Motorbike Men

by Duncan James

  “I hope it all turns out as easy as you make it sound,” said Roger Lloyd.

  “It will be easy,” said Clayton, reassuringly, “except that you have to remember that you will be identifying yourself, attending your own inquest if you do need to go, and then going to your own funeral. You must, by then, have completely taken on the identity of Dr. Roger Lloyd.”

  “I honestly think I have, already. I feel quite happy with my new ‘self’ now.”

  “There is one other thing we need to do before we formally announce your death, and that is to tell a chosen few that you are, in fact, alive and well. We have been through your list and agree to everyone on it except your friend at the Lawrence Livermore University in California. I’m afraid he must not be told, otherwise your cover could well be blown.”

  “Why?”

  “Let me just remind you that the last time you were at the University, you had two KGB agents for company. I’m not saying your friend was responsible, but somebody there told them, and we have been unable to positively establish his trustworthiness with any absolute degree of certainty. The Americans have helped, but there remains an element of doubt, so we must err on the side of caution. It’s in your own interest that we do so, of course.”

  “So be it then.”

  “We are arranging for all the others to be briefed personally later this afternoon.”

  “What about the two colleagues who I hope to be working with overseas?”

  “They will be told later today as well. One of our team has been specially briefed, and is even now flying out to meet them.”

  ***

  It had taken some days for the news of Dmitry Makienko’s return to filter through the system to the Cabinet Office, and then Bill Clayton.

  Sir Robin Algar rang Clayton to tell him.

  “What the hell’s he doing back here?” said Clayton. “He’s only been away a week or two!”

  “Odd, isn’t it,” replied Algar. “Even odder, is the fact that he’s gone to the Trade Delegation offices at the Consulate in Highgate, and not to the Embassy in Kensington.”

  “How do you explain that?”

  “I can’t. My only conclusion is that he might think he will be less conspicuous there than in the Embassy, but don’t ask me why he needs to be. The fact is that he was not expelled by the UK Government, or designated a prohibited immigrant, so there was no way of preventing him from returning. And they haven’t claimed diplomatic status for him again, either, probably because they know it would have been refused.”

  “But he’s one of their top FSB men. They don’t usually hide them away.”

  “True, but there are others in Highgate. It’s a good front for them, especially if they are involved in industrial espionage.”

  “That’s not his trade,” said Clayton.

  “I understand from MI5’s Moscow station that he was given a bit of a bollocking when he got back, and sent for some pretty intensive re-training, probably more as a punishment than as a necessity.”

  “But that doesn’t explain why he was sent back here so quickly. Why here, and not some other place?”

  “They’re trying to check, and our man here also has his ear to the ground for us. I’ve asked Wilfred Forsyth to have a word with the Ambassador, to express our displeasure. I doubt whether we shall learn anything, though.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “How’s this for a theory, then,” said ‘S’. “If you ask me, Makienko’s back here because either he or his people in Moscow don’t believe Barclay is dead. He’s been sent back to check, and if he finds that the Professor is still alive and well, to finish the job he started.”

  There was another pause.

  “You could just be right, y’know.”

  “I’ll have a bit of a brainstorming here, and put Dusty Miller back on to Dr. Roger Lloyd, I think. Just to be on the safe side.”

  “That’s probably sensible.”

  “Can you have a word with ‘M’, and get him to arrange for his people to keep an eye on Makienko for us?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll have people at the inquest tomorrow as well, just to see who turns up. And in force at the cremation on Thursday.”

  “If Makienko is at either event, then at least we’ll know why he’s back.”

  “Yes. But then what do we do? We can’t shield Lloyd for the rest of his life.”

  “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, if we do,” said the Cabinet Secretary, ending the red phone conversation.

  ***

  Forsyth rang the Russian Ambassador.

  “I thought I would speak to you on the phone, Mr. Nevsky, rather than put you to the trouble of asking you call here again.”

  “That is considerate of you, Sir William. How may I help this time?”

  “We are most concerned, Mr. Ambassador, to discover that Dmitry Makienko has returned to this country.”

  “Has he really?” asked Nevsky, feigning surprise. “You mean the man who used to be our second secretary in the commercial department? That Makienko?”

  “The very same,” confirmed Forsyth.

  “Are you quite sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well! You do surprise me. I have certainly not been told, and neither have I seen him about the Embassy. I shall have to make enquiries and get back to you.”

  “You will not have seen him about the Embassy, Yuri, because he appears to be based at the Trade Delegation.”

  “In Highgate? Really!”

  “Let’s not play games, Ambassador. You will recall that Her Majesty’s Government only pulled back from expelling the man on the strength of your assurances that he would leave this country the day after our meeting.”

  “Which he did.”

  “Exactly. But we did not expect that your government would see fit to send him back here almost immediately.”

  “I am not sure that my government has done so. As I said, I shall need to make enquires.”

  “Please do so, then, with all speed. Let me remind you that, when we last spoke about this, I was able to show you evidence which linked him with the murder of one of our public servants.”

  “Ah, yes. The faked photographs.”

  “You know very well they were not fakes, Ambassador, and I can now tell you that we have direct and positive forensic evidence that Makienko did indeed carry out the crime.”

  “And what might that be, can I ask?”

  “You may ask, but I shall not tell you. That will be revealed in a court of law, probably at the Old Bailey, when your man is charged with murder.”

  “Come, come, Sir Wilfred. Surely it will not come to that?”

  “That depends on you, Mr. Nevsky. You said you needed to make enquiries because once again, it seems, your officials have been less than honest with you, and have failed to brief you. I must ask you formally to contact me within the hour with an explanation of this totally unacceptable behaviour on the part of your government. If you are unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for the man’s continuing presence in this country, then you will leave me with only two possible courses of action. One would be to demand his immediate expulsion, and the other to arrange his immediate arrest. I shall make sure that whichever I decide gets the maximum possible publicity, and that your own role in this unsavoury affair is left in no doubt.”

  There was a moment’s silence from the Ambassador.

  “I shall ring you within the hour,” said Nevsky quietly.

  When he did so it was to explain that Makienko was in London in a private capacity, no doubt as a tourist, that he had travelled on his personal passport, that he had no diplomatic status whatsoever, and that he was not working at the Trade Delegation, but staying nearby with friends in Highgate.

  “I have, however,” continued the Ambassador, “in the interests of furthering the good relations which currently exist between our two countries, issued instructions that Makienko is to be contac
ted immediately and instructed to leave the country forthwith. Again.”

  “And not to return,” insisted Forsyth.

  “And not to return,” confirmed Nevsky.

  “We shall watch developments with interest, Mr. Ambassador, and I shall seek a further meeting with you in this office if there is any evidence that your instructions are not being carried out with all haste.”

  “Thank you, Sir Wilfred. I understand perfectly.”

  Once again, Yuri Nevsky had come off second best in a confrontation with the man from the Foreign Office.

  Nevsky had always been one of those who subscribed to the view that, in these days, Ambassadors were more social than crucial.

  He was fast beginning to change his mind.

  ***

  Clayton called together his top team, and asked Barbara to get Miller along as well.

  “There’s an old friend of yours back in town, Miller,” said ‘S’

  “Makienko?” he asked immediately.

  “What made you think that?”

  “Just a hunch, that’s all.”

  “Well, I wish you’d shared it with us. He’s back at the Trade Delegation in Highgate. Arrived a few days ago, apparently, travelling as a tourist on his own passport, not as a diplomat.”

  “It doesn’t really surprise me,” said Miller. “We were too quiet for too long about Barclay’s murder. They must have smelt a rat.”

  “In all honesty, we couldn’t do anything else until the police found his body, and we needed all the time we could get as well to make sure Dr. Roger Lloyd was ready to face his public. Barclay’s nervous breakdown was the best we could do.”

  “There shouldn’t be any doubt about his death now,” said Nick Marsden. “It’s a big story in all the papers, especially the tabloids, with photographs.”

  “OK,” said Clayton. “Now let’s think about this. Makienko is back, for one reason or another, either officially or as a tourist, which is what he claims. Nobody will believe that, though. The fact is that Makienko must be back in London because he, or someone in Moscow, believes Professor Barclay is still alive. And I agree with you, Miller, that they would be quite justified in reaching that conclusion until now. So the question is, if Makienko is still after Barclay, or Lloyd as he now is, who should we keep an eye on? One, or the other, or both?”

  “Makienko doesn’t know me, but I know him,” said Miller. “I also know Lloyd, so I could keep a close watch on him, and spot the Russian if he should show up.”

  “If Makienko does think Lloyd is Barclay, he’s going to have another go at getting rid of him,” said Newell. “I can’t see him doing that at the coroner’s court, but I suppose the crematorium might present an opportunity.”

  “The Russians will need to be sure Barclay is still alive before they risk doing anything,” said Doc Perkins. “Lloyd is not at all like Barclay now, and in any case we don’t think Makienko ever met the Professor anyway. He will have photos of Barclay of course, but they won’t be enough. So he will have to rely on inside information.”

  “If you mean someone telling him, that will mean we have an informer in our camp,” said ‘S’. “And Jarvis is dead, so it can’t be him.”

  “Someone told them Barclay was going to California,” Newell reminded the meeting, “otherwise there would not have been KGB men at the reception in the university,”

  “I must say, I had always assumed an American source for that, and we’ve been careful to make sure they all believe Barclay has been killed,” said Clayton.

  “If the Russians can turn Jarvis, though, they can turn anyone, even if Jarvis was blackmailed.” said Marsden. “I think we need to get MI5 to mount a ‘mole’ hunt, and pretty quickly. Meanwhile, we have to assume that the Russians know what’s going on, and that they know Lloyd is Barclay under another name. For us to do otherwise would be plain stupid.”

  “I agree,” said Clayton. “The possibility of an informer in our midst has worried me for some time, I must be honest. Stay behind afterwards Nick, and we’ll talk about it.”

  “As a matter of interest,” asked Miller, “what’s Lloyd going to do for a living when the dust settles?”

  “He’s said he wants a change, and has asked to join the UK team at the CERN project in Switzerland. He knows of a couple of people there – fellow particle physicists – and Sir Robin Algar has arranged for him to go out there immediately after the cremation, which in turn will be immediately after the inquest. He obviously can’t go back to his old job in the nuclear fusion research field at Culham, although he can continue to help as a consultant while he’s abroad. A few people on his old project will know of his new ‘alias’, and know too that they can call on him from time to time if they must. Once the heat is off, there is no reason why Lloyd shouldn’t even visit Harwell now and then, if he needs to.”

  “I’ll go with him to Switzerland,” said Miller, without being asked. “I shall also need to be in the coroner’s court and at the cremation, since I know what Dmitry Makienko looks like, and everyone else has only seen the photos I took of him. I’ll bet he turns up at one or the other.”

  “I think we should deploy quite a few people at the crematorium. I can’t imagine that Makienko will attend the service or anything that brazen, but he could well be in the grounds somewhere with a pair of field glasses, and we need to be able to spot him if he does turn up,” said Newell. “I’ll organise that if you like.”

  Clayton nodded, and the meeting broke up. Commander Nick Marsden stayed behind.

  “Close the door Nick, and grab a seat.”

  There was an awkward silence for a moment,

  “This is about Barbara, isn’t it.” It was a statement rather than a question from Marsden.

  “It could be, Nick,” agreed Clayton. “Or it could be about you, or me or even Barbara’s mother.”

  “I suppose so,” agreed Marsden. “It’s probably the same thing that’s worried the life out of me in the last few days that’s worrying you.”

  “How did the Russians know that Jarvis was Donald’s father?”

  “Exactly,” agreed Marsden. “How the hell did they know? Who can possibly have told them?”

  “There aren’t that many possibilities, are there?” postured Clayton.

  “Agreed,” said Marsden. “Barbara and Alan Jarvis obviously knew, but Jarvis was hardly likely to tell anyone, let alone the Russians, for exactly the reason that it would lay him open to blackmail, and put his career at risk.”

  “And Barbara?” probed Clayton. “You are closer to her than anyone. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think, to be honest, Bill. In spite of the fact that we are supposed to be getting married at some time, I have done my honest best to be objective about this, to put the job first and all that jazz, but I simply cannot see any motive on Barbara’s part. What would she possibly gain by telling the Russians something that nobody else knew about? Revenge on Jarvis? If she’d wanted that, she would have buggered his career sooner by telling me, or Sir Robin Algar or someone. Telling the Russians makes no sense to me. The fact is she told nobody until you stumbled across the possibility and forced her into admitting the fact.”

  “So that puts me in the frame. I could have told the Russians,” said Clayton. “And so could you, and so, possibly, could her mother, if in fact she knew Jarvis was Donald’s father. Do you think she did?”

  “I have no idea, Bill. I’m sure Barbara would tell us if we asked, but again we come back to the question of motive. Unless there’s a vital piece of information we’re missing, nobody on that list of five people seems to have the slightest motive for telling anyone, let alone the Russians.”

  “I tend to agree,” said Clayton. “So how else could they have found out?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Marsden. “Just suppose – only suppose for a minute - that the Russians had been tailing Jarvis for some time. They would have seen him visit Barbara’s place and
seen him with the boy.”

  “So what?” queried Clayton.

  “So if they were trying to get something on the man, perhaps with a view to blackmail, they would naturally have been suspicious, wouldn’t they?”

  “Keep going.”

  “So they would wonder, as you or I would wonder, why Jarvis had an interest in Donald. They would also know, or soon find out, that the identity of Donald’s father was not common knowledge – in fact a carefully guarded secret.”

  “So?”

  “So they might just put two and two together, and set about trying to find a connection.”

  Clayton nodded thoughtfully. “If they suspected that Jarvis could have been Donald’s father, they would need to prove it one way or the other. That means they would either need someone to admit to the fact, or they would need documentary evidence.”

  “Keep going.” It was Marsden who challenged Clayton this time.

  “Documents,” said Clayton quietly. “What documents could there be, apart from a birth certificate, perhaps?”

  “Bloody hell, Bill! That’s it! The boy’s birth certificate is almost bound to show the father’s name!”

  “Tell you what, Nick. The Family Research Centre or something like that – the old Public Record Office, - is just round the corner from here. Why don’t you nip over and see what you can find.”

  “I know the place! I’ve walked past it a hundred times. I’m off!”

  “Wait!” commanded Clayton.

  Nick Marsden sat down again.

  “The other option is just to ask Barbara,” said Clayton simply. “Why don’t you do that instead?”