Secret Service

by Tom Bradby

  Kate didn’t have a good reason to object, so Fiona and Gus topped and tailed in Fiona’s bed and Jed was assigned the sofa in the corner, which was slightly too short for him. He went to brush his teeth while Kate kissed Fiona and Gus goodnight, and she bumped into him again on the landing.

  ‘Is there anything else I can do, Mrs Henderson?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ll be fine now, Jed. Thank you.’ He was on the way back to the bedroom when she stopped him. ‘Jed … It’s always … useful to be reminded one can get things wrong. I misjudged you. I’m sorry.’

  He rewarded her with the kind of smile that would probably have melted her heart if she’d been Fiona’s age. ‘I might have misjudged you, too, Mrs Henderson.’ He hesitated. ‘And, by the way, that red dress really suits you.’

  ‘Steady, Jed,’ she said, hoping he wouldn’t spot the pink in her cheeks. ‘One step at a time.’

  She called Rav’s mobile again when she was safely back in her own room. No answer. She tried his home number. No answer there either. By the time Stuart came back half an hour later, she’d tried both numbers more than a dozen times, without success.

  She heard him bantering to the team in the kitchen, then his uneven footsteps on the stairs. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. He was quite pissed. He always got drunk when he was angry or upset with her.

  ‘Yes. Fine.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Probably nothing.’ Kate was by the window. The Roland Mouret was back on its hanger, and she was in jeans and a dark pullover. ‘There were some men outside the house earlier, before I got back. Hammering on the door. Fiona and Gus got a bit scared. Jed’s here with them. He was a bit of a hero, actually – went down and put the chain on the door.’

  Stuart was getting more sober by the second. ‘Who the fuck were they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must have some idea.’

  ‘I don’t. I’m just playing it safe for now.’ Kate picked up her raincoat. ‘I need to go out for half an hour. Do you mind holding the fort?’

  ‘Of course not. Whatever you need.’

  ‘I said Jed could stay. Gus is sharing Fiona’s bed. Jed’s on the sofa.’

  ‘Well, wonders will never cease.’

  As she walked past him, he took her arm and pulled her towards him. She forgot sometimes how strong he was. He looked as directly into her eyes as his still slightly blurred vision would allow. ‘Are you really okay?’

  ‘Fine. Just being cautious.’

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here. Anything you want me to do, just ask.’

  She kissed him tenderly. ‘It’s not your problem, it’s mine.’

  ‘It’s ours.’

  ‘I won’t be long.’ Kate pulled on a pair of black trainers and busied herself with the laces. ‘I’m sorry – how was tonight?’

  ‘We’re through. But God knows what happens next. The party appears to have given itself the rather surprising choice of an adulterer or a Russian spy. It’s not politics as we know it, but what is, these days?’

  ‘You can say that again. How is she?’

  ‘Her mood changes about every ten seconds, and she has no idea what to think about anything. It’s quite hard keeping her on the level, and I have no idea how she’s going to cope with the next few weeks. But at least she’s still in it.’

  Rav’s building was shrouded in darkness. She parked a little way down the road and called both his numbers again. There was still no answer. She tried Julie, who picked up straight away. ‘Sorry to bother you so late,’ Kate said, ‘but do you have any idea where our talented but elusive colleague might be?’

  ‘At home, I guess. I think he flew back in from Zürich at teatime.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Still at work.’

  Kate wondered if Ian was with her. She felt more betrayed by their dalliance than she had a right to. Two lonely adults seeking solace in an unlikely relationship – what was new? ‘Could you check the flight manifests, see if he actually got on a plane?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Julie rang off and Kate waited.

  There was no sign of life inside Rav’s top-floor flat. She scanned each vehicle, up and down the street. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  Julie called back. ‘He was on the BA flight that arrived at Heathrow at five p.m. I’m just checking the CCTV. I’ll tell you when I’ve picked him up.’

  Kate realized she’d been half hoping Rav might have decided to go AWOL for a night or two and sample the fleshpots of Zürich. If Zürich had fleshpots. He was addicted to his phone. It was unheard of for him to ignore her calls unless he was deliberately avoiding her. And the alternatives didn’t bear thinking about. She pressed the WhatsApp button. If you’re avoiding me because I was shitty with you, then stop it. I need to know you’re okay. Call now.

  She switched on the radio, surfed the dial for a few moments and then turned it off. She messaged again. Stop fucking around. Make contact.

  ‘Come on, Rav,’ she muttered. ‘This is not funny. Where are you?’

  She glanced up and down the street again and got out of her car. There was no answer when she punched Rav’s buzzer. She retreated and looked up. No sudden play of lights on curtained windows. Nothing. She got back into the car and pulled up Zac’s number. She hesitated for a moment, then thumbed the call button. He answered immediately.

  ‘Zac, it’s Kate Henderson.’

  There was a momentary silence. ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ he said.

  ‘Have you heard from Rav?’

  ‘You mean since the raging argument we had after what you told him?’

  ‘Tonight, I mean.’

  ‘No. He’s in Switzerland.’

  ‘He’s not. He flew into London earlier this evening. Should be home by now, but I’m outside the flat and there’s no sign. And he’s not responding to my calls and messages, which is highly unlike him.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s as pissed off with you as I am.’

  ‘I wouldn’t blame him for that. But he’s the most professional officer I know. He’d respond on a work issue, no matter what.’

  ‘Maybe he’s had enough of you and your “work”.’

  ‘Zac, I’m worried enough about him to call you, despite the abuse I knew I’d get. So, is there any chance you could come round here and let me in?’

  There was another silence. ‘I’ll be there in five minutes,’ he said.

  In fact it was more like three, his state of mind made blindingly obvious by the speed at which he drove down the terraced street and the screech of brakes as he brought his SUV to a halt. He was a tall, rangy man with a big nose and a generous beard, which seemed intent on invading his flowery designer shirt as he stalked towards the entrance. ‘You’ve got me worried,’ he said.

  He opened the shared front door and they charged upstairs. He put the key in the apartment lock and turned it until Kate put a hand on his arm and a finger to her lips. She went in first. It was dark, with no discernible movement in the air. She was powerfully reminded of the moment Rav had saved her life in the Andros hallway, and did not turn on the light.

  She glided noiselessly down the corridor, turning right into a bedroom. The duvet had been pulled back on one side, as if someone had recently been sleeping there.

  On the opposite side of the corridor, state-of-the-art kitchen equipment gleamed in the ochre glow of a street lamp. An electronic clock flashed at her, as if it was waiting to be reset. The room was a testament to what Rav called his OCD, everything so neatly stored it made her wonder if it had ever been used.

  Kate took a knife from the magnetic rack by the cooker. She glanced at a photograph of Rav with his arm around Zac on a beach somewhere, stuck to the stainless-steel fridge, and then at Zac himself, framed by the doorway, his face so pale and gaunt that his eyes appeared to have sunk into their sockets.

  She moved back into the corridor. Waited. Stepped into the living room.

  It was even da
rker in here, with the curtains drawn. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the silhouette of a naked figure hanging from the ceiling. She switched on the light.

  Rav had a belt wrapped around his neck, taut as a razor strop, attached to a wrought-iron ring set into an oak beam that spanned the width of the ceiling. His eyes bulged accusingly at her and an orange had been stuffed into his mouth.

  ‘No!’ she cried. She grabbed a chair, dragged it across, climbed onto it and tried to lift him down. ‘Zac – Zac!’

  She wrenched the orange from Rav’s mouth, wrapped one arm around his waist and struggled to unbuckle the belt. She caught sight of Zac, frozen to the spot, by the entrance to the room. ‘Help me!’

  But he still didn’t move.

  Kate slashed and slashed at the leather with the knife until Rav came free. She lowered him to the floor, in the recovery position, bent over him and touched a fingertip to the carotid artery in his neck. She knelt and put her cheek to his mouth, hoping to feel a hint of breath on her skin.

  ‘Rav … Oh, Rav …’

  She rolled him onto his back, placed both palms on his chest and rhythmically compressed his ribcage, counting to herself as she went. When she reached thirty, she pinched his nose between her thumb and forefinger, opened his lips and lowered her mouth to his, desperate to fill his lungs with life-giving air. Once. Twice.

  ‘Rav …’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No, no, no … Ravindra, my dear friend, please …’ She cupped his cheek and rocked back and forth, cradling his head to her breast. ‘Don’t do this to me. Not after everything we’ve been through. Not like this, not now …’

  The silence was deafening. She looked up at Zac, still rooted to the spot, as pale as driven snow. He was staring at Rav’s body, mouth moving, but failing to form any recognizable words.

  Kate pushed past him into the bedroom, pulled the duvet off the bed and used it to cover Rav, as if helping him recover some dignity in this moment of agony would make the slightest difference to either of them.

  She stood beside him and looked around the room. Save for the chair she’d moved, the room seemed undisturbed. She switched off the light, went to the window and fractionally eased back the curtain. The street appeared deserted, except for a woman taking her dog for a late-night constitutional on the opposite pavement.

  She took out her phone, dialled the SIS night desk and asked them to alert Ian and C. Then she called the police. Then Stuart. She warned him it was likely to be a long night, and that she would also have to go away tomorrow. His voice vibrated with concern and he wanted to know what had happened, but she told him not to worry.

  Zac was now seated in the corner, his head bowed. He looked up, still struggling. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘The police come, then a load of people from the office. There will be a lot of questions for both of us. And then we get to feel guilty for the rest of our lives.’

  ‘It was me who killed him, not you.’

  ‘Actually, Zac, it wasn’t either of us. You don’t know Rav very well if you think he would hang himself from a beam with a fucking orange in his mouth because you went back to your wife for a week. Apart from anything else, he’d have wanted something a lot more original.’

  ‘You didn’t hear him crying on the phone.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I did know him. And we’ve seen each other through thick and thin. There’s no way on earth he would have wanted it to end like this.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘He made the mistake of calling in what he found in Switzerland. And that call killed him.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You don’t need to. And perhaps you never will. All you need to know right now is that he was murdered.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. But he wasn’t the first and, sadly, he probably won’t be the last.’

  Kate worked her way carefully through the apartment, and found absolutely nothing of interest. Rav’s laptop was missing. So were his phone and the leather satchel he always carried with him. She looked for hiding places, but unless he had thought of something or somewhere very unusual, there wasn’t one. She tried to enlist Zac’s help, but he had sunk into a state of shock so deep he was barely capable of breathing, let alone speaking.

  The police arrived first. They insisted on detaining her and transporting her to Scotland Yard. She waited in a spartan interview room until Ian and Sir Alan arrived. They didn’t look as if they’d formed a rescue party. Grim-faced, they took the seats opposite her. ‘We’ve had to talk to Five,’ Ian said. ‘They’ve opened an investigation. They’ll be in touch in due course.’

  ‘It doesn’t take a genius to work out who killed him.’

  ‘They’re not looking into who killed him.’

  ‘So, what are—’

  ‘Viper,’ Sir Alan said. ‘We couldn’t put them off any longer.’

  ‘If there’s anything you wish to tell us,’ Ian said, ‘it would help to do so now.’

  ‘Help who?’

  ‘Don’t get cute, Kate. It would help all of us.’

  ‘If I had anything new to tell you, believe me, I would.’

  Ian took a laptop and a file from his bag. He arranged them fussily on the table. ‘We haven’t been going behind your back, Kate, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Why would I think that?’

  ‘I’ve never felt your story added up. Not for one minute. In many ways I wish I could have swallowed it whole. But it just doesn’t make sense. And we all have an obligation to act upon any reasonably founded suspicion.’

  ‘That’s Orwellian double-think, Ian, if ever I heard it. Why don’t you just spit it out?’

  Ian stared at her. ‘It’s not credible that you don’t know who Sergei Malinsky really is.’

  ‘I do know who he is.’

  ‘Then spell it out for us.’

  ‘He’s a friend from my time as a student in St Petersburg. I lost touch with him, but he must have joined the Russian Foreign Service, possibly the SVR. I agree it’s odd we have no record of him, but he wouldn’t be the first. You know as well as I do that they keep people hidden in the diplomatic service for so long that we can’t be sure of their exact operational role. I met him again at the American ambassador’s party, as I’ve said, and he gave me the tip-off that led to the recording on Igor’s gin palace.’

  ‘So this guy, with an unspecified role somewhere within the Russian state apparatus, gift-wrapped this golden intelligence egg out of pure friendship?’

  ‘I don’t know why he gave it to me. All I know is that it turned out to be true.’

  ‘You might concede he could have been manipulating you?’

  ‘Yes, I might. But we have been over this. In the end it doesn’t matter what his motives were because the information we gleaned from the operation has so far proved to be accurate. Unless the PM is faking it, and cooked this whole thing up with Vasily and the boys for their own amusement. We wouldn’t have acted upon any of it otherwise.’

  ‘It’s a beguiling theory,’ Ian said, ‘but just not credible.’ He opened his laptop, maximized a file on the screen and hit play. They all watched. ‘The Winter Olympics in Sochi,’ Ian said, by way of commentary. ‘The opening ceremony. Here we have the Russian president, watching his mistress. But who should be sitting alongside him?’ He hit the stop bar.

  Kate peered more closely. ‘Alexander Gregorin. So what?’

  ‘His old friend from their days as liaison officers with the Stasi in East Berlin, now head of the GRU.’

  Kate glanced at Sir Alan, who was examining her with such stillness and purpose that she felt like a laboratory specimen. ‘How is that surprising? Gregorin is exactly who you’d expect the Russian president to have at his side.’

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ Ian said. ‘But watch this.’ He hit play again. The Russian president murmured something in Gregorin’s ear, and, as he leant over to do so, the shot widened to revea
l a third man. They were all laughing now.

  ‘My goodness,’ Ian said, making no attempt now to conceal his enjoyment of her discomfort. ‘Sergei Malinsky, as I live and breathe. Silly me. While we were toiling in the vineyards, trying and failing to work out who he really is, he’s risen like a spectre and now sitteth at the right hand of Alexander Gregorin. Except he’s one hell of a hidden asset, because we’ve never seen him in Gregorin’s company before – or with anyone else in the GRU, for that matter.’

  Kate stared at the frozen image of her friend laughing at the Russian president’s joke. ‘So the GRU hide people deep inside the diplomatic service as well. How does this change anything?’

  Ian planted his elbows on the table. His cheeks were flushed and a lock of his curly blond hair tumbled across his forehead in its enthusiasm to join the celebration. ‘Are you really going to tell us you had no idea who he is?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m going to try to tell you, yes.’

  ‘Or you could admit you’re working for him.’

  ‘And what is your evidence for that?’

  ‘This whole operation suits Alexander Gregorin and the GRU down to the ground. Or indeed the underground. They embarrass the SVR and us at the same time.’

  ‘I thought you said I was being manipulated?’

  ‘I did think that – before I knew who he fucking was! Why would you keep that a secret from us unless you were working for him?’

  ‘You think I’m working for the GRU?’

  ‘I’m saying that’s one of the vanishingly small number of conclusions one can draw from the facts now in our possession.’

  Sir Alan stood. ‘All right. That’s enough. Ian, give us a minute, please.’

  ‘Alan, I really think—’

  ‘I said, “Give us a minute.” Not “Would you like to give us a minute?”’

  Ian returned the laptop and file to his case and walked out, taking care to slam the door as he did so.

  25

  ‘I had to let him have his head,’ Sir Alan said. ‘You can be sure he’ll give all that to our friends in the Security Service, and I wanted to see how you’d react.’