by Tom Bradby
‘I’m not surprised. A lifetime in Moscow probably wasn’t what he had in mind.’
‘He says they’re treating him like a pariah.’
‘Perhaps, but I doubt it.’
Kate had only a moment to consider this before Ian Granger burst in, as was his habit these days. He’d always liked to stage an entrance. ‘Aghamo mshvidobisa,’ he said. Even by the standards of the service, he had a gift for languages and liked to remind everyone of this by peppering routine conversations with different greetings – in this case, Georgian.
‘I fear this is not going to be good news.’ He crossed his legs to reveal a brand new pair of suede Chelsea boots that matched the designer black jeans he had recently taken to wearing to the office. He now eschewed Savile Row tailoring, the qualities of which had once been one of his standard dinner-party riffs, and rarely seemed to bother with a haircut either, his long blond curls tumbling over the collars of his Ted Baker shirts. Sir Alan was much too aloof to notice Ian’s cry for mid-life attention.
‘Coffee, tea?’ Sir Alan asked.
‘Not at this hour,’ Ian said. He’d discovered ‘wellness’ lately and told anyone who would listen it was ‘dangerous’ to drink caffeine past noon.
‘Something stronger?’
Ian was about to decline, but then had second thoughts. ‘Well, if you’re offering.’
Sir Alan went to a cupboard in the corner, took out a bottle of Glenfiddich and poured three glasses. He didn’t ask Kate whether she wanted ice or water.
Ian didn’t wait for Sir Alan to take his seat before turning to Kate. ‘Give us your worst,’ he said, with what he considered his megawatt smile.
Kate tried not to let her irritation show. ‘Mikhail Borodin and his father, Igor, want to defect. Mikhail says that Igor and Vasily Durov have been the victims of a coup in Moscow Centre, orchestrated by the GRU. He says that both men are under house arrest already. He’s offering the video he says was used as kompromat to force the prime minister to work for them, along with evidence of the cash payments made to him over the years.’
‘Do I dare ask what the video shows?’ Ian said.
‘He claims it’s of James Ryan having sex with underage girls while he was an army officer in Kosovo. I asked to see it, but he said he would only show it to us once we accept his offer in principle.’
‘What do they want?’ Sir Alan asked.
‘Residence here, passports – and a guarantee they’ll be able to use the assets they have stored in the West. They also want to ensure freedom of movement throughout Europe and America. I said that wasn’t in our gift.’
‘And, no doubt, they’re in a hurry.’
‘Yes. There was one other thing. He offered what he called a parting gift. He says the GRU has been planning a coup in Estonia, which is now imminent. The Night Wolves have bought a farm just outside Narva and stored enough weapons there to start a small war. The Kremlin will create some kind of crisis involving the Russian minority and the Night Wolves will come to their aid.’
‘And the Center Party will call for Moscow to intervene,’ Sir Alan said, tapping his glasses against his leg again. Kate noticed some dark stubble beneath both sides of his chin, missed with careless shaving. It was most unlike him.
‘We think we’ve probably found the farm. It’s on PCR2.’
Sir Alan got up and went to his desk. Ian and Kate stood behind him as he put on his glasses and looked at the satellite feeds. ‘The place by the beach on the right is where we think some of them are staying. If you close in, you can see the rear wheels of a line of motorbikes.’
‘How long have the CIA got?’ Sir Alan asked.
‘Only a week. No movement in or out in that time. But it rained heavily nine days ago, so those tyre tracks outside the barn have been made since then.’
Sir Alan closed the feed and led them back to sit in the corner. He took a sip of his whisky and swirled the ice around in his glass.
Ian jumped into the silence, as was also his style. ‘I’m suspicious,’ he said. ‘That’s my first reaction, I’m afraid.’
Kate resisted the temptation to point out that he was always suspicious of anything he hadn’t originated. Sir Alan continued to stare into his glass.
‘I don’t think this needs to take all night,’ Ian went on, which invariably meant he had a dinner to attend, or an assignation, or both. ‘We can monitor the situation in Estonia to see how it develops, but we shouldn’t – couldn’t – accept their offer to defect.’ He looked at his superior. ‘I’m sure you agree, Alan.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘And why would you think that?’
Ian made a show of appearing incredulous. ‘Because it smacks of a well-organized disinformation plot designed to take us for fools. They know Kate is in a vulnerable state—’
‘Come on, Ian,’ Kate said. She had not expected his assault on her to be quite so obvious.
‘Withdraw that,’ Sir Alan instructed him. ‘And apologize, please.’
‘All right, I’m sorry,’ Ian said easily, without bothering to look at her or sound as if he meant it. He ran his hand languorously through his hair. ‘But the stakes are damned high here. Just imagine if the PM gets wind of the fact that we’re taking this seriously. He is the prime minister, after all, and likely to remain so, unless I’m missing something. The damage that could be done – the havoc he could wreak – on our organization might be terminal.’
‘So you’d rather have a Russian spy running our country?’ Kate asked.
Ian faced her. ‘Well, first, we should be careful in our language. If we accept your theory, he isn’t a Russian spy but an agent of influence. Compromised, yes, if it were true, but unlikely to be doing much more than simply giving their arguments a fair hearing. And, much more importantly, there is absolutely not a shred of hard evidence that he is working for the Russians.’
‘That’s what they’re offering us,’ Kate said.
Sir Alan was sitting back in his chair, watching the pair of them fight this out.
‘It’s a trap, Kate. Surely you can see that. They’ve offered us some tasty bait again. We’ll be drawn in again. And then they’ll seek to embarrass and confuse us. Again. They hardly need to bother with any serious operations, these days, because we do all their work for them.’ Ian looked at them, waiting for a response, and, when he didn’t get one, simply ploughed on. ‘It’s too damned neat. Last time, they drop in the intelligence that our prime minister has prostate cancer. We don’t know this, so we discount it. Then, hey presto, he suddenly walks out into Downing Street to announce both his illness and resignation within twenty-four hours. We take this as clear evidence that the original operation was a stroke of genius and the intelligence it gleaned thus one hundred per cent genuine and correct. And the rest is history. Weeks of total chaos and confusion not just inside these four walls but in our country at large.’ Ian paused to draw breath. If his frustration was confected, it was very convincing. ‘And now here we go again. They offer us another juicy morsel. Proof, this time, in the form of some disgusting video of our new prime minister – and who can argue with that? It couldn’t possibly be faked – that the original intelligence was correct. They know Kate will be inclined to believe—’
‘Do not personalize this, Ian,’ Sir Alan said. ‘And that’s an order, not a request.’
‘But we’re going around the same mountain.’
‘Perhaps we are,’ Sir Alan said, ‘but if there is a video and a chance it proves that our prime minister is a liar, a traitor and a cheat, then we would be neglecting our duty if we failed to mount even a cursory investigation into its credibility. I have enough faith in our organization to believe us capable of determining whether a piece of video is faked or not.’
‘But that’s exactly the point. No one can ever determine that with one hundred per cent accuracy. So they’ve just put this fly out on the water, waiting for us to come up and swallow it whole, like a lazy trout.’ Fly-fishing was another of
the new hobbies Ian liked to show off about, along with skiing, shooting and an apparently endless succession of Ironman competitions. He glanced at his watch. ‘Time is money’ was another of his favourite phrases. ‘I have to go or I’ll be late.’
‘For what?’ Sir Alan turned his gaze towards him.
Ian was briefly flustered. ‘I just promised not to be late for dinner.’
‘I understand that your reputation for good timekeeping can’t be held hostage by important matters of state, but all the same . . .’
Ian bridled. Only a short time ago, his brazen insubordination, even rudeness, would have been unthinkable, but his insolence was a testament to Sir Alan’s fading power. He had been in the job for seven years now, his standard five-year term extended twice, but it was unlikely to be amended for a third time, and Ian’s attempt to woo the prime minister to appoint him Sir Alan’s successor was Whitehall’s worst-kept secret.
‘We really can’t take this any further now, Alan.’ Ian was addressing him as if Kate wasn’t present. ‘I’m happy to stay all night, if need be, as always.’ He shook his head. ‘But nothing is going to be said, I fear, that will persuade me to change my mind. I propose a keen watching brief on Estonia, but as for the rest . . .’ he shrugged ‘. . . we should let it go.’
As Kate watched the two men squaring up to each other, like stags long past their prime, she was reminded of Stuart’s succinct summary of Ian Granger. ‘He’s just a bit of a cunt,’ he would say. ‘Everyone has a boss like that once in a while.’
If thinking of Stuart wasn’t in itself so painful, it might have made her smile.
Ian departed. Sir Alan peered at the whisky in his glass, then drank it straight. ‘If he ends up as your replacement, I’m going to kill myself,’ Kate said.
Sir Alan went to refill his glass. ‘You’ll have to excuse his manners. Ella has just filed for a divorce.’
‘Christ. Why?’ Ella was Ian’s long-suffering wife. The pair had met at Oxford and he liked to boast of her incredible success in building an online retail empire selling sleepwear. ‘I mean, I always assumed she must know about his affairs.’
‘Suspecting is one thing, but it turns out knowing is another. She found the phone he’d been using to arrange his assignations.’
‘With Julie?’
‘He wasn’t in a mood to be specific. It only happened this afternoon.’
‘Oh, shit. That would explain it. She got a text while we were travelling back from Venice.’
‘He tells me he’s in love and fully intends to marry her.’
‘Julie? He thinks he’s going to marry Julie?’ Kate was aghast. If the two of them having an affair was puzzling enough, marriage would be incomprehensible. ‘She thinks it’s just sex. Expedient, because she can’t be bothered to date properly. I feel sorry for him.’
‘I doubt that. I don’t. Somewhere in there, beneath the vaulting ambition and the deep-seated insecurities, is a man whose heart is basically in the right place, but I’m afraid I lost sight of that individual a long time ago.’
‘Subtlety has never been his strong point.’
‘Or loyalty.’ Sir Alan turned to her. ‘How are you?’
‘I don’t know.’ She thought about it. ‘I just don’t know.’
‘Try not to take this the wrong way, but you don’t look on top of the world.’
‘Thanks. How are you?’
‘As you would imagine. Alice decided in the end that she would go through another round of chemo, but the oncologist was fairly clear that he thought it unlikely to have much effect. If it doesn’t, we’re to be transferred to palliative care.’
‘I’m sorry, Alan.’ She watched him in silence.
He was as still as a statue. Then he shook his head, as if to dismiss a morbid train of thought. ‘Tell Karen to go down to Narva tonight. I’ll send out someone to help her and speak to the Estonians. We’ll need a Cobra in the morning. I’d like them to know we were ahead of the curve if Mikhail is right and it does kick off.’
‘What do you want to do about their offer?’
‘Ian’s objections are understandable enough. In the end, the only thing all that grief brought us six months ago was the knowledge that your husband was Agent Viper. So . . . I need to buy some cover. I’d like us both to brief the foreign secretary after Cobra. I think, for once, I’ll conspire to leave Ian behind.’
‘Is that wise? Briefing the foreign secretary, I mean.’ The prime minister had sent one of his early leadership rivals, Meg Simpson, to the grandiose office overlooking Whitehall that had once ruled an empire. The press generally considered it a dull, uninspiring choice, designed to make sure he had no rival anywhere near him. Imogen Conrad, the dynamic younger woman who had given him a run for his money in the final round of the leadership contest, had remained where she was at Education.
‘I think so,’ Sir Alan said. ‘Meg may not be as dazzling as either the prime minister or Imogen Conrad, but she’s a hell of a lot more reliable than either. Did you check with Cheltenham for any traffic to support the idea of a coup in Moscow Centre?’
‘Yes, and they’ve heard nothing of the kind either.’ Kate stood. ‘I’d better go. The children are looking after themselves, which is not ideal.’
She went downstairs and put her head around the door of her department. Only Suzy was there, which was far from untypical as Kate had quickly learnt. Suzy shared her predecessor Rav’s work ethic but, sadly, not his charm. ‘Julie briefed me,’ Suzy said, with clipped Mancunian vowels, in such a way as to indicate Kate should really have done so.
‘I’m sorry. Do you mind if I fill you in properly tomorrow? I have to run for the kids.’
‘I understood the situation in Estonia was potentially critical.’
‘We’re watching it closely. Karen is going to Narva tonight. She’ll report back in the morning.’
‘Do you want me to do some work on anything?’
‘No, don’t worry. And don’t stay late . . .’ Kate got a few paces down the corridor before she had second thoughts and went back. If Suzy was determined to staple herself to her desk, they might as well make it count. ‘Actually, it would be useful if you could do a briefing note on the Night Wolves for the foreign secretary and the PM, their links with the Kremlin and the GRU, their role in Ukraine, that sort of thing.’
Suzy looked pleased. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I really appreciate that.’
‘There’s a Cobra meeting first thing. I’ll give it to the PM and the foreign secretary there.’
Suzy’s smile broadened. Kate had already worked out that nothing pleased her new deputy quite as much as the prospect of catching the eye of their superiors.
4
KATE CHANGED INTO her trainers by the lift and walked out into the chill night. The wind was biting, so she took a cashmere beanie from her coat and pulled it down tight over her ears. Normally, this daily walk helped bring some order to her thoughts, but tonight, the rhythmic pace of the journey seemed to accelerate the rising tide of her anxiety. Now that Stuart had gone, the only person she shared her true state of mind with was her aunt Rose, who combined the role of mentor at work – as the long-time head of the Finance Department, it had been she who’d first encouraged Kate to apply for the Service from Cambridge – and surrogate mother at home. Kate’s real mother was in a home nearby with Alzheimer’s, which was a relief to everyone who knew her.
But even Rose was not aware of the long sleepless nights and the sense of a world closing in so fast that it was almost suffocating her niece.
As had been so often the case, it was a sense of duty that came to Kate’s aid as she walked into the light and warmth at 17 Khyber Road. The single driving force of her life now was to try to limit the damage of her husband’s departure on Gus and Fiona.
Not that she had any sense they appreciated it. Her thirteen-year-old son was hunched over his iPad on the sofa in the corner of the kitchen. Kate gently removed the headphones from his ears (which,
she could not help noticing, were full of wax). ‘What are you watching?’
‘Mission Impossible.’
‘Sounds like my life.’
He didn’t smile. ‘Is that a joke?’
She tutted in despair. ‘Where’s your sister?’
‘She went out.’
‘Where? I told her—’
‘That is a joke. She’s upstairs. With Jed.’
‘Oh. What time did he come around?’
‘About ten minutes ago.’
Kate went to put on the kettle. ‘What did you have for supper?’
‘Salmon, like you suggested.’
‘Did she eat her—’
‘I’m not going to be your snitch, Mum.’
Kate came to sit next to her son. ‘You know this is serious, right? They say anorexia is the hardest mental illness to treat.’
‘She isn’t anorexic.’
‘With respect, you’re not a doctor.’
‘And neither are you. If it’s so serious, why haven’t you taken her to see one?’
For all his detachment, Gus sometimes had a knack for putting his finger on the key question and she winced inwardly. She’d been asking herself the same question for some weeks. ‘Right now,’ she said, ‘what with everything else, I worry that it might actually make it worse, not better. I’m hoping if we can just keep her on the straight and narrow for a little longer, the pressure will ease off.’
‘You know that’s not how it works, right?’ Gus said.
‘What?’
‘Psychiatrists don’t make you worse. That’s not the point of them.’
Kate had no comeback to that. She kissed him thoughtfully, made a cup of tea and opened the bin to throw in the teabag. As she did so, she noticed the remains of what looked like an untouched piece of salmon fillet.
With a heavy heart, she went upstairs to knock on Fiona’s bedroom door. ‘We’re fully clothed,’ her daughter replied. Kate pushed back the door to see Fiona and her tall, rangy boyfriend lying in front of what appeared to be homework on Fiona’s bed. Jed leapt to his feet and came to kiss Kate on both cheeks. Despite his tattoos and piercings, Kate had come to be very fond of him over the past few months. She wondered sometimes what they would have done without him. It was almost as if he was the glue holding their family – or sanity – together.
