Miles nodded as he refilled their glasses, and they both sat down in the armchairs by the fireplace. The Russian said shortly, ‘I asked them to send me a British expert and they have sent me another American. I have not much time. I need to get back before dark or questions will be asked. So are you a British expert? Can you get information to them quickly and secretly?’
‘Yes,’ Miles replied. ‘I live in London and I am the Agency’s chief liaison with the British agencies. I can get your information directly to them as soon as I get back.’
‘Good,’ said Mischa. He put his glass down on the side table next to his chair. ‘I hope you are aware of the conditions I set.’
‘I am.’ Miles stood up and took the roll of bills from his pocket. He handed it over to the Russian, who had remained sitting. ‘It’s dollars, as you requested. I think you’ll find it’s all there.’
The Russian riffled the bills with his hands, and seemed satisfied. Then he said warily, ‘You do understand this is a down payment. I will expect the rest in due course.’
‘Provided your information proves correct,’ Miles felt obliged to add. The sum agreed was $10,000 – and he had just handed over half of it. The amount was less important than the principle of part-payment – it was believed that paid sources should always be left hanging slightly, to incentivise the further flow of information.
‘It will,’ Mischa said sharply. ‘If you listen carefully, there will be no chance of any disagreement.’
I’ll be the judge of that, Miles thought. Yet soon he found himself gripped by the story the Russian told him.
Very briefly Mischa sketched the origins of his overtures to Western intelligence, seeming to assume that Miles would be familiar with this part of the story. He’d been sickened by the atrocities he’d witnessed in Ukraine, committed by the fighters he was supposed to help. After they’d shot down the Malaysian airliner, firing a missile system they were not trained to use, he was made responsible for helping disguise what had happened in an attempt to shift the blame on to the Ukrainian government forces, and now his conscience could bear it no longer. When he came across the American journalist on the site, he decided to try to use him to get in touch with American intelligence. It was an enormous risk; the journalist could have publicised his story, or he might not have made the contact on Mischa’s behalf, or Mischa himself might have been ordered back home to Russia. But the contact was made and since then he had been crossing the lines at great risk to himself to pass information.
But it was not simply the downing of the passenger plane, or the fact that his own Russian colleagues had urged the Ukrainian rebels on to ever-more brutal tactics, that had persuaded Mischa to consort with the enemy; it was also a growing conviction that Russia was reverting to the despotic totalitarianism his generation thought had been overthrown forever. Democracy had not come to his country, despite the promise of those first post-Cold War days, and Mischa was becoming more and more convinced that it never would.
Miles had heard this sort of talk before from informers from Russia and it was credible as far as it went, but the fact that it was almost always accompanied by requests for large sums of money rather took the shine off the idealism.
Having got his justification off his chest, Mischa turned to the story Miles had travelled all this way to hear. It had come through his elder brother Sasha, who was a middle-ranking officer in the FSB in Moscow. Sasha, unlike his younger brother, was not an idealist. Rather, he, like many of his colleagues in the FSB, was a cynic – cynical about the way the country was governed, cynical about the way the FSB behaved and the things he was required to do. And, like many cynics, Sasha – when suitably fuelled by late-night vodka during Mischa’s visits from the front – liked to talk.
On Mischa’s last visit home Sasha had started describing how the FSB had worked to prepare the ground for the Russian takeover of the Crimea. How they had covertly influenced the Russian-speaking population, stirring up and spreading dissension and separatism until the annexation became the desired outcome for the majority of people. Now they were doing the same in East Ukraine. Sasha had said that he was working in the department responsible for that type of covert action, but not in Ukraine – in Western Europe. There were two types of target in the West. The first, said Mischa, was Russians themselves, émigrés who were thought to pose a threat to the homeland.
Miles was growing slightly impatient. ‘That’s nothing new. We’ve seen it already, with Litvinenko.’
Mischa shook his head. ‘Litvinenko was ex-KGB. He was betraying his former colleagues. His murder was vengeance rather than the removal of a threat. I’m talking about something different. Since all the activity here,’ and he waved an arm towards the window, ‘Putin’s position is increasingly unstable. Sanctions are having an effect, and the people most affected by them are those who have got rich by corruption. Those who have been his supporters. They can’t move their money around as they could, and their stakes in oil and gas are worth half what they were. Until now, they needed Putin, but not any more. Putin is terrified they will fund a coup against him, and he may be right.’
The result, according to Mischa, was that the FSB were initiating a new campaign to undermine and destabilise the leading opponents of Putin living abroad. Action of various kinds would be mounted to destroy their position; it might be by damaging them financially or by destroying their reputation by scandal of some sort or even assassination. It would take place wherever they were living – in Switzerland, Hong Kong, the United States, but particularly Britain. The methods would vary, but all these plots would be organised and initiated by FSB agents working undercover.
‘Do you have any details of these plots?’ asked Miles. The news was concerning, but in the absence of specifics there wasn’t much the Western authorities could do: increase security, issue warnings, threaten further sanctions if Russian state involvement could be proved.
‘Not yet,’ said Mischa. ‘I will need to speak to my brother again but that’s not possible until I go home.’
Miles nodded, but he was disappointed. Was it just for this nebulous warning that he’d come all the way to the eastern edge of Ukraine? His colleagues in Kiev had been taken in by this man, who now seemed to have nothing worthwhile to impart.
Mischa said, ‘I will of course do my best to find out more, but I hope this is of value.’ When Miles said nothing the Russian seemed to sense his disappointment, for he added quickly, ‘There is something else I also learned from my brother.’
‘Yes?’ Miles’s voice was flat. This was when agents liked to lie. Seeing their handlers unimpressed, they began to invent.
‘You know the term “Illegals”?’
‘I do.’
‘Then you will know the Russian security service’s interest in using them.’
He did, very well. All intelligence services put agents into target countries with false identities – using third-country nationalities. The KGB had had particular success with this technique during the Cold War – famously with the Portland spy ring, run by a KGB officer under cover as a Canadian businessman.
Mischa continued, ‘My brother is involved in this area.’
‘Oh.’ Miles was careful to sound neutral.
‘Yes. But the programme has changed.’
‘In what way?’
‘In the past they were used for collecting intelligence. Now they are part of the destabilisation programme. The programme is in two parts. As I said, the first is to destabilise the opponents of Putin; the second is to destabilise the target countries themselves by undermining leading politicians, encouraging separatist parties, reinforcing minor parties to create unstable coalitions, giving covert support to religious extremism or whatever will be effective in the different countries. It is an ambitious and long-term programme.’
‘Do you know if any of these Illegals are in place? And where?’ asked Miles, desperately trying to get something concrete to make this trip worthwhile.
‘Why?’ asked Miles, suddenly leaning forward in his chair, then as suddenly relaxing as he told himself not to show such obvious interest. ‘Has this Illegal managed to achieve something?’
‘Not yet, I think. But Sasha said that he is well on the way to a major destabilisation. Sasha’s bosses are very pleased with him.’
‘Do you know what nationality he has or what his target area is?’
‘No. All I know is that he is a man and at the time when I was talking to Sasha his success was quite recent.’
‘And you say this is different from the oligarch programme.’
‘Yes – but both are part of the larger destabilisation programme.’ Suddenly Mischa looked at his watch. ‘I must go. It will be dark in an hour or so. I hope I have been able to help.’
And with a quick handshake he was gone. Watching him from the window, cycling off down the track to the road, Miles didn’t know whether he had been told something of great importance or a fairy story. If it was true, it was alarming. The Russians would not be mounting Illegal operations, with all the preparation, back-up and risk they involved, unless they had some very serious intent, and whatever that was it was not benign.
19
Jasminder emerged from Green Park Underground station into a bright, warm spring day. She was early so she decided to walk to the interview even though, unusually for her, she was wearing a smart suit with a rather tight skirt, and shoes with heels. Carlton Gardens, the letter had said, and she’d had to look it up on Google Maps. Pall Mall, she knew, was lined with grand clubs but she had never even noticed the anonymous street running between it and The Mall, leading to Buckingham Palace. This was not a part of London she frequented.
When she had woken up that morning she had almost decided not to go to the interview. She would ring and tell them she had changed her mind, she thought. The job was not for her and she couldn’t understand how she had got herself into the position of applying for it and then agreeing to attend an interview. But after a cup of coffee and a bowl of porridge curiosity had begun to get the better of caution. She still wasn’t entirely sure which agency she was involved with, though the advertisement in the Guardian had made it fairly obvious it was MI6, and she found it totally bizarre that they should even be considering her.
The rather severe grey-haired lady in a raincoat who had called at the flat one evening to do what she described as Jasminder’s ‘security interview’ had not been at all forthcoming. ‘It’s an agency of Government,’ she had said. ‘If you are called for interview, you will learn more about the post then.’
As Jasminder headed away from Piccadilly and down Queen’s Walk she saw a few people sitting in deckchairs in St James’s Park, chatting and enjoying the first real sun of the year. She was jealous; the nearer she got to her assignation at Carlton Gardens, the more anxious she felt. What’s the matter with you? she asked herself. You don’t want this job so why are you worrying about it? But she knew the answer. She wasn’t used to failing and she didn’t want to fail at this. Even though she was mentally reserving the right to turn them down, she didn’t want them to reject her. She walked on, along The Mall and up the Duke of York’s Steps, where she turned left along the line of grand, anonymous buildings until at the end of the road she saw the number she was looking for, and the front door of the house.
The bell was answered by a middle-aged woman in a dark jacket and skirt, which looked like some sort of uniform. To Jasminder she appeared to be a carbon copy of the security-interview woman who had come to her flat, except that rather unexpectedly this one smiled warmly and invited her to sit down in a kind of waiting room, furnished with brown furniture and chairs with leather seats and button backs. The windows were obscured by heavy net curtains, making the whole room dark and gloomy after the bright sunshine outside. Jasminder’s spirits sank further; now she definitely wished she hadn’t come.
‘Help yourself to coffee,’ said the smiley woman, waving at a thermos jug on a table. But Jasminder didn’t feel like coffee; she sat down uneasily on one of the leather chairs.
She didn’t have to wait long. After no more than three or four minutes, the door opened and Catherine, the woman who had been with the head-hunter when Jasminder had first discussed the job, stood in the doorway. ‘Good morning, Jasminder. They’re ready for you now.’
The room they went into was very different from the waiting room. Jasminder’s first impression was that she had walked into the drawing room of a small stately home. Facing the door, set in a curved wall at the end, tall windows looked out over The Mall to St James’s Park. A blind was partly drawn down over one window where the sun was trying to glance in. To her left, as Jasminder followed Catherine into the room, chintz-covered armchairs were arranged round a marble fireplace, but in front of them were three men in dark suits, sitting in upright chairs on the far side of a polished mahogany table. Catherine indicated an empty chair facing them and sat down herself on a chair next to it.
‘Good morning, Miss Kapoor,’ said the man in the centre of the group. ‘It’s good of you to come and see us.’ He was thin-faced with a prominent nose. Even in her own nervous state, Jasminder could see that he looked anxious.
‘I’m Henry Pennington of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,’ he continued, ‘and chairman of this selection board. Before we proceed further I should say, as I’m sure you are aware, that this post involves a high level of security clearance. We are not asking you to sign the Official Secrets Act at this stage as you may not be selected for the post. However, I must ask you to observe confidentiality about anything you may learn as a result of this interview. Do you agree to those terms?’ As he spoke, he was gently rubbing his hands together in a washing motion. The dry sandpapery sound was very audible in the quiet room.
‘Well, yes,’ replied Jasminder cautiously. ‘But what does that mean? That I can’t tell anyone I have been to this interview?’
Henry Pennington looked even more anxious and uncomfortable and his hand-washing intensified. There was a short silence then the man sitting to his left said, ‘No. Of course not. It means that if we reveal any of the nation’s secrets, you must keep them to yourself. If we do that, we’ll warn you.’ He smiled reassuringly at her and said, ‘Back to you, Henry.’
Pennington cleared his throat. ‘Before I introduce my colleagues on the board,’ he said, frowning, ‘I should tell you that we are interviewing a shortlist of people both from inside and outside the public service for the new post of Director of Communications in the Secret Intelligence Service. You have seen the outline description of the post and Sir Peter – ’ he nodded to his left ‘ – will tell you some more about how he sees it. But let me introduce the members of the selection board. This,’ indicating the man who had spoken to her, ‘is Sir Peter Treadwell, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service. He is referred to as C.’
‘That’s MI6,’ said Sir Peter cheerfully. ‘Good morning, Miss Kapoor.’
‘And this,’ went on Pennington, indicating the man on his right, ‘is Mr Fane, also of the Secret Intelligence Service. Miss Catherine Palmer you have already met, I think.’
Jasminder nodded in response to the introductions and waited. She could feel the tension in the room and had an almost irresistible urge to laugh. This was clearly going to be like no other selection board she’d ever attended.
‘I will ask C to start by telling you some more about the post, which will be on his staff.’ Pennington leaned back in his chair, clearly relieved to be passing the baton.
‘Thank you, Henry.’ Sir Peter sat forward
and smiled at her. ‘You must be wondering why you are being interviewed for a post in SIS, Miss Kapoor. Well, I envisage the role as serving as the day-to-day interface between SIS and the public and media. That’s why we are describing it as Director of Communications.
‘From time to time I make public speeches with input from various parts of the Service; the Director of Communications will be responsible for pulling this material together and drafting what I say. But more important, and arguably more influential, will be contact with the media and through them the public. I want that to be a lot more open than it has been in the past and I want it to be done by a person who is not seen as a faceless spook or anonymous propagandist. I’d like someone already known outside the covert intelligence world, someone seen as open-minded and honest. They need as well to grasp the complex balance that has to be struck today between civil liberties and security.’
He paused briefly, then said, ‘I should add that not everyone in the Government, the Foreign Office or SIS itself agrees with me that this should be the way we do it.’ A little snort, just audible, came from the direction of the man called Fane.
Jasminder said, ‘Thank you for the explanation. It does sound an interesting position but I don’t understand why you think I might be suitable. I feel sure that you and I would differ very much on the balance you talk about – and where the line should be drawn. I think both of us might be accused of hypocrisy if I were to join you. People would say I’d sold out to the establishment, and that you were just trying to curry favour with your critics.’
‘Thank you for being so frank, but that’s not how I see it.’ Sir Peter was no longer smiling; his elbows were on the table and his expression was intense. ‘I know your reputation is for supporting civil liberties of all kinds against what you see as incursion by the state. You’re also concerned that, using the excuse of terrorist threats, governments will intrude unnecessarily on private lives.’ Jasminder was about to reply, but he went on: ‘Believe it or not, so am I. But what impresses me about your position is that you also acknowledge there is a real threat from extremism, and that the Government does have a duty to protect its citizens – even if that involves some surrender of civil liberties. Have I got that right?’
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