‘Sounds Russian.’
‘I know. Here’s the other thing: when we last spotted the car it was on the Manchester Ring Road near Sale. Then we lost it. It must have turned off. Looking at the map, we’ve noticed that Sale is very near Altrincham and I remembered that that’s where Patricov’s place is. It’s a long shot but I just wondered whether there could possibly be a connection. We’ve still got A4 teams up there scouting around but they’ve found no sign of him, and your traffic people have seen nothing of the car, so the trail’s gone a bit cold by now. I just wondered if your contact there… Reilly, I think it was… could check to see if by any chance the car went in to the grounds at Patricov’s mansion. Could you help?’
‘Of course. I’ll get straight on to Reilly. Just give me the number plate. He’ll know if the car’s there and if it belongs to Patricov.’
‘If it is there, could he let us know who drove it in last night? That would be a big help.’
As soon as Liz had put the receiver down, the phone rang. It was Wally Woods. There had been no sightings of the Mercedes and he wanted to pull the teams off as they had a counter-terrorist job up there that needed all available resources. The police were still on the alert for the Mercedes but he didn’t think there was much more the A4 teams could usefully do on Liz’s job unless anything new came up. With a sinking feeling Liz agreed they could stand down. If nothing came from the Patricov lead, they were back to square one and would have to start again from scratch in London.
Liz found it difficult to settle to anything else while she waited for Pearson to come back. She noticed too that Peggy was not her usual bright self. In fact, she looked rather depressed. ‘You all right?’ she asked.
Peggy nodded unconvincingly and Liz said, ‘Sit down. Is it Tim?’
After a moment Peggy replied, ‘Somehow it seemed to be easier to cope when he was being aggressive and hostile than now when he’s being all contrite and miserable.’
Liz smiled. ‘Yes, but you must feel relieved. At least Tim hasn’t done anything illegal. He’s just been a bit naïve.’
‘I’ll say,’ said Peggy crossly. ‘Of course I’m pleased he’s not in trouble. But he doesn’t come out of this very well. It’s not as if he rebuffed this Marina creature; she just seems to have realised he didn’t know anything of value and dropped him. He’s been a complete ass.’
Just then the phone rang. It was Pearson, calling back. Liz put him on loudspeaker so Peggy could hear. He sounded puzzled. ‘Hello, Liz, I’ve talked to Reilly; he was on duty yesterday. He says the Mercedes did arrive, late in the evening, and it’s still there. It belongs to the estate. But your Hansen wasn’t the driver. No one new has entered the compound.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Reilly is. The only people who’ve come in are the guards, changing shifts – the same ones as usual; the housekeeper; and Patricov’s sidekick, the Russian called Karpis. If you remember, you and I didn’t meet him when we visited. He was out.’
Liz tried to make sense of this. Could A4 have goofed about the car? It didn’t seem likely; they were always extremely careful. Perhaps after it had last been spotted, near Sale, there had been another switch, and for some reason Karpis had taken the car back to Patricov’s compound.
She looked at Peggy, who shrugged, equally mystified. Liz didn’t believe this could be a simple mistake. ‘Is there CCTV coverage of the entrance to the estate?’
‘Absolutely. Reilly’s looked at it, just to make sure somebody hadn’t somehow slipped in. Nobody has.’
‘Could you send me a photograph of anybody who’s driven the Mercedes in the last twenty-four hours?’
‘I’m sure that’s possible, though Reilly’s already said he only has film of Karpis with the Mercedes. But I’ll ring him again and see what he can do. Oh, and by the way, that company you mentioned is the holding company for the Patricov business.’ He rang off and Peggy and Liz looked at each other, completely bemused.
For fifteen minutes they discussed possible solutions to the mystery. Then Liz’s desktop pinged with the arrival of a new email. Liz glanced at the screen and sat up. ‘It’s from Pearson.’
She clicked on the email then opened its attachment – a video clip, labelled ‘Karpis’ at the bottom, showing a tall man dressed in a blazer and slacks, standing up as he got out of the Mercedes’s driving seat. His back was to the camera. Liz swung the screen towards Peggy and they both watched as the man approached the mansion’s front door. As he began to climb the stone steps he was picked up by a camera looking down from above the front door. It showed his face clearly. Liz and Peggy spoke together.
‘But…’ said Liz.
‘Isn’t that Laurenz?’ said Peggy.
‘Yes, that’s Hansen,’ said Liz.
‘But why are they calling him Karpis?’ said Peggy.
‘Don’t you see?’ said Liz, her voice shaking with excitement as she pointed at the screen. ‘Laurenz Hansen is Karpis.’
50
‘Good afternoon, everyone.’ It was four o’clock and in the corner meeting room in Thames House the sun was just glancing in between two buildings. Peggy, looking harassed, was fiddling with the blinds to try to keep the glare out of Liz’s eyes.
‘Thank you all for coming at such short notice,’ Liz continued. ‘ I thought it was time to take a view of where this case has got to and reach agreement on what we should do next.’ She looked around the table. Geoffrey Fane was there, lounging back in his chair in his usual detached manner, one long, elegantly clad leg crossed over the other, a slight sneer on his face. But Liz knew him well enough by now to be sure that he would be listening closely to everything that was said, ready to intervene forcefully if he didn’t agree. In spite of his air of ineffable superiority, she found it a comfort to have him here. He had long experience and she had benefitted from his advice in the past.
Beside Fane sat Bruno McKay. It was twelve years or so since Liz had first worked with him and it had taken him that long to show a more thoughtful, less patronising, and even helpful side to his character. When she thought about it, Liz reflected that she too had probably grown up; she was less chippy, less quick to take offence than she had been twelve years ago. Life, grief in her case and perhaps his too, had changed them both.
Sitting next to Bruno was Miles Brookhaven, looking unmistakably transatlantic with his black polished tasselled slip-on shoes and yet another button-down shirt. Liz was relieved that he no longer seemed to fancy her; his gaze now strayed more often in Peggy’s direction. Liz rather hoped any affection on his part might be reciprocated by her assistant, since it seemed clear that Tim was far too weak and feeble for her now.
The final member of the group, apart from Peggy, was Charlie Simmons from GCHQ. Even he was looking somewhat more grown-up than usual. His hair was still standing on end as though he had just got out of bed but he had swapped his pullover for a jacket and his usual tee-shirt for a white shirt with an open neck. And, unusually for him, he wasn’t late. He had come down by car with a colleague for an earlier meeting so had not been reliant on the notoriously unreliable trains from Cheltenham.
Liz began, ‘I think it will be helpful if I just summarise where we have got to in this case. All of you know some of it but I want to be sure we are all au fait with the latest developments because we need to decide whether we should take action now or wait to see what happens next.’
There was a general shuffling in the room as people sat up in their chairs ready to join in. ‘You will all remember,’ she went on, ‘that the first lead in this investigation came from Miles. His colleagues had a Russian military source in Ukraine who asked to meet a British expert as he had important information to pass on. Miles, you went to Ukraine to meet him and he said, correct me if I get this wrong, that the Russians were planting Illegals in Europe and the US with the aim of weakening or destabilising those countries. That in the UK the operation was proving very promising and the Illegal was getting close to a targ
et.’ She paused and looked at Miles.
‘That’s correct,’ he said. ‘The source, Mischa, claimed to be disaffected after the Malaysian aircraft was shot down over Ukraine. The other important point is that Mischa’s source for this is his brother, an FSB officer, who talks more than he should, when he’s drunk. So in other words, our source has direct access to the information. I should just add that he is being paid quite generously by my colleagues in Ukraine.’
‘Thanks, Miles. So it was all very vague and there didn’t seem to be much we could do about it, except keep our ears to the ground. Then Mischa resurfaced saying he had more specific information. By that time he had been posted to Tallinn and I met him there.
‘What he told me was that the Russians are operating two Illegals in this country, and suggested they were a couple. Their original brief was to infiltrate protest movements in the UK and subtly influence them to cause as much trouble and disturbance as possible, with the aim of weakening both government and society. But then the nature of that operation changed. The man managed to get close to a woman who was in some way connected with one of the intelligence services and his partner was targeting a man who might be able to provide information about another of our services. They were now calling the operation “Pincer”. I suppose they were imagining a pair of jaws snapping up two of our services.
‘That was the background. Now we get on to the current situation, which as you will all appreciate is highly sensitive as it involves a member of one of our services and a close contact of another. It appears that our two Illegals got lucky. We assume that they were targeting the anti-surveillance lobby, probably trawling through internet chat rooms, looking for people to approach, when they must have come across a notice for a lecture that Jasminder Kapoor was giving at King’s College, London, where she worked at the time.
‘It seems certain that the female attended the lecture. Who knows how many people present were potential targets, but we are aware of one in particular – a lecturer at the college called Tim Simpson – who asked a fairly aggressive question and made it clear that he didn’t think Jasminder’s lecture was radical enough. Tim was active on the internet, on various anti-snooping blogs. He was approached at the talk by a woman calling herself Marina, and they chatted for a while, then continued their conversation by email.’
There seemed no good reason not to mention that Tim was also Peggy’s partner so Liz continued, ‘Unsurprisingly, Marina’s interest in Tim increased dramatically when she learned he lived with a member of MI5. It was then that she gave him a special phone to use when communicating with her, telling him that it would be more secure from surveillance. Charlie has had a close look at this phone and is ready to tell us what he’s found out.’ And before anyone could interrupt to ask the identity of the MI5 officer concerned, she turned to Charlie Simmons.
‘Yes. Thanks, Liz,’ said Charlie, sitting to attention. ‘The phone, which is now in bits at Cheltenham, looks like an ordinary iPhone 5c, and it is – but that’s not all it is.’ Everyone was looking at him now as though he were about to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
‘I’m reasonably good at spotting things, but it took me three days to work out what’s inside this. They’ve been very clever. First of all, they fronted it with an app that automatically erases messages and texts that might be lying about. I couldn’t find any history of messaging, much less the messages themselves, simply because they’d all been wiped as soon as they were received and read or transmitted.’
Liz said, ‘Tim mentioned that to me. He thought it must be for security purposes.’
‘He’s right, but it also hides a multitude of other sins. Capabilities the person who gave it to Tim didn’t want him to know about.’
‘What else does it do?’ asked Miles Brookhaven.
‘The hardware has been rigged. It can be turned on remotely and all the functions can be operated by a third party. The camera’s ready to video whatever Tim’s looking at; the audio component’s set to transmit any conversation on the phone – and off the phone too. It’s like carrying a microphone around. And the phone can be made to transmit its location. So if Tim had the phone with him, his “friend” would know exactly where he was.’
‘The complete works,’ said Miles. ‘That’s got to be state-sponsored. No private individual could do all that.’
‘That’s the bad news,’ said Charlie.
‘You mean there’s good news?’ asked Bruno.
He nodded. ‘Yes, and that is… these utilities haven’t been used. It’s as if someone had decided they’d made a mistake setting Tim up with all this. The links are all fallow; it’s like they couldn’t be bothered. Very odd.’
‘Indeed,’ said Fane. He sounded unimpressed.
‘Why’d you think that is?’ Peggy asked.
‘They must have decided Tim was never going to be one of them,’ said Charlie.
Fane said, ‘So it’s a bit of a damp squib, isn’t it? This Marina woman doesn’t want to play.’
‘Oh, I’m sure she does – just not with Tim, when he’s so unforthcoming. But she’ll keep sniffing around until she finds someone who can be more helpful. In fact for all we know, she may have other people in play right now. So it’s important that we find her.’
‘How are you going to do that?’ Fane still sounded sceptical.
Liz sat further forward in her chair. ‘We hope that she will resurface. With Tim or someone else. But that’s just one side of their pincer movement. As Geoffrey and Bruno already know, we seem to have uncovered another, even more dangerous, plot that looks set to compromise their service.’
And she explained what they had discovered about Laurenz, detailing how he had met Jasminder, his cover as a Norwegian banker, and how the fact that he had given her the same model of iPhone had spurred them into taking a closer look at the man. She described the recent surveillance operation, and the shock discovery that Laurenz Hansen was actually Karpis, aide-de-camp to a Russian oligarch living near Manchester.
‘And this is the same chap who was romancing Jasminder Kapoor, new Communications Director of Six?’ said Fane in an incredulous tone. ‘How did this interesting personal connection escape the vetters?’
‘I’m afraid she failed to declare that she had a boyfriend,’ said Liz. ‘As soon as we began to suspect there was something wrong about Laurenz Hansen, we checked.’
‘Yes. And unfortunately he seemed to find her easier to exploit than Marina did Tim.’
‘So this is where Bruno comes in,’ went on Liz, ‘and why we asked him to get alongside Jasminder. And it seems to me that what we do next partly depends on what he’s found out. Over to you, Bruno.’
He had been sitting back in his chair, eyes half closed, but now he came to life. He put his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands, pursing his lips contemplatively. ‘I haven’t any evidence that she’s under anyone’s control or acting to any brief. But I spent an evening with her, and I have to say it made me more suspicious rather than less. She was clearly under a lot of stress – she looked exhausted for one thing. That may of course be pressure of work, but if that’s all it is, I’d be surprised.
‘From the outset, she was at pains to let me know she was single and unattached – and if what you say about this Laurenz Hansen is still the case, then that wasn’t true. And we all know she has never declared him to the Service, so why is she hiding him? I think, following your investigation and now we know he’s actually a Russian and not a Norwegian banker, it’s pretty obvious.
‘But just to finish on my evening out with her… more tellingly than her claim to be unattached, at least as far as I’m concerned, was that throughout the time we spent together she tried to steer the conversation to the Moscow Station; she especially wanted to know about our informants there. I played along up to a point, but every time I changed the subject, she brought it back to Russia. Then she tried the Baltics. I felt like a trout that won’t rise, even when the fly’s put right
above his nose. I can only give you my impression but I came away thinking something’s amiss there; I like Jasminder, but I felt she was asking me things at someone else’s behest. I don’t believe she personally could give two hoots about the Moscow Station. Someone’s put her up to it and she’s pretty desperate, would be my conclusion. But I have no proof.’ He sat back in his chair.
‘We’re not trying anyone here,’ Fane said sharply. ‘The rules of evidence don’t apply, or any presumption of innocence. There’s already enough here to get her out of the Service, just on her failure in the first place to declare this Laurenz Hansen. And now he’s turned out to be a Russian, she may well be looking at a long prison sentence.’
Liz could see that Peggy was about to jump to Jasminder’s defence so she broke in with, ‘Hold your horses, Geoffrey. We don’t know whether Jasminder knows Laurenz is Russian. What do you suggest we do about her?’
‘There’s only one thing to do. We need to sit down with Ms Kapoor and wring the whole story out of her. Plus,’ he added, ‘get Charlie here to take her phone to bits and see what that tells us.’
‘I’d want to inform C before we called her in.’
‘Of course. And actually, I wasn’t suggesting you interview her,’ said Fane. ‘This is a Six matter so we’ll look after it.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Liz, ‘but we need to coordinate the timing with our investigation in Manchester. It’s important not to alert Laurenz Hansen, or Karpis or whoever he is, before we move up there. If you tell Jasminder you want to talk to her, she may warn him and he’ll skip.’
‘What are you proposing then?’
‘Hansen is in Altrincham now, at Patricov’s estate. I think it would be best if you could interview Jasminder, with no advance warning, at just the same time as the police move in on Altrincham. She may tell you something of value to us when we interview him and vice versa.’
‘When are the police proposing to go in?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon, assuming Hansen stays at the estate. Otherwise they’ll arrest him if he moves out.’
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