by Tom Bradby
‘Would it not be easier to go to Paris? Dad is very bright and I am fairly certain he’d find work there.’
‘He likes the idea of somewhere warmer. So do we. He said there’s a lot of English people in the Dordogne and they even play cricket there, so Gus was super-excited about that.’
Kate washed down two sleeping pills with a slug of wine. ‘Roll on the future,’ she said, with as much sincerity as she could muster.
‘Do you take those every night?’ Fiona asked.
‘Erm . . . not every night, no.’
‘Honestly?’
‘All right, too often, yes.’
‘I know you’re worried about me, but it’s yourself you need to be paying attention to.’
Sometimes Fiona was capable of wisdom well beyond her years, Kate thought. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘But I can’t think about it right now.’
She finished her wine, kissed her daughter and left her nursing a cup of tea at the kitchen table as she went up to bed. For once, she was asleep almost the moment her head hit the pillow.
25
AS ALMOST EVERYONE who has ever had even mild insomnia will attest, four hours’ pill-induced sleep is not enough. Watching the dawn light creep through the shutters and across the kitchen table several hours after she had risen, Kate had quietly promised herself that, as soon as Mikhail and his father were safely brought into the UK, she would request time off work and make a concerted attempt to sort herself out. She had grasped that her job was breaking her. And that, in turn, might have influenced her decision to keep the morning’s rendezvous with the foreign secretary simple.
With Sir Alan’s wife now hovering between life and death, the meeting took place in the kitchen of his Pimlico home, one floor beneath the bedroom in which Alice was being nursed night and day. That lent the proceedings a surreal and distinctly uncomfortable air, which, it was clear, none of them was immune to. The foreign secretary, Meg Simpson, arrived last and didn’t bother to take off her long, fawn raincoat, as if she were going to run at the first hint of news she didn’t want to hear. She took a seat opposite her permanent secretary, a strikingly young-looking man with wavy blond hair and a bright tie. He must have been forty, but looked twenty-five at most.
Opposite him sat Ian and Kate. Sir Alan was at the end of the table, beneath an enormous watercolour of a Cairo street market. Kate recognized, but could not quite recall, the artist. As in so much of the rest of his life, Sir Alan had exquisite taste in art.
‘I’m very sorry to force you to meet like this,’ Meg Simpson said. ‘Kate, you take the floor.’ Like the rest of them, Sir Alan had no wish to extend the meeting a second longer than was necessary.
‘You asked for more evidence,’ Kate said, facing the foreign secretary, ‘so I activated a source whom I believe to be completely reliable. At considerable personal risk, he agreed to travel out of Russia to meet me near Helsinki in Finland. We talked for about an hour and he confirmed, in essence, what Mikhail, Igor’s son, told me in both Venice and Berlin.’
‘What do you mean, “in essence”?’ Simpson asked.
‘He was honest about what he didn’t know. He couldn’t be certain of exactly what had happened in terms of the internal dynamics of the very top tier of individuals close to the Kremlin. But he confirmed that Vasily Durov and Igor Borodin were under house arrest and that the widely held view was that the Kremlin had concluded both they and the SVR in general were becoming too arrogant and over-mighty.’ Kate stared at the spotless oak table before her.
‘So he confirmed the GRU had been engaged in some kind of coup against its rivals in the SVR?’ Simpson asked.
‘Yes.’ This lie was coming harder than she’d imagined. Kate studied her hands. There was a long silence. She finally looked up and watched the faces around her. A grim group they assuredly were. Surprisingly – or maybe not, given the relentless nature of his ambition – Ian was the first to break ranks. ‘This really leaves us with no choice, Foreign Secretary. I’ve had my reservations. You know that. But this is crystal clear: a reliable agent, talking to one of our most experienced and able officers. We have no choice but to pursue this to its logical conclusion now.’
Simpson gave him a withering stare, but he didn’t back down. If this was to go ahead and ruin a prime minister, he wanted to own it. ‘My advice is that we must proceed with all due speed.’ My advice. He made it sound like the most weighty and significant thing in the world. Meanwhile, Sir Alan gazed out of the window.
‘It doesn’t assuage any of my doubts,’ Simpson said. She was visibly squirming now. She’d taken her glasses from around her neck and was tapping them nervously against her knee.
They waited her out. ‘If the video is fake, the ramifications are horrific. Your source can’t verify it, can he?’
Ian had rolled up his sleeves. He leant forward, elbows on the table, intent on taking control of the meeting now. ‘The truth is we have done all we can, Foreign Secretary.’ He gestured towards Kate. ‘Kate has done a frankly amazing job, which we should all acknowledge. If there is an inquiry . . .’ He let that hang. It was his standard way of cornering politicians. ‘. . . then we will be required to show that we acted at every turn in good faith. This looks like due diligence to me.’
‘I am fully cognizant of the possibility of an inquiry into all aspects of my work at any point, now or in the future,’ Simpson said acidly.
‘I understand that, Foreign Secretary, but this is surely about the balance of risk. Because of Kate’s good work . . .’ My God, she thought, he’s laying this on thick. He was making sure the blame game was well advanced if subsequently it all went wrong. ‘. . . we can characterize with confidence the worst that can happen.’
‘Which is?’
‘You are completely right about the video. As we have discussed before, there is the real possibility that it is a “deep” fake and that the financial information they say they are going to provide will prove to be a long and misleading trail to nowhere. But if we conclude they are misleading us, we have a choice: simply to let them be and ignore them or throw them out.’
‘Except they will have hired the most expensive lawyers in the country to make that impossible,’ the permanent secretary said. He had a very deep, steely voice.
‘All right. The worst that can happen is they get an unwarranted passage to freedom and security in the West. Not ideal, but they’re hardly public figures. Who is ever going to know?’
‘Are you familiar with British politics and our press?’ the permanent secretary shot back.
That seemed to silence the room. Simpson had taken to staring out of the window too. ‘This is so fraught with risk and complication,’ she said, ‘that every political instinct I have rebels against giving the go-ahead.’
‘Perhaps you should pay attention to them,’ her permanent secretary muttered to her.
‘But you leave me no choice.’ She looked at Ian. ‘As you have so helpfully pointed out, any subsequent inquiry will make inaction look like cover-up, or worse.’
‘Are you sure?’ the permanent secretary asked.
‘Sadly, yes.’ She stood, looking squarely at Kate. ‘I hope to God you know what you’re doing.’
Simpson and her permanent secretary walked out, leaving Kate with Ian and the chief. Sir Alan hadn’t said a word. ‘You want coffee?’ he asked eventually.
‘I’m fine,’ Kate said.
Ian declined. ‘How much longer?’ he asked Sir Alan softly.
‘A day. Two. Three. Soon, in any event.’
‘I am so sorry.’ It was said with quiet sincerity.
‘I’m going to have to leave it to you both,’ Sir Alan said. ‘I know it’s a lot to ask, and in normal circumstances I’d be with you in the trench, but I can no longer pretend that we’re in anything but the very final chapter.’
‘We can handle it,’ Ian said confidently. ‘There’s no reason to think it will be anything but straightforward.’
‘Nothing like this is ever straightforward.’
‘I understand that. But we’ll do our best.’
They left him to the gloom of his thoughts and circumstances. Kate found herself dwelling on how she would feel if she were told Stuart had terminal cancer and only weeks to live. It was hard to keep conversation with Ian going as he started to try to discuss every aspect of the operation. He had a spring in his step and she found it difficult to work out exactly why. Was it his chance to prove himself to Meg Simpson, or had he some other outcome in mind?
Suzy and Julie were waiting in the office and Kate briefed them on the decision that had been taken. Suzy appeared thrilled until Kate told her that she would have to remain in London. She argued about it until Kate put her foot down, at which she retreated into a barely disguised sulk.
Julie slipped out with her. Kate closed her door and sat with her back to it, eyes shut as she tried to still her thumping heart. The pain in her stomach and central back had grown in intensity again. She felt about a hundred years old.
Ian had made clear he was going to run the operation and had already insisted on deploying himself to Tbilisi with her, but Mikhail was her contact, so there was plenty for her to work through. She took out her phone and sent him a message, using Signal this time, as all staff were advised to do from time to time: Green light. We will arrive in Tbilisi tomorrow.
She got a reply in seconds. Good.
Kate logged on to her computer. She started researching Kazbegi, deep in the Caucasian mountains, where Mikhail had indicated his father would cross the border. She had lost herself in the task when Julie burst in. ‘Have you seen?’
‘What now?’
‘Go to the ITV website. Someone’s leaked it.’
‘Leaked what?’ Kate asked, in exasperation, but Julie didn’t dare answer and, as soon as she pulled up the site, Kate could see why. She stared at the headline, as if it belonged to a different world entirely: Russian Defector Offers MI6 Sex Video Evidence PM Is Moscow Spy.
Kate stood, physically backing away from the screen. ‘I’m counting down to your phone erupting,’ Julie said.
Kate was hardly able to grasp what had happened. How long ago had she left the meeting? Half an hour? Forty minutes, at most. Who could possibly have picked up the phone to the media? The foreign secretary? No, surely not: this seemed destined to end her career within minutes. Her permanent secretary? But what could conceivably be his motive? ‘Who in the hell . . .’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Ian.’
‘What?’
‘Of course. Every which way he wins. He tips off the PM. He tips off the press. Then he tells the PM’s people the leak came from the foreign secretary’s office. She is screwed, Sir Alan is embarrassed, the PM is grateful.’
Kate shook her head. ‘Even he isn’t that brazen.’
‘Of course he bloody is! Can you think of anyone else with the sheer brass neck to do something like this within an hour of your meeting?’
Kate didn’t have time to give this a lot of thought. Her phone rang. It turned out to be the Downing Street switchboard. ‘Mrs Henderson, I have the prime minister for you.’ Kate waited, her heart thumping.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Henderson,’ he said. ‘May I politely ask what the fucking hell is going on down there in Vauxhall?’
‘Prime Minister—’
‘I’m not going to trouble your chief. I’m aware his wife is dying and I’ve known him long enough to be sure this isn’t his doing. With my next call, I intend to unceremoniously fire the foreign secretary for gross incompetence, not to say disgraceful disloyalty. So I’m going to need someone to offer me an explanation. And I have a hunch that person is you.’
‘Prime Minister—’
‘Get your pretty little backside in here right now. I’m in my office at the Commons. I’ll expect you within ten minutes.’ He ended the phone call. If you could slam down a mobile phone, it had sounded as though he had certainly done so. ‘Who was that?’ Julie asked.
‘The PM.’
‘Holy shit.’
Kate sat down. She closed her eyes, tried to gather herself. ‘I have to go,’ she said. Julie didn’t dispute it. ‘I have to go,’ she repeated.
‘I know!’
Kate got up, pulled on her coat, slung her bag over her shoulder and walked through the outer office. Suzy was nowhere to be seen, but Maddy stood in front of the TV screen, transfixed. It was tuned to Sky News and the strap at the bottom read: ‘Foreign Secretary Fired Over Fake Sex Video’. News moved so fast these days.
26
KATE WAS GRATEFUL for the fresh air and decided to walk up to the House of Commons. Streaks of morning sunlight cut through the bank of dark cloud and gave the Mother of Parliaments a golden hue. She crossed Lambeth Bridge, slipped across Victoria Gardens and went through security like any other visitor before making her way to Central Lobby.
A taciturn but pretty young woman with straight black hair came to meet her and escorted her to the prime minister’s office behind the Speaker’s chair. ‘I don’t know what the hell you people are playing at down there,’ she muttered. Kate wondered again at the supreme – and annoying – self-confidence young special advisers attached to Downing Street were wont to exude, as if they had just inherited the earth.
The prime minister rose from behind his desk as she entered and guided her to a seat in the deep green chair by the door. He didn’t bother to offer her tea or coffee. ‘Well?’ He sank on to the wide sofa opposite.
He ran a hand through his dishevelled hair as his special adviser curled up on the sofa opposite, long legs and short enough skirt just revealing the tops of lace stockings. She hadn’t offered her name. ‘You asked to see me, Prime Minister,’ Kate said, glancing at all the weighty tomes lining the bookshelves in the old-fashioned wood-panelled room. Kate thought of the much greater men and women who had occupied the office before him. How had it come to this?
‘Of course I asked to bloody see you.’
Kate wasn’t going to make this easy for him. If her career was to expire, as seemed likely, if not frankly inevitable, it was only reasonable to derive some enjoyment from its dying embers. She waited. So did he, but not for long. He could barely contain his rage and it was the first time she had ever really witnessed it. His temper was legendary. ‘Well, are you going to offer me an explanation or not?’
‘Of what, Prime Minister?’
‘Are you totally deranged?’ the PM said, as his special adviser glared at Kate, shifting in her seat, so that her skirt rode up another notch. He surely couldn’t be having an affair with her as well, she wondered idly.
Kate thought of that terrible video. Real or fake, true or false? So much seemed to ride on her judgement, her instincts. Had she believed in its credibility because she thought the character of the man she’d seen in it matched exactly that of the one before her? ‘We’ve been trying to do our duty,’ she said quietly.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ the special adviser spat at her.
The PM leant forward, elbows on knees, so his eyes seemed hooded and brooding as he awaited an answer. Kate thought he was ageing rapidly. ‘The former leader of the Russian SVR, Moscow’s equivalent to SIS—’
‘Yes, yes, I know what the bloody SVR is by now, for God’s sake. That’s something you have achieved in your determination to give yourself a starring role in my life story.’
‘He offered to defect.’
The PM just stared at her. ‘And?’
‘There appears to have been some kind of coup at the heart of the Kremlin. It is incredibly unusual – not to say unheard-of – for such a senior official to offer himself to us. He’d bring with him a treasure trove of material on all aspects of their operations in the UK and everywhere else in the world. It was our judgement, and that of the foreign secretary, that it was an offer we had to explore.’
‘What does this fellow want?’
‘Asylum.’
‘So, do you want to expla
in to me how ITV has this story today and what it is about?’
‘The man in question, Igor Borodin, has been one of the most influential intelligence figures in Russia for the last decade or more. I have been dealing with his son. It was he who first approached me to explain what had happened in Moscow and to offer his father’s services in return for asylum for his immediate family.’
‘And?’ The PM still looked as if he was about to explode, puffing out his cheeks nervously.
‘Among other things, they said that you had been recruited into their service many years ago while you were serving as an army officer in Kosovo. The son, Mikhail, played me a video that purported to show you having sex with three underage girls.’
The PM looked as if he was ready to leap up from his seat and throttle her. ‘And you believed this disgusting codswallop?’ The special adviser had uncurled herself and sat upright on the sofa, the colour drained from her face.
‘The video was incredibly convincing. Now, it’s possible that it’s what we would call a “deep fake”. Because motion-capture technology and AI are so advanced, it’s possible, for example, to have a public figure say and do things that never actually happened. But there is no way of assessing that until we can get the video back into our labs to test it in the most thorough possible way.’
‘You’re talking, Mrs Henderson, as if I’m not here. Unless I’m mistaken, this grotesque fake is of me.’
She looked at him steadily. ‘I understand why you’re so upset and angry, Prime Minister—’
‘Angry? I’m bloody livid!’
‘I understand that. And, in your shoes, I would feel the same. I am merely trying to explain the reality of the situation we found ourselves in as dispassionately as I can.’
‘And you and your colleagues, in your wisdom, decided to take this seriously?’
‘There are many factors here. We could possibly have chosen to ignore the video—’
‘God’s blood, it’s not of me!’
‘—purporting to be of you, and all the other evidence, which they suggest they would bring with them, including detail of the many financial payments made over the years.’ He was shaking his head now. ‘But, ultimately, none of these things was material. The crucial fact is that an offer to defect of this kind is a priceless intelligence jewel. We had to pursue it.’
