by Tom Bradby
No one answered.
‘If he or she exists, we must confront the possibility that they have a desk inside this building.’
Kate glanced at Ian, who was staring out of the window.
‘And, if somewhere else, then in what way can he or she “help”?’
‘Could be anyone,’ Ian said. ‘In Number Ten, Whitehall, a journalist …’
‘Let’s start with the most senior civil servants around the secretary of state for Education and the foreign secretary,’ Sir Alan instructed. ‘Talk to GCHQ. Start with the basics: lifestyle, phone records, travel history. See if you can spot anyone or anything that sticks out. And I want you to go back to the source here.’ He was pointing at the file.
‘In what sense?’ Kate asked.
‘The only way they could be pissing us around is if they saw us coming. And if you were as tight with your procedures as I would expect you to be, that should have been more or less impossible. So let’s not give up on the source of it. Your agent is still in place. Let’s plant other devices. Let’s see what else she can tell us.’ He tapped the file. ‘Looking through the transcripts again this morning, I think we should resume our focus on the son, Mikhail. If he’s gay, he’ll be finding an … outlet somewhere, even if it’s not in Russia.’
Kate glanced at her phone. ‘A message from Julie. The yacht disappeared overnight.’
‘Then let’s track it – and be there when it reappears.’ He flipped the file shut and nodded to them, their audience over.
‘Bang goes our quiet autumn,’ Ian said, as they waited for the lift.
Kate raised an eyebrow. ‘I hadn’t figured you as a season-of-mists-and-mellow-fruitfulness fan.’
‘You’re going to need more help. Who would you like me to bring in?’
‘Ops teams later, of course, but we should start off by trying to do it ourselves.’
‘Excellent.’ He adopted his habitual expression of messianic zeal. ‘You’re not alone on this, Kate.’
She glanced at Rav and tried not to laugh. Ian had never taken to her deputy, whom he had made a habit of ignoring. They rode the lift down in silence. When they reached their floor, Ian turned away without another word.
‘What’s he hiding?’ Rav asked, when Ian was out of earshot.
‘You might have to ask his tailor.’ She grinned. ‘He’s at his most disconcerting when he starts trying to be helpful.’
‘No, I mean specifically. He said, “We know the Russians, but what if this is just another …” Then Sir Alan cut him off. So, just another what?’
‘He said something similar the other day. I didn’t read too much into it. We know how Moscow works. They may well be misleading us.’
‘No, no. That isn’t what I’m saying. He and Sir Alan were looking at each other and they were talking about something specific they were aware of but we weren’t.’
‘If that’s the case, I’m still not.’
They reached their office and the telltale signs of Rav’s vigil: a McDonald’s bag in the bin, half a dozen styrofoam coffee cups.
‘Did you go home at all?’ Kate asked.
‘No.’
‘What did you find?’
‘All kinds of interesting things. If you get me a coffee, I’ll give you a presentation.’
‘You don’t need another coffee, but it’s a deal. Just give me a second to log on.’ Kate stepped into her own small glass-walled office. As she sat at her desk, there was a knock on the partition door.
‘Do you have a moment?’
Kate turned at the sound of Sir Alan’s mellifluous tones. ‘Yes, of course.’
He closed the door behind him. ‘It seems like only yesterday I sat here, enjoying the same uplifting view of Vauxhall station.’
‘You must miss it terribly.’
‘Promotion does have its drawbacks.’ C leant back against the filing cabinet. ‘I didn’t want to say anything in front of Ian but I’m not naive enough to believe that the intelligence gathered from Istanbul was solely down to luck.’
Kate didn’t answer.
‘Kate, I know every agent, every source we have in your neck of the woods. And since you started this job – my old job – I have noticed the occasional gem of information, whose origin I cannot completely fathom, creeping into the reports crossing my desk. Somebody tipped you off that one or more of those men were going to be on that yacht, didn’t they?’
Kate stared pointedly out of the window.
‘Clandestine sources are beguiling, but dangerous. They allow us to be manipulated and misled, with potentially serious consequences.’
‘Is that what Ian was alluding to?’
‘Yes.’
‘It would be helpful to know how we were misled.’
‘In an operation that began very much like this.’
‘That doesn’t tell me anything remotely useful.’
‘It’s a matter that is now closed on the orders of our political masters. But it’s the oldest story in our profession. You think you’re buying gold, only to find you’ve paid a lot of money for highly coloured glass. But back to the present. I’d like to know if the impetus for this operation came from a source you haven’t declared.’
She looked at him, sifting her options. ‘Yes, it did.’
‘Who was he – or, indeed, she?’
‘I gave him my word I wouldn’t say.’
‘That wasn’t what I’d call a request, Kate.’
‘Well, I’m sorry. I can’t tell you. I won’t break my word – for you, or anyone else.’
‘How very noble of you.’ C switched off the light in his eyes. ‘So where does that leave us? Perhaps we should be looking for someone you met during your time at Cambridge. Most probably on your year in Russia. Since then, he or she will have risen to a position of some importance in the Russian intelligence community – or perhaps their foreign service – and your contact is … episodic. Getting warmer?’
He waited out her silence. What a cool customer he was.
‘You’re a clever and ambitious woman, Kate. If I looked in your vetting file, I guess I’d find the name I’m looking for somewhere down the list of declared contacts from your Russian sojourn. I don’t think you’d have been foolish enough to omit all mention of a contact of this … significance.’
‘You probably could, but I still can’t say.’
‘I’d respectfully suggest that you’re adopting an unnecessarily inflexible position.’
‘Perhaps. But I think you’d do the same. It’s one of the many reasons why I’ve always admired you. It comes down to a basic principle: you either trust my judgement or you don’t.’
‘Alas, in the real world, it’s not as simple as that.’
‘I’m not trying to challenge your authority. You’re a very large part of the reason I’m still slaving away down here day after day. As I said, I gave my word.’
‘Is it possible you were set up?’
‘No.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Instinct.’
‘A sometimes mercurial guide, if I may say so.’
She turned to face him. ‘You’re right. He’s someone I got to know when I was studying in St Petersburg, long before any of this.’
‘A lover?’
She hesitated a moment too long. ‘No.’
‘You should tell me, if so.’
‘No,’ she said emphatically. ‘Someone who might have been in other circumstances. I’d met Stuart by then.’ She paused. ‘I’d heard nothing from him for years until he turned up in London.’
‘Possibly not by accident.’
‘I’ve thought about that, of course, but I met him at an American Embassy reception about three years ago and we chatted for a few minutes. I heard nothing more until this time last year when I had an anonymous letter in the post. It said we should watch Igor closely as he moved around Europe. We already were, as you well know. And then I got another letter a month ago.’
&nb
sp; ‘Saying what?’
‘Just tipping me off about a meeting of senior intelligence officers on Igor’s yacht on the Bosphorus. We already had an operation in mind. We’d been planning to try to find a way to get close to Mikhail, so I just brought it forward.’
C remained impassive, except for a faint ripple of the jaw muscles. ‘Very well. There are things you don’t know. Vasily is not as powerful as he once was inside Moscow Centre. There are those who believe that his attempts to interfere with the democratic politics of the West are a distraction, which might prove costly. They’re trying to persuade the Russian president he should concentrate only on the country’s direct sphere of influence, and leave the West to unravel by itself. So perhaps you’ve been used. And perhaps you haven’t.’ Finally, he smiled. ‘We all like to think our relationships are special. But let’s not forget Moscow plays a very long game. From now on, I want to know everything, Kate. No secrets.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m glad we understand one another.’ He opened the door. ‘Good luck.’
He shared his smile with Rav, who slipped in as soon as C had rounded the corner.
Kate forestalled Rav’s question. ‘He wanted to remind me of the almost inestimable size of the can of fucking worms we’ve just opened. Now I really will get your coffee. Wait here.’
Kate went down to the kitchen and closed the door. She could feel the heat in her cheeks. She punched the machine. Rav joined her before it had spewed out the second latte.
‘You’re so incredibly impatient,’ she said.
‘You’ll already know point one of the briefing I was about to give you.’
‘I don’t. But I feel sure you’re about to enlighten me.’
‘I’ve been putting our foreign secretary under the microscope.’
‘All night?’
‘All night. And there is a great deal I have to tell you. But page one, paragraph one, point one: guess who was at school with him.’
‘Sir Alan. It’s not a secret.’
Rav was not remotely deflated. ‘I bet you don’t know this: they were in the same house, in the same year.’
Kate frowned. ‘You’re right. I didn’t know that.’
‘It’s your highly over-privileged world. How many boys is that?’
‘It’s not my world, Rav.’
‘You went to private school.’
‘I went to a small Quaker school where you were expelled if you failed to get straight As and where the playing fields had been sold off to build a block of flats. It wasn’t Eton.’
‘Eton doesn’t accept girls.’
‘Don’t be pedantic.’
‘Okay, but how many do you reckon?’
‘In a year in a house? I don’t know … twelve, thirteen, fourteen?’
‘He gives the impression he doesn’t think much of the man he calls our “nominal” superior, doesn’t he?’
‘Well, yes, though he’s reasonably discreet about it. And I don’t see why it matters that much.’
‘But it’s interesting, right? You know how the establishment likes to stick together? It excludes you just as much as it does me, and you went to Cambridge.’
She thought about it for a moment. ‘Yes. It is interesting.’
8
Back in Kate’s office, Rav pulled up a chair and deposited his pile of notes on her coffee table. He flipped around the three files in front of him so that the one marked ‘Conrad’ was on top. ‘I’m going to start with your friend Imogen, if you don’t mind, because although there’s less to report, in some ways it’s more interesting.’
She waited.
‘Her finances look commensurate with her role and her husband’s job with Oxfam: one house, which you know about, in London, and no sign of any other wealth. She gets a hell of a lot of abuse online, I mean really disgusting stuff – rape threats, the works.’
‘She’s a woman in public life and has made the mistake of being pretty.’
‘Well, the internet is not a flawless intelligence resource, but I can’t see any rumours of extra-marital affairs or anything else that might be used against her. However, her record on Russia is a bit odd.’
‘What sort of odd?’
‘When she became a minister, she was very voluble, particularly about the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, which had happened a few years before she joined the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. She took a very tough line, demanding stiffer sanctions and actually getting them imposed on a wider section of the president’s inner circle. In 2012, she was invited by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee to accompany MPs on a fact-finding mission to Moscow, St Petersburg and, of all places, Ekaterinburg, Ipatiev House—’
‘Where Tsar Nicholas and his family were assassinated. And?’
‘And she’s barely spoken publicly about Russia since.’
‘2012 … She must have got promoted to Culture, Media and Sport around then.’
‘Later that year.’
‘So her silence on that subject is hardly surprising.’
‘Maybe.’ He was flicking through to the end of the file. ‘But on most of her other favourite subjects – human rights in China, Tibet, Saudi – she has continued to be quite frequently and widely quoted. At a conference fringe event last year. At a discussion on shaping the modern world at the Chalke Valley History Festival a few months ago. On Russia, however, even with the Salisbury nerve-agent attack and everything that followed, nothing.’
‘Have you got a list of who accompanied her on that Russian trip?’
He fished it out and handed it over. ‘Interesting or not?’
‘The trouble is, once you start looking for things that might seem extraordinary, then graduate to the curious absence of the ordinary, that way madness lies.’
Rav flipped open the second file. ‘Okay, our illustrious foreign secretary, James Ryan, of whom the reverse appears to be true. Leaving aside the moments when he’s had to be critical – such as the attack on Salisbury, for example – he’s said incredibly little about Russia, which is intriguing, given that he’s been foreign secretary for half a decade. He’s filled acres and acres of newsprint on the US, Europe, Saudi, Yemen, Israel, Syria, ISIS, the Middle East in general, China, North Korea, Japan – but Russia only rarely, and he’s been only mildly critical, even of its role in Syria.
‘Before Salisbury, he was on record as saying, “At least the Russian president knows what he wants.” And in general, he’s the least hawkish of the cabinet, perhaps surprising, given his time in the military. He has never been in favour of pursuing and confiscating the assets of the London-based oligarchs. And the Foreign & Commonwealth Office has been kind enough to remove sanctions and travel restrictions on eight more members of the president’s immediate circle – to “improve relations” with the Motherland.’
‘Cosy? Or merely pragmatic?’ Kate mused.
‘I’ve looked into the possibility of some kind of kompromat on the foreign secretary and I’m with C on this. His reputation as a shagger is so Olympian that even if they had footage of him in bed with any number of women – or men, or even goats, for that matter – they’d have no real hold over him.’
‘You never know what really goes on behind the scenes in a marriage, though. Perhaps Sophie chooses not to believe the rumours, but would find the evidence utterly devastating.’
‘She seems to have learnt to live with the fact that he has at least one love-child.’
‘Is said to have a love-child.’
‘Have you seen the pictures?’
‘No.’
Rav pushed across a printout: a young boy holding a woman’s hand in a playground. To say he was the image of James Ryan was understating the likeness between them.
‘Hmm. I see what you mean. All the same, wives, husbands – partners – can always blind themselves to what appears obvious to everyone else.’
‘Not sure I agree, but let’s park it for now. His financial status is puzzling. He left school at
eighteen and joined the military. Only made it to major before quitting, and after a very short spell in business, he became an MP. Yet he has a house in Chelsea, that pile in Hampshire I showed you, a cottage in Cornwall and sends all three of his children to public schools, whose fees for each child are now almost forty grand a year.’
‘The privileged among us mostly pay for their children’s education through inheritance. It’s what keeps the class system afloat.’
‘Not in this case.’
‘Go on.’
‘His dad was also an army officer. He died two years ago, leaving everything he had to his wife. She lives in a cottage near Basingstoke and holidays in James’s Cornish shepherd’s hut. Sophie’s father was RAF and her mother was a nurse and they’re both dead. The mother left an estate valued at just over half a million three years ago.’
‘That’s not nothing.’
‘Enough to pay the school bills, possibly, but not the rest of it. She also has a sister.’
Kate glanced over the relevant paperwork. ‘What next?’
‘Follow the money. I’ll look into what he did after leaving the army. We should also try to speak to people who knew him at school and in the military, particularly, I would say, during his time in Kosovo. Can I at least ask Five for his vetting file?’
‘No.’
‘That will make everything harder.’
‘You heard what Sir Alan said.’
‘Fair enough.’ Rav reached for the last file. ‘Viper. Potential suspects.’
The names were listed under just two headings: Imogen Conrad and James Ryan. Stuart made an early appearance.
‘Sorry,’ Rav said.
‘For what?’
‘If there’s ever a review, we’re both going to look stupid if we leave him out.’
‘Of course,’ Kate said. ‘Perhaps I’ll discover he has a secret gambling habit. It might explain how all our money seems to vanish into thin air.’
‘I don’t think I’d want someone in my team investigating Zac.’
‘Then you should have more faith.’ Kate handed back the dossiers and eyed the McDonald’s wrapper. ‘Not good,’ she said. ‘But the coffee is probably worse. If you insist on being here all night, you’re going to have to cut down or you’ll be dead before you’re forty.’
