Kompromat

by Stanley Johnson

  Edward Barnard laughed. ‘If I can’t make a speech about Europe without notes, after months of campaigning, it’s time I headed for the knackers’ yard.’

  Harriet Marshall was waiting for them at the entrance to the Oxford Union building. She ushered Melissa to her seat in the chamber, while Barnard met the other speakers in the anteroom. Lord Middlebank of Upper Twaddle had already arrived. His flowing fair hair had turned a silvery colour with the years, but he was still strikingly handsome.

  ‘Hello, Edward.’ Though he proffered his hand there was a frosty edge to his voice. ‘I sincerely hope you lose this debate and lose the vote next week. You are doing great damage to the country.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll say so this evening,’ Barnard replied. No point having a fight now, he thought. Fisticuffs could come later.

  He moved out of range to study the photos displayed on the wall of the anteroom. Back in the day, he’d been a competent performer at the Oxford Union himself, though he had never made it to President. If he had, he too would be hanging on the wall in a silver frame. So many famous names, he thought, as he moved along the row. Gladstone, Wilberforce, Curzon, Asquith, Hogg, Foot, Heseltine, Bhutto, Johnson – what a galaxy!

  The photographs were arranged in chronological order. When he came to the 1990s, he paused to peer more closely. Howard R. Marshall, it said. President, Trinity Term, 1995. How odd, he thought. Howard. R. Marshall could have been Harriet Marshall’s twin, the resemblance was so striking. Did Harriet actually have a twin brother, Howard? If so, why had she never mentioned him?

  Sitting next to H.R. Marshall was another man whose face was familiar. Y. Yasonov, he read, Treasurer. Good God! This was really too much! If Harriet had a twin brother, Howard, she had kept very quiet about it. And why had the name ‘Yasonov’ not rung a bell with her? Yasonov had been more than Howard Marshall’s contemporary at Oxford. He had been a close collaborator. They had apparently both served as Officers of the Union at precisely the same time. How bizarre!

  When he came back to Britain after that tiger-tagging expedition in Russia’s Far East, Barnard distinctly remembered telling Harriet that he’d had a private dinner in Khabarovsk with President Popov and his key aide, Yuri Yasonov. Popov, as he recalled, had said something about Yasonov having learned his ‘classy’ English at Oxford! Harriet hadn’t picked up on that at all. If Yasonov had been close to her twin brother, surely Harriet would have heard of him, even met him at some May Ball or at a Union debate or whatever.

  And then the truth struck him. There was only one possible explanation. Howard. R. Marshall was actually Harriet Marshall! It wasn’t a question of there being twins. Howard had actually changed sex. For some reason, known only to him (or her), Howard had become Harriet!

  Barnard was still trying to work it all out when the Union steward struck the gong. The debate was about to begin. The Officers of the Union, led by the current President, Arthur Pemberton, filed into the Chamber, followed by the speakers. The TV cameras began filming. Louisa Hitchcock, star presenter of the BBC nightly news digest, set the stage for millions of views around the world.

  ‘Tonight we come to you from Oxford,’ she began, ‘from the Oxford Union, one of the world’s most famous debating chambers, modelled on the House of Commons. Eighty-three years ago, the Oxford Union held a vitally important debate, a debate which resonated across the Continent of Europe. The topic then was: Should Britain go to war? The topic today is equally important. Should Britain leave the European Union?’

  The cameras panned to the speakers. ‘And what a tremendous line-up of speakers we have,’ Louisa Hitchcock continued. ‘On the Remain side we have Lord Middlebank of Upper Twaddle; as well as Tom Milbourne, the chancellor of the exchequer. On the Leave side, we have Andromeda Ledbury, MP, and Edward Barnard, chairman of the Leave campaign. The vote will be taken at the end of the debate. Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seat belts!’

  Lord Middlebank, opening the debate, was in tremendous form. Before his elevation to the peerage, he had spent years in the House of Commons. At a time when good old-fashioned oratory was going out of fashion, Middlebank bucked the trend.

  ‘We shouldn’t be having this Referendum at all,’ he thundered. ‘I fail to understand why such a commitment was included in the Conservative manifesto. I can only conclude that the prime minister totally miscalculated. Maybe he assumed that the Conservatives would not win an overall majority in the election and therefore there would be no need to deliver on the manifesto commitment since it would be vetoed by their coalition partners. If that is the case, ladies and gentlemen, then I put it to you, this is cynicism of the highest order!’

  Andromeda Ledbury, leading for the Leave side, did her best. With speaking engagements up and down the country, she had grown daily in confidence and stature over the weeks of campaigning. She was graceful. She was witty.

  ‘I am delighted to follow Lord Middlebank of Upper Twaddle. I am so sorry. I’ve got that wrong. I shouldn’t have said Upper Twaddle. I should have said Utter Twaddle!’ The young audience loved that. And they warmed to her too. She was the dark horse – dark filly, really – who had come up fast on the rails in the final furlong. Barnard mentally tipped his hat to her.

  Up in the BBC commentary box, Louisa Hitchcock commented, ‘No one knew very much about Andromeda Ledbury before the start of the campaign but, so far, she hasn’t put a foot wrong.’

  Tom Milbourne, when it was his turn to speak, seemed strangely hesitant. Maybe he knew that the tide was beginning to turn in favour of Leave. And when he started talking about the dire measures he would be forced to introduce if the country ‘voted the wrong way’ his audience sensed that he had made a colossal error of judgement.

  Once again, Louisa Hitchcock summed it up. ‘The chancellor has already given us Project Fear. He has told us that the ice caps will melt if we vote to leave Europe. Financial markets will collapse. Granny will starve in the attic. But today, before this Oxford audience, he has gone one step further, promising the country a Punishment Budget, like a Punishment Beating, if we dare to vote Leave.’

  Louisa Hitchcock looked straight at the camera. ‘Tonight the chancellor, normally so shrewd, may have made a fatal miscalculation.’

  Sitting there, waiting his turn to come to the despatch box, Barnard found it hard to concentrate. He simply couldn’t put the photo he had seen in the anteroom out of his mind. The photo that showed Harriet (then Howard, of course) Marshall sitting next to Yuri Yasonov. If Harriet/Howard and Yasonov had been friends and colleagues at Oxford, were they still friends now? If so, why hadn’t Harriet/Howard ever mentioned it?

  He decided to send an urgent message to Jerry Goodman. ‘Something fishy going on. Keep an eye on Harriet Marshall. Sitting next to my wife, left front.’

  Arthur Pemberton, Oxford Union President in the Trinity Term of 2016, had a powerful voice which he did not hesitate to use.

  Sitting in his high-backed chair in white tie and tails, he boomed, ‘I now call upon the Right Honourable, Edward Barnard, MP to make the final speech opposing the motion.’

  As he stood up, Barnard could see Harriet Marshall a few feet away, waving the order paper in front of her face, like a fan. Funny, Barnard thought, it was almost as though she was signalling or something.

  Jerry Goodman, standing by the door so as to keep an eye on the packed hall, glanced down at his mobile when Barnard’s message pinged in. He spotted Harriet immediately, waving the paper. Then he saw Harriet look up at the crowded balcony, turning her head to the right as she did so. What was Harriet looking at, he wondered? Then he saw it. At the far end of the hall, above and behind the balcony, was the old projection box, left over from the days when undergraduates came to the Chamber on wet Sunday afternoons, not to debate, but to watch classic films in their original celluloid. The box had to be big enough to hold the projectionist. Some of those old films, like The Manchurian Candidate, needed three or four reel changes before the film was ove
r.

  The Manchurian Candidate! Oh my God, thought Jerry Goodman! As he remembered it, the assassin chooses a high vantage point right at the back of the stadium to shoot the candidate at that giant rally in New York!

  He quickly pulled out some pocket binoculars to scrutinize the projection block more closely and, as he did so, he saw the barrel of the rifle emerge.

  Jerry Goodman spoke urgently into his lapel mike. ‘Anna, Tom, are you up there? There’s a guy with a gun on the balcony. In the old projection box. Take him out!’

  Then Goodman hurled himself across the room, just as Barnard walked to the despatch box to begin his speech. You could have handguns, you could have Tasers but in the end the old-fashioned rugby tackle often worked best. Goodman’s shoulder hit Barnard hard, in the ideal spot for a good clean tackle, halfway up the thigh, and Barnard crashed to the floor like a wing three-quarter hurtled into touch by the corner-post. The sound of gunfire erupted in the room. First, a single shot, coming from the projection box, then a brief staccato volley, as both Anna and Tom returned fire.

  The gunman’s bullet, which would surely have smashed into Barnard had he not been brought low by Goodman’s rugby tackle, demolished an antique plaster bust of former prime minister William Gladstone, scattering debris over the despatch box.

  Goodman picked Barnard off the floor, slung him over his shoulder, and headed for the door. ‘We’ve got to get you out of here!’ he said.

  In the BBC commentary box, Louisa Hitchcock barely missed a beat. ‘Extraordinary scenes here tonight in Oxford,’ she said. ‘The debate has broken up in confusion. A gunman has tried to assassinate Edward Barnard, leader of the Leave campaign, but that attempt appears to have failed. I have just watched Barnard being rushed from the debating chamber by security officers. As I speak, the search continues for the would-be assassin.’

  There was a sudden commotion outside the BBC’s makeshift studio on the balcony, as a Swat team rushed past. The camera caught that too.

  ‘Next time I come to the Oxford Union, I’ll bring a flak jacket,’ Louisa Hitchcock announced, with studied nonchalance.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The attempt on the life of Edward Barnard made headlines around the world. In the confusion following the exchange of gunfire, the would-be assassin had slipped away, apparently down the fire escape, leaving behind a collapsible, high-powered rifle and a stack of leaflets saying ‘KEEP BRITAIN IN EUROPE’.

  Back in London the next morning, after the eventful evening in Oxford, Tom Milbourne, chancellor of the exchequer and de facto leader of the Remain campaign, held an emergency meeting of the core Remain team.

  ‘This attempted murder is already being pinned on us. The KEEP BRITAIN IN EUROPE leaflets found on-site don’t help,’ he told them. ‘Of course, we’ve put out a denial, but that’s not enough. Leave is up two points this morning and the trend is against us. For some reason I can’t understand, people seem to like Edward Barnard. They don’t want Europhile maniacs to take a pot-shot at him. I tell you, if they’d taken a vote at the Union last night, we would have been absolutely hammered.’

  Geraldine Watson, MP for Milton Keynes and deputy leader of Remain, chipped in, ‘Maybe it’s not all bad news, Tom. I’ve just received a Google Alert. Harriet Marshall, the Leave campaign’s wonder-worker, has been taken in for questioning this morning. Everything’s very hush-hush. There’s some suggestion that Marshall has been in contact with the Russians.’

  ‘What kind of contact?’ Milbourne asked sharply. ‘I had dinner with the Russian ambassador last week. Great guy. Gave me a Château Petrus 1957 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. Sharing a bottle of wine with the Russian ambassador doesn’t make me a spy. They’d have to pay me huge sums for that. Or make me editor of the Evening Standard!’

  He was joking, of course.

  Geraldine Watson was still looking at her phone. ‘They got a search warrant. Seized Harriet Marshall’s computer.’

  ‘That sounds more interesting,’ Milbourne said.

  It wasn’t exactly the third degree but it wasn’t a picnic either.

  MI5’s top interrogator, a huge Nigerian called Mnogo Abewa, told Harriet Marshall, ‘You’re being held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. That means we can do pretty much as we like with you without anyone being able to stop us. I could sit on you, for example. I’m twenty stone. I’d just squash you flat. Wouldn’t leave a mark.’

  Harriet Marshall said nothing. Her tradecraft, surely, had been perfect. She had never used her phone to communicate with her ‘handler’ and never sent an email or a text. What the hell did they have on her?

  ‘Okay, you don’t want to talk. That’s fine by me,’ Mnogo Abewa said. ‘So I’ll do the talking. I’ll just run through what we have on you.’

  He opened the file, took out a document and passed it over.

  ‘See that?’ he said. ‘That’s a photocopy of something we found in your dustbin. I’ve got the real thing here,’ he tapped the file, ‘but we’ll keep that for court. If I gave it to you now, you might just pop it in your mouth and swallow it, then where would we be?’

  Harriet Marshall examined the document. ‘Doesn’t mean anything to me. Someone’s missing a three-legged black cat, apparently. Looks as though they put a notice on a board somewhere.’

  Mnogo Abewa sighed. ‘On the morning you picked up the message, you phoned your handler at the Russian trade mission. No, I don’t mean you phoned the number on the card: 077238954978. We know that’s a fake number. You phoned Nikolai Nabokov’s number, the number you know by heart, from the phone box at the end of your road.’

  Mnogo Abewa pushed a button. Harriet Marshall heard herself say. ‘Forty-five minutes.’

  ‘That could be anyone,’ Marshall said.

  ‘How about this then? This is a call you made to Nabokov on your office line. Tut tut.’ Abewa shook his head disapprovingly. ‘I thought they would have told you not to use the office line, and certainly not when you’re phoning one of the numbers on our list.’

  He punched the button again. This time Marshall heard her own voice even more clearly. ‘Westminster Bridge. Two o’clock. This afternoon.’

  ‘We tracked you on the bridge too, of course. You told us the time and the place, thank you very much. Had our team ready when you got there. Of course, we’ve known about Nabokov for ages. Have to send him packing now, of course. Back to Moscow. Won’t be the first time we’ve sent the Russkies packing. Won’t be the last time either.’

  Abewa’s own phone pinged. ‘Ah, apparently Nabokov’s already gone. Flew out this morning on KLM. Rats leaving a sinking ship, eh?’

  Half an hour later, they took a break. Mnogo Abewa looked at his watch. ‘Interview interrupted at 10:45a.m.’ he said.

  Jane Porter, head of MI5, who had been watching the interview through the one-way window, was waiting for Abewa outside the room. ‘I don’t have to tell you,’ she said, ‘that this is pretty sensitive stuff. What do you think the Russians have been trying to do with Harriet Marshall?’

  She made the question seem so innocent, so naive.

  ‘How about trying to influence the result of the Referendum? Will that do for starters?’ Mnogo Abewa replied.

  ‘You’re going to have to do better than a newsagent’s card dug out of someone’s rubbish bin,’ Jane Porter said. ‘And a casual meeting on Westminster Bridge. Did anyone hear what they actually said?’

  Mnogo Abewa was a Tigger, not an Eeyore. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get there,’ he assured her. ‘I’ll try my “enhanced interrogation techniques”. They usually work.’

  ‘Tell me about Yuri Yasonov,’ Mnogo Abewa asked Harriet when he came back into the interview room. ‘You met him at Oxford. When you were Howard, not Harriet. You were friends there. Must have been. You were both officers of the Oxford Union, as I understand. Then, after you left Oxford, you went to Russia for two years. What did you do there? Why didn’t you tell Barnard you knew Yasonov?
What were you concealing? Did Yasonov himself recruit you? Did you ever meet Igor Popov? Why did you go to Amsterdam? Why did you meet Yasonov in the Rijksmuseum?’

  The questions came thick and fast. Harriet blocked them all. Just pushed her pawns forward, keeping her king well-guarded. If you played chess as well as Harriet did, you soon realized that – contrary to expectations – defence was often the best form of attack.

  At the end of the morning, Mnogo Abewa came, crucially, to the attempt on Edward Barnard’s life.

  ‘Why were you fanning your face with the order paper, when Barnard got up to speak?’ Mnogo asked. ‘It wasn’t particularly hot, as I understand. I think you were sending a signal. A signal which meant, “When I wave my order paper to fan my face, be sure to shoot the next man who gets up to speak”. Isn’t that what you were telling him? So what does that make you? A murderer or at least an accessory to murder? This is serious stuff, Harriet. You can’t go on stonewalling.’

  After a while, Harriet Marshall said, ‘I’d like to call a lawyer.’

  Later that morning, Jane Porter went to see the home secretary.

  ‘We’ve some pretty clear prima facie evidence that Russia has been trying to influence the result of the Referendum,’ she said.

  Mabel Killick sighed. ‘I wish the beastly thing was over. Okay, Jane, just summarize the key points. What exactly is Russia doing? It’s all very well having stuff in the Guardian, but where’s the hard evidence?’

  ‘Well, Home Secretary.’ Jane Porter chose her words carefully. ‘We’ve been building the case for some time. First, there’s the so-called Referendum dossier, the one Barnard brought back from Russia. Did the Russians actually pay good money to the Conservative Party as a whole, or to the PM or Conservative Party chairman in particular, so as to ensure there was a commitment to the Referendum, first in the prime minister’s Bloomberg speech, and then in the Conservative manifesto?’