Secret Service

by Tom Bradby

  ‘No, Mikhail. We’re not going to do that. And since you are neither naive nor stupid, I’m not going to pretend our hand is stronger than it is. But what we want isn’t very substantial either.’

  She paused long enough for her cappuccino to be delivered, then brought out her phone and played him thirty seconds of Danny’s edited highlights.

  ‘If we sent this footage to your father, I think it would be painful. But since I suspect he isn’t in awe of your machismo anyway, it’s not going to change the course of your life, or his, all that much. So we wouldn’t do that. What we would do is send it to his opponents or, at least, one of their choicer websites. That would humiliate, embarrass and possibly damage him. I think you would pay a heavy price for that.’

  ‘Or he could find out I’ve been talking to you, in which case he’d kill me.’

  ‘Now I hope you’re exaggerating. He’s bad, but he’s not mad, your father, as you must know better than anyone.’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘We have a problem. As you must be aware, we recorded your father and some of his former SVR colleagues in the boardroom of the Empress. So we know you have at least one agent at the heart of our political establishment, and a well-placed informant, codename Viper. I need to know who they are.’

  Mikhail smiled. ‘This is amusing. And you think they would tell me who these people are?’ He stared at her. ‘You know I work on the Polish Desk, right? I mean, if you really want to trade one of your second-rate operatives in Warsaw so I can maintain the illusion that I’m the Kremlin’s answer to James Bond for a little longer, we might be in business. But …’ He raised both palms. ‘Seriously, this is why you came?’

  ‘You’re saying you weren’t party to any of those conversations?’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Or, at least, I didn’t until I read about the foreign secretary in The Times.’

  Kate leant forward, elbows on the table. ‘Perhaps your father didn’t share this with you. And I doubt he educated you at Eton so you could spend your life in Russian intelligence, so I guess this phase is designed to familiarize you with your system. But you were aboard the Empress when Lena was killed, and I’m afraid I refuse to believe you didn’t know about that.’

  Mikhail’s eyelids flickered. He wasn’t the ruthless bastard his father was.

  ‘So how did you find out Lena was working for us?’

  He gazed over her shoulder, out to sea.

  ‘Let me make this clear. Given how much time you’ve spent in the UK, I think you know I can be relied upon to be as good as my word. We’re interested in one trade. Give me something that might allow me to track down your agents and I’ll let you go. Withhold what you know, and I’ll make sure that not only is your father gravely embarrassed by this footage, but you’re on every sanctions list circulated by every country any old Etonian is ever going to want to spend any time in. And, believe me, however tough you think you are, I can see very clearly you’re not cut out to spend the rest of your life in a Moscow apartment block.’

  ‘I have nothing to trade,’ Mikhail said. ‘Honestly.’

  ‘How did you know Lena was working for us?’

  ‘A message from Moscow, saying someone on board was passing information to the British and we needed to eliminate him or her.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘My father and me.’

  ‘When did you receive this information?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘How did you receive it?’

  ‘We use WhatsApp, like everyone else.’

  ‘May I see it?’

  He almost handed over his phone, then thought better of it. ‘This is all you’re going to get. It’s all I have. So do I have a deal?’

  ‘Yes.’ She held out her hand. ‘Now give it to me before I change my mind.’

  Mikhail scrolled through his phone and pushed it across to her. ‘That message only.’

  Kate took a shot of the screen and stood up. ‘Good luck, Mikhail. I hope, for your sake, that we don’t meet again.’

  ‘I can assure you we won’t.’

  Kate slipped her phone back into her pocket. She had less than she’d hoped for, but more than he thought he’d given.

  28

  Kate took Julie and Danny back to London with her. The surveillance teams would de-rig and return in their own time. She got back to the office in the late afternoon and went directly to the basement, a long, dimly lit room with a dirty grey carpet, a low ceiling over walls with faded paint peeling in the corners and a bank of more than two dozen screens covering every aspect of and approach to the building, both inside and out. The hidden cameras were located as far away as Vauxhall Bridge Road and the Embankment to the north of the river, and those on the roof gave a full 360-degree view of the surrounding area.

  Internal Security was run by a man called Jim, who had spiky dark hair and large round glasses. The internal CCTV footage was stored digitally, and it took Jim a while to locate the feed that covered the Russia Desk’s lifts. Kate and Julie stood either side of him as he fast-forwarded through the afternoon she had pinpointed with a little help from Mikhail.

  ‘There,’ Kate said. She checked the time. ‘Five eighteen.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Julie whispered.

  ‘Play on,’ Kate instructed.

  Jim hit the space bar again and they watched as Kate turned left to her office and Ian right to his. Their eyes followed Ian until he exited the frame.

  ‘Freeze there,’ she said.

  They peered closer at the shot of Ian taking his phone from his pocket.

  They thanked Jim and didn’t speak again until they were in their own office with the door closed.

  ‘It doesn’t prove anything,’ Julie said.

  ‘The timing fits.’

  ‘Yes. There is some circumstantial evidence. Your meeting with C is over by a quarter past five, yet Mikhail has his warning half an hour later. But it doesn’t narrow things down conclusively and the fact that Ian is in a hurry to whip out his phone doesn’t prove anything at all. In theory, it could still be you, or C himself.’

  ‘Or you.’

  ‘I thought you’d ruled me out.’

  ‘Technically, we’re all in the frame. But neither of us can claim that you’re truly objective.’

  Julie looked through the internal window, towards Ian’s office. ‘What should we do?’

  Kate picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. ‘I’ll think of something. If either Ian or C asks, say I wasn’t feeling well and had to go home. We’ll speak in the morning.’

  ‘Novichok poisoning?’

  Kate smiled. ‘A mild tummy bug should suffice.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘You think I’ll tell him?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘And that’s why you made sure I saw the footage.’

  ‘If it’s Ian, no one can save him. Not even you. And you shouldn’t want to. If we lose battles like this, our country doesn’t belong to us any more. And it never will again.’

  Kate strode home. The strap of her bag dug into her shoulder enough to give her a sore back by the time she arrived at her front door. The sole remaining member of the security detail told her the family had gone for a walk in the park.

  He withdrew discreetly to the living room and left Kate in peace in the kitchen. She made herself a cup of tea and checked the mail. There was no mistaking the handwriting on the third envelope down, and her heart thumped a little harder as she opened it.

  I have the proof you need, Sergei had written. Come to the dacha. Come alone.

  The envelope had been posted from Kotka in Finland, just over the border from Russia and only a short drive from Sergei’s family dacha.

  Kate burnt his note and the envelope in the sink, sluiced the ash down the plughole, then sat at the kitchen table in silence.

  Eventually sh
e retrieved her coat from the hall and went out. She half expected to bump into Stuart and the children as she skirted the park, but she reached her mother’s building without seeing them. She looked up, hoping the light would be off on the eleventh floor and she might be able to turn away with her conscience clear. But she was disappointed.

  Lucy sat alone, gazing out over the London skyline. ‘Hi, Mum,’ Kate said.

  There was no answer, so she repeated her greeting, but Lucy didn’t stir. ‘It’s Kate,’ she said. ‘Your daughter.’

  ‘Perhaps I did make mistakes,’ Lucy said.

  Kate sat next to her by the window. ‘We all make mistakes.’

  ‘Your father said you wanted him to leave me. I thought that was very cruel.’

  ‘I just wanted him to be happy.’

  ‘He was happy with me.’ There was a long silence. ‘But perhaps I did make mistakes.’ Lucy turned to her. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘At work.’

  ‘You’re always working. That was one of your father’s mistakes.’

  Kate had steeled herself not to rise to the bait. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘No, thank you, dear. I have more tea in here than a Calcutta street trader. I don’t know that it’s doing me much good.’

  ‘Can I get you anything else?’

  ‘No. Why are you here? I only saw you at the weekend.’

  ‘I came to say goodbye.’

  ‘For ever?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Just for a little while.’

  ‘Well, I know how important you are. “She’s practically running the government,” our friends used to say. You must be so proud.’ Lucy turned back to the window. ‘Ambitious Kate. Clever Kate. All those As in all those exams. Still, you’ve got what you wanted.’

  Kate knew her mother well enough to be certain she should leave it there, but she couldn’t resist ignoring her own advice. ‘And what did I want?’

  ‘To prove you weren’t me. And now you can parade your virtue and your happy family for the world to see.’

  ‘It never ceases to amaze me how such a benign-looking woman can have such an acid tongue,’ Kate said. ‘But I might be gone for a while and who knows what will happen in the meantime? So, if you want our last words together to be harsh ones, then carry on as you are.’

  Lucy made her wait so long for an answer that Kate wondered whether she had toppled back into the dementia pit. Eventually, without turning her head, she said, ‘I don’t. Have a good trip.’

  Kate stayed there as the minutes ticked by and then, very quietly, got up and left, a new layer of loneliness wrapping itself around her heart.

  At home, Stuart and the children’s welcome was as immediate and warm as her previous encounter had been grudging and cold. They were relieved to have her back. She went through the motions of engaging with everything they said, but she was not in the moment. She didn’t know why she’d said goodbye to her mother. She couldn’t bear to do it to her children. She was going away again, early in the morning, she said. It would be the last work trip for a while and she hoped she would be away only for a day or two.

  Fiona asked if anything was wrong, but the evening haze continued all the way up to the moment she joined Stuart in bed. The concern in his eyes was raw. ‘Are you all right, my love?’ he asked. ‘You don’t seem yourself.’

  ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘No. Even the children noticed. What’s happened?’

  ‘I went to see my mother. It was worse than usual.’

  ‘Yes. She called when you were on your way home. She said you’d come to say goodbye.’

  Kate lay down, facing away from her husband. ‘I don’t want to see her any more.’

  Stuart gently coaxed her towards him. ‘Your mother is a gold-plated, diamond-encrusted bitch, but that’s not the reason, is it? What’s happened?’

  ‘I can’t talk about it, my love. The conclusion of something.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Everything I’ve been working on for as long as I can remember.’

  Kate turned away from him again, so Stuart swung out of bed, circled around it and sat beside her. ‘Please tell me.’

  ‘I have to go to Russia tomorrow.’

  ‘I thought all members of staff were banned from travelling to Russia.’

  ‘We are. I’ll have to go in under cover.’

  ‘That’s an insane risk.’

  ‘It may be, but I don’t have a choice. Someone has agreed to give me evidence—’

  ‘Sergei?’

  She couldn’t bring herself to lie to him. ‘Someone has made contact to say he has evidence to prove who’s been betraying us. That’s all I can say, so please don’t question me any more or attempt to dissuade me. I wouldn’t go unless I absolutely had to. I’ll be all right as soon as I’m back. It’ll be over. One way or the other.’

  He touched her cheek. ‘You know I’m here for you, don’t you? Right behind you. Always have been, always will be. But are you sure it’s right to go? There must be another way.’

  ‘Yes. It is right. So, please, if you’d like me to go and sleep in the spare room, that’s fine. I have to be up really early …’

  Stuart withdrew. He switched off the light, but in the darkness she could tell that sleep eluded him, too. It was a long time before he succumbed to it.

  When she was sure he was finally asleep, Kate got up. She emptied the bag she’d taken to Mykonos, filled it with cold-weather gear, then went down to the kitchen. She opened her laptop and sent a message to Ian and Sir Alan, separately but identically: My source says he has proof of who has betrayed us. Am on my way to Russia to collect. More to follow.

  She WhatsApped Julie and Danny, asking them to meet her at Heathrow, then crept back upstairs. Gus did not stir as she kissed him, but Fiona was awake as soon as her mother’s lips brushed her forehead. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just kissing you before I go.’

  ‘You never do that.’

  ‘I always do that.’

  ‘Not in the middle of the night.’

  Kate sat on the bed beside her daughter.

  ‘What are you doing, Mum?’

  ‘I have an impossible few days ahead, my darling. But I have to go, and I don’t think I can do it without your support.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I think you know what I mean. Those men outside our house? They’re there for a very good reason. And I have to settle the matter now. I don’t think it’s going to be easy.’

  ‘Will you be all right?’

  ‘Yes, I believe so. Otherwise, I don’t think I could say goodbye to you and your brother. But I don’t know precisely how it’s going to end.’

  ‘What about Dad? Surely you couldn’t say goodbye to him either …’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘In this room? Yes. In the country? No.’

  ‘But you’ll be okay? You’re not going to take any … risks?’

  ‘There’s just something I need to do, and then it will all be over.’ She smiled at her daughter. ‘How is my new friend?’

  ‘He likes you.’

  ‘I apologized for misjudging him.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I should have apologized to you, too. I should have trusted your judgement.’

  ‘You don’t have to apologize to me. I deserve all the shit I get.’

  ‘Well … some shit, perhaps. But not all of it.’

  Fiona wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck. Her tears were damp on Kate’s cheeks. ‘I love you, Mum,’ she said.

  It was the warmest hug she’d had for years and it made the walk out into the chill night the bleakest she had endured.

  Kate called an Uber. She wanted her movements to be traced. And as she got into it, she looked back to see that her bedroom light had been switched on.

  Kate spent half an hour with Danny in Carluccio’s at Heathrow as he passed her the equipment and
explained how she could rig it. Then they all boarded the flight to Helsinki.

  29

  They hired a car at Helsinki airport and didn’t stop until they reached Kotka, where Sergei’s letter had been posted. Kate had first come here with him on a day trip from the dacha to the Finnish capital. It had changed considerably for the better – and worse – since then. A major port in the Gulf of Finland, it had once thrived on its paper mills and other light industrial output, but globalization had taken its toll and the evidence was clearly visible in the ill-kept apartment blocks in the outer districts, gloomy now as the grey afternoon crept towards dusk. But the harbour had been spruced up and the coffee shop they stopped at, overlooking a tall ship by the quay, was a temple to Scandinavian minimalism.

  They didn’t talk much. They had agreed to part there. Kate would go on alone. ‘Are you ready?’ she asked, after they had sat in silence sipping coffee.

  They nodded.

  She hugged them both. ‘I wish I was coming with you,’ Julie said.

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘I’ll happily come.’

  ‘I need you here.’

  Julie gazed at her. ‘It’s reckless to go alone, Kate.’

  ‘It’s reckless to go at all. Taking you would be even more so.’

  Kate got into the car to forestall any further discussion and drove away without looking back. She only glanced in her rear-view mirror as she swung right at the end of the quay and saw that Julie and Danny were both still standing on the pavement, watching her.

  It began to rain, the dull drizzle in flat grey, almost winter light, which made life in England feel like a ray of sunshine. And as she drove on with the pine forests to her left and the Gulf of Finland stretching away to the horizon on her right, she was so absorbed in a cascade of endlessly repeating thoughts and theories that it felt like only minutes later that she began the approach to the Vaalimaa border crossing. European and Finnish flags tugged violently in the breeze as she joined the queue.

  Kate tapped her fingers on the wheel in the way Rav used to.

  The rain strengthened. She inched forwards, listening to the steady beat of the windscreen wipers. The control booths were a blaze of light in the gathering gloom.