Aha! The central event of Ulysses was the novel’s own
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creation. Perhaps the central event of History is writing it down!
As it is written, so shal it be. And the future too. Homer, Shakespeare, and Cookies tel us what to take heed of.’
She took a tissue from her bag and dabbed her eye.
‘Someone, some ordinary person, should dig the corpus historiarum up. Exhume the effing facts, suck the putrid core from the marrow, test its mitochondrial DNA—like the bones of King Dickie the Third carried forth from a Leicester car park into the penetrating light of day; write everything down, even the footnotes, however bad they smel ; eyebal History, shout, imposter! to its face—and be done with it.’
At that moment the station was empty, and the lights were low.
Reflected in the window glass, she could see the faint outline of her face against the strangely fluid darkness.
Will I too final y wake up and escape this nightmare? she thought to herself.
Pulling out her filofax, she frantical y jotted down her thoughts before they escaped her.
Sunday: The Ides of March.
00:20 a.m.
London Stansted Airport.
The jet descended the last 100 feet on to the east runway.
Lara’s reading light was out, but the novel rested on her lap, and she held the final photograph of Kitty in her hand.
Valentina had been like a sister to Kitty’s late mother. They had been together, at the side of young Kitty—three weeks short of her fifteenth birthday—in 1978 when she had given birth to
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Blanka.
Lara and Blanka had only met half a dozen times, but unknown to both Russian and Western Intelligence, they exchanged birthday gifts and Christmas cards each year.
Blanka’s such a Libran, reflected Lara, as the wheels of the jet hit the tarmac. Always sending me little gifts.
Captain Stein sent the EPR gauges spinning, by engaging the thrust reversers.
One soul takes off, another lands, thought Lara, looking out at the green landscape of England, now a funereal gray in the airport night. As the aircraft braked to 15 knots and turned onto its taxiway, Lara contemplated Kitty’s big green eyes.
How had Valentina summed Kitty up? A young woman who never had to look for trouble, because trouble came looking for her.
The Berlin passengers were held up two hours with a signalling fault. It was the early hours before dawn on Sunday when the shuttle train arrived at Liverpool Street. Lara stepped from the second car, put her ticket into the automatic barrier on platform 7, and walked onto the concourse. The police glanced at her and the other exhausted passengers from Berlin, and then returned to their conversation with some drunken clubbers.
Lara had been to London this way before, and headed straight for the subway, the tube. As she approached the entrance, with her cabin bag, the five foot six bronze sculpture, Für Das Kind, stopped her in her tracks.
The little girl stood determinedly beside an old-fashioned trunk, her younger brother sat dejected on the floor, hands on the legs of his shorts.
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Very Narnia-esque thought Lara, noting the white roses at their feet.
It brought a lump to her throat. She knew about the Kindertransport—a drop of goodness on the brink of the ocean of horror—and had read about the Flor Kent sculptures created to commemorate it. Original y a glass suitcase had contained the original things the Jewish children arriving on trains had brought over to London.
The first 196 Kindertransport children had been rescued from a burning Berlin orphanage, set on fire during the infamous Kristallnacht, Crystal Night, or Night of Broken Glass. The symbolic beginning of The Holocaust.
When you burn small children in their beds, Lara said to herself, it’s time to put a loaded revolver to the col ective head of the human race, and pul the trigger.
The sculpture could not but evoke Katya and Elsa—her other aunts—born a decade before her father, Ivan, and Valentina.
While the passenger trains of the Kindertransport carried children away from the nightmare, the steam trains of France and other countries carried the forsaken scapegoats of Europe—
in cattle trucks—to nightmare central: Auschwitz and the other Nazi death camps.
Had no one dreamed how bad the nightmare would become?
Feeling the eyes of a police officer on her back, she walked at a steady pace down the steps toward the Central Line and the rendezvous with her KGB Sergeant at 07:00 hours.
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From her vantage point at Café Fox, Nearby was sure of her target.
Heavily disguised and wearing a long, dark wig, she stil looks like Kitty Maguire, Nearby thought.
As she packed up her bag, and prepared to tail her, she pressed a code button on the CIA-Blue and sent a target acquired signal to the control in Blanka’s stable.
10 minutes later, one car down from Lara on the Central Line, Nearby sat and typed an encrypted message on her Scanner.
She only took her eyes off Lara for a minute but, in that time, Lara confirmed her suspicion: she was already being tailed.
Probably the Irish linguist from the Russia Desk, she thought. Plan B.
Lara got off at Oxford Circus, changed to the Victoria Line and chose south, the direction of MI6 headquarters.
She noticed her tail picked up by Jude Robinson, Russia Desk Grade 7, and a short black woman.
The new female agent was a German, also from the Russia Desk, a glamorous young black woman, born in Berlin, and living with her aunt in London W2. Everyone called her Paddington, not just because she lived in Paddington, but because of her burnished brown hair, and her tendency to wear floppy hats.
Using standard tailing-from-in-front procedure, they followed Lara to a hotel near Victoria, then reported in to Blanka. Meanwhile, Nearby returned to the Edgware Road spy hostel for a few hours sleep.
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River Heights, Victoria Embankment.
8:25 a.m.
While two rival surveil ance teams, reporting to C and to Blanka, watched from different vantage points, two agents on the steps to River Heights pretended to take fashion photos of each other. One was a very tired Nearby, the other was Paddington. They were there as a deterrent to the KGB—
because Lara had given everybody the slip.
Not even Vladimir Putin could have arranged what happened next. In order to battle cyber-terrorism, MI6 was recruiting 16-year-olds, and the first (from Sheffield, and already nicknamed Wednesday after the soccer team) was starting the following day.
Wednesday was transgender, so it was that a ‘Sullivan, Gilbert and Son’ truck bearing a portacabin and porta-potty, emblazoned with transgender restroom insignia, passed River Heights on its way from E16 to MI6.
‘It’s the trans-g-gender bathroom for Wednesday!’ exclaimed Nearby.
Paddington snapped it with her camera in front of Big Ben.
‘Tweet-tweet’, she said. ‘It’s in good time for Monday.’
‘Tweet-tweet,’ laughed Nearby.
More seriously, Comrade Putin had arranged for a large band of young women to look like a hungover hen-party. In their midst, Lara went quite undetected, as they turned the corner, shouted un-ladylike remarks at the porta-potty truck, and
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shambled along Victoria Embankment past River Heights.
They were just testing the British security.
Five minutes later, Grigori Grinin stepped out of the rotating door of River Heights.
With a spring in his step he descended the wide steps on his way to confession at the Russian Orthodox cathedral. Almost of another age, more like an Ancient Greek, Sherlock Holmes, or indeed Rasputin, than a 21st century man.
As he walked, a procession f
ormed behind him with the look of those pagan rituals in which the statue of a god is paraded through the streets. It began with his wife, Diana, fol owed by the Nanny (the same height as Grinin and Nearby at five ten). She led the twins; Emma in one hand, and Olga, clutching her birthday-toy tiger, in the other.
A man from the newly-arrived MI5 protection team fol owed with the double buggy.
He might as well do something useful, Grinin had said.
Another of the MI5 officers, Anthea Gabor, standing outside the apartments, fel in with the procession as it turned right and walked up Victoria Embankment towards Big Ben.
Lastly, from their position near Boudica’s Chariot statue, came a third MI5 agent, together with Paddington.
Grinin and his procession stopped at the end of Westminster Bridge in the shadow of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.
Emma tugged at his sleeve, and Grinin bent down for her to whisper in his ear. He nodded, and called over Anthea Gabor, who arrived and smiled at the children.
‘Officer Gabor,’ piped up Emma.
‘Yes, Emma,’ she said.
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‘Are we British?’
‘Why, yes, you are I’m sure,’ she said, pointing. ‘You were born in London—in fact on the seventh floor of the hospital you see across the river.’
Emma turned on Olga, ‘There I told you.’
Olga stuck her tongue out at Emma, moved her ever-present tiger to her left hand, and took her father’s hand.
‘And I was born in the water pool,’ said Emma.
‘Girls,’ Grinin announced impatiently, ‘I have a story for you.
Do I have your attention?’
The twins stopped squabbling and stood at attention, in a comic fashion, before their imposing father. Diana couldn’t help but smile.
‘Many years ago, in something called the Second World War, this country was at war with Hitler –’
‘Who’s he?’ asked Emma in her cheeky voice.
‘The Leader of Nazi Germany, who overran the whole of Europe.’
‘Even Moscow?’ asked Emma
‘He tried to.’
‘And London?’ asked Olga
‘He dropped bombs. The House of Commons, in here, was blown up.’
Grinin raised his arm, making a loud explosion sound, and the girls jumped.
‘Hitler silenced al the bel s in Europe, except this one.’
Grinin pointed to the Big Ben bell tower, and the twins fol owed his gaze.
‘The Nazis stole the church bel s from the occupied countries of Europe, and turned them into guns.’
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Olga squeezed inside her father’s greatcoat, and then pulled her tiger inside too.
‘Guns are bad,’ a little voice said, from inside the coat.
Grinin contemplated his tiny daughter through his bushy beard, and nodded solemnly.
‘In this Island, where the British struggled on alone –’
‘We’re British,’ said the voice.
‘– The British silenced their own church bel s to stop the Nazis navigating by them.’
‘What’s navi-gate-ing?’ said Emma cheekily.
‘It’s finding your way,’ said Diana
Emma bumped into her sister and pointed into the air.
‘See, it’s walking into something you can’t see.’
‘To continue with my story,’ Grinin said, ‘One summer day, Hitler invaded Russia, and Russia became Britain’s al y.’
‘Al i-Baba?’ said the cheeky voice.
Her sister giggled and flopped outside the coat.
‘The Americans became allies as wel , and Hitler started slowly to lose the War. The threat of invasion passed, and the church bel s of England rang out again. From Easter Sunday 1943 in fact.’
Grinin looked at his watch, then nodded to Diana as a signal for her to grab the hands of the children.
A cacophony of sound started!—the bel s of Big Ben struck above them—its famous 16 note signature for the hour.
Startled, the twins looked up at their father, who was laughing, and they started to laugh too. Big Ben went on to strike eight deep notes for the hour of eight o’clock.
‘Such a big noise!’ the twins said together.
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Once the bel s had stopped, the procession turned into St James’s Park, participated in the ritual feeding of the ducks on The Princess Diana Memorial bridge over the pond, and then headed for The Mal .
Major Grinin wanted photographs taken with Buckingham Palace in the background. He suspected—he wasn’t sure—but he fancied that it might be the last photograph of him, and he wanted his daughters to have happy photographs from their last days together to remember him by.
As the procession approached the Palace, Grinin decided on the best view. Because of the security risk, two London bobbies and two armed Met police joined the entourage.
The MI6 agents loyal to C kept their distance, as instructed.
Ahead, inside the Russian cathedral, Blanka had stationed Sokol, still nominal y Russian Orthodox.
Blanka was in the sky a thousand feet above, flying their new H175 high-speed helicopter.
Nearby had the day off and had volunteered to do some gardening in Blanka’s back yard (as she cal ed it in American) while listening on the CIA-Blue.
Near the Cathedral, in the back of a surveil ance-proof BMW
SUV with special mesh in the smoked glass, a disguised Felicity studied the twins’ mugshots—fascinated by their combination of fair hair and brown eyes.
She checked the time in her head, and dropped the pictures into her bag, alongside her La Bombe perfume. She wasn’t wearing it; no one would smel her scent today.
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As the Grinin family lined up for the snaps, Emma spied a scarlet-colored Royal Mail post box and remembered excitedly that they had postcards to mail to Diana’s parents in Moscow (thanking them for birthday presents).
The Nanny’s suggestion that the postcards could wait was met with scorn.
‘I’m going to post mine now,’ said Emma. ‘ To Moscow!’
Olga pul ed away from the Nanny and ran to her father who was holding her toy tiger. With her tiny hands Olga took the tiger from her father’s huge hand.
‘Father, we want to post our cards,’ she said.
While Diana, the Nanny, the MI5 officers, the police, and the MI6 officers reporting to C all watched each other—Grinin nipped to the post box with his daughters.
Olga swung on his one arm, gripping her tiger in her hand, and the postcard in the other. Emma followed close behind, carrying hers.
As Paddington later reported, it only took a moment. Two postcards and an old-fashioned blue airmail letter (addressed to Blanka at an address in Fiji) disappeared into the scarlet mail box.
10 a.m.
Knightsbridge. Russian Orthodox Cathedral.
℧5, Sokol Comarova believed, like Abraham Lincoln, that actions speak louder than words. But as she sat in the cathedral watching Grigori Grinin kneel in line to await the Eucharist,
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she had more in common with him (and indeed Bio) than she knew.
Sokol and Grinin had both defected from the KGB. They shared a love of music and their homeland, but they also liked Oscar Wilde’s Bal ad of Reading Gaol. Sokol liked it because it was close, morbid and nihilistic. Grinin had come across it while he studied for his doctorate at Cambridge.
That day, as Grinin knelt and glanced up at the cathedral window, Wilde’s poem came to mind.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky.
There it was, he told himself, that little tent of blue.
The hint of sky, high above the ceiling, only confirmed to him that he was a p
risoner. There was no escape from his fate.
As the chalice came slowly, inexorably closer, his eyes took in the immensity. A grand structure, fil ed with icons, images both of hope and suffering. Yet, for him, more than anything else, it was the suffering of Christ that he felt, His suffering on the night of the last supper.
And when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said,
‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’
In that moment of waiting, Grinin thought about how early death had marked the Starikova family—the death at Auschwitz
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of the other twins, Katya and Elsa, so young. And Kitty. The Operation Fatima that had marked her end. He glanced furtively, angrily, around the cathedral. These images of Christ and His mother, His family. His death.
Kitty’s death trying to reveal His Fatima Secret. All that suffering. The opening of the poem echoed:
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead.
He smiled grimly. His hands. I have just one now.
Every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.
In laboratory novichok epsilon, he reflected, with my two hands, I created the Frankenstein fragrance.
Metapox. A sweet perfume to maim whole nations. The Law of Karma has punished me. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.
And to think I fled Russia, my home, and thought I could escape. Did Kitty think she could escape? When I brought the St Petersburg icon to her, La Magdalene? Did she see hope in it, or only more suffering? he deliberated.
She told me it was the key to the mystery: the solution to the Fatima Secret…
Then La Magdalene led her to her death; to being a raw
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statistic, a Polizia di Roma accident file, a fresh wet job. I didn’t save her, I condemned her. Another prison. Another prisoner. Is that what images do? Condemn us?
Girl Who Fell 1: Behind Blue Eyes. Offbeat Brit spy series-cum-lesbian love triangle. Killing Eve meets female James Bond meets Helen of Troy returns (HAIL THE QUEEN series) Page 15