Presence of Mine Enemies

by Stephen England

  “Who refuses to accept that the world has changed,” Ashworth retorted, cutting him off. “Who somehow can’t accept that we’re not still in West Berlin in the bad old days. An old Russia hand, like yourself. That’s why you approached Julian—there aren’t so very many of you left.”

  “No,” the old counter-intel spook replied simply, bridling his anger with an effort, a strange sadness hidden behind the thick glasses. “There are not.”

  He went on after a pause. “He’s dead now, you know? The asset Marsh told you about—the man we were trying to extract. His wife found him last night, in their Hounslow flat.”

  “I know.” The words came out flat, emotionless. Utterly unsurprised. He wasn’t sure what reaction he had expected from Ashworth, but this wasn’t it. The acting DG reached over to one side, picking up a manila envelope from where it lay on one side of his desk.

  He half-stood, leaning across the desk to hand it to Greer. “Have you seen these?”

  3:39 P.M.

  1 Fleet Street

  City of London

  “Simon Norris, Security Service. I believe you’re expecting me?” Norris asked, struggling to maintain his composure, to keep his voice from wavering as he glanced around the interior of the bank, taking in the white globes of lights hanging down from the ceiling above, a small knot of businessmen clustered together around the yellow sofas in the center of the room. Unable to meet the secretary’s eyes.

  Half-expecting her to press some button beneath her desk, a signal for Special Branch—the jaws of a trap, snapping shut about his neck.

  Somehow, a part of him almost hoped it was. . .

  But she smiled instead, a warm, genuine smile that seemed to mock the desperation his own masked. “But of course, Mr. Norris. We received your call from Thames House yesterday. You’re early, but one of our associates will be with you in a few moments.”

  3:41 P.M.

  Biggin Hill Airport

  Bromley, UK

  Twenty minutes, Alexei Vasiliev thought, glancing critically at the sky as he stepped out of the air-conditioned Mercedes into the heat radiating off the airport tarmac. Give or take.

  The heat was building up to a breaking point, if the clouds moving down from the north were any gauge. Great thunderheads, towering into the sky, darkening the horizon with the promise of rain.

  It might cause them some problems, getting off the ground—even if their pilot had cut his teeth flying Su-27s in the Russian Federation’s air force.

  But for the moment, getting off the ground wasn’t Vasiliev’s principal concern.

  If Simon Norris was on schedule, he’d be arriving at the bank in twenty minutes or less. In less than thirty, the thumb drive Vasiliev had given him would be inserted into the bank’s network. And the Royal Bank of Scotland’s seven hundred billion pounds’ worth of assets would lie exposed, to the worm.

  It would be the most devastating cyber-attack in history, an entire bank’s holdings wiped out in the space of a few heartbeats. Or as good as wiped out—the records of who owed what to whom, erased beyond restoration.

  The records of whom had paid what to Arthur Colville. . .lost in the shuffle.

  The fallout would destroy the British economy, bring down this government, like the last one before it. The shockwaves of the public crisis of confidence would ripple around the world, tearing apart the West at its very heart. Money.

  And with their network inside the Rodina practically disemboweled, the British would be unable to retaliate, even if they could muster the will to do so.

  All of it resting upon the shoulders of Simon Norris. The man of the hour.

  A shadow passed across Vasiliev’s face at the thought, dark as the gathering clouds. The analyst couldn’t be counted upon, and he knew it, perhaps more keenly than Moscow.

  But there was no one else.

  3:43 P.M.

  1 Fleet Street

  City of London

  “Your people have taken quite an interest in the late Mr. Colville’s financial matters, haven’t you?” His interlocutor was an Indian woman in her early thirties, dressed professionally in a navy blue pantsuit. Rani Sherawat, a senior associate with RBS. The look on her face half-serious as she glanced back at him along the corridor leading to the underground room that housed the electronic heart of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s London operations. His target. “There’s no truth in what the media has been speculating, is there? That the security services were responsible for his death?”

  “No, no, that’s ridiculous,” Norris replied distractedly, still focused on her earlier comment. Quite an interest. “There have been other officers?”

  “Oh, yes,” she replied, brushing a strand of dark hair back from her face as she moved into the door, placing her eye close to the eyepiece and waiting as the machine scanned her retina. Both he and their accompanying security officer drawing up short to wait for her. “A Mr. Greer, I believe. You didn’t know?”

  The spy-hunter. He shuddered involuntarily, glad she wasn’t watching his face. Remembering that day, only a few months before, when that very man had swept into the heart of G Branch’s operations centre, Special Branch in tow. He’d known that they were coming for him, known then that it was all over.

  He couldn’t have suspected that that would have been a mercy, that he had so much farther yet to fall.

  But Greer had taken away MacCallum instead, an innocent man sacrificed for the guilty—his misdirection successful, at the last.

  And so here he was. With the spy-hunter’s footsteps echoing close behind him once more. “No,” he replied finally, mastering himself as she turned to face him—forcing a smile. “Compartmentalization, I suppose. We’ve never learned to share.”

  “Well then perhaps I shouldn’t have told you,” she said, seemingly embarrassed, opening the door. “This way, Mr. Norris.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, following her into the cold, semi-darkness of the room. “I know how to keep a secret.”

  Did he ever. The irony of the words tasted bitter on his tongue, his gaze flickering around the room, taking in the dozens of glowing terminals—the faint chill in the air seemed to penetrate to his very bones.

  His escort led the way to one of the computer terminals, typing in her access code and taking a step back. “There you go, Mr. Norris. This computer has full access to our network. You can bring up Arthur Colville’s account history—all of his transactions, deposits, all the business he did with RBS over the years. Everything.”

  “Excellent, thank you,” Norris acknowledged, withdrawing the thumb drive from his pocket, his eyes quickly scanning for a port. There. “I will need to make a copy for our Registry at Thames House.”

  “Hold on, hold on. . .wait just a minute,” the bank associate interjected, bringing him up short. The security officer a few feet away, visibly stiffening at the sight of the drive in his hand. “This is a secure facility, you can’t just come in here with a foreign drive and insert it into our systems—that would compromise the security of our networks.”

  “Ms. Sherawat,” Norris began, struggling to keep his voice level—his palms slick with sweat, even in the chill of the room. He resisted the urge to wipe them against his pants. “I am only doing what I was sent here to do, and I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that the Royal Bank of Scotland has agreed to cooperate fully with the Security Service in this investigation, in the interests of national security.”

  She just looked at him, not giving an inch. “That’s all very well, Mr. Norris, but I’m responsible for your actions while in this building, and what you’re proposing violates every protocol we have on the books. I can’t permit it.”

  The security officer cleared his throat, stepping forward. “With your permission, sir, I can take your drive and scan it on an air-gapped terminal. Should only take ten minutes, and then you’ll be clear to proceed.”

  There was no help for it. Norris glanced from the associate to the security officer and
back again, seeing no way out of handing it over. No way to talk his way through this.

  And once they had scanned the drive. . .

  He could sense the walls closing in once more, all around. The suffocating feeling of fingers, interlacing themselves about his throat.

  “All right,” he conceded finally, handing the drive over to the officer, “but while you’re doing that, I’m going to need to go back upstairs. Place a call to Thames House.”

  He met her eyes, mustering up the courage for a Parthian shot. “It is Sherawat, isn’t it? Rani Sherawat?”

  3:47 P.M.

  Thames House

  Millbank, London

  The story was there, written clear in the 4x6 prints scattered across Phillip Greer’s lap. The story of their undoing.

  Of a man’s death.

  “That is one of our officers, isn’t it?” Ashworth asked after a long moment, his tone acidic.

  A nod. “Yes, it is. Darren Roth, a G Branch field officer. The man I assigned to handle Dmitri Pavlovich.”

  And there the two of them were. Standing together in the middle of an Underground carriage, clearly under surveillance. Had this been the night that Roth had detected the Russian officers?

  Or had this been another meeting, some other time that he hadn’t? They had been rumbled somehow, that much was clear.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “They were delivered earlier this morning,” Ashworth replied, his voice losing none of its edge, “by a courier from the Russian Embassy. They are claiming, Phillip, that Litvinov committed suicide after our Security Service discovered his embezzlement of Russian government funds and used it in an attempt to blackmail him into betraying his country.”

  “That’s nonsense!” Greer exclaimed, recognizing, even as he spoke the words, the mastery of the plan. The net that surrounded them, closing fast.

  “Is it?” The acting DG just looked at him. “The suicide note the Met recovered from Litvinov’s kitchen table corroborates the money angle, and the Russian ambassador is preparing to lodge a formal protest of the Security Service’s behavior with the PM.”

  “Listen to me, Patrick,” Greer began, shaking his head, “Litvinov did not commit suicide. They killed him. They had him under surveillance—these photos prove that—and they killed him for it. I know that, you know that—anyone who examines this critically has to come to the same conclusion. They murdered a man on British soil, and they want us to answer for it.”

  “You know that, Phillip,” Ashworth said quietly. “So far, you’re right, but no further. You and Julian Marsh, perhaps. But otherwise. . .you’re alone, and you can’t prove it. I couldn’t prove it, either, even presuming I was willing to stake the reputation of an embattled Service on what you ‘know.’”

  A knock came at the door before Greer could reply, Ashworth’s secretary’s head appearing around the door. “There is a call for Mr. Greer. A Darren Roth, G Branch—he says it’s urgent.”

  “Excuse me,” Greer said, rising from the chair. “I must take this.”

  “Tread carefully, Phillip,” Ashworth warned, his voice hard and cold, his eyes boring into Greer as he paused at the door. “The potential diplomatic fallout of what has already been done. . .is well-nigh incalculable. I won’t hear of you antagonizing the Russians further.”

  Greer turned without a word, closing the door of the inner office behind him as he moved over to the secretary’s desk, accepting the phone from her hand. “Darren?”

  “We got a call from Fleet Street a few minutes ago,” his officer replied, the words coming rapidly, his voice breathless with excitement. “Simon Norris showed up at the RBS branch less than a half hour ago, claiming to be on official business from Thames House and requesting access to Arthur Colville’s financial records.”

  Got you. “And?”

  “And it’s not clear just what happened next. He wasn’t given access, and left the bank to head back out on the street where we were able to acquire him on CCTV being picked up by someone driving a black Passat a few moments later. They’re headed south-east, near as we can tell—we’re working to track them now.”

  “Leave that to the techs,” Greer snapped, “and get us a car from the motor pool. I’ll meet you on the street in a few moments. And alert CO-19—have them mobilize a team.”

  “Yes sir.”

  4:02 P.M.

  London

  Failure. That was all that filled Norris’ mind as he sat in the back of the car, rain pelting down on the roof to the accompaniment of the rumble of thunder, glancing out through the heavily-tinted windows as London flashed past. One final time.

  He would never see this city again, so long as he lived, he realized—and that was the best case, assuming that the Russian would overlook his inability to fulfill the original conditions. The request—the order, really—which had been Vasiliev’s central focus from the beginning of their relationship.

  “The people handling him were careless. . .you can make this go away for us, can’t you? Find a way.”

  And he had found the way, and lost it. . .all in the space of an afternoon. A moment’s indecision.

  But he still had the list, Norris thought, glancing forward to where Vasiliev’s man sat in the driver’s seat of the Passat, an impassive, silent figure. Didn’t seem like the intelligence type, for some reason. A criminal, most likely.

  It was strange how discordant that judgment seemed to him in this moment, even as he prepared to exchange so very many lives, in exchange for his own.

  Outside the car, the rain continued to fall—lightning streaking across the sky back toward the Thames, the crack of thunder penetrating into the interior of the Passat.

  He could only hope it would be enough. . .

  4:06 P.M.

  Thames House

  Millbank, London

  The heavens had let loose by the time Phillip Greer emerged from the vaulted archway of Thames House out into the street, passing uniformed guards with slung Heckler & Koch MP-5s as he made his way to the waiting car.

  Fifteen steps. Less. But he was soaked to the skin in the time it took to cross the street, rain running in rivulets through his thinning gray hair—his suit jacket sodden, shirt uncomfortably plastered to his chest.

  Lightning rent the sky above them, the peal of thunder following behind it just as Greer slammed the door of the Audi shut.

  “Where are they now?” he demanded brusquely, offering no greeting or preamble as the car jerked into motion, an intense, focused look on Roth’s face as he guided it away from the kerb, the windscreen wipers offering up a rhythmic drumbeat.

  “Passing through Herne Hill now,” was the reply. “Cameras picked them up on the roundabout, merging southbound on the A2199.”

  “Already?” Greer swore, looking out the window as Roth merged with traffic heading out over Lambeth Bridge. London’s legendary congestion wasn’t cooperating with them this day—Norris was already further out of the city than he would have expected. Soon passing out of London’s CCTV blanket.

  Where were they headed?

  Out of the country, little doubt about that. But. . .what? Sea? Air? Was there still time to head them off?

  Time? Too much of it, for them to have any hope of making it to the coast. And the Russians would have to know that. Whatever Norris’ gambit at the bank had been, they would have been prepared for it to result in his compromise.

  And if he had yet to hand over the list. . .

  They wouldn’t want to give Thames House time to react, to mobilize a response. Get him out of the country, and fast. Beyond UK jurisdiction.

  Air.

  The conclusion reached him with startling certainty. It was only thing that made sense. Only realizing then that Roth was still talking.

  “. . .if they stay on the A2199, they should lose time in the traffic around Crystal Palace Park—we may be able to gain on them there.”

  It wouldn’t be enough. “Biggin Hill,” Greer announc
ed simply, cutting Roth off. “We need CO-19 meet us there—lock down the airport. No one in or out.”

  The former Royal Marine looked over at him, taking his eyes briefly off the road. “Are you sure?”

  “Think about it,” Greer returned, taking off his glasses and fishing for a handkerchief to wipe the raindrops from them. “On their current heading, it’s the closest general aviation airport to the city. Business jets depart from it all the time—many of them owned by Russian oligarchs with ties to the Kremlin.”

  And Ashworth’s warning echoed once more in his ears. Tread carefully, Phillip.

  But there was no time to consider that now, not with stakes this high. He saw the realization dawn across Roth’s face. “What’s one more Russian jet among so many?”

  A nod. “Lock it down.” Then, “Do you have a gun?”

  “No.” There was surprise in Roth’s eyes. “Of course not.”

  4:37 P.M.

  Biggin Hill Airport

  Bromley, UK

  “What do you mean?” Vasiliev demanded, taking a step off the stairs of the Embraer Legacy 450 business jet—his eyes boring in on the station manager.

  “Exactly what I said,” Carrick replied, seeming about to wring his hands in despair, the man’s entire demeanor craven. The attitude of a dog, seeking approval from his master. He turned toward Roman Igorevich, leaning heavily there against the door of the nearby Mercedes SUV. The young man had been drinking again, but hadn’t mixed them with any more drugs. Or at least Vasiliev was relatively sure. “I am deeply sorry that this has happened, Mr. Zakirov. I can’t begin to express how truly I regret that you’re being subjected to this inconvenience. I realize you must want to return to Russia as soon as possible.”