by Tim Heath
“It was satisfactory. She is seeing her mother today. She wasn’t overly impressed with being pulled into all this, but I think she’d spot something if there were an issue.”
“And would she let you know, if there was?” It was a leading question. Charlie wasn’t sure how much they all knew about his current relationship status with Anya, let alone their history.
“Anya has always been very thorough about her job. Her search for justice and truth is what drives her more than anything else.”
“You know that is not what I asked.”
“I’m not sure what you are implying, Sir?”
“Charlie, your history with Anya speaks for itself. This isn’t just one agent speaking to another. That history puts you in a difficult position. If her mother found out you were involved, she’d put an end to things for sure. Her father is far from a fan, as well, remember. And from what we’ve been told, Anya herself has much less time for you than you do for her.”
“And your point is, exactly?” Charlie was frustrated that the focus of the conversation seemed to be on him a little too much.
“My point is precisely this––that because you messed up your chances with Anya because you were such a boy, there is a chance that either they’ll censor the information that you are told, or worse still, give you false information. Can’t you see, Charlie, they could use you to feed us wrong advice. We have no way of knowing if we can trust what we are told, or not, based on your situation.”
“Well, it’s not my situation that is really at stake here, is it?” Charlie was keen to get the focus off himself. “I’m certain that if anything is going on, Anya will let me know.”
“Well, tread carefully. And be cautious how much we share from our side.”
“Our side? Man, we have nothing to share. What do we possibly have that they don’t already know, assuming there isn’t any truth in this spy thing?”
“There isn’t, Charlie, but we’ve been here before.”
“Good. Well, I suggest, you let me do my job. Trust me when I say that I know when I’m being spun a line. Anya wouldn’t do that to me anyway. She is more honest than you give her credit for.”
“I don’t think honesty comes into this one, does it.”
“In what way?” Charlie didn’t see the connection.
“I mean, nothing about the case so far has been about honesty. It’s all been about power, about control. It’s been Russia showing the UK that they can do what they like, regardless of the consequences. Nothing we’ve said or threatened has made any difference.”
“Which is why I’ve spoken with Anya. She’s now our best bet to understand what’s going on behind the scenes. She’s obviously picked up on something to have been curious enough to even meet with me in the first place. She took a big risk flying down to see me. If her mother is involved in all this, she’s taking an even bigger risk going down to see her, no doubt asking questions that will arouse suspicions. She will let me know if she finds out anything.”
“I hope you are right,” was all they said in return.
“I need to get moving on all this,” Charlie said, excusing himself from the room. His mind was actually with Anya. The Russian press were claiming Hackett was, in fact, a British spy, citing the evidence to prove it, which was causing a huge stir in turn in England and especially London. The truth was, if anything was going on, whoever was behind it all, Anya was now their best hope in finding answers, and no one could be allowed to know of her involvement.
21
Anya had arrived at her mother’s lavish house in the most exclusive part of Moscow just before ten that morning. She’d already seen on the news the excitement surrounding the revelation that there was proof Hackett was a British spy. It only added fuel to the Russian capital punishment sentence.
The house was far more elaborate than any Anya had grown up in. Her mother had moved around several times, trading up each move. She’d been in this latest fortress less than a year. It was Anya’s first visit but she was already very impressed. Her mother had done well from the divorce, but still, this house was something else altogether. Anya had been met at the front door by a member of the household staff that she knew her mother now kept. The front gate had been security-guarded, two men on constant watch. She suspected there were others in the grounds, though she hadn’t spotted any on her walk towards the front door. The furnishing was lavish, it had her mother written all over it. She always had expensive taste, something which hadn’t been passed on. Anya was far more content with function over image, especially when it came to her home.
Her mother came from a different era entirely. Raised during Soviet times, her family had wealth in a time when many in Russia were starving to death. Her mother’s marriage to a British gentleman had caused all sorts of issues from the very beginning. The birth of Anya, and initially schooling in the UK, only added to that. When the breakdown in the marriage inevitably happened, few in Moscow were saddened. Anya’s return to the Motherland, her potential already recognised, was seen as a victory for Russia. Anya, in the early days, was largely oblivious to all the political power play that was at work, often behind the scenes. Only with her growing role within the FSB had the curtain been raised, somewhat, and she became increasingly aware of her mother’s influence in the elite circles she moved in.
Standing there on that cold December morning, she was taken to a new level of amazement at what her mother had established around her. It was impressive just being there, which was surely the idea. Anya started to wonder just how many people from the inner circle at the Kremlin had done what she was now doing. Had Putin himself graced the house?
Having been left to herself for long enough, the surroundings having had the desired effect, her mother came through a side door and walked over as confidently as ever to embrace her only child. They kissed each other three times on the cheek.
“Anyechka, how good it is to see you,” she said.
“Mother, the pleasure is mine.” There was something overly formal about their meeting, but it had been some time since they were last together.
“So what do you think of the new house?” she asked, waving her hands around, doing a spin herself on the polished granite floor. She was also an accomplished dancer, amongst other talents.
“Mother, I’m impressed. It really is a beautiful home.” And she meant it. It was stunning. Massive in fact, though she was yet actually to have a look around. It was far bigger than her mother needed, for sure. She lived alone, and her only daughter rarely came to visit. But that wasn’t the point. Like many in the Moscow elite, it made a statement. It opened doors of opportunity before a word was spoken. That’s how it all worked in Russia, Anya was only too aware.
“I’ll give you a tour,” and she took Anya’s hand and proceeded to lead her around the downstairs. There were two separate lounges, a kitchen that wouldn’t have been out of place in a top restaurant, offices that could seat twenty people around a conference table and rooms where her staff lived. Upstairs, once you had walked up the wide main staircase, huge pieces of art hanging on the wall, you arrived on the main landing. A crystal chandelier hung over the space, spreading light to the whole area. There were five spacious bedrooms, each easily big enough to hold a whole family. Many in Moscow and St Petersburg lived in flats smaller than one bedroom. Three of the rooms had their own bathroom, and there was another bathroom that led off the landing. There was a final smaller office, which her mother said she preferred to use for herself. It gave a wonderful view of the park in front of the house, and Red Square was visible in the distance too. She picked up a telephone on the desk in the office, asking for some tea to be brought up. She took a seat. Anya came away from the window and joined her mother in sitting down. Moments later, the tea arrived. Green tea, and lots of it. There was no food to go with it, a rarity in a Russian home, except with her mother. She was always watching her figure and looked good, given her age.
“It is so wonderful
that you’ve found the time to come down to see me, Anyechka. It has been too long for the both of us.”
“I know, Mother. You seem to be well.”
“I am, my darling. I have a wonderful doctor, and I’m eating well thanks to the wonderful chef I have working for me. I even have my own personal trainer, you know.”
Besides the money from the divorce, which might have been enough to purchase half of the downstairs, Anya wasn’t sure from where the rest of the money came. Her mother hadn’t worked a day in her life, but she was a social goddess, able to mix with anyone yet never getting out of her depth. Anya wasn’t going to start questioning anything about the house, at that moment. It was the least of her concerns.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” she said.
“Besides coming to see my own mother?” Anya said. The smile went from her mother’s face, momentarily.
“We are both too busy to only do social visits, Anya. There must be something else that brings you home?” Too busy seemed an odd phrase for someone who seemingly didn’t work. It also wasn’t her home, but she let both of these thoughts drop.
“Mother, can’t a girl come and see her own mother and not be questioned as to why?” Her mother sat back at this moment, before pouring some more green tea.
“Yes, of course, you can. I’m sorry.” She poured some for Anya too. Russians drank a lot of green tea. “So how are things for you in St Petersburg? Are they keeping you busy?” Her mother had been involved, behind the scenes, in her job for the FSB, but had wanted to have her based in Moscow. It had been Anya who had insisted on taking the position in St Petersburg. She wanted to make it on her own.
“Things are well, and yes, it’s busy.”
“You were lead agent on that spy killer, weren’t you?” They both knew that this was common knowledge.
“Yes, I was. I made the arrest myself in England. Flew with him back to St Petersburg.”
“A terrible business, that. I should put in a good word for you, and there is probably a medal or something in it for you. You’ve done your country a service, after all. That man was a spy, and my daughter exposed him. I’m very proud of you, darling.” There was a heavy, almost scripted style to her mother’s speech as if she was going through the motions. Anya knew that she had not been the one to expose him. That had come from the entries on the tablet which had been recovered from the scene and especially from the newspapers that morning.
“You don’t need to put in a word for me, Mother.” That was the last thing she wanted.
“Nonsense. You’ve done your job with distinction. There's no knowing what that spy would have done to our country had he got away with this. You know Anthony Fernandes had connections with the Kremlin, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, very aware of that fact. “What do you know about the company he owned, this RusCom?”
“I tend to keep away from business, Anya, you know me.” Anya was beginning to wonder if she knew her mother now at all, in fact.
“You must have heard something? One minute it’s a small business, albeit with big ambitions. Then the owner gets murdered, the company gets put up for sale, rumours circulate, and before long, its share value is up ten times the level it was before the crime, and there is talk that it might go higher still. There must be someone talking about what’s going on. What about RusCom HQ themselves? The device they were testing, the one the public is hyping up a storm about on the internet. It runs on the main system here in Moscow. That’s how the papers were able to pick up on the entries as they went public. You must have had some conversations about that one, surely?”
“No, Anya, I can’t say I have.”
“What about the charge? The sentence of capital punishment was a surprise even for me. That could only have come from Putin himself. What’s the news on that side of things?”
“Anya,” she said, in that dismissive tone she knew only too well. She’d been raised on that tone. “I don’t see why you are asking all these questions about a case that is in the past. He was found guilty in our court system. I’ve been following the case as much as anyone else. You probably know much more than me, but it was clear he was guilty, even before the evidence that the papers have brought to light today.”
“Yes, I’m not saying that. I am convinced he committed the crime too. It has just moved at such a pace, and it’s all happened so quickly.”
“It was just how things needed to be, that’s all.”
“So you have heard something?”
“No, not really, Anya, just that the evidence was there. There was talk within the Kremlin. Of course, the treason case came before them here and was allowed to be pressed. But I was not involved closely enough to know anything more about it, I’m afraid.” Anya stayed silent for a moment. She had a growing sense her mother was lying to her.
“Would you let me know if you do hear anything more please, Mother?” Her mother’s expression changed noticeably at that last question.
“Who has put you up to this, Anya?”
“No one,” she said as plainly as she could.
“I don’t see why you have come here to ask these questions about a case that is over. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, it’s still going on for one thing. There is an appeal next week.”
“A formality, I can assure you,” she said all too automatically. So she did know more than she was letting on.
“And I just wanted to satisfy my curiosity, that’s all. I don’t like to be in the dark on a case I’ve worked on.”
“I suggest you drop it, that’s all. There is nothing good to come from digging up on this one, darling. Let it lie.” Now she was really beginning to worry Anya.
“Is that the time?” Anya said as if suddenly realising how time had got away from her. It fooled no one, but her mother said nothing. Anya promised to see her again later on, as they parted at the front door. Her mother walked over to a telephone and called the front gate, which her daughter had just reached.
“Have her followed,” she said, putting the phone back down without another word.
22
The next week flew by. In London, news coverage, as it does, had gone onto other things for the time being. A severe cold front coming down from the Arctic had brought winter snow to St Petersburg, with the weather pattern set to continue and move down towards Moscow as the days went by. The UK was covered in heavy rain, as Charlie sat in his London office watching the weather forecast predict yet more bad weather.
A foot of snow had already fallen in St Petersburg in the last two days. Temperatures had dropped overnight to minus ten Celsius, and it was predicted it would drop a little more, too. While December was not usually the coldest month––that was reserved for February––it was not uncommon for the snow to come the way it had. City life continued at its normal crazy level, albeit with snow trucks working through the nights to clear the new snow that was falling. Anya had kept herself busy since her trip to Moscow. She’d picked up that she was being followed soon after leaving her mother’s house. She’d stayed away, therefore, from RusCom altogether and had gone to ground, literally just staying at the hotel she was booked into, making use of the spa facilities. It was unusual for her to have free time, so she made the most of it. She didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself. The tail stopped, as far as she could tell, once she got to the airport for her return trip home. She hadn’t therefore gone back to see her mother on that trip, after all. It was obvious that it had been her mother, or at least her visit to her mother’s home, that had directly led to her being followed around her own capital city by people whom she assumed were fellow FSB agents. She hadn’t let on she knew, nor had she searched in the system back in her office to find out who they were. To have done either would only have made her situation worse. What she had done was to connect the two. Her questions to her mother, who’d lied to her with her answers, had led to her now being followed. That could only mean, as much as she didn�
�t want to admit it, Charlie was onto something when he’d suggested they meet.
She’d keep her head down during the week. When the day of William Hackett’s appeal came along, she had requested admittance to the courtroom, which at first caused some confusion. It was a hearing before three judges, and it was not open to the public. As a state security agent, she didn’t count as public so was reluctantly allowed to watch proceedings. There were only a few others present. It had lasted just the day. Bill had been brought in looking older and more fragile than when she’d last seen him, which was less than two months ago. There was no watching press; this was a hearing behind closed doors, so the speeches were shorter, there was less performance and a lot more action. The prosecution made less drama with the evidence, bringing it all forth as before but not labouring anything. The defence lawyer did his best as well, but by the end of the day, the judges had retired to review their decision. Just ten minutes later, they returned a decision, upholding the original jury’s verdict. William Hackett was still guilty of treason, and his execution date was set for two weeks from then. There were to be no further appeals. Bill seemed numb as he was once again led away, still a condemned man. There seemed little reaction in the faces of those watching. In fact, it seemed as if they were all just going through the motions. Anya had left confused and remembered the way her mother had so clearly stated that the appeal was just a formality. She’d known it was going to be turned down before it had even taken place. Had someone got to the three judges who were hearing the case? Anya had no way of knowing. A quick search had shown that all three were very senior, that they’d been judges for at least twenty years and had sat on appeal boards for at least a decade. They all lived in Moscow, but most of the appeal judges did, so that wasn’t too surprising. As there was no reporters present, there was no news. That was the strange thing. The final appeal had been rejected, an execution date set for two weeks’ time and there was no one breaking the news. It was to be Russia’s first execution in a long time. An execution of a British spy no less, and yet the airwaves were silent.