Kompromat

[Leander]

Six – Watchers

There was no official ban that said that MI-6 couldn’t act on UK soil in the course of legitimate duties. It was something that was rarely done though. MI-5 had far more experience and the manpower to do that and there was the fact that the focus of the Secret Intelligence Service was overseas rather than in Britain. When there were intelligence operations to be conducted within the country, as the senior of the two organisations, there was the lead set by MI-6 in having their sister service do their bidding for them. It wasn’t a matter of equals cooperating but the bigger of the two having the other undertake tasks at their direction. When it came to Lauren Worthing, those from the Security Service who were under instruction to undertake full surveillance of her were told that she was suspected of being involved in an international espionage affair. The suspicions about the prime minister herself weren’t mentioned: just her aide. Authorisation came from the head of MI-5 where he had his people do what the Two Three Seven Zero tasking instructed.

Eyes were to be on Worthing constantly, no matter how time consuming and the level of manpower needed.

Surveillance began on the Friday morning. Worthing was observed leaving her house in Notting Hill and heading for the Tube. A large team of MI-5 close surveillance operatives, the Watchers, were involved. One was on her street as she departed, trailing behind her. Another took over for the next two streets and followed her into and through Ladbroke Grove Underground Station. A third Watcher was already on the platform and subsequently got on the same train which she did. Two men and a woman, the latter supposedly walking her dog, were the first stage of that morning’s tail. None of them gave any outward sign of what they were doing. They knew their job and that meant that they knew how to be near invisible. There was no hard staring at Worthing nor getting close enough to her to make Worthing feel uncomfortable.

The Watchers observed whom she came into contact with in a physical sense. A brush pass, even a hurried conversation made on the sly, was what they sought to see. None of that occurred though. If it had, they would have seen it.

The third Watcher got off the train at Paddington where the fourth got on. She stayed with the Circle Line train when it went onwards without Worthing who departed two stops later at Edgware Road. That was a busy interchange station. The tradecraft employed that the defector Svetlana had spoken of had warned about such places. Three more Watchers were already there at Edgware Road. It was a busy place and they had their work cut out for them but they pulled it off: eyes were on her at all times until she got on what was her regular next train. That was Jubilee Line service southbound. There were Watchers on several trains already less she miss one of them for any number of reasons.

Communications support for the Watchers previous to Worthing reaching the Jubilee Line came from radio link via tiny earpieces that they wore, or in the case on one of the men on the streets near her house, oversized headphones which weren’t actually playing music. A secure digital channel was used above ground in Notting Hill and also on the Central Line where that part of the Tube ran not underground. Regardless of the depths of the Jubilee Line though, there was still an unbroken communications link for the Watchers. Their direction team – four people off in Thames House with audio & video surveillance both – were watching through Transport for London security cameras with the live feed sent to them. The entirety of the below-ground section of the London Underground was covered with radio repeaters for the emergency services (a post terrorism atrocity introduction) and MI-5 had complete access to that as well. The Watcher shadowing Worthing said nothing but received updates on where their subject was at all times.

Worthing was observed going down to Westminster where she departed the train there. Up through that station and then a walk to the Cabinet Office on Whitehall were also subject to intense surveillance from video cameras and also the eyes of the Watchers. Surveillance ended there when she went inside… at least the physical observation anyway. The Watchers would wait until Worthing left work later and pick her up again. However, at the control station for the Two Three Seven Zero task, those there, including one of the MI-6 people whose come over, were using her phone to monitor her. GCHQ had a tap on it in the fullest of manner. All that it was used for in terms of communications and internet use was fed to those watching her. There was the location ping to use and then the Hot Mic feature.

Twenty four hours a day, the personal phone of the prime minister’s aide was a live microphone without it’s owners use. Like most people, Worthing had her phone with her at all times. Broadcasts were made outwards of all that was said within proximity of the electronic device without anyone else knowing. That included what was said within 10 Downing Street in the presence of the country’s leader too.


Worthing left work in the early afternoon. That was an unusual occurrence but the Watchers were ready for it. Communications monitoring had alerted MI-5 to her having a dinner to attend that evening. She’d also reminded the prime minister about it in person and those listening in to that conversation had heard Worthing wished a good time. Back home she went, the same way as she had come that morning to spend just over half a day in Downing Street. The Watchers were all over her, getting close but not too close. They saw her do nothing suspicious at all.

Just after six o’clock, Worthing left her house. The Watchers were ready to trail her to the same station which she had gone through twice that day. They were unprepared for her going in a different direction though. She headed towards another station in an action that at once screamed to the veteran surveillance operatives as being something suspicious. Disappointment came fast though. She went into a newsagents and the Watcher who followed her in there, acting entirely disinterested in her when within, heard her buy a pack of cigarettes. She wasn’t a smoker so that was something to note but it explained the diversion: there were no newsagents between her house at Ladbroke Grove. At Westbourne Park there were quick moving Watchers already there at that smaller station. One was also on a Hammersmith & City Line train – that line shared the same tracks as the Central Line – which Worthing got on. She rode that one right across the middle of London all the way to Whitechapel before getting on an Elizabeth Line train just the one stop deep and fast underground to Canary Wharf.

Over there on the Isle of Dogs, the Watchers knew her ultimate destination for the evening. They weren’t sure how she would make the final stage of that trip though and so had various measures enacted. That preparation paid off. She got on a hire bike and peddled her way down Upper Bank Street, over the bridge above the water of South Dock and around to South Quay. Worthing was dressed for dinner in a fancy restaurant yet had taken a pair of trainers and wore then while on that bike, one which she left at the docking station within sight of her final destination. Because they had been ready for anything, as experience had long showed, there were two Watchers also on bikes who shadowed her through different parts of that short ride.

In the restaurant, MI-5 had more people. These were people who usually did counter terrorism or anti-espionage surveillance. Worthing was an easy target to follow but the requirements to keep physical eyes on her at all times while she was moving involved dozens of them. She couldn’t be allowed to see the same face twice and so that meant more and more Watchers brought in.

Her boyfriend was at the dinner. He worked in The City though spent much time out in the Docklands too. It was a restaurant close to his office, a location that the Watcher had become aware of via Worthing’s phone contact with him. He was waiting for her there and so too was his colleague. That man, another banker, had brought a date whose identity MI-5 hadn’t been able to determine ahead of the dinner. To the surprise of the Watcher inside of the restaurant, Worthing appeared to know that date very well indeed.

They hugged and laughed like old friends before all of them sat down to dinner.

That restaurant had a security camera set up that was very modern. From Thames House, via an urgent GCHQ hack of the wireless internet feed over there in South Quay, footage from multiple cameras inside there was being fast supplied to those directing the surveillance. They’d missed the hug because it took out of sight of the cameras whose internal coverage had dark spots. The Watcher at the bar hadn’t seen any brush pass though. As to the unidentified woman, it was she whom attention turned to. Worthing was seen giving her that packet of cigarettes as a gift over wine and then go off with her to the ladies as well. Another Watcher who’d come into the restaurant and who’d sat at the bar too went in there ahead of them after an alert via the Hot Mic that they were going. That would avert any suspicion of being followed in, such was the Watchers’ thinking.

Nothing underhand was seen in there.

Worthing and her fellow diners had dinner. Her boyfriend went off to talk a call on his phone outside at one point and his colleague’s date went out for a smoke. There were waiters who came over to the table and a fellow diner who alerted Worthing that she had dropped her napkin. That activity drew eyes close in and distant too. Still, there was nothing in all of that that gave those conducting the surveillance any hint of confirmation that what the prime minister’s aide was doing was in any way connected to espionage.

The dinner ended and there was more physical interaction. The women hugged each other before the other’s dinner date. The two men shook hands. Parting ways, the couples went off their separate ways. Worthing’s boyfriend hailed a taxi. It didn’t take them to the Tube anywhere near and instead crossed the width of the city. Near Bayswater, the taxi stopped and the Watchers were present. Worthing got out while her ride idled and she went into a mini-supermarket, one of those busy convenience stores. Through the Hot Mic, they’d heard her tell her boyfriend she was going to stop there so the Watchers had raced to be in-place. A woman went in just ahead of her and remained afterwards: her eyes had been on Worthing the whole time while she bought a bottle of wine and made no contact with anyone else. To their home that taxi went with the driver getting a nice tip atop of his already hefty fee for the long ride.

Worthing was at home though the surveillance continued. Exits were watched and there was electronic eavesdropping too. It was a full spectrum, thorough watch on her that would continue while she slept.

*

Grace read through the detailed report of the first day that the Watchers were all over Worthing. When finished, she handed it back to Debbie.

“They did a lot! How many were involved?”

“Two dozen at least. That’s those close to her and those from afar. They’ll shift around throughout it all, covering outlying points in case she changed expected direction.”

“You’ve done it?” Grace knew that Debbie had several years’ experience at MI-5 but not all that she’d done there.

A nod came. “Watching suspected bombers pre-scouting targets. Following Chinese supposed tourists. Trailing Russian businessmen. It’s what we do and I can tell you it isn’t much fun either.

There are all sorts of tricks to it,” Debbie continued, “to make sure that you aren’t recognised. I’ve used reversible coats, different handbags and let my hair down. Sometimes I wear glasses, then later taken them off. The guys and girls who did all of that yesterday would have had even more disguises up their sleeve too.”

“I doubt this team enjoyed themselves much either.” Grace placed a hand on the tablet that Debbie now had back. “They saw nothing untoward at all for all of this work. One minor divert off her expected route yet that’s it.

All those people,” Grace had a question to add, “which Worthing had momentary contact with will be run down, yes?”

“Yes, they will be.” They were inside the SIS Building and Debbie went to the window after she confirmed that, looking upstream as the river ran towards MI-5’s headquarters. “They’re doing it all again today, trailing her through her Saturday as well.” The younger spook then stepped back away from the window and turned towards her MI-6 colleague. “What they’ve given us though is this Siobhan to deal with.”

With a grimace, Grace addressed the issue of that woman who’d been at the dinner and so friendly with Worthing. “Siobhan is a complicated issue.”


There had been nothing in Worthing’s contacts to highlight any connection with the date that her boyfriend’s colleague had brought with him. Worthing knew she was coming due to the gift she gave her though. It was a bit of a mystery for the Watchers, and for Grace & Debbie who read through their opening day report, as to the link between the two women who’d been there in the Docklands.

Identifying her hadn’t been easy. Facial recognition technology that MI-5 had access to was good though better was what GCHQ had. When still images taken from the hacked restaurant security cameras hadn’t provided a match at Thames House, nor indeed here over at the SIS Building too, those images had been run through GCHQ. Their search was wider where the internet was scoured for her face to put a name to it. They’d found her in the end. Paul Philips, whom MacDonald was reporting to, had called her in the middle of the night and asked Grace to come to Vauxhall Cross in relation to that name. There was a flat in a riverside development in Battersea which Grace had been given the temporary use of. The Secret Intelligence Service owned a whole swathe of them – via an offshore front company – for various uses including housing staff who were usually based overseas as Grace was yet were temporarily in London. She’d got a ride through an app the short distance up to the SIS Building after his call and arrived long before dawn.

MacDonald, Debbie and the others had all been woken up to come in too.

Siobhan Rice was someone with no social media presence and in a sensitive government job. The young woman was a civilian working for Defence Intelligence, a semi-independent MOD intelligence organisation mostly staffed with uniformed personnel though with civil servants like her there too. In addition, of what Grace agreed was more significance when Paul presented her identity, was whom her father was. They didn’t share the same last name but he was the current foreign secretary…

…the man who’d given the instruction for the whole undertaking of discovering whether what Svetlana was saying was true was in fact so. The coincidence of that, Paul had said, was mind blowing. Grace had been lost for words then though was less so now it was far later in the morning.


“How does all of this work?” She asked of Debbie while MacDonald was seated at his desk where they had returned to. “Did he know that his daughter was friends with whom we’d focus on as the prime suspect in what Svetlana has accused Manningtree of? Or, is he just completely clueless about the whole thing?”

“I don’t know about that,” Debbie said, “but what interests me if where she works. D.I is a place full of secrets that the S.V.R could be interested in. The whole thing with Lauren just being a cut-out for what Manningtree is up to could be something that we have got wrong. Svetlana is a couple of years out of the loop too. It could all have gotten far bigger than anything she knew about back when she was here pretending to be someone she wasn’t.

Then again,” a different idea came from her, “Siobhan could be nothing more than an old friend of Worthing’s. Worthing too could be entirely innocent, as could Manningtree, of anything they’ve been accused of.”

Grace understood all of that yet she still believed in Svetlana, as she had done from that start. She laid out her own fears to MacDonald.

“I’m concerned that this whole thing has gone too political. There might be a power struggle in government and we, us all at the bottom, are likely to get caught up in all of that. The foreign secretary’s daughter, the prime minister’s close aide whom many people have said is like a daughter to her, Russian spooks with backstopped legends… where does it end?”

Grace had spent a whole career never worrying about any sort of political impact in the work which she did. That had all changed now with this investigation. She realised that the signs were there for the start with the allegations from Svetlana, long before it had been some sort of diplomatic shift that had occurred while he and the prime minister where in New York which had seen the foreign secretary return home and green light this whole investigation.

Her worry was just the same as was shared by Daniel & Paul when she first brought this to them: that it was all going to blow up in their faces.

“Paul will speak to the Chief,” MacDonald told them with what Grace was sure was an un-comfortability, “and she’ll make the decision on what we do regarding Siobhan. She might decide there is nothing there or, she’ll shut the whole thing down. In the meantime, we’re going to carry on. The Watchers stay on Worthing and we’re looking for a Russian contact. The Hot Mic on Worthing’s phone should alert us if Manningtree tells her to do something but that can’t be relied upon. We watch Worthing and we wait to see how things play out.

The bigger picture is for those at the top. We do what we do.”

That was it. Grace led Debbie out of MacDonald’s office. She took a moment to glance back at her boss as she closed the door and saw quite the exasperated look on his face. His expression was similar to what she was feeling yet MacDonald looked like he wasn’t handling it so well.

Grace put that down to the pressures of command.

[Leander]

Seven – Working theory

The foreign secretary, Robert Barton, should be the current prime minister. He had been cheated out of that job by the incumbent who had lied and stole that role as the country’s leader. He told his two guests at Chevening this evening that, something that the two of them had heard beforehand from Barton.

“It’s not right at all, Bob.” There was fervent agreement from the transport secretary who’d come down to the grace-&-favour country mansion in Kent which the foreign secretary had use of for both official and unofficial purposes. “She’s a damn fraud who jumped the line and took what wasn’t hers.”

That was echoed by the health secretary, another long-term Cabinet ally of Barton’s. “It’s your job that she’s taken. Alicia has no right to do, none at all. We have a far better prime minister sitting here with us than the one that we have been stuck with. Come the next election, she’ll doom us all.”

Barton lapped up the praise of him and revelled in the criticism of his party leader.

No matter that such things had been said before by the man and the woman with him, that he knew too that they owed him everything and that their careers were a result of his influence, it still warmed him to hear their agreement.

When Manningtree was finally deposed, these two would be well rewarded just as long promised. Barton would have the two of them involved in a game changing reorganisation of the British Government. He’d be at the top, his closest allies next to him and Manningtree nowhere to be seen.

As to the allies, he’d brought them here to tell them something to start the process of seeing him where he rightly belonged.

“James, Victoria, there is something that I really think that the two of you should know about Alicia. I want us to keep it between ourselves though because I cannot stress enough how important it is that this doesn’t get out, not least for now anyway. Do we agree on the complete silence?”

Nods came from the two of them.

“You both know about New York and what happened there with Alicia siding with the Americans on their desire to re-establish ties with Russia in the face of my department’s disapproval. The day after I returned home, I had a visit at the Foreign Office from the Chief of S.I.S. She had a story to tell, one of which she admitted she was more than a little sceptical about the veracity of yet thought best to tell me.

A Russian defector turned up in Gibraltar, a high grade spook who begged for an escape. The defector says that Alicia is someone whom they have been blackmailing for years and is now working for their interests, especially since the changing of the guard in the Kremlin. There wasn’t much proof, despite the defector saying that there was, but I told the Chief to run a full investigation nonetheless due to the seriousness of the situation. That they are doing.

If it’s all true, Alicia goes down. She goes down hard too.”

The transport secretary got up off his chair. “What the hell? It can’t be, surely not!”

“It’s not entirely unbelievable,” so said the still seated and far calmer health secretary, “for such a thing to happen. Six don’t believe the defector though. Did the Chief say why she doesn’t believe him?”

Barton had deliberately not said whether the defector was male or female. He let go what his Cabinet colleague assumed there. The Chief had stressed how secret the information was and while he was telling those who had no right to know, the foreign secretary left out details like that. His allies could think what they wanted. One was outraged and the other at once believing. He wanted them both on the same page as him though.

“From what I could gather, they are running a serious investigation because there are some facts that were enough for them to do so. Alicia’s behaviour with Russia has always been something suspect to me,” that was a lie, “and so I gave the Chief the go ahead to do what must be done, come what may.”

“A traitor?” The transport secretary had sat back down but his fat face remained tomato red. “For her to be involved in anything like that means… well… it would be a case of seeing her not just removed from office, Bob, but arrested, tried and put in prison.”

The health secretary remained calm and she shook her head at that suggestion. “Robert, what James suggests there would be a damaging route to go down long term. Actually, even in the short term. What a disaster that would be.”

The two of them were allies to him, less so to one another. Barton had long played them off against each other to his own advantage. The remarks from the health secretary concerning the approach that the transport secretary declared wasn’t about a rivalry between them though. The former was spot on and the latter dead wrong when it came to the ultimate outcome of what he was telling them both. The matter with Manningtree couldn’t be something that could in the end go down that route.

“Victoria is correct there.”

The transport secretary huffed and puffed a bit but it was clear by his expression that he could see his colleague was right. He turned to her and conceded the point. “You’re not wrong there.” Then he looked back at Barton. “Sorry for my outburst. I wasn’t thinking straight because of all of this. It’s all a little more than a shock.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Barton was happy to hear his man had calmed down, “but I feel your anger. I have it myself in me. This allegation made is so serious that it almost physically sickens me. I’ve left its investigation in what I am confident is capable hands though. Those looking into the whole affair have my complete backing and when the outcome arrives, then we shall act. We’ll do the right thing but I’m determined to see what will be done will be done right too.”

The transport secretary was pleased with that. The health secretary though expressed some concern about the details. When Barton informed her that there was a big MI-5 involvement, something necessary in that, she asked about the home secretary.

“And Catherine?”

“She’s out of the loop on it all.”

The transport secretary gave a sly grin though he didn’t know how that had been wrangled. His colleague wasn’t just prepared to swallow that.

“How?”

Barton told her how that was the case.

“Clever.” The transport secretary was pleased in what he heard.

“I admire your handiwork there, Robert, but the risks of that are quite something.”

“Have trust in me and it’ll all work out.”

Barton was long convinced in his own brilliance, too used to getting his own way through secret deals behind the scenes, this time with unelected civil service mandarins, that he believed her could ignore the health secretary’s concerns.

He afterwards moved the conversation onwards. They spoke more about their plans for when the now foreign secretary ended up where he rightly belonged in role of prime minister. The ‘super-ministries’ were talked about, especially the two for these allies of his. There would be a Department for Public Services and a Department for National Infrastructure. Education, health, social care & a range of other services would all be under the former; the latter would have public utilities, telecommunications & transport within that second new department.

A Department for the Union (the Northern Ireland, Scottish & Welsh Offices all combined) was another, so too an expanded Foreign Office. The disbandment of the Home Office was also discussed along with how that would work. Revamping both the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence for the modern era came up as well. Fewer ministers with more responsibilities was the goal alongside getting rid of anachronisms from the past.

Their plots and plans were detailed, with each of them assured that they would soon be in a position to see it happen once the rewards by witnessing the removal of Manningtree came. Talking once more of her being gone, right before his guests left, Barton made sure that they understood him on his point about secrecy.

“Keep it to yourself or she’ll worm her way out of it.”

He made that very clear.


Come the Monday, Barton was back in Whitehall and received a visitor. It was the Chief of SIS who made an unscheduled trip – she’d called while on the way – and this time came alone. There was no deputy with Suzannah Quinn–Browne this time around. When she was in his main office, she waited until his secretary closed the door and thus the two of them were alone before she had anything to say.

“This concerns Alicia?”

He asked that though fully expected that it would only be that.

“Yes, it does, Robert.”

She looked reflective, maybe apologetic. Barton couldn’t decide which it was.

“I was of the understanding that we’d be talking about this later in the week. You did tell me, Suzannah, that you’d want at least a week before you could give me a detailed briefing.”

“Something came up.” The Chief of SIS gave nothing away in how she spoke. “There was a development that I thought it best I bring to your attention. Let me run through this all with you.

Surveillance started on Friday with the focus of that being on the principal personal aide to the prime minister. She is the one that the investigative team decided is the closest to Manningtree, the one with whom she spends a great deal of time with and has plenty of trust in. Their working theory, one subject to change I must add, is that she is whom has replaced that deceased former aide.

Everything has been thrown at tracking her and seeing if she is in contact with anyone whom she shouldn’t be, or, failing to get a glimpse at that, acting in the manner as if she is a message conduit.

You know of this aide. It’s Lauren Worthing.”

“I know her: she came to New York on that trip.”

Barton was a bit surprised that it had been that young woman whom the people from MI-5 & MI-6 had chosen to be the likely figure involved. He had on his own run through a mental list of suspects that that good-looking aide wasn’t on it. She didn’t look smart enough, she looked to him just as an attachment for Manningtree for decorative purposes.

Personally, he wouldn’t mind having her hanging on his arm. She was something to look at indeed.

“So far,” Quinn–Browne carried on, “they have found nothing. That doesn’t mean that they will come up empty handed. Her name wasn’t just picked out of thin air. There is an issue though.

You said that you know her. How well do you? What do you know about her? There is a reason for me asking this and please don’t assume I’m being unduly intrusive.”

Without meaning to, because he was taken aback at such unexpected questions, Barton opened his palms as he replied: “Suzannah, I do not in any way know this Lauren beyond seeing her alongside Alicia for the last couple of years. I don’t actually think I’ve ever spoken to her, not beyond the basic ‘good morning’ at the very most.”

His mind raced as he tried to recall anything else. There was nothing though. She was just an attractive young woman who worked for his long term political opponent.

“Your daughter knows her.”

There it was.

Barton saw at once what this strange line of questioning was all about, why Quinn–Browne had come to see him like she had.

Siobhan?

“My Siobhan is someone that she knows personally?”

“They have a social connection.” The Chief of SIS confirmed that. “It goes beyond just casual. They appear to have been friends for some time.”

“Siobhan doesn’t have friends.”

His daughter was difficult.

The only child of his first marriage (Barton had two young sons via his second), there was very little father-daughter relationship. It was all her fault. She was the one who was in the wrong. He’d done everything that he could for her but she just didn’t love him. Siobhan blamed him for the fact that she was a child from a broken home. She’d said that it was his fault that her mother had never emotionally recovered from that split. His daughter had spurned him with angry words and silence for many long years now.

Aside from how she’d treated him, Barton knew that his daughter had problems with people. She’d never been close to anyone. It was more than her being an introvert. It was a case of her not liking anyone. There’d never been a best friend, there had never been a boyfriend or girlfriend. No other relative had any form of relationship with her.

To hear that she had a friend was quite the surprise. In these circumstances it was an unwelcome too.

Quinn–Browne had said nothing after his remark. She sat with her hands folded in her lap across on the other side of his desk looking at him. Whether she was reading his mind, judging him as a bad father or something else with that silence he didn’t know. The woman had always been a bit of an enigma though.

Spies were like that.

“Is,” Barton decided to break the silence that she’d imposed, “my daughter a person of interest in this whole thing? Because of her job and this personal connection?”

“No, that isn’t the case. It was a social meeting and nothing untoward was observed. I had to bring it to you though, Robert. Not informing you of it wasn’t something I would do.”

“Do you want me to call her, try to warn her off?”

The Chief of SIS shook her head emphatically. “Absolutely not.”

“Will they do… I’m not sure what to call it… a ‘data dump’ on Siobhan’s phone and computer devices?”

“That has been already done. Everything was clean. No suspicion is on her. Your daughter’s link to someone who is only still an investigative suspect is something not being given any further attention.”

“Thank God.” There was relief in him, a lot of it.

“The people involved will stick with Lauren Worthing. That remains who they are looking at. There is an observation of Manningtree as well though not as detailed as is the case with her aide. She’s the key, so the working theory is, into breaking this all open. Should they catch her, then they move towards the prime minister.”

“Have you considered what happens then, Suzannah?”

He certainly had, but had she?

“We first want to discover if it is all true.”

Barton didn’t believe that. He was sure that the Chief of SIS, like the director general of MI-5 whom he’d already spoken with, was planning an outcome. Whatever either of those women were up to, it would be he who would decide how it all went though, no matter what.

Manningtree would be gone and he’d be in Downing Street, which was all that really mattered.

“I just want to check something else with you?” This time it was she who broke the reflective silence.

“Go ahead.”

“You haven’t told anyone else anything about this, have you, Robert? We are keeping this close hold less it all break into the open and, if she’s guilty, Manningtree would slip free.”

Barton lied to her: “I’ve told no one, not a soul.”

[jemhouston]

The odds of this being a disaster just doubled.

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

".... Did the Chief say why she doesn’t believe him ?”

A 'Freudian Slip' ??
If you were on the 'inside' and knew, would you unconsciously phrase it thus, rather than 'him or her' ?

Or would you ??

It's a bit like 'scissors, paper, rock' : If you go 'random', you'll beat some-one who's trying to be clever and double-guess you. Unless, of course, you're clever enough to figure their logic, tie it in knots...

[Leander]

".... Did the Chief say why she doesn’t believe him ?”

A 'Freudian Slip' ??
If you were on the 'inside' and knew, would you unconsciously phrase it thus, rather than 'him or her' ?

Or would you ??

It's a bit like 'scissors, paper, rock' : If you go 'random', you'll beat some-one who's trying to be clever and double-guess you. Unless, of course, you're clever enough to figure their logic, tie it in knots...

Lots of people trying to be clever here.
This espionage case, with its political dynamics, will tie everyone in knots. Talking of knots...

The odds of this being a disaster just doubled.

This guy talks too much, yes. That will be bad news all round.

[Leander]

Eight – Danger signal

Lauren was in Alicia’s former family home in Worcester. The prime minister remained the local MP for that West of England constituency though no longer had a residence there. This four bedroom detached property at the end of an upmarket cul-de-sac had been sold. The paperwork would show the first day of the new owners taking possession tomorrow despite Alicia having moved out more than three months ago when she assumed the country’s premiership. Since Alicia and the kids had left, there had been people in and out with the estate agents handling the sale dealing with them. Furniture and possessions were long since gone and the house was quite the shell inside. Alicia herself had come here only last month with Lauren to see that everything belonging to her family was gone. Nonetheless, she’d sent her personal assistant back here today. Lauren’s task was to check that there was nothing left. She had felt it pointless but Alicia was Alicia. Doing what she wanted was what Lauren did.

She walked into the master bedroom. Lauren recalled vividly the first time she’d been in here. It was the night when she had Alicia had first made love.

The bed was gone, the one which Lauren had been tied to. Picturing herself like that brought a smile to her face. So do did further memories of that night where Alicia had done what Lauren hadn’t thought she’d enjoy before she had. A couple of years had passed but it was all fresh like it was yesterday now.

Lauren was Straight. She lived with a man and would end up marrying him… eventually. Yet Alicia was Alicia. When they were together alone, then Lauren was what she was then. There were two Lauren’s, so she’d often told herself, the one who loved Alicia and the one who shared and home & bed with her man.

The children’s bedrooms and the spare room were all just as empty as the master bedroom was. All three bathrooms – one en-suite off the largest bedroom – was just as bare. Lauren went down the stairs to the living room and the dining room. She closed the door behind her after entering the latter and it gave way too easily in her hand. It went with a bang, echoing throughout the dining room into the kitchen. The utility room and then the downstairs loo were the last places she checked inside. Alicia hadn’t said that anything in particular would be there yet still Lauren looked.

Maybe a memento, a discarded book or a piece of clothing was what her employer was thinking off. Nothing was in sight though, just emptiness.

The rear garden with its wide expanse was where Lauren went onwards to. She walked down the winding stone path which ran right through the middle and to the shed at the bottom. Inside there were paint tins and a step ladder. Those, she assured herself, weren’t of any interests to Alicia.

Recalling a conversation in here, in the morning after that night in the master bedroom, Lauren could hear now what Alicia had asked of her that time.

She’d told Lauren of the trouble that she’d got herself into and how only Lauren could help her. It had been right after Liam had died and Lauren had asked if that had anything to do with it all. Not at all, Alicia had said. She might have loved Alicia by Lauren was honest enough to admit that her lover had lied to her there. Of course, that had been connected. There’d been something between Liam and Alicia too.

Alicia had stood right where Lauren was now, just behind the closed door, when she’d asked of her young aide to help her. It had been a plea. Lauren hadn’t refused despite Alicia telling her of the dangers. What was it all about, why was her employer in that mess? It was something that she had done a long time ago. She was being blackmailed and the only way to escape the consequences of it all was to do as she was forced to do. The word ‘treason’ hadn’t been said. Lauren had known then that was what was being asked of her, here in this tiny space she was back in now. She’d held firm to her promise to help since then. To keep Alicia safe, Lauren did what she was asked to do.

What they did together when they were alone was to her an entirely different matter.


The prime minister was in town. She was holing a constituency meeting today. It was something done once every two weeks when Alicia came here to Worcester. Lauren had come along on this trip like she did most of them though hadn’t stayed for the time when Alicia met with locals. She was glad not to. Worcester’s residents generally liked their MP who was serving as the prime minister but that wasn’t every one of them. Certain people would have unpleasant things to say. Alicia could handle herself though to hear the sometimes said horrible things was upsetting for Lauren.

The request to go out to that house had been a welcome errand.

On her way back now to the library where the constituency surgery was being held, Lauren was doing what she had recently done out in New York: helping Alicia with that long-standing problem she had of people wanting something from her in secret. This high street had been used before for an exchange. It was one of many various locations were every week or so, Lauren would either pass to or receive from someone a SIM card or a flash drive. None of those exchanges were done in the middle of London. A security measure that was, a reason that Lauren had accepted when told by Alicia due to things having nearly gone wrong in the past when someone other than her had been helping Alicia.

That had been likely Liam, the dead guy.

Walking down the high street, Lauren was anonymous. She glanced around to look at shop fronts, noting the vast difference between this place and New York’s Fifth Avenue, and also people in sight too. No one was taking any notice of her.

Up ahead, near the fountain, Lauren saw the woman she called ‘Tatyana’. As with ‘Boris’ and ‘Dmitri’ too, she didn’t know the real name of one of the three regular contacts with whom she’d make the brush pass with. Nothing but their faces was the scope of her knowledge about them. Tatyana was here in Worcester like Alicia had said the arrangement as for her to be just as someone different had been on the streets of America’s biggest city last week.

Tatyana gave her the danger signal.

Lauren was twenty feet from her, no more. The Russian woman, the one who looked like a university student, raised her left hand to her face with the palm inwards. All five fingers were spread wide momentarily before down that hand came and the woman turned slowly away while looking at her phone.

There was a tightening in Lauren’s belly. It nearly stopped her walking. She carried on though with her head up and past the fountain she went. Tatyana was gone from sight and Lauren didn’t look at her. The forming ice ball in Lauren grew but onwards she kept on going and towards the library.

A million pairs of interested eyes might have watched her but Lauren did everything possible to carry on regardless. She was a nobody walking down a high street this afternoon and anyone watching would get nothing from her.

But there was someone watching otherwise Tatyana wouldn’t have done what she had.


“I’ve got to nip to the loo.” They were on the train station, waiting for a service to take them back to London which was running late. Lauren said that while standing next to Alicia with another staffer and a trio of police officers with the prime minister’s security team also there.

Her eyes were on Alicia when she said that and she glanced away to the side afterwards too. It was her own danger signal, one denoting that they needed to talk urgently. Unfortunately, Alicia wasn’t aware of the significance of what Lauren meant.

“Don’t worry, we’ll still be here waiting.”

“I’ll come as well,” so said the female policewoman serving with the Met.’s Royalty & Specialist Protection unit, “because this train isn’t going to show up soon.”

Lauren was trapped into doing what exactly she had said she was going to do. The policewoman went with her and also waited for her to come out. Lauren was a bit surprised at that.

“I didn’t want to lose you here.” That was the good humoured explanation given.

Believing none of that, Lauren trailed behind the policewoman as they walked back to where Alicia and the others were. Some people had crowed around, a couple and a single woman, and they wanted to take photos on their phones of the prime minister waiting like everyone else for a delayed train. Alicia happily obliged, making small talk with them too. Her accent went more local while she was here in the West Midlands and the prime minister fitted in well with those also from Worcestershire like she was. Those were her people.

Lauren hung backwards, out of sight. She looked at the police officers and then a pair of commuters standing nearby too. Any of them could have been the cause of the warning to abort the exchange which Tatyana had sent to her at the very last moment.

All of them could have been.


The train took them to London. Lauren sat beside Alicia during the ride though there was no moment for them to talk alone. Others with their party, plus nearby passengers on the packed train, were all within earshot.

Within the handbag on Lauren’s lap sat that flash drive which she should have long by now passed to Tatyana. Her hand went into her bag as she subconsciously moved to touch it.

Alicia spoke to her before then though.

“So, the house was entirely empty? There was nothing there at all.”

“Bare.” Realising where her hand was, Lauren pulled it back. “It is all nothing but as shell.”

“Oh, I thought there might have been a box or two left behind but that’s it then. The house is no longer mine.”

There was a ruefulness there. That had been the home which Alicia had shared with Oliver and where her two children were first raised. Lauren, who’d been there so many times, including that first time where Alicia drew her into her web, knew that her employer had long loved that house.

She changed subject, tilting her head towards the prime minister while they sat beside each other on the train taking them back to London.

“I wasn’t able to nip into the shop on the high street and get what I wanted on the way back either.”

Since being given that danger signal by Tatyana, the one which Lauren had at once followed by walking away, Lauren had wanted to tell Alicia that. There hadn’t been a moment where the two of them could be alone. This certainly wasn’t one either, not with everyone around. She had to tell her though and had thought of the best possible way to say so without saying so.

“That’s a shame.” Alicia brushed it off just like that. She was looking down straight afterwards at her government papers.

Lauren’s mind sought to add a further point in suitable terms, to say something that only Alicia would understand. However, there was someone looking right at her.

The Downing Street aide and the police officers from London were seated around her and the prime minister. Standing nearby, close to yet not directly in the way of other passengers, were officers from the British Transport Police. By sight, Lauren knew of all the main officers who worked close protection tasks. Alicia was friendly with many of them too. There were also others around though, those not assigned in the bodyguard fashion. They had watching eyes and Lauren was wary of them.

This Transport policewoman though glared at her. She stood next to a male officer in the carriage doorway with her eyes fixed on Lauren. They bore into her.

She knew.

The policewoman knew what was in her bag.

Lauren was known as a traitor.

Everyone else would soon know.

Down she looked, then out of the window past Alicia. In the reflection, Lauren caught that policewoman still staring over at her. She pretended to be looking outwards just like Lauren was yet that policewoman was certainly full of knowledge of what Lauren was up to and what was in her bag.

“Are you okay?”

Alicia asked that question as Lauren stood up while holding her bag.

“I’m fine.” The answer was automatic. Lauren was anything but. “I’ll be back.”

She moved down the walkway through the carriage. Lauren wanted to look backwards, to confirm if, as suspected, that policewoman was following her. However, she fought off that urge and kept her eyes front. There was a sign for the toilets and Lauren headed that way. The train jerked about a bit and she nearly took a tumble but soon enough she was there.

Only as the door opened, did she dare turn her head to look back down the carriage.

The policewoman was still there at the other end.

That didn’t mean that Lauren was safe though. She went into the loo, closing the door behind her and told herself that there could easily be someone else onto her. Tatyana hadn’t given that danger signal for no reason at all.

The window wouldn’t open. Lauren tried to get it to do so, but it wasn’t one that did. She had the flash drive in her hand, ready to throw it into the north Gloucestershire countryside. Gone for good it would be. There would be nothing for the police to find.

There was no way to open the window though.

Her eyes went to the waste bin but her mind told her that that was a bad idea. The bin could be emptied and its contents examined by those who knew what she was involved with. It wasn’t somewhere safe to dump the flash drive and Alicia had long ago extolled upon her the matter of not being careless about packages received and given.

When she sat back down beside the prime minister, the little device was no longer in her handbag. That could be searched. So could the place where it was now hidden though if a search got that far, to the intimate level, then things would really have gone to hell. It was the safest place that Lauren could think to hide it for now.

As she moved uncomfortably in her seat, Alicia asked the same question as before.

“Are you okay?”

Again, Lauren told the same lie: “I’m fine.”

As to that policewoman, she was back staring again.

She knows, so Lauren told herself, and everyone soon will too.

Her doom waited upon her when the train reached London, of that she was certain.

[Leander]

Nine – Red herrings

There had been a male Watcher walking behind the prime minister’s personal assistant in the centre of Worcester and an older woman, one almost at retirement age, had been on the train going back to London too. Neither of them had seen anything untoward with the behaviour of Worthing. They’d looked hard yet had discovered nothing to suggest that she was engaged in espionage contact with foreign cut-outs.

It had been a week that this had been going on for, Grace was reminded.

“And in that week,” Debbie told her, “the Watchers haven’t found not a thing. There’s been some grumbles, Grace.”

Grace bit her tongue rather than say what was on her mind at that point. The large MI-5 team providing round-the-clock, close-in surveillance of Lauren Worthing could moan all that they wanted. It didn’t matter. Their job was to do as they were told. Debbie was one of them though and, notwithstanding the fact that she liked her, Grace knew that the Security Service officer needed to be kept onside.

“They’ll see her doing something eventually.”

She hoped that that was true.

MacDonald had them in his office that afternoon. Grace knew that he was feeling the pressure on the same subject. MI-5 were saying that there was nothing there but his orders kept them in-play. Grace reported to him on the physical surveillance of Worthing before he moved to what else he had brought her to him to update him on. There was a first report he wanted on what Svetlana had said about the SVR set up with case officers that she’d worked for when she’d been in the UK.

On that, Grace brought him firm progress.

“We now know everything concerning both Vladimir and Nadezhda. The two controllers have been identified for when they were each in the country several years ago. We know their covers and have an outline of suspected activities.

As to the second one, based upon what we were able to be access by Langley,” (there’d been more intelligence sharing done, this time with the CIA), “we have confirmation that she’s back working at Yasenevo. The tracked her there after she spent some time last year in the States on what looks likely to have been an agent-running mission in Washington.”

“So, they sent her to D.C for a tour with the knowledge in her head about what she’d done here too. That means they put a lot of trust in her.”

MacDonald didn’t sound too impressed at the SVR’s actions there. It sounded sloppy and unprofessional.

“Something which,” added Grace, “shores up Svetlana’s story too. The doubts about her being allowed back out into the field, on assignment in another country while knowing what she did, should now be firmly dismissed when they’d done it was her former controller.”

“Arguably, yes.” He wasn’t that convinced, that was readily apparent. However, he wasn’t dismissing anything that she was saying out of hand.

To Grace though, it was a vindication of her belief in Svetlana since the start. The SVR had made an error and they here at MI-6 had benefitted from that.

“Tell me about Amsterdam then.” He wanted her to move on, to talk about more of Svetlana’s story which was being systematically checked out.

Grace now spoke about the issue of the kompromat that it was alleged the Russians had on the British Prime Minister.

“We took what Svetlana gave us and ran without it, Neil. Manningtree’s entire background was checked, in particular the years when she was aged sixteen to twenty-five. There we found something that matches up to what we’ve been told.

She was twenty and had just finished her second year at Warwick Law. Six girls from there, Manningtree included, went to Amsterdam at the end of term for what had to be riotous party by the description one of Debbie’s people coaxed out of one of the attendees.

All were interviewed by Dutch murder detectives on the second-to-last day there in Amsterdam. An American boy died. He was the same age as they were though not connected to their party and happened to be staying in the same cheap hotel as them.

That boy was the youngest son of the U.S Ambassador here in London, also on holiday over in the Netherlands. Do you remember the case?”

“Barely.” He did his usual thinking trick and ran his fingers through his hair. “It didn’t make much of a media splash, did it?”

“Nope, it didn’t. The family wanted it that way.

He died in that hotel where Manningtree and her friends were staying though. The police there had physical evidence that it was during a sexual encounter with a female. He’d been suffocated while bound to the bed with some rather complicated, time-consuming knots. They spoke to everyone, especially as many foreign young women as possible. The interview with Manningtree might as lasted as short as five minutes because they did so many.

She was never a suspect and flew home the next day. It’s never come up again, certainly not in the media.

The Dutch had some physical evidence needing further examination but not a month later, their secure storage facility for high-profile cases in Amsterdam went up in flames. Arson was suspected and there was – there still is to this day in fact – a belief there that the fire was started to destroy evidence linking an organised crime group to another deadly incident. No link has ever been seriously raised between the fire and the death of that boy.”

“I can see that,” MacDonald said, “and it makes sense from their point of view.”

Grace nodded too. In their shoes, she would likely have thought the same thing… unless they were looking at the big picture that she was.

She continued onwards: “Not a year later, Dutch Intelligence, their A.I.V.D., saw to it that a Russian diplomat was expelled. His actions were unbecoming of his diplomatic status. They knew this character, Pishvanov, was a spy but didn’t say so publicly for diplomatic reasons at the time. Our own files on that incident are limited but we’ve been in contact with those working for S.I.S in the Netherlands at the time.

That Russian was certainly a spy as the Dutch claimed and his beat was Amsterdam. He was suspected of trawling through the tourist parts of the city looking for Westerners from America, Britain, France and such like – the larger, important countries – who misbehaved drastically while on holiday. Those Pishvanov sought out were the well-connected foreigners, not the mindless drunks on stag dos or university girls at the end of term getting sloshed.

He would gather compromising material before that would be sent onto Moscow for later use when recruitment using kompromat for blackmail would be done.

No proof is available that Pishvanov was there at that particular time of the boy’s death. We have nothing to say that he gathered intelligence for later use on Manningtree, nor that she had anything to do with the death of the ambassador’s son.

Yet, that boy was, how shall we say, free spirited? He would have been a likely target for a spy to track so see what might come up.

Should she have killed him, as Svetlana’s story points to, then Manningtree could easily have been approached years later down the line when she first went into politics.

The S.V.R could even have pushed her entry. Her early career is a bit strange as a publican’s daughter from Kidderminster who went from law student to journalism, then to politics.”

MacDonald gave a reply once she was finished.

“That’s a lot of conjecture, a lot of assumptions, Grace. Still, I’ll concede that it is a plausible scenario. If it went to court, it would be ripped to shreds. That’s not our task though. Ours is to find enough circumstantial evidence to support the one thing we have to prove: that despite what we suspect about the past, Manningtree is engaged in working against this country on behalf of Russia now.

How goes that?”


Grace told him about the useless information gleamed from phone interceptions done remotely. The direct use of their phones by Manningtree and Worthing both, plus what the Hot Mic application had turned up too, came to a big fat nothing. Edward and Taylor, the two team members responsible for collating all that was gathered, had found nothing of any significance at all. There had been political gossip and everyday chit-chat, yet that bore no relation to the search for evidence of espionage.

Siobhan Rice, daughter of Foreign Secretary Barton, friend to Worthing and employee of Defence Intelligence, remained a red herring as far as the search went. There was nothing there with regards to her. The prime minister’s aide hadn’t had any contact with her since that restaurant meal.

On the matter of the physical surveillance attached to Worthing’s daily activities, Grace reported to MacDonald much of what had been said when she’d been speaking with MI-5 employee Debbie. The Watchers assigned to the ‘Two Three Seven Zero’ task were getting annoyed. They were all over Worthing and had absolutely nothing in return. She did nothing like someone engaged in espionage would do. It wasn’t a case of them not catching her, Grace explained to MacDonald, but those Watchers believing that she wasn’t doing anything for their presence to be justified where they might have had near-misses.

MacDonald reminded her that MI-6 was picking up the tab for the Watchers’ activities yet her reply was that those were professionals who weren’t being challenged. More than that, over at Thames House there were senior people anxious to pull the Watchers. Other objectives weren’t being undertaken because there was such a large team deployed to cover Worthing on a constant basis. Confirmed espionage and counter-terrorism duties were suffering due to the manpower drain when it came to those on Two Three Seven Zero duties.

“I think that it is time to switch to Hewitt. They might have more luck there.”

Manningtree’s chief policy adviser was whom Grace had believed from the start was far more likely than Worthing to be involved as a cut-out with the Russian SVR. The absolute lack of anything with the first suspect after more than a week made her hope that her boss would be amenable to her suggestion of the switch. Worthing was another red herring, so she believed.

That wasn’t how it was to be though.

In that Liverpudlian accent of his, one which grinded her gears the wrong way when he was telling Grace anything that she didn’t want to hear, his reply was in the negative.

“We’re not doing that. We stay with Worthing because she remains the most likely candidate.”

There was nothing to add to that. His no was a firm no. MacDonald gave her no wiggle room to counter it.

Nothing was said for a few moments. MacDonald looked up at her after a checking something on his computer.

“You missed the Heathrow issue, didn’t you?”

“I guess.” Grace searched her mind for anything linking Worthing to London’s biggest airport. There wasn’t anything. “What happened?”

“Border Force officers,” he explained, “turned a way a foreign national this morning. He was travelling on a Latvian passport and that was genuine. There was nothing in their systems saying that he wasn’t who he thought he was.

Five had someone on station there though and she requested that they deny him entry into the country. The supposed Latvian was all wrong, apparently: that’s what they’re saying at Thames House. He didn’t come across as neither a tourist nor businessman but might as well have had the word ‘Hitman’ stamped on his forehead.

I’m sure there will be a fuller report, with a better, legally justifiable excuse than that but for now, they made him persona non grata and turned him back at immigration control. Border Force put him on a flight back to Latvia.”

“A Russian from Latvia. That’s something that Svetlana told us to be concerned about, isn’t it?”

Grace could recall the Russian defector talking about the use of Latvian passports by the SVR. There were many Russian-speakers in that Baltic country that was inside the EU’s free travel area and so it wasn’t too difficult for a Russian national to pretend to be an ethnic Russian from Latvia. The SVR too had a way of getting no-questions-asked passports too from that country.

“Yeah, though that wasn’t something that I believe the officer on-site was aware of. He just struck her as wrong though and she exercised judgement. Without any fuss he accepted it all too, so the report says.

An innocent traveller would have kicked up a stink.”

“Could he have been coming here gunning for Svetlana? We know they went through all of Spain looking.”

Concern spread throughout Grace at that thought.

“It’s possible that by now they know we have her and might be searching here.” MacDonald looked just as worried. “We’re going to be moving her tonight. Five have another safe house and this one is far from where she is now. The location is being kept close-hold, far more than the current site is. They haven’t even told us where that is, though we’ll send our Terri–Ann with her because Svetlana does belong to us.”

“If we need to talk to her again, how do we do that?”

Grace had been thinking yesterday that maybe another interview with Svetlana was necessary. There might be something in her memory that could be jogged to help them.

“Should that need arise, then we’ll arrange a meeting. Five will stick her someone damn safe though and right out in the middle of nowhere. We might end up doing a remote interview in that case, so there would remain the fewest possible people in the know.”

That was understandable. Grace didn’t take offense at the idea that not even she, whom Svetlana had first run to, couldn’t know where the defector was. Keeping her alive when the Russians might be about to throw everything at killing her was more important than any wounded feelings. There would be other hitmen not detected entering the UK, ones who could follow her.

She ran with that.

“Svetlana knew who I was down in Gibraltar. That could be somewhere in S.V.R files. I won’t be there on The Rock if they come looking for me and they could search for me here, aiming to track Svetlana that way.”

“It’s what I’d do, yes.”

MacDonald’s agreement with her made Grace realise she was glad to have only visited Svetlana in Oxfordshire a couple of times, none of those recently too. Wherever MI-5 took her, Grace hoped that was far, far away.

“So,” she returned to what they were talking about before, “the Watchers stay on Worthing?”

“That they do.”

MI-5’s huge physical surveillance effort directed against the prime minister’s personal assistant would continue in spite of other requirements upon the varied Watchers.

[jemhouston]

Ax is falling (I hope).

[pengolod_sc]

Grace didn’t take offense at the idea that not even she, whom Svetlana had first run to, wouldn’t know where the defector was.

There's a double negative there, so the meaning of the sentence is turned on its head.

[Leander]

Grace didn’t take offense at the idea that not even she, whom Svetlana had first run to, wouldn’t know where the defector was.

There's a double negative there, so the meaning of the sentence is turned on its head.

Sounds a lot like most of my life. It should have been 'could'. Fixed. Thank you.

Ax is falling (I hope).

Alas, something terrible is about to happen to redirect the attention of so many elsewhere.

[Leander]

Ten – Manchester

When he got rid of Manningtree and assumed her role as prime minister, Barton was aware that at that point his foreign travel would be cut. While foreign secretary, he was on the move constantly with almost weekly overseas trips. There would be still be those when he reached Downing Street though nowhere near as many. It would be a sacrifice but one he would bare when he took the top job from someone who had stolen it from him.

He was in Paris this evening. Barton was at the Quai d’Orsay, the French Foreign Ministry. His host, his opposite number serving in the French government, was giving him a dinner at the ministry. The two of them got on well, no less because she was pleasing on the eye. When inviting him to eat at the ministry rather than having him go back to the embassy, Barton had told her that he couldn’t imagine turning down such an invitation from a ‘beautiful lady’.

It was the type of comment that had gotten him in trouble at home. His host hadn’t minded at all.

The dinner wasn’t formal yet it still was quite something. Barton enjoyed his food and the company too. They talked international affairs. The situation in Pakistan with the civil conflict there stemming from a government crisis was discussed. Afterwards, the foreign minister expressed – in diplomatic terms – her government’s disgust at the recent Anglo-American move to release Russia from its several years of isolation. He had no choice but to defend his government’s position on that yet Barton made sure that she understood he only did so because he had to. He had been dropping hints all day at his unease at it all.

If only his country could do as France and Germany were doing in telling Moscow where to stick their friendly diplomatic charade under their new president…


An aide entered the dining room, one of his from the FCO who’d come along on the Paris trip. The interruption of his friendly dinner, right when his host was laughing at one of his jokes, caused Barton to turn around with a scowl and an impatient demand.

“What is it, Dean?”

The young man came right over to the table and crouched down beside him.

“Sir, there’s been a terrorist attack back home. Several blasts and possibly shootings too. Manchester is the target and it’s a mass casualty event. The P.M’s calling the Cabinet Crisis Group together.”

“Islamists?”

It wasn’t Barton who asked that. His mouth fell open to say something but nothing came out. Instead, it was his host, whose English was excellent, far better than Barton’s French anyway, who asked the question.

“Yes, Ma’am.” The aide briefly answered her before turning back to Barton. “We should go over to the Embassy. There’s a secure link already waiting.”

Nodding, but still unable to say anything for the moment, Barton stood up. His aide had come in with his coat and handed it to him.

“Manchester is your city,” the French foreign minister was standing too, “isn’t it, Robert?”

“It is, Brigitte.” Finally, he could say something.

While his parliamentary constituency was in Cheshire, Manchester was his home city. Barton had an emotional attachment to that place. It was something that was often mocked by critics. That mattered nought to him though.

She touched his hand. “I’m sorry.”

They were in the official car taking them to the embassy straight afterwards. Barton travelled with his aide and a Met. Police officer. There was a French police escort too, one which allowed a race through the Parisian traffic.

The foreign secretary might just have shed a silent tear during that trip, worrying about his city after what he briefly heard had just happened there.


“I’m here. Tell me the worst.”

Once at the embassy, Barton was rushed into the communications room. There was a remote video conference feed connecting him directly to Whitehall. Key members of the Cabinet were gathered on the other end though, like he was, the defence secretary was also calling in from elsewhere. In the room which the screen allowed him to see fully was the prime minister, deputy PM, home secretary, transport secretary, justice secretary, health secretary and key officials as well.

“Robert,” the home secretary, an opponent of his in Cabinet spoke to him, “we are still getting exact confirmation and trying to ascertain the facts. There are reports of four, five, six, even as many as eight incidents. All occurred near simultaneously about an hour & ten minutes ago now in the City Centre, and outside too.

Greater Manchester Police armed officers shot a suspected bomber at the airport. He’s dead at Terminal Two and the Army has a bomb disposal team already there. There’s been no explosion but quite the upheaval with an evacuation and diverted flights. No other shots were fired apart from by the armed officers and that is of spite some panicked reports to the contrary.

We have confirmed explosions taking place at both Piccadilly and Victoria train stations. It looks like a lone suicide bomber at each, detonating devices in the ticket halls of the two stations. Casualties are significant: rush hour was just starting and the explosion sites appear to have been within the crowds of commuters.

There’s a report out in the media already of a bombing or a shooting in the Arndale shopping centre. That is false and we’re trying to shut down that misinformation. Some panic erupted in what we believe to be the public food court, up away from the shops themselves but G.M.P have people there confirming that no attack took place. There are injuries from a crush of people and a lot of bedlam occurred yet the source of that is still unknown. Regardless, no attack took place there.

Out at the Trafford Centre, that shopping centre has certainly been the scene of another explosion though. Over on the western side, down on the ground level either inside or outside of a shop there, is where the bomb went off. Whether it was a device left or a suicide bomber like has been seen at the train stations is an unknown. There’s a lot of injuries there and we have reports of confirmed casualties. Separately, two people were hit by a car outside of the indoor shopping centre. Conflicting reports say they either ran into traffic in panic or were deliberately mowed down by a car. G.M.P are saying they believe that it wasn’t part of the attack and those people were in the road in panic yet that all needs confirming. The whole situation there is a mess and there’s been trouble getting ambulances through too.

We’re looking at a far worse situation not just in St. Peter’s Square where the emergency services first responded but also around the corner, on the viaduct behind the G-MEX Centre as well. The sequence of events is still not confirmed. What we do know is that one tram pulled into square, moving eastbound in a damaged state with casualties aboard from a bomb blast. The response was directed there at first with that tram. The bomb wasn’t on that one though. It appears it went off on a second tram, one going westbound when the two of them passed by one another outside of the Deansgate-Castlefield station. The first tram driver brought his vehicle down into St. Peter’s and evacuated passengers there. The second driver still has had no contact with anyone. The emergency services’ response to that is only just getting started after an awful delay because all attention was on the first tram and the second one unknown about. Again, whether it was a device left on the tram or a bomber himself, we cannot be sure. The target might have been the tram or somewhere else.

That second tram is on fire up there on the viaduct. One report we have says that several passengers might have been blasted clear, even into the Rochdale Canal below.

The City Council Building incident is again a false report due to overreaction on the ground there. The same can be said about some panic seen in Piccadilly Gardens among pedestrians there, and, of course, over at the Arndale too.”

Briefed as he was though the reports of different locations, when each one was mentioned, Barton had pictured them all. All of those places, even where it was said that there hadn’t been attack but false reports, would be full of people at this time of day.

Some evil people had set out to kill them.

Barton didn’t say anything afterwards. He watched and listened to the continuing briefing ongoing. Manchester’s chief constable and mayor both were on the line (voice only) from the UK’s second city. They were hurried and neither was in the best of states. Confirmation came that all off-duty police officers, medical personnel and firefighters across the Greater Manchester area were being called-in. The police chief wanted further military support though not troops on the streets: if was bomb disposal teams (for clean-up & checking discarded packages) and medical teams that he wanted to see deployed. The mayor was someone who was quite the political opponent of the government. Barton and he had been many times at odds in the past too. None of that partisanship was in him when he spoke of his need for government assistance at such a time though nor was any shown when, at the prime minister’s direction, it was granted. He spoke too of how the transport system was being shut down and a lot of people were going to be stuck in Manchester. His office was calling hotels and asking them to open their rooms for the night as well as speaking with chain fast food restaurants to see them provide free meals to stranded people as well.

With Barton listening rather being directly involved, the Cabinet discussed the security situation. The nationwide heightened alert protocols, especially with those concerning London, had already kicked in. The Met. were deploying extra officers, heading into transport interchanges already to provide a visible presence alongside a mass of armed officers being put on full alert. News reports coming out of Manchester, especially the ones putting out misinformation, were a subject that Manningtree made a point of instructing to be dealt with. Cabinet approval for addressing that was complete. The culture secretary, whose role had a national media brief, wasn’t in the meeting as a member of the Crisis Group. That oversight was pointed out by the transport secretary and he was quickly gotten on the phone.

Sort that mess out, so Manningtree told him.

Barton had a long-standing contempt for her. It went back to long before she swiped the premiership from under his nose. Nonetheless, in a crisis like this, she was quite something to observe. He had to silently admit he was impressed. Most of his thoughts though were still with his home city.


The director general of MI-5 arrived late to the meeting. Barton remotely watched her arrive, quite some time after he’d heard Manningtree demand of the home secretary that the head of the Security Service should be with them rather than over at Thames House. A subordinate of hers was already there and that was the serious young man – quite the high flyer Barton knew – who headed up the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT). That was an organisation with a bureaucratic focus rather than running intelligence missions like MI-5 though when he’d spoken about details of the attack, giving information to the Cabinet as it arrived in confusing form, he'd been doing a good job.

Now he was being replaced as lead briefer though.

MI-5’s head began talking about what her organisation knew so far. There wasn’t much at this early stage, she conceded. Initial focus was on tracking down the identities of the bombers and where they had gotten their explosives from. There would be others involved too: those who helped them and someone who would have certainly given them instructions and cohesion. The five bombers didn’t wake up this morning and decide to suddenly and simultaneously blow up key parts of Manchester all on their own.

The justice secretary started asking about whether this was Pakistani-related considering the support of the UK Government for the elected government there facing off against a surge by armed insurgents in that nation. Manningtree cut him off though, turning on MI-5’s director general.

Barton watched with unease at the exchange between Manningtree and Beth Smith.

“It is the job of the Security Service to make sure that attacks like this don’t happen. We – this government and the last one too – has given you everything that your organisation has long asked for to address the threat. This series of attacks have come out of the blue, so you say.

But they shouldn’t have, Beth. Tell me, why that is the case? Tell me how you have failed.”

Ouch.

All eyes there in that secure briefing room located below the Cabinet Office were on the civil servant and professional spook heading up MI-5.

She defended her organisation’s activities in tracking terrorist threats and trying to deal with them. While not saying that this attack had something to do with what was happening in Pakistan, she did mention what the prime minister’s colleague had in saying that there was a chance that it might have been related. There were Britons of Pakistani heritage in the UK who were of mind to lash out against the country supporting what so many saw as an illegitimate, illegal regime in Islamabad.

“That isn’t an excuse which I am willing to listen to.” Manningtree was having none of that. Her voice was stern and unforgiving. There was silence elsewhere within the Crisis Group as she raged at MI-5’s head. “Where has been the mass of surveillance recently been directed away towards? Tristram here,” (she referenced the head of the OSCT), “told us before you got here that the people you call ‘the Watchers’, dozens of them in fact, have for the past week or two been on another task. Why were they not all over terrorism suspects?”

Barton realised that he’d missed that being said to the Crisis Group: it must have happened before he came on the line from here in Paris.

He knew exactly where a good portion of MI-5’s surveillance effort had recently been directed. In that room there back in London, no one else, not even the home secretary, knew. Tristram didn’t appear to but, the most certainly director general did indeed.

There was no expectation in Barton that she would say exactly what they’d been working on. Thankfully, he was correct in that. She spoke of an important espionage investigation, once which was considered by Thames House to be of vital importance.

The deputy prime minister, an implacable political enemy of Barton’s, maybe more so than Manningtree was, coughed and seemed about to demand a more detailed answer. Barton was ready to jump in, to stop that as best as he could. The prime minister spoke up first though.

“Whatever that is, there’re to drop it. Do you understand?” She was firm and her demand wasn’t one that gave any leeway. “I want them all over every terrorist suspect. I want leads followed up and assistance to the police given so that targeted raids can be made against suspects. Pull them away from whatever spy they are chasing and have them taking on this terrorist threat we are facing.”

MI-5’s head didn’t object.

Barton knew her well, that woman who could be beaten down easy. She’d been with him the only the other day when he’d met with her at the Foreign Office. Unbeknown to MI-6, he was getting reports on the investigation into Manningtree and her aide from her separately because she would do as he wanted due to a situation he had her in.

Never a man to put all of his eggs in one basket was the foreign secretary.


More news came in from Manchester soon enough with first numbers on casualties. The Crisis Group was told that those were preliminary.

“It’s going to be higher than that.”

Hearing that there were only eight confirmed dead – bombers not included – after half a dozen separate explosions at crowded parts of his home city at such a busy time of day, Barton didn’t fool himself into thinking that the numbers would be in the single digits. He expressed that to those back in London.

“I’m afraid you’re going to be unfortunately correct there, Robert.” Manningtree spoke to him in reply. “There’s going to be a lot of sorrowful families tonight and tomorrow.”

From the woman who had taken what was his, rubbing his nose in it when she had done so, there was plentiful compassion in her being expressed. Manningtree was someone who he was told was working for a hostile foreign government against his nation as well. His hatred for her was something that he was aware enough to realise wasn’t healthy. Nonetheless, there she was saying the right things. While Manningtree had ripped into the head of MI-5, everything else she’d done during this meeting which he was a distant part of had been undertaken in the correct manner.

That actually made his disgust for Manningtree even greater.

Putting that aside for the moment, Barton requested that she allow him to do something that he’d been thinking of when, before they’d been briefed on early casualty numbers from Manchester, there had been mention made to the Crisis Group of word coming from Washington expressing sincere condolences & offering any assistance.

“Alicia,” he tried his best to be friendly, “I want to make a statement here from Paris. Brigitte and I were talking about what happened last year in Strasbourg when I arrived here. I believe she would be amenable to making a joint statement, one of Anglo-French unity, against international Islamist terror.

Of course, I’d wait until you had made your own statement from Downing Street… that’s assuming you intend to?”

The previous December, the French border city of Strasbourg, across the Rhine from Germany, had been struck by a wave of suicide bombers in what had been copied today in Manchester. France had been shaken by that attack. The UK was then led by Manningtree’s predecessor with Barton in the same government post he was in now. He’d been central to expressing unity against terrorism between the two nations then, an act done with prime ministerial direction.

“No, don’t do that.”

The negative reply came in the same manner as she had done when tearing into MI-5 head. The compassion in her voice which had been there was gone in an instant. It was the usual Manningtree on show again.

Barton was about to give a reply to that, one urging her to reconsider. He just needed a moment to frame it right due to her sudden change in temperament. However, the conversation there in London had moved on. The home secretary was speaking with the transport secretary about air & rail diversions in the Greater Manchester area. The prime minister interjected herself into that conversation, turning away from the screen view direct to her foreign secretary.

He muted the sound. Then he uttered a curse word, one aimed solely at Manningtree. There were others in the room with him on this end and he regretted their presence. It was said though and there was no taking it back. Barton would regret the error but he had other things on his mind.


Before the night was out, Barton did what he’d been forbidden by his prime minister to do.

Giving the impression that his prime minister was okay with it all, not lying but not telling the truth either, he had the embassy people set up a joint appearance for the media with his French opposite number.

She came over to the embassy.

“Thank you, Mademoiselle.” They were about to get started but Barton had those quiet words for the French foreign minister.

“Together, Robert, we are against them.”

The cameras were rolling and Barton gave a short speech, one followed by comments made from the Frenchwoman beside him. She had her president’s approval for doing what she did but he didn’t have his prime minister’s.

She can get stuffed, so he told himself.

His phone was ringing soon after the end of the media event where the two of them had expressed solitary against terrorism and told the world of the immense ties between the UK and France when faced with such outrages as they had been. Barton let it ring. He’d speak to Manningtree soon enough yet he made her wait.

She’d been gone soon anyway and he’d have her job. That was once MI-5 got back all over her aide though, something that he reminded himself not to forget because that was not a thing that could ignored. He’d have to figure out how to make sure that happened considering what the prime minister had gone and done with the Watchers.

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

{ Shudder... }

[jemhouston]

Also make sure if he gets the top job, this can't happen to him.

[Jotun]

Jeez, the arsehole quotient in the Brit government is somewhere close to 100%. Both Barton and the PM make me want to rip their arms off and beat them do death with them. Good writing.

[Leander]

{ Shudder... }

It was bad. The idea came from a real life GMP-stopped plot to to something similar too.

Also make sure if he gets the top job, this can't happen to him.

If he gets the top job, the country's in trouble.

Jeez, the arsehole quotient in the Brit government is somewhere close to 100%. Both Barton and the PM make me want to rip their arms off and beat them do death with them. Good writing.

Neither of them are good people. i wanted to have those fighting it out for the PM role to be completely unlikeable too.
Thank you.

[Leander]

Eleven – Hot Mic

“Grace, listen to this will you and tell me what you think?”

Debbie handed over a tablet device with earphones. She was the only MI-5 case officer left with the joint team. All of them, Edward (‘Eddie the Analyst’) included, had been order to emergency counter-terrorism tasks less another Manchester-style attack occur elsewhere in the country. There was a reason why Debbie was on the outs with the Security Service and hadn’t been called back, though whatever that was, Grace wasn’t privy to such a thing.

She took from her fellow spook what was handed over and set about listening.

“I cannot hear anything properly.”

There were sounds, maybe some voices muffled in the background, but nothing really. Grace took out the earphones.

“We’ve had it cleaned up significantly. Press play again.”

Doing as instructed, Grace listened to the recording after the technicians had been at work with it to bring about clarity to recorded voices. It was still a struggle but she was able to make out both Manningtree and Worthing. The screen had said that it was a Hot Mic lift from the latter’s phone and so Grace was able to understand what the prime minister and her personal assistant were saying.


Manningtree: “Don’t worry about it. Anyone can watch but no one will see a thing. There isn’t anyone watching you anymore anyway, I’ve seen to that. Lauren, just keep your phone away from you when you do it today: those things have no secrets.”

Worthing: “If they find out though… If they catch me…”

Manningtree: “They won’t because there is nothing for them to see. Just be careful, don’t let your guard down. You know what you’re doing.”

Worthing: “I’m trying, I’m really trying. Getting warned off, that danger signal before, really scared me.”

Manningtree: “Remember, what you are doing is for me. Be careful and everything will turn out okay.”

Worthing: “I’ll do it today, but only because you want me to.”


Twice Grace listened to the clearer recording before she once more removed the earphones.

“The conversation,” Debbie told her, “was recorded earlier this morning at R.A.F Northolt before their flight to Manchester. They were standing outside of the P.M’s car with both of their personal phones still inside the vehicle.

It’s likely that the door was open though otherwise we’d never had heard what they had to say, not with all of the wind and also the airfield noises too.”

Grace put the tablet down on Debbie’s desk. For a moment she looked around the open-plan workspace where there were empty seats, ones vacated since what had happened yesterday. MI-6 personnel were still at work and MacDonald had told her that more were being brought in, yet those people from MI-5 would be missed. Taylor, with them since the beginning and a long-term Russian expert, was holding the fort for now.

“If she’d hadn’t taken all of those people from us, we would have had this earlier.”

“So, you picked up on that then?”

“Oh, I did.” Grace confirmed that with a firm nod of her head. “She made sure that she got rid of those watching and she tells Worthing that. That means that they both knew that they were being watched and had a conversation about it – at least one anyway – that we didn’t manage to hear. They’re smart enough to realise the danger that their phones pose.

We got it, they’re guilty!”

For a moment, Grace forgot herself. She gave one of those little whistles, the ones that unnerved those who heard them, and grinned ear-to-ear. There was excitement in her. Proof was available that all suspicions about the prime minister were correct: she was having her aide engaging in espionage on her behalf.

Debbie brought her back down to Earth.

“There’s nothing there though, Grace. Yes, yes, I know that the two of us know this is proof, and MacDonald would likely agree too, but in that conversation, neither doesn’t say anything incriminating directly. Our assumptions are correct but it still is nowhere near enough.”

For a moment, an objection rose in Grace. It was short-lived though. Debbie was perfectly correct. That overheard conversation made the two of them guilty as hell but it still wasn’t enough.

A couple of things occurred to Grace as she experienced that come down.

“They’re having a meeting today with Worthing doing what could be an exchange with a Russian. We have no one watching her now.

And, we also missed a near meeting, something that was called off. Where? When?”

Debbie didn’t know but she had another issue for Grace to consider too.

“They knew we were all over them.” She lowered her voice, almost whispering now. “That means we have a leak.”

*

Lauren had made London her adopted city when she was eighteen. The capital was, in her considered opinion, the only real city in Britain. Other large urban areas like Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool & Manchester might claim to be cities, yet Lauren knew that the middle of them could be crossed on foot in about half an hour. Try doing that with London! Where she had moved to in her teenage years from her family home in rural Cambridgeshire was a real city.

In places such as those pretending to be what they weren’t, there was long what she found irritating in the form of an artificial love for them expressed throughout. Residents were told that they should be proud of those fake cities, that those places were special. It was galling to her. She’d explained it to others beforehand though, while there were nods and smiles, no one ever seemed to understand what she meant. Of them all, Manchester was the worst.

Like Liverpool before it, the city seemed to wallow in victimhood too.

Today, Lauren was in Manchester as part of the prime minister’s party which had this morning flown up from London. The day before had seen five simultaneous suicide bombings take place with – according to the latest figures – eighty-three people killed. So much of the city, its transport links especially, remained shut down. Manchester Airport had taken Alicia’s RAF plane as the only exception to an otherwise closed key transport facility. The two biggest train stations were shut and the trams weren’t running. There were queues on the roads with congestion added to by further shutdowns of major arteries for security reasons.

Regardless, the middle of Manchester was packed with people. Police officers in great numbers were all about though Lauren was no longer concerned by their presence as she had been a few days past when on that terrifying train ride back from Worcester. Crowds of people had come into the city to hear a public address being given by Mayor Reid and alongside their prime minister.

The two of them, political opponents, were soon due to speak though, at her employer’s direction, Lauren had slipped away.

She was over in St. Ann’s Square, a couple of streets away and where, while there were police officers, not so many of them.

‘Boris’ was there too.

Like they’d done many times before, they made an exchange.

It was a hurried brush pass with each of them momentarily touching the hand of the other as they walked in opposite directions. Lauren gave to the Russian what she had failed to give to ‘Tatyana’ in Worcester.

Just as quick as could be imagined, it was over. Boris went on his way and Lauren took a stroll through the rain – it always rained in Manchester – down to that larger public square where the crowds were thick. The terrors of Worcester, and that train ride afterwards too, were behind her. Lauren remembered Alicia’s words that no one was watching them anymore.

Using her Downing Street security pass, Lauren avoided having to go through the throng of people in Albert Square and was soon back among the PM’s staff at the rear of the overnight-erected platform stage. Reid was speaking, wallowing in the grief that Manchurians felt. Lauren refused to listen to the man. Her focus was on Alicia as she stood up there too, waiting for her turn to speak. On the flight up, when going over what she’d say with her chief speechwriter, the prime minister had been very keen to deliver those prepared remarks.

Lauren could only see her from behind and below. She wanted to be up there beside her, giving encouragement even when it would be unnecessary, yet her place was down here and out of sight.

“Two minutes and she’s on.”

Andrew Thorn retained his deputy chief-of-staff role. Lauren didn’t know how he’d wrangled that. He was next to her and made that comment.

“Yes.” A one-word answer was given in reply to, hopefully, shut him up.

It didn’t work.

“The liberal media will go ape once they hear what she has to say. This crowd will lap it up too, so too most of the country. I just cannot wait to see the reaction that it’s going to get.”

This time, Lauren kept silent. Andrew stood there waiting for her to say something but, when she didn’t, he finally buggered off.

He was perfectly correct in what he was saying though.

Reid had spoken of reflection on the loss and for the city’s people to come together. Alicia went down a different route. She expressed anger and the desire for vengeance against those responsible for what had happened the day before. The manner in which she spoke, with seemingly real passion that contained anger and empathy both, connected with the people gathered before her. Lauren had seen it earlier in the day when the prime minister had been at the hospital and at one of the train stations too. What few public remarks she had said there had connected with people listening.

On this bigger stage, upstaging Reid in his own political fiefdom, there was a far greater acceptance of what she had to say.

What the people wanted their national leader to say, Alicia gave them that. The reaction of the crowd which her personal assistant was able to see was one that was fully supportive of that.

There was applause afterwards. It wasn’t the polite kind, the thing to be done for just anyone. Instead, it was different. It was applause truly meant. These people turned their previous apathy, opposition even, to Alicia around in an instant. She was one of them and all else from the past was suddenly forgotten. Lauren had seen it done before though each time it was always something special to see.

Alicia had a gift and that gift was winning people over.

Rather than come back down off the stage to the rear, Lauren watched as Alicia approached the edges of the crowd. Several police officers looked like they were having a fit at their prime minister’s behaviour but they didn’t stop her. There was a metal barrier between the Manchurians and their prime minister. Arms were reached across it to touch Alicia and, while she couldn’t hear it, kind words came back. Alicia worked that crowd some more, all in the full view of the media. Cameras recorded her talking to people and giving a couple a hug too. There was no rush for Alicia to get away from it all.

It must have been ten minutes before she finally came back to where Lauren and the others were.

Alicia put her mouth to Lauren’s ear.

“Did the drop go okay?”

She’d just been in among a crowd mourning the previous day’s terrorist tragedy. Now Alicia was checking that the act of treason that she’d just have Lauren commit for her had gone off with no problems.

“Yes!” Lauren gave her the thumbs up too as she answered that query, something that came with an almost shout due to the noise still coming from the crowd that Alicia had so thoroughly worked to her own advantage.

“That went well.” Alicia beamed ear to ear. She was proud of herself.

Lauren was proud of her too.

“You did amazing!”

“Andrew,” the prime minister was now in front of that awful man, “let’s go see that tram.”

The party departed from Albert Square and moved off to what would be a different kind of appearance put in to see the burnt-out remains of that tram behind the G-MEX.

Alicia turned back to her as they departed.

“Stick close to me, Lauren.”

*

“She’s just so terribly awful, isn’t she?”

“Alicia is certainly something, Robert; something indeed.”

“You just cannot say things like that,” Barton continued talking with his minister of state, Christopher Dale, the first of those whom he’d take into his confidence about Manningtree’s treason, “not in the modern age. Vengeance isn’t what the country wants, it isn’t what people should be promised either. Compassion and a vow to combat the root causes of terrorism is what being a prime minister is all about.

This here though, this here…”

He didn’t finish his point there. Instead, he stood alongside his junior colleague watching footage from Manchester where the prime minister continued her tour de force. The BBC was covering it live, all other programming suspended as Manningtree was now outside the shell that was the remains of that second tram. It was the one on which the bomb had been on and almost thirty lives had been taken when a suicidal religious maniac blew himself and commuters to pieces. There were transport workers and police officers with her, all standing solemn before that destroyed vehicle.

The rain had stopped and there was silence there too with the news reporter in her London studio saying nothing.

Barton’s eyes moved to those with the prime minister. Reid was there and so too was the home secretary. Behind the three of them there were some other figures, keeping a respectful distance. Among them was Lauren Worthing: the woman whom the Chief of SIS had told him was her cut-out for treason.

“That’s the girl I was telling you about, Chris. The one in the blue coat with long hair.”

“The one who Alicia has been jumping into bed with?”

“The one who helps her spy and act against this country.”

“Damn. She’s quite pretty to look at.”

Irritated by his colleague’s expressed desire, which he regardless, shared Barton concentrated on the screen. He was in an anteroom within the FCO Building on Downing Street having been here since an early morning meeting at Downing Street with Manningtree. He’d got off the plane from a flight back from Paris and gone straight into see the prime minister at her demand. She’d berated him for defying him yet, as he’d expected, done nothing to get rid of him.

She couldn’t, he had too many Cabinet allies.

Her words had meant nothing to him. Perhaps she had aimed to humiliate him into stepping down or to force to accept her leadership. Barton had had worse meetings with Manningtree than that and knew full well that she was powerless to act to remove him.

“They’re leaving.”

“I’m still watching, Chris.” His eyes were still fixed to the screen as Manningtree and those with her left that viaduct behind the G-MEX.

“Sorry, I thought you’d drifted off.”

“No, no. I was just thinking about how we really need to get of this woman and have proper, grown up leadership over in Downing Street. This traitor needs to be gone soon.”

Chris touched his arm as he stood up. “Yes, Robert, I agree that that needs to happen with urgency.”


His colleague left the room while Barton stayed where he was. Carrying on watching the coverage from Manchester with rage and jealousy both in him, plus his minds full of plots, he had no idea that Chris went straight to his own office and placed a phone call to someone who used to serve as his own aide before taking a new job the other month also in Whitehall.

“Andy, it’s Chris.” So the phone call began.

“Hi.”

“Listen, Bob isn’t letting this silliness go. He’s convinced of it all and is soon going to start making a real fuss about it. How’s he’s kept those spooks convinced too, I don’t know, but this madness has to stop at some point soon.”

“Don’t worry, Alicia will sort it all out in good time. She’s knows your value in keeping an eye on him too.”

[jemhouston]

Chris is at best a twit. Worse case, he makes a twit look smart.

[Leander]

Chris is at best a twit. Worse case, he makes a twit look smart.

Yep, he's been fooled. Another non-believer in something too many still think is too fanciful to be true.

[Leander]

Twelve – Good Bohemian Style

With Debbie in tow, Grace flew to Prague.

The two spooks went to the Czech capital to see Pishvanov, the alleged former Russian spy who it was suspected had gained that kompromat on their country’s current prime minister twenty plus years beforehand.

Greg Harrison, an old colleague of Grace’s, met them at the airport and saw that they cleared customs without any fuss. He was the deputy station head in Prague and had been the one to identify and then bring in Pishvanov at the direction of those back home in London.

When they were out of the airport and heading towards the safe house where that Russian was, he turned to Grace sitting in the rear of the car he was driving.

“How many people are in the know?”

“Too many, Greg, far too many.”

“The thing with secrets is that once someone knows one, they just have to tell someone else.”

Nodding in acknowledgement of what her fellow SIS spook was saying, Grace took a moment before adding to that. She wanted to make sure that she was tactful.

“With the greatest of respect, if it had been up to me, I’d have made sure that you were kept out of the loop as well. Who else in Prague knows of all of this?”

The expected good humour was in Harrison. He took it on the chin with a laugh before turning back again to look around at her.

“My station head, Rebecca, is the only one. She understands to keep it close-hold. Sometimes, I think that she, you and I are the only three people in S.I.S to understand the value of just shutting up and keeping things to yourself!”

“Please,” Debbie spoke up for the first time, “can you just watch the road!”

“Are you okay there, Five girl? You’re as quiet as a church-mouse.”

This time, Harrison didn’t turn around.

Grace answered for her. “Debbie’s good people. She’s just had an uncomfortable flight out here. Advice for you, Greg: don’t fly Budget Air.”

“A bad flight indeed.”

Debbie had that to say and nothing more. As he talked to Grace, Harrison kept his eyes on the road so as to not disturb the quiet MI-5 passenger he had in his car whom his colleague from SIS had brought with her.


The warning had come that Pishvanov was a bit eccentric. That didn’t at all suffice when it came to describing him.

Grace quickly came to the conclusion that he was flipping nuts!

“Sergey Anatolyevich Pishvanov is deceased. I’m Kolya and I speak for him instead.”

Pishvanov was in the living room with Grace, Debbie, Harrison and Rebecca Nutley. He wasn’t dead. Kolya was an identity that the former spy had created for himself and what she first thought was just his little charade would have been comical if it wasn’t as frustrating as Grace found it to be.

Kolya’s primary concern was money. He wanted it before he’d tell them what they wanted to know. He wanted a lot of it too. She asked him what was the amount he required.

“Five million Euros.”

“You might as well just ask for ten million, Kolya.” Harrison mocked his demand, refusing to accept it as real. “Hell, why not fifty million instead? Maybe that can be done, but it will have to be in Monopoly Money, not Sterling or Euros.”

“Five million Euros.”

Kolya repeated himself.

“That figure,” Nutley told him, “is completely absurd… and you know it. Something can be arranged, a significant fee, and we can help you with your trouble with the Czech Police too, but when you start asking for millions, the conversation cannot go anywhere.”

“You give me the money I ask for, all of it, and I’ll not have to worry about these stupid Prague police fools anymore. Then I’ll tell you all that Pishvanov knew and did. But I want my five million Euros.”


Debbie and Nutley stayed inside with Kolya while Grace took a walk outside in the property’s rear garden with Harrison.

“What the heck is going on with him?”

Harrison gave her an apologetic look. “I explained this to MacDonald on the phone before he sent you and your girl from Five out here. This guy is more than just a mercenary, he’s a greedy one at that. He was talking about one million last night, but, after a sleep on it, has upped that. I’d expect that even if you handed him over a bag of banknotes right now, he’d want ten, twenty million before we actually got what we wanted.”

“Why though? For all that he is, Pishvanov is no idiot. He must understand that any figure like that, even the first one he gave you, is entirely unreasonable. It’s just not going to happen.”

Under no circumstances that Grace could imagine was SIS nor any other UK Government organisation going to pay this man millions of Euros.

Harrison agreed: “There are some serious issues with him. I could put it politely but instead I’ll just be honest.

The man is crazy and we shouldn’t be dealing with him.”

While Grace listened, Harrison briefly went through what was known about Kolya. Much of it had already been covered in her conversation with MacDonald the night before and then there was the written intelligence summary that Harrison & Nutley had put together which she’d read on the airplane too.

At the end of the 1990s, Kolya (then Pishvanov) had been a SVR field agent in Amsterdam. He was collecting kompromat there. The belief was that he had witnessed the possible incident between Manningtree – then a teenager – and that boy who died. Along with other evidence gathered during his two years in that Dutch city where he spied on visiting foreigners, everything he had had been passed back to Yasenevo.

Not a few months after returning home, the SVR gave the boot. His erratic behaviour, connected to an identified cocaine problem, had seen him fired. He’d later tried his hand at private security work and also as a detective for hire. Kolya had been involved in criminality where there were jobs for a price undertaken by him that might have involved the deaths of enemies of employers. Neither a Silovik nor one of the Vor v Zakone, despite his dealing on the outsides of both types of post-2000 prominent groups in Russia, Kolya had apparently been smart enough to realise that his future in his homeland was unlikely to be fruitful nor lasting either. He’d gone to Prague and set up a small-scale criminal enterprise there since.

SIS had been looking for Pishvanov for more than a week before they located the man claiming to be Kolya instead. Intelligence work tracked him down with, despite the somewhat delay, an occurrence which Harrison told Grace caused her a little worry.

If they could find him, then why hadn’t the SVR? If it was true what it was suspected he knew, he was a loose end that risked great exposure to what had to be the most important intelligence operation ever run by post-Soviet Russia.

“How come we so easily got our hands on him, Grace? Shouldn’t he be dead in a lonely grave by now?”

She didn’t have an answer for her colleague on that one.


When they went back inside, Kolya started talking again.

“You get a lot for five million Euros. I have the video of what happened in that hotel room. It’s a copy which Pishvanov made, and while S.V.R has the original, he kept my own. It’s on a V.H.S tape so, when you pay me, you’ll need to track down a suitable device to play it on. Pishvanov told me all about it.

She ties him up, they play some adult games but he says something to offend her. She suffocates him with a pillow.

There are tears afterwards but she’s pretty quick to start cleaning up and getting rid of incriminating evidence. Pishvanov was following the boy, the ambassador’s son. He was smart enough to find out who the girl was, though not knowing that all these years later she’d be your country’s prime minister.

If he was here, he’d tell you that it’s not a coincidence that it was she who made it that far. S.V.R would have made sure she got there.”

“Have you watched it yourself, Kolya?”

He shook his head. “It’s a pornographic snuff film. Not to my taste.”

To Grace, he looked offended at the very idea that he’d watch such surreptitiously recorded footage. Yet, that wasn't important.

What was important was that he hadn’t actually seen it.

“Pishvanov might have lied to you, Kolya.”

Grace set about goading him, believing that through his madness, that approach might get her somewhere.

“No, he would not.”

Removed from the reality that he was Pishvanov, Kolya was adamant that that wouldn’t happen.

“Kolya, we need to see the video. There can be no question of payment in advance when you haven’t even seen it yourself.”

“Five hundred thousand Euros upfront and I’ll get it to you afterwards.”

Grace caught momentarily sight of Harrison’s incredulous face. Quickly, her fellow spook wiped that look away before Kolya did. As to Debbie and Nutley, neither of them showed no reaction to Kolya’s sudden new quoted figure. It was a tenth of what he’d been demanding when they arrived, half of what he’d said yesterday he wanted too.

However, it remained a vastly unreasonable number… though they were getting somewhere now.

“Did,” she continued now with questions, “Pishvanov hide the video himself, or did you?

Is it here in the Czech Republic or back in the Rodina?

To not expose yourself to risk, could one of my people go and retrieve it while you sit here talking with us about money?”

“That cannot be done.” He shook his head. “No one can get to it apart from me, entrusted as I was to ensure its safety by Pishvanov before he departed from this world as he did.”

“Are you sure?” She pushed him, hoping to see if the madness evident would allow a clue to be uncovered. “It can be arranged very easily.”

That was debatable, especially if the alleged video recording was inside Russia.

“There are other items hidden with it.” Kolya leaned forwards as he spoke to her, lowering his voice yet none of that denied everyone else the ability to hear him. “I cannot let you access them. Only I can get it because Pishvanov told me that only I was to ever see them.

There will have to be my payment first before anything though. I want my money for Pishvanov’s buried treasure.”


“We are going to be dealing with that frustrating, annoying bugger all day again today, aren’t we?”

It was the next morning. Debbie and Grace had stayed in a hotel in the middle of Prague and were having breakfast downstairs in the dining room. It was loud and busy in there though the two of them were over in a corner, separated from any listening ears.

“We are. Then we get to fly home with the goods on Manningtree though.”

“I’m hiring a car and driving back.”

“Tell me that you’re joking, right?” Grace wasn’t sure if Debbie was having her on or not.

“I should really do so. That flight was just terrifying.”

“Turbulence, Debbie. That’s why you should stay with Five and never take another cross-posting again. You guys and girls over there don’t get to fly around like us at Six do.”

“That’s a good point.” She had a sip of her tea. “But, I’m still considering the hire car. I’ll tell you what, for five million Euros, I’ll fly with you again.”

Grace and her fellow spook, the younger woman who’d been with her almost since the start of the investigation, ate for a little while longer without saying anything else. Once she was finished though, Grace recalled something from that miserable flight that they’d taken from London to here in Central Europe yesterday.

“Right before the plane nearly made you lose your lunch, you were about to tell me why you were on the outs with Thames House.”

“I was?”

“Yep.”

Grace wanted to get that out of her.

“Okay, but we have to trade. You tell me something that I want to know and I’ll tell you the big mystery.”

“It’s a ‘big mystery’, is it?”

“Do we have a deal?”

“Done.”

Debbie finished the last of her breakfast before she revealed the big mystery.

Grace was left rather underwhelmed at it all.

“I didn’t know that she was your mother. If your name was – oh, I don’t know, say Orchardson – I would have made the connection. Smith isn’t a giveaway.

You had a falling out with your mother at Christmas dinner and, because she’s your boss, the head of the whole organisation, that then puts your whole career in serious jeopardy.”

Grace knew that the head of MI-5 was personally in the know about what Svetlana had alleged about Manningtree and the whole subsequent investigation. She’d never met the woman though and regarded the interference which came from the Security Service, including the removal of the Watchers at the prime minister’s direction, as an obstruction. Debbie’s revelation that her mother had sent her to join the investigation, while saying that it was because her parent was angry with her, put things in a whole different light. That was, in fact, madness. She was hardly the perfect parent herself with disappointments over her grown children. However, those family issues never touched her work like it was the case with the Smith family.

Argued they might have at Christmas leading to a rift, but it was clear that she’d sent someone close to her to work on a task that, if it all went wrong, could have cost the older Smith dear.

Debbie’s read on the whole thing by how she explained it was different from how Grace saw it: her mother must have had some trust and faith in her. Yet, Debbie had her own, different understanding there. Grace decided to leave it be for now and moved on.

“You wanted to trade?”

“Oh, yes.” Almost as if she’d forgotten before being reminded, Debbie confirmed that. “Tell me, Grace, who do you think is our leak? We agree there is a leak, so tell me who you suspect.”

Grace had no idea who it was. She believed as Debbie did that there was someone talking, and that was confirmed as far as she was concerned by that overheard conversation picked up by the Hot Mic on Manningtree’s aide’s phone, but the scale and content of it was unknown. Without having those details, she didn’t really know where to start.

“I truly have no idea.”

“No suspects? None?” With a coy look and an arched eyebrow, Debbie tried to tempt something out of her.

Grace had nothing to give though.

“If I suspected someone, anyone at all, I’d be all over them. It would be too big of a risk to take a chance, to try and catch someone in the act.”

“But,” Debbie wasn’t giving up, “if there was someone who a leak could be pinned on, or even assumed towards, what would be done about it?”

Grace shook her head.

“There’s no one I nor anyone else back at Vauxhall Cross can think of, Debbie.” It was pointless to speculate so Grace shut that all down.

“If we make it back alive to London, when you next force me on a plane, will you tell me then how your organisation would deal with it?”

She would say no more despite Debbie’s efforts to get her talking.


Harrison and Nutley, the two lead Secret Intelligence Service officers based in Prague, worked at the embassy. They were ‘undeclared’ foreign intelligence officers and instead had diplomatic roles. That protected them from any legal repercussions should their activities even in this friendly country put them in jeopardy.

Nutley was there when Grace and Debbie arrived, ready to once more go see Pishvanov aka Kolya at a new location. Harrison was running late though.

They waited, talking about the Russian and his claims of having a videotape (Nutley had got hold of a VHS player) as well as a buried horde of intelligence treasure. There remained plenty of scepticism about all of that but, if it was true, Grace was ready to see what needed to be done to get their hands on it.

Harrison turned up, bringing with him bad news.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Debbie read his expression and pre-empted what he had to say.

Harrison turned to Grace: “I messed up in ensuring his that he was safe.”

“How did he die?” Grace had a lot of questions but that was her first, what came to her at once despite the shock of the news.

“He fell out of a hotel window… from nine storeys up.”

Nutley added an unhelpful comment about Prague and its infamous history with defenestration. Kolya had died in what history had before called ‘good Bohemian style.

Grace, not in the mood, gave her the foulest look she could muster.

Debbie then had something to add.

“The Russians must have known we were talking to him. They’re cleaning up and have made him a dead end for us now.

What about Svetlana?”

Hearing that, Grace felt a chill run through her.

Was Svetlana safe?

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

Would the Russian for 'Defenstration' translate as 'Natural Causes' ?

And did Pishvanov set up a 'DeadMan' system ??