by Tom Bradby
He gave her an unwitting glimpse of unutterable sadness. ‘I’ll be dead long before I’m forty.’
‘That’s an extreme and frankly stupid thing to say.’
‘Trust me. I will be.’
‘Don’t talk like that, Rav.’ Kate looked into his eyes and saw the vulnerability he worked so hard to hide. Rav had always felt unloved and unworthy in his parents’ estimation, which left him prone to often crippling depression. It was a reminder that she was not alone in her unresolved demons.
Rav slipped out and closed the door behind him.
Kate tapped her keyboard and opened the Records entry portal. Zehra’s response to her question about the translator she’d assessed in Istanbul still nagged at her. If the recruitment had gone ahead, why had Ian lied about it? She typed in her own name and staff code and entered Irina Demidova in the search bar. A few seconds later, she was rewarded with No items found.
Maddy knocked and entered. ‘Morning. I hear Istanbul went well.’
‘Yes, it did. We’re going to be very, very busy.’
‘That’ll make a nice change.’
Maddy was in her early forties, tidy, steady, married and childless. She was one of those women who could be annoyingly pedantic – pedestrian, even – over detail, but would always have your back. She was also a world-class gossip, which had its uses in that building. ‘You might want to come and watch,’ Maddy said. ‘He’s out of the blocks already.’
Kate joined Rav in front of the TV screen on the far wall. As an apparently impromptu press conference was being set up outside the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in King Charles Street, Kate passed Maddy the list of MPs on the Moscow trip. ‘Can you get me in to see one of these champions of the people this morning? Angela White might be favourite – she’s been around a while and is quite vociferously anti the Russian president.’
Kate checked that she was not about to sit on anything, then perched on the edge of Julie’s desk. It was bare, save for the picture of her brother, Jason, who’d been killed on the top deck of a bus during the 7/7 London bombings. She’d always said she was there to play a meaningful part in the war on terror but, bright as she was, plenty of department heads gave her a wide berth. She’d been to places not many others had experienced, even in a building like this, which set her apart.
A suave, dark-haired man emerged onto the street and approached the microphones. Rav picked up the remote and pumped up the volume. James Ryan paused for a moment, glancing about him. ‘Thank you very much for turning out at such short notice. I’m sure you were all as shocked as I was last night to hear what the prime minister had to say. His service to our country has been exemplary and we hope and pray he will be successfully through his treatment and back to front-line politics in no more than a heartbeat. We know he’s in the hands of the best health-care professionals anywhere in the world today.’
‘Why do they all say that?’ Rav asked. ‘It isn’t true, and they don’t mean it.’
‘The prime minister’s legacy is a great one,’ Ryan continued. ‘He’s led this country with an energy and optimism that are the envy of other world leaders. A golden future awaits us as a proud, independent, free-trading nation, developing new and exciting relationships with countries across the globe.’
He surveyed his audience.
‘Was he the original model for Action Man?’ Kate whispered.
‘If it’s him against Imogen Conrad,’ Rav said, ‘it’ll be the best-looking political contest in British history.’
‘He’s too smooth for me,’ Maddy said. ‘I wouldn’t trust him to put out my rubbish.’
‘None of us would choose to be here today …’ the foreign secretary went on.
‘You fucking would,’ Rav whispered.
‘… but I have never denied that, if the moment were to arise, I would aspire to lead our great party and our wonderful country. Such sad circumstances serve to remind us that in adversity there is always opportunity – and today the question before you is, who can give this country the bold and optimistic leadership it needs?
‘I count myself truly fortunate to have had so many calls of support from colleagues, urging me to run. And so this morning I announce with considerable pride that I will be putting my name forward. I’m sure an open, exciting and vigorous contest awaits us. May the best man – or woman – win! Thank you!’
As the assembled reporters shouted questions, the foreign secretary turned smartly and re-entered his domain.
Maddy put down her phone. ‘Angela White can see you now, if you have time. They’ll come down and get you from Reception at Portcullis House.’ She followed Kate into her office. ‘Any expenses from Istanbul?’
‘Somewhere. I’ll put them on your desk.’ Kate picked up her coat, then hesitated. ‘Maddy, you know I don’t like to ask about your stint with Ian …’
‘I’ve never understood why you insist on being so scrupulous. He wouldn’t.’
‘I don’t want to put you in an awkward position.’
‘You mean like I was the whole bloody time I worked for him?’
Kate smiled. ‘All right. Do you recall him recruiting a woman called Irina Demidova? I assessed her in Istanbul. Originally a relatively lowly secretary in the KGB, but she may have progressed beyond that. Ian told me yesterday that he never moved forward with her, but I’m not so sure.’
‘I don’t, but that doesn’t mean much. If he told me it was Wednesday, I’d still check a calendar.’
‘But if she had gone on the payroll, it would have been down to you to process it through Finance?’
‘Probably, unless she was one of the little secrets he liked to keep.’
‘If she had gone on the payroll, Finance would still have a record, right? I mean, if the management committee wants to take someone off the books, they can remove them from the central system, but there’s no procedure for taking it out of the accounts?’
Maddy closed the door quietly behind her. ‘That’s a pretty big question. What’s going on?’
‘I have to keep everything tight for now and I’m not sure this is relevant anyway.’
Maddy shrugged. ‘I really don’t know. You’d have to talk to Rose.’
‘I thought you might say that.’
Kate walked down the back stairs to the Operations Room on the floor below. Maddy’s visceral dislike of Ian was partly explained by his attempt to get her sacked for incompetence, as a result, she said, of her having refused his advances. Only the fact that she had once worked for Sir Alan had saved her.
Danny’s colleague Hamid was staring at a set of screens in the far corner of the Ops Room. ‘Morning,’ Kate said. ‘You look knackered.’
He manipulated the mouse on the pad in front of him and pulled up a satellite feed displaying the progress of Igor’s yacht. ‘Headed for Greece, at a guess, but not in any particular hurry.’ He moved to the screen on the right. ‘There was something we missed, though.’ He fast-forwarded through the stream of video from the top of the Kempinski. ‘Danny went through the pictures from the very small hours … And here we are. Four thirty in the morning …’
A group of men were getting onto the launch, speeding in to the shore, offloading on the quay, then walking towards the hotel. At the head of the group, which included Vasily and his colleagues from the Russian Intelligence Service, was Igor.
‘They got into two separate Mercedes, drove to the airport and took off in a private jet bound for Moscow.’
‘No sign of Mikhail, his wife and son or the au pair disembarking?’
He shook his head. ‘As far as we can tell, they’re still on board.’
‘Will you tell me as soon as they get within reach of a dock?’
‘Sure. Danny’s packing up in Istanbul and heading home. Is that all right?’
‘Yes, but I’ll want him to turn straight round and head out to wherever they make landfall.’
‘I’ll give him the good news.’
Kate took the lift
to the ground floor. Rose’s office was only just far enough above the exterior walkway to afford its incumbents a view of the river. ‘They put us here,’ her aunt had once told her, ‘because they’d be only too delighted if someone planted a bomb on the wall and the whole Finance team got blown to smithereens.’
Rose’s secretary had poorly dyed blonde hair and a lurid green cardigan with bright brass buttons pulled tightly across her chest. Jane was originally from Poland in the days when it had laboured under Communist rule and looked like she’d never left. Her manner was pure Iron Curtain too, and it was a mystery why Rose was so loyal to her. ‘She’s in a meeting,’ Jane announced, as Kate approached, allowing herself a rare moment of delight.
‘No problem. Will you tell her I dropped by?’ Kate glanced at the frames on Rose’s desk, which included photographs of her husband and beloved dog Stanley, Kate and her father, arm in arm on the Ridgeway, just above Rose’s home.
Rose Trewen was Kate’s father’s sister, and the principal reason Kate had joined the Service. She was also as close to a mother as Kate had ever enjoyed, though the depth of their emotional connection was not something either tended to advertise at work.
‘Can I help you with something?’ Jane asked.
‘Don’t worry. It can wait.’ Kate turned away, then thought better of it. ‘Actually, could you do a system search? We’re doing some internal vetting.’
‘I am sure Rose would want us to help.’ Jane’s accent was still strong enough to make that sound like a threat.
‘Could you check whether we’ve ever made any payments to an Irina Demidova?’
Jane turned to her monitor, tapped away for a few moments, then went very still. ‘You will have to speak to Rose about that,’ she said.
‘Oh … of course. I’ll come back later.’
Kate emerged from Security into a close afternoon. Banks of dark cloud brooded over Vauxhall station, threatening to explode at any minute. She thought about the expression on Jane’s face when her screen had sent her a message she clearly hadn’t expected.
It seemed obvious that Ian had recruited Irina Demidova. So why was he so evasive at the mention of her name?
9
Kate cleared security into Parliament at Portcullis House with unexpected speed. The fig trees on the other side of the barrier seemed to reach up to the great glass roof, but she had little time to admire them.
The woman who came to meet her was tall and slightly forbidding. She tucked a strand of long, grey-streaked hair behind her ear as if rebuking it for an act of momentary disobedience. ‘Angela White,’ she said. ‘I was passing through from the House, so I thought I’d take you up myself.’ She swiped Kate through the glass security portal and gestured at the light and airy piazza beyond. ‘I’m guessing you’ve been here often enough.’
‘Not really.’
‘You were admiring the fig trees. Quite right too. They cost our loyal taxpayer four hundred thousand pounds. Oh, the glory of the Blair years. Those were the days!’ She broke into an unexpected smile and gestured at the coffee shop. ‘Would you like to come up to the office or stay down here?’
‘Probably best to have a little peace and quiet.’
‘I assumed as much. Let’s go up.’
Angela led Kate up to a small but well-appointed suite on the third floor, which overlooked Big Ben and a slice of the river. She smiled again. ‘You have no idea of the native cunning required to get an office like this.’
‘With a view like that, I might have been tempted to indulge in a little light skulduggery myself.’
‘Tea?’
‘Coffee, if it’s on offer.’
Angela motioned to her smaller, more intimate chamber with an even more spectacular perspective of Big Ben. Kate sat on the sofa by the window, as invited. ‘The chimes must be deafening.’
‘Oddly, you get used to them, to the point when you look out for the strike of the hour as a signal to go and do something, and somehow always miss it.’
‘It’s a hell of a place.’
‘It is, but I try not to let it go to my head. My seat isn’t exactly a marginal, but it wouldn’t take much of a turn in the tide …’
‘You’ve been here a while, though.’
‘Seventeen years. It only feels like five lifetimes so far.’
Angela’s assistant brought in a tray of tea, coffee and biscuits. They were silent for a moment as they helped themselves and settled back in their seats.
‘Have you ever wanted to be a minister?’ Kate asked.
‘No. An MP is what I am, and what I shall remain. That’s partly to do with the children – we have three, all grown up now – but also because I think one has to choose early on in here between ambition and principle, and I found it too hard to win my seat to readily let go of the things that really matter, which perhaps sounds a bit priggish. I try not to stand on my principles too often, which is harder than it might appear …’ She sipped her tea. ‘Sorry. I imagine you didn’t come all the way here to discuss my less than impressive career.’
‘I can’t help feeling that choosing integrity over office is pretty impressive.’
‘Kind of you to say so.’
Kate put down her cup. ‘I know you must be busy, so I’ll get to the point. My office was probably rather vague—’
‘“Opaque” is a word that springs to mind.’
‘I can’t stress strongly enough the sensitivity of what I’m about to discuss. Which is a roundabout way of saying that after listening to what you’ve just told me, I’m going to speak more openly than perhaps I would otherwise.’
‘That sounds … dangerous.’
‘I’ve kept up to speed on much of what you’ve said at the Foreign Affairs Committee hearings, and you seem to have a very dark view of modern Russia.’
‘Are you suggesting I’m wrong? After the nerve-agent attack in Salisbury, I thought it was generally accepted—’
‘My God, you’re not wrong. It’s a gangster regime and the Russian president is the nemesis of everything we hold dear. In his view, a great modern Russia requires a corrupt, weak and supine West. He is the most serious and well-organized enemy of Western civilization.’
‘Go on.’
‘Oh, I could be here for hours. He’s everywhere. He’s trying to provoke war with Georgia via the breakaway republics in an attempt to deter NATO from admitting it to membership. He’s funding and equipping right-wing paramilitary groups in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and even Slovakia. Look closely on the satellite pictures into some of the camps these groups are building in the middle of the countryside and you’ll see armoured cars and stashes of semi-automatic weapons. What would they need those for? A long while back you alerted the committee to the Russian president’s attempts to undermine the operation of Western democracy and since then, of course, it has exploded into the public consciousness in America and everywhere else. But it isn’t just the false social-media accounts and the hacked emails, the leaking and assistance given to candidates of dubious views who once might not have had a cat’s chance of high office.’
Angela was listening intently now.
‘They’re doing much more than that. We know that they’re trying to bribe, bully or blackmail leading figures within these walls. What could be more satisfying than having Western leaders as your agents of influence? Which brings me to the current leadership election. We’re trying, very carefully, to check out the main candidates, so I’d be grateful if you didn’t read anything significant into the choice of individual I’m here to discuss.’
Angela’s gaze was now hawk-like. ‘Isn’t that MI5’s job?’
‘Yes. But in this particular case, because of the nature of the original intelligence, we need to pursue things ourselves, at least initially. If we find evidence that it’s correct, Five will be fully briefed.’
‘Okay.’ Angela visibly relaxed. ‘I’ll try to keep my trap shut.’
‘About seven years ago, you went on a trip to
Russia with Imogen Conrad. At that point, she was a junior minister in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.’
‘I did, yes.’
‘Was there anything about her conduct on the trip that struck you as odd or worthy of note? Anyone she saw, anything she said?’
‘That’s a rather open-ended question, if I may say so.’
‘True. But I think you know what I’m driving at.’
‘All right. I’ll tell you what I really think of Imogen Conrad, in the privacy of this room. She’s what you might call a man’s woman, at her brightest and most vivacious when there’s a man around she wants to impress. She is attractive – what men would call sexy – and she knows it. I think she likes to feel she has the men around her exactly where she wants them. She is, consequently, not someone who finds women – particularly jobsworth backbench MPs – of much interest. So, mostly, I find myself somewhat impervious to her no doubt considerable charm.’
‘How did that particularly manifest itself in Russia?’
‘To be brutally honest, she didn’t seem especially interested in the place or its issues, which struck me as curious for a young minister early on in her brief. And less than sensible, given that her colleagues on the trip – mostly women, unusually, in this instance – might one day play a role in her future, as now seems about to be the case.’
‘So she didn’t speak to you?’
‘She didn’t speak to anyone very much. She had various flunkeys with her, all men, at least one of whom she appeared very friendly with indeed.’
‘Which one?’
‘Oh, I can’t remember. Some Scottish fellow.’
Kate suddenly found herself concentrating very hard on the floor. ‘Did he have a name?’
‘I suppose he must have done.’
‘Someone from her private office?’
‘Probably. He seemed to be with her all the time.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘I really can’t …’ Angela leant forward. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Fine. Sorry, just a little warm.’ Kate composed herself. ‘Do you think she was having an affair with this man?’