The Queen's Pawn by Andrew Turpin

Author:Andrew Turpin [Turpin, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788750448
Published: 2023-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Friday, October 7, 2016

Lausanne

Nick Geldard went up rapidly in Jayne’s estimation. He not only insisted on playing a part in the operation to put Kira Suslova in a position where she could be compromised by the CIA team, but helped come up with ideas about how they might achieve it.

“It’s like playing chess in real life,” Geldard said. “One false move and you’re screwed. Maybe not immediately, but eventually.”

Jayne nodded. She had often thought precisely the same thing herself about her long career in espionage for MI6 and then as a freelance operative.

During a chat with Lina Cailler, during which Geldard pretended he knew nothing about her conversation with Suslova, he agreed to go to Grindelwald for negotiations and a game of chess. He rightly wanted Cailler to report directly back to Suslova that he was looking forward to meeting her.

“Give her my email address and phone number, and ask her to get in touch directly,” Geldard said.

However, the issue now was not so much agreeing on a time and date to get Geldard into Suslova’s property but finding a way in for Jayne and Grewall.

Coleman moved with impressive speed to get the operation underway. His starting point was a covert surveillance program on Suslova’s property in Grindelwald, without alerting either Suslova or the Swiss authorities, given what he was doing was illegal.

Grindelwald, a seventy-five-kilometer drive southeast of Bern, was a large, quaint village, almost a small town, perched over a thousand meters up in the Alps. It was almost entirely focused on tourism, with skiers descending on it in winter and hikers and climbers in summer.

Running a full-scale surveillance program would not be easy. It was, in fact, Geldard who, employing his knowledge of Switzerland, suggested that the team position themselves as a group of hikers who were visiting Grindelwald for a few days. “You’ll fit in perfectly,” he said.

It turned out to be a sound idea. Someone at the Bern CIA station used a local property rentals website to book a four-bedroom wood-framed chalet house on Spillstattstrasse with an underground car garage, around a kilometer from Suslova’s chalet.

By early evening, the team was installed in the house, complete with hiking boots, backpacks, and trekking poles. At Jayne and Vic’s insistence, Geldard had remained alone at his property in Lausanne, just in case Suslova checked on his whereabouts. He could drive to Grindelwald via Berne in around two and a half hours when required.

One of the three drones that Coleman’s team had brought was immediately dispatched from the broad first-floor balcony that ran around the outside of the house on Spillstattstrasse. It was soon transmitting pictures from high above Suslova’s property.

To Jayne’s relief, flying drones seemed to be a popular pastime among tourists in Grindelwald, given that the magnificent mountain scenery provided instant gratification for drone photographers. The presence of other devices in the skies offered good cover for the CIA’s machine.

The pictures that came back to Coleman’s laptop from the drone immediately revealed the scale of the issue facing the team.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.