by Henry Porter
‘Yes, there’s a bottle of Scotch beside your chair.’
He grasped the bottle – Anastasia had consumed about a third – and went for one of the glasses wrapped in cellophane. ‘It’s more complicated than you think, Samson. People in our administration, the Russian government and the UK government are all unified at this time by a desire to see you, the Syrian boy and Mrs Hisami taken off the map. You need to hide and keep your cellphones switched off, and stop using the internet. That’s my advice to you for the next sixty hours. Get the hell off the grid.’
‘So you’ll get Stepurin to make the call?’
‘Here’s the deal. I will make sure that call happens tonight, but you have to give me the entire dossier before it’s made public. I mean everything! I need to know what’s going down.’
‘Okay. That won’t be until after the weekend. But you’ll let me know about the call either way, yes?’
He nodded. They shook hands and Reiner got up, contemplated the rest of his whisky, then washed it down the sink and rinsed out the glass. A careful and considerate man, Reiner.
At that moment they heard shouting. It was Anastasia. He ran the length of the corridor and tore past two nurses who had emerged to see what was causing the second disturbance of their shift. From Denis’s room hurried two men, both in jackets and ties, pursued by Anastasia, who was brandishing one of the hospital’s now empty drip stands. They brushed past Samson, one of them, absurdly, putting on dark glasses as he did so.
He reached Anastasia. She was heaving with anger and exertion.
‘I went to the bathroom, came back and found them searching the room. They were about to search the body.’ She shook her head, put the stand down and told the nurses that everything was all right. They looked doubtful, but left.
Samson and Anastasia turned to Denis’s body. Shrunken, and without the slightest hint of the energy that had propelled him from the dust and chaos of Kurdistan to the very top of American society, he was unrecognisable. Anastasia expressed what Samson was thinking. ‘This isn’t him, is it? He’s gone. He wouldn’t want us here. I think we should leave.’ She stood up, looked down at him and kissed his forehead. Then she slipped both hands under his body.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he hissed.
She withdrew the computer and put it in her shoulder bag. ‘If I’d come back a minute later, they would have found it.’ She looked at Denis once more, touched his folded hands and mouthed goodbye. ‘It was the only place I could think of. And Denis would have found it funny,’ she said, turning to the door.
‘I thought Naji had it.’
‘He didn’t take it when he left and, as I sat here with Denis, I began to think he’d want me to handle everything now.’ She closed the door behind her and didn’t look back.
Reiner had gone but when they reached the elevators Samson received a text: ‘That was Homeland Security.’
Anastasia and Samson slept for a few hours in a large suite in the Jefferson Hotel. He held her for most of that time and whispered to her, and in the morning she asked him to make love to her. Before dressing she sat on the side of the bed and phoned Marty Reid to tell him to bring the meeting forward and that it would take place in one of the Jefferson’s business suites. She ended the call before he could protest for a second time that it would take him two hours at least to reach DC by car; after his son’s death he didn’t take helicopters.
They had rearranged it so that the announcement of Denis’s death would be after Reid’s arrival, partly to see whether he already knew, in which case he had spoken with Daus or Gaspar, who could only have been informed that Denis was out of the way by Stepurin. On the advice of Macy Harp, who had arrived at the hotel and ordered himself breakfast, they would only play tough and use the existence of the film if absolutely necessary. Macy’s experience of questioning and turning traitors in the Cold War suggested that pressure worked best if it was implied. ‘The looming threat is always more terrifying than the stated one.’ He was greatly saddened by Denis’s death, but that didn’t inhibit a cold assessment of the challenge. ‘You lead,’ he said to Anastasia. ‘It’s fine to have Samson in the room with you, but use the position you’re in. If Samson talks too much, Reid will see it as a challenge. But you are grieving, and that will make him listen. It’s going to be hard, but use the history of the Cold War. Fighting communism means something to someone of my and his generation.’
There was no hint of Macy’s terminal illness in his manner, or his choice of a cooked breakfast.
‘We’re going to have to make ourselves scarce until Monday. What are you going to do for the weekend?’ asked Samson.
‘Cuth and I have plans to meet up with one or two old chums from the Agency in the eighties. Should be fun. And we thought we’d take a look at the spectacular countryside at some point.’ This was said into a plate of hash browns and sausage. When he looked up, he ignored Samson’s stare.
Reid arrived in golfing attire and a poor mood. He was shown into the meeting room, where there was coffee and iced tea and a selection of sandwiches. He gave Samson a suspicious look and sat down. ‘What is it that you so urgently needed to tell me in person?’ he asked.
He hadn’t asked about Denis, or why they were meeting at the hotel rather than the hospital.
‘You haven’t heard?’ Anastasia said.
‘Haven’t heard what?’
She waited and searched his face. Samson had already decided that he knew.
‘Denis died last night, of natural causes. His heart just stopped. Sadly, no one was with him, but we believe it was peaceful.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Reid. ‘Of natural causes . . . and you say you weren’t there. So distressing for you, Anastasia.’
‘Yes, I wish I had been able to say goodbye and tell Denis how much I loved and admired him.’
‘Terribly sad. Thank you for telling me. When are you announcing this?’
‘About now.’ She looked at her watch.
‘Was there anything else? You told me you wanted to speak in person before Denis’s passing, so I guess there is.’
‘What do you know about Denis’s work over the last few years, Marty?’
‘He’s made a very good comeback with some sound investments, which I have sometimes followed.’ He smiled. ‘I always thought I knew the media and the music business, but Denis beat me to a couple of good deals.’
‘His other work.’
He looked perplexed and shifted in his seat. He was a tall man, but when he was sitting his stomach bulged over his waistband and it evidently made him uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know what you’re referring to.’
Anastasia leaned forward with her hands clasped. If Reid had been half as alert as he thought he was, he might have asked why this grieving widow looked so composed. ‘Like you, Denis was a patriot. He cared profoundly about liberty and democracy. He loved this country – it gave him everything.’ Reid nodded. ‘So when he discovered a network of foreign agents that had infiltrated the highest councils and agencies in the land, he was determined that it should be exposed. That’s why he died.’
‘Network?’
‘Yes, led by a woman named Mila Daus, also known as Mila Muller and Mila Mobius. She was a member of the East German security service – the Stasi.’ She stopped and looked for the tell, which came in the form of a brief fluttering of his left eyelid. ‘It’s a very effective network based on a classic cell structure. Everything feeds into her and her stepson, Jonathan Mobius. People worry about cyber, but Denis and his friend Robert Harland, also murdered, knew that if a foreign asset is in the room with the most powerful people in the land – the bankers and politicians and intelligence officials – then hacking is child’s play. For over thirty years, Daus has been feeding secrets and intelligence back to her Russian handlers. Her influence increases by the day. We’re at the point when she ca
n do just about anything she damn well wants, including contaminating the heart of American democracy with nerve agent.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because you’re one of her people, Marty.’
‘How do you reach that bizarre conclusion?’
‘Because we know, Marty! Denis knew, too.’
There was no eruption, but the blackest look entered his eyes and his mouth resolved into a tight, lipless, downturned line. ‘I like you, Anastasia, but don’t mistake me for some liberal sea sponge. I am not in the habit of rolling over. I never have and I’m not going to start now.’
‘Yes, Marty, you’ll nail me to a prairie washboard, etcetera. I notice you didn’t deny your association with Daus. You couldn’t very well do that, could you? Because there are pictures of you together.’ Samson glanced in her direction. This wasn’t going the way they had agreed.
Reid worked his way to the front of the leather armchair and launched himself forward with a grunt. ‘I’m not going to listen to this. You’ll be hearing from my lawyers.’
Anastasia didn’t move, didn’t even look up at him as he stood. ‘You aren’t going anywhere, Marty.’ She held up her phone. ‘Because if you do, the evidence of your entrapment will be published within the hour.’ She waited a beat. ‘But why are we concerned with this? Why don’t we just talk about the damage being done to the country you love?’
He stood stooped, exuding a kind of raw, primitive aggression. ‘She’s a business associate. She knows thousands of people.’
‘I want you to meet someone,’ she said. ‘Would you do me that favour?’
This certainly surprised Samson, but then in the brief meeting with Macy he had noticed the flash of steel when Macy suggested Anastasia give the computer to Zillah Dee for safekeeping. Anastasia was keeping the computer and doing things her own way. And why not? This was her husband’s legacy.
Anastasia sent a text and within a couple of minutes the door opened and, to Samson’s considerable astonishment, Ulrike entered.
She looked at her most regally beautiful as she offered Reid her hand and a charming smile. Samson changed chairs so she could sit next to the one Reid reluctantly re-occupied. ‘You’ve got ten minutes,’ Reid said. ‘Ten minutes before I rain down hell on you.’
‘Ulrike is the widow of Robert Harland,’ said Anastasia. ‘She was the most important Western spy in East Germany in the closing months of the Cold War.’ She lost her husband two weeks ago. He was shot in cold blood while painting in the countryside. She wants to tell you her story.’
Ulrike began in 1989 and, because she could tell a story clearly and without superfluous detail, Reid was soon listening. She spoke of meeting her first husband, the risks they took while working with the CIA and MI6 to seize, in Leipzig, an Arab terrorist sponsored by the Stasi, her capture and confinement in a Stasi jail and her first encounter with the ice-cold supervisor of interrogations, Mila Daus. Then came the fall of the Berlin Wall, her release and her marriage to Rudi Rosenharte, which was followed by his murder and her eventual marriage to Robert Harland. That she had lost two husbands to Daus was stated as a matter of fact; she did not dwell on it. Rather she talked about her work with Western intelligence services – she emphasised her dealings with the CIA – before the Wall came down. She went on to detail her experience looking at her file in the Stasi archive which, because of Daus’s obsession with data, was a revelation about their power.
‘And this was before the internet became part of all our lives,’ she said. ‘Now Mila Daus collects the data of American citizens with perfect ease.’ She stopped. ‘I know you are an important and busy man, sir, but I want to tell you about the archive. Victims of the Stasi were allowed by the authorities to inspect their own file at the archive in Berlin. I went there and found the details of my life – my boyfriends, my dental appointments, my mother’s illnesses, her love of canaries, references to my college project, my taste for making clothes and the money I made from selling them, the name of our neighbour’s dog, my absolute failure at any sport, my love of Bach – honestly, they knew more about my life than I did, and that was before I was working for the West.’
Reid plainly wondered why he was being told this.
‘When I was in the archive I met a woman who was about ten years older than me. She’s the sort of person you see in a bus line anywhere in Germany, utterly ordinary: a pleasant face yet eyes that betrayed her struggle. She was sitting near the desk I was using and suddenly she began to cry. I went to comfort her and she told me her story. I won’t trouble you with too much detail, but this woman was arrested for making a joke in a store about the Party leader, Erich Honecker. She was put in Hohenschönhausen jail, where she became one of the first subjects of Mila Daus. She was there for two years and was only released when her husband had divorced her and gained custody of her daughter and son. She never saw them again, even after the liberation. And you know why? Mila Daus told her husband that she had betrayed him with another woman and that she’d had many lesbian lovers all through their marriage, which was untrue. She was barred from the weddings of her children, has never met her grandchildren and has led a life of lonely destitution. Until she read her file and saw that Daus had persuaded her neighbours and friends to collaborate in the lie, convincing her husband that she liked women, she never knew the reason. And now he’s dead and the children will still have nothing to do with her.
‘It’s a small story from the Communist era, but it tells you of the kind of pain that is Mila Daus’s life’s work.’ She had held her hands together. Now she leaned forward and touched Reid’s wrist. ‘She murdered the only two men I ever loved. She murdered first the father of my son, then his stepfather, whom he loved very much.’
‘I’m sorry, but this has nothing to do with me.’
‘But it does, Mr Reid. I can see that you are a good man and you’ve had your share of pain and loss. But now you need to help us expose this woman and save your country. You are the only person who can do this.’
‘I’m not in a position to help.’ He had admitted nothing, but Ulrike’s sympathetic appeal had eroded his resistance.
‘But you are in a position to help us, sir,’ said Samson. ‘All we want is for you to bring Mila Daus to the Foreign Relations Committee on Monday afternoon in Room 2172 of the Rayburn Building.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘Because she will hear Denis’s reputation being destroyed,’ said Anastasia. ‘For her, it will be the ultimate victory.’
‘By Warren Speight? You know my feelings about him.’
‘Yes, by Speight and others.’
‘I have absolutely nothing to hide,’ said Reid. But the titan of American business didn’t look convinced of that. If he had nothing to hide, why was he still in the room?
‘When we talked at that fundraiser,’ said Anastasia, ‘I really felt we had a connection. Can I just ask you to do this for Denis and me, after everything that we went through?’
Reid was about to say something, but a knock at the door broke the spell and he began to shuffle forward out of his seat. One of Zillah’s bodyguards came in and bent down to whisper to Anastasia. Samson could hear that Homeland Security agents were in the building. The Agency, routinely used as the presidential enforcers, was demanding entry to the suite that Samson and Anastasia had used under the name of Zillah’s personal assistant. Her people had already got Naji out a half-hour before, and Mr Avocet had left with Mr Harp some time ago.
Anastasia rose to make a final plea, but it was Ulrike who hooked her arm with Reid’s and walked him from the room. They didn’t hear what she said to him, but they saw him with his head bowed and shaking before they were led by two of Zillah’s men to a car waiting in the service road at the back of the hotel.
Zillah was in the front passenger seat on the phone with a laptop on her knees. ‘It’s all kick
ing off, but it’s only the waterheads at Homeland Security who really don’t have a clue,’ she said. ‘Ask them to beat up protestors and they can just about do that, but anything else and they go to pieces. If it were the Agency, or the Bureau, we’d be in trouble.’ She turned round for the first time. ‘But they’re taking the weekend off. And so are we. You’re going to spend the next thirty-six hours on Ariel II.’
‘That’s your boat?’ asked Samson, the memory of crossing the North Sea in Silent Flight fresher than he’d wish.
‘My new boat! You’ll like her – roomy, very sleek and beautiful to behold under full sail. The love of my life.’
Ariel II was moving sedately across the wind, some distance off shore, where the Potomac and Anacostia rivers meet the Washington Channel. They boarded a small launch, driven by a tanned blonde woman in a dark blue windcheater with Ariel II printed on her breast. ‘This is Daphne, your skipper today,’ said Zillah. ‘I’ll join you later in the weekend.’
Before he got on board Samson received a call from Ivan at Cedar telling him that Peter Nyman urgently wanted to be in touch. He explained to Anastasia that he needed to return the call to find out what Nyman wanted before they left. ‘They’re going to track the phone you use to call back,’ said one of the bodyguards and handed him her phone. ‘Try this.’
The number rang: an American dial tone. Nyman was in the States. ‘How can I help, Peter?’ said Samson.
‘Denis Hisami is dead, and we think that should be an end to the matter.’
‘Who am I to argue with that? If you think the matter is over, that’s fine.’
‘The British government is working to resolve certain aspects of this affair and we do not need your interference now.’
Samson grinned at the phone. ‘It’s not my interference you have to worry about. Maybe you should look east, and, by the way, I literally have no plans other than a weekend in the Blue Ridge Mountains.’
‘When are you returning to the Washington area?’
