Fatal Ally

by Tim Sebastian

  ‘This may have been the problem we’ve encountered.’

  Yanayev thought for a moment. ‘And do you know the location of the package?’

  ‘Rough area. No more. Our information could be out of date now by several days.’

  ‘And it’s critical that you find this man …’

  ‘It’s a woman, Vitaly.’ He saw the ambassador raise a single eyebrow. ‘And yes, it’s critical that we find her.’ Harry looked up and down the street but there was no one else nearby. ‘Will you help?’

  ‘I’d like to, my friend.’ He paused and wiped his runny nose. ‘But you don’t have much credit these days in my capital. They don’t like the interventions in the Middle East, they don’t like your games in Georgia and Ukraine, or the little stunts in Congress on human rights. There’s not much appetite to make life easy for you.’

  Jones could feel the cold seeping into him through his bald head. He had forgotten to bring a hat. Vitaly was better equipped, sporting a flamboyant fox shapka.

  ‘This one’s important. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.’

  ‘I know, Harry, and I’ll send the message through, but I also know what the answer will be.’

  The ambassador’s black sedan slid abruptly to a stop beside them and Harry realized that it must have been close by since they left the restaurant.

  ‘This is my ride.’ Yanayev slapped him on the back. ‘Can I drop you back to the White House – or would that look bad?’

  ‘It wouldn’t – but I could do with the walk.’

  Yanayev got in, but then stopped midway and turned back to face the American.

  ‘Give me a gift, Harry.’ He extended a gloved hand. ‘A big one, an expensive one that I can take to Moscow to buy you your favour. That’s the only way this is going to work. Cash on delivery. Needs to be something impressive. And it needs to be soon. Without it’ – the wind grabbed at his shapka – ‘without it, they’ll turn you down.’

  Vitaly Yanayev loved America. But as Russia’s ambassador to Washington he rarely admitted it. Still less did he admit why.

  He had confided once to his wife, Lydia, that it was because the US was a land of infinite variety and unpredictability. ‘In Moscow,’ he had told her, ‘I will always be stabbed in the back. Except when they miss or hit me in the hip or, God forbid, in the buttocks. But in America I never know. Sometimes they will stab me right in the chest, in the middle, and stare straight into my eyes with love and adoration while they do it. It’s so refreshing, so different … you just never know what to expect.’

  He couldn’t help recalling that conversation as his car inched through the afternoon traffic back to the Russian embassy.

  Harry Jones hadn’t lied when he said he needed the fresh air. He hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours, not since the cable had come across his desk – the one from State, followed by comments from Langley. But he’d known it anyway. She hadn’t replied to any of his messages in more than a week. The ones he’d left on an ordinary gmail account, opened by someone else a world away with a name that meant nothing to anyone. He always used a different internet point. Different times of day. And now there was silence.

  As he walked, he could see her face the day they had said goodbye. She had never cried. When things got to her, she would always bite her upper lip, the way she did that day at the airport in London, as she boarded the flight to Istanbul.

  ‘Harry, we need to get a grip on this. It has to end here.’

  ‘Not for me, it doesn’t.’

  But his words didn’t seem to reach her. The small elfin figure was already turning away, the long dark hair sweeping around her neck, a wave in constant motion, her ancient black leather jacket on her arm.

  She had smiled at him quickly, just once – a sudden shard of light in a grey sky – and then she was gone.

  And in that instant Harry knew she had breached his defences, crossed the line, set by reason and duty. A line and a code he had lived by for so long. His love of country, his patriotism and loyalty. The oath he had sworn to the president. He had told himself to step back, excise her from his consciousness, even as he had realized the impossibility of doing it.

  He reached the White House gate, nodded to the guards who scanned his pass and strode to the side entrance and his office in the West Wing. Once there, he was never more than a step away from the most powerful man in the world, with unfettered access to his military might, his secrets and those of his allies right across the world. He could engage, at will, the assets of the most extensive spy service the world had ever seen – its satellites in orbit, its ground stations, its undersea listening posts in the furthest reaches of the globe. If it moved they saw it, if it spoke they heard it. Task the machine, throw money at it and it would deliver almost anything you wanted.

  But Harry Jones wasn’t thinking of any of that. His mind was focused and crystal clear.

  She was missing in the civil war in Syria and he would do whatever it took to get her back.

  LONDON

  Margo Lane’s day had begun badly – cold silence from Jimmy in the flat – wet streets outside, sleet and snow promised for later.

  The phone had rung at seven which hadn’t pleased either of them – especially since she had gone into the bathroom to take the call.

  She had reached the fifth floor conference room ten minutes ahead of schedule but Manson was already there at the head of the table.

  ‘What’s so urgent?’ She hung her coat by the door.

  ‘I’ve ordered coffee.’ Manson looked up from the file. ‘We’ll wait for everyone to arrive. Don’t want to say it all twice.’

  She took a seat furthest away from him and stared out of the window. Conference Room D. Same place where her first interview had been held. Not the initial greeting in the drab little house in Camberwell Green, nor the informal chat in the café in Victoria. But the first recorded session where they had told her it was time for a decision. She didn’t have to sign the papers. She could go off and become a lawyer, or head for the City and retire at forty-five with a yacht in the Caribbean and a chalet in the Alps.

  Nothing wrong with that.

  Alternatively, she could embrace a life of intermittent, but incalculable risk, and the prospect of unending, lonely hours with a bunch of people, far more fucked-up, they said, than she was, stretching away into an ill-defined future.

  Leave now, though, and we’ll never bother you again.

  As they spoke, every instinct was screaming at her to turn and run. But she couldn’t do it. Sat there, expressionless, on the grey steel chair, with the black plastic cushion, just sipping her tea. Raincoat and umbrella on the floor beside her. Poppy in the lapel. I come from a normal world, it all said, but she knew that she’d left normality at the door. And if she simply stood up and went off down the corridor, handed in her visitor’s badge at reception, headed for the Tube and the journey back to Hampstead, where Mum and Dad and the Labrador were living happily ever after, her life would never be so interesting ever again.

  Much later, she told herself, it was like watching a giant killer wave, listening to its savage, roaring advance and then calmly walking towards it.

  Twelve years ago – and now this.

  ‘Morning everyone.’ Manson’s eyes took in the four people at the table. ‘I’m giving you copies of a signal that came in from Moscow overnight – please read it.’

  He pushed a grey file, containing a single sheet, towards each of them – Forbes from the Russian section, Silverton from C’s office, Halstead from Legal. Margo knew them by sight – all younger than her, not long out of training, fresh meat for Manson to bully and manipulate. She wondered if they knew his real function: to be a pain in everyone’s arse.

  Manson turned away from them and stared out at the Thames. Rain was spattering the windows. A light mist had spread itself along the north bank.

  ‘Right. Let’s get on with it.’ He swivelled back to face them. ‘Yesterday afternoon a man called Arkady Mazu
rin – who used to be our most valued asset in Moscow – surfaces after five years of total and complete silence and calls a crash meeting with our station chief Robert Evans. They met in a bookshop near the Lubyanka. Mazurin was apparently drunk – but lucid. Bottom line: he wants out.’

  Margo leaned forward. ‘Why? The signal doesn’t say.’

  ‘Says he’s got something special for us. Wouldn’t say what. And anyway we promised we’d get him out when the time came.’

  Margo closed the file and pushed it back towards Manson. ‘What’s the real reason?’

  Manson shrugged. ‘How the fuck do I know? Apparently a previous employee of ours in Moscow made him a half-baked, half-promise more than twenty years ago, that if he ever wanted out, we’d make it happen. Now he’s cashing it in.’

  ‘Yes, but why now …?’ Forbes from the Russian section seemed suddenly anxious to get involved.

  ‘Work it out for yourself,’ Manson shot back. ‘Why do agents leave places in a hurry? They’re in trouble. Money, women, or they’re blown. Whatever it is, he’s not going to tell us the truth. Bad boys don’t tend to run straight home and tell Mummy what they’ve done.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Or do they?’

  Forbes blushed. ‘I still don’t get it. Why not leave years ago? He’s been retired more than five years … why now?’

  Manson reached down to his briefcase on the floor, removed a bigger file and began flicking through it. He didn’t bother to hide his irritation. ‘He has a wife … an ex-wife.’ He gave Forbes an unpleasant look. ‘Don’t you people read files in your section these days?’

  Margo caught Manson’s eye. ‘You said before that Mazurin is no longer any use to us. Is that true?’

  ‘According to the file, we gutted him some years ago. But maybe he held something back for a rainy day. Wouldn’t be the first time. Or …’ He paused and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Or he just wants us to try that little bit harder to get him out.’ He put the file back in his briefcase. ‘Thoughts?’

  Margo looked round the room but nobody spoke. Forbes was staring down at the table, licking his wounds. The two others were buttoned up tight.

  ‘OK …’ Her eyes fixed on Manson. ‘We don’t have much of a choice here … if he has something of value, we want it. If not, we still made a commitment and unless there’s a pressing argument for breaking it – which none of you seems to have – we need to deliver.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Manson didn’t bother with the others.

  Margo gestured towards the grey file. ‘According to the signal Mazurin still has a diplomatic passport. After all, he was in the Soviet delegation – there undercover for almost ten years. In my view, it’s best if he flies direct to New York. We arrange to have him invited to some meaningless ceremony there – something to do with one of his old colleagues – or his old department. The Russians always bought into nonsense like that – flattered them, made them feel important. We’ll do the same again. It’ll arouse less suspicion.’

  ‘And the embassy?’

  ‘Tell them to leave it for a day or so, then make contact and let Mazurin know the invite’s on its way. He’ll have to apply for an exit – all KGB, serving or retired, have to do that. If he gets clearance, then we’ll know he’s got a good chance of making it.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t?’ Halstead, turned ninety degrees to face her. The prospect of failure seemed to stir his interest for the first time.

  Margo rounded on him. ‘Then I’m sure he’ll be grateful for your prayers.’

  She was surprised at how little emotion she actually felt.

  ‘You’ll have to take charge of this one, Lane …’ Manson had gestured to the others to leave. He got up and shut the door behind them.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Why not you? You’ve worked in Russia, you also understand’ – his voice hovered over each syllable – ‘the Americans – if memory serves. It would seem to have your name engraved all over it.’

  She stood up.

  ‘Just a moment.’ Manson returned to his chair and dug back into his files. ‘Mazurin was one of the best we had in Moscow. Our man. He’d only work for us. Christ knows why. Getting him out – even if he just sits on a plane and farts for 10 hours – is a major undertaking.’

  ‘What are you worried about?’

  ‘I worry about the things we don’t know …’ The arrogant, hectoring tone had suddenly softened. ‘Man comes back to us from the dead. Tells our agent that he has something we need to see.’ Manson shook his head. ‘How did he get it? Is it ancient or modern? Is it about them – or us? What’s he leaving out.’ He sighed. She could see the dark pools under his eyes. He wouldn’t have slept since the signal came in overnight. ‘And then of course there are the Americans to deal with. Always wanting a slice of the pie …’

  ‘Do we warn them?’

  Manson sniffed as if the thought were somehow unpleasant. ‘That he’s coming out? No choice. If we don’t tell them – and something goes wrong, they’ll shit on us from a very great height. Spiteful bunch, these days – and they have more ways of showing it than we do.’

  He got up. ‘As for whether he has some sparkling new gift for us … we’ll keep that to ourselves.’

  MOSCOW

  Arkady played over the meeting a hundred times. What the Englishman was wearing, cufflinks instead of buttons, mauve tie, dull suit, dull shirt, dull face – where did they find these people?

  But what had he expected – a Vaudeville act? A caricature of the British spymaster of old, with half his lunch congealing on his jacket, and a waistcoat and watch chain? They didn’t make them like that anymore. Probably never had.

  The man had been under forty and knew his business. Came out of nowhere, browsed the bookshelves and spoke faultless, unaccented Russian. So they weren’t playing games. The Englishman had treated him courteously, but without sentiment or warmth. Arkady imagined that he belonged to the brand new breed, fed on statistics and psychometrics, with bottles of mineral water on the desk in front of them and forms to fill in every time they went to the lavatory. They’d all save like good boys and girls for their pensions, check their cholesterol once a year and dutifully mow the lawns of England at weekends. Or would they?

  He didn’t know. Didn’t know anything anymore.

  All he knew was that the man came from somewhere else – iz-za bugra – literally from beyond the hill. He had an inner sense of calm and certainty that nobody in Russia can possess. He’d grown up without the danger of random attack, without being called to apartments where husbands had pickaxes sticking out of their foreheads, or children had knifed their mother in the back, or strangled granddad, or where the tramps – the bamzhi – fell asleep in the basements of blocks of flats only to have the radiators burst and drown them where they lay.

  So he would know nothing of the extremes of ludicrous, limitless, domestic violence that Russians lived with, grew up with, day after day. He would have lived in a place governed more or less by the rule of law, instead of the irredeemable kleptocracy that reigned over Russia. He would have read what he wanted, travelled where he wanted and never had to fear that the system might run him over, if he got in its way.

  The conversation had lasted less than a minute and a half. Casual not hurried. Arkady had said his piece – amazing, he thought, my life in forty-five seconds and my hopes for the future. The Englishman had asked five questions and said he’d return in less than a week. Same time, different bookshop. A mobile phone had been passed.

  Four of the questions had been easy – only the fifth had kept him thinking all the way back across Moscow to the flat.

  Do you have something urgent to tell us?

  He had whispered the reply in the bookshop and now he whispered it again to himself.

  In the living room Arkady had reached automatically for the whisky bottle, but this time he stopped himself. It wasn’t a day for drinking. Tonight he had made his move. Climbed back into the danger zone where all his faculties
were needed. A clear head and a set of plans inside it. Contingencies. Fallbacks, escape routes. That’s what he needed. The whole kit of parts that would get him out of Russia alive and land him somewhere safe. Maybe.

  He sat in the chair and let the memories approach him, silently like wild animals emerging slowly from the darkness of the forest, teeth bared.

  Arkady shut his eyes.

  Seven p.m. on a housing estate in Leningrad, fly-blown, dingy, half-dead. And the monthly deal was being sealed.

  Six of them crowded into the tiny living room: the deputy mayor and all his associates from the City Administration. Round the table there were glasses of tea and some dry biscuits. Someone had brought a bottle of Georgian brandy but it was empty now and the voices were getting louder.

  Time had come to put the stakes on the table. So they began as they always did, reaching into their pockets, dragging out the wads of cash and pushing them across the table to the boss.

  That little smile on his face. Like he’d won it.

  But this time something was wrong. Only four of them had handed over their stake.

  And that smile had suddenly disappeared.

  ‘What is it, Fyodor Ivanovich?’ The boss’s voice was smooth, untroubled.

  The big man at the opposite end pushed his chair away from the table. ‘I can’t do this anymore. I thought I could but I can’t.’

  ‘What worries you, my friend?’

  ‘What worries me?’ The big man laughed. ‘What worries me is what should be worrying you.’ He pointed a finger at the boss. ‘Each month we come here. We, the important and most respected heads of department at City Hall, all of us trusted colleagues of yours, Mr Deputy Mayor. We drink, we talk and then we hand over our official pay packets to you. You put the money in your pocket and nothing is said. We each get back in our cars and go our separate ways to our allotted districts where – in return for the stake we gave you – only we may take bribes from our citizens.’ He shrugged and looked around at the other faces. ‘And so it goes. We take bribes from the police, from the crooks, from honest businessmen and from the corrupt – from whoever and wherever we can extort it. And we turn up at the city parades and accept the grateful thanks of the people for doing our Socialist duty.’ He bit hard into his lower lip. ‘And you ask what worries me …’