Slingshot: A Spycatcher Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

and added, “I’ll not say anything to my colleagues about you three. That will buy you some hours to get out of Poland. But they’ll conduct a forensic analysis of this gun battle and in all probability will soon realize that there are men unaccounted for.”
    Will shook his head. “Thank you. But I can’t ask you to cover for us and jeopardize your career.”
    The Pole shrugged. “It’s dark, weather is bad, I’m injured. I could easily have failed to see three men escape this place.”
    Will nodded.
    The AW officer spat blood onto the ground. “The whole thing was a setup.”
    Will frowned. “What do you mean?”
    The operative looked at him. “After he carried me away from danger, the big SVR officer briefly spoke to me. He said that the defector had used my Agencja Wywiadu exfiltration route and resources to simply get out of Russia, but once in Poland it was never his intention to hand himself over to us. Instead, he’d come to Gdansk to be taken away by the team that showed up here tonight. The SVR man knew that and was here to try to stop it from happening. He said the defector was carrying something that must not get in the wrong hands.”
    Will felt his stomach tighten. “What?”
    The Pole looked along the bridge toward the direction where the van had disappeared with its prize. “He’s carrying a single piece of paper. The SVR officer told me that it’s imperative the paper’s retrieved, that my country’s security service must do everything to stop the defector and his friends from escaping Poland. He said that he would hunt them down and that we should not attempt to stand in his way.” He looked back at Will. “He told me that the paper is lethal.”

Three
    T he four senior CIA officers sat in silence within a windowless room in the agency’s Langley headquarters. Save a table and chairs, the room was empty of anything else including telephones or any other electronic equipment. On the oak boardroom table between the men was a jug of ice water, four glasses, nothing else.
    Tibor, the oldest of the men, was in his mid-forties and had twenty years of intelligence service under his belt. Wearing a bespoke blue striped Adrian Jules suit, a pink French-cuff shirt with cutaway collar, a silk tie, and handcrafted black leather brogues, and with his dark hair styled and held in place by cream, the Bostonian looked like a Wall Street investment banker rather than a government employee. “I asked you here because we’ve got a problem. Lenka Yevtushenko has momentarily reappeared on the radar before disappearing just as quickly.”
    “Where?”
    “When?”
    “How?”
    Tibor took a swig of his water and winced as the cold liquid produced a few seconds of pain inside his head. “Gdansk. Yesterday.” He paused. “How? Well, that’s a bit more complex.”
    Damien, the blond man to his right, snapped, “But no matter how complex, we still know why he reappeared. Right?”
    “Wrong.” This came from a Texan named Marcus. “I’m betting Tibor’s a little confused. Right, Tibor?”
    Tibor nodded. “Right. But so would you be.”
    Lawrence, the youngest of the four, spoke, “Blow by blow, Tibor.”
    Tibor rubbed his temples. “Yevtushenko did a walk-in to the Polish consulate in Saint Petersburg saying he wanted to make the transition to the other side. And he said he had some major coin for the ferryman.”
    “Defection on Russian soil?”
    “Stupid.”
    “More likely calculated.” The pain in Tibor’s head receded. “Looks like it was a setup.”
    “Exploiting the Polish exfiltration route?”
    “Seems that way.”
    Damien shook his head. “Yevtushenko isn’t clever enough to have thought this up himself. Someone gave him instructions.”
    Tibor agreed. “But that someone met some unexpected resistance. The Russians tailed Yevtushenko to Gdansk and most likely would have grabbed him there had it not been for the fact that an MI6 team was also on the ground.”
    “They were the