Overkill Read Online Free

grey-haired man’s face, and his blue eyes were steady, bright and totally devoid
of humour or compassion. ‘This is my field. I am the expert, and if I tell you something you should listen, and perhaps even learn.’
    Modin leaned back in his chair. Despite the seriousness of the situation, and his deep personal dislike of the interrogator, he was almost beginning to enjoy it.
    Bykov was furious. ‘How dare you address me in such a manner? I am a lieutenant general in the GRU—’
    ‘That is precisely why I can address you like that, or in any other manner that I wish. I am the senior SVR interrogator. Neither you nor any other member of the GRU has any power
whatsoever over me, and I suggest you remember that.’
    ‘Enough, both of you,’ Modin interjected. He pointed at the interrogator. ‘You. Finish what you were going to say.’
    ‘Thank you, General. I would be delighted to do so, and preferably –’ he looked sharply at Bykov ‘– without any further ill-informed interruptions.’ He turned
to face the SVR officer. ‘I agree that my methods are crude, but they are rapid, and they do work. All my interrogations have yielded positive results, just as this one has.’
    ‘Rubbish,’ General Modin said, picking up the clipboard and waving it. ‘There is nothing here that is of the slightest use to us. There is not a single mention of the
project.’
    The interrogator smiled. ‘Precisely, comrade. Because the subject did not know the answers to any of the questions you instructed me to ask.’
    Modin considered this for a moment. ‘Are you sure – absolutely certain?’
    ‘Quite certain. If he had known, he would certainly have told me. He would have told me anything. Anything at all.’ The interrogator chuckled and picked up his coffee cup again.
    Modin stared at him with an expression of acute distaste, then spoke. ‘Get out.’
    The smile left the interrogator’s face for an instant, and his blue eyes stared without expression at Modin. Then he gently placed his cup and saucer on the table, stood up and bowed
slightly to the senior officer, and left the room without a word.
    When the door had closed behind him, Modin looked across the table. ‘He would have known, wouldn’t he?’ he asked.
    ‘Who?’ Bykov was unsure what the SVR officer meant.
    ‘The Britisher. If anyone here in Moscow had known, it would have been him?’
    ‘Definitely. In his position, he had to have known. What other reason could he have had for sending his deputy to Sosnogorsk? What other conclusion could we have drawn?’
    Modin shook his head. ‘And all for nothing. What a waste.’
    There was genuine regret in his voice. Although Nicolai Modin had ordered the termination of many – far too many – men in his long and successful career with the KGB and SVR, he had
always been personally satisfied that each of them had deserved to die. His assiduity in checking and double-checking the details of each case before signing the termination order was not just a
matter of personal pride; it was also the mark of a professional intelligence officer.
    There are few rules in the ‘wilderness of mirrors’, as the clandestine world has been aptly named, but one obeyed by almost every intelligence service is that opposition agents are
never terminated without very good reason. This reluctance does not derive from any sense of compassion or respect for human life, but simply from considerations of operational necessity. The
ever-present fear is that even a single execution could lead to an escalating spiral of captures and killings – essentially a private war – something that no service would want. The
fear is so prevalent that, if a termination is thought to be essential, it is not unknown for the deceased operative’s parent agency to be advised afterwards, with an apology and a
justification for the action taken.
    Modin had no doubts about the real identity of the man whose body was even then beginning to