Jasminder nodded and began to relax a little. The chairman, Pennington, had made her want to laugh with his mix of pomposity and nerves, but she liked Sir Peter, who seemed straightforward. As they continued their discussion, she sensed she might enjoy working with (and for) this man, and could feel a growing fascination at the prospect of being involved in this mysterious world.
It was only when it was the turn of the third member of the panel, Mr Fane, to ask the questions that she again began to feel that she was in the wrong place. This languid-seeming gentleman in pinstripes, lounging comfortably in his chair in this elegant room, was exactly what she’d been expecting from the interview and just the sort of person guaranteed to make her feel uncomfortable. His questions took a completely different line from Sir Peter’s and were aggressively posed. How could she possibly move from the untrammelled freedoms of academe to the restrictions of a closely controlled environment? Was she used to knowing secrets? More important, was she good at keeping them? Did she realise how intrusive the media could be? Could she work with colleagues who didn’t share her political views? Could she get along with people who thought her naïve, and despised her brand of liberalism?
As each question was posed, with elaborate old-school courtesy, Jasminder felt her temper rising, but she managed to control herself and reply politely, if increasingly curtly, until he prefaced a question with ‘My dear Miss Kapoor’, when she finally snapped. ‘I’m not your “dear”, Mr Fane. And if that’s how you address women you barely know, then I hope you’re not typical of the men in MI6. If you are, I would feel quite uncomfortable about being closely associated with them, let alone representing them to the public.’
There was a short silence. Fane looked slightly stunned, and then Sir Peter intervened. ‘Thank you, Geoffrey,’ he said firmly. To Jasminder he said, ‘As I mentioned, there are different views in the Service about how our interface with the public should be managed, and you have just heard one of them from Geoffrey. However, you have also heard the route I intend to pursue and I hope you think it’s the right one.’
Geoffrey Fane said nothing. He leaned back in his chair, long legs stretched out in front of him, a look of supercilious distaste on his face. Henry Pennington suddenly roused himself as though he had just remembered that he was the chairman of the selection board. Looking (and sounding) more anxious than ever, he turned to Sir Peter.
‘Have you any more questions for Miss Kapoor, C?’
‘No further questions, thank you. Is there anything more you would like to ask us, Miss Kapoor?’
Jasminder, who had been more shaken by Geoffrey Fane’s attitude than she was prepared to show, asked whether there was a great deal of opposition within the Service to the creation of the post. ‘I would not wish to find myself caught between a hostile media and hostile colleagues, attacked from both front and rear as it were.’
‘I can assure you, Miss Kapoor,’ replied Sir Peter, ‘that I attach a great deal of importance to the creation and success of this post. There will be no attacks from the rear, as you put it. I will be responsible for ensuring that.’
Jasminder nodded. ‘Thank you. That’s my only question.’
After this, Henry Pennington wound up the interview and Catherine stood up and escorted Jasminder out of the room to the front door.
‘Don’t be put off by Geoffrey Fane,’ she said. ‘He’s a traditionalist and suspicious of any change. But he’s not a bad old stick really, and he’s very good at his job. If something new seems to be working, he’ll get behind it. And anyway it’s Sir Peter who will be calling the shots, as you saw for yourself. Do ring me if you have any queries, and I hope we meet again.’ With that, she shut the door, leaving Jasminder to walk back down Carlton Gardens, her head in a whirl.
20
‘You ready?’ It was Peggy, knocking on Liz’s open door and walking into her office.
‘Ready for what?’ asked Liz, looking up from what she was reading. ‘Oh, yes, of course. I forgot Miles brought the meeting forward. I was thinking he was coming this afternoon.’
‘Reception’s just rung to say he’s in the waiting room. Shall I go and get him?’
‘Perhaps I’d better go down. It seems only polite, as I haven’t seen him for a few years.’
‘I thought you didn’t want to encourage him?’ said Peggy with a grin.
‘I don’t. But we’ve both grown up a bit since those days and he is the senior Agency man here now. Have you booked a meeting room? It’s a bit of a squash in here.’
On first catching sight of Miles Brookhaven through the glass door of the waiting room, Liz was quite surprised by the change in the man. When she’d first encountered him – it was at a meeting in Whitehall when he was the junior officer at the CIA London Station – he had been like a large puppy. An Ivy League puppy, she thought with a private smile. He’d sported light-coloured suits and striped ties and she remembered an absurdly new-looking Burberry raincoat that he always wore, whether it was raining or not. In those days he had admired everything English. She wondered if time and experience had changed that.
As she walked into the room he leaped to his feet. He still towered above Liz, though he seemed thinner than she remembered and his face had lost its boyish openness. He was wearing a well-cut dark grey flannel suit and a plain tie, and looked distinguished and serious.
‘It’s wonderful to see you again, Liz,’ he said, shaking her hand.
‘You too. You look fit.’
‘Never fitter,’ he said, and smiled at her; Liz knew that his return to work had involved a long climb back to health.
They took the lift upstairs, standing for a moment side by side in silence. Then Miles said, ‘I heard about your friend, Liz. I just wanted to say how very sorry I am.’
‘Thanks, Miles,’ she said, feeling relieved when the lift doors opened. She didn’t want to talk to him about Martin and risk showing her feelings. As they walked down the corridor, she changed the subject by mentioning that Peggy would be joining them.
‘Good,’ said Miles emphatically. ‘I was very impressed with her when I met her the other day.’
They settled around the table in a small meeting room where Peggy was waiting. A window looked east down the Thames, giving a fine view of the flurry of buildings being erected along the South Bank. ‘How was your trip?’ Peggy asked Miles. ‘I was expecting a suntan.’
‘You were?’ he replied, puzzled.
‘Yes. But I suppose you didn’t spend a lot of time outside.’
Miles continued to look puzzled, then his face cleared. ‘Oh, yes. I told you I was going to the Middle East to meet a new source.’
Peggy nodded. ‘I’ve been looking forward to hearing what he had to say. That is, if you can tell us.’
‘I certainly can. In fact, that’s what I’ve come to talk to you about. I should first admit that I misled you slightly when I said I was meeting him in the Middle East. In fact I only passed through Dubai on my way to Ukraine.’
‘Goodness,’ said Peggy. ‘I can see why you haven’t got a suntan.’
Miles grinned broadly. ‘More like frostbite,’ he said.
Liz and Peggy listened while he described his journey and the meeting with Mischa. ‘He’s a source of our Kiev Station’s. They don’t know his name, though his story seems to check out. The stuff he’s been giving them has been very useful, they say.
‘Anyway, when he suddenly announced that he had information about activity in Western Europe and the States, they brought me in. I found him pretty impressive.’
Miles went on to relate what Mischa had said about the two-pronged operations in the West. ‘Destabilising or killing the anti-Putin oligarchs is no surprise, of course,’ he said. ‘We’ve seen it already.’
‘Yes,’ replied Peggy. ‘But if we can get advance information on targets and methods, that will be very helpful. We were completely taken by surprise with Litvinenko. And we still don’t know if any of the others who’ve died o
ver here were murdered.’
‘It’s the other part of this programme that interests me most,’ said Liz. ‘The use of Illegals to destabilise societies in the West. Put like that, it’s ludicrously ambitious. They were very successful in Ukraine but how on earth could they hope to make any impact here? Ukraine must have gone to their heads.’
‘It sounds to me like something from the Cold War,’ said Peggy. ‘You remember how the KGB tried to infiltrate peace movements, and anti-nuclear movements in Europe, to try to weaken the West’s ability to defend itself if the Cold War ever turned hot?’
‘Yes. But they had a large British Communist Party to work with in those days and plenty of members who were happy to help them make trouble,’ said Liz. ‘They poured money into it, but at the end of the day I don’t think they got much benefit from it at all.’
‘But our two countries never went to war. It might have been very different if we had.’
‘True. But what could the Russians do here nowadays that would have any real weakening effect?’ Liz looked sceptical.
‘Ruin the economy,’ suggested Miles. ‘Though I imagine they’d try to do that remotely by cyber-attack.’
Liz said, ‘Maybe it’s nothing as fundamental as that. I think they’d save financial attack until we really were at war.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Peggy slowly, ‘it’s just an effort to disturb and confuse. To damage morale and confidence; encourage separatism; try to magnify our problems, in some way, so we don’t have the resources or the will to intervene in Ukraine, say, or the Baltic States if Putin decides to go for them – that sort of thing,’ she ended uncertainly.
‘That’s a pretty big programme for one Illegal,’ said Liz with a smile.
‘Let’s just think about that,’ said Miles, coming to Peggy’s defence. ‘Remember, he said that one Illegal was just the start. What are the current troublesome issues? Non-economic, I mean. One is young people being recruited to fundamentalist groups. Then there’s the possible break-up of the UK through separatist movements. And the possibility that you might leave the European Community – that might please Russia, as they’d hope it would weaken Europe. And what about the non-renewing of Trident? I’m sure they’d like that. There’s quite a lot when you come to think about it.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Liz was getting into the spirit now. ‘And what about the anti-snoopers who nearly knocked me out the other day? I’m not sure they need much encouraging, but they could do our intelligence effort quite a lot of harm if they got the law changed on interception, for example, so GCHQ’s powers were restricted. I bet the FSB would love that. But,’ she added, coming down to earth, ‘this all sounds terribly far-fetched. I can’t believe the Russians would spend resources on it.’
‘Well, if we are to believe Mischa, they are doing just that. And not only here. He said there were two Illegals already placed in France and another in the US. Langley and the FBI are working on that. But… and this seems to me to add urgency to the situation… he said that in Britain their Illegal has had some recent success. His brother was crowing about it. I took him to mean success in getting access to information or being alongside people with access. Mischa implied they’d got something they wouldn’t normally expect to secure so soon.’
There was silence in the room while they all considered the problem. ‘So,’ said Liz, ‘we are looking for a person, could be a man, could be a woman, who has fairly recently appeared in some milieu or other, we don’t know what. All we do know is that he or she won’t be Russian and they won’t be English. That’s right, isn’t it?’ She turned to Miles.
He said, ‘Yes, I’d say the one here is almost certainly not English. The country’s just too small for him to masquerade as a native very easily.’
Peggy put her head in her hands. ‘How are we going to get anywhere with this? I wouldn’t know where to begin. It really is looking for a needle in a haystack.’
‘I’m sorry to be giving you such a headache,’ said Miles with a smile. ‘I wish I had more information. But I’m hoping to get something else out of the source before too long. My Kiev colleagues have set up a communication link with him, but they have to be very careful.’
‘Let’s not forget about their campaign against the oligarchs,’ said Liz.
‘That may be just as hard to pin down,’ Miles acknowledged. ‘I’m not sure how much my source’s brother has to do with it. The anti-Putin ones will be the ones most at risk, of course, but they don’t always make that obvious to outsiders.’
‘Mmm,’ said Liz. She was thinking of her lunch with Pearson, and his story about the new arrival in Altrincham. ‘At least we can track down those who live here and make sure they are aware of the risks.’
‘Yes,’ said Peggy, ‘and I’ve just remembered what Charlie Simmons said at our meeting. He’d analysed some traffic that reminded him of the pattern that occurred before the Litvinenko murder. It suggests this might all be connected. It could be coincidence, of course, but I wouldn’t want to count on that.’
21
As Jasminder woke up she became aware of noise in the street outside. It was normally fairly quiet in the mornings, with just an occasional car going past, but she could hear raised voices and what sounded like people talking on telephones. She got out of bed and peeped out from behind the curtains to see what was going on.
On the pavement outside her house a group of about twenty people had gathered. Some had cameras, one man was standing on top of a small stepladder, some were holding microphones. Most were clutching cardboard coffee cups from the shop round the corner in Upper Street. She peered at them in astonishment, wondering what it was all about. She wished Laurenz were here with her, but he had gone off for almost a week to see clients.
Then the phone rang and Jasminder flinched. But it was Catherine Palmer calling her.
‘Good morning, Jasminder,’ she said. ‘Sorry to ring you early but I’ve just been told that there’s a lot of media interest in your first day with us.’
‘I was wondering why there was a posse of cameramen and reporters outside the house. I’ve just seen them from the window.’
‘Are they there already? It’s going to be on the Today programme too. There’ll be a discussion just after eight o’clock about whether we’ve done the right thing in appointing you. C is going to take part, arguing against some MP who thinks the heavens have fallen in. It should be worth hearing.’
‘I’ll catch it on Listen Again when I get to the office. I was thinking of setting off before eight.’
‘That’s what I was ringing about. I think you should stay put for the moment. We’ll send a car for you at about nine. We’re going to try and get the media called off on the grounds that they pose a threat to your security. Some of them will have got bored by then anyway as they’ll have missed the morning news deadline but I expect others will hang around. Our advice is that you should just walk straight out of the house and into the car. Look pleasant, smile at them and say ‘Good morning’, but don’t answer any questions. We don’t want this to be more of a news story than we can help – not until you’ve got your feet under the desk and can plan how you are going to deal with media attention in future.’
Jasminder moved well away from the window. ‘OK. Will the driver call me from the car when he gets here? I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the journalists don’t ring the bell before long. They’ll start getting impatient if nothing happens and I don’t want to answer the door to them.’
‘Yes, I’ll tell him to do that. And we’ll have to send a security team round to survey your house now it’s become public knowledge where you live.’ Catherine’s voice was sympathetic. ‘I’m sorry about all this, Jasminder. It’ll die down before too long.’
‘I hope so.’ Jasminder sat down heavily on a kitchen chair, near to tears. ‘I don’t know what my neighbours will think of all this. It’s always been a rather quiet street.’
‘I’m sorry – it would have been better if
it could have stayed like that. But the cat’s out of the bag now so we’ll have to cope with it.’
As she sat in her kitchen, drinking coffee and listening to C justify her appointment by making a case for greater openness, Jasminder wondered if she had made a dreadful mistake in accepting the job. She had been very happy in her old life, establishing what she knew was a growing reputation. Though she had frequently found her students irritating, she had loved her work at the immigration charity and felt that she was really making a difference to people’s lives.
After her clash with Geoffrey Fane she had resolved not to take the MI6 job, even if it were offered to her. But she had been invited in to Vauxhall Cross for further discussions with Peter Treadwell, and had been more and more impressed by him and his clear views on where the Service should be heading. She had also met several of the senior people and had liked them. She had even re-encountered Geoffrey Fane on one of her visits and had found him rather polite in a formal, courteous sort of way – she remembered what Catherine Palmer had said about how good he was at the job and how he would get behind change once it had happened. So when a letter came offering her the job, Jasminder had decided to accept. Now she had to live with the consequences.
22
Jasminder had a good deal of experience of the British media. Not only did she edit a monthly magazine, she’d written articles for the broadsheets, she’d been doorstepped by the Daily Mail, she’d done Start The Week on Radio 4 as well as joining panels in discussion programmes. She’d even done Question Time, the television programme that had made her mother so proud. So she thought she understood the methods and madness of the British press.
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