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Nik_SpeakerToCats wrote: ↑Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:18 pm
My apologies for not keeping up with the tale.
When my eyes are working better and their changed Px corrected, I'll be back...
There's a lot going on!
In fact, we are heading for a conclusion at - some point - soon.
jemhouston wrote: ↑Fri Mar 28, 2025 9:45 pm
We're rather good at that.
There'll be plenty of breadcrumbs to follow as well.
Then there will be hell to pay, despite the politics: killing a sitting senator, even by accident, is a no-no and begging for a return strike.
The dead German girl in America, the one whose picture was on the screen before Hannah, looked a heck of a lot like her little sister Holly. A non-identical twin alongside her brother Hamish, Holly was the spitting image of the young woman who was embroiled in a sex scandal after her murder. The American news media were having a field day. No one did such a thing like they did. Truths, half-truths, rumours and outright lies were being told. On-the-record stern statements were issued by politicians and commentors while there were off-the-record briefings full of slander too. Senator Daniel Goldberg was the centre of the scandal though Lieselotte Schick had her name and reputation dragged through the gutter as well. It was horrible to read and listen to.
Hannah had to pay attention though, not just because that deceased mistress of the senator shared a likeness to her sister.
MI-5 and the rest of the British intelligence establishment were all over the issue regardless of the political dirt being dished because of Goldberg’s position. His role on the Senate Intelligence Committee brought about that keen interest. Hannah was reading through the detailed report on what was known about what had happened in Georgetown. The FBI were not very keen to be sharing what they knew though the CIA was all over the ongoing investigation and were sending what they knew – editing out unknown portions though – across the Atlantic.
None of it made Hannah comfortable.
The American media was focusing upon the secret relationship between Goldberg and his stepson’s girlfriend yet what FBI agents and spooks at Langley were looking at was what wasn’t on the surface: could this all have been part of a foreign espionage effort. The Schick girl was the focus of their enquiries. There were a lot of questions in her background, a lot of worry too that she might have been a ‘sparrow’ now being brought up. Goldberg had access to a lot of intelligence secrets, all of which would have been more than interesting to various hostile foreign intelligence services. The deaths of them both was being speculated upon as some sort of murder-suicide by the media.
Spooks across the Atlantic, and Hannah too here in London, were thinking with grave concern that it instead might have been some sort of assassination. She didn’t have access to the thinking of CIA operatives, just her own suspicions. Hannah knew that the leak that there was a spy for Britain operating in the SVR’s London rezidentura had come from Washington.
Could it have been from Goldberg via Schick originally?
Is that why the two of them were now dead?
Hannah talked it over with both Amanda & Leighanne, the two of them whom she remained difficulty working alongside & reporting too respectively. The former could see what Hannah was imagining: the whole thing made sense to her. She went as far as giving the Russians credit for doing such a thing. It impressed her, what they’d done with a sparrow seducing an old fool to gain information via pillow talk, as it was the type of operation that she was usually involved in with attempts to do similar back to them. The latter was less sure. Leighanne didn’t believe that SVR would go as far as killing a sitting senator. The blowback on them, she assured Amanda & Hannah, would be too feared so as to make sure nothing like that was done.
Amanda had an answer for that, almost exactly what Hannah was thinking: “Maybe an accident happened?”
Leighanne shook her head dismissively. She wasn’t convinced. She also wanted to move on to the matter at hand, the reason why she had called into her office her two subordinates.
“Tell me, Hannah: why has Katerina done another runner again?”
Early this morning, during the rush-hour where commuters were ten-a-penny at Canning Town Station in East London, Katerina had made a dramatic dash to escape anyone following her. She gone through a staff access door, setting off an alarm. The Underground station out there was all aboveground though with many staff-only areas just like a station belowground. It was dangerous to go where Katerina had, as well as illegal. Through a door, along a staff route and then out of the station the Russian woman had ran. There had been a Transport for London worker who had tried to stop her.
Katerina had kneed him in the groin.
The whole incident had been caught on various cameras with the footage watched repeatedly by Hannah. Katerina had then got out of the station through an area not covered by CCTV cameras and done a vanishing act.
Who was she running from? There were no MI-5 Watchers on her at that time – coverage was patchy; there were many other people to get the close monitoring treatment from a team stretched thin – and neither could any other known Russians be seen at the station. Katerina had made sure that no one could have followed her though, even remotely via camera footage. She was gone.
This wasn’t the first time that such a thing had been done. It was now the fourth such incident of Katerina suddenly doing a runner to make sure that she couldn’t be followed. The last time had been that recent afternoon when she had surprised Hannah out in Hammersmith… something which she hadn’t reported in the end as she was supposed to. What happened at Canning Town had consequences though. Katerina’s actions brought attention onto her. The Met. Police had been issued with an instruction to look the other way on the whole thing: they’d initially sent officers to investigate the assault as well as what else Katerina had done. From Thames House, the order went for them to cease their inquiries and ask no questions.
But Katerina had done a runner and just because the police couldn’t ask why, that didn’t mean that Leighanne couldn’t.
“I think we’re going to lose her.”
“Lose her?” Amanda sounded unsure of what she was hearing.
“This is Katerina getting ready to pull a disappearing act.” Leighanne clarified herself. “Not just on the Russians but on us too.”
Hannah shook her head. Yes, Katerina was acting strange, rather out of character recently, but ‘doing a disappearing act’ wasn’t on the cards.
“I don’t think so, Leighanne.”
“Then,” the counter came fast, “why is she doing what she is?”
Hannah tried to explain what she thought was going on: “It’s in her training. Not us, but what they gave her. Doing what she wants to do, always about the secrets and not having anyone track her, is just Katerina. It’s what she has always done since I’ve known her. They drummed it into her back home and since she’s been sent to the London rezidentura, working for us here, she keeps on doing it.”
Before she’d said that, when she’d thought of the reason why in her head, Hannah had more confidence in such an explanation. When she said it, it didn’t sound believable at all.
The looks on the faces of Amanda and Leighanne told her that they didn’t believe it either.
“We’re going to up the surveillance on her.” Leighanne wasn’t going to be caught out by Katerina if she made a run for it. “Amanda, employ your bag of tricks. Get more than one tracker on her. Do what you have to with that.”
“Will do.”
Neither of the two other women explained exactly what that meant though Hannah had a good idea what they were talking about. Tiny tracking devices would be attached to Katerina’s clothes and closest belongings. They wouldn’t be something that could be seen nor detected with counter-tracking equipment… hopefully anyway. Several would likely be used, to make sure that if Katerina managed to deliberately or accidentally get rid of one or two, others would remain in place.
“Brief the Watchers, make sure that they understand that losing Katerina isn’t going to stand. They are to do what they must to stick with her no matter what she might do to try and shake them.
If someone needs replacing on the team, Amanda, then you have my authority to do that.”
That was Richard’s authority to be correct though Leighanne was comfortable speaking on behalf of him. Momentary jealousy hit Hannah: she used to be able to speak for Richard before she had lost his confidence and Leighanne had taken her place.
The issue at hand, that of the belief here that Katerina was going to run away, hadn’t gone yet. Hannah was determined not to let that take hold among her colleagues. She set about arguing again that their Russian agent working inside the SVR’s den of spies within London wasn’t about to flee and leave MI-5 high-and-dry.
“Katerina is on our side.
She’s work for us for some time now, she’s always delivered, she’s always come through. What she did up in Edinburgh was fantastic: the whole S.V.R set-up that they had operating out of their consulate there was put an end to for a good long time. When she was in Canada, loaned out to Six, she did wonders there too.
And back here, she’s keeping SPEARMINT clear of suspicion so that no one suspects that Ksenia is our agent-in-place. After this London posting, there’s a good chance I think that they’ll send her to America. Katerina can do some real damage to whatever the Russians are up to in Washington or New York.
Yes, yes, yes: I agree she is unpredictable, wild even. But she’s on her side and isn’t going to run off!”
Hannah thought that this time she’d made her argument well.
Yet, again, neither Amanda nor Leighanne looked in any way convinced.
Before any reply could come, there was a knock on the door to Leighanne’s office and, without being bidden, a young aide of hers came in with undue haste.
“It’s important, sorry.” The aide whispered something to Leighanne with Hannah tried, and failed, to overhear. She did note though that Amanda appeared just as keen to try and overhear what was being said too.
When her aide was finished, Leighanne let her go. “Okay. Yes. Do that.”
Hannah impatiently waited during the pregnant pause of that woman leaving to see if Leighanne would tell her what was going on.
“The Americans,” Leighanne began, “have been in touch with regard to the Goldberg death. They have in custody one Martin Eaglesfield: he’s apparently the ‘Special Assistant to the Deputy for Legislative Affairs’.
I’ll be honest and say that I’m not quite such what such a job that man has but he’s C.I.A and I assume he works on Capitol Hill a lot.
It appears that he came forward himself – clearly not a man who believes in the whole Cover Your Behind principle – to clear some matters up. That’s turned into an arrest with charges probably pending for the chap. Doing the right thing has cost him greatly.
I do not know how but he was in knowledge of the name of SPEARMINT. He says he told Goldberg.
We know that there was a leak at Langley that came to the S.V.R, and the current presumption of mine is that it went through this Eaglesfield to Goldberg, that we had someone inside the rezidentura here. That looks like that happened first and then, somehow, Eaglesfield has gotten hold of Ksenia’s name.
There’s all sorts of unexplainable gaps, maybe ones which Eaglesfield will clear up, but to me, this is looking why Goldberg and his sparrow might have got themselves killed.”
Amanda swore.
Hannah put her hand to her mouth before taking a breath and then adding something of her own: “We need to pull Ksenia out.”
“Oh yes, we really do.” Leighanne was in agreement.
“Either the Russians know and are waiting for an excuse to deal with her, or they are damn close to knowing and closing in.” Amanda was thinking aloud. “I say pull her too.”
Leighanne was nodding. “We are doing just that: today.”
“What about Katerina?”
“She stays where she is for now, Hannah, while we try to figure out what is going on with her. Ksenia is whom now is important. I’ll talk to Richard and get final approval but I’m sure he’s going to give the go ahead.
SPEARMINT’s time is up and, even if she objects, as I suspect she might, she’s out of there less they snatch her, get her out of the country to forcibly debrief her to find out everything she’s ever given us and who she’s worked with here: Katerina included.
Let’s get to that now.”
Katerina’s safety was forefront in Hannah’s mind as the meeting broke up with haste. She went to discuss that with her team, Phoebe included.
Phoebe, whose treacherous mind she was unable to read.
Katerina was away from the rezidentura this morning. She took part in nothing more than a farce therefore missing the events back there, all for the sake of appearances and a bigger cause than the one which she was fighting for.
Her absence was due to the need to meet with Zach Montgomery. He worked in Downing Street and was considered a source of first-rate political intelligence that they craved back home in Yasenevo. There was a personal debriefing to be had with him, one which the rezident, Ilya, directed her to undertake. One-on-ones with British traitors were rare, done sparingly due to the need for caution. Off she went to see him as instructed though and that was the farce.
Some time previously – a year, maybe more: Katerina hadn’t been told the exact details –, Montgomery had been turned by MI-5. They’d learnt of his treason, confronted him with threats of punishment and had him deliver carefully-crafted false information to the SVR set-up here in London. Through SPEARMINT, aka Ksenia, they had done that, with her knowledge that what was being given to her was junk…
...of part of a complicated disinformation plot, so the British said.
And now Katerina was wasting her time taking part in it too.
When she returned to the embassy, coming up to midday, she slipped through the communications room and towards the doorway which led to the belowground rezidentura. Yevgeny was, as always, waiting for her on the other side.
“Are you okay?”
She asked that of him because he didn’t seem himself. He was always off, but today was different. Yevgeny was quiet, withdrawn even.
In addition, below his left eye there were what Katerina was sure were a pair of scratch marks.
A dismissive wave of his hand: “It is nothing for you to worry about. Go down.”
No jokes.
No foolishness.
No comments about tunnels and spiders and dwarves and elves and dragons and magic rings.
Yevgeny was very un-Yevgeny today.
It was more than Yevgeny who wasn’t their usual self. Everyone in the rezidentura was.
Katerina went to get some tea. Lyudmila barely had anything to say. She looked shaken up, ruffled. Oleg was at his desk. Katerina watched him for a moment, seeing him staring vacantly eyed at his computer screen. He was there in body, just not in spirit.
Over in one corner there usually sat a ceramic vase which Polina would always take the time to fill with a wide selection of fresh flowers. The contents of the vase were in the bin, so too the scattered container.
Oddly, there were show scuffs marks on one wall, up at waist height.
Something had happened here...
Katerina started to put things together. Yevgeny had been in a physical struggle of some sort. Lyudmila and Oleg, maybe others not currently present, had witnessed it. Some of the damage had been cleaned up, more of it missed though.
She started to look for more clues. Katerina was moving towards her desk yet Ilya came out of his private office before Katerina could discover anything else.
“Katya, come with me.”
It wasn’t a request delivered in his usual fatherly manner. Instead, it was an order.
Katerina followed him, away from the office and out into the tunnel that stretched quite some distance away from the rezidentura itself.
The tunnel, the one which she had come down into on the first day at the rezidentura, led from the embassy’s chancery building to Ilya’s domain. Katerina had been told that it went on further, right up to where the ambassador’s splendid official residence lay but she had never been that far down it. There was a doorway in the fashion of a submarine hatch, one which blocked progress further than where the rezidentura lay.
Katerina didn’t have the access code for the lock.
Ilya did though. As per procedure, only because of that, she purposely turned her head away when the rezident entered the code. Katerina wasn’t supposed to know it and if he saw her looking, he’d have uncomfortable questions to ask.
The tunnel layout was identical beyond the hatch.
“Up there,” Ilya broke the silence that had been present since his order to follow him, “is the way to the residence. Have you been in there?”
“Nyet.”
He smiled: “It’s fancy in there. You’d like it.” Then he laughed.
It was some sort of private joke, one which she wasn’t privy too.
“Okay…?” She tried to encourage him to explain.
“Here we have three rooms.” He had moved on. “Each is sound-proof and secure.”
Katerina looked at the trio of steel doors as she stood in the gloom of the longer portion of the tunnel to which she had been brought into. They were lifeless clunks of metal, shorter than even she. Each had a keypad entrance as well as bolts top & bottom.
What was beyond them she couldn’t fathom.
Ilya filled her in though.
“A second, bigger safe than the one out in the rezidentura. For paper files and electronic copies. This one, even Lyudmila doesn’t get access to.” He had placed a palm flat against the first door before now moving the same hand to the second door. “This one, and the next one too, Katya, are containment spaces.”
Katerina looked at him unsure. She had no idea what he meant. When he wasn’t forthcoming with an explanation, she sought one. “They are ‘containment spaces’, Ilya?”
“Officially, that is their name.” He sighed and pulled a face of resignation. “They are cells for captives.
One is currently empty while the other I had Yevgeny put into it Ksenia Alekseyevna Kazankina.”
So SPEARMINT had been caught.
Questions as to how that had happened, what exactly had occurred down in the rezidentura too, flooded Katerina’s mind. She kept schtum though. Now was not the time to ask them. Ilya would be on edge. She was confident she wouldn’t make a mistake, that she could play him for a fool as she had always done, but if she did make a mistake – Katerina had a quite unhealthy doze of self-confidence yet remained un-stupid –, well… there were two cells there weren’t there?
“A source made an approach,” unbidden, Ilya started to give some details of what had gone on, “and they are keeping their identity hidden. Naturally, Katya, I was suspicious about the nature of that: I feared a trap. I was going to wait for you to return. They sent you here to find the spy that the British have and I was going to wait.
Something spooked Ksenia though: I don’t know what. She went to leave. I tried to find a plausible excuse for her to wait but she was determined to leave. Thus, a regrettable incident occurred.”
“You did your duty.” Katerina was careful with what she said. “Is she okay?”
Ilya nodded: “Nothing but scraps and bruises. Yevgeny didn’t get too rough with her. Her trying to run confirmed her guilt to me.”
“I want to debrief her.”
Taking back control of the situation was Katerina’s aim, one secondary to protecting herself though.
“I have been a fool.” Now the rezident was shaking his head. “Ksenia did more that just deceive me: she has made an idiot of me. I’ll be for it too once Yelena back at Yasenevo is told all. She’ll find out that Ksenia wormed her way into my affections – I don’t have to tell you what I mean by that, do I? – and so blinded me as to what she was up to.
How long has she been doing this? Think of all of the damage that she has done, not just here but to the Rodina as a whole!”
“I should debrief her, Ilya.” Lost in his own sorrowful woe, he hadn’t allowed her to do what was necessary.
Ilya stepped back from the door and led Katerina away towards the intra-tunnel access hatch.
“I have instructions from Yelena already. We are to send her back to Yasenevo with haste. There she will be debriefed. I expect too that they will want both of us back as well. Ha! They will leave Lyudmila in charge: she has long wanted my job.”
None of this was what Katerina wanted to hear.
“When?”
“As soon as possible. Transportation is being laid on from Moscow’s end. I will need your help arranging the logistics here. It will be difficult, but I am relying on you, Katya.”
What Ilya wanted was help with smuggling Ksenia out of Britain. That wasn’t going to be an easy task at all.
She was an accredited diplomat. There was therefore no anonymity with her person. Whatever state she was in at the moment, inside the cell which Katerina walked away from, Ksenia might not be in the same frame of mind or physical shape when it came for her to head home to Russia. Regardless, there was no way that she would leave by a commercial aircraft to be flown home to the fate which awaited her. Ksenia could try and run. The British could try and snatch her. All sorts of possibilities were on the table.
She could also start talking about Katerina too.
Ksenia was going to have to leave Britain without anyone knowing.
With that, Katerina saw an opportunity.
Ksenia was no friend of democracy, no willing agent-in-place for the British. They’d forced her to spy upon the rezidentura, maybe even pushed for her to climb into the married Ilya’s bed as well to gain more of what intelligence that they sought. Katerina didn’t feel anything warm for Ksenia either. She was one of them, one of the people ultimately responsible for her father’s death.
Like Ilya was.
Like everyone who willingly worked for the SVR.
Once Ksenia reached Russia, she’d face hell. Even if she fully cooperated and told her interrogators everything, she would still suffer. There would be physical pain, mental anguish and whatever else they could think of. They would drain her for information. Everything she had ever done, not just against the Rodina, but in her entire miserable life would be dragged out of her. They’d use drugs. They’d beat her. They’d electrocute her. They would simulate drowning her. They’d dangle her upside down for days. They’d burn her. They’d mutilate her. They’d let a gang of rowdy soldiers have their way with her.
And, then afterwards they’d shoot her and dump her body in a lonely grave.
Did Ksenia deserve that?
Katerina, consumed by vengeful hatred, wasn’t sure if she did or not.
But…
...stopping that from happening would hurt the SVR.
If she could rescue Ksenia, or at least stop Yelena and her people in Yasenevo from interrogating her alive, that would be quite the blow that Katerina would inflict against them. They’d need to know the damage done and without such knowledge would be left reeling.
Her mind turned to what else she could do.
Walking back into the rezidentura proper, pretending to listen to Ilya as he talked, Katerina took a moment to stare at Lyudmila. He’d been correct in what he had said: Lyudmila would replace Ilya, at least on an acting basis here in London when the rezident would be recalled as she was – to expect anything else was stupid – to the Rodina.
The smaller safe was behind Lyudmila, the one full of secrets. Perhaps there were more in the bigger one next to those cells, perhaps there weren’t. Either way, there was a goldmine of intelligence located behind where Lyudmila sat. The British would love to get their hands on that.
Such a thing would gravely hurt the SVR if it happened.
The plan now fully formed in Katerina’s mind.
She was going to do them so much damage!
And she was going to have to run too.
Ksenia hadn’t gotten away. Someone had betrayed her, even Ilya himself didn’t know who. If they knew about Ksenia, who was to say they – whomever they were – didn’t know about Katerina either.
It was time to go. But before she did, she was going to break things.
The MV Venus made port late on a Thursday evening. It was dark, cold, windy and wet. The weather matched the waters: unsettled and foreboding. Into Poole, down in Dorset, the little ship went. The captain dealt with the harbour master while his crew set about the assigned tasks that they had been given. They were an unsavoury bunch of characters, men from all over the world. As to the captain, he was a man of the utmost seriousness. A professional to his core and a servant of Russia’s foreign intelligence service too.
Carrying a Panama flag, one of convenience, the Venus had a registration in the distant port of Nicosia. The owner was a UK-based shell company. All of that aside, the ship was Russian in reality. It and its crew had been engaged in many acts benefitting the Rodina, each one of them deniable.
However, nothing like what was due to happen tonight had been done before.
The process of assembling an ad hoc cage had started before Poole had been reached. When coming up from the Bay of Biscay, rounding Brittany and then entering the English Channel, a trio of the crewmembers had been at work on that. Within the hold, they had instructions to assemble a secure confinement for someone. It must be escape proof, that was the first requirement. Where would an escapee run to while at sea? That question was almost posed by one of them but, with the captain in one of his well-known and feared moods, it wasn’t asked aloud. No one could get out of the cage being built. It had to be large enough for a person to move about a little, even stand up. There had to be a doorway. Buckets for human waste had to go inside and be able to be removed without opening the main entranceway through which the captive would enter & leave. Some bedding was to be put inside though nothing special nor what was needed by the crew themselves. Outside of the cage, there had to be somewhere reasonably comfortable where a watch over the prisoner would be mounted from as well.
All of this took work. The materials had to be gathered then the cage assembled. One of the deckhands, a strong young fellow who hailed from Uzbekistan, was assigned to get inside and make every effort to escape. He was given a screwdriver too so a real effort could be made. He got out at the first attempt! The assigned crew were glad that the captain wasn’t aboard to see that. Repairs and reworks needed to be done. Back into the cage went the deckhand again, this time with another couple of tools that could conceivably fall into someone’s hands while they were aboard the ship, if they were crafty enough to snag them too as the fellow from Uzbekistan showed he was.
He couldn’t get out on that follow-up effort. Jokes were made at his expense about leaving him in there for a while. Threats were made of retribution should that be the case. A challenge was about to be accepted by the engineer’s mate, this crewmember from India, yet nothing came of all of that because the captain had returned.
Tomorrow morning, when the tide was right, the Venus was due to leave Poole. The extra passenger would be brought aboard before then: tonight in fact.
The captain wasn’t looking forward to that at all. He had no idea who it was to be, if it be a Russian captive, a Briton or even another nationality. He assumed that it would be a man yet had to concede that it would be a woman too. The prisoner would take a voyage aboard as far as the Baltic Sea. There was to be a rendezvous in that stretch of water where an at-sea transfer was scheduled to take place due to the requirement that the Venus itself never enter a Russian port so it could continue to maintain its activities without suspicion.
The captain wanted to know why that other ship couldn’t take the captive from Britain back to the Rodina: why did it have to be the Venus? Like his crew, he knew when and when not to ask questions of superiors though.
As to the matter of getting the captive aboard this ship… now that was going to an experience indeed! It had to be done secretly. It had to be done quickly. It had to be done when there were people about the harbour too.
What fun that would be!
The captain, and the crew of the Venus too, waited upon the arrival of whomever was due to take their upcoming voyage with them.
*
Nathan had to literally beg Daniel for five minutes. He told him that he needed to go and sit on the loo before he left: better now than latter on when they were in the car.
It was a dodgy curry that was to blame.
Daniel tutted when Nathan held his belly for a moment and climbed back out of the car, walking briskly back into his flat too. To the bathroom Nathan went and he even sat on the loo. He didn’t use it though. No, instead, he retrieved a hidden phone and made a call.
On the first attempt, his call was declined on the other end. He tried again.
“There’s no need for you to be calling any more. I’m hanging up.”
Such was the remark made.
“It’s important. Hold on, Phoebe: hold on and listen to me.”
She sighed loudly down the line at him before an answer: “What is it?”
Nathan had rehearsed what he was going to say when rushing back inside. It was clear and concise. He had planned to inform Phoebe, the lady from MI-5 who had replaced his original handler Hannah, of the seriousness of the situation so she could act upon it. He understood that she would want to know what was important.
In addition, as always, he had wanted to impress her.
However, it all just came out jumbled. He was aware as he spoke that he was sounding like an idiot, again.
“We’re going off to shoot someone, I think so anyway. No, I’m sure: that’s what Daniel McSherry is here to collect me for because he wants me to drive and he’s got his gun again and that can only be the reason for him having that gun.
It’s something to do with the Russians. I think we’re going to… well… he hasn’t said so directly, but that’s what I think we’re going to do.
You got to do something about this because something needs to be done about what I’m worried is going to happen. Like I said, Phoebe, he hasn’t said we’re going off to shoot some Russians but he’s been mad at them since someone told him that they killed Haemorrhoid, I mean you knew him as Robinson, but that’s what I called him.
That aside, I’m telling you all this because I have no time. I need to know what to do and what you’re going to do. Do I delay? Do I try and message, or even call, you later when I know where this is happening? Are you sending armed police because I have to ask do they know that I’m on your side?
So, Phoebe, what should I do?”
There was silence on the other end.
Nathan waited. Then he waited some more too, all while well aware that Daniel was down in the car outside.
Finally, when she was ready, Phoebe had a reply.
“Do nothing to stop what is going to happen. Report back to me tomorrow.”
And she hung up after that.
Nathan took his phone away from his ear. He looked at the dying screen and asked it a question: “What?”
Phoebe sat with her head in her hands after talking to Nathan. It occurred to her that he might call back again. She turned the phone off so if he did, he wouldn’t be able to get through.
Thankfully, there was no voicemail set up. There was no automatic recording of calls for the phone too. No one would ever hear what Nathan Clay had told her. Yet, Phoebe assured herself, that wouldn’t matter that much. It had all been a jumbled mess. She broke down what he had said.
Daniel had his gun.
Daniel might be going off to shoot someone.
That someone might be Russian.
Nathan didn’t know anything for sure. Therefore, based on her reports of his previous behaviour too, she had given him limited instructions. Those were suitable in light of the circumstances.
Phoebe returned to her desk. She wrote up a contact report after checking the time and also having a quick glance around the office. Hannah was gone for the day. With her immediate superior not present, Phoebe emailed her the report. It wasn’t one that she marked urgent though.
No, there was nothing urgent about any of this, not as far as MI-5 was officially concerned. That was due to the utter falsities that Phoebe put in the report, changing entirely the mess that Nathan had said: key to that was playing down the Russian angle significantly.
Yet, what Nathan had actually said about those Russians might be something important with regards to her own personal future.
She considered the issue of Daniel going off after some Russians with his gun. The only ones he was likely to be out to do harm to where those from the rezidentura. That would cause quite a stink! One of them might be the rezident himself… or probably not. Yesterday, Phoebe had been in contact with him. She’d covered herself completely and he had had no idea who she was when she had gotten a message to him telling him who SPEARMINT was. She’d sent proof with that allegation. Did he want more information, first-rate intelligence that he would be willing to pay for? She’d sent him that question and was awaiting a reply.
Thinking of him as she closed her laptop, picked up her bag and got ready to leave for the evening, Phoebe told herself that it wouldn’t be the rezident that those criminal smugglers went after, if they were going to shoot anyone. She’d read all about Daniel before. He was a hot-headed maniac but he wasn’t a fool. No, it would be others: people she didn’t know of any whose existence she didn’t care about because they couldn’t improve her financial circumstances.
The risk Phoebe took was quite something but it was calculated and, in the end, wouldn’t in fact come back to bite her on the behind as if might easily have done had she been unlucky.
The SVR’s London rezident wasn’t about to get shot, not by a British criminal gangster anyway. It was his own people who he had to worry about.
*
Yevgeny, the rezidentura’s watchdog, wasn’t at his station. He was away, travelling with Ksenia to Poole where she was due to meet that ship. Katerina knew this when she arrived here late this evening. Lyudmila would be there to let her in and Lyudmila wouldn’t check her handbag as thoroughly as Yevgeny.
Katerina got inside carrying what she wasn’t supposed to bring in here.
There were no eyes cast upon the plug-in memory banks. Nor the zip ties.
And the SIG Sauer P938.
Katerina went down the ladder and along the tunnel to where the rezidentura lay below the embassy up above. Lyudmila was ahead of her, walking faster though slowing down when the inner door was reached. She held that open for her colleague but didn’t glance in her direction nor what was in Katerina’s hand.
Only Vadim was here tonight with Lyudmila and Ilya too. Vadim was no worry. If Oleg or Feydor had been here, even Polina, Katerina would have been more careful. That trio of SVR officers, like Yevgeny too, would be a threat to what she was about to do. But the three that were here, Katerina and her shiny little pistol – it was a really nice piece of gear, something to admire so she thought – could handle them.
She waited until she was properly inside, and after walking over to where Ilya & Lyudmila were standing, with Vadim seated nearby too, Katerina made her move. A deep breath and then her pistol came out of her bag.
“All of you are going to do what I say or you will die here and now.”
The rezident started to chuckle before he checked himself when he stared right her.
The third secretary’s husband dropped her cup of tea rather dramatically.
The nerdish consular assistant suddenly had a vibrating lower lip.
“You,” in his best fatherly voice, stern but fair, Ilya spoke up, “need to stop this right now, Katya.”
“Get down on your knees. Place your hands on your head and link your fingers. You too, Lyudmila. Otherwise I’m going to shoot you both, one after the other.
As to you Vadim, stand up and come here: slowly.”
Lyudmila did what she was told. Vadim started to do the same though stopped himself mid-stride when he looked at the inactive Ilya.
The rezident took a step forward, opening his hands to show empty palms towards her. His face was red with anger that stood in contrast to that non-threatening gesture. Katerina noted the absent confusion: he was starting to become aware of all that she had done before this surprising moment.
“I told you to stop this foolishness. Katya, this isn’t how you were raised. Your father, a man who served his country and this service with note, and died doing so too, would never have stood for this. Whatever you are doing, if you are thinking of some misguided vengeance in his name, that is wrong.
Put down that gun: right now!”
She raised it instead, placed a second hand on it, and moved it forwards so the tip of it’s barrel touched his forehead.
“Get down on the ground as I told you to.”
He shook his head and met her eyes. Ilya was seeking to look disappointed but there was only rage there.
“Vadim, come here: I have several tasks for you and I need you to be quick with them as well.”
Katerina and Ilya spoke no more. To Lyudmila she said nothing else as well. It was only to Vadim whom she had anything to say. He did everything that she told him to. The hands of the other two Russians were secured and Vadim carefully laid each of them down on their stomachs. Katerina told him about her considerable experience with firearms. Did he know that she had achieved one of the highest scores ever recorded by an SVR officer cadet on the live weapons handling course? There had never been a shot as good as her, so they’d told her. Vadim nodded but refused to say anything nor even look her in the eye.
He held out his own hands, his wrists together, presumably for her to secure them as well with more zip ties.
“No, no, Vadim. I have another job for you.”
Keeping her pistol out and her eyes on Ilya & Lyudmila even with them on the floor and bound, Katerina took Vadim over to the inner safe within the rezidentura. He was carrying her bag, in it those memory banks.
It took longer than Katerina expected. None of that was Vadim’s fault. He did as he was told, not making any mistakes either. Massive qualities of data were transferred from hard storage onto those memory banks. All of it was secret information, all of it would harm Russia’s foreign intelligence service to lose. Vadim bypassed all of the systems designed to stop the theft. She led him outside to join the others afterwards, only then securing his hands behind his back too while laying him face down on the floor.
Katerina hunched down in front of Ilya, pushing her gun into his forehead again.
“You know why I’m doing this, don’t you?”
Ilya had a different reply than what she had asked for: “Katya, there is nowhere in the world where you can hide forever from the long arm of Russia’s might. One day they will get you, one day they will put a bullet in the nape of your neck. You might be old and wrinkly at the time, but it’ll happen, eventually.”
He looked as if he meant every word of that statement too.
“Ibrahim Al Dali: you remember him, don’t you?” Katerina continued onwards with what she had to say. “Just because he was anti-American, you worked with him. He was anti-everyone though!” She managed to stop herself from screaming that last bit at him. “He disliked us Russians only marginally less than the Americans. Killing one of us wasn’t as much fun as an American but it still made him happy.
And you knew this, Ilya.
And you still worked with him.
And you send my father off to have him slaughtered at his hands!”
“The complications of the relationships,” he had his lecturing voice on, “that the Service has had in the past with regard to Syrian nationals, especially ones who gained a richly deserved death, are for another time, Katya. What is important is what you are doing now and the consequences for yourself of them.”
“No, no, no.” Katerina was having none of that. “The only thing that was important to me was my father.”
“Vanya knew the risks. He accepted them, just as we all do when we serve our country. The Service sent him to Syria for reasons beyond Al Dali. Al Dali killed him and so he was slain in return.
Your father’s death was avenged, Katya.”
Ilya just didn’t get it.
None of them in ‘the Service’ – the SVR – ever had. That was her father. The only parent she had left after they both lost her mother when Katerina was young. He was her entire world. Out in the Syrian Desert one lonely night, Al Dali, a terrorist maniac, decided that he wanted to end his relationship with the SVR. Such a thing had been done with a murder. Katerina had read the secret files which she wasn’t supposed to see. Ilya and others, those higher-ups, had been repeatedly warned about Al Dali.
Still, they had sent her father to work with him, all alone too.
Revenge was what Ilya had just been talking about. The SVR had gotten its revenge but now was the time for her to receive hers.
Shooting Ilya, as well as Lyudmila & Vadim, was an option that Katerina had considered. She rejected it now as she stood above them here in the rezidentura.
“I’m going to let you all live. Do you want to know why?”
Only Ilya opted to give a response, a sarcastic one at that: “And why would you be so kind and considerate, Katya?”
She looked down at him and smiled.
“You are all,” she had to stifle a laugh, “so thoroughly screwed! After Ksenia and now what I have done, not just now, but for everyday since I have been in the Service. I’ve been working against the Service from the very beginning. When I was sent to Scotland, to Canada and then here too. Ksenia and I were in it together.
You know what? The British didn’t have to recruit me because I went to them as soon as I arrived in this country. I’ve done more damage than a thousand Ksenia’s ever could!
Now the Service will want its revenge, again.
It’ll fall on chiefly you, Ilya.
If General Olyunin is still alive, he’ll be for the noose. So to Colonel Komova: she was only here there week before last and failed to detect what both Ksenia and I were up to. All of you who work here in London will all be recalled and all be disgraced. Don’t worry, Vadim: they won’t execute neither you nor Lyudmila. You’ll just get an ‘internal exile’ somewhere cold and unpleasant.
Hopefully, our beloved president will go on a rampage and tear apart the entire Service when he finds out.”
Katerina could picture all of that: the SVR having the chainsaw taken to it.
“Why do you hate the Rodina so much, Katya?”
This time she didn’t contain her laugh. When she was finished with that response to such a ludicrous notion, she corrected the rezident.
“Ilya, you chekists and you siloviks aren’t Russia. Try to understand that… in the short time you have left alive before they shoot or hang you when you get back home. You’re just a cancer upon the country I was born into. No matter what happens, even with another revolution, your sort will endure to continue to destroy Russia from within. I will no longer be a part of that.
Now, it is goodbye from me.” She gave her three captives a parting wave, just for the fun of it before, unable to stop herself, rubbed some salt into their stinging wounds. “One more thing: I’ve sent some rather angry British criminals, those ones Mikhail was in contact with, to rescue Ksenia. When they save her, it’s only going to make things much worse for the Service.
A shootout beside the motorway is going to make so much noise they’ll hear it in the Siberian labour camp where poor Vadim here will likely end up in.”
Katerina was out of the rezidentura with that final remark.
It wasn’t a police car though the lights behind the front grill were fitted to give it the appearance of one. Those were on and flashing as the Saab sedan raced up behind an old panel van. “Stuff it, I’m hitting the siren too.”
Talking almost to himself, Daniel did just that. A police siren had likewise been made a recent addition to the stolen car and that wailed. Drivers of vehicles travelling along the A-31 main road as it ran through the New Forest paid attention.
One of those was the woman who had been observed as driving the van.
“This is how we get paid. We rescue this woman and there’s a bucket load of cash in it for all of us. Remember, Nath: policemen are polite but they tell people what to do and expect to be obeyed.”
“Can I not stay in the car? I can keep watch from here...” He tried his best to say that without sounding so cowardly. Nathan didn’t want Daniel to know that he was seriously worried about how all of this was going to turn out. “I don’t have a gun, do I, and I couldn’t be much good.”
Daniel gave him a foul look: “Just get out of the car and stop being stupid. I ain’t got time for this, Nath. Here come Slim and Spaniard now.
This is on.”
Pumped up, Daniel jumped out of their car. Nathan spotted the other car, a Ford, one also with blue flashing lights fitted to the front behind the radiator grill, coming to a stop as well. The lay-by now had three vehicles halted in it and a trio of pretend police officers walking towards the parked van.
With the greatest of reluctance, Nathan joined them. He slinked after them while looking like the most unconvincing police officer imaginable.
When later (repeatedly) interrogated by real coppers, as well as spooks, Nathan told the same story about what had occurred after the van had been stopped.
The Russians shot first.
The woman driving the van had a little pistol. That redhead, her with the face full of freckles, pushed that weapon out of the open driver’s side window the moment that Terry – Spaniard – approached it. He didn’t even get a chance to say anything. She just shot him in the face. Terry dropped dead in the roadway. Nathan remembered a passing car, one going towards Dorset, hitting its horn just afterwards – maybe the driver saw what happened? He did. He saw Terry get killed and then Daniel opening fire with his own gun. Nathan hit the ground when that happened, scooting back on his hunches towards the parked car.
Daniel certainly killed her, of that he was sure. There was a purple pulp, what remained of her head, soon hanging out of the window.
The van’s rear doors opened after the driver was killed. There was a bug-eyed guy, one wearing builder’s denim overalls, who had a sub-machine gun of some sort in his hands.
“I’ll kill you all!” So he shouted.
Well… he never got the chance. Slim – Nigel – killed him first.
Two or three bullets knocked that guy back into the can before he even got a shot of his own off. Nathan wasn’t sure exactly what happened next. There was more shouting and perhaps another horn from a passing car. Maybe a woman screamed too, the one who then came out of the back of the van held by the third Russian.
He had his gun to her head. Daniel and Nigel had theirs trained on him.
“Give her up!” Daniel called out.
Nigel also shouted at the Russian: “Let her go and you walk.”
Nathan was rather surprised what happened next. The Russian did as he was told. He released her, walked backed backwards all while keeping his gun.
As to the woman, she ran towards the Ford, climbing in the driver’s side. Nigel tried to stop her and ended up on the ground: he came off worse despite carrying a gun.
Then things went black.
Nathan didn’t remember any pain. He didn’t see what happened: he just heard Daniel calling out to him: “Nath, watch the hell out!”
He was told what occurred though.
He was hit by that Ford, the one that the woman who’d come out of the back of that van drove off in. Nathan’s compatriots abandoned him afterwards – maybe they thought that he was dead like Terry was? They left behind a wounded man.
Nathan was hurt bad. His interviews were given from a hospital bed where he certainly wasn’t going to leave for some time.
*
Hannah was on a date that night. She’d been set up by a couple of friends. It wasn’t an entirely blind date because she’d been told who the woman was and checked out her social media (and also ran her name through some other checks too) with the presumption that Victoria would do the same… though unable to use MI-5s computers.
Tori, as she said she preferred to be called, was a banker in The City. A year older than Hannah, they had somewhat similar interests and moved in interlinking social circles. Their professional lives and backgrounds were miles apart, but two separate friends thought that they might hit it off. It had been a while since Hannah had dated anyone. She’d tried to put the whole thing off, embarrassed that friends had tried to attach her to someone. Yet… Tori was apparently interested, so Hannah had been told, and Hannah had nothing on that night.
They met first in a bar and then had sometime to eat at a restaurant a few doors down. There was a karaoke back at the first place they’d been and Tori wanted to give that a go. The memory of when Hannah had first met Katerina when the latter had been singing had come to her but she’d pushed that aside: she worked hard to push her Katyusha out of her mind.
Tori was interesting company and the night was looking like it would finish with the two of them at the place of one or the other. Asked about her job, Hannah had a prepared lie, one that would stand up to scrutiny too: she was a Home Office immigration official who worked in a backroom role on a liaison committee with government policy people.
Boring.
No excitement there.
Tori was drunkenly singing an effort at Imagine when Hannah’s phone rang. She saw the number on the screen, knew it couldn’t be ignored, raised a hand to Tori and then stepped outside the bar onto Lambeth Road. A dark rainy night it was and Hannah was without an umbrella. She wanted to ask whomever was calling on the phone from the office where this was important, in an angry tone too, but she knew it would be.
“Yes?”
“Hannah,” it was Zach calling, “I’m sending a car to you right now: Leighanne’s orders.
There’s no other way to put this but to say we’ve got a sh!tshow going on.
About an hour and a half ago, there was a shootout beside the A-Thirty-One road down in Hampshire. Two Russians out of the Embassy, ones identified as Rezidentura members Polina and Yevgeny, are stone cold dead. We’ve got a third dead body – Terry Sanchez, a known criminal – and a fourth person having been taken to the hospital. There are all sorts of conflicting reports about different vehicles but none of them are on-scene at the minute according to Hampshire Constabulary. Witnesses are few and far between and no one yet knows exactly what happened nor where those who left, a good few people reportedly did, went.
They guy in the hospital: we know him too.
Hannah, it’s Nathan Clay.”
She took a deep breath. Hannah arranged what Zach, calling from Thames House, had said. It would be quite the understatement to say that any of this was expected but neither was it the most crazy thing that she had heard in her time at MI-5.
Her job wasn’t boring and was full of excitement… of the unwelcome kind.
“Is Leighanne sending me to Hampshire?”
“No, she wants you back here. Abigail and Louise are en-route to meet a police counter terrorism team who got the call. As to our boss, she wants you to talk to Phoebe with her: something is up with that but that’s all I know.
It’s a blue Mini on the way. The driver has your phone location, Hannah, and is about five minutes out.”
And so that was the end of Hannah’s date.
Soon enough she was back at Thames House. Leighanne spoke to her first about more details of what was known from that shootout that was now being called the ‘New Forest Ambush’.
There had been Russians in a van which two cars full of Britons had pulled over in a fake police stop. Gunfire had been exchanged with three people shot dead and a fourth hit with a reversing car. Two men had fled in one car, a woman in another and a man in the van. Weapons had been recovered on-site and crime scene forensics people were all over them as well as other evidence, including a discarded phone.
It was certainly Clay who’d been hit by that car and the identities of the two Russians – each an accredited diplomat – had also been confirmed; there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that Ksenia might be that woman who’d fled too. As to Clay, he had made a call to Phoebe earlier, one which she had logged as ‘unimportant’. Hannah agreed with Leighanne that they really needed to talk to Phoebe about all of this: something wasn’t right.
Before then though, they went up to see Richard.
He had some more bad news.
“Is it a full moon out there tonight? Has everyone gone crazy?”
His questions appeared rhetorical. Hannah wasn’t sure how to answer them. Leighanne posed her own.
“What else has happened, Richard?”
He huffed and he puffed. Flustered, he sat back down at his desk while the two of them stood before him.
“I’ve just got word from the Watchers. There have been some rather disturbing goings-on at the Embassy this evening too.
Katerina came out of there, reportedly moving like – and I quote here – ‘a bat out of hell’. They lost her, again: she’s getting really good at that.
Less than an hour later, the embassy’s doctor showed up in a black taxi. He rushed inside. We’ve seen a pair of security people – not S.V.R., but their diplomatic coppers – also hurriedly arrive.
Footage from earlier in the evening has been gone over and the cameras caught a van coming out of there, one driven by Polina. That was before Katerina did a runner. Maybe it’s linked to her, maybe it isn’t. I bet the doctor and the security people showing up are though.”
Leighanne sat down with her head in her hands. “What is going on?”
Both of Hannah’s bosses looked wholly despondent.
She remained standing, trying to figure out what had happened. The whole answer didn’t come to her, couldn’t yet, but she had an idea about what might be a big part of all of this.
As she thought, the two of them were discussing the wider implications of all of this. MI-5’s Director-General had already been informed and he had reportedly already spoke to the Home Secretary. There would likely already have been a phone call to the Prime Minister as well – she was out in Australia on an official visit – because diplomats had been shot. Leighanne brought up the fact that, if one of the witnesses had it right, it looked like those Russians were armed and shooting yet Richard said it didn’t matter. They were dead and there would be consequences, his career being one of them.
Hannah heard enough of that and she silently scoffed at Richard and his damn career. Her thoughts were what was on important: Katerina. She had had finally gone over the edge, going full-on crazy. This was all her doing… somehow.
“We have to find Katerina,” she told them, “because nothing else matters now.”
Three separate black cab drivers on Bayswater Road had ignored her.
Three!
Katerina had never known anything like it. She loved London for its transport systems – its taxis, its Tube & its urban trains – which had always favoured her. Of course, Moscow’s was better, but Britain’s capital was second best.
Not this evening.
She mouthed obscene remarks at the second and third drivers before racing towards the Tube station at Notting Hill Gate. The thought hit her that there might be an unexpected problem there though Katerina forced that unwelcome worry away. Then, there was a fourth taxi: right near the subway entrance.
The driver of this one didn’t ignore her.
“Where to, Luv’?”
“Do you know the Rockingham down at Shepard’s Bush?”
A grunt. “On the way.” It wasn’t far and wouldn’t be much of a fare for him but he was pulling away from the curb as he spoke.
Traffic was light and the going was good. Down Holland Park Avenue the taxi went. Katerina was on her phone, messaging instructions to Josephine.
Once they reached the pub, Katerina paid the driver in cash and added a tip. Not a big one but not going without one either: the idea wasn’t to be remembered.
“Have fun in there, won’t you?” The driver said that with a sneer towards the pub. It had quite the reputation.
Katerina was going to be remembered by him.
Not a good start to her running at all.
The pub wasn’t for the passing drinker nor the tourists. It had an unwelcoming look to it. There could have been a sign which said ‘Locals Only’. The management might protest that they welcomed any customer but that wouldn’t have mattered. Strangers going into the Rockingham would have to work pretty hard not to get hard eye-balled by the regulars, given a gentle shove or even told to F-off if they wanted to leave with all of their teeth.
It was just that type of place.
Loud, thumping music poured out of it onto the evening street. It was the type of pub that had such music going all day and all night long. There was narrow frontage, making it look small, but Josephine, who’d been in there and gotten quite the greeting, had assured Katerina that that was a deception. It was big: like a Tardis, so she said… with Katerina supposing she was meant to get some sort of pop culture reference from that.
One of the two guys standing outside smoking – each with a pint glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other – gave Katerina the unfriendly eye treatment as she walked past them and into the Rockingham. Afterwards, the taller of the two had his eyes on her behind though.
“Mate,” he said to his smoking companion, “I’d fancy a bit of that on my lap any day.”
Katerina heard him clearly. She wanted to stop, spin on her heels, punch him in the face and see if his friend wanted a wallop too. There was no time for any of that and it would only be another way to be remembered.
Another silent insult given in reply.
She went straight to the bar. The music was a lot louder inside, more than she had expected it to be. Katerina had to manoeuvre her way around people. No one was friendly, no one was polite enough to let a woman pass by. The people were all sorts, none of them that Katerina could see any kindness in.
What an awful place!
Looking none of them in the eye, Katerina tried her best to be unnoticed. She told herself that even if she was, who in here would willing talk to either the authorities or any Russians asking questions.
Hopefully.
The barmaid had an exceptionally large bosun. It was all on show due to the shape and spareness of her top. Katerina was unable to stop herself looking at what was in front of her before she spoke to the woman.
“Please can you help me?” Katerina made the effort to spread despair all across her face. “I’ve got myself into a situation: it’s an Angela thing. Please… have you got another exit?”
This was all Josephine’s idea. Katerina had been apprehensive about the approach yet her little helper had assured her that it would work. Despite everything about this place, ‘asking for Angela’ would work. Katerina had phrased it all wrong, she realised straight away, but she saw what looked like the correct recognition in the barmaid’s face.
“Come with me: I got you covered.”
Asking for Angela was a government scheme. It was mandatory for anywhere with a drinks license to train their staff about it. There had been some controversy when it had been tested by investigatory journalists yet it was reported to be a success story. A woman, even a man, would use the coded phrase to ask for help if they were in danger.
Perhaps a date had gone wrong or a boyfriend was not taking a break-up well. Maybe there was a stalker or just a pervert who wouldn’t accept being told to F-off.
Bar & restaurant staff were meant to do everything that they could to help those in need.
“There’s a back way out of here,” the barmaid confirmed what Katerina had been told, “and you’ll be safe with me.”
Josephine said that she’d tested all of this. The barmaid made no comment on the fact that only a week ago another young woman had asked for an escape too: the dots weren’t being joined there.
Katerina touched her arm as they moved down a staff-only passageway: “You’re so kind, thank you.”
“I won’t lie to you: it’s a dark alley. But you can get away through there sharp-ish.”
A woman fleeing from a possible dangerous man is led into a deserted alleyway in the middle of the night. The fire door is closed behind her and she is on her own: sounds like the plot of a horror movie.
Thanks!
Katerina was glad she wasn’t helpless and really in trouble.
Out the door she went. The barmaid gave her a motherly smile, one of sympathy, and the locked her out there in a place where it was hardly safe at all. However, Katerina still had her pistol in her bag. Even without it, she was never going to be a vulnerable woman.
She started running again, through an area with no cameras and no one able to easily follow her.
Josephine was waiting nearby.
“Beckenham, please.” Katerina told her driver where she wanted to go, putting on a funny voice too. “Make it sharpish, Driver.”
Josephine played along: “Yes, Ma’am.”
The car pulled out of the alley, made a sharp turn and started to leave Shepard’s Bush. Katerina saw none of that though. She was seated on the floor in the rear, tucked in tight out of sight there. Her head was done with her eyes on her phone. There were flickers of light and noises but she paid them no attention. She was tracking someone via an app and that had all of her attention.
The vehicle was a red Range Rover. Josephine had hired it using a false identity so it was, in theory, stolen… but not really. It was going to be returned and no one was looking for it. The big car had tinted windows in the back and that space on the floor for someone short & thin like Katerina to sit. She couldn’t be seen from the outside, her face couldn’t unexpectedly be caught by a camera. In what she had at first assumed was a joke, it had been suggested by Josephine that Katerina get in the boot if she wanted to stay fully hidden.
No, thank you!
Katerina had rather ghastly images of being trapped in there, drowning while in a boot. She’d sit on the floor, just behind Josephine so nothing bad could happen.
Ten, fifteen minutes passed in silence before there was any more conversation between the two of them.
“Explain this money thing to me, Kat? I just don’t get it.”
“It’s simple really and something I think you, with all of your talents for the bluff, would like. I told the guy Daniel that there would be a lot of money in it for him if he rescued my embassy colleague. I know he likes money and I knew he would do it. The full story was something I didn’t tell him because, even though he loves cash, he would wisely have backed out.
There is no money. Well… there is: his own money.
I’m going to steal that instead. He’s got a lot of it, hidden away but just sitting there for the taking. I’m going to grab it while he is busy chasing some imaginary more.”
“How do you know where he keeps it?”
“Someone else from the embassy who he worked with before,” like was the case with Ksenia, Mikhail’s name wasn’t mentioned either by Katerina, on purpose too, “who found it. I read it in a file – he was very thorough – and I just thought ‘thank you kindly, I’ll be having that’ and so that’s how.”
Josephine laughed a little: “You’re something special, Kat.”
Katerina opted to say nothing in reply.
Back to her phone her eyes went, looking at where Daniel McSherry was. He was far, far away from the South London suburb of Beckenham.
Her thoughts turned to Josephine.
Katerina liked her and was putting her to use at the moment and would be during part of her escape. She refused to tell her everything though, especially how she planned to make the final stage of her escape. There just wasn’t the trust there, despite how little she believed that Josephine would or could go against her.
Trusting others just wasn’t for Katerina.
There was a shop which sold home tiling. It was closed for the evening with no one about. Katerina took a set of skeleton keys which Josephine had acquired for her and jiggled the lock in the shop’s front door.
It opened and in she went. Mikhail had noted where the alarm box was and it’s code: how helpful was he! The code was correct. Next, she was in the office. There was a safe in the corner but she ignored that. From her little tote bag she pulled out a screwdriver and a hammer. Katerina smashed apart the plug mounting on the wall. Taking it apart would take too long. The electricity wasn’t live as the whole thing down behind a filing cabinet was a facade.
It just came apart, revealing a pullout draw behind it.
She smashed her way into that too after pulling it out onto the office floor. There was no time to try and pick the lock, one which she had no key to work with it on.
Crash.
Bang.
Wallop.
Katerina was left frustrated by the lock. She considered picking it up and leaving with it though had to consider that if it was empty, there would be no coming back here to look for another hiding spot.
She went back to smashing it apart, only after checking on her phone where it’s owner was.
She hit it, bent it and then, finally, forced it open.
Cash and diamonds were inside, just as Mikhail had noted.
“Spasibo, Daniel!”
“Now,” head down, Katerina climbed back into the car, “to Ipswich.”
“Did you get it? C’mon, tell me!”
Katerina smiled as she replied: “I’m bloody rich!”
Once more, silence came upon them. Josephine drove, heading for the M-25 motorway and then towards East Anglia, while Katerina used her phone’s torch light to check the contents of the beaten-about security box.
Pounds, Euros & Dollars all in high-denomination bills and wrapped tight in plastic. There were gems in two little bags as well. Katerina had absolutely no idea about diamonds at all with regard to cost but was sure that these would be worth something indeed. She looked down at the cash, and the gems too, while considering how foolish Daniel was. This was an absolute fortune. It wasn’t all of his money but a good portion of it. Look at where he had left it! Why couldn’t he had got a safety deposit box or buried it in a garden? To hide it where he had, where she could take it in five minutes or so, was foolish.
He deserved to have lost it.
Josephine had rented a house in a cul-de-sac named Strawberry Gardens. Maybe the name had sold her on it. To Katerina, the insides were the selling point. Here on the outskirts of Suffolk’s Ipswich, she had found a very comfortable hideout. Those Russian and British escape routes which had been drawn up should she ever need to make use of them, which she never had any intention of doing so, had involved abandoned buildings or sleeping under the stars or in the backs of cars.
There was none of that here.
This was a high-spec two bedroom family home. It was rented fully furnished with all the latest comforts. Within a quarter of an hour of being inside, after climbing out of the car only when it was in the garage, Katerina was in the jacuzzi. Her pistol was atop of the toilet seat – within reach – but her mind was on the bubbles.
Katerina was having the time of her life.
Her thoughts turned to Hannah. Katerina wanted to see her one last time, just to say goodbye. She had a present for her too: all those stolen electronic files from the rezidentura. Seeing her though was impossible. She’d get caught. She knew that.
There would be no more jacuzzis.
There would be no more diamonds.
There would be no more freedom.
Katerina told herself to accept that she’d never get to see Hannah again… yet she thought about the Scottish spy as she (carefully) held one of those diamonds – the biggest, prettiest one – in her hand while among the bubbles.
