Breaking Cover

by Stella Rimington

  ‘OK. Thanks for that, Andy. Miles, I think that explains the background and indicates why Andy is so concerned about a meeting with Mischa in Estonia.’

  Before Miles had a chance to reply, Andy Bokus broke in again. ‘I sure am,’ he said. ‘The Station has put in a mighty effort to get where they are and they don’t want someone like you – and let’s face it, Miles, you are not exactly unknown to the Russians – coming in and blowing it up.’

  Gunderson broke in, looking at Miles. ‘You would of course do a completely professional job, but I can see his point, Miles. In the little fish bowl of Tallinn, you might well be identified. Even if you kept clear of the Station, you might alert the opposition and conceivably blow Mischa’s cover into the bargain.’

  Miles was annoyed. He resented Andy’s tone and the implication that he was going to go barging in, but he decided to suppress his irritation. He didn’t want to get into an undignified slanging match in front of Gunderson and the FBI man, who so far had said nothing. So he replied, as calmly as he could, ‘What are you suggesting we do, Andy? I don’t feel we can ignore Mischa’s request for a meeting. If he has more information about the FSB’s operation in Britain then we must try and get it. We can’t ignore an Illegal’s operation against our main ally. After all, it may well affect our own interests if it is successful. And what about the Illegal in the States?’ He turned to the FBI man. ‘Bud, what do you feel about it? Would you be happy for us to turn down Mischa’s request?’

  Bud looked embarrassed – as though interfering in a family squabble. ‘We’re working hard to find the Illegal they’ve put in over here. Your source said he was suffering from lymphoma, so we’re searching for foreign nationals being treated for the disease. We’ve narrowed it down a bit – we’re not looking in remote rural areas – but the pool of possibles is still pretty large. Obviously we’d value anything more that might help us find him.’

  Gunderson said, ‘Miles, your report said there was a couple operating in France.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He looked at Bokus. ‘Any news on them?’

  Bokus shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not. We spoke to the DGSI and they got pretty excited. They claim they have their own informant, who said the Russians have planted someone in the National Front Party, close to Marine le Pen. It’s not clear if this “someone” could be the same person your friend Mischa is referring to. The French, in their usual way, aren’t telling us much.’ His irritation was obvious. ‘Until we know more, there’s no way of saying.’ He was looking almost accusingly at Miles, as if he were responsible for the French service’s intransigence.

  Gunderson cut in now. ‘Okay, that’s the state of things from our end. What’s your take on this, Miles?’

  ‘If Mischa has more information on Britain and wants a meeting right away while he’s in Tallinn, I think we should meet him.’

  He paused while Bokus made huffing noises.

  ‘But if Andy is uneasy about me going in, and I admit I’m not unknown to the Russians, then perhaps we should send someone else.’ Miles paused for a beat. ‘One of the Brits maybe.’

  Gunderson looked at Bokus, who was turning red in the face. ‘MI6?’ he spluttered. ‘I’m not having one of Geoffrey Fane’s golden boys trampling around Tallinn. They’ll be just as well known to the Russians as you are. They’ll stand out like a sore thumb.’

  ‘Actually I wasn’t thinking of MI6,’ responded Miles calmly.

  ‘Who then?’ Bokus said sarcastically. ‘Scotland Yard? Or is Sherlock Holmes on your books these days?’

  ‘No, MI5. If there’s an Illegal working in the UK it’s primarily their business. They don’t have any presence at all in Tallinn, and there’s far less chance of one of their people being detected. I was going to talk to Liz Carlyle. I’ve worked with her before; she’s very good.’ This time he looked at Gunderson. For all his bluster, Bokus wasn’t going to make the final call on this one.

  But he also wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Bokus clasped both hands on the table, squeezing them together as if he was trying to crack a nut between them – or perhaps Miles’s head. ‘Sandy,’ he said to Gunderson, ‘this is crazy. Carlyle’s okay,’ he said grudgingly, ‘but it’s not Five’s kind of work. I know the Brits – Geoffrey Fane at Six will take over Mischa as quick as you can whistle. In six months’ time Mischa will be sitting in a British safe house, spilling his guts out with fabricated stories, when he and his brother could have stayed in place, working for us. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘I don’t agree.’ Miles knew he had a fight on his hands. He didn’t know Gunderson well enough to say whether he was a man to cave in to the sheer force of Bokus’s bluster. ‘There’s no danger of losing Mischa as our source. MI5 would see him in Tallinn, get whatever he has to say about the British operation, but that’s it – once he’s back in Moscow all his dealings would be with us again. But unless you can tell me how we can a) safely meet the guy in Tallinn ourselves, or b) get his information about the British operation without someone meeting him, then I think we’ve got no option but to ask the Brits to do it. And if it’s going to be the Brits, then my firm recommendation is that it should be Liz Carlyle.

  ‘Look, we’re not talking about a meet in a hostile country. Estonia’s a NATO ally, for God’s sake. It gets swarms of tourists from Britain all year round. They arrive on cruise ships and low-cost flights every day. I’m quite sure Liz Carlyle can slip in, do the job and slip out undetected.

  ‘I don’t see that we have anything to lose. If we go ahead alone, we could compromise the source, and screw up Andy’s operations; equally I think it would be a great mistake simply to refuse to meet him. If we did that we’d lose whatever intelligence he has access to now, and we’d almost certainly lose him as a source in future, not to mention screw up any chance of recruiting his brother.’

  ‘Bud?’ asked Gunderson softly. ‘Have a view?’

  The FBI man thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Not really. Outside our bailiwick. Just to say we’d welcome anything more this Mischa has to give on the guy with lymphoma. Could save us a lot of trouble. But anything else I said would be pure opinion.’ Miles suppressed a smile; Bud obviously dealt in facts and hadn’t grasped that what they were asking for was his opinion.

  ‘Okay,’ said Gunderson, planting his elbows firmly on the table. ‘Thanks, everyone, for your advice. There’s strength in both sides of the argument but I don’t see any possibility of compromise. Miles, you’re the only one of us who’s actually met Mischa, so it’s your judgement I’m going to back on this one. Let’s go with the Brits, assuming they’re willing to play ball. I just hope this Carlyle woman’s as good as you say.’

  24

  It was Saturday morning and Peggy had just had another row with Tim. It seemed that nowadays whenever they had a conversation it ended in a row. And sometimes, as had just happened, the entire conversation was a row. What’s more, she was seeing less of him these days than when they had lived in separate flats. He was here as a physical presence, but they usually spoke only at meals; the rest of the time he spent closeted in the little room he used as his study, with only his computer for company. Though that seemed enough for Tim.

  He had always been a hard worker, studious and immersed in his books to the point of obsession, but lately he seemed consumed by something altogether different – something he didn’t want to share with her. Time was, he would tell her about his latest interpretation of some Metaphysical poetry or the interesting discoveries he had made about seventeenth-century London. But now the only discoveries he brought up were accusations – against MI5, which he knew she worked for, against GCHQ and MI6, or in his wilder moments, against ‘The Establishment’. As far as Peggy could tell, Tim was working as hard as ever, but not on John Donne.

  At first, she had thought it would pass, telling herself that he’d lose this new infatuation with cyberspace and go back to his true love – English literature. But there didn’t seem to
be any sign of it, and she’d noticed that the manuscript of his book seemed to be stuck on the same page as weeks before – months actually. So what was he doing instead? She knew he was constantly on the internet – he’d exceeded their monthly BT allowance by twenty gigabytes when the last bill came. He must be busy doing something.

  In desperation, Peggy decided to find out. She tried not to think of it as snooping, though she knew it was. But she was deeply worried about Tim and, if she was to help him, she had to find out what was going on.

  She waited for ten minutes after she’d heard the door bang when he’d marched out after their latest argument then went into the study. She stood with her back to the door and looked around. The usual neat piles of scholarly tomes, reference books and student essays were no longer on the desk. They had been replaced by a mess of press cuttings, computer magazines, political journals, and among all this, a copy of the unauthorised biography of Julian Assange. The laptop lying on top of the muddle was switched on. After hesitating momentarily, Peggy sat down at his desk and picked up the mouse. She knew his password and he knew hers; it was no big thing, they’d always shared everything. She typed it in and the machine sprang into life.

  Opening his internet browser, she started by examining his online History; what she found was both bewildering and alarming. A mixed bag of blogs, chat rooms, samizdat-like publications – all patently disaffected, all addressing the same topics: the danger posed by the security services in the West. Some of the talk was philosophical and abstract; some of it was about making sure adequate safeguards were in place when Government surveilled its own citizens, and some of it was much more worrying – technical discussions of how to hack into Government sites and divulge classified information. Peggy wasn’t sure how much of this was illegal, but to her mind it was entirely wrong.

  The more she looked at these sites, the more Peggy realised that there was a whole subterranean world that shared these views. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden were the two most famous public faces of this movement – if you could call such a hodgepodge of hackers, ‘libertarians’ and anarchists a ‘movement’ – and the chat room Tim frequented most often, according to his History, was called The Snow Den.

  Her bafflement growing, she wondered where on earth this new preoccupation of Tim’s had originated. He had never been a political soul, didn’t usually play much of a part in dinner-party discussions when controversial topics came up – like immigration or cutting the size of the Welfare State. He was happiest talking about a play he had seen at the National, or the poetry of Philip Larkin, or Hawksmoor churches in the City of London.

  Peggy couldn’t for the life of her see the catalyst for this transformation in him. He hadn’t seemed unhappy before: he’d never complained about his job, he liked to teach, and didn’t even grumble when buried in exam papers to mark. His research had been going well, and she remembered how excited he had been when the encouraging letter had come in from OUP.

  Something must have happened some time ago, and more recently perhaps, someone. But who could that be? They had a wide circle of friends, who like Peggy and Tim were in their early thirties, and in the early stages of careers. A few had had children; most were waiting until they were established enough, and well off enough, to start families. None, as far as she knew, were remotely interested in this underground world where Tim now seemed to be spending his waking hours.

  She opened his Mail and looked at his Inbox. There was very little there. He must have cleared it quite recently. Then she turned to his Sent box – an email to a student who’d been ill, arranging an extra tutorial; a jokey one sent to his cousin, who lived south of the river and collected bad puns. Next she glanced through his Delete folder; it hadn’t been emptied for several days. Most of it was spam he’d deleted without opening – insurance offers, retail sites of all kinds, phony bank alerts. But then one caught her eye – it was an email Tim had sent to Marina*382@gmail.com a few days ago. Opening it, she read: New account all set up and ready to recieve mail. T.

  She sat there, stunned. What did it mean? But she could guess – Tim had set up another email account, one he hadn’t told her about. Why did he need that? Unless it was to hide something from her. Like… Marina. Whoever she might be.

  25

  Liz enjoyed driving. She liked to be alone, listening to the radio and thinking things over without having to talk to anyone. But this journey had been a bit more than she’d bargained for. She’d set off from her mother’s house in Wiltshire at eight o’clock in the morning, thinking she’d arrive in Manchester at lunchtime – the AA route finder had told her it would take four hours. But heavy traffic on the M4 and lane closures on the M62, which had her stuck behind a long line of lorries, meant it was three o’clock before she finally reached her hotel.

  Manchester was foreign territory to her, brought up as she had been in the South. Recently work had brought her here several times but those had certainly not been relaxed or happy visits; she was hoping for better with this one. She had found a good online deal at a rather trendy hotel in a converted warehouse near the railway station. It seemed to be staffed entirely by beautiful young people in black – PIBs as Peggy Kinsolving called them – and Liz amused herself by watching them floating elegantly about as she waited to check in, behind a man who complained loudly to the receptionist that he hadn’t been able to rent a Mercedes from Avis when he’d landed at the airport. This was not a milieu Liz was accustomed to; it certainly didn’t match the traditional idea of Manchester, she thought, as a few minutes later she took her electronic room key and ascended in an all-glass lift to her room.

  Pearson, who’d said he’d pick her up, laughed when she gave him the name of the hotel. He warned her that the restaurant he’d chosen for dinner had none of the urban chic of her hotel and was in a rather run-down part of town. ‘But the food’s very good,’ he’d promised. ‘I’ve known the chef since he was a schoolboy.’ So she left the smart suit and heels that she had been intending to wear in her wardrobe and put on trousers and a blouse and jacket instead. But she kept on the gold strand necklace and earrings that Martin had given her two years before.

  Pearson turned up in a jacket and jeans and an open-necked shirt, so she thought she’d got the sartorial tone about right. Instead of the police car with driver she had expected, he was in a BMW estate that had seen better days. As he drove them out of the centre of town conversation was somewhat stilted, but by the time they came to the restaurant in an old industrial part of the city they were chatting away companionably.

  ‘This area will be developed quite soon and all these old factories and cottages will be turned into desirable flats and houses. This is the place to invest your money,’ he told her.

  ‘Sadly I haven’t got any to invest,’ she replied. ‘I spent more than I have on my flat in Kentish Town.’

  ‘Nor me,’ he replied with a grin. ‘Policemen don’t get paid enough to become property investors. Never mind. Let’s go in and drown our sorrows.’

  The restaurant was in an old two-storey factory building that looked as though it could have been a pottery; a bulbous chimney that might once have served as a kiln poked upwards on one side. It seemed to be the only occupied building on the street. As he parked the car and went and held the door for Liz, Pearson explained that the chef was also the owner of the restaurant. ‘Mike has a short lease on the building until the restoration of the area starts. But he’s hoping to be able to establish a reputation. He has big ambitions and sees himself here as Manchester’s Jamie Oliver when it’s all become trendy and upmarket. But he’s pretty good already, as you’ll see.’

  It was clear that the staff in the restaurant knew the Chief Constable well. A smiling woman came straight across as they went in and held out her hand. ‘Good evening, Mr Pearson,’ she said. ‘Welcome back.’ Pearson introduced Liz and she too received a warm handshake. They were shown to a quiet table in a corner of the room and as soon as they’d sat down the
barman came across with a glass of white wine for Liz and a half-pint glass of something for Pearson. More smiles and ‘good evenings’ and Pearson said to Liz, ‘I hope that’s all right for you. They’ve seen I’m driving myself so this will be non-alcoholic. It’s not bad actually,’ he said, taking a sip.

  When the food had been ordered, with advice from Mike in the kitchen relayed by the waitress, they settled down to talk.

  Pearson said, ‘We’re due at Patricov’s place tomorrow at ten. I’ll pick you up at the hotel at nine-thirty if that’s okay.’

  ‘That’s fine, thank you. Who will be there, do you think?’

  ‘Patricov obviously, and possibly his wife. Also there’s a character called Karpis – he seems to be a kind of sidekick, possibly a secretary or something – who’s joined Patricov fairly recently.’

  Liz said, ‘I checked our files on Patricov last week, but frankly there isn’t much there. He made a lot of money during Yeltsin’s time. When they were setting up a government computer service, he bought one of the divisions, then made a fortune leasing those services back to the government.’

  Pearson said dryly, ‘Sounds like a licence to print money.’

  ‘In his case it was. He was one of the early billionaires, and continued to thrive under Putin at first. Then for some reason he left Russia; we don’t know why. Since then, he’s become a major investor in some high-tech companies, mainly in America.’

  Pearson nodded. ‘All that fits in with what we know. But I’ve had one of my staff do a bit of digging – I wanted to know if Patricov might pose any sort of threat to the Putin regime. The chap helping me is doing an Open University degree in politics so he was especially keen on the project.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Patricov has gone to great efforts to keep away from any dissident movements among Russians living in the West. He makes a point of keeping his distance: now he’s moved up here that’s probably easier. To all appearances he’s like any other international businessman, uninvolved in politics, no ideology; just your average multinational plutocrat, with the private jet, younger wife, and multiple residences.’