important, a balcony that ran along the length of the building.
Owing to the time difference with London, it was early evening by the time he was settled in and the October dusk was already cold enough for those on the Street who could afford an overcoat to wear one. That night Monk dined inside the hotel and went to sleep early.
The following morning there was a new reception clerk on duty.
“I have a problem,” Monk told him. “I have to go to the U.S. Embassy for them to check my passport. It’s a minor matter, you know, bureaucracy. …”
“Unfortunately, sir, we have to retain visitors’ passports during their stay,” said the clerk.
Monk leaned across the desk and the hundred-dollar bill crinkled in his fingers.
“I understand,” he said soberly, “but you see, that’s the problem. After Moscow I have to travel widely across Europe, and with the passport close to its expiration date, my embassy needs to prepare a replacement. I’d only be gone a couple of hours. …”
The clerk was young, recently married and a baby on the way. He thought how many rubles at the black market rate a hundred-dollar bill would buy him. He glanced left and right.
“Excuse me,” he said, and disappeared behind the glass partition dividing the reception desk from the complex of offices behind it. Five minutes later he was back. He carried the passport.
“Normally, these are only returned upon checkout,” he said. “I must have it back unless you are leaving.”
“Look, as I said, as soon as the Visa Section has finished with it, I’ll bring it right back. When do you go off duty?”
“Two this afternoon.”
“Well, if I can’t make it by then, your colleagues will have it by tea time.”
As the passport came one way, the hundred-dollar bill went the other. Now both were co-conspirators. They nodded, smiled, and parted.
Back in his room, Monk hung the Do Not Disturb Notice and locked the door. In the bathroom the dye-solvent described on the label as eyewash. liquid came out of his toilet case and he ran a bowl of warm water.
The cluster of tight gray curls belonging to Dr. Philip Peters disappeared, to be replaced by the blond hair of Jason Monk. The moustache gave way before the razor blade and the smoked glasses that masked the weak eyes of the academic went into a trash can down the hall.
The passport he withdrew from his attaché case was in his own name with his own photograph, and bore the entry stamp of the airport’s immigration officer, copied from the one brought back by Irvine’s soldier from his earlier mission but with the appropriate date. Inside the flyleaf was a duplicate currency—declaration form, also bearing the forged stamp of the currency desk.
At midmorning Monk descended to the ground floor, crossed the vaulted atrium, and left by the door facing away from the reception desk. There was a rank of licensed taxis outside the Metropol and Monk took one, by now speaking fluent Russian.
“Olympic Penta,” he said. The driver knew the hotel, nodded, and set off.