by Tom Bradby
‘But if I’m right, we’ll be putting Kate and her team in danger if we allow them to proceed. Their entire operation could be compromised before it has even begun.’ Suzy sounded almost plaintive.
All three looked at Kate. She shrugged. ‘You raise an interesting question over Rav’s murder, Suzy. We shouldn’t and won’t sweep it aside lightly. But I’m ultimately confident my husband was Viper. And I agree with Sir Alan: nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of this operation.’ Kate was aware of the formality of her language. It almost sounded like she and the chief were in a police interview, but perhaps that was what having a member of Five around did to you.
The foreign secretary nodded. ‘All right, we’ll leave it there for now. Kate, you and your team will go to Berlin and we’ll assess where we stand on your return. But, I repeat, I want to take this step by step.’
It was clear their audience was over. Kate and Suzy both stood, though Sir Alan did not move. Kate turned back at the door. ‘Would you like us to wait for you, sir?’
‘No, thank you. We have other matters to deal with.’ He smiled again at Kate.
She wished them both goodnight and walked out to the car waiting by the fountain in the driveway. Suzy got in with her. Neither spoke for some time, though even the driver must have sensed the tension in the back. Eventually, Kate could contain her curiosity no longer. ‘How come you know the foreign secretary so well?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Then why did she call you “Suzy”?’
‘I don’t know. I only met her earlier this afternoon.’
Suzy was staring out of the window to avoid Kate’s gaze, but she was plainly lying. ‘I think you tried to go a bit far in there, if I may say so,’ Kate suggested.
‘I wasn’t trying to do anything except my job.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
‘I was asking a question you should perhaps have asked. And I think you know that.’
Her sanctimony stung Kate into a response. ‘Don’t they throw a spell at Charm School into the training programme for the Security Service?’
Suzy was visibly upset. ‘I’m really sorry, Kate. I know my manner can be tactless. My last boss at the Security Service said as much and couldn’t wait to approve my transfer.’
If the vulnerability in Suzy’s eyes was not genuine, then she was a damned good actress. ‘Look, forget it. You’re right on both counts. I should have asked the question and I do know it.’ Suzy smiled at her. ‘Let’s talk about it when I get back from Berlin.’
‘I really think I should accompany you to—’
‘I need you here.’
‘I have to be there. I mean, I want to be. This is exactly why I asked for the transfer from across the river. Please.’
Suzy’s transition from snake in the grass to vulnerable young woman and back again was bewildering, but Kate no longer had the energy to fight it. ‘All right,’ she said, but it didn’t stop her train of thought. If Suzy knew the foreign secretary much better than she was letting on, then the question was how? And was she Simpson’s eyes and ears inside the Service? Was that why she had been foisted upon them? Kate resolved to treat her with still more caution.
‘Thank you,’ Suzy said. ‘Thank you very much.’
10
KATE WAS RELIEVED that the house was still empty when she got home, the children having not yet returned from Cornwall with Rose and Simon. The respite she’d felt during the meeting at Chevening receded with the onset of fatigue, and the energy drained from her once more. She put on the kettle to make a cup of tea, then thought better of it and poured herself an enormous glass of white wine instead.
She sat at the table to drink it, wondering if this was what being an alcoholic felt like. She looked at Nelson, quite possibly the laziest beagle she had ever come across, gazing up at her without much enthusiasm from his basket in the corner. She got down on her hands and knees to rub his head and scratch his tummy, then lay flat so that she could put her head alongside his in the basket. He didn’t much like to travel, these days, so she relied on a neighbour to look after him when she and the children were away.
Good God, his breath smelt. Perhaps that was what old age did to you. She shifted position so that her head was resting on his back instead and closed her eyes. It wasn’t exactly comfortable on the tiled floor, but she was as likely to get to sleep there as anywhere else.
She lay there until the smell of him got too much, then stood and walked through to the living room. She switched on the TV and channel-surfed for a few minutes.
She’d managed an entire vacuous half-hour watching Game of Thrones before the doorbell rang. She glanced through the keyhole to check that it was Fiona and Gus, no doubt having forgotten their keys, only to see Imogen Conrad standing there.
Damn, Kate thought. The very last thing she needed. Was the woman stark, staring mad? She waited, pretending no one was in and hoping her unwanted guest would get the message and turn away.
Fat chance. The bell rang again. Kate gritted her teeth, opened the door and smiled. She was determined not to give her former friend the satisfaction of seeing just how much hurt she’d caused.
When she was talking politics, Imogen rarely drew breath, and Kate could tell tonight was going to be no exception. ‘What do you think?’ she asked, as she marched through the kitchen to the living room beyond. ‘Oh, God, wine on a Sunday night. I shouldn’t . . .’
Kate hadn’t been intending to offer, but she filled a glass more or less to the top, since she’d long ago learnt that Imogen really did like to drink, and returned to the living room. ‘Game of Thrones?’ Imogen said, looking at the screen, paused on a dragon in flight.
‘Better late than never.’
‘I couldn’t watch. Too much violence and all the energetic sex just reminded me of what I miss with Harry.’ Imogen took a large sip of her wine. ‘Too much information?’
‘I should say so.’
‘I’m sorry. I suppose you’re single again.’
‘I suppose I am.’
The silence that followed this reference to the fallout of Stuart’s betrayal was awkward enough to have both of them avoiding each other’s eye. In the immediate aftermath of Stuart’s admission of his affair with Imogen – or, rather, their episodic trysts, since both denied it had ever been more than that – she had bombarded Kate with phone messages containing ever more profuse and abject apologies. They had been followed by letters, then unannounced visits.
Kate knew then as she did now that she should have been angrier with her erstwhile friend, but she couldn’t quite summon the bitterness the circumstances seemed to demand. Imogen was every clichéd politician writ large: engaging and entertaining, but unfaithful and untrustworthy. Kate had never laboured under any illusions regarding her, but Stuart was the rock she herself had built her life on. She reserved her rage, therefore, for him and allowed herself to be bludgeoned into submission by his former boss, knowing that Imogen’s desperate attempts to preserve some vestige of their friendship were nothing more than an attempt to salve her own conscience. ‘So, what do you think?’ Imogen asked, still staring at the TV screen. Kate quickly turned it off.
‘About dragons?’
‘No! What’s going on in Estonia.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘What do you mean, “Oh, that”? What else would I be talking about? I’m surprised you’re not stuck at your desk.’
‘I’ve just come back from seeing Meg Simpson.’
‘What did she have to say?’
‘About what?’
‘The prime minister’s response, of course! I mean everything we said – you said – during the leadership election looks like it must have been true. He’s a Russian spy, isn’t he? How else do you explain his utterly bizarre reaction unless he really is working for the Russians?’
‘Innate caution?’
‘But he isn’t a cautious man, is he? In fact, we’d probably agree he’s reckless by n
ature – and pretty bellicose when it suits him.’
‘I suppose so.’ Kate wanted to get out of this conversation. She was relieved to see the wine disappearing at a rate of knots.
‘What are you going to do?’
Not refill the glass, she thought. ‘About Estonia?’
‘The suggestion that he’s a Russian spy!’
Kate sat down on the arm of the sofa. She suddenly needed to. ‘There’s nothing we can do. We have no evidence. The case is closed. He’s the prime minister, after all.’
‘Have you spoken to Meg about it?’
‘No.’ Kate avoided Imogen’s penetrating gaze.
‘Are you all right?’ Imogen asked. ‘You don’t look well.’
‘Just tired.’
‘I’m sorry. I know the past six months have been . . . very difficult.’
Kate smiled weakly. She had forgotten: Imogen also had a gift for understatement. ‘I should probably get some rest. I understand what you’re saying, but I honestly don’t think there’s very much we can do about it.’
Imogen drained her wine and stared at the floor, deep in thought. She started waving the glass in a circle, and Kate worried that she would ask for a refill. But she placed it decidedly on a side table. ‘I’m going to have a word with Meg myself. I won’t mention you – don’t worry – but I think I should at least raise it with her. And perhaps the home secretary as well.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we can’t let him get away with it.’
‘As you wish.’ Kate didn’t doubt her former friend’s political skills. She was one of the great survivors, after all. But she wasn’t about to launch a leadership challenge so soon after losing her battle against James Ryan for the premiership.
Imogen hovered. ‘I’m sorry, Kate. I really don’t like to see you this way and I know I . . .’ She smiled again and made her exit. What else, Kate supposed, was there to say?
Kate drained her own glass and went up to lie on her bed while she waited for the children to come in. It was strange to feel dog-tired, but not at all like sleeping, as if she were being hollowed out from within.
It was a shade after eleven when she heard the door go. Neither Fiona nor Gus bothered to come and say goodnight, so she had to haul herself off her bed to do so. She went to Gus first. He’d flopped face down on to his mattress. ‘How was today?’
‘Fine.’
‘Long journey back?’
‘It was fine.’
‘How was Fiona?’
‘Fine.’
‘You all okay for tomorrow?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I have to go away for a couple of days, so Rose said she’d be here.’
‘I know.’
‘Will you be fine?’
‘Yeah.’
Kate allowed herself a smile as she kissed his head. She moved on to her daughter’s room. Fiona was lying in bed, staring at her phone. ‘You’d sleep better if you didn’t look at that all night, you know.’
‘Because you’re the expert.’
Kate smiled again. Perhaps it was despair. ‘I have to go away for a few days—’
‘I know. Rose said. I’m staying with Jed this week.’
Kate recognized the incendiary device for what it was, but trod on it anyway. ‘You can’t do that, love.’
‘Er, actually, I can.’
‘This is your home. You can’t just leave.’
‘I’m going to Jed’s house. Not Moscow or Beijing, or the moon. His parents are both doctors. I’m fairly sure I’ll come to no harm. I’ll be back by the time you finally get home anyway, so you’ll hardly notice the difference.’
‘But it isn’t really fair to leave Gus here on his—’
‘He won’t notice either. Whenever he crawls out of whatever gaming hole he chooses to occupy this week, Rose will be there to spoil him. He’ll be like a pig in shit.’
Kate was tempted to go on, but, for once, discretion got the better of her. Fiona was right: Jed’s parents were responsible people and she was unlikely to come to any harm.
She retreated, without kissing her daughter goodnight, took Nelson down the road for a night-time pee – he didn’t bother – then came back to bed. She took 15mg of her sleeping drug of choice, zopiclone – double her normal dose – and lay down to stare at the ceiling until chemistry finally overwhelmed her worried mind and gave her at least a few hours of fretful sleep.
11
WHEN THEY ARRIVED, it was a flat, grey, cold March day in Berlin, a city that had been comfortably in the mid-teens for most of the weekend. Suzy revealed an unlikely eye for luxury in the choice of a hotel overlooking the Tiergarten, with a giant wooden sculpture of a crocodile’s jaws in Reception, a nod to the proximity of Berlin’s zoo and perhaps the situation in which they were about to place themselves.
It was called Das Stue, meaning ‘living room’ in Danish, and beneath the grand split staircase in the entrance lobby, the reception area had been designed to capture the warmth and intimacy implicit in the hotel’s name. It was very Berlinerisch, from the doorman dressed in bowler hat and Dr. Martens to the inverted art-deco lights arranged in the shape of a grand piano hanging from the ceiling.
Kate was shown to her room on the fifth floor, which had a long balcony overlooking the treetops of the Tiergarten. She ordered tea and sat outside in her winter coat drinking it, then took herself across the road for a walk in the park as the light was beginning to fade. Berliners were hurrying home with hands thrust deep in pockets and hats pulled low to ward off the chill. And yet, the signs of spring were all around: the daffodils were coming into bloom, the lime blossom drifting on the evening wind.
There were joggers and cyclists, dog-walkers and lovers out for an evening stroll. And it was so quiet. Berlin was the only capital in Europe that could pass for a town or even a village, and Kate had always had a particular affection for it.
She walked as far as the Brandenburg Gate, where shoals of tourists were still being talked through the days when this monument to a nation’s bellicose past had stood just beyond the wall that had divided a city, a country and a continent. It occurred to Kate to wonder if it hadn’t all been a touch easier for her predecessors when the threat from the East could at least be contained in part behind that wall: the days before they could come and go at will in all places at all times, whether it be to murder former spies in Salisbury or attempt to rig elections across the democratic world.
It took longer than she’d anticipated to complete the circle back to the hotel, so she skipped a shower in favour of touching up her make-up, then headed down to join her colleagues in the bar.
Julie was curled up with her feet tucked beneath her on a long aubergine-coloured sofa, opposite doors open to an internal courtyard. It was cosy in there too, with a low ceiling and black-and-white photos on all the walls.
A girl was singing slow jazz to the accompaniment of a keyboard player. A couple at the next table seemed grateful for the excuse to avoid conversation, the woman deep in her phone. Beyond them, two young parents also watched the singer in silence, apparently oblivious to their young son playing a game on his iPad between them. In the courtyard, two girls chatted, feet beneath thick rugs and an empty champagne bottle upside down in the ice bucket beside them. Kate joined Suzy at the bar and asked her for a gin and light tonic, then returned to sit next to Julie. ‘Where is Danny?’ she asked.
‘Don’t know.’ It was standard practice for the covert surveillance teams to stay somewhere different for an operation such as this and to avoid communicating, except via the agreed method.
Suzy returned with their drinks. They listened to the singer for a while and Kate glanced about her once more. With its pastel rugs, parquet floor, the glass and chrome bar, this salon felt like a temple to modern Berlin: slick, stylish and low key, as if the city’s violent, tumultuous past had belonged to a different world entirely.
Half an hour later, they caught a cab to a restaurant called Bo
rchardt, which Suzy insisted was a ‘Berlin institution’. It was a German twist on a French brasserie, with high ceilings, grand pillars, waiters dressed in black waistcoats and white shirts, and French café chairs and tables packed in close together, save for the upholstered maroon velvet booths along the far wall.
The waiter brought the menus and Kate glanced around her. It was the kind of place where people spend the evening watching everyone else – and eating Wiener Schnitzel, which seemed the main course of choice for every second table.
They ordered. Kate decided on Schnitzel – when in Rome – and gazed around the room again, as Suzy and Julie appeared to be getting along like a house on fire, until Suzy turned the conversation to the internal politics of their own organization and brought up Ian’s ill-disguised ambition to succeed Sir Alan as C. ‘Do you think he’ll get it?’ The question was directed at Julie.
‘I have no idea.’
‘But he wants it badly, right?’
‘I should think so. Wouldn’t you if you were in his shoes?’
‘What’s he like?’
‘He’s okay. A bit chippy sometimes.’
‘I heard he’s a bit of a player. On the romantic front, I mean.’ Kate watched Suzy’s expression. Either she was spectacularly ill-informed – since Julie’s affair with Ian was now pretty much common knowledge inside the building and probably beyond – or she was being provocative, malicious, or both.
Julie shrugged to indicate she had no idea, or did not want to be drawn. ‘I just need to go the Ladies,’ Suzy said.
Julie waited until she was out of earshot before she exploded. ‘What is she – fucking autistic?’
‘I don’t think she can possibly know. Even she isn’t that stupid.’
‘Everyone knows.’ It was said with a disconsolate shrug.
‘I’m not going to say I told you so.’