What she hadn’t experienced before was being at the heart of a media frenzy. She hadn’t realised how explosive a story combining a spy agency with a young, attractive, ethnic-minority woman would be, or how long the excitement would last.
It was bad enough finding the same gaggle of photographers and reporters outside her front door on the second morning that she went to work, but many of them were also there when she came home, and some were still around on her third day in the new job. Someone had even tweeted her presence at the local bistro when she’d had supper there with Emma.
Jasminder hated the intrusion. But it got worse when a decision was taken by MI6 (C himself apparently) that her private residence had to be made more secure. Since she had become such a celebrity editors had been warned not to identify her house, but some of the photographs they had published made it pretty clear where she lived.
So Jasminder came home one evening to find a small team of technicians installing new locks on her front and back doors. The carpet was rolled up and wires had been laid for panic buttons. Her front door sported a shiny new video entry system and the lady who lived in the upstairs flat was standing on the stairs complaining about the effect all this was going to have on her. Was she safe? she wanted to know. Were they going to be murdered in their beds? Jasminder’s once cosy place no longer felt like home; she was living in Fort Knox.
At MI6 her first week was filled with a relentless series of induction briefings. She understood the need for these, but it was still frustrating not to be able to get on with the work she’d been appointed to do – though even that presented a complication: Jasminder’s job was to represent the Service to the world outside, yet the media enquiries pouring into MI6 at the moment were all about her, not the Service.
As she hastily drank a cup of tea during a short snatched break and looked at the stack of phone messages on her desk, she found herself dreading a return to her newly fortified house, and yet another media scrum outside the front door in the morning.
Then Laurenz once again came to the rescue. Since her first night with him she had seen him several times, but then suddenly he’d gone away – seeing clients in Copenhagen. On her way home after the third day at work her mobile rang, she looked at the number and answered it at once. Her voice must have given her mood away for Laurenz said, ‘Hi, darling, I’m back.’
‘Thank God.’
‘You sound terrible. What’s the matter?’
She explained, and he said at once: ‘The bank owns a flat and I’m using it. Come and stay with me for a few days until the fuss dies down. Don’t worry, it will. Nothing lasts for more than five days in the popular press. Get some things and take the tube to Moorgate. Text me when you’re at Angel station ready to get on the train and I’ll meet you at Moorgate where you come up from the Northern Line.’
So seven-thirty saw her clutching a small overnight bag, on the up escalator at Moorgate station. She waved when she saw Laurenz standing at the top, waiting for her. As they walked along Moorgate he explained that the bank’s flat was normally reserved for colleagues visiting from abroad; Laurenz had been loaned it temporarily while his divorce worked its messy way to a conclusion because his own flat was let.
The apartment, in a tall glass-faced block, was small: one reasonable-sized living room with a galley kitchen screened off by a granite counter with bar stools, and one bedroom. It was modern, impersonal and soulless, but also blissfully private. Laurenz said he didn’t have a clue who else lived in the building. He rarely saw or heard anyone. The most he noticed was the hum of the lift going up and down. ‘I thought we’d eat in,’ he announced, handing Jasminder a large glass of Sancerre. ‘That way you can stop looking over your shoulder every thirty seconds.’
He cooked garlic prawns and pasta, and they ate at the counter, sitting on the bar stools. When she asked him where he’d learned to cook, he shrugged. ‘My mother wasn’t often around, and my father thought being in the kitchen was unmanly. I didn’t have much choice: if I didn’t cook, I didn’t eat.’
‘This was in Norway?’ she asked, eager to learn more about his background.
‘Of course,’ he said simply. ‘But I want to hear all about you. How’s the new job going? Have you learned loads of secrets? Tell me everything.’
She smiled. ‘No, I haven’t learned any secrets yet. I’ve spent my time learning who does what and where everything is and trying not to get lost in that complicated building. And fending off the media, who all want to interview me about my background and my thoughts on working women and careers and all sorts of other stuff that I’m not going to talk about.’
Laurenz grinned. ‘You’re the perfect role model. But hang in there! They’ll get used to you.’ They fell silent until Jasminder asked about his work at the bank.
‘I work exclusively with private clients. Wealthy individuals, unsurprisingly. Some of them are quite interesting – especially the ones who’ve made their money themselves. You don’t have to be an intellectual to make a fortune, but you can’t be stupid either. And there are some real eccentrics.’ Jasminder laughed as he described the software inventor who put gloves on to shake hands; the oil mogul who installed solar panels on his house on the Norwegian island of Jan Mayen, only to discover it received less sunshine than any other place in the world; and the hedge-fund founder who had amassed the world’s largest collection of ten-pin bowling balls.
‘How bizarre,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone really rich.’
‘These are people who have so much money that they can do anything they want, indulge absolutely any interest they have. However weird it seems to the rest of the world, they don’t care – they can afford not to. But when it comes to money, they are deadly serious, and they can get very worried. The world seems increasingly unstable to the very rich. For these people globalisation is a two-edged sword: it’s easy now to make investments all over the world in countless different ways; it’s hard, though, to find places where you feel your money is safe.’
‘Is that what you do for them then?’
Laurenz nodded. ‘For the most part, yes. There’s a lot of hand-holding involved. They often invite me to meals or to stay in their places. They like the pretence that I’m a friend. But the bottom line is that they have hired me to protect their most important interest – which is their assets.’
‘It must make for a strange relationship.’
‘It does. There’s no real friendship in it, in spite of superficial appearances. They expect a high level of fiscal performance, and you don’t get any applause for doing well – it just means they keep employing you. But if their cocoa futures dip for six hours, I’ll get a phone call right away, no matter what time it is, and it won’t be very friendly.’
They had moved to the sofa, and he was pouring Jasminder some coffee now. She asked, ‘How can you cover such a range of investments, and in so many places?’
‘It’s not easy. I travel a lot, as you know, and I talk to people who travel even more than I do. But I’m heavily reliant on data banks. They’re not always very good, and the private sector will always lag behind governments in collecting the best information. That’s what I envy about your job.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Simply that you have access to unparalleled collections of data. Your new employers have the money to buy all the private ones, but they also have their own sources – and the CIA’s. And probably the French, German, Spanish and Scandinavian intelligence services’ as well if they need them. It’s a pity people like me can’t have access to them – I mean, to the unclassified parts of course. I bet ninety-nine per cent of the information is perfectly harmless, in terms of security, but it’s all completely locked up, and the security services hold the key.’
He paused for a moment, then seemed to think of something. He said, ‘If you really want to change the image of the organisation, a first step would be to let people with legitimate purposes have access to so
me of your research data. Then you wouldn’t have Snowden-types stealing millions of documents without any regard for what should be secret and what not. There wouldn’t be any point in exposing stuff that was already available.’
Jasminder nodded; it seemed sensible enough, provided that what needed to be secret was kept separate from what didn’t. That should be easy enough to do, she thought.
‘Sounds a good idea,’ she said. ‘But I’m very new to all this. It may be more difficult than it sounds. I like knowing more about your work, though. My friend Emma was asking me about what you do and I realised I couldn’t actually tell her.’
‘Why did she want to know?’ The question was sharp.
‘She’s one of my closest friends, so naturally I told her I was seeing you.’ Jasminder felt his eyes fix on her. ‘Is there anything wrong with that?’
He smiled suddenly. ‘Of course not.’
‘Emma’s hoping to meet you. I thought we might have dinner one night.’
His smile turned briefly back to a frown, and Jasminder wondered if she’d offended him again. She usually felt so relaxed with Laurenz; she didn’t like this sudden feeling of walking on eggshells. Then he smiled again, and she was pleased until she realised how her own mood was becoming dependent on his. I must be really falling for him, she thought, if I’m acting like such an impressionable schoolgirl.
‘I’d love to meet Emma,’ he said, and Jasminder was about to suggest some dates when she saw his hand was held up, like a traffic policeman stopping a lorry. ‘But not just yet. Let me get this wretched divorce out of the way, and then you and I can go public. I can meet your friends, and you can meet mine, and perhaps some of my clients too. That is,’ and he said this shyly, endearingly, ‘if you’d like to do that?’
‘That would be wonderful,’ said Jasminder, her doubts melting away.
‘But I almost forgot,’ he said, getting up from the sofa. ‘I bought you a present. To celebrate your new job.’
‘Oh,’ said Jasminder, surprised and delighted. ‘That’s really kind of you.’
As she was speaking he got up from the sofa and went to open a drawer in the kitchen. He took out a box.
‘Here you are,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘It’s a new phone – the latest iPhone. I hope you like the colour.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, taking the phone out of the box. ‘But that’s a terribly expensive present.’
‘I wanted to be sure you kept in touch. You can keep it on your desk in the office and I’ll know I can always get through to you.’
‘Oh, dear. I’m afraid that won’t work,’ she laughed. ‘We’re not allowed to take private mobiles into the office. We have to keep them at the door and collect them when we leave the building. But you can always leave messages on it and I’ll pick them up as soon as I go out.’
He looked disappointed. ‘Put it in your pocket. They’ll never know.’
‘I think they might,’ she replied, smiling. ‘And you shouldn’t be encouraging me to break the rules. You’ll get me sacked.’
‘Well, okay then. Leave it at the door.’ He paused and looked at her, grave-faced. ‘I certainly wouldn’t want you to get the sack.’
23
The fog was just lifting at Heathrow airport, allowing the early-morning long-distance flights that had been stacked overhead to land, filling the Immigration Hall with weary arrivals. In the Departure Hall Miles Brookhaven, along with thousands of other frustrated travellers, was scanning the departure boards for information about when his flight to Washington was likely to take off.
He hadn’t wanted to make this journey. He didn’t think it was necessary and, if it hadn’t been for Andy Bokus’s insistence on a face-to-face meeting, was sure it could all have been sorted out in a video conference. Andy Bokus, Miles’s predecessor as CIA Head of Station in London, had left Britain under a bit of a cloud. A gruff, son-of-the-soil sort of man, he had never liked the place. He hated the weather, he didn’t like London, and above all he didn’t like the Brits, particularly Geoffrey Fane of MI6, who he thought, rightly, patronised him.
Andy was nonetheless rather good at his job, and the London Station had done well under him. Yet after he’d spent years asking for a new posting, Bokus had finally got his wish – though only after he had made a misjudgement and lost a potentially useful counter-terrorism source to Russia. Now, after six months’ rest and recuperation leave, he was back in Langley as Head of Counter-Intelligence Operations in Northern Europe, which meant that he was still involved in some of the London Station’s activities.
What had triggered Miles’s flying visit to Langley was a message that had come in the day before from the Kiev Station. Mischa, the Russian military source Miles had met, had resurfaced. Shortly after that he had left Ukraine but no one knew where he’d gone and nothing had been heard from him. The Kiev Station was under instructions not to try and contact him as he was seen as a potentially valuable long-term source; nothing was to be done that might put him at risk. But a message had come from him. He was in Estonia for a month and wanted to see the ‘British expert’ again; he had more information. He would provide contact arrangements when a meeting was confirmed, the message had said.
The communication, which Kiev had sent to London and Langley simultaneously, had triggered a rapid response from Bokus. No one was to contact Mischa in Estonia, and Miles was to come to Langley for a meeting. So here he was, hanging around at Heathrow, expecting to spend more time in the air in the next twenty-four hours than he would on the ground – that is, if he ever got off the ground at all.
Heathrow eventually got itself back to something approaching normal and Miles’s plane landed at Dulles airport in the early evening, several hours late. He stayed the night at the guest house near the HQ building at Langley and turned up early and grumpy for the eight-thirty meeting. Rather to his surprise he found that it had been moved from Andy Bokus’s office to the grander suite of the Director of Counter-Intelligence.
This post was now held by someone Miles had not met, a new man called Sandy Gunderson. His predecessor, the legendary Tyrus Oakes, known as ‘The Bird’, was a small thoughtful man with outlandishly big ears and an obsessive habit of taking voluminous notes by hand on yellow legal pads, even in the most sensitive meetings. People speculated about what happened to the notes afterwards. Some said it was just a nervous habit and that they were immediately destroyed, others thought that he was saving them up for his memoirs, but only his secretary knew for sure. And she wasn’t saying.
Gunderson, Oakes’s successor, was too new to have acquired a nickname, and from the look of his office was almost fetishistically tidy – his desk and the table in the windowless conference room attached to it were bare. The walls held only framed photographs of the Agency headquarters, and the chrome-and-leather chairs looked more functional than comfortable. There was not a legal pad in sight or any person except Gunderson’s secretary. Miles was early.
‘Mr Gunderson will be along in a moment,’ she said, placing a plate of pastries and a jug of coffee on the table. ‘Help yourself.’
Ten minutes later the meeting that Miles had come so far to attend got under way. Round the table were Andy Bokus, looking slimmer and fitter than when Miles had last seen him, and a tall, square-jawed man in a dark blue suit and gleaming black shoes, who was introduced as Bud McCarthy from the FBI.
At the head of the table sat Gunderson: early fifties, thin-faced, rimless glasses, intense pale blue eyes. Reminds me of photographs of Himmler, thought Miles, who had studied the Second World War at college. But Gunderson began in friendly enough style.
‘I’ve called this meeting to discuss our response to the message from your friend Mischa asking for a meeting in Estonia, Miles. And thank you for coming over at such short notice, and to you too, Bud, for coming across. We have no one here from our Kiev Station, but Miles, you’ve met their source so maybe you’d begin by reminding us of the background and the intelligence he
provided.’
Miles outlined the circumstances of his meeting in Ukraine and reminded them of Mischa’s information about Illegals and Russian efforts at subversion and disruption in the West. ‘His information came from his brother who is an FSB officer working on the programme,’ he added. ‘He specifically mentioned the US and France – and Britain, where he said the Illegal was having success. I was described to him as a British expert, so as he’s asked to see me again, I assume he has more information about the British operation.’
‘Thanks. That’s useful background. Now, Andy, you have concerns about a meeting in Estonia, so would you tell us your angle?’
‘Yes, I certainly have,’ replied Andy Bokus. ‘Estonia is a hotbed of Russian activity at the moment. The FSB has a large station there and the GRU too. Our station is covert. We’re watching what’s going on and keep pretty close tabs on the situation. We’re as sure as we can be that they haven’t sussed us out. We have some excellent sources and are working ourselves into a position to pre-empt the Russians, if and when they start the sort of disruption operations that have been so successful in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Estonia’s population is roughly one-third Russian, and as in Ukraine there’s tension building between them and the indigenous people, which the Russians are stirring up.
‘I’m fairly sure we’ve identified your Mischa. He is officially part of a military delegation holding consultative meetings with their Estonian counterparts on cross-border security. But his real mission, we’ve learned, is to assess what kinds of weaponry and manpower Russia would need if the decision were made to do another Crimea and send in covert forces. We think it’s unlikely, because of the NATO umbrella there, but you never know what our friend Vladimir is going to decide to do. Now that we think we’ve identified Mischa, we’ve got the Moscow Station working on identifying his brother, the source of your stuff, Miles.’
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