Breaking Cover

by Stella Rimington

  There was a loud guffaw and the door opened to admit a man in a belted raincoat, and a young woman.

  ‘What’s the joke?’ asked Liz.

  ‘I was just telling our colleague from the Home Office something she didn’t know about one of her Ministers. It’s amazing what you can learn from the Protection boys.’

  Liz raised her eyebrows. She was not impressed by DI Ferguson’s indiscretion, but at least Rona Benson looked embarrassed.

  Hot on their heels came Bruno Mackay of MI6. Liz and Bruno were about the same age and had worked together before, though not recently. When she’d first met him, she’d joked with her friends that he fancied himself as T. E. Lawrence – tanned face, bright blue eyes, skin taut and lined from gazing into the sun. Bruno had been in Afghanistan, where he had been running an agent against the Taliban, and was very pleased with himself – his manner towards Liz and her colleagues was one of ineffable superiority. Since then he had been Head of the MI6 Station in Paris and after that he’d been in Libya. The grapevine reported that something very unpleasant had happened to him there but no one was saying what it was.

  So Liz had been half expecting Bruno to look different from the young man she’d first met, but she was still surprised by how changed he was. His face was no longer tanned but a yellowy-white, and the blue eyes seemed to have sunk into his face. He was still an elegant figure, in a beautifully cut dark blue tweed jacket worn with striped shirt and flannels, but he had lost a lot of weight and his clothes now hung on him limply.

  He greeted Liz with a handshake. Instead of the teasing personal remark he would once have made, he said, ‘Good morning, Liz. It’s good to see you again. I was very sorry to hear about Martin.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied, rather taken aback. ‘I’m sorry to hear you’ve had a rough time.’ He just nodded and sat down at the table.

  A few moments later Charlie Simmons arrived, looking like a student who had slept in his clothes, his spiky hair standing straight up, khaki anorak undone and hanging half off his shoulders. Had Liz not known what a vital role he had played in the Paris operation, she would have found it difficult to take him seriously.

  ‘Sorry to be late,’ he said, dropping his backpack on the floor beside a chair and sitting down. ‘Those trains get more and more unreliable.’

  Liz rattled through the first item on Peggy’s agenda and then asked Charlie to explain why he had asked for the meeting to be brought forward.

  ‘Well,’ he said, sitting up in his chair, rather more focused, ‘you will all remember that after the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in 2011, police and other investigations showed without much doubt that a special operations team of at least two or three Russians had brought the polonium into the country and then administered it. We’ve assumed it was an FSB assassination, either formally or informally approved. After that was uncovered, I and a couple of colleagues looked back at our data to see whether anything might have given us a clue that a special op was going to be carried out. We thought it likely that relevant Rezidentura in countries might have been alerted in case anything went wrong and the special ops team needed assistance of some kind.

  ‘When we looked, we saw some traffic in the run-up to the murder that we couldn’t read, but that was unusual – because it was sent to just a few Stations. Including London of course. There was a lot more unusual activity from London during the period when Litvinenko was dying in hospital and the investigation was getting under way. We think the traffic was being sent out of St Petersburg, not the main communications centre in Moscow. That may mean that the operation was organised by a special unit outside the mainstream.

  ‘After that,’ Charlie went on, ‘we decided to continue to monitor, looking for any similar pattern, in case we were seeing the start of some concerted plan to eliminate critics in the West. And the reason I asked for a meeting of this committee is that in the last few weeks, beginning about a month ago, we’ve seen something similar. It’s traffic out of St Petersburg to London but it has also gone to Riga, Oslo and, rather unexpectedly, New York.’

  By now everyone round the table was looking interested. Eventually it was agreed that, despite the vagueness of the intelligence, resource should be committed to trying to prevent attacks on Russians or ex-Russians living in the UK, whether they were oligarchs or political defectors (or both). It was also agreed that all UK police forces should be alerted at senior level; that Bruno would alert MI6 Stations, particularly in the Baltic and Scandinavian states, to keep their ears to the ground; and that MI5 would ensure that all domestic sources were similarly alerted. Rona Benson would discreetly report upwards in Whitehall, trying to ensure that no overreaction took place in the Home Office.

  Following a quick review of current investigations, the meeting broke up, the participants leaving considerably more animated than when they had arrived. But as Liz watched them go she felt uneasy. She had a strong sense of a threat and it seemed fairly clear where it was coming from, but its precise nature and what could be done about it were not at all clear. This was very different from her recent experience in counter-terrorism where at the first sign of a threat all the cogs fell into place and started working to defeat it. With this threat she could only wait for further developments – and that worried her.

  10

  It was raining when Peggy Kinsolving got out of the cab in Grosvenor Square. She put up her umbrella and peered out from under it at the American Embassy at the west end of the square. As always, armed police stood guarding the entrance, where despite the rain a queue of visa applicants snaked back along the pavement. Concrete crash barriers extended out into the square, and a lane on one of the streets had been closed off with cones. Above the 1960s edifice of pre-stressed concrete, the enormous gold figure of the American eagle spread its wings, as if struggling to fly off. Soon it would get its wish, since the Embassy was moving south of the Thames, to a building safely located without immediate neighbours.

  Peggy showed her credentials to the guard in the small shelter outside, put her bag and her wet umbrella under the X-ray machine and went through the entrance, shaking the remaining water off the umbrella. The receptionist on the desk put a call through and Peggy took a seat in the large waiting area. She hoped this meeting wasn’t going to take too long.

  Peggy had had a sleepless night, thanks to Tim’s coming to bed at two. He had been working long hours lately, though to her chagrin it was not on the article he was meant to be writing for Essays and Criticism. Instead he was always at his computer, surfing the net for articles about internet surveillance and the intrusions of governments on the private lives of their citizens. When Peggy had tactfully suggested this wasn’t the best way to be spending his time, he had bridled. ‘This is important,’ he’d insisted angrily, and Peggy bit her lip and said no more. At some point she was going to have to have a proper conversation with him about it. He had students to teach, and his own academic work to pursue – he had a book to write in which Oxford University Press had expressed strong interest. Yet Peggy knew that however gently she pointed this out, he would react badly.

  She couldn’t understand where this new fascination with half-baked conspiracy theories had come from. In his own subject Tim was indefatigable in his pursuit of source material and a rigorous judge of authenticity. Now he was spending hours in murky chat rooms, exchanging ‘views’. Usually the mildest of men, recently he had become terribly opinionated, and very aggressive in argument – and arguments were what most of their conversations were these days. She felt she was watching him change in front of her eyes, and she didn’t like it one bit. What had happened to the gentle scholar she had fallen in love with?

  A tall woman in a bright blue suit came out to collect her. She led Peggy up to the fourth floor, through a series of combination-locked doors, into what seemed to be a waiting room furnished with sofas and low tables, off which led four or five heavy wooden doors, all closed.

  ‘This looks different from the
last time I was here,’ remarked Peggy.

  ‘Yes,’ replied her escort, in a Southern accent. ‘We’ve had a security upgrade. But nothing’s very secure in this old place.’

  Hmm, thought Peggy. Not much faith in our counter-terrorism measures then, but she said, ‘I expect you’re looking forward to the new building.’

  The blue-suited woman raised her eyebrows. ‘I’ll be home by the time that’s finished.’ Then, opening one of the doors, she said, ‘Miss Kinsolving is here for you, sir,’ and turning back to Peggy, waved her into the room.

  Miles Brookhaven stood up from behind a large steel-and-glass desk as Peggy walked in. He seemed taller and thinner than she remembered him, and no longer wore the heavy horn-rimmed spectacles he’d sported as a younger man. He looks as though he needs feeding up, she thought, and remembered that he had been badly wounded in Syria a year or so before, knifed by an unknown assailant in a Damascus market. Liz had told her that he had almost bled to death and had been lucky to pull through. Since then he had been commended for his work in Yemen, where he’d recruited a source whose information had helped prevent a terrorist attack on Britain. This post as Head of the CIA Station in London was his reward. It was said that he was the youngest ever to hold it. But his responsibilities didn’t seem to be weighing on him; he looked cheerful and friendly as he energetically pumped her hand, then ushered her to a seat on the sofa, while he sat down in an easy chair.

  ‘It’s really good to see you again, Peggy. We have met before… do you remember?’ he said with a wide grin.

  ‘Yes. Of course I do,’ she said, finding her own formality starting to melt in the face of such friendliness.

  ‘And you’re still working for the redoubtable Miss Carlyle?’

  ‘I am,’ she said with a half-smile.

  ‘And surviving?’

  ‘Loving it,’ she replied. She wasn’t used to being teased in this building. Miles’s predecessor, Andy Bokus, was a much grumpier character, but she remembered now that Miles was something of an Anglophile, having spent a year at Westminster School when he was a boy.

  ‘I was rather hoping …’ and he hesitated ‘… that Liz might come with you today.’

  Peggy knew this meant he’d been hoping Liz would come alone. It was well known that he had made a pass at her years ago when he was here as a much more junior officer. But Peggy didn’t take offence; according to protocol, meetings with the CIA Head of Station would normally be conducted by someone more senior than she was. ‘Liz sends her apologies. There’s a meeting at Cheltenham she couldn’t get out of.’ Peggy had prepared this excuse in advance.

  Brookhaven seemed to accept it. He nodded. ‘And how is she?’ There was concern in his voice, which his cheerfulness could not disguise.

  ‘She’s fine,’ said Peggy, knowing the subtext here was the death of Martin Seurat.

  ‘Good,’ said Brookhaven briskly. ‘So what can I do for you?’

  Relieved to turn to business at last, Peggy said, ‘I expect you’ve heard that Liz has moved back into counter-espionage and I’ve moved with her. Liz is concerned that with all the focus on terrorism, we may have got rather out of touch with you on espionage. She wants to set up a channel for a regular exchange of views. I’ve come over really to start the ball rolling with that and also to brief you on some things we have become aware of recently.’

  Peggy talked for a few minutes about the increasing number of cyber-attacks on British companies, and also mentioned two recent cases where a couple of employees of defence firms had been subjected to old-fashioned sexual compromise. ‘It all seems very Cold War,’ she said, ‘and the intelligence component at the Russian Embassy here is as high as it’s ever been.’

  ‘From what I hear, it’s the same all over Western Europe.’

  ‘Yes,’ Peggy went on, ‘but there’s one added problem that is perhaps unique to us: the possibility of physical attacks on the anti-Putin oligarchs who are living in Britain. The Government is most anxious that there shouldn’t be another Litvinenko.’

  Brookhaven was listening closely, occasionally making a note on a yellow legal pad he’d taken from his desk. ‘Have you seen anything to indicate something like that might be in the air?’ he asked.

  ‘We have – though just the vaguest hint. It’s possible we might have misread it,’ replied Peggy, and told him what Charlie Simmons had revealed at the Counter-Espionage Assessment Committee meeting. ‘Charlie thinks it might mean that some kind of special unit is on the move. What bothers us is the similarity between these new messages and some traffic that was picked up before the Litvinenko murder.’

  ‘They’ve always kept a close eye on the oligarchs here, haven’t they? It may be that, given the raised tension between Russia and Europe, they want to prevent anything remotely resembling a movement in exile from growing up.’

  ‘Well, if it involves killing people with radioactive poison, we need to stop it.’

  Brookhaven considered this for a minute. He was an attractive man, thought Peggy; he appeared rather English in his well-cut dark suit, and though he was thin he looked athletic, confident, but with a certain vulnerability she rather liked. He said, ‘Do you know, what you’ve said doesn’t surprise me at all.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘About ten days ago a new source came to us in…’ He paused. ‘Let’s just say the Middle East for now. He said he had important information about FSB activity in the West. At first, we thought he must mean America – you remember the Illegals the FBI flushed out a few years ago?’

  ‘Of course.’ It had been the stuff of Hollywood – over half a dozen Russians who had been living as Americans in the United States, some for many years, undetected.

  ‘In fact, it turned out he was talking about the UK – and France. I was about to arrange a meeting with you all at Thames House but you beat me to it.’

  Peggy said nothing, wanting to believe him. Everyone knew the Americans were forthcoming when it suited their interests, silent when it didn’t. Peggy was not alone in thinking the Special Relationship was only special on one side of the Atlantic.

  Brookhaven went on, ‘I’m due to go meet this source later this month. When I get back, why don’t I come over to Thames House and brief you and Liz?’

  ‘Terrific,’ said Peggy. She couldn’t resist adding, ‘I’ll make sure she’s not in Cheltenham that day.’

  11

  ‘Hi, Jasminder, any chance of dinner tonight? I was thinking we could meet at La Sambuca?’

  She was surprised to hear Laurenz Hansen on the phone. She’d enjoyed their second meeting, a few weeks ago, for dinner in Primrose Hill, though she had been a bit taken aback when afterwards he had seen her into a taxi outside the restaurant with only a chaste peck on the cheek for goodbye and no mention of a future meeting. He’d said rather vaguely that he’d ring her, but she had more or less decided that nothing was going to come of the relationship.

  It wasn’t surprising he was reluctant to get involved. From the sound of it, his divorce was enough to put anyone off relationships. He and his wife had separated almost two years before and it was only now the divorce was coming through – and that after months of such acrimony that they were only communicating through lawyers.

  Jasminder usually found the details of other people’s divorces too tedious to bother with, but she had asked Laurenz why his had become so unpleasant. ‘Money,’ he’d replied. ‘I made some successful investments when I was working in Bermuda and I’d previously worked in Venezuela for a couple of years and have holdings there as well. I declared everything to the court months ago but she doesn’t believe me. She’s hired private detectives to try and find the fortune I’m meant to have hidden away.’

  In spite of herself Jasminder had found his candour attractive and she thought that perhaps the divorce proceedings explained some things about him that had puzzled her. If he had private investigators on his tail it was not surprising he hadn’t wanted to call the police after her
mugging the other week. And maybe the fact that he’d given her his office number rather than a mobile or a home number had the same explanation.

  Now here he was on the phone again, just when Jasminder had more or less given up on him. She hesitated, tempted by his invitation – and the restaurant he was proposing was conveniently close to her flat. But this would be her second night out this week – she’d had dinner with her friend Emma in Covent Garden two evenings before – and there were student essays to mark and a long brief to review for an urgent political asylum case. It wasn’t as if she had a lot of time on her hands.

  Laurenz Hansen seemed to pick up that she was wavering. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we scratch the restaurant idea? Let me come over and cook while you get on with your work. We can talk over supper. You do have to eat, you know.’

  And eventually she accepted, telling herself that he was right; she could do her work and still make time to see him. She couldn’t remember a moment, not even in early childhood, when she hadn’t felt she had too much to do, and too little time to do it. From primary-school days she had always been busy and hard-working, and it had paid off. She’d won a full fees-paid scholarship to Leicester Girls’ High School and had gone on to Durham. There she’d got a first, then a distinction in her supplementary year at law college in London. She’d had her choice between four firms of solicitors who were vying for her services. All this before she’d turned twenty-three.

  Looking back now, she supposed this urgency must have come from her parents, who like so many immigrants to the UK were desperately eager for their children to succeed. Her father had been a successful pharmacist in Kampala, until Idi Amin had suddenly decided that Uganda didn’t need its Asian community any more and had thrown them all out. Arriving in England with hardly any possessions, her father had discovered that his professional qualifications didn’t transfer to the UK. Settling in Leicester, where so many Indian arrivals were living, he had managed with the help of a cousin to buy a tiny corner shop, selling cigarettes and newspapers and, at first, not much else.