by Tom Bradby
‘Hi, love,’ Kate said.
‘Hi.’ Fiona didn’t move.
‘Did you manage to cook supper okay?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Have you eaten, Jed?’
‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Henderson. I had supper at home. How was the rest of your day at work?’
‘Er, complicated, if I’m honest.’
Fiona’s demeanour suggested there was every chance she would continue to ignore her mother, so Kate retreated to her bedroom. She ran a bath and soaked in it, then contemplated once more how lonely she felt in the middle of the night – or at any time, for that matter.
She had one more task, so she reached for the house phone and dialled the number for Rose’s London home. It was a gorgeous four-bedroom townhouse just off the King’s Road, in a row characterized by many shades of pastel.
‘Is that you, Kate?’
‘How did you know?’
‘No one else calls this late.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘How was your trip?’
‘Oh . . .’ Kate realized she hadn’t had time to reflect upon the impact of seeing Stuart. ‘I don’t really know.’
‘How was he?’
‘Sad. A bit pathetic. He burst into tears on the children and told them both how much he hated his life in Moscow.’
‘Oh, God, how selfish. And bloody unhelpful.’
‘Yes . . . yes. I guess so.’
‘Was that all?’
‘Yes. Other than that, it went smoothly.’ Kate had learnt to her cost over the last six months that, in the house of secrets, it was better to keep knowledge to herself, even if Rose was the reason she had joined the Service in the first place. ‘Look, I’m so sorry to do this to you, but something’s come up that’s going to keep me in London this weekend, I think, so we’ll have to cry off the trip to Cornwall.’
‘That’s a shame. We were so looking forward to seeing the children.’
‘I know. I’m really sorry.’ Rose and her husband Simon had a newly built holiday home – a temple to oak and glass – between the beaches of Polzeath and Daymer Bay, one of Kate’s favourite places. As she thought of it, she realized she was disappointed too.
‘Why don’t you let us take them?’ Rose asked. ‘If you’re going to have to work, it doesn’t sound as if they’ll have much of a weekend. And, of course, there’s your mother. She’ll never let us forget it and I’m not sure I feel saintly enough to take her on our own.’
Kate thought about this.
‘It’s settled, then,’ Rose said. ‘I’ll drop by your office in the morning to work out the arrangements.’
‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
‘You’d be fine. But . . . have you seen Dr Wiseman yet?’
‘No.’
‘Kate—’
‘I actually have an appointment tomorrow lunchtime.’ Kate had clean forgotten about it until then. And she had fully intended to cancel.
‘Well, go. Whatever else is happening, make sure you go. Please. Or I really won’t forgive you.’
‘All right, all right . . . Oh, one more thing.’ Kate bit her lip. ‘Any news on Lena’s sister?’
‘I’m still waiting for the report from Belgrade.’
‘What’s taking them so long?’ Kate had recruited Lena Sabic to work for the Service with the clear promise that they would free her young sister Maja from terrible circumstances in Serbia and bring her to England. Kate naturally felt Lena’s death reinforced this promise rather than freed them from its implications, but it was not a universal view, with the cost and complications of an extraction in danger of triggering a major row at the top of the Service. As head of Finance, Rose was overseeing the operation, at Kate’s behest. At least she would have one ally when it came to the crunch.
‘It’s complicated, Kate, you know that. I’ll chase it up in the morning. In the meantime, get some sleep – and make sure you see Dr Wiseman.’
Kate replaced the receiver. Although she had been seeing a counsellor for months, sometimes singly, sometimes with the children, Rose had insisted the change to a psychiatrist was what she needed now.
Kate’s phone buzzed and she picked it up to see a message from Suzy, sent via the secure in-house service they used amongst colleagues: Julie just told me about the potential video. Jesus, what a fucking sleaze bucket. Am sorry, but you are absolutely right. You have to follow it up.
Kate put her phone face down and switched off her bedside light. She stared at the ceiling, thinking of the phone call with Rose. There was no way she’d see Dr Wiseman tomorrow. It felt too much like opening Pandora’s Box.
5
KATE WAS AWOKEN the next morning by another message, this time from Julie. Switch on the TV.
She glanced at her watch. It was 6.24 a.m. She pushed herself upright, reached for the remote and turned on the television.
The banner running along the bottom of Sky News read: ‘Estonia: Kremlin calls attacks a “provocation”.’ It was emblazoned over footage from late last night of a mob wielding sticks and attacking a group of protesters in the centre of the Estonian border town of Narva.
The presenter, a slim woman with riotous blonde hair and the cadaverous air of someone who hasn’t eaten properly for a decade, was talking to her political editor, a slim young man who looked like he was filling in between school and Cambridge. ‘Well, the temperature seems to be rising rapidly,’ the young man said. ‘As you know, this all started when a group of men tried to pull down a statue of Lenin in the Estonian border town of Narva. Some of the local ethnic Russian population protested and were then attacked. Now, in the last few minutes, we’ve seen the Center Party in Tallinn, which principally represents Estonia’s quite substantial Russian minority, issue a highly provocative invitation to the Kremlin to formally intervene – militarily, if necessary. Russian people are simply not safe in Estonia, it says. No word from the Kremlin in response, yet, but Estonia is of course a NATO ally and, under its Article Five, an attack – or a threat – on one is an assault on all.’
‘So what has been Downing Street’s response?’
‘It’s early in the day, of course, and I understand there is to be a Cobra meeting within the next few hours, but the briefing I received a short time ago suggests that the prime minister’s overwhelming mood is likely to be one of caution. In the words of one source in Downing Street, it’s not worth risking World War Three over a few punches being thrown in Estonia. But the Germans and the French are taking a much more robust line and I guess we’ll wait to see exactly what emanates from the White House in the course of the day.’
‘Would it be overly cynical,’ the presenter asked, sitting back in her chair with a sly smile, ‘to cast our minds back to those allegations in the leadership election six months ago that the prime minister might in some way have been . . . how shall I put it? . . . compromised by the Russians – and to worry that this could be a factor?’
The political editor permitted himself an equally sly smile back. ‘I think it’s a thought you would whisper very quietly, unless you wanted to earn the PM’s undying enmity. “Trash of the social-media age” is what they call all that in Downing Street. But opposition MPs will, no doubt, level the charge at him once again that he is in some way Moscow’s stooge.’
Kate switched off the television and went to shower. By the time she was out, she had a message from Sir Alan warning that the Cobra meeting had been brought forward to 8 a.m., so she left an apologetic note for Fiona, asking her to make sure she got her brother on to the bus with her for school, and caught a cab direct to Whitehall.
She walked through the entrance just next to Downing Street and swung right to go down the stairs past the carefully preserved Tudor remnants of the palace that had stood there in Henry VIII’s time. She handed her phone in to the guard sitting by the security portals at the bottom. Her pass didn’t give her automatic clearance, so she waited for him to check her details against the names on
the list, then open the door for her. She glanced through to the anteroom, where the more junior aides sat, sifting any last-minute intelligence coming in.
The prime minister, James Ryan, was already seated in the Cabinet Office Briefing Room, the setting for all Cobra meetings, waiting for everyone else to arrive, a very different approach from his predecessor, who had always liked to arrive last, preferably having kept his audience waiting. The PM was fifty-five, the same age as C, of whom he had been an exact contemporary at public school. He had the carefully cultivated crumpled air of the truly vain. His shirt did not appear to have been ironed and his thick, wavy dark hair seemed not to have seen a brush for days, giving him the appearance of a student who’d just crawled out of bed. He’d put on weight since crossing the threshold to Downing Street, his once handsome features now puffed and jowly. But he still liked to share his legendary charisma with anyone in his orbit.
‘Kate Henderson, as I live and breathe. What a pleasure to see you.’ He gave her a beaming smile.
‘Good morning, Prime Minister.’
‘Is it? I’ve been up for hours. It feels like lunchtime.’ He glanced at the cabinet secretary, who sat beside him. She was a tall, grey-haired, mostly serious woman called Shirley Grove, who, it was said, occasionally exhibited a flash of supremely dry and rather cutting humour. She didn’t find her boss funny in the least. ‘Must be why I’m getting so fat,’ the prime minister went on. ‘I keep inventing extra meals.’ He leant forward on the table and fixed Kate with a steely, half-amused gaze that was another of his stocks in trade, as if life was one long P. G. Wodehouse story. ‘How are you, Kate?’
‘I’m well, Prime Minister.’
‘Sorry to hear about your husband. Sounds like a wretched fellow. Better luck next time. That’s my motto.’ He smiled again. His latest girlfriend had just departed Downing Street after what was said to have been another tempestuous row. ‘I’m on the market,’ he had quipped at a recent dinner.
Kate coloured. She couldn’t think of anyone else tactless enough to make a joke of the breakdown of her marriage. But she was saved further embarrassment by Sir Alan’s arrival, which chilled the air by several degrees. He nodded at the prime minister and sat at the far end of the table from him, as if deliberately trying to keep his distance. The two men were said by contemporaries to have been close friends at school, but, if so, Kate had yet to identify the cause of the current hostility between them. He was followed by the defence secretary as the room quickly filled. The foreign secretary, Meg Simpson, and her senior team were the last to arrive.
Simpson was smaller and broader in the flesh than she appeared on television and looked quite a few years older, too, with thick-rimmed reading glasses on a chain around her neck and a tight bob of grey hair. She wore barely any make-up and betrayed few signs of vanity. She looked flustered to have arrived last.
‘Let’s begin,’ the prime minister said, as if they were about to have a party.
Sir Alan stood up. He sure as hell wasn’t the entertainment. ‘As you know, we scheduled this meeting yesterday evening, before the events in Narva. We had received a tipoff from a reliable source that the Russians were about to roll the dice again. Our working assumption is that the GRU is the agency responsible and they appear to be following the playbook that worked so well for them in Crimea: create unrest, claim the local Russian minority is under threat, and intervene.’
Sir Alan had the remote control for one of the screens at the end of the table and he flicked it on. It was showing the feed from PCR2 on SIS’s internal server, which Danny must have switched out to line. ‘This is a farm in a small village called Puhlova, which was bought from a local man by a firm registered in Helsinki some months ago. The true owner is hidden behind so many holding companies that it will take us some time to get to the bottom of it, but I think we can safely assume we will find it’s one or other agency of the Russian state.’
Sir Alan zoomed in on the muddy ground and moved to point at the screen. ‘It’s hard to make out unless you look very closely, but you can see here the tyre tracks of lorries or heavy trucks. Our understanding is that the Night Wolves – which is a Russian paramilitary group mainly made up of veterans from the war in Chechnya and closely allied with the Kremlin – have stored enough weapons here to mount a serious challenge to the Estonian state.’
‘Looks like any other farm,’ the prime minister said. ‘What have they got hidden in there? Pitchforks?’ He was smiling, as if this was still some kind of joke.
‘We don’t know yet.’ Sir Alan closed down the feed and clicked on another. ‘Kate here and her team found this hotel nearby on the Baltic, which we think at least some of the Night Wolves are staying in.’
‘Looks tempting,’ the prime minister said. Kate glanced from one man to the other. It was hard to imagine that these two had once been school friends. If they were faking their disdain for each other, they were great actors.
Sir Alan flicked on Sky News, which was still showing pictures of last night’s violence. ‘We have no doubt that the original attempt to pull down the statue of Lenin, which of course triggered the protests and then the counter-violence, will have been orchestrated from Moscow. Indeed, the entire event, from beginning to end, appears to have been their work.’
‘Why?’ The prime minister leant forward on to the table again, his demeanour more serious now.
‘To expand their sphere of influence, as they have in so many other places that used to be part of the Soviet Empire. That has to be our working assumption. The Night Wolves will come to the protesters’ aid, possibly tonight. They will clash with Estonian security forces. The tension will ratchet up. The local Russian population will increase their demands for Moscow to intervene, possibly for the entire region to secede, as we saw in Crimea.’
‘It’s possible the whole thing is just a feint,’ Ian said, desperate to be in on the act. Sir Alan didn’t deign to look at him.
‘A what?’ the prime minister asked.
‘A feint, Prime Minister, a manoeuvre, just designed to test us out.’
‘I should say it’s obviously designed to test us,’ the prime minister said, turning to Kate. ‘What do you think?’
She was acutely conscious of all eyes in the room being upon her and of the fury in Ian’s flushed cheeks. He’d forgotten that a stilted formality was the hallmark of all Cobra meetings – at least, all those she’d attended – and his easy insouciance jarred, even if the sentiments were designed to appeal to the man at the head of the table. He looked underdressed for the occasion, too. He was the only man in the room without a jacket.
‘Ian may be right,’ she said, throwing him a lifeline, on instinct. ‘Perhaps they just want to see how we react. But then we have only to look at what happened in Crimea and even in Montenegro, with that attempted coup. So it might be wiser to assume they mean business again.’
‘We’ve got about a thousand troops there?’ the prime minister asked the defence secretary.
‘That’s right, Prime Minister,’ he said. ‘Nine hundred men and women, principally from the Queen’s Royal Hussars and the Rifles, armed with Warriors and Challenger II tanks.’ He was a relatively young man for such a post, with a dramatically receding hairline and flawless skin. Like so many politicians, these days, he had been a special adviser before becoming an MP and always carried with him the air of a teenager pretending to be a grown-up. ‘Of course, NATO can quickly move reinforcements in from neighbouring countries.’ He pushed a sheet down the table. ‘That is the list of deployments in the region. We can also look to reinforce swiftly from here—’
‘It’s too soon for that.’ The prime minister glanced around the room, deliberately making eye contact with his audience. ‘Ian here may be right. Perhaps it is a feint. We need to be careful not to overreact. And, in any case, I’m not sure the public is ready for us to go to war over a country few have heard of.’
There was a stunned silence in the room, its occupants
carefully avoiding catching anyone’s eye. Meg Simpson broke the spell. ‘Prime Minister, I’ve spoken to the French and the Germans already this morning. We’re talking about a fundamental tenet here of the most important and longest-lasting security alliance our nation has ever known. They want NATO to send reinforcements to Estonia today. We must—’
‘I’m aware of all that, thank you, but not yet.’ The PM was looking at the list of deployments in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland on the table in front of him. He had a reputation across Whitehall for chronic indecision, but there was no sign of it this morning. ‘I have a call scheduled with the White House as soon as the president is awake. I imagine he will share my caution. For the moment, we remain as we were. I will circulate a draft press statement.’ He stood abruptly and walked out, taking the list of deployments with him.
For a moment, nobody moved or spoke. There were a few coughs. Then the politicians and their staff stood and filed out in silence. Only Shirley Grove, the cabinet secretary, held back. ‘Good work, Mrs Henderson,’ she said, then headed for the door.
It was a strange aside, since Kate had never before met the woman, but perhaps she was just making up for her superior’s bad manners.
6
KATE, SIR ALAN and Ian were the last to leave and they stood together for a moment in the morning sunshine on Whitehall. ‘One can’t blame his caution.’
Ian must have been aware that Sir Alan was intending to brief the foreign secretary on Mikhail’s offer to defect, but the chief skilfully deflected him with a request that he return to monitor the unfolding situation in Narva and inform Downing Street directly if there were developments. It was a role Sir Alan knew he would be unable to resist.
Ian jumped into a taxi. Sir Alan and Kate walked the long way around to the front entrance of the Foreign Office in King Charles Street, perhaps to give them time to talk. ‘If we needed anything to focus our minds,’ Sir Alan muttered, ‘it couldn’t have been planned any better.’
