The Old Enemy

by Henry Porter

  As Lucas said, ‘Please state your names,’ Anastasia recognised them from the backs of their heads.

  ‘Special Agent Edward Harold Reiner.’

  ‘And I am Frank Toombs.’

  ‘Mr Reiner, you are a long-standing Federal Agent, serving with the FBI for twenty-five years. And Mr Toombs, you are senior member of the CIA with twenty-two years’ service, both in the field and at Langley. Is that correct for you both?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ they both said.

  ‘Lucas isn’t reading from notes!’ Samson whispered. ‘He knew!’

  ‘Since this is your idea, Ranking Member,’ continued Lucas, ‘I suggest you proceed, unless of course there are any objections from our colleagues.’ He looked up and down the lines of members. ‘Please go ahead.’

  ‘Gentlemen, please state your current status,’ said Speight.

  They looked at each other. Toombs spoke first. ‘I was given notice of likely termination this morning from my job at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, though as yet I have received nothing in writing.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that last part,’ said Speight. ‘Special Agent Reiner?’

  ‘I’m on paid leave of absence and I expect to be redeployed to Seattle,’ said Reiner.

  ‘And can I confirm that you were both working on the matters that we have touched upon this morning before you were threatened with termination and suspended? You have both been watching the live feed – yes?’

  They nodded.

  ‘And have you seen the material that is before us, the distilled version? And before you reply, I want to make quite sure that you understand that this committee has voted to support the principle that no one should be defamed, degraded or incriminated by these proceedings.’

  ‘We have seen all of the material,’ said Reiner. ‘By which I mean everything on Mr Hisami’s computer. It was delivered to me early this morning.’

  Speight nodded and weighed his next question. The room held its breath. ‘To the best of your knowledge, has the American government been penetrated by a network operated by and for the benefit of the Russian government, an operation run by five key players that has spread its tentacles and corruption through the top of our society, as well as using its considerable resources to gather personal details of millions of Americans under the guise of environmental and climate-change campaigns?’

  ‘Yes, to all those questions,’ said Toombs. ‘Special Agent Reiner and I have been informally working on this for some time, though it took us a while to put everything together. However, it is right to state we were way behind Mr Hisami’s investigation. That is what broke this open.’

  Lucas cleared his throat. ‘May I ask you gentlemen a question? Was the attack that took place here roughly two weeks ago carried out by the people you were investigating?’

  Toombs looked at Reiner and answered. ‘Yes, it was a coordinated assassination of Mr Hisami, Robert Harland and a man who has worked closely with both – Paul Samson, a former officer in MI6 in the UK.’

  ‘And Mr Samson was the only one to survive,’ said Speight.

  ‘Yes,’ said Toombs. ‘Without Mr Samson and many others, including, obviously, Mrs Hisami, none of this would have seen the light of day. Paul Samson is right here in this room, if you want to thank him.’ Samson looked down as the journalists scanned the room for likely candidates.

  ‘And you were stopped from pursuing the investigation because someone was pulling strings behind the scenes?’

  ‘We cannot speak to the motives or indeed the fact of any cover-up, but they have the dossier now and I believe resignations and arrests are already taking place.’

  ‘That’s good to hear. And what now for you both?’

  ‘We’re waiting to hear,’ said Toombs. ‘Though my seniors won’t be pleased to see me here.’

  ‘Well, I guess that’s just too bad. Congratulations on a fine job, the two of you, and also to Mrs Hisami and Mr Samson. I have no further questions, Mr Lucas.’

  The stunned silence that followed was broken by a moan from Daus’s direction. Samson and Anastasia jumped up to see her levitate from her seat, fight through the standing figures around, cuffing Ulrike in the process, and tear to the front, where she stood berating Warren Speight. ‘You are a traitor. I will destroy you.’

  Speight pulled the microphone towards him. ‘That is an epithet that surely applies to you more than me, ma’am.’

  She went on shouting. Unperturbed, he shuffled his papers, rose and paused for a moment to seek out Anastasia’s face in the crowd jostling to see and take pictures of Mila Daus. And, when he found her, he placed his hand on his heart and bowed, as they do in Afghanistan, where Speight had briefly served his country as a reservist and learned a whole lot more about chemical weapons. He looked up and mouthed the words, ‘You won!’

  Chapter 37

  Old Friends

  Macy Harp and the Bird were unaware of the drama unfolding in Congress. They were travelling through wooded landscape in the rental car, each with a cup of coffee in the beverage holder. They did not speak but occasionally glanced at each other and grinned. After many operations during the Cold War the once inseparable spies were working together again.

  For much of the weekend they’d recced the area north of Seneca Ridge, probing tracks that looped through the woods and weren’t visible on the public satellite photography of the area, which had all been shot in the summer months. They went unhurriedly, stopping to look at an otter lying in the sun on the bank of a stream and a bald-eagle nest. They had plenty of food. Macy had loaded up at a high-end food store in DC and the Bird made a neat little fire that was as hot and efficient as it was small. He fried steak in a skillet that he’d bought on the way in an outdoor sports store. They were content, like two boys playing hooky, and they talked of old times, going back forty years and more. Macy drank his fair share, while the Bird watched him with a wild affection. How many operations had they done together? the Bird mused. Something like twenty, the most hair-raising of which, they both agreed, had been undertaken in the winter, on a boat skippered by Gus Grinnel, when they searched for, and found, a man in a canoe with a tiny home-made sail off Sassnitz, on the East German coastline. They drank to Gus and to their old friend Bobby.

  By mid morning they were in position. The Bird winked at Macy and got out of the car. With the pistol he’d bought on the street in Washington tucked in the back of his waistband, he began the long trudge up to Seneca Ridge. It took about forty minutes to reach the incline to the houses. He walked two thirds of the way to the top then waited in the shade of a broad leaf oak, watching for any movement. There was none. He knew that Gaspar had no appointments at either of the two clinics because those were only held from Tuesday to Thursday. He approached the Pinzgauer truck, looked around and went to the door Gaspar had used to exit the building, which he’d noticed wasn’t locked. He entered and headed straight for the den, where two computer screens sat on a desk.

  The Bird was so quiet that Gaspar didn’t hear him. He was concentrating on one of the screens, a pair of reading glasses on the end of his nose, chin up and stroking his collarbone absently.

  The Bird coughed quietly and said, ‘Good morning Dr Gaspar.’

  ‘My God, General! Where the hell did you spring from? Have you come to buy the gun?’ He rose and folded the glasses. ‘They didn’t tell me you were here.’

  The Bird moved towards him, gun drawn, and said, ‘I have come to talk about my friend Bobby Harland, the man you had shot two weeks ago.’

  Gaspar spluttered that he didn’t know what he was talking about. Had the General lost his mind? What the heck did he think he was doing, walking into his home with a gun? He made for a pistol in his desk, but the Bird moved quickly to bring the gun down on his bare arm. A small gash appeared. Gaspar looked astonished. He reached for the phone. The Bird stopped that, too.
He now saw that Gaspar had been watching the stream from Congress being aired by Fox News. Anastasia was sitting alone at a table. Someone was asking her a question. The Bird nodded and smiled. This was the first he knew of what was happening in Congress.

  ‘You know her?’ said Gaspar incredulously.

  ‘Yes, she’s a remarkable young woman. Now pick up the gun case over there and walk to the door. If you do anything but walk and breathe, I will shoot you in the back of the head.’

  ‘Are you taking the gun?’

  ‘To fill a room like this with dead creatures?’ He looked from the elephant to the leopard then back to the rhinoceros head. He shook his head. If Gaspar had glanced at the Bird’s eyes instead of the street gun, he would have seen a look of great sadness, as well as disgust.

  The Bird pushed him out of the house to the Pinzgauer, where Gaspar made as though he had forgotten the keys. ‘They’re where you left them, clipped above the sun visor.’

  They drove to the spot they had stopped before, where Gaspar had excitedly climbed down. Waiting there was Macy Harp, sitting on a tree stump with his loafers resting on a boulder. He was peering at an anthill. The Bird, who never noticed much about a person’s mood, saw how content he seemed. Now he looked up and squinted at them in the sunlight. ‘So this is the fella who killed my friend Bobby,’ he called out. He got up and ambled over, picking his way through the grass, which had already grown tall in the spring warmth. He reached them and looked at Gaspar. ‘It’s funny,’ he said, addressing the Bird, ‘when you meet a real bad’un, how profoundly unimpressive they always are.’

  Gaspar shrank from him. He saw in the cheery, rubicund features something that really frightened him. ‘I haven’t got long to live, Mr Gaspar,’ started Macy conversationally. ‘A matter of weeks, they tell me. I have no pain – nothing like Robert Harland endured in his final days – so I count myself as fortunate.’ He looked around him. ‘But, when you’re dying, you see the wonder of things with such clarity. Bobby was painting when your man executed him, completing a work of sublime beauty. I can’t paint, but I have been watching those ants over there for nearly an hour and, to be honest, I haven’t spent a happier hour in the last forty years. Ants are quite simply marvellous, aren’t they?’

  Gaspar glanced at the Bird, as an improbable haven of sanity. The Bird handed the pistol to Macy and set about fixing the barrel of the Nitro Express rifle to the stock and fitting the forend under the barrels.

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Gaspar. ‘Money? I can give you more money than you could dream of.’

  Macy smiled. ‘It must be evident that I have no use for money.’

  ‘Normally, I’d take you up on that,’ said the Bird. ‘I could use a substantial donation for my place. I have a zoo and conservation projects that absolutely burn money.’ He looked down both barrels. ‘But, well, it seems I can do more for conservation and the wildlife right here with you.’

  ‘You have no ammunition,’ said Gaspar. ‘Let’s talk this over. Come on, fellas. You don’t want to do this.’

  ‘Oh, but I do have ammunition.’ The Bird put his hand in his pocket and held out his hand. Two large shells rolled across his open palm. He inserted them in the barrels and snapped the rifle shut.

  ‘You going to shoot me with that?’

  The Bird shook his head. ‘You start walking over there. Follow the deer track. If you want to run, please feel free to do so. Sporting chance, and all that.’

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ said Gaspar.

  ‘I am,’ said the Bird. And for the first time the smile vanished from his face. ‘Go!’

  Gaspar took a few steps, looking back at the rifle, then a few more. People and animals had flattened the path. It was tempting. He could make a dash for it. He ran thirty paces, picking up speed, then ducked down, took a firearm from his ankle holster – Bird had known it was there – turned and fired wildly in their direction. Macy ducked, but the Bird didn’t move. Gaspar ran a few more paces, and only then did the Bird raise the rifle. He didn’t aim at the figure fleeing chaotically through the dappled light, but rather at a spot a little ahead of him, and loosed off two shots in quick succession. The sound was deafening. Realising that he hadn’t been hit, Gaspar shot over his shoulder twice more and kept running – straight into the plume of cyanide gas that had been ejected from the baited M-44 trap that had so recently felled a six-hundred-pound bear. Exactly three paces beyond the trap he staggered, performed a grotesque pirouette, clutched his throat and fell forward.

  ‘That’s for Bobby,’ murmured Macy.

  ‘And for the baboon,’ added the Bird. He lowered the gun. ‘And the leopard, the warthogs, the rhino, the buffalo, the elephant, the bears, the deer and the croc.’ Indistinct sounds came from the grass up ahead of them, but very soon there was silence. ‘We’ll wait for the gas to clear,’ he said, beginning to wipe down the gun and the shells with a newly laundered red-spotted handkerchief.

  A few minutes later a breeze shook the leaves above where Gaspar had breathed his last. The Bird went over to the body, with the handkerchief pressed to his face, and laid the rifle near the outstretched hand that held the Saturday-night special. He took the little pistol in the handkerchief and unfastened the ankle holster with one hand. He removed his cap and placed the gun and holster in it, and peered at Gaspar’s face. The same foam was visible on his lips as had appeared on the bear’s muzzle. Having checked the scene once more, he turned to Macy.

  ‘Spot of lunch, Cuth?’

  ‘That’d be perfect,’ replied the Bird, and they walked to their vehicle, hidden a little way down the track. He used one of the food store’s bags for the handkerchief, cap and gun and holster and placed it in the trunk for disposal later.

  ‘Shame about the cap,’ said Macy, ‘I’d become rather fond of it on you.’

  ‘Had you,’ said the Bird, with his usual untamed pleasure. ‘How nice of you to say so. I saw a rather nice one in the camping store. Thought we might drop in on the way back, if that’s all right with you.’

  Epilogue

  From Room 2172, Anastasia and Samson were more or less propelled into the lobby, where the media jostled around them. Anastasia let go of Samson’s arm and said, ‘You don’t want your face on every news channel. I’ll see you in a few moments.’ He made his way to the back of the crowd and watched Ulrike gather the German witnesses around Anastasia, who stood looking into the camera lights. When eventually the noise had died down, he heard her say, ‘The dossier speaks for itself. I stand by all the information that my husband and countless others have assembled. It is now for the American and British people to make up their minds about Russian penetration of their governments, and the scandal of the governments’ cover-up.’

  Samson was aware of a voice at his side. ‘No doubt you’re proud of what you have done.’ It was Peter Nyman.

  ‘No,’ said Samson. ‘I’m proud of what Anastasia has done. Very proud.’ He turned to see Nyman’s tight-lipped, drained expression, smiled and shook his head.

  ‘You don’t give a damn, do you? I mean it’s all out there – everything.’ He swept his hand over the crowd.

  Naji had only just told Samson what had happened. When Homeland Security stormed into 2172 and seized Denis’s laptop, Rudi Rosenharte and Zoe Harland had pressed the button and released everything on the Web. By sharing it through a peer-to-peer network they eliminated the need for a vulnerable central server and ensured that Denis Hisami’s dossier couldn’t be taken down or sabotaged. The whole thing was being amped up across social media.

  Samson smiled again. ‘I understand perfectly what’s happened, Peter. The entire British establishment, including you and Ott, would prefer to take a few discreet actions then forget the whole affair. But a younger generation are outraged, and it was in their power to make sure nothing was swept under the carpet. That makes you seem, well, a bit obsolete, Pet
er.’

  ‘You think you’re going to get away with this? These matters were being dealt with at a level that you cannot even comprehend. Don’t you see? It was all in hand.’

  ‘That’s bollocks, Peter.’ Samson moved off to listen to what was going on.

  Ulrike had spoken. Now a CBS reporter called out a question to Anastasia. ‘Why should anyone believe the evidence of a war criminal?’

  ‘Because my husband was prepared to give his life for the country that became his home.’

  ‘Is it hard to mourn someone with that kind of past?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she fired back angrily. ‘He did more good than most of us. He lived with his own terrible guilt, but also the pain of what had been done to his people for centuries, and to his sister, who was murdered by Islamic State. He was America’s friend. Don’t ever forget that.’

  Anastasia had signalled Samson with a look that she was winding up when a woman reporter from Fox News asked, ‘Did you order the destruction of the server and internal networks at GreenState?’

  ‘I didn’t order anything. I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. That’s all I have to say.’ Samson moved to her side, and Zillah led them from the building.

  ‘What was that woman saying about GreenState?’ asked Anastasia.

  ‘Let’s talk outside,’ said Zillah. She turned to them both once they were through the doors. ‘Naji and his friends hacked the GreenState servers and published all the data in redacted form to show how the organisation has siphoned millions of people’s private information from social media accounts and a bunch of different commercial entities.

  ‘Actually, it’s kind of funny. They sent an email to everyone in GreenState’s database with an apology, a copy of their data and advice on how they might join a class action against GreenState and its hidden affiliates. Everything is laid out – people’s ethnicity, education, sexual orientation, family members, income, political views and relations with authority, institutions and local communities. Interestingly, it’s precisely the kind of information that was gathered by the Stasi in East Germany. They’ve also provided an account of how each individual was targeted with special ads by parties and campaigns. This is a big deal. It’s likely to get as much attention as what went on in there.’ She jerked her head towards Room 2172.