...Better and better and BETTER.
Mike
Kompromat
Re: Kompromat
This story is a prime example of why I am both disgusted and intrigued by intelligence work. There is absolutely nobody really likable in the story, and everybody has a damn agenda and an ego big enough to barely fit in a zeppelin hangar.
Now was Brton poisoned or does he simply have the equivalent of a nukedet in his brain?
Now was Brton poisoned or does he simply have the equivalent of a nukedet in his brain?
-
Nik_SpeakerToCats
- Posts: 1126
- Joined: Sat Dec 10, 2022 10:56 am
Re: Kompromat
Could just be stress, an aneurysm or ulcer letting go...
Bwa-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha !!!!
Bwa-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha !!!!
Re: Kompromat
Thank you.
The unlikability factor of people I've made has been troubling me a bit, slowing me down in writing.Jotun wrote: ↑Mon Mar 06, 2023 9:21 pm This story is a prime example of why I am both disgusted and intrigued by intelligence work. There is absolutely nobody really likable in the story, and everybody has a damn agenda and an ego big enough to barely fit in a zeppelin hangar.
Now was Brton poisoned or does he simply have the equivalent of a nukedet in his brain?
Barton has been poisoned. He was too much trouble.
Someone gave him his stroke.Nik_SpeakerToCats wrote: ↑Tue Mar 07, 2023 2:25 am Could just be stress, an aneurysm or ulcer letting go...
Bwa-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha !!!!
Re: Kompromat
Twenty–Two – New phone
Lauren had been comfort buying. Internet shopping for things which she really didn’t need, probably couldn’t afford too if she was unemployed, her intention was to starve off being upset by taking pleasure in extravagant purchases. She’d done it before and it never worked.
Nonetheless, she’d been doing it since her split with Alicia and also that terrifying visit from that woman who’d come here to the flat. Tell herself as she might, as many times as possible, that it wouldn’t work, she returned to spending.
There was a parcel due this morning. Shiny red shoes, ones which she didn’t know what she wear for nor with, were expected. When the doorbell went, Lauren looked out of the window and saw a delivery van.
Her shoes were here!
Opening the door after a peek to see that it was a driver there, Lauren signed for the parcel and took it inside. Opening it up, she found that it wasn’t the shoes she’d been waiting on.
“What’s this?”
She spoke aloud to her living room.
There were no red shoes carefully placed in the parcel. Instead, upon unwrapping the packaging, she found a phone in there.
It looked exactly like hers. Complete with the same case, and a scratch on the back of that too that matched the one on hers, Lauren sat for a moment befuddled by the whole thing. After a few moments, she held her phone in one hand and in the other hand had the one which had just come. There was visual confirmation there that they were the same.
Her pin code worked to unlock the new phone. On her home screen was the same image of her seven year-old niece. She started exploring though it, unnerved yet at the same time completely absorbed by it all.
Lauren found that her phone had been cloned, in every possible way. It was two days out of date though. There were recent things missing with messages, calls and images absent from the new phone when she checked that with her own one.
There was also an app which she didn’t recognise.
It was something called ‘Turtle’ and was a messaging service, one she’d never heard of before.
Opening it, Lauren found that there was an inbound message there.
USE THIS APP FOR ALL FUTURE CONTACT, W/ ALICIA TOO
The message vanished. There was no retrieving it.
On the contacts within this Turtle app, there was only one. Alicia’s number was there but no sign of whomever had sent that message to her.
Another message quickly came.
NO MEETS, NO X-CHANGES. USE APP TO TRANSFER DATA UPON INSTRUCTION. DITCH YOUR OLD PHONE
Quickly, the message disappeared. The sender had been unidentified and there was no way of replying that she could see.
And in came a third one too before that would be wiped as well.
GO TALK TO ALICIA, TODAY. DON’T LEAVE IT ANYMORE
It was clear to Lauren that this was all the handiwork of that woman who’d been here the other day. She’d told Lauren to fix everything with her employer and continue doing what she’d been doing before everything had gone entirely crazy with that.
Lauren had said that would yet she hadn’t. There had been chances to do so as well. Alicia had sent her several messages – using Whatsapp – telling her that all was forgiven and that she missed Lauren. The prime minister had spoken of the immense pressures that she was under at the minute and how Lauren was needed.
Those efforts at reaching out had been ignored by Lauren.
She'd seen the news with Alicia front-and-centre of the British Government’s responses to that the awful tragedy in Pakistan. Tired and distressed Alicia had looked when addressing the public.
There had been an urge inside of Lauren to go and help Alicia. She would need it, especially at a time like this when there were so many pressures on her. There were people around the prime minister who could help out with day-to-day matters yet Lauren was well aware that no one could do that job like she did. Now, the same woman who’d been in this very room and threatened her was instructing her do as she said that she would and go to Alicia. Lauren couldn’t imagine that it would have been anyone else behind those messages.
It had to be her, the woman who’d frightened Lauren then and whose presence had now reached back into here, where Lauren should have been safe, once again.
*
Back to Downing Street went Lauren that very afternoon. Alicia had replied to the message which she’d sent her, using that new app as instructed, and told her that yes, she did need her body woman.
Please come, she said, and we can sort everything out too.
As was the case with how things were with the news recently, since what had happened in Pakistan yesterday, what was still going on there in fact, dominated the political agenda entirely. That country was half the world away and not exactly the closest of partners to Britain. Nonetheless, a nuclear explosion had occurred within it, there was a city there currently getting drenched in fallout, the whole world had its attention focused on Pakistan and there was a domestic political impact here in this country because of that.
Lauren did what she did best.
She was back to being the invisible assistant to Alicia while the prime minister was on the move. The task wasn’t difficult and was made for her. She knew how to step out of the way and keep quiet. Alicia wanted her there to help her with the small matters which the busy members of her staff couldn’t and so there was Lauren to do that.
Inside the prime minister’s Downing Street office, Lauren was present when the defence secretary revealed that the Americans were considering launching a complicated military operation inside Pakistan to seize suspected nuclear weapons dumps less those be lost to radical militants or end up destroyed as the Pakistani Armed Forces collapsed. Alicia told him that the British Government would offer diplomat support for that should it occur but not be directly involved in any military operation like that.
Over in the historic House of Commons, there was another office for the prime minister and Lauren was inside a briefing given there by Alicia to the leaders of the opposition parties. That concerned what was known about the fallout affecting Faisalabad. It was grim news to hear. Horrible, tragic stuff was described. One of those MPs there actually shed some tears when she heard select details which had so far not been revealed in public about just how bad things were in the Punjab. There weren’t just words either. A German company was putting satellite images on the internet but an MOD staffer there with the prime minister showed those present some others. Those gave an even clearer visual indication that all was being said was true.
To Belgravia with Alicia travelled Lauren that evening. They went to the High Commission: the de facto embassy of Pakistan in the UK. The prime minister and the high commissioner spoke in private – no aides, no interpreters – and Lauren wandered. She signed a book of condolences that had been opened before telling Alicia about that afterwards. The prime minister would do the same as her aide did in adding her name to a very long list of those distressed at what they had heard.
Back down to COBRA they went afterwards with Alicia going into a meeting within there yet Lauren not authorised to enter the secure briefing room. She waited outside for the prime minister and upon her return went into another meeting alongside her employer where she stood against the wall and listened to something secretive. The justice secretary and the chief whip were there alongside the seniormost minister of state from the foreign office. Lauren learnt that the foreign secretary, Alicia’s primary opponent in government, had suffered a stroke yesterday while COBRA was in session when the news first broke about Pakistan. He was in hospital and there he lay gravely ill, so the chief whip said, with the doctors fearing the worst. No foul play was suspected despite an unfounded, speculative suggestion at the time of the incident. None of that on the news, Lauren knew. Though she said it would be taxing upon him, the justice secretary as asked by the prime minister to temporary assume the duties which Barton couldn’t preform. This wasn’t the right moment for a Cabinet reshuffle and the minister of state would be stepping up for the time being too. Would the two of them work together at this difficult time? They both agreed. Lauren was impressed at how Alicia handled that though understood that the issue wasn’t solved.
Only afterwards did she recall that it was Barton who had that fixation on Alicia where he was the one who lead the charge of asserted treason against her.
Upstairs within the Cabinet Office, there was a media suite for official government use and that was the final destination of the day. Alicia did a press conference from there where the prime minister answered questions from various journalists. Standing out of sight, Lauren watched her employer at work. What she saw in Alicia was what had been on the news since the blast in the Punjab. There was concern and distress on her face. She spoke calmly and with warmth. Compassion was expressed, just like it had been Manchester too. This time though there was no call for vengeance but rather a declaration that Britain was moving to help those in need. Her sorrow was to be matched with action.
Watching her then and now, Lauren was convinced that what she was seeing was all an act. All that she knew of the prime minister told her that none of that was the real her, none of it at all.
Alicia did her usual trick once they were up her flat high about Downing Street. The taps went on in the bathroom, making all of their noise, and she pulled Lauren in close to her while whispering in her ear.
It took everything that Lauren had not to push her away.
“I got a new phone too, just like you did.” She sounded eager to get that out. “I’ve been so worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
That she really wasn’t.
“It’s been truly a nightmare here. There’s been so much going on and there’s been no one to turn to. No one can do what you do, Lauren.”
Alicia continued to hold onto her, keeping her tight.
Lauren made the effort to stay within that grip and not make it feel like she didn’t want to be there, yet she was no longer the willing participant that she had been in the past. Only being like this with Alicia made her realise just how much she had moved on from all of it.
In short, there was no more love in her for her employer.
Finally, Alicia let her go. She stepped backwards and looked Lauren up and down. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Repeating herself Lauren was.
“Good.” Alicia seemed convinced despite Lauren not thinking that she herself had sounded genuine. “I’m going to need you to fly with me tomorrow. Back to New York and the U.N again.”
“Tomorrow?”
She’d been unprepared for that request, especially one with no notice.
“I know it’s come with no warning. We were talking about it down in that bunker briefing room and that’s what Katie confirmed as I was coming up the stairs just now. World leaders are gathering again and I need to go.”
“I’m not sure that I can do it.”
Despite all that she’d done to convince herself to return to Alicia, being with her was unsettling. The thought of travelling with her didn’t appeal to Lauren.
“I need you. There’s no one else.” Alicia said that and then turned off the bath taps to instead run the shower. She was speaking quietly: “I told you that everything would sort itself out in the end. Robert is out of the picture and he was the last major obstacle to things getting back to how they were.
I said I’d protect you no matter what.
Lauren, you don’t need to worry. I’ve got everything in-hand now. I’ll do what needs to be done with my phone, you won’t have to use your one at all. I’ll just need you to go out and broadcast the data from a spot not here, then pop back as quick as you can.
Once, twice a week. That’ll be all. Promise me you’ll do it? Come to New York too?”
Alicia got undressed and went into the shower. Lauren was left seated on the edge of the bath without having answered either question. The prime minister would want a reply when she emerged soon enough from being under the water.
An urge was in her to flee, to run from this very bathroom once again. It wasn’t so much what Alicia was asking her to do, which was bad enough as it was, but what she’d said about the foreign secretary. Downstairs Lauren had learnt of that man’s suspected stroke and up here Alicia was telling her that she’d got rid of him.
Lauren made the connection between the two easily enough.
“Well? Are you still mine?”
Alicia was out of the shower, standing before her.
Lauren had to give her answers.
All she wanted to do was to scream and run away though. This mess she was in, with the threats and the pressure and the demands upon her, were all just too much.
An escape was what she needed, a real one, because she just couldn’t handle this anymore.
Lauren had been comfort buying. Internet shopping for things which she really didn’t need, probably couldn’t afford too if she was unemployed, her intention was to starve off being upset by taking pleasure in extravagant purchases. She’d done it before and it never worked.
Nonetheless, she’d been doing it since her split with Alicia and also that terrifying visit from that woman who’d come here to the flat. Tell herself as she might, as many times as possible, that it wouldn’t work, she returned to spending.
There was a parcel due this morning. Shiny red shoes, ones which she didn’t know what she wear for nor with, were expected. When the doorbell went, Lauren looked out of the window and saw a delivery van.
Her shoes were here!
Opening the door after a peek to see that it was a driver there, Lauren signed for the parcel and took it inside. Opening it up, she found that it wasn’t the shoes she’d been waiting on.
“What’s this?”
She spoke aloud to her living room.
There were no red shoes carefully placed in the parcel. Instead, upon unwrapping the packaging, she found a phone in there.
It looked exactly like hers. Complete with the same case, and a scratch on the back of that too that matched the one on hers, Lauren sat for a moment befuddled by the whole thing. After a few moments, she held her phone in one hand and in the other hand had the one which had just come. There was visual confirmation there that they were the same.
Her pin code worked to unlock the new phone. On her home screen was the same image of her seven year-old niece. She started exploring though it, unnerved yet at the same time completely absorbed by it all.
Lauren found that her phone had been cloned, in every possible way. It was two days out of date though. There were recent things missing with messages, calls and images absent from the new phone when she checked that with her own one.
There was also an app which she didn’t recognise.
It was something called ‘Turtle’ and was a messaging service, one she’d never heard of before.
Opening it, Lauren found that there was an inbound message there.
USE THIS APP FOR ALL FUTURE CONTACT, W/ ALICIA TOO
The message vanished. There was no retrieving it.
On the contacts within this Turtle app, there was only one. Alicia’s number was there but no sign of whomever had sent that message to her.
Another message quickly came.
NO MEETS, NO X-CHANGES. USE APP TO TRANSFER DATA UPON INSTRUCTION. DITCH YOUR OLD PHONE
Quickly, the message disappeared. The sender had been unidentified and there was no way of replying that she could see.
And in came a third one too before that would be wiped as well.
GO TALK TO ALICIA, TODAY. DON’T LEAVE IT ANYMORE
It was clear to Lauren that this was all the handiwork of that woman who’d been here the other day. She’d told Lauren to fix everything with her employer and continue doing what she’d been doing before everything had gone entirely crazy with that.
Lauren had said that would yet she hadn’t. There had been chances to do so as well. Alicia had sent her several messages – using Whatsapp – telling her that all was forgiven and that she missed Lauren. The prime minister had spoken of the immense pressures that she was under at the minute and how Lauren was needed.
Those efforts at reaching out had been ignored by Lauren.
She'd seen the news with Alicia front-and-centre of the British Government’s responses to that the awful tragedy in Pakistan. Tired and distressed Alicia had looked when addressing the public.
There had been an urge inside of Lauren to go and help Alicia. She would need it, especially at a time like this when there were so many pressures on her. There were people around the prime minister who could help out with day-to-day matters yet Lauren was well aware that no one could do that job like she did. Now, the same woman who’d been in this very room and threatened her was instructing her do as she said that she would and go to Alicia. Lauren couldn’t imagine that it would have been anyone else behind those messages.
It had to be her, the woman who’d frightened Lauren then and whose presence had now reached back into here, where Lauren should have been safe, once again.
*
Back to Downing Street went Lauren that very afternoon. Alicia had replied to the message which she’d sent her, using that new app as instructed, and told her that yes, she did need her body woman.
Please come, she said, and we can sort everything out too.
As was the case with how things were with the news recently, since what had happened in Pakistan yesterday, what was still going on there in fact, dominated the political agenda entirely. That country was half the world away and not exactly the closest of partners to Britain. Nonetheless, a nuclear explosion had occurred within it, there was a city there currently getting drenched in fallout, the whole world had its attention focused on Pakistan and there was a domestic political impact here in this country because of that.
Lauren did what she did best.
She was back to being the invisible assistant to Alicia while the prime minister was on the move. The task wasn’t difficult and was made for her. She knew how to step out of the way and keep quiet. Alicia wanted her there to help her with the small matters which the busy members of her staff couldn’t and so there was Lauren to do that.
Inside the prime minister’s Downing Street office, Lauren was present when the defence secretary revealed that the Americans were considering launching a complicated military operation inside Pakistan to seize suspected nuclear weapons dumps less those be lost to radical militants or end up destroyed as the Pakistani Armed Forces collapsed. Alicia told him that the British Government would offer diplomat support for that should it occur but not be directly involved in any military operation like that.
Over in the historic House of Commons, there was another office for the prime minister and Lauren was inside a briefing given there by Alicia to the leaders of the opposition parties. That concerned what was known about the fallout affecting Faisalabad. It was grim news to hear. Horrible, tragic stuff was described. One of those MPs there actually shed some tears when she heard select details which had so far not been revealed in public about just how bad things were in the Punjab. There weren’t just words either. A German company was putting satellite images on the internet but an MOD staffer there with the prime minister showed those present some others. Those gave an even clearer visual indication that all was being said was true.
To Belgravia with Alicia travelled Lauren that evening. They went to the High Commission: the de facto embassy of Pakistan in the UK. The prime minister and the high commissioner spoke in private – no aides, no interpreters – and Lauren wandered. She signed a book of condolences that had been opened before telling Alicia about that afterwards. The prime minister would do the same as her aide did in adding her name to a very long list of those distressed at what they had heard.
Back down to COBRA they went afterwards with Alicia going into a meeting within there yet Lauren not authorised to enter the secure briefing room. She waited outside for the prime minister and upon her return went into another meeting alongside her employer where she stood against the wall and listened to something secretive. The justice secretary and the chief whip were there alongside the seniormost minister of state from the foreign office. Lauren learnt that the foreign secretary, Alicia’s primary opponent in government, had suffered a stroke yesterday while COBRA was in session when the news first broke about Pakistan. He was in hospital and there he lay gravely ill, so the chief whip said, with the doctors fearing the worst. No foul play was suspected despite an unfounded, speculative suggestion at the time of the incident. None of that on the news, Lauren knew. Though she said it would be taxing upon him, the justice secretary as asked by the prime minister to temporary assume the duties which Barton couldn’t preform. This wasn’t the right moment for a Cabinet reshuffle and the minister of state would be stepping up for the time being too. Would the two of them work together at this difficult time? They both agreed. Lauren was impressed at how Alicia handled that though understood that the issue wasn’t solved.
Only afterwards did she recall that it was Barton who had that fixation on Alicia where he was the one who lead the charge of asserted treason against her.
Upstairs within the Cabinet Office, there was a media suite for official government use and that was the final destination of the day. Alicia did a press conference from there where the prime minister answered questions from various journalists. Standing out of sight, Lauren watched her employer at work. What she saw in Alicia was what had been on the news since the blast in the Punjab. There was concern and distress on her face. She spoke calmly and with warmth. Compassion was expressed, just like it had been Manchester too. This time though there was no call for vengeance but rather a declaration that Britain was moving to help those in need. Her sorrow was to be matched with action.
Watching her then and now, Lauren was convinced that what she was seeing was all an act. All that she knew of the prime minister told her that none of that was the real her, none of it at all.
Alicia did her usual trick once they were up her flat high about Downing Street. The taps went on in the bathroom, making all of their noise, and she pulled Lauren in close to her while whispering in her ear.
It took everything that Lauren had not to push her away.
“I got a new phone too, just like you did.” She sounded eager to get that out. “I’ve been so worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
That she really wasn’t.
“It’s been truly a nightmare here. There’s been so much going on and there’s been no one to turn to. No one can do what you do, Lauren.”
Alicia continued to hold onto her, keeping her tight.
Lauren made the effort to stay within that grip and not make it feel like she didn’t want to be there, yet she was no longer the willing participant that she had been in the past. Only being like this with Alicia made her realise just how much she had moved on from all of it.
In short, there was no more love in her for her employer.
Finally, Alicia let her go. She stepped backwards and looked Lauren up and down. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Repeating herself Lauren was.
“Good.” Alicia seemed convinced despite Lauren not thinking that she herself had sounded genuine. “I’m going to need you to fly with me tomorrow. Back to New York and the U.N again.”
“Tomorrow?”
She’d been unprepared for that request, especially one with no notice.
“I know it’s come with no warning. We were talking about it down in that bunker briefing room and that’s what Katie confirmed as I was coming up the stairs just now. World leaders are gathering again and I need to go.”
“I’m not sure that I can do it.”
Despite all that she’d done to convince herself to return to Alicia, being with her was unsettling. The thought of travelling with her didn’t appeal to Lauren.
“I need you. There’s no one else.” Alicia said that and then turned off the bath taps to instead run the shower. She was speaking quietly: “I told you that everything would sort itself out in the end. Robert is out of the picture and he was the last major obstacle to things getting back to how they were.
I said I’d protect you no matter what.
Lauren, you don’t need to worry. I’ve got everything in-hand now. I’ll do what needs to be done with my phone, you won’t have to use your one at all. I’ll just need you to go out and broadcast the data from a spot not here, then pop back as quick as you can.
Once, twice a week. That’ll be all. Promise me you’ll do it? Come to New York too?”
Alicia got undressed and went into the shower. Lauren was left seated on the edge of the bath without having answered either question. The prime minister would want a reply when she emerged soon enough from being under the water.
An urge was in her to flee, to run from this very bathroom once again. It wasn’t so much what Alicia was asking her to do, which was bad enough as it was, but what she’d said about the foreign secretary. Downstairs Lauren had learnt of that man’s suspected stroke and up here Alicia was telling her that she’d got rid of him.
Lauren made the connection between the two easily enough.
“Well? Are you still mine?”
Alicia was out of the shower, standing before her.
Lauren had to give her answers.
All she wanted to do was to scream and run away though. This mess she was in, with the threats and the pressure and the demands upon her, were all just too much.
An escape was what she needed, a real one, because she just couldn’t handle this anymore.
Re: Kompromat
FYI: I'm planning for three more chapters, to end the story there.
Just deserts will be delivered but not in the traditional/expected manner.
Just deserts will be delivered but not in the traditional/expected manner.
Re: Kompromat
Twenty–Three – Value
She was handcuffed to Lee on her left wrist and to on old & heavy radiator on the wall by her right. Lee was dead though, killed yesterday right in front of Svetlana. Certain that she still had his blood on her, she was sitting down on the ground in the back of the warehouse attached to what was literally dead weight. Any escape from here meant escaping from the cuffs attaching her to him too.
And he was starting to rot.
She could smell the death stink coming off of him. He’d evacuated his bowels when that woman Debbie had shot him, and that had been rather unpleasant, but now he was actually beginning the process of decomposition. Svetlana was right next to him as that began. How long she’d be here, she didn’t know. Where exactly she was, again she had no idea.
What she did know was that Debbie was over on the other side of the warehouse with the keys to those handcuffs.
All Svetlana had to do was to wait until she got really close again…
Debbie was no dummy. She knew all about her captive’s history when it came to that Russian woman’s capability for extreme, fatal violence. There were a lot of people dead at her hands – at the very least the three that she’d admitted to – who’d likely considered her not much more than harmless. That wasn’t the case with Debbie. She’d seen enough of the damage that Svetlana could do and didn’t fancy either being stabbed with a kitchen knife, bludgeoned with a piece of toilet furniture or something else like that.
No thank you.
She was standing by the window and looking outwards at the river. An excellent view Debbie had, one covering several of the approaches to the warehouse. There was no one that she could see yet that didn’t give her much confidence at all. If someone was coming here uninvited, she wasn’t foolish enough to believe that she would be able to spot them in time.
Her eyes went back to Svetlana. There was a look of filthy disgust on that pretty face of hers though it wasn’t directed towards her captor but rather than dead man beside her. Debbie could smell him where she was too, even with the window open to let some air flow inwards. Not the best thing to do, it hadn’t been, yet she believed that shooting him while he was handcuffed to Svetlana and leaving him attached, allowed her to keep control over the woman. Maybe, just maybe, Svetlana could somehow get that radiator free off the wall but she’d have to dead with that corpse too.
Debbie was sure that she’d done what had to be done there.
While she continued to look over at Svetlana, their eyes meeting down across the emptiness of the interior space within this building, Debbie reflected on how she’d tracked her down. That had been back when Grace was alive, a couple of months past and one afternoon when the two of them were working together not long after Svetlana had defected.
*
“Sarah Sharpe: what a puzzle that woman is.”
“What do you mean, Debbie?”
Debbie yawned, tired as always. “We’ve been all over this fake identity that Svetlana was using but there’s so much more of it which we don’t know about. She’s missed bits out and there’s gaps that I think we should fill in.”
“She’s always been entirely straight with us.” Doubt was there in Grace’s voice yet Debbie felt it was towards her, not what Svetlana had told her debriefers. “Maybe there’s just nothing there?”
“No.” Debbie shook her head. “I don’t think so. We need to dig deeper, Grace, into this fraudulent façade she put on. I’m worried that there might be something there that we should know, that we need to know.” She put up her hand to stop whatever Grace intended to say in interruption. “I’m not saying that it cuts away at her story. My point is that we need to know everything in case something goes wrong eventually.
I’d rather be prepared for the worst, instead of left standing there with a clueless look on my face, wouldn’t you?”
A non-committal reply had come: “Erm…”
Debbie had badgered her afterwards, finally getting Grace to go to MacDonald and have them do some field work. The two of them, one with MI-5 and the other with MI-6, had dug into Svetlana’s ‘legend’ which she had used those years beforehand when she was in the UK the first time.
It hadn’t been easy. Grace had to be dragged kicking and screaming – metaphorically at least – into going along with what Debbie kept on assuring her was necessary.
Nonetheless, Noah Addison was discovered by Grace.
A casual boyfriend of the woman he knew as Sarah Sharpe was uncovered with Debbie suitably impressed at how Grace had found him. The young man, one from a background of extreme privilege, which Debbie didn’t like, and Grace had seemed to be willing to pretend didn’t matter, had been interviewed by them. They’d told him that they were from ‘the Government Security Services’ without going into any details on that. He’d been cooperative, believing that telling the truth was the right thing.
The interview had been interrupted by Grace taking an urgent call in the middle of it, one which she had been tied up with for some time. Noah had during that time told Debbie about the hidden box which his former on/off girlfriend had impressed upon him the need to bury in his garden. He’d stressed that he wouldn’t have told anyone but Debbie was from the authorities and he did have a concern about the whole thing.
Debbie had asked him to take her to it and dug it up with him, all while Grace had been on the phone and, while within view, not directly with them.
The box wasn’t actually a surprise. Debbie had something like that of her own: a container kept in a secret place (not buried in someone’s garden though!) where she had access easily enough and use its contents to flee from trouble if the case arose where that was necessary.
She’d lied to Grace afterwards.
“It’s only a box of keepsakes she’s buried for them to one day open and live happily ever after. Noah is a bit paranoid. So am I to be honest. I should have trusted you and your judgement. Svetlana is what she says she is.”
Grace had accepted that. “Thanks, Debbie. Sorry for taking that call in the middle of things. Honestly, you’re such a good friend, a real star. I don’t know what I’d do without you sometimes.”
Noah had been compliant when she’d told him another lie.
“This all remains a matter of national security, Mister Addison. Bury it, tell no one. You won’t get in trouble if you say nothing.”
As to the official reports filed at both Thames House and Vauxhall Cross for their day’s activities, the lie about the box was told in both (Grace did so unwittingly) and its significance no more than a footnote.
As far as Debbie knew, Grace had told no one about something she’d believed was insignificant. She herself though had been ready for the day that that box would come into play just like it had with Svetlana fleeing from her latest safe house, lying low for a couple of days and then seeking to retrieve it.
If Debbie had been in her shoes, it would have been the first thing she would have seen too rather than hiding out in that fat man’s bed.
*
A headbutt.
Or a kick between her legs.
Svetlana was determined that one of those would be what she’d do to Debbie. Either, better yet, both, would put her on the ground. Svetlana was ready to bite her, strangle her with the crook of her arm, & push her thumbs into her eyes if that was what was needed. Still sitting down on the ground where she was, she pictured doing all of those secondary things to Debbie once she’d done one of the first to get her down too. None of it bothered her. She’d have to do it because if she didn’t, she soon be dead.
“Can you do something about him and his smell?”
Debbie came across to her after Svetlana asked that. The woman had her pistol in her hand and also seemed to force herself to stop some distance back from her captive rather than come within what might be physically striking range.
“Nope. He stays there and you stay cuffed to him.”
In her heels, Debbie was rather tall. She stood above Svetlana and a good two meters back.
“What do you want from me?”
“Do you have any idea how much grief you have caused me, Svetlana?” Debbie moved forward a bit, just a little bit. She still wasn’t close enough for Svetlana to strike but closer than she had been. “You just cannot imagine the upset, the drama and the running around all for you.”
“Who the heck are you?”
Svetlana wanted to keep her talking, hoping that she’s come nearer to her.
That wasn’t to be though. Debbie suddenly seemed conscious of that. She took a big, dramatic step backwards.
“I’m someone,” Debbie told her with a big grin, “who looks at you and sees your value.”
Leaving her captive with those words, Debbie went back to her seat by the window. She got her lunch out of her bag and sat eating it. Svetlana stayed where she was over on the far side with nothing else to say and Debbie was happy with that.
What she’d meant by her captive having ‘value’ soon came to pass.
Georgy arrived. The Russian came with two others in a van which pulled up outside. He’d sent her a message via that Turtle app she had on her phone and said that he wouldn’t be alone. Two very large, tough looking men were with him. Debbie had to steady her nerves and tell herself that this was going to go the way which she planned it. She had a value, a value that would be gone if they double-crossed her.
Now as unlikely as that was, she was ready for that too.
“Debbie,” Georgy was friendly, “I see that you are a woman of your word.”
“When am I not?”
A smile, a warm one at that, came in reply before a response: “You always have been, young lady. You ask for a lot of money for her though.” The smile went. “It’s more than we’ve ever given you for anything, nor would likely pay for any information at all.”
“She’s not just information though, and she’s worth it, Georgy. If you think my fee for her is outrageous, I could tell you again about that man in Prague and the silly figures he had. I’m much more reasonable, far less greedy too.”
“Prague, no!” He waved his hand, pushing that mention of what had gone on there away.
“There is much value in her.
She can tell you plenty when she gets a debrief. Your people can use her too against your rivals for whatever ends that might entail back in Russia. Take her and see her punished for all that she has betrayed your country. With me, leave me the money which I asked for.”
He nodded in agreement though, as usual, chastised her a bit: “Debbie, remember what I’ve said before. This is my operation I’m running here.”
Svetlana spat at Debbie feet when the woman approached her with that trio of Russians in-tow. She heard how she was being sold and was disgusted by that. Her spittle didn’t reach the knee-high boots that the Briton wore, yet at least she’d tried.
One of the burly men – those clear goons who had come with this fellow countryman of her who was in charge – came forward straight at her while another moved in from the side. Svetlana had no hands to use, just her feet. She tried to kick the one who grabbed for her ankles while cursing at the other one.
“You with the fat-face: yob tvoyu mat.”
He growled in reply and threw a punch. The other one had a hold of her when that punch from his comrade landed. Svetlana therefore wasn’t thrown as far across the floor as she could have been when hit so hard with that fist to the head as she was.
He’d caught her with his fist right behind the ear.
There was an almighty instant pain there. Her eyes teared up and there was a tightness in her throat too. She tried kicking and also shouted more abuse at them.
“Control her!”
That Georgy shouted an instruction to his goons. Svetlana sought to deny him what he wanted though. She twisted and turned as best as she would. Being handcuffed as she would didn’t help yet she really did try.
“Hit her again, Stepan.”
She tried to turn away, desperately moving her head away from the same fist which had struck her before, but then everything went black.
“I did tell you that she was a fighter. You remember what she did to those two men who came to that house in Wales? That was with a toilet brush holder, an innocent household object!”
“I do but they were S.V.R fools. My people know what they are dealing with. She’s movable now she’s unconscious, though not once will Stepan and Vadim let their guard down.”
He said that to her though Debbie was sure that he wanted his two Russians to understand that.
She stood with Georgy as his men got to work. The handcuffs were swapped about so Svetlana was cuffed to herself now, not the deceased Lee nor the radiator. Her ankles were bound with barbed wire and a hood went over her head: it was one which covered her eyes and ears, with padding there to dull the senses, but left her able to freely breath. Lee was rolled over into a body-bag that Georgy had brought with him.
He held his nose as he helped Vadim do that.
“Svetlana complained about the smell too.”
It wasn’t nice but it didn’t bother Debbie that much. There were far worse things than a rotting corpse as far as she was concerned.
“The girl will have a lot of complaining to do but no one to listen to her for a while. She’d be taking a trip, with an escort, but he won’t be hearing what she has to say.”
“Okay…” Georgy said that in what seemed to be some sort of coded manner, something she was supposed to understand. Debbie didn’t.
“The money then, Debbie.”
Debbie had her pistol in her hand. It was pointed downwards but she was ready to raise it up fast. If something went wrong, Georgy was going to get shot first. Then Vadim and finally Stepan over with Svetlana. This building would be burnt down with five bodies inside of here if necessary, all of them with bullet holes in them from her gun should the Russians not keep their word.
She was prepared to do that.
“Did you bring it all with you?”
“I did. The cash was hard to come by and will attract a lot of attention for you, young lady.”
His concern didn’t sound genuine yet she didn’t care. She knew what to do with all of that cash and not get caught. All the money that he’d been paying her over the years had been in cash and she’d made sure that no attention came her way. It wasn’t like she was going to walk into her high street bank and make a deposit of all of the fee she’d demanded for Svetlana.
“Svetlana,” Debbie called out to the unconscious Russian one-time defector, “your value, the one I told you about, is a whole one million pounds!”
The trio of Russians left with the two bodies.
Debbie had her money, and her life too because Georgy had kept his word.
She was handcuffed to Lee on her left wrist and to on old & heavy radiator on the wall by her right. Lee was dead though, killed yesterday right in front of Svetlana. Certain that she still had his blood on her, she was sitting down on the ground in the back of the warehouse attached to what was literally dead weight. Any escape from here meant escaping from the cuffs attaching her to him too.
And he was starting to rot.
She could smell the death stink coming off of him. He’d evacuated his bowels when that woman Debbie had shot him, and that had been rather unpleasant, but now he was actually beginning the process of decomposition. Svetlana was right next to him as that began. How long she’d be here, she didn’t know. Where exactly she was, again she had no idea.
What she did know was that Debbie was over on the other side of the warehouse with the keys to those handcuffs.
All Svetlana had to do was to wait until she got really close again…
Debbie was no dummy. She knew all about her captive’s history when it came to that Russian woman’s capability for extreme, fatal violence. There were a lot of people dead at her hands – at the very least the three that she’d admitted to – who’d likely considered her not much more than harmless. That wasn’t the case with Debbie. She’d seen enough of the damage that Svetlana could do and didn’t fancy either being stabbed with a kitchen knife, bludgeoned with a piece of toilet furniture or something else like that.
No thank you.
She was standing by the window and looking outwards at the river. An excellent view Debbie had, one covering several of the approaches to the warehouse. There was no one that she could see yet that didn’t give her much confidence at all. If someone was coming here uninvited, she wasn’t foolish enough to believe that she would be able to spot them in time.
Her eyes went back to Svetlana. There was a look of filthy disgust on that pretty face of hers though it wasn’t directed towards her captor but rather than dead man beside her. Debbie could smell him where she was too, even with the window open to let some air flow inwards. Not the best thing to do, it hadn’t been, yet she believed that shooting him while he was handcuffed to Svetlana and leaving him attached, allowed her to keep control over the woman. Maybe, just maybe, Svetlana could somehow get that radiator free off the wall but she’d have to dead with that corpse too.
Debbie was sure that she’d done what had to be done there.
While she continued to look over at Svetlana, their eyes meeting down across the emptiness of the interior space within this building, Debbie reflected on how she’d tracked her down. That had been back when Grace was alive, a couple of months past and one afternoon when the two of them were working together not long after Svetlana had defected.
*
“Sarah Sharpe: what a puzzle that woman is.”
“What do you mean, Debbie?”
Debbie yawned, tired as always. “We’ve been all over this fake identity that Svetlana was using but there’s so much more of it which we don’t know about. She’s missed bits out and there’s gaps that I think we should fill in.”
“She’s always been entirely straight with us.” Doubt was there in Grace’s voice yet Debbie felt it was towards her, not what Svetlana had told her debriefers. “Maybe there’s just nothing there?”
“No.” Debbie shook her head. “I don’t think so. We need to dig deeper, Grace, into this fraudulent façade she put on. I’m worried that there might be something there that we should know, that we need to know.” She put up her hand to stop whatever Grace intended to say in interruption. “I’m not saying that it cuts away at her story. My point is that we need to know everything in case something goes wrong eventually.
I’d rather be prepared for the worst, instead of left standing there with a clueless look on my face, wouldn’t you?”
A non-committal reply had come: “Erm…”
Debbie had badgered her afterwards, finally getting Grace to go to MacDonald and have them do some field work. The two of them, one with MI-5 and the other with MI-6, had dug into Svetlana’s ‘legend’ which she had used those years beforehand when she was in the UK the first time.
It hadn’t been easy. Grace had to be dragged kicking and screaming – metaphorically at least – into going along with what Debbie kept on assuring her was necessary.
Nonetheless, Noah Addison was discovered by Grace.
A casual boyfriend of the woman he knew as Sarah Sharpe was uncovered with Debbie suitably impressed at how Grace had found him. The young man, one from a background of extreme privilege, which Debbie didn’t like, and Grace had seemed to be willing to pretend didn’t matter, had been interviewed by them. They’d told him that they were from ‘the Government Security Services’ without going into any details on that. He’d been cooperative, believing that telling the truth was the right thing.
The interview had been interrupted by Grace taking an urgent call in the middle of it, one which she had been tied up with for some time. Noah had during that time told Debbie about the hidden box which his former on/off girlfriend had impressed upon him the need to bury in his garden. He’d stressed that he wouldn’t have told anyone but Debbie was from the authorities and he did have a concern about the whole thing.
Debbie had asked him to take her to it and dug it up with him, all while Grace had been on the phone and, while within view, not directly with them.
The box wasn’t actually a surprise. Debbie had something like that of her own: a container kept in a secret place (not buried in someone’s garden though!) where she had access easily enough and use its contents to flee from trouble if the case arose where that was necessary.
She’d lied to Grace afterwards.
“It’s only a box of keepsakes she’s buried for them to one day open and live happily ever after. Noah is a bit paranoid. So am I to be honest. I should have trusted you and your judgement. Svetlana is what she says she is.”
Grace had accepted that. “Thanks, Debbie. Sorry for taking that call in the middle of things. Honestly, you’re such a good friend, a real star. I don’t know what I’d do without you sometimes.”
Noah had been compliant when she’d told him another lie.
“This all remains a matter of national security, Mister Addison. Bury it, tell no one. You won’t get in trouble if you say nothing.”
As to the official reports filed at both Thames House and Vauxhall Cross for their day’s activities, the lie about the box was told in both (Grace did so unwittingly) and its significance no more than a footnote.
As far as Debbie knew, Grace had told no one about something she’d believed was insignificant. She herself though had been ready for the day that that box would come into play just like it had with Svetlana fleeing from her latest safe house, lying low for a couple of days and then seeking to retrieve it.
If Debbie had been in her shoes, it would have been the first thing she would have seen too rather than hiding out in that fat man’s bed.
*
A headbutt.
Or a kick between her legs.
Svetlana was determined that one of those would be what she’d do to Debbie. Either, better yet, both, would put her on the ground. Svetlana was ready to bite her, strangle her with the crook of her arm, & push her thumbs into her eyes if that was what was needed. Still sitting down on the ground where she was, she pictured doing all of those secondary things to Debbie once she’d done one of the first to get her down too. None of it bothered her. She’d have to do it because if she didn’t, she soon be dead.
“Can you do something about him and his smell?”
Debbie came across to her after Svetlana asked that. The woman had her pistol in her hand and also seemed to force herself to stop some distance back from her captive rather than come within what might be physically striking range.
“Nope. He stays there and you stay cuffed to him.”
In her heels, Debbie was rather tall. She stood above Svetlana and a good two meters back.
“What do you want from me?”
“Do you have any idea how much grief you have caused me, Svetlana?” Debbie moved forward a bit, just a little bit. She still wasn’t close enough for Svetlana to strike but closer than she had been. “You just cannot imagine the upset, the drama and the running around all for you.”
“Who the heck are you?”
Svetlana wanted to keep her talking, hoping that she’s come nearer to her.
That wasn’t to be though. Debbie suddenly seemed conscious of that. She took a big, dramatic step backwards.
“I’m someone,” Debbie told her with a big grin, “who looks at you and sees your value.”
Leaving her captive with those words, Debbie went back to her seat by the window. She got her lunch out of her bag and sat eating it. Svetlana stayed where she was over on the far side with nothing else to say and Debbie was happy with that.
What she’d meant by her captive having ‘value’ soon came to pass.
Georgy arrived. The Russian came with two others in a van which pulled up outside. He’d sent her a message via that Turtle app she had on her phone and said that he wouldn’t be alone. Two very large, tough looking men were with him. Debbie had to steady her nerves and tell herself that this was going to go the way which she planned it. She had a value, a value that would be gone if they double-crossed her.
Now as unlikely as that was, she was ready for that too.
“Debbie,” Georgy was friendly, “I see that you are a woman of your word.”
“When am I not?”
A smile, a warm one at that, came in reply before a response: “You always have been, young lady. You ask for a lot of money for her though.” The smile went. “It’s more than we’ve ever given you for anything, nor would likely pay for any information at all.”
“She’s not just information though, and she’s worth it, Georgy. If you think my fee for her is outrageous, I could tell you again about that man in Prague and the silly figures he had. I’m much more reasonable, far less greedy too.”
“Prague, no!” He waved his hand, pushing that mention of what had gone on there away.
“There is much value in her.
She can tell you plenty when she gets a debrief. Your people can use her too against your rivals for whatever ends that might entail back in Russia. Take her and see her punished for all that she has betrayed your country. With me, leave me the money which I asked for.”
He nodded in agreement though, as usual, chastised her a bit: “Debbie, remember what I’ve said before. This is my operation I’m running here.”
Svetlana spat at Debbie feet when the woman approached her with that trio of Russians in-tow. She heard how she was being sold and was disgusted by that. Her spittle didn’t reach the knee-high boots that the Briton wore, yet at least she’d tried.
One of the burly men – those clear goons who had come with this fellow countryman of her who was in charge – came forward straight at her while another moved in from the side. Svetlana had no hands to use, just her feet. She tried to kick the one who grabbed for her ankles while cursing at the other one.
“You with the fat-face: yob tvoyu mat.”
He growled in reply and threw a punch. The other one had a hold of her when that punch from his comrade landed. Svetlana therefore wasn’t thrown as far across the floor as she could have been when hit so hard with that fist to the head as she was.
He’d caught her with his fist right behind the ear.
There was an almighty instant pain there. Her eyes teared up and there was a tightness in her throat too. She tried kicking and also shouted more abuse at them.
“Control her!”
That Georgy shouted an instruction to his goons. Svetlana sought to deny him what he wanted though. She twisted and turned as best as she would. Being handcuffed as she would didn’t help yet she really did try.
“Hit her again, Stepan.”
She tried to turn away, desperately moving her head away from the same fist which had struck her before, but then everything went black.
“I did tell you that she was a fighter. You remember what she did to those two men who came to that house in Wales? That was with a toilet brush holder, an innocent household object!”
“I do but they were S.V.R fools. My people know what they are dealing with. She’s movable now she’s unconscious, though not once will Stepan and Vadim let their guard down.”
He said that to her though Debbie was sure that he wanted his two Russians to understand that.
She stood with Georgy as his men got to work. The handcuffs were swapped about so Svetlana was cuffed to herself now, not the deceased Lee nor the radiator. Her ankles were bound with barbed wire and a hood went over her head: it was one which covered her eyes and ears, with padding there to dull the senses, but left her able to freely breath. Lee was rolled over into a body-bag that Georgy had brought with him.
He held his nose as he helped Vadim do that.
“Svetlana complained about the smell too.”
It wasn’t nice but it didn’t bother Debbie that much. There were far worse things than a rotting corpse as far as she was concerned.
“The girl will have a lot of complaining to do but no one to listen to her for a while. She’d be taking a trip, with an escort, but he won’t be hearing what she has to say.”
“Okay…” Georgy said that in what seemed to be some sort of coded manner, something she was supposed to understand. Debbie didn’t.
“The money then, Debbie.”
Debbie had her pistol in her hand. It was pointed downwards but she was ready to raise it up fast. If something went wrong, Georgy was going to get shot first. Then Vadim and finally Stepan over with Svetlana. This building would be burnt down with five bodies inside of here if necessary, all of them with bullet holes in them from her gun should the Russians not keep their word.
She was prepared to do that.
“Did you bring it all with you?”
“I did. The cash was hard to come by and will attract a lot of attention for you, young lady.”
His concern didn’t sound genuine yet she didn’t care. She knew what to do with all of that cash and not get caught. All the money that he’d been paying her over the years had been in cash and she’d made sure that no attention came her way. It wasn’t like she was going to walk into her high street bank and make a deposit of all of the fee she’d demanded for Svetlana.
“Svetlana,” Debbie called out to the unconscious Russian one-time defector, “your value, the one I told you about, is a whole one million pounds!”
The trio of Russians left with the two bodies.
Debbie had her money, and her life too because Georgy had kept his word.
Re: Kompromat
Twenty–Four – Blame
Robert Barton was in the London Bridge Hospital beside the Thames. A private hospital, it was quite the nice facility. He noticed none of that though. Barton was in a coma and his surroundings were unknown to him.
Siobhan was at his side. She was visiting her father this evening in London while he remained unconscious. There was a chair next to his bed and she sat there looking at the man whom she’d long hated.
“I love you, Dad.”
She didn’t know if he could hear her. The doctors had said to her and other visitors that they should speak to him and that maybe he might be able to understand. Keep on trying, she’d been told: it just might do some good.
“I’m sorry that this happened.”
Her head was in her hands and eyes were down. Her father’s second wife and his young sons had been here and Siobhan had seen that they were upset though she was sure that they weren’t hurting as much as she was.
That was because she believed that somehow this was all her fault.
There’d been stories in the media concerning her father. He’d suffered a stroke, so they’d said, and remained in a critical condition. His position as the country’s foreign secretary generated plentiful coverage. Barton was unable to preform that role yet he remained in post despite his illness. It had been said that the prime minister didn’t believe that it would be appropriate to remove him from his post: she apparently wasn’t heartless enough to do that even when common sense said that she really should. Someone else was doing his job on an unofficial acting basis, all while he lay here in this state.
Foul play hadn’t been mentioned in the media. No one else had said anything like that either here. Siobhan believed that someone had done this to her father though. How and why, she didn’t know yet the feeling wouldn’t leave her. Before his stroke, she’d been suspended from her job and investigated. That was part of a political powerplay at the top of the government which she didn’t understand. In addition, long ago she’d gone against him and tried to wreck his career by her dealings with his greatest political rival, someone she now really regretted ever talking to.
Siobhan was certain that her predicament was linked to him being taken so gravely ill.
She looked up at him again, wiping away the tears that she shed.
“I’ll find out who did this, Dad,” with as much conviction as she could muster she said that, “and I’ll make them pay for it.”
How she was going to do that she didn’t know.
Yet… it would come to her in several month’s time.
Mark Littlewood flew home from Zurich and took a taxi to the flat in Notting Hill which he shared with his girlfriend. Lauren hadn’t been answering his messages, including the one he’d sent when arriving at Heathrow, and he was pretty annoyed with her.
“What’s going on?”
“What’s that, mate?
The taxi driver looked around at him.
“Sorry, I was talking to my phone.” That he had been.
Soon enough, Mark reached Oxford Gardens: the street off the Portobello Road on which they lived. He paid the fare via an app on his phone and took his suitcase with him. The flat was dark and cold when he entered. That was unlike Lauren at all so he told himself that she wasn’t there.
She was though.
He found her in the kitchen, two feet off the ground.
Mark’s hand went to his mouth. His guts tightened and his knees weakened.
As to his eyes, they looked up at his girlfriend as she hung from the old light fitting up there. There was a bed sheet around her neck which was supporting her weight.
Lauren’s mouth and eyes were open but there was no life there.
“NO!”
He screamed.
“NO!”
And again too.
Then Mark dropped to the floor on his knees with guilt overcoming him.
He told himself that should have been here for her.
Mark hadn’t been though. Instead, because for the last week since she’d broken with Alicia, in a dispute which she had refused to tell him about, Lauren had been driving him crazy with her moping about looking all sad, he’d taken a trip to Switzerland with another woman. It hadn’t been for work as he’d told Lauren, but rather horizontal romance. He’d wanted to get away from her dreary depression and gone to have a good time.
Mark had left Lauren all alone and while he had, she’d gone and done this.
“No, no, no!”
He stayed where he was on the floor below his dead girlfriend, still blaming himself. And that would never cease too.
Beth Smith had come up to Finchley and her daughter’s flat, the one which she shared with Steve. Opening the door, Debbie let her in and showed her to the kitchen. The former director general of MI-5 and the young intelligence officer with that organisation sat down for a cuppa.
Beth was told of her daughter’s day.
“They were going to place me on leave, Mum: like they did to you. They kept on saying that I allowed myself to be taken in by a Russian disinformation job and therefore let down the Service by my – quote – unprofessional behaviour – unquote –, something which we both know is a load of baloney.
I quit there and then. I didn’t tell them where to stick the job, but I realised on the Tube home here that I should have as I was walking.”
Shaking her head at her tempestuous daughter’s actions, Beth could understand why Debbie had done what she had. Nonetheless, it wasn’t the smartest move to make and she told her that.
“Mum, you just don’t get it, do you? Even after what they did to you, how they thoroughly savaged your career, you fail to understand that they were trying to do the same to me. I wasn’t going to stick around and fight The Man. The process you talk about is something you might want to go through, but not me.”
Beth, again, explained to Debbie why she should have stuck it out. The Security Service would have had to fire her and go through the proper channels in doing so, ensuring that Debbie came out of it in the best way. By quitting in an act of rage, her daughter had made things easy on them.
“I’m just couldn’t do it like you did. I wouldn’t let them play their game with me, Mum, and so I walked. You know it cost me a friend, right? Someone I liked lost their life behind this mess and I blame myself for that too.”
A dismissive wave of the hand came when Beth spoke about the loss of her civil service pension that Debbie was going to incur by quitting her job in such a manner. There would be no security clearance given in the future for any other government job too should Debbie want to re-enter intelligence work, even on the outskirts of such a role.
“I’m thinking of travelling, to be honest. Steve might come with me… or he won’t. If he doesn’t, that’ll make you happy, won’t it?
Anyway, I have some money saved, quite a bit actually, and I know how to budget. A nice long trip away, sightseeing around the Far East, where you know that I always wanted to go, sounds appealing. Flying is out for me so it’ll be a long start to get where I’m going, but there’s trains and boats which don’t make me sick.”
Beth was aghast. Her daughter was just insane! She’d quit her job in such a foolish manner as that and was now seeking to travel the world. She knew that Debbie like her overnight sleeper trains and getting away from it all, but this was crazy. It was rather unwise too. There would be no coming back from that into a decent career. Beth herself would never do anything like that and couldn’t get her head around Debbie’s motives.
Yet… thinking on it, Beth in some ways understood. Debbie was never really cut out for all of this. Intelligence work had been her field and her daughter had aped her by trying to do what she had with her career. Both had failed though in her daughter’s case, Beth did believe – but was hardly going to say – that much of that was down to Debbie’s unsuitability for the task. The funk that she was in over the death of that woman from MI-6 with whom she’d spent some time working with was part of that. Debbie did blame herself for that, of that Beth was certain.
The girl wasn’t a good liar, she couldn’t deceive people properly and would never be a good spy.
The ship left Felixstowe at high tide.
A freighter which was owned by a company in the Middle East yet sailed under a Micronesian flag with a port registry in Lagos, the ship was available for commercial charter. It had been hired by a trading business operating out of Saint Petersburg who were shipping ‘general cargo’ below deck on pallets as well as in a couple of containers which sat strapped to the main deck.
Georgy was inside one of those, so too was his captive.
“Neither of us will see any daylight until we reach the Rodina, Svetlana.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
Back at him came that reply.
Svetlana was on the ground in the smaller fifth of the container’s interior. She was chained to the floor by one ankle with a lock that couldn’t be broken. There was a bucket on the floor, and on a table lay bottles of water and cartoons of food. A blanket was in there too. Such were her creature comforts. Between him and her was a clear plastic screen, two inches thick with breathing holes through it. On his side of the container there were far nicer creature comforts. Georgy would have an uncomfortable trip back home yet nowhere near as unpleasant as hers.
And she seriously thought she could harm him.
“You can’t. You’re going to stay chained there like an animal. To be honest with you, enjoy it while you can. Far worse things lay in wait for you back home and that’s all on you too.
You’re to blame for what you’re going to get.”
She shook her head and gave him a foul look before once more Svetlana had something to say.
“You’ll never make it back home alive!”
Georgy sat on the edge of the camp-bed and looked over at the naked woman trapped there. He had a question for her.
“Why did you do it?”
“What exactly?”
“When you killed that Mikhail fellow in Spain, why did you run to the British and defect like you did? You could have gone to that box of buried treasure that you had made an escape to obscurity somewhere with those faked identities and legends you had.
What was the need you felt to betray your country like you did and see you end up here, Svetlana? Don’t you understand? The blame is all on you for that.”
It had been something that he hadn’t been able to get his head around since he and the GRU found out about the SVR officer Svetlana Danilova. Why couldn’t she have just vanished?
“You wouldn’t understand.”
There was a dismissive tone to that reply, as if she truly didn’t believe that he could.
“You’ll answer the question when it is asked back home. You’ll be made to talk then.” That she would be, he was sure.
“I’ll kill you before then.”
Georgy turned out the light and lay his head down.
“No, you won’t.”
The rocking of the ship soon had him off to sleep. He dreamt of the Motherland and seeing the richly-deserved end of the traitor Svetlana when they got there.
Robert Barton was in the London Bridge Hospital beside the Thames. A private hospital, it was quite the nice facility. He noticed none of that though. Barton was in a coma and his surroundings were unknown to him.
Siobhan was at his side. She was visiting her father this evening in London while he remained unconscious. There was a chair next to his bed and she sat there looking at the man whom she’d long hated.
“I love you, Dad.”
She didn’t know if he could hear her. The doctors had said to her and other visitors that they should speak to him and that maybe he might be able to understand. Keep on trying, she’d been told: it just might do some good.
“I’m sorry that this happened.”
Her head was in her hands and eyes were down. Her father’s second wife and his young sons had been here and Siobhan had seen that they were upset though she was sure that they weren’t hurting as much as she was.
That was because she believed that somehow this was all her fault.
There’d been stories in the media concerning her father. He’d suffered a stroke, so they’d said, and remained in a critical condition. His position as the country’s foreign secretary generated plentiful coverage. Barton was unable to preform that role yet he remained in post despite his illness. It had been said that the prime minister didn’t believe that it would be appropriate to remove him from his post: she apparently wasn’t heartless enough to do that even when common sense said that she really should. Someone else was doing his job on an unofficial acting basis, all while he lay here in this state.
Foul play hadn’t been mentioned in the media. No one else had said anything like that either here. Siobhan believed that someone had done this to her father though. How and why, she didn’t know yet the feeling wouldn’t leave her. Before his stroke, she’d been suspended from her job and investigated. That was part of a political powerplay at the top of the government which she didn’t understand. In addition, long ago she’d gone against him and tried to wreck his career by her dealings with his greatest political rival, someone she now really regretted ever talking to.
Siobhan was certain that her predicament was linked to him being taken so gravely ill.
She looked up at him again, wiping away the tears that she shed.
“I’ll find out who did this, Dad,” with as much conviction as she could muster she said that, “and I’ll make them pay for it.”
How she was going to do that she didn’t know.
Yet… it would come to her in several month’s time.
Mark Littlewood flew home from Zurich and took a taxi to the flat in Notting Hill which he shared with his girlfriend. Lauren hadn’t been answering his messages, including the one he’d sent when arriving at Heathrow, and he was pretty annoyed with her.
“What’s going on?”
“What’s that, mate?
The taxi driver looked around at him.
“Sorry, I was talking to my phone.” That he had been.
Soon enough, Mark reached Oxford Gardens: the street off the Portobello Road on which they lived. He paid the fare via an app on his phone and took his suitcase with him. The flat was dark and cold when he entered. That was unlike Lauren at all so he told himself that she wasn’t there.
She was though.
He found her in the kitchen, two feet off the ground.
Mark’s hand went to his mouth. His guts tightened and his knees weakened.
As to his eyes, they looked up at his girlfriend as she hung from the old light fitting up there. There was a bed sheet around her neck which was supporting her weight.
Lauren’s mouth and eyes were open but there was no life there.
“NO!”
He screamed.
“NO!”
And again too.
Then Mark dropped to the floor on his knees with guilt overcoming him.
He told himself that should have been here for her.
Mark hadn’t been though. Instead, because for the last week since she’d broken with Alicia, in a dispute which she had refused to tell him about, Lauren had been driving him crazy with her moping about looking all sad, he’d taken a trip to Switzerland with another woman. It hadn’t been for work as he’d told Lauren, but rather horizontal romance. He’d wanted to get away from her dreary depression and gone to have a good time.
Mark had left Lauren all alone and while he had, she’d gone and done this.
“No, no, no!”
He stayed where he was on the floor below his dead girlfriend, still blaming himself. And that would never cease too.
Beth Smith had come up to Finchley and her daughter’s flat, the one which she shared with Steve. Opening the door, Debbie let her in and showed her to the kitchen. The former director general of MI-5 and the young intelligence officer with that organisation sat down for a cuppa.
Beth was told of her daughter’s day.
“They were going to place me on leave, Mum: like they did to you. They kept on saying that I allowed myself to be taken in by a Russian disinformation job and therefore let down the Service by my – quote – unprofessional behaviour – unquote –, something which we both know is a load of baloney.
I quit there and then. I didn’t tell them where to stick the job, but I realised on the Tube home here that I should have as I was walking.”
Shaking her head at her tempestuous daughter’s actions, Beth could understand why Debbie had done what she had. Nonetheless, it wasn’t the smartest move to make and she told her that.
“Mum, you just don’t get it, do you? Even after what they did to you, how they thoroughly savaged your career, you fail to understand that they were trying to do the same to me. I wasn’t going to stick around and fight The Man. The process you talk about is something you might want to go through, but not me.”
Beth, again, explained to Debbie why she should have stuck it out. The Security Service would have had to fire her and go through the proper channels in doing so, ensuring that Debbie came out of it in the best way. By quitting in an act of rage, her daughter had made things easy on them.
“I’m just couldn’t do it like you did. I wouldn’t let them play their game with me, Mum, and so I walked. You know it cost me a friend, right? Someone I liked lost their life behind this mess and I blame myself for that too.”
A dismissive wave of the hand came when Beth spoke about the loss of her civil service pension that Debbie was going to incur by quitting her job in such a manner. There would be no security clearance given in the future for any other government job too should Debbie want to re-enter intelligence work, even on the outskirts of such a role.
“I’m thinking of travelling, to be honest. Steve might come with me… or he won’t. If he doesn’t, that’ll make you happy, won’t it?
Anyway, I have some money saved, quite a bit actually, and I know how to budget. A nice long trip away, sightseeing around the Far East, where you know that I always wanted to go, sounds appealing. Flying is out for me so it’ll be a long start to get where I’m going, but there’s trains and boats which don’t make me sick.”
Beth was aghast. Her daughter was just insane! She’d quit her job in such a foolish manner as that and was now seeking to travel the world. She knew that Debbie like her overnight sleeper trains and getting away from it all, but this was crazy. It was rather unwise too. There would be no coming back from that into a decent career. Beth herself would never do anything like that and couldn’t get her head around Debbie’s motives.
Yet… thinking on it, Beth in some ways understood. Debbie was never really cut out for all of this. Intelligence work had been her field and her daughter had aped her by trying to do what she had with her career. Both had failed though in her daughter’s case, Beth did believe – but was hardly going to say – that much of that was down to Debbie’s unsuitability for the task. The funk that she was in over the death of that woman from MI-6 with whom she’d spent some time working with was part of that. Debbie did blame herself for that, of that Beth was certain.
The girl wasn’t a good liar, she couldn’t deceive people properly and would never be a good spy.
The ship left Felixstowe at high tide.
A freighter which was owned by a company in the Middle East yet sailed under a Micronesian flag with a port registry in Lagos, the ship was available for commercial charter. It had been hired by a trading business operating out of Saint Petersburg who were shipping ‘general cargo’ below deck on pallets as well as in a couple of containers which sat strapped to the main deck.
Georgy was inside one of those, so too was his captive.
“Neither of us will see any daylight until we reach the Rodina, Svetlana.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
Back at him came that reply.
Svetlana was on the ground in the smaller fifth of the container’s interior. She was chained to the floor by one ankle with a lock that couldn’t be broken. There was a bucket on the floor, and on a table lay bottles of water and cartoons of food. A blanket was in there too. Such were her creature comforts. Between him and her was a clear plastic screen, two inches thick with breathing holes through it. On his side of the container there were far nicer creature comforts. Georgy would have an uncomfortable trip back home yet nowhere near as unpleasant as hers.
And she seriously thought she could harm him.
“You can’t. You’re going to stay chained there like an animal. To be honest with you, enjoy it while you can. Far worse things lay in wait for you back home and that’s all on you too.
You’re to blame for what you’re going to get.”
She shook her head and gave him a foul look before once more Svetlana had something to say.
“You’ll never make it back home alive!”
Georgy sat on the edge of the camp-bed and looked over at the naked woman trapped there. He had a question for her.
“Why did you do it?”
“What exactly?”
“When you killed that Mikhail fellow in Spain, why did you run to the British and defect like you did? You could have gone to that box of buried treasure that you had made an escape to obscurity somewhere with those faked identities and legends you had.
What was the need you felt to betray your country like you did and see you end up here, Svetlana? Don’t you understand? The blame is all on you for that.”
It had been something that he hadn’t been able to get his head around since he and the GRU found out about the SVR officer Svetlana Danilova. Why couldn’t she have just vanished?
“You wouldn’t understand.”
There was a dismissive tone to that reply, as if she truly didn’t believe that he could.
“You’ll answer the question when it is asked back home. You’ll be made to talk then.” That she would be, he was sure.
“I’ll kill you before then.”
Georgy turned out the light and lay his head down.
“No, you won’t.”
The rocking of the ship soon had him off to sleep. He dreamt of the Motherland and seeing the richly-deserved end of the traitor Svetlana when they got there.
Re: Kompromat
This story is good, very good, but not fun at all.
-
jemhouston
- Posts: 3837
- Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:38 am
Re: Kompromat
They're going to ridden out of London / Power on rail? I don't me by train unless they're strapped to the front of the engine.
Re: Kompromat
Full, undeniable public exposure of her crimes instead.jemhouston wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 12:45 pm They're going to ridden out of London / Power on rail? I don't me by train unless they're strapped to the front of the engine.
Re: Kompromat
Twenty–Five – An urgent question
Several months passed.
The world kept on turning and events took place at pace. Somethings stayed the same though, treason included.
*
Alicia Manningtree went to Russia. It wasn’t an official visit with the trappings of a state affair yet she was there as the British Prime Minister making the first such trip by someone in her position for quite a good number of years. There’d been plentiful negative comment back home ahead of Alicia going to Russia but also come positive remarks made as well. Things had moved on; the world was changing and Russia just couldn’t any longer be ignored.
Her handling of the aftermath of the nuclear disaster in Pakistan brought her goodwill along with much political capital at home and abroad too. Britain had led the way in providing aid and others had followed. It had been said that all that had been done with that, where it had caught the Opposition flat-footed, averted the potential of domestic ethnic disturbances and shamed other nations into action too, might be enough for Alicia to confidentially call an election to win.
Maybe.
As to her trip to Russia, the reason, on the surface at least, was a cultural one.
At the famous Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia and the Soviet Union before it had used that location for the State Hermitage Museum. A celebrated collection was there and there was a new showing coming up. Alicia’s sister Amy Holmes, the art lover who moved on the very fringes of the London art scene, had wangled her way into being part of the UK Museums delegation to Russia this winter where well-known pieces of collections from across Britain were being shown at the Winter Palace. There was an exchange with Russian pieces on loan going the other way too. Those being displayed in Saint Petersburg gave Alicia an opening to be there for what was sold to the media as a bridge-building exercise.
A small Downing Street delegation had come with her including her newest personal aide, the engaging Meredith. Unbeknown to those travelling from London, Foreign Office people included, Meredith was the young lady who was currently rocking Alicia’s world. Their passionate affair was secretive, the first one which Alicia had embarked on after the untimely death of her last body woman in a tragedy which – thankfully – had barely made the news back home when it had occurred. Meredith had been told by Alicia that the two of them wouldn’t be intimate while on the trip because Alicia feared watching eyes & listening ears, yet she was needed nonetheless.
Dutifully, Meredith, the daughter of an influential party donor, had agreed to that. The children were there too with Becca and Blake travelling with their mother: another reason that Meredith said that she understood the need for them to keep their hands off each other.
The first night’s opening event was going fantastic. Alicia’s sister came over to her briefly.
“Have the kids been enjoying themselves?”
“They’re at the hotel. I’m sure that they are causing chaos.” They’d done that one the flight here. “Becca will likely be looking for a way to sneak out to go find some boys. Blake will be looking for something he can break and claim that it wasn’t him, again.”
“Meredith is with them then?” Amy leaned in closer after asking that. “I like her. I hope that you two… Also, you after Lauren, I’m just glad that…”
Amy didn’t finish either point. Alicia understood what her sister meant though. The mention of Lauren’s name caused a momentarily twang of pain but she got past that. Amy just wanted her to be happy, no matter who that was with. Smiling at her sister and watching as Amy turned away to chat to one of the Russian museum people, Alicia got back to business.
Alicia herself returned to talking with the FCO diplomat whom she was with. He was being manoeuvred to being named the new consul-general in Saint Petersburg once the diplomatic building was reopened there, something that Alicia’s visit to Russia was really about rather than pictures and sculptures. That was all very nice but meant nothing really. Fully-fledged diplomatic contact and economically beneficial trade was what restoring London-Moscow ties were really all about.
“A lot of good is being done here tonight, prime minister. This is needed before we can see many more ties restored, beyond just the reopening of the consulate.”
“I agree.” There was a lot of mixing being done and that was important for those relations but also her own government’s agenda too. “When are we expecting Koskhin to arrive, Tim?”
He looked at his watch: “Soon, very soon. You’ll know when he does too because Anton Maksimovich does like to make an entrance.”
Alicia nodded, recalling what she’d heard before. She had some of her wine and listened to Tim reel off the names of Russian government attendees here. He highlighted the important ones, those who would help grease the wheels with the planned repair in bilateral relations.
Rachel came back over from what she’d been talking to a Russian counterpart too. The mousey little journalist, the one whom Alicia had sent to sink Barton before he fortunately fell ill, had come to Saint Petersburg too. She had claimed before they’d left London that Alicia owed her and that previous details ahead of time on the cabinet reshuffle that had come post-Barton hadn’t been enough. Alicia had conceded the point.
“Art isn’t for me.” Her arms were crossed and she had a childlike stubborn look on her. “This place too, it’s just so ghastly, you know after all that happened here.”
“What happened here?” Alicia didn’t know what was meant by that.
“This was where the communists killed the Tsar and his family. This place must be haunted with all of that slaughter.”
Tim let out a little cough which Alicia took as him supressing a laugh at Rachel’s error, her stupidity. Her history was quite wrong on that. They’d been killed elsewhere, off in a basement in the Urals.
Damn, the woman just dumb!
She was about to correct Rachel but Katie came marching over alongside Matthew Forbes, one of the intelligence people from the Cabinet Office who’d made the trip to Russia with her too. Alicia’s chief-of-staff wore a face as if someone had just died while Forbes’ was as pale as could be imagined.
“What’s the matter?”
“This way.”
Leaving Tim and Rachel standing where they were, with the latter looking pained to have been left out, Alicia went with Katie and Forbes over to the corner.
Away from listening ears, they told her what was going on.
“Prime Minister, there’s a breaking story which has gone up on that Angleton website that we were discussing the other day. It’s about you and it’s – for lack of a better term – pretty explosive.”
Forbes mentioned something that had recently come up in government. He was with the Joint Intelligence Organisation, a Cabinet Office set-up where civil servants worked with their minister and the prime minister too as an in-between with the country’s professional intelligence organisations. In recent months, following the changes made at the top of MI-5 and MI-6 both, Alicia had strengthened the little-known JIO significantly. It was part of the process she intended to see where, after the expected further difficulty, the nation’s intelligence agencies were to be reined in and under her full control. One of her hand-picked people, Forbes was trustworthy and also someone she was close to. He was to be a big part of that planned consolidation when it came.
As to Angleton, it was American-based and, as he’d called it beforehand, a ‘leak site’. Named after a famous CIA counterintelligence chief, there’d been damaging exposés put out through it since its creation concerning secrets which the US Intelligence Community hadn’t wanted out. Every single leak had been completely true, despite official denials in Washington. The family secrets from the CIA and other agencies were being spilled with a relish on the part of doing that.
It had been the subject of a briefing because there had been a – vague – warning that the next leak might concern Britain. There’d been worry back in London at that, especially since it was reported that someone unknown from the UK was working closely with those behind the website and helping in defying all efforts to shut it down. Who that was and what they’d brought with them was a mystery.
“They’re repeating those lies from late last year, Alicia.” Katie had her hand on the prime minister’s shoulder. “But it’s worse than that. This time it’s out in public and there’s a lot more added.”
Katie knew all about what had previously gone on with allegations made behind closed doors in London against her boss. Alicia had shared with her long-time political aide all of what had been said and what those led by Barton had tried to do. She had believed every lie that Alicia had told her and looked like she still did.
“There’s some worrying things here.” Forbes had his phone out with that website up. “The main piece is entitled ‘Kompromat’.
All sorts of allegations are here. Things are said about Lauren Worthing and Robert Barton – that Lauren’s suicide wasn’t a suicide at all and that Barton was poisoned. The claim,” he paused, reading some more, not noticing the pain on Alicia’s face once more at the mention of her former aide’s demise, “is that you were behind both their deaths.
The story outs you as well, claiming you’ve been having many affairs with young female staffers.
And there’s more. A Russian defector telling a story, the deaths of MI-6 personnel in Wrexham and recording devices in Downing Street listening to your ‘personal affairs’. This stuff just goes on and on, getting murkier. The claim is that you’ve always been an agent of Moscow, and that Russian spooks built your whole career, getting rid of opponents down the line to allow them to get who they wanted, who they controlled into Downing Street.”
Like Katie, Forbes sounded like he believed none of it. His mouth was wide open as he continued to read though.
“Someone is going all out to try and do you in, Alicia. They’re really coming for you with all of this. It’s going to be all over the internet back home too.”
Alicia still had nothing to say in reply to both of them. Her mind was on not their reactions but what she expected that others might have. She was no fool, she didn’t expect the level of loyalty that brought disbelief in this two to come from elsewhere.
She was also waiting for something more. If whomever was behind this had all of that, did they have the video from Amsterdam too? She’d been shown that recording a long time ago: a video of an event which she remembered in a far different manner than what had been shown to her right before she was bamboozled into that career change that eventually took her to Downing Street.
Her mind went to something else though.
This morning, she’d received a message on her Turtle app. It had come from a sender identified as ‘S.R.’. Brief, it had told to ‘enjoy the coming day’s surprise’.
Only now did she realise who that was.
Siobhan Rice.
Barton’s daughter.
And this would be that girl’s revenge for her father’s eventual death.
The two of them kept on reading that story on their phones. Alicia herself didn’t do so on her own though. She took a couple of steps back from them unnoticed and then a few more. She imagined that it was only the truth being presented on their screens and she knew what the truth was. They would see it in time too.
What the truth was was that she was as guilty of all of it, even the indirect stuff such as the suicide that she was sure had been ‘given to’ Lauren and Barton’s death. As to the rest, yes, that had happened.
She had been blackmailed for years by Russia.
She had been party to people dying as she had betrayed her country.
She was likely to be the worst traitor that her country had ever had, even more so than the infamous Casement, Joyce & Philby.
Everyone would now know what she was.
Alicia stepped further and further away from her people, moving out of their sight before they understood it all.
Rachel came up to her as Alicia, by her lonesome, apart from the eagle-eyed bodyguard, went out of the display hall.
“This is all true, is it?” Tugging at her blouse, Alicia was pulled close to the manic journalist who looked utterly furious. She saw that in her other hand, Rachel had her phone with Alicia briefly seeing the ‘Kompromat’ title on the screen. “You’ve bloodily well done all of this!
Admit it, will you?”
The policeman who was there to protect her physically pulled Rachel off her. Alicia paid no attention to that though. Instead, she looked at Rachel and in her face she saw what she knew she’d see in those of millions of Britons too soon enough.
Anger.
Hatred.
The wish to see her punished gravely.
Alicia went past her without saying anything in reply. She was running from her collapsing world.
She ran into someone else though: President Koskhin. He hadn’t made a dramatic entrance as she’d been told he would but instead had been silently standing at the top of the stairs during Rachel’s confrontation of her.
“Good evening.” His English was perfect, his face welcoming, as she got to the top stair. “It is good to meet you at last, Miss Manningtree, even at such an extraordinary time. Forgive me but I have an urgent question.
Perhaps you might not want to go home and, instead, stay here in my beautiful country?”
THE END
Several months passed.
The world kept on turning and events took place at pace. Somethings stayed the same though, treason included.
*
Alicia Manningtree went to Russia. It wasn’t an official visit with the trappings of a state affair yet she was there as the British Prime Minister making the first such trip by someone in her position for quite a good number of years. There’d been plentiful negative comment back home ahead of Alicia going to Russia but also come positive remarks made as well. Things had moved on; the world was changing and Russia just couldn’t any longer be ignored.
Her handling of the aftermath of the nuclear disaster in Pakistan brought her goodwill along with much political capital at home and abroad too. Britain had led the way in providing aid and others had followed. It had been said that all that had been done with that, where it had caught the Opposition flat-footed, averted the potential of domestic ethnic disturbances and shamed other nations into action too, might be enough for Alicia to confidentially call an election to win.
Maybe.
As to her trip to Russia, the reason, on the surface at least, was a cultural one.
At the famous Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia and the Soviet Union before it had used that location for the State Hermitage Museum. A celebrated collection was there and there was a new showing coming up. Alicia’s sister Amy Holmes, the art lover who moved on the very fringes of the London art scene, had wangled her way into being part of the UK Museums delegation to Russia this winter where well-known pieces of collections from across Britain were being shown at the Winter Palace. There was an exchange with Russian pieces on loan going the other way too. Those being displayed in Saint Petersburg gave Alicia an opening to be there for what was sold to the media as a bridge-building exercise.
A small Downing Street delegation had come with her including her newest personal aide, the engaging Meredith. Unbeknown to those travelling from London, Foreign Office people included, Meredith was the young lady who was currently rocking Alicia’s world. Their passionate affair was secretive, the first one which Alicia had embarked on after the untimely death of her last body woman in a tragedy which – thankfully – had barely made the news back home when it had occurred. Meredith had been told by Alicia that the two of them wouldn’t be intimate while on the trip because Alicia feared watching eyes & listening ears, yet she was needed nonetheless.
Dutifully, Meredith, the daughter of an influential party donor, had agreed to that. The children were there too with Becca and Blake travelling with their mother: another reason that Meredith said that she understood the need for them to keep their hands off each other.
The first night’s opening event was going fantastic. Alicia’s sister came over to her briefly.
“Have the kids been enjoying themselves?”
“They’re at the hotel. I’m sure that they are causing chaos.” They’d done that one the flight here. “Becca will likely be looking for a way to sneak out to go find some boys. Blake will be looking for something he can break and claim that it wasn’t him, again.”
“Meredith is with them then?” Amy leaned in closer after asking that. “I like her. I hope that you two… Also, you after Lauren, I’m just glad that…”
Amy didn’t finish either point. Alicia understood what her sister meant though. The mention of Lauren’s name caused a momentarily twang of pain but she got past that. Amy just wanted her to be happy, no matter who that was with. Smiling at her sister and watching as Amy turned away to chat to one of the Russian museum people, Alicia got back to business.
Alicia herself returned to talking with the FCO diplomat whom she was with. He was being manoeuvred to being named the new consul-general in Saint Petersburg once the diplomatic building was reopened there, something that Alicia’s visit to Russia was really about rather than pictures and sculptures. That was all very nice but meant nothing really. Fully-fledged diplomatic contact and economically beneficial trade was what restoring London-Moscow ties were really all about.
“A lot of good is being done here tonight, prime minister. This is needed before we can see many more ties restored, beyond just the reopening of the consulate.”
“I agree.” There was a lot of mixing being done and that was important for those relations but also her own government’s agenda too. “When are we expecting Koskhin to arrive, Tim?”
He looked at his watch: “Soon, very soon. You’ll know when he does too because Anton Maksimovich does like to make an entrance.”
Alicia nodded, recalling what she’d heard before. She had some of her wine and listened to Tim reel off the names of Russian government attendees here. He highlighted the important ones, those who would help grease the wheels with the planned repair in bilateral relations.
Rachel came back over from what she’d been talking to a Russian counterpart too. The mousey little journalist, the one whom Alicia had sent to sink Barton before he fortunately fell ill, had come to Saint Petersburg too. She had claimed before they’d left London that Alicia owed her and that previous details ahead of time on the cabinet reshuffle that had come post-Barton hadn’t been enough. Alicia had conceded the point.
“Art isn’t for me.” Her arms were crossed and she had a childlike stubborn look on her. “This place too, it’s just so ghastly, you know after all that happened here.”
“What happened here?” Alicia didn’t know what was meant by that.
“This was where the communists killed the Tsar and his family. This place must be haunted with all of that slaughter.”
Tim let out a little cough which Alicia took as him supressing a laugh at Rachel’s error, her stupidity. Her history was quite wrong on that. They’d been killed elsewhere, off in a basement in the Urals.
Damn, the woman just dumb!
She was about to correct Rachel but Katie came marching over alongside Matthew Forbes, one of the intelligence people from the Cabinet Office who’d made the trip to Russia with her too. Alicia’s chief-of-staff wore a face as if someone had just died while Forbes’ was as pale as could be imagined.
“What’s the matter?”
“This way.”
Leaving Tim and Rachel standing where they were, with the latter looking pained to have been left out, Alicia went with Katie and Forbes over to the corner.
Away from listening ears, they told her what was going on.
“Prime Minister, there’s a breaking story which has gone up on that Angleton website that we were discussing the other day. It’s about you and it’s – for lack of a better term – pretty explosive.”
Forbes mentioned something that had recently come up in government. He was with the Joint Intelligence Organisation, a Cabinet Office set-up where civil servants worked with their minister and the prime minister too as an in-between with the country’s professional intelligence organisations. In recent months, following the changes made at the top of MI-5 and MI-6 both, Alicia had strengthened the little-known JIO significantly. It was part of the process she intended to see where, after the expected further difficulty, the nation’s intelligence agencies were to be reined in and under her full control. One of her hand-picked people, Forbes was trustworthy and also someone she was close to. He was to be a big part of that planned consolidation when it came.
As to Angleton, it was American-based and, as he’d called it beforehand, a ‘leak site’. Named after a famous CIA counterintelligence chief, there’d been damaging exposés put out through it since its creation concerning secrets which the US Intelligence Community hadn’t wanted out. Every single leak had been completely true, despite official denials in Washington. The family secrets from the CIA and other agencies were being spilled with a relish on the part of doing that.
It had been the subject of a briefing because there had been a – vague – warning that the next leak might concern Britain. There’d been worry back in London at that, especially since it was reported that someone unknown from the UK was working closely with those behind the website and helping in defying all efforts to shut it down. Who that was and what they’d brought with them was a mystery.
“They’re repeating those lies from late last year, Alicia.” Katie had her hand on the prime minister’s shoulder. “But it’s worse than that. This time it’s out in public and there’s a lot more added.”
Katie knew all about what had previously gone on with allegations made behind closed doors in London against her boss. Alicia had shared with her long-time political aide all of what had been said and what those led by Barton had tried to do. She had believed every lie that Alicia had told her and looked like she still did.
“There’s some worrying things here.” Forbes had his phone out with that website up. “The main piece is entitled ‘Kompromat’.
All sorts of allegations are here. Things are said about Lauren Worthing and Robert Barton – that Lauren’s suicide wasn’t a suicide at all and that Barton was poisoned. The claim,” he paused, reading some more, not noticing the pain on Alicia’s face once more at the mention of her former aide’s demise, “is that you were behind both their deaths.
The story outs you as well, claiming you’ve been having many affairs with young female staffers.
And there’s more. A Russian defector telling a story, the deaths of MI-6 personnel in Wrexham and recording devices in Downing Street listening to your ‘personal affairs’. This stuff just goes on and on, getting murkier. The claim is that you’ve always been an agent of Moscow, and that Russian spooks built your whole career, getting rid of opponents down the line to allow them to get who they wanted, who they controlled into Downing Street.”
Like Katie, Forbes sounded like he believed none of it. His mouth was wide open as he continued to read though.
“Someone is going all out to try and do you in, Alicia. They’re really coming for you with all of this. It’s going to be all over the internet back home too.”
Alicia still had nothing to say in reply to both of them. Her mind was on not their reactions but what she expected that others might have. She was no fool, she didn’t expect the level of loyalty that brought disbelief in this two to come from elsewhere.
She was also waiting for something more. If whomever was behind this had all of that, did they have the video from Amsterdam too? She’d been shown that recording a long time ago: a video of an event which she remembered in a far different manner than what had been shown to her right before she was bamboozled into that career change that eventually took her to Downing Street.
Her mind went to something else though.
This morning, she’d received a message on her Turtle app. It had come from a sender identified as ‘S.R.’. Brief, it had told to ‘enjoy the coming day’s surprise’.
Only now did she realise who that was.
Siobhan Rice.
Barton’s daughter.
And this would be that girl’s revenge for her father’s eventual death.
The two of them kept on reading that story on their phones. Alicia herself didn’t do so on her own though. She took a couple of steps back from them unnoticed and then a few more. She imagined that it was only the truth being presented on their screens and she knew what the truth was. They would see it in time too.
What the truth was was that she was as guilty of all of it, even the indirect stuff such as the suicide that she was sure had been ‘given to’ Lauren and Barton’s death. As to the rest, yes, that had happened.
She had been blackmailed for years by Russia.
She had been party to people dying as she had betrayed her country.
She was likely to be the worst traitor that her country had ever had, even more so than the infamous Casement, Joyce & Philby.
Everyone would now know what she was.
Alicia stepped further and further away from her people, moving out of their sight before they understood it all.
Rachel came up to her as Alicia, by her lonesome, apart from the eagle-eyed bodyguard, went out of the display hall.
“This is all true, is it?” Tugging at her blouse, Alicia was pulled close to the manic journalist who looked utterly furious. She saw that in her other hand, Rachel had her phone with Alicia briefly seeing the ‘Kompromat’ title on the screen. “You’ve bloodily well done all of this!
Admit it, will you?”
The policeman who was there to protect her physically pulled Rachel off her. Alicia paid no attention to that though. Instead, she looked at Rachel and in her face she saw what she knew she’d see in those of millions of Britons too soon enough.
Anger.
Hatred.
The wish to see her punished gravely.
Alicia went past her without saying anything in reply. She was running from her collapsing world.
She ran into someone else though: President Koskhin. He hadn’t made a dramatic entrance as she’d been told he would but instead had been silently standing at the top of the stairs during Rachel’s confrontation of her.
“Good evening.” His English was perfect, his face welcoming, as she got to the top stair. “It is good to meet you at last, Miss Manningtree, even at such an extraordinary time. Forgive me but I have an urgent question.
Perhaps you might not want to go home and, instead, stay here in my beautiful country?”
THE END
Re: Kompromat
That bitch needs Mossading at some point. Constantly looking over her shoulder, waiting for an accident.
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jemhouston
- Posts: 3837
- Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:38 am
Re: Kompromat
Well played sir, well played.