Spy People

by Duncan James

  He aimed a punch at the official in the front of the car. “Take us home now,” he shouted. “We want to go home.”

  The Russian spoke no English, but delivered a smart clip round the ear to Donald, who also burst into tears.

  The man was glad to get rid of them at their flat, which was an official Government residence.

  He handed Barbara the key, and told her the place would be kept under surveillance until further notice. She was free to leave the flat for short periods, but would probably be escorted by an official. Hopefully, not him.

  “There is food in the fridge,” he announced, “and you will find everything else you need. You may visit the local shopping arcade, but do not use the phone. It is straight through to our administrative office. You cannot make external calls from it. Tomorrow, you will be taken to Lubyanka for questioning by one of the Directors. We have appointed one of the other residents in this block to act as your mentor, to help you settle in, and show you around. I am told you know her husband. She will call on you tomorrow.”

  He left, dodging a well-aimed boot from Donald, who was shouting at the top of his voice demanding to be taken home to Uncle Nick.

  ***

  Barbara could not believe how her life had changed so dramatically in such a short space of time. Within days of living comfortably in London, with a secure job at the top of the British civil service, working diligently for her country, she was now back in Moscow in a small apartment and no future that she could foresee.

  And Donald, of whom she had been very fond, was now making life even more difficult. She was sorry for him. He was too young to understand, and had been rushed away from his comfortable home, his friends, his school and everything that was familiar to him, into a totally alien environment. He had turned against her so very quickly and violently and unexpectedly. She could understand it, of course. But the depth of his anger was such that she feared she would never regain his confidence or love. That hurt.

  She would miss the love of Nick, too, but in a way that had been her downfall. Her affair with Alan Jarvis had been a great mistake, but it had happened, and that was the end of it. Her controllers at the time had expressed concern, but this time her relationship with Nick, and their planned marriage, had been her undoing. She was living too close to the enemy, she had been told. She accepted that. Although it had considerably increased her access to classified information, it had also exposed her to greater risk of detection. And that was the turning point. She was close to being uncovered as an agent when she was pulled out in such a hurry a few days ago. She did not in any way want to leave London, but at the same time she did not wish to be caught and tried and spend the rest of her life in a British prison. She also knew that she was putting Nick at great risk, both to his life and his career, and she genuinely wanted to avoid that. So there was no option. She had to leave. But she also had to take Donald with her. She could not simply abandon him, although his behaviour now almost made her wish that she had.

  She had grave doubts that he would ever settle in his new country and a strange city with people who he could not understand or speak to. There were several good English schools in Moscow, she knew that, but it would take years for him to adjust and speak the language sufficiently well for him to be accepted. On present form, he would not even begin to try to make the changes needed. Even in the short term, he would stand out among a crowd, and draw unwanted attention to her at a time when she, too, needed to adjust and become part of the Moscow scene again. She was sure she would be found work at the Lubyanka headquarters of the FSB, but the thought of being ‘questioned’ disturbed her. She had no more useful information to pass on, she was sure, at least not much of any value which would not also put Nick into danger. And that she would avoid at all costs.

  But Donald was a big problem now. Unless his disruptive behaviour subsided in a day or two, she could see that she would be asked officially to do something about it. But what could be done? They could take him from her, and put him into some kind of institution perhaps. But that would never work, as he spoke not a word of Russian.

  The more she thought about it, the more she came to the conclusion that returning him to England was the only solution. Not just the only solution, but the best one. He was, after all, British by birth, and although they had provided him a forged Russian passport, he retained his British one as well. So had she, although the authorities did not know that.

  By now, Donald was both hungry and tired. She quickly put together a meal for them both from what had been left for them in the kitchen and discovered immediately that Donald did not like the rough brown bread from the local supermarket, and liked the borsch soup even less. But he was too tired to argue much, and was glad to get into the bed they had left for him in the single bedroom. Barbara went through the back-pack he had brought with him, and found his favourite soft toy. Soon they were both tucked up in bed.

  By the morning, Donald had found his voice again. He also managed to open the front door, and was half way to the road when he was caught and stopped. With the help of the security guard, Barbara managed to get him back to the flat, kicking and screaming.

  Shortly afterwards, her phone rang.

  “That’ll be Uncle Nick,” shouted Donald, grabbing the phone.

  It wasn’t, so he hung up before his mother could get to it.

  It rang again, and this time Barbara managed to get there first.

  She was instructed to either get a taxi or walk to the Lubyanka Building.

  “Comrade Director Egor Ivanovic will meet you at 11 o’clock. Don’t be late.”

  ***

  They walked.

  Barbara was fearful that Donald would wrench himself free of her hand and run off, but she had told him that the man they were going to see might be able to help arrange for him to return home, if that’s what he really wanted.

  “That’s what I really want,” he said without hesitation. “Now!”

  “I shan’t be able to come with you, Donald. It means that we may never meet again – ever.”

  The boy was quiet for a moment.

  “But if I’m with Uncle Nick, he will arrange for you come over to visit us if he wants you too.”

  Not ‘If I want you to,’ she noted sadly.

  “And you won’t be alone,” the boy added. “Grandma is here somewhere, so she will look after you. You don’t want me,” he added, “or we would have stayed at home in the first place.”

  He plainly did not want her, either. She was tearful when ushered into Ivanovic’s office.

  He made them welcome, offered the boy a coke and Barbara a coffee. The two adults spoke in Russia.

  “There are many administrative details to be attended to now you are home after so long,” he said, “and my people will take care of them with all speed. For example, you will need a bank account, driving licence and so on, and eventually a job of work. All this will be taken care of. But first we also need to interrogate you in some depth. We need to be sure that you have no information which will be of value to us, as well as to make sure that your close relationships with people in your London office - far too close if I may say so, - have not resulted in you being turned by them. We do not welcome double agents.”

  He looked at her fiercely.

  “I must also tell you that we have already received complaints from other residents in your apartment block about your boy’s behaviour.” He nodded towards Donald. “We will not tolerate rowdiness and aggressive behaviour, and he will be taken from you if you are unable to control him,” he said.

  “He is very young,” said Barbara defensively, “and does not understand at all what is going on or what is happening to him. I am doing my best to reassure him and quieten him, but I may have to consider sending him back to England if it becomes evident that he will not settle here.”

  “That would be the best,” agreed Ivanovic. “Get rid of him. From what I am hearing, he would prefer to be with your Commander friend th
an here with you.”

  “I am afraid you are right at the moment, but I hope to be able to change his mind.”

  In fact, she was not at all hopeful.

  “I also don’t believe I have any further useful information for you,” she added. “I have meticulously passed on everything I have discovered either to my controller or, more recently, to Makienko.”

  “Ah, yes. Dmitri Makienko. The man seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Perhaps you have an idea of where he might be?”

  “None at all.”

  “Well, we shall have to judge after detailed questioning whether you have anything further to tell us which is of value. Meanwhile, I can tell you that Makienko’s wife, Sasha, lives in your apartment building. We have arranged for her to be your mentor, which we thought would be amusing. She will be in touch later today, I have no doubt.”

  He waved them away, and the two were escorted out of the building.

  ***

  Barbara had not been looking forward to meeting Makienko’s wife, but in the end, she proved to be both kind and helpful.

  Barbara chose not to mention the fact that she had met Dmitri in London, and knew the background not only to their original expulsion from the Russian Embassy, but also the reasons behind Dmitri’s second departure after his swift return. Inevitably, the subject eventually came up.

  “I gather you know my husband?” asked Sasha.

  “Yes I do. He became one of my main contacts, even during the time you were both in London.”

  “His return so quickly after we had left is claimed by Ivanovic to be unauthorised and they pretend not to know why he went back. He told the Director it was to collect personal items which we had left behind, but I am sure there was more to it than that.”

  “He did not confide in me at all,” said Barbara, “although I did make contact with him after he returned, to give him information.”

  “And now he seems to have disappeared.”

  “So I am told.”

  “Do you have the slightest idea where he might be?” Sasha was obviously anxious.

  “I was asked the same thing this morning by Ivanovic, but Dmitri did not tell me.”

  “Ivanovic thinks he has probably defected, but I know the man better than that,” said his wife. “If he had, we would have gone together. They have no idea either why he returned to London, never mind where he is now. The idiots at the Embassy followed him to the airport, but did not watch him board a plane, so they are only assuming he caught the Moscow flight. All they know is that he never arrived here, and hasn’t been seen or heard of since.”

  “Very distressing for you,” sympathised Barbara, who could have told her more, but chose not to, for the time being, anyway. “I gather I am in for some in-depth questioning now I have returned, and I’m not looking forward to that one little bit.”

  “That will not be pleasant,” said Sasha.

  “Ivanovic also thinks I should ‘get rid of’ Donald, as he put it. I think I had already decided, even after such a short time, that he would be much better off back at home in London. It is unfair to expect him to settle here at his age. He has no idea what has happened, or where he is, and only talks about going home.”

  “He certainly seems to have quietened down a bit this afternoon,” said Sasha.

  “Only because he thinks there is a chance of him going home. That’s all he wants.”

  “I will help if I can,” promised Sasha, “even if only to get some peace and quiet in this apartment block! Now, let me show you the local shops.”

  ***

  Peter Northcot and Nick Marsden were looking at the CCTV footage taken at the Blackbushe airfield on the night of the Wilkinson’s departure. There was no doubt who it was. They saw the car arrive, a man force open the gate, the car drive in to the floodlit car park by the flying school, where all the light aircraft were parked. Three other people got out. While the bags were being taken out of the boot, the small figure of Donald ran in to the terminal building, no doubt to make his now famous phone call to Nick, hotly perused by one of the other figures. They could not tell if it was Barbara, or her mother. By this time, the aircraft had landed and taxied to a halt. The four people clambered aboard. Almost at once, the twin-engine aircraft took off again, into the darkness. A trained eye would have had no difficulty in reading the registration number of the aircraft as it moved away under the floodlights.

  The two men had looked at the video several times, but could glean nothing new from it.

  “Has it occurred to you, Nick, that we should have seen something of the security patrol on this video?”

  “I suppose we should, thinking about it. It’s not a huge place, and even if they were at the other end of the airfield, where they have the Sunday Market, they should have been able to get back when they heard the aircraft approach and land.”

  “Let’s have a look at the whole tape again, not just the bit we are interested in.”

  “It covers just over two hours, I think.”

  They wound it back to the beginning, and watched it through to the end.

  “Now that’s very odd,” said Peter. “Not a sign of them in all that time, either before the aircraft arrived or after it left.”

  “If they’d had their wits about them, they could at least have driven their Land Rover across the runway to block the aircraft’s take off. They must have heard the thing arrive, surely.”

  “Didn’t exactly rush to find out what was going on, did they?”

  “They need to be asked why, in that case. I’ll get on to the Superintendent in charge down there.”

  A bit later on, they took a call on the red phone from the MI6 people in Moscow.

  “Two of your people seem to have arrived,” Moscow station reported. “A middle aged girl and a young boy who is creating havoc. We’ll keep a watch on them for you.”

  “Barbara and Donald,” concluded Nick. “Poor little sod.”

  “Talking of the red phone,” said Peter, “we haven’t heard from Downing Street lately, have we?”

  “Sir Robin Algar seems to have lost interest, all of a sudden.”

  “And Bill doesn’t seem in the mood to offer him a briefing, either.”

  Nick rang Bill in the Ops Room.

  “Two of our birds have turned up in Moscow,” he announced. “Barbara and Donald, by the sound of it.”

  “If the Cabinet Secretary rings, tell him we still have nothing much to report yet, but that we think they’ve probably all gone to Yorkshire somewhere. Say that I’ll get in touch with him when we know more.”

  Nick looked across to Peter.

  “We were right,” he announced. “The Cabinet Secretary is definitely being kept out of the loop for some reason.”

  “What’s Bill up to now, I wonder?”

  “Perhaps he knows something we don’t know.”

  “It’s not every day you deliberately mislead the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.”

  “And hope for a future career!”

  Suddenly, a rarely used machine in the corner of Bill’s office burst into life.

  “I’d forgotten that was there” said Peter, who was using the office while Bill was in the Ops Room. “What does it do?”

  “It’s a secure teletext; sends and receives encrypted text,” said Nick crossing to it. “Moscow station,” he announced. “Message reads,

  “Sasha Makienko and Barbara Wilkinson have met stop they live in the same apartment block stop so do we exclam.”

  Well, if they’ve got someone that close, they should be able to keep an eye on things,” said Nick. “Good for them!”

  The machine chattered away again.

  “The boy Donald is tearing the place apart stop who is Nick query”

  “How do I reply?” asked Nick, staring at the now lifeless machine.

  “Don’t ask me,” replied Peter. “I’m new here.”

  “Barbara would know.”

  “
Gladys!” they both shouted.

  ***

  Barbara was not enjoying her sessions of being quizzed at the FSB headquarters. They had obviously concluded that she had also been working for British Intelligence as a double agent, and she was having trouble convincing them otherwise.

  “You were seen only this morning at the British Embassy,” her inquisitor told her. “You were admitted to the Smolenskay building without question. How do you explain that?”

  “I am trying to arrange for my son to be returned to England, as requested – told, rather – by Director Ivanovic.”

  “And what information did you pass to them while you were there?”

  “None at all. I have nothing to tell them, or to tell you that you have not already been told.”

  “So why did they let you in without question? They knew you had information for them, that’s my conclusion.”

  “Well your conclusion is far from being accurate. The fact is that my son has a British passport, since he is British, and that’s why I was admitted without question.”

  “Ah!” said the man.

  She did not tell him that she still had her British passport as well.

  Donald was sitting in the room, quietly for a change, not knowing what was going on. But he had promised to behave on the understanding that if he did, he could well be sent back home to his beloved Nick. That was the only thing keeping him quiet; that, and a can of Coke and his favourite book which he had brought from home.

  They kept asking her about Makienko and where she though he was, but she could not help them at all. She had concluded, though, that she might one day tell Sasha about her husband, and where he had gone. She would have to tell her about Lloyd as well, but could not see that it would in any way put Nick at risk if she did. She had no idea, of course, what had happened to Dmitri, only that he had gone to Switzerland where he was believed to be a threat to Lloyd, and that Nick had flown out to try to prevent a further assassination attempt. Once Nick had left her Battersea home, of course, she lost touch with events, and was herself rushed out of the country soon afterwards.

  She had one further piece of information which she could also pass on to Sasha at some time, but had not yet worked out if it was a good idea to tell her or not.