The Russian Lieutenant

by Peter Marshall

  “Not good enough,” said Sir Oliver, brusquely. “I am told that your people detained a Russian naval officer and a British woman not long after those visiting Russian ships arrived. The Russian Ambassador has already asked for the immediate release of the officer and diplomatic access to him before he is questioned. So, who are these people, and why were they detained? I need answers today, not tomorrow.”

  The MI5 man then explained that the Security Services had been monitoring internet communications between a woman working in the naval Commodore’s HQ in Portsmouth and a Russian naval officer for several months and that they had become increasingly suspicious. The couple were using a popular dating website, but they had exchanged various references to naval activities in both Portsmouth and Sevastopol. The messages were currently being analysed by his department to establish the identity of the Russian and to discover whether there were any security breaches, possibly by sending information in a coded form.

  Tom Spencer went on to explain that the website they were using was completely open and not protected in any way. But in the course of these online exchanges, the messages had discussed the visit by these Russian naval ships to Portsmouth and then a plan for the couple to meet, so they decided to track the movements of the woman and were ready to detain them at the first opportunity. He described how his agents had observed the couple when they met on the quayside in Portsmouth and had then tracked them as they visited various places in the city, eventually arriving at the woman’s flat. Their conversations had been monitored from time to time, he said, including inside the flat, and although nothing incriminating was heard the decision was made to enter the flat late in the evening and detain them both for further questioning.

  “So where are they now? And has anything leaked to the media about this incident yet?” asked Sir Oliver, in a firm voice.

  “They have been at a Portsmouth police station overnight, with two of my people, and I am expecting a preliminary report very soon – and no, we are not aware of any press interest.”

  “Won’t take long,” barked Sir Oliver. “The police leak like a sieve, so be prepared. This incident will have to go up to the Minister as soon as I get back to the office, so let me know as soon as you have more information.”

  The officer from MI6 asked to be kept informed of any developments from the Russian angle and said he would liaise with their bureau in Moscow. The representative from the MoD said he was in touch with the Portsmouth Naval Command regarding the woman involved and that he would want to be told about in any inquiry relating to the operations in the Commodore’s office. The man from Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism unit confirmed that the involvement by Portsmouth police was being carried out “by the book”.

  Spencer had been through this sort of thing many times before, taking care to include the many different parties with a special interest, and he knew that time was not on his side in making a decision about the next move. Was this a serious spying incident, which would involve Government ministers, or was it something trivial? Maybe even just a budding romance, in which case, over-reacting could prove embarrassing. The meeting broke up, with a plan to reconvene later in the day, and the participants went back to report to their respective departments on the story so far.

  Spencer was soon on a direct phone link to his two experienced colleagues who had travelled to Portsmouth the previous day to handle the assignment. “What’s the latest?”

  He was told that the two suspects had been held overnight at the police CID department and were being questioned separately to establish as many facts as possible. Neither of them had yet been cautioned or charged, but they had confirmed that the woman worked in a sensitive part of the Commodore’s office in the Dockyard. A senior naval officer there had just been informed of the woman’s whereabouts, but they had not shared any details at this stage about the reasons for her absence from work.

  The MI5 officers also reassured their chief that they had remembered to ask the police inspector on night shift to bring in the local on-call solicitor “just in case”. They said that a somewhat dishevelled man called Jeremy Scott had arrived to go through the appropriate legal instructions separately with the two detainees, advising each of them that they were entitled to say “no comment” in reply to any questions they were asked, and to request a break if they felt too tired to continue. The agent added that the Russian detainee appeared to understand English but was refusing to say anything until he had an interpreter and an officer from his ship or someone from the embassy with him. The woman was being hysterical at times and asking to talk to her boss in the Dockyard office, insisting that she had done nothing wrong. When asked, she had confirmed that in her online exchanges with her “date”, she had told him about her own Russian ancestry.

  In their verbal report, the two agents went on to describe to Tom Spencer how, after two sessions of interviews with the couple about their past history, their special interests, and their friends and contacts, they had built up the profiles – more successfully with Marina Peters than with the Russian. They had decided that everyone needed a break soon after midnight and the local police team had set up camp beds with blankets for the detainees in the two interview rooms.

  Some seven hours later, and after providing some breakfast of coffee and pastries, the two agents said they had continued their interrogation of the two individuals who were still being held in separate rooms. They had started on the next stage of the interviews, which was to try to establish how the relationship had come about and what each of them knew about the other. This was still in progress, they said, when this call came from their boss in London.

  Tom listened carefully to their report, without interrupting, and then replied, “That sounds fine, so far. Let me have a written summary of your sessions to date as soon as possible – send it over on the usual link to my tablet. And get the CID people there to take a photo of each of them and have them transmitted to my office. But take care not to ruffle the Russian feathers too much at this stage. There’s already a problem at the Foreign Office, so ease off the pressure until I get back to you.”

  The call ended, and the two agents decided to take a break from questioning to prepare the written report on progress while they awaited further instructions from London.

  6.

  THE TIP-OFF!

  At about the same time, early on this Thursday morning, Gary Andrews was in his small bachelor flat in Fratton, trying to sleep off a heavy night down at his local pub, when his phone rang. He was the crime reporter at the Portsmouth Herald, and it was not unusual for him to be disturbed at inconvenient moments. This time it was one of his contacts at the police station.

  “Sorry to call you so early,” Gary heard through his hazy brain. “It’s Bill here – are you OK? Look, there’s something a bit odd going on here this morning. Some plainclothes people we haven’t seen before brought in a bloke last night who looked like a foreign naval type, and there was a woman with him. I have been told that they have been questioning them here all night. Just thought there might be something in it for you.”

  “Thanks, Bill – I’ll check around. Let me know if you hear any more.”

  After grabbing a quick breakfast, Gary drove his small Fiat to his parking slot at the newspaper office in the town centre and soon found the paper’s naval correspondent at his desk. He asked him casually, “Any foreign ships in port that you know of?”

  “Yes, I did a piece last night,” said Charles Williams. “There are three Russian frigates in the Dockyard – came in from some exercises in the Med. My contacts said they are probably here to get fuel before going on to join their Baltic Fleet friends. Not often we see them here, but it’s happened before… Seems just routine. Why do you ask?”

  Gary told him about his early-morning tip-off, and Charles said he would go straight to the Dockyard and call on his usual contacts to see what might be going on. If it is a foreign sailor at the police station, he conjectured, it might just be conn
ected with the Russian visitors. In any case, he wanted to get a photo or two of the Russian ships to illustrate the story he was writing for Friday’s edition.

  Meanwhile, Gary set off for his regular morning visit to the police station to take a look at the occurrences log for the past 24 hours with the duty sergeant. As usual, there were a couple of arrests of drunken sailors, a domestic row out in the suburbs and a fairly serious road accident – two injuries. All seemed normal – except that as he walked outside, his eagle eye spotted an unfamiliar black 4 x 4 vehicle in the car park at the front of the building with a London registration. It also had a more-sophisticated-than-usual radio antenna.

  Gary returned to the police sergeant’s desk and enquired, casually, “Has the Chief Constable got a smart new vehicle, then?”

  “No idea, pal,” replied the sergeant. “Saw it myself when I came in this morning, and CID told me it was a bit hush-hush – can’t say any more.”

  Gary’s journalistic instincts immediately sensed something a bit fishy. As he went back through the car park, he surreptitiously took a quick picture of the black car on his mobile phone and then drove back to the newspaper office deep in thought. Who drives a vehicle like that? Must be something or someone special? And if that foreign naval type came from the Dockyard, he could have something to do with the Russian ships. Ah yes, Russians – that could be a story…?

  Back in the newsroom, he was just doing some online research about the Russian navy when Charles called him from the Dockyard.

  “Something is going on here,” he said. “They are not saying anything in the information office about the Russian ships except that they are scheduled to leave at the weekend. But when I was taking my pictures, one of the Dockyard foremen working nearby told me that soon after the ships docked yesterday, he saw a strange car pull up at the dockside and one of the men in the car took photographs as one of the Russian officers came down the gangway and met a woman who appeared to be waiting for him.”

  “Did he say what sort of car?”

  “I’m not far away,” said Charles. “I’ll go back and ask him – hold on.”

  Gary overheard the conversation. “Yeah. I think it was a big black job,” said a third voice. “It was one of those four-wheel drives – don’t see many of those around here.”

  Gary interrupted. “Charles, ask him what happened next and if he saw where the couple went?”

  “I was quite a long way away”, came the reply. “But the officer and the woman walked off into the Dockyard and I think one of the men from the car was following them.”

  Back in the newsroom, Gary and Charles put their heads together and spent the next hour calling their various police and naval contacts to see if there were any more clues. The next clue came when a friend of Charles’, who worked as transport manager in the Dockyard offices, told him that there was certainly some unusual activity going on. A couple of senior officers had arrived in the past half hour for an unscheduled meeting “upstairs with the bosses”. The office gossip was that they were making enquiries about one of the women in the communications department who had not arrived for work as usual, and they had asked several of her colleagues in the offices if they knew how to contact her.

  “What’s her name?” asked Charles.

  “Give me five minutes. I think I know who to ask. I’ll go somewhere quiet and call you back soonest,” came the reply.

  The call came just a few minutes later. “Apparently, they’re looking for someone called Marina Peters – she lives in Southsea Terrace.”

  Charles and Gary decided that it was time to brief their editor, Matthew Sampson. He was upstairs, sitting behind his traditional walnut desk, reading the morning papers, as they knocked on the door and went into his office. They soon got his full attention as they each outlined what they knew at this stage, and he advised them to be cautious; there were not many facts to go on yet, he pointed out. He, too, could smell a rat as they began to put the pieces together, but he also knew his responsibilities if an emerging news story involved the police, the Navy, the Russians and a mysterious black car from London.

  “Let me make a few calls,” he said. “And you can send one of the young reporters over to Southsea Terrace to find out anything he can about Miss Peters; don’t tell him why – he can make up an excuse.”

  The editor’s first call was to the Portsmouth Police Chief Constable, Terence Hardy – they were on good terms and had belonged to the same local golf club for years. He had the Chief’s direct line phone number, and it had been their understanding that they could always exchange information in confidence.

  “Sorry to bother you, Terence,” he began. “It’s not about my nomination to the golf club committee this time. It’s about a story my guys have got wind of today. Something about a foreign naval officer brought in for questioning … and they think it may have something to do with the Russian ships in the Dockyard. Should I be interested?”

  “Can’t say a thing, Matthew – you know I would if I could, but there are other parties involved, and I hope you will tell your guys to leave it alone at the moment. I will give you a call as soon as I know more. Okay?”

  “Yes, understood. I’ll stay in touch.”

  The editor could read between the lines. There was clearly something going on, and he suspected that if Russians were involved, it might have some national security angle which he would need to handle very carefully. Next, he called the office of the Royal Navy Commodore in the Dockyard and asked to speak to the number two man, Commander Robert Gaffney, who had been serving there for quite a few years and was experienced in dealing with the Press on confidential naval matters; he was also well known in Portsmouth dining circles. But he was not available, even for his friend Matthew, and neither was anyone else. “Try again later in the day,” was the unusual response from a junior officer. Matthew was not often rebuffed by his personal network.

  Meanwhile, the young reporter had returned from the flat in Southsea Terrace with the news that Miss Peters had not been seen there since the previous day – but he went on to tell Gary that he had spoken to one of the elderly residents who told him that she had been surprised to be woken up by a police car arriving early that morning. She had then seen two police officers come into the building, and somehow they had entered Marina’s flat and spent about half an hour inside before leaving with several boxes.

  And that was not all, the reporter added. She also said there had been “something funny” going on late the previous evening and she had heard comings and goings and had looked out and seen a police car there as well. The neighbour was understandably very concerned and had been trying without success to contact the only friend of Marina’s she knew; she gave the Herald reporter the name and phone number of one Betty McGuire.

  Gary returned upstairs again and reported these latest developments to the editor. They called Charles into the office again for another review of the situation. The Herald had had a fine reputation as an evening newspaper for many years, but because of commercial pressures, it was no longer published daily. Since it was now Thursday morning and the next edition of the weekly paper would be put together that day for publication on Friday, they had limited time to think.

  They pondered and decided that Gary should next try to find this Betty McGuire while Charles kept an eye on the Dockyard and his naval contacts, and they would meet again mid-afternoon to hopefully finalise the story for that week’s edition.

  Gary checked the voter register and discovered that Betty and her husband lived in a new block of flats off Arundel Street. He called her number but got no reply. He decided not to leave a voicemail message but to try the address anyway. As he drove through the city, he did some more pondering about another dilemma. His best drinking friend, Mike Morrissey, was the local freelance reporter and correspondent for most of the London national newspapers – and they always swapped information on the stories they were covering. Mike’s tip-offs sometimes helped Gary to shine with ex
clusive stories that pleased the editor of the Herald; Gary often heard titbits which Mike could develop into a story for the London tabloids – and also paid for a few drinks. But should he share this emerging story – which might turn out not to be a story at all? Or it could be something big. Should he wait 24 hours so that the Herald could feature an “exclusive”? Or perhaps it would help to let the experienced Mike loose on the story…

  He decided to wait a bit longer, and when he arrived at the Arundel Street flats, neighbours told him that Betty was a nurse, working shifts at the local hospital, and that she came home at unusual times. Her husband worked in a High Street furniture store, and just as he was sitting back in his car, working out which direction to try next, Gary spotted a woman in nurse’s uniform walking towards the flats from the bus stop. His lucky day?

  He followed her to the door and, as politely as he could, asked, “Excuse me, but are you Betty McGuire?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m Gary Andrews from the Herald. I am very sorry to bother you, but may I have a few words – it’s about your friend Marina.”

  “What’s happened to her? Come on in for a moment,” she replied anxiously.

  When they got inside and Betty had taken off her coat and sat down in the kitchen, Gary explained that Marina had not turned up for work as expected that morning. He said the Navy had asked the police to make some enquiries, and it was quite normal for the local paper to follow up this sort of thing in case someone else knew something. Someone like Betty, for example.

  “When did you last talk to Marina?” Gary asked.

  “At the weekend – we usually see each other somewhere at the weekend unless I am working overtime. On Sunday, we went for a walk on the seafront and had a cup of tea at her flat. Why, what has happened?”