by Tom Bradby
‘So how did the two of them cope?’ Kate asked. ‘Rumour has it they didn’t much like each other.’
Rupert frowned. ‘Who told you that?’
‘It’s just the impression we’ve got.’
‘Then someone is trying to throw you off the scent. They were best friends. We began life in dormitories and we spent our rugby-free waking hours outside of lessons in what was known as the day room – essentially lots of desks lined up in a row. In the second year, we graduated to a study, which in due course we were allowed to sleep in as well. As far as I recall, Alan and James shared one until we were given single rooms in our final year.’
‘I guess that would end up sealing a friendship,’ Rav said. ‘Or make you the best of enemies.’
Rupert looked from one to the other as if they were hard of hearing. ‘They weren’t just friends, they were inseparable. Most of the rest of us switched roommates periodically. They stuck together, through thick and thin.’
‘Are you suggesting that there was something more than—’
‘Good God, no. They were both heterosexual, James rampantly so. I think they just got along. They had the same sense of humour, the same slight detachment from the life of the school. I think their response to the madness of the first year was to join forces and, after that, saw no reason to open up much to anyone else.’
‘Slight detachment, you say … Could you elaborate?’
Rupert shook his head. ‘It’s quite difficult to explain. It was such an odd environment. James and Alan were the unofficial leaders of our year all the way through. They were the establishment, if you like. Well, Alan was. He was head of house and so on. James was a maverick, uncontrollable in some ways. Always smoking, endlessly up at the girls’ school, mostly in the middle of the night. It was a miracle he wasn’t expelled – though that might have been because Alan usually covered his back.’
‘So they were the gamekeepers and the poachers,’ Rav said. ‘How did that work?’
‘They knew how to play the system. And when caught between a rock and a hard place, they were able to come out with the most bare-faced lies, never turning a hair. We were all rather envious. I’m not in the least surprised that James went on to become a politician and Alan rose to the top of an organization like MI6. It was what they were destined for. You could say, I suppose, that it was what our school life – or their experience of it – trained them for.’
‘You paint quite a picture,’ Kate said, ‘both vividly illuminating and more than a little confusing. What did you personally think of them? Did you like them? Did you trust them?’
Rupert didn’t answer immediately. The striking of the abbey clock seemed to prompt him to do so. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t like them. People are often rude about public-school boys and girls, which I understand. We have a terrible habit of hanging together as a tribe, which can be intimidating, even if we don’t intend it to be. And it’s no accident. It is an extraordinary experience, not good always, but certainly unique.
‘Back then, we spent five years in a tumble-dryer lined with sandpaper. Some people were destroyed by it. Some were just numbed. Some simply lost their rough edges. The Jameses and Alans of this world worked out how to insulate themselves from the harsher elements of the environment, sometimes at the cost of their companions.
‘One consequence was that beneath our often unattractively pompous exterior, we developed quite a high level of social skill, and not just of the cocktail-party variety. Most of us are now rather good at navigating our way around conflict and pouring oil on troubled waters. All of which is a very long-winded way of saying that we learnt how to get along.
‘So, if you asked James what he’d thought of me then, supposing for a moment that he could remember, he would probably say, “He was a good man.” And, yes, we had a laugh and rubbed along fine. On the day we left, we parted with a warm handshake and a genuine smile. But I haven’t seen him since, and there’s probably a reason for that. I thought him just … well … immoral, on a very basic level, really intensely unprincipled.
‘He had a good brain and was brilliant in an argument. We’d stay up late at night in the dormitory, even as very young boys, arguing about everything under the sun – it was a surprisingly stimulating environment – but he would change his position on a whim, then argue as if it were his most deeply held conviction, even if it was the polar opposite of what he’d defended to the hilt the previous night. We used to say to ourselves, “It’s just James,” but there was something quite disturbing about it.’
‘Did that manifest itself in how he treated people?’ Kate asked.
‘Not in how he treated us. I certainly wouldn’t have relied on him, but he wasn’t mean or unpleasant. He was quite good to the juniors and even stepped in to defend one or two when they were being given a hard time. I’d go so far as to say that the house was better run when he and Alan were in charge than it was before and possibly after.’
‘If not “us”,’ Kate said, ‘then who?’
‘I found his treatment of women pretty distasteful. He was a good-looking guy. A lot of the girls carried a torch for him … Perhaps I needed to get out more.’
‘Or perhaps you had a point.’
‘What about Sir Alan?’ Rav asked.
Rupert repeated his shortbread ritual. He could not be accused, Kate thought, of glibness. ‘Alan was different. I’m not sure I liked him much more, though. He was a stickler for the rules, particularly when it came to the lower forms. He was unyielding, strict even, though never with James. He was capable of great charm, but I found that the closer you got to him, the less warmth he exuded. He was quite Machiavellian – which is uncomfortable in a teenager. Again, he wasn’t someone I would have chosen to go to war with.’
‘Why not?’ Rav leant forward. ‘I mean precisely.’
‘James would have given a rousing speech on the eve of battle. But you wouldn’t trust him not to desert, or to sell your rations to a black-marketeer, or even defect to the enemy, if he thought it would be more profitable. Alan wouldn’t have hesitated to send you out on a mission he knew to be suicidal, if that was what the orders said. And he’d do it with a glint in his eye.’
12
They got a bite to eat in a delicatessen on the road that led past the abbey and began the return journey in silence. The sun was bright on the honey sandstone of the terraced houses along the way, so the journey felt like a slow departure from a bucolic idyll. ‘He was very thoughtful, insightful and articulate,’ Rav said, as they passed the turning to Warminster, ‘but I can’t help wishing we hadn’t come.’
‘Don’t be so feeble.’
‘Well, let’s recap. He told us that the foreign secretary is an unprincipled bastard, who could easily have sold himself or his granny to a foreign power, and that our own superior was his best friend, despite vigorous attempts to claim otherwise.’
‘Wasn’t it you who suggested we should just treat this like any other case?’
‘That was when I wasn’t thinking about it properly.’
‘Well, man up.’
Rav stared out of the window as they approached Stonehenge. ‘Thanks. I appreciate the pep talk.’
‘We have no evidence of anything yet. It was a moderately compelling but ultimately insubstantial portrait of the pair as young men. I’m not sure anyone I was at school with would have said anything much more positive about me.’
‘You were the class swot. There’s nothing wrong with that.’
‘At school, there’s everything wrong with it.’
‘I thought you said that was the point of your school.’
‘It didn’t make it popular.’
‘Well, anyway, did you miss the bit where I reminded you that our hitherto trusted leader was best mates with one of our potential traitors, yet goes to great lengths to indicate the polar opposite? Don’t you find yourself wondering why he does that?’
‘All right, Rav. I get it. Now calm down.’
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br /> He didn’t, though. And neither did she.
The Ops Room updated them on the Empress as soon as they got back to the office. Kate, Danny and Rav studied the satellite footage of Igor’s super-yacht arriving at the port of Gavrio on the Greek island of Andros, and watched Mikhail and his wife wander along to an ice-cream shop on the quayside with Lena and their son in tow.
‘Why Gavrio?’ Rav said. ‘Not really Mikhail’s kind of town, is it? Looks like a port that time forgot …’
‘It’s a stop-off point for the Piraeus–Mykonos ferry,’ Danny said. ‘Maybe he’s planning a day trip.’
Julie had just landed at Heathrow from Istanbul, so Kate immediately rerouted her to Athens, and booked herself and Rav on the first flight out the following morning. She messaged Stuart to say she’d be late home, and left Rav to handle the operational paperwork while she ordered up another mic from the technical team, then took a closer look at Gavrio.
When she was finally ready to go home and pack, Sir Alan popped his head around her door. ‘Athens-bound?’
‘Yes.’ She glanced not too pointedly at the wall clock. It was past nine. ‘First thing.’
‘Good call. Have you briefed Ian?’
‘I was going to email him in the morning.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll talk to him.’
She was momentarily surprised by his sudden interest in a routine operation and wondered how he’d found out about it so quickly. Perhaps he had come via the Ops Room.
He advanced towards her desk and placed a photograph in front of her. Kate found herself staring at a grainy surveillance shot of a man climbing into a car on what looked like a London street. She felt her cheeks redden again, not just because of the sudden clash between principle and ambition.
‘I believe his name is Sergei Malinsky,’ C said. ‘But you won’t need me to tell you that.’
‘I don’t mean to be impertinent, but I haven’t changed my mind. I made my position clear.’
‘Are you saying you don’t trust me, Kate?’
‘I have trouble trusting anyone.’
‘Join the club. A handicap, perhaps. Or possibly an advantage.’
‘Time alone will tell.’
‘You won’t be taking my place, nor should you be, if you don’t learn to put the interests of your country and, indeed, of this organization before your own. I don’t know what this guy is to you – friend, lover, performing seal – and I don’t care. Your files make it pretty clear – to me, at least – that he’s your undeclared source. So why would you fail to ID him when you’d already listed him as a previous contact in your vetting?’
She met his penetrating gaze but did not answer.
‘The most benign interpretation is that he wanted to be off the books and, in deference to whatever relationship you had – or have – with him, you felt duty-bound to respect that. Correct?’
Kate watched the minute hand on the clock pass the quarter.
‘I’m trying to help you here, Kate. It might be a good idea if you contributed to that admirable objective.’
‘I will, if you can tell me why you’re pushing this to breaking point.’
‘Because you and I need to be able to talk honestly. And not simply about this.’
He waited, but she still wasn’t going to budge.
‘Let me tell you what’s at stake, both professionally and personally,’ he said. ‘Your intelligence suggests that our superior, the foreign secretary, or one of his rivals for the premiership, is an enemy asset, assisted by another agent somewhere in Whitehall, perhaps inside this building. That leaves two possibilities: either we’re being subjected to a calculated campaign of misinformation, or it’s true. Either way, the threat to our organization and, indeed, our democracy, is of the severest possible kind. Do you agree?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Then let me tell you what is at stake personally. I don’t shout about it much, but I have known the foreign secretary for a very long time. The fact that we were at school together is a matter of public record, though for obvious reasons I tend not to highlight our close proximity – or that we were friends, good friends.
‘In recent years, our relationship has soured. Like most politicians, he favours the kind of expediency that I find … discomfiting. And if he discovers that we’re investigating him as a possible traitor, he’ll flay us alive. All of us. Do you understand that?’
‘Yes, sir. I do.’
‘Less of the “sir”, if you don’t mind. I simply cannot hope to plot a course through this area of turbulence unless I have all relevant information. And Sergei Malinsky is a piece I lack.’
Kate looked at the photograph again.
‘Perhaps I need to remind you that it’s often wise to go back to basics if you’re to have any chance of assessing motive and reliability. It’s perfectly possible that they found out about the prime minister through some other channel, and saw a chance to embarrass us. I think your man Sergei was where it began. So I need to know what he’s up to. Who does he really work for? Where do his loyalties really lie?’
Sir Alan ran a manicured index finger down the length of his cheek. ‘I’m not trying to catch you out, Kate. You do know that, don’t you? The question here is whether or not we’re a team.’
‘Whoever he may or may not be, I don’t know who he works for. All I can say is that his information has proved one hundred per cent accurate so far.’
‘All right. I’ll back off. But I will say this. Whoever your … contact may be, you need to find a way to activate him, and reassess his motives for giving you this information. And I want to know about that meeting. I need to know about that meeting. Is that understood?’
‘Yes.’
The index finger moved from his chin to the picture of Sergei. ‘A piece of friendly advice. Admitting something of this nature only when forced to, even though it was inevitable that I – or someone else – would find out in the end, is not … sensible. It speaks of some kind of flaw you might want to think about.’ He paused. ‘Good luck in Greece.’
On his way out, Sir Alan seemed hardly to notice Rav, still hunched over his desk. Kate closed the door behind him, went to the window and looked down at the people scurrying in and out of Vauxhall station in the rain. She could still feel the colour in her cheeks.
Kate had first met Sergei on a wintry afternoon in January 1992. The Soviet Union had been falling apart and she’d taken a break from her lonely studies in central St Petersburg to catch the train to Tsarskoe Selo fifty minutes outside the old Russian capital to spend the afternoon looking around the Alexander Palace, the unprepossessing yellow stucco building that had been home to the last Tsar of Russia and his family.
Sergei had been a volunteer at the palace and offered to show her around the dowdy, poorly kept rooms that the Romanovs had occupied. He’d claimed he wanted to practise his English. She’d insisted he endure her still shaky Russian. They turned out to share an obsession with the life and times of Tsar Nicholas II, Emperor of All Russia, one of the most infuriating and tragic figures in world history: a good, kind, devoted husband and father, who was as stubborn and foolish a leader as had ever lived. His wilful inflexibility had perhaps lost his country the chance to take its place gradually in the democratic landscape, and had pitched it instead into a nightmarish experiment from which it had still to emerge.
Sergei was the son of an elderly couple who lived on Vasilevsky Island, close by the old stock exchange. His father was the caretaker at the Ice Palace, home of the SKA St Petersburg ice-hockey team, and Sergei had ended their tour of the last tsar’s rooms with an offer to join him at a game that evening.
Later she had spent many hours wondering if it was only loneliness that had prevented her refusing. That evening, they hardly watched the game. They talked about politics with enormous passion. Sergei’s maternal grandfather had been an important figure in the Leningrad Communist Party and had fallen victim to one of the very last of Stalin’s purges
, so his family had had even more reason than most to be happy at the demise of the old regime. Sergei’s enthusiasm and excitement at the prospect of a new and democratic society emerging from the rubble of the old Soviet Union was utterly infectious, but he was unnerved by the chaos and feared that old Russia herself – the great steppes that he maintained had barely changed in a century, a place to which he held a romantic, almost mystical attachment – would end up a poor and backward nation rather than the first-world country he believed it should be.
Afterwards he’d taken her to a basement bar just off the Nevsky Prospekt that had become a favourite haunt of student radicals. He introduced her to some of his friends, but somehow it was always his bright eyes in the centre of her vision. They drank beer and vodka shots, and she could hardly stand when she tipped out onto the snowy streets in the crisp hours of the early morning.
He walked her home to her seedy digs on the top floor of a run-down building at Podolskaya. He hooked his arm through her own, but made no attempt to kiss her. Kate was conscious of a faint twinge of regret at his reticence in the few seconds between when her head hit the pillow and she passed out, fully clothed.
In the sober light of dawn, she remembered she hadn’t even told him that she had a boyfriend – and not just any man: Stuart.
After that, he called every evening. She didn’t answer for almost a week, but was caught out when she thought it was her father. He said he would be round in ten minutes. She went out for a long walk by the Neva. When she got back, he was still waiting, sitting on the step of her tenement in his thin leather jacket.
‘You’re a fucking idiot,’ she said.
‘I know you have a boyfriend,’ he said, ‘but I am happy just to be your friend.’
She’d wanted so badly to renew his acquaintance that she’d let that line go and invited him up for a cup of coffee. After that, they were inseparable.
Sergei’s parents had welcomed Kate, their son’s English ‘friend’, into their lives, and for a while she had felt almost part of the family. By the time the summer came, she was spending weekends at their primitive wooden dacha on the Gulf of Finland – which Sergei’s mother’s family had somehow managed to hold on to after the execution of her father – and everyone assumed they were lovers.
