16
They’d been in the shower together this morning, having a whispered conversation in there, while the extractor in the bathroom was going too, and Natalie had had to smack away one of David’s wandering hands. There had been no time for that, not when there was so much of significance going on. He’d argued the contrary though where her husband’s position was that there was nothing to worry about. David was fixated on finding the initial leak that had started all of this: he wanted to know how Britain’s spooks had gotten onto Luke Goddard in the first place.
Natalie was out of the house before him. She had the kids with her and walked around to her new friend’s house. There was no issue there. David said that if something was up, it would show there. She was glad he wasn’t here to give her one of his I-told-you-so looks. Abigail was soon holding the hand of Natalie’s daughter and there was a short walk ahead to take the children to their school. The same ministerial car for the cabinet minister went past Natalie to collect Young. Would there not have been some invented reason to stop her walking off with that woman’s child if NISS was all over them and ready to pounce?
She imagined hearing David pose that question and shook her head.
A couple of hours later, Natalie was in Richmond Park. She wasn’t working today and took a jog. Her eyes looked for faces that she wouldn’t want to recognise but there was no one from the regular picture book of headshots that she and David had regular access to that showed them the ‘opposition’. There was no one watching her as far as she could tell. She tested the reactions of apparent disinterested strangers by stopping and changing direction with haste to see if there was any reaction from the others in the park on a weekday morning. Zero things of an unusual nature happened at all though with that apart from a dog off its lead darting past her while barking.
Out of the park and on her way home, she stopped beside a bench on the edge of Putney. Her wrist exercise tracker gained her attention then one of her shoes. Natalie slipped something out of her sock though as she tightened her laces, servicing a well-used dead-drop by leaving a message there. Gone quickly from there, she ran on home while using her eyes, not her head, to look around.
No one was paying her any attention.
As to that message left, it was one to be forwarded onto Yuri. Their controller back in Moscow was someone whom David had said that there was no need to contact at this time. Natalie had done something she rarely did: do the opposite of what she and her husband had agreed to. There would be a collection from a cut-out of the message she left, someone British who would pass it along to a Russian diplomat out of the embassy. Whom either of those two people were exactly, she didn’t know. That was a security measure and one which she was comfortable with. As to David, he’d find out in time, but when that happened, Natalie would deal with it then.
Her rationalisation there was that Yuri needed to know.
Back home, Natalie did some chores and had lunch. While eating, her mind turned to the concern that she had over the possibility that British intelligence was closing in. All evidence was to the contrary on that with, as David had pointed out, the two of them being in the clear. True that maybe was but she told herself that they hadn’t been as successful as they long had by being complacent. A plan for the afternoon formed in her mind, one before she went back on the school run.
Cutting through the back alley that David was so fond of using, she went to the lock-up garages that were through an old iron gate that she had the key for. There were three of them there, protected from intruders by a wider gate that led to a side road. Barbed wire topped the fences and there was anti-climb paint as well. Local kids hadn’t been inside the little courtyard around which the three of them were arranged to graffiti and there was no sign of any recent activity by thieves.
Natalie knew exactly who rented two of the garages but no one by her and David knew who had possession to the third. That was theirs, rented through a fictious name. A car sat inside it along with several sports bags. She opened the vehicle using the key taken from atop the rear left wheel and turned the engine over. Natalie did a walkaround of the vehicle as well, checking it was in perfect condition. She moved to look in the bags to see that their contents remained there as they should be. Both of the two unregistered mobile phones were given a charge by her. She used one to make sure that the bank accounts linked to the debit cards present were still active. The disguise kits were there, so too the fresh clothes. Bottled water, snacks and a first aid box were likewise where they should be. There were passports and other forms of identity all ready. In addition, two pistols, ammunition magazines and a folding knife were checked by her physically as well as visually.
You could never be too sure, she told herself when finished with that.
Everything was in place as it should be. There was an escape avenue for her, David & the kids… or just her & the kids, if necessary.
David came home late and they had dinner when the children were in bed. Jessica came downstairs when she knew she wasn’t meant to and David took her back upstairs after their daughter had complained of nightmares. When he returned, they waited fifteen minutes to be sure that Jessica was back asleep before slipping out into the garden to their usual talking spot.
He was quick to air his fresh ideas as to how to walk back the cat when it came to discovering how they’d got into this mess. Natalie listened and, when he was done, acknowledged that it was a good plan. Nonetheless, she told him that he should hold off in putting it into motion. The time wasn’t right.
“Nonsense.”
His reply was firm and the way that Natalie heard it, David was making it clear that he wanted no argument from her.
He was going to get one regardless of his wishes.
“We don’t know for sure if we are clear to act as we want. They could be on to us, David.”
“The pillow-talk we heard,” he reminded her, “told us that they aren’t.”
“What if that’s wrong?”
“It isn’t.” David was having none of it.
Natalie said no more. She stood with him out in the garden as he spoke at length about how the two of them were entirely safe.
A thought arrived and stuck with her. David was leading them both into danger.
Back in the house and when getting ready for bed, Natalie’s mind was ticking over again. She thought about the message that she had sent onwards to Yuri and the request made to activate emergency lines of exfiltration just in case. He wouldn’t be happy to hear that but she knew that he, and both their ultimate bosses at the top of the SVR, would be even more upset if she and David were caught and exposed by the British.
In addition, Natalie considered taking leverage if the worst happened.
Should the whole world cave in and an escape was needed to be made, there was always someone who could be made to come along too so as to help her get away.
That person was little Abigail, who would provide quite the leverage indeed if need be.
The Britons
Re: The Britons
17
Rebecca was beaming. A smile lit her face and her eyes almost sparkled. It had been some time since Harriet had seen her colleague looking so satisfied. The veteran spook knew that the newbie had something pretty damn good.
“Oh, we’ve busted them both.” She rubbed her hands together. “Those two frauds have been exposed for what they are!
Harriet, you were right. David and Natalie Morris aren’t in any way who they say that they are.”
Inviting the former policewoman to sit down, Harriet felt her heart beating in anticipation of what Rebecca had got. “Tell me everything…”
“From how I understand it, ten, no, fifteen years ago, they could have got away with these legends of theirs. Digitalisation has changed everything though. We’ve got easier access to records now and so much more too. You can see where they’ve tried to paper over the cracks that they know are going to be spotted, but it’s a poor job.
Neither David nor Natalie are British. We pulled the threads from their stories and it all came apart. There’s lies, falsehoods everywhere.
Their school records, medical files with the N.H.S and further education histories are all false. So too with employment records as well. The further back we went, the more exposed the truth became. The two of them were created from thin air and put here six years ago now to slip into those legends. It looks like they did some of their own work to add additions to their cover though so much of that it rather amateur.”
“You had fun doing this, didn’t you?”
“You bet!” Her smile was still firmly fixed. “It beats the trailing them around stuff hands down.”
Harriet had another question: “Do we know who they are?”
“Maybe, yes.
I’ll start with David. Two years ago, a sixty-one year-old drunk driver was arrested up in Newcastle. He was well over the legal limit so was arrested, charged and fined by the Court. Northumbria Police took a D.N.A sample from him and it’s been sitting in their computer since. We gained a discarded coffee cup lid that David dropped and the computer matched that to that police sample. David is a close male relative to the drunk driver on the paternal side.
Doing what the Americans do, we then fed both samples into several of those genealogy sites on the web. The drunk driver has a cousin who was on the database of one of them and, with the help of an outside consultant that Tariq approved us using who specialises in family tree building, we were able to put it all together. The drunk driver is David’s uncle. That led us to David’s father… who was once Five back in the Nineteen Eighties. Richard Boles fled to the then U.S.S.R, selling secrets that didn’t turn out to be much. He hasn’t been seen since and all evidence points to David being that man’s son and he’d have been born in Russia too.
There was a D.N.A sample from Natalie that we got our hands on too but there was no luck there, despite many avenues tried. More luck was had with a picture of her. That was run through facial recognition software where we had an A.I programme run a harvesting going back many long years. I’m too young for MySpace but there are pictures uploaded on it lurking in the dark corners of the web.
A pretty teenage girl shows up in pictures, often standing on the edges of group photos, taken by several other girls at a posh private school in Surrey. Natalia Vladimirovna Federova was a student at that school, the eldest child of two Russian emigres who have long since returned home due to failed financial interests. There was a fire there not long before she arrived back in the U.K, one which destroyed many student records there. Someone recently put them all online for an alumni project and that, along with passenger list archives from Heathrow on the night they all went home, confirms that this Natalia is the Natalie we are seeing now.”
“The son of a traitor,” Harriet summed what Rebecca was saying, “and the daughter of an oligarch. So, they are our Mister & Missus Morris.”
The Security Service may have been formally disestablished by Parliamentary statue, along with the Secret Intelligence Service too, but the former MI-5 central building at Thames House (and the MI-6 building over at Vauxhall Cross) was still in use. Counter-terrorism and anti-extremism operations were run from there and Thames House was too the headquarters for NISS alongside various off-sites such as the set up at Canary Wharf where counter-espionage had its base of operations. Harriet went there this evening alongside Rebecca, Katie and Tariq too. NISS’ deputy chief wanted a briefing on the whole affair after being briefed that two Russian Illegals had been identified as being active in the country.
Tariq, whose doubt throughout of the matter had aggravated Harriet no end, gave the presentation asked for. She sat with Katie and Rebecca, wondering why there was any need for them to be here when her boss was seeking to claim all of the glory for such a discovery.
He went through the whole thing, starting with the detection of what Goddard was up to and then the long wait for the confession from him. That was Tariq’s work yet he almost boasted of the success that Harriet and Rebecca had had in a manner that only reflected well upon himself as their overall boss.
What an a**ehole!
There were many questions from the deputy chief. A busy, harried civil servant, he had a far less visible role than his superior. Harriet knew him to be good at his job and was the real force behind NISS rather than the service’s head and the politician who served as Security Secretary too. Tariq was asked about the surveillance being undertaken upon David & Natalie Morris; he presented what Harriet had put together right before their identities had been broken open.
Harriet saw the same video footage shown here that she had seen back at Canary Wharf. Both Illegals had been caught servicing dead-drops. Natalie had first been spotted where she had left a message attached to a public bench down in Putney. That had been retrieved by a British national – his identity wasn’t a legend – by the name of Mike Edgecombe. Edgecombe was a taxi driver who was in NISS’ computers due to a year spent in Russia some time ago. He’d never been suspected of espionage directly before he picked up that message. His watchlist status had been upgraded to that of someone engaged in treason afterwards though. Who he had or was going to pass it onto if he was the cut-out suspected that he was, that was yet to be determined. Another video showed David leaving a message at a bench (he and his wife seemed to like them) at Baker Street Underground Station. That was retrieved by a woman in a seemingly innocent hand motion that was anything but when looked at hard.
Michelle Finch was meant to be a journalist for a New Media outlet working the Westminster beat. She wasn’t who she said she was. Her true identity had yet to be revealed, but she wasn’t a Briton like she was pretending to be. More investigations were underway with the thinking that she was a third Illegal. As Harriet had told him, Tariq told the deputy chief that there were likely to be more Russians too with the Morris’ at the centre of a spy ring involving Illegals like them and British traitors too.
Finally, Tariq would talk about Natalie Morris’ friendship with the British Defence Secretary. It was clear that that had been something that the Russian spy had sought to manufacture for the purposes of gaining access to secrets. How that was progressing was unknown. What he didn’t do was what Harriet had been pressing him before the journey over here commenced: that was to strongly suggest to the deputy chief that Charlotte Young needed investigating less she be more than just a gullible innocent. Tariq had said that she was too suspicious and that a warning would be sent to the Cabinet member to get her to end the friendship and make sure that she no longer had any contact with the Russian. The deputy chief said that that would be done though in a way not to alert either of the Morris’.
He wanted to see them, and all of those working for them, caught and exposed rather than being tipped off that something was up.
After the meeting ended, Harriet discussed that with Katie when they shared a taxi.
“The Young issue really worries me.”
“Me too.” The American was in full agreement. “This isn’t how things should be done with that. There’s too much at stake for your country – my country too, to be honest – to just allow those Russians to be roaming free while we wait to uncover more of them. If they weren’t near that minister, then, yes, it would be a good strategy, but she complicates it all. Something could go really wrong there.”
“How do we deal with it?”
“I’m thinking on it…”
Katie left it at that.
As to Harriet, her concern only grew. She didn’t know how it could go wrong, but feared that something bad was going to happen.
The taxi rode on further. The driver had the inter-cab window up and had earphones on. Harriet looked out at the rain in London this evening.
“I’d feel better if we could get into their phones, wouldn’t you?
Katie’s question broke Harriet’s wandering mind.
“Yes.” She agreed with that. “But how?”
Katie slid across closer to her, speaking lower despite all sighs that the taxi driver was paying them no attention.
“Look, I’m going to trust you with something. This is between us, okay?” The Americans didn’t wait for an answer there. “My people back home are going to do something about that. There is no way that we’ll be collateral damage in another British spy drama again. That just cannot stand. We’ll figure out a way of bringing what information we gain into this once the Morris’ phones are hacked on our end.
That’s between you and me though.”
Harriet thought back to what Rebecca had said about Katie drawing her into her orbit. She knew that she had to object.
“I’m not sure if…”
“Harriet,” Katie cut her off, “my country isn’t going to do nothing once again while this happens where your country’s intelligence service bureaucracy threatens the mutual security of both our nations. You have to trust me that I can make this all go smooth.
Tariq isn’t up to the job. Look how he left out our suspicions linking these Illegals to what occurred in Harrow with all your dead British spooks and that Russian defector. There was no one senior at that meeting. Where was your chief, the security secretary or even his junior minister? They don’t think what you uncovered to be serious enough to warrant enough attention being paid. You’ve tried to change their minds and that isn’t working, is it?
Someone has to step up, and that’s going to be me… with you helping.”
Katie said no more.
Harriet opened her mouth to object yet what Katie said was right. Something had to be done and that seemed the only option open at this time.
Rebecca was beaming. A smile lit her face and her eyes almost sparkled. It had been some time since Harriet had seen her colleague looking so satisfied. The veteran spook knew that the newbie had something pretty damn good.
“Oh, we’ve busted them both.” She rubbed her hands together. “Those two frauds have been exposed for what they are!
Harriet, you were right. David and Natalie Morris aren’t in any way who they say that they are.”
Inviting the former policewoman to sit down, Harriet felt her heart beating in anticipation of what Rebecca had got. “Tell me everything…”
“From how I understand it, ten, no, fifteen years ago, they could have got away with these legends of theirs. Digitalisation has changed everything though. We’ve got easier access to records now and so much more too. You can see where they’ve tried to paper over the cracks that they know are going to be spotted, but it’s a poor job.
Neither David nor Natalie are British. We pulled the threads from their stories and it all came apart. There’s lies, falsehoods everywhere.
Their school records, medical files with the N.H.S and further education histories are all false. So too with employment records as well. The further back we went, the more exposed the truth became. The two of them were created from thin air and put here six years ago now to slip into those legends. It looks like they did some of their own work to add additions to their cover though so much of that it rather amateur.”
“You had fun doing this, didn’t you?”
“You bet!” Her smile was still firmly fixed. “It beats the trailing them around stuff hands down.”
Harriet had another question: “Do we know who they are?”
“Maybe, yes.
I’ll start with David. Two years ago, a sixty-one year-old drunk driver was arrested up in Newcastle. He was well over the legal limit so was arrested, charged and fined by the Court. Northumbria Police took a D.N.A sample from him and it’s been sitting in their computer since. We gained a discarded coffee cup lid that David dropped and the computer matched that to that police sample. David is a close male relative to the drunk driver on the paternal side.
Doing what the Americans do, we then fed both samples into several of those genealogy sites on the web. The drunk driver has a cousin who was on the database of one of them and, with the help of an outside consultant that Tariq approved us using who specialises in family tree building, we were able to put it all together. The drunk driver is David’s uncle. That led us to David’s father… who was once Five back in the Nineteen Eighties. Richard Boles fled to the then U.S.S.R, selling secrets that didn’t turn out to be much. He hasn’t been seen since and all evidence points to David being that man’s son and he’d have been born in Russia too.
There was a D.N.A sample from Natalie that we got our hands on too but there was no luck there, despite many avenues tried. More luck was had with a picture of her. That was run through facial recognition software where we had an A.I programme run a harvesting going back many long years. I’m too young for MySpace but there are pictures uploaded on it lurking in the dark corners of the web.
A pretty teenage girl shows up in pictures, often standing on the edges of group photos, taken by several other girls at a posh private school in Surrey. Natalia Vladimirovna Federova was a student at that school, the eldest child of two Russian emigres who have long since returned home due to failed financial interests. There was a fire there not long before she arrived back in the U.K, one which destroyed many student records there. Someone recently put them all online for an alumni project and that, along with passenger list archives from Heathrow on the night they all went home, confirms that this Natalia is the Natalie we are seeing now.”
“The son of a traitor,” Harriet summed what Rebecca was saying, “and the daughter of an oligarch. So, they are our Mister & Missus Morris.”
The Security Service may have been formally disestablished by Parliamentary statue, along with the Secret Intelligence Service too, but the former MI-5 central building at Thames House (and the MI-6 building over at Vauxhall Cross) was still in use. Counter-terrorism and anti-extremism operations were run from there and Thames House was too the headquarters for NISS alongside various off-sites such as the set up at Canary Wharf where counter-espionage had its base of operations. Harriet went there this evening alongside Rebecca, Katie and Tariq too. NISS’ deputy chief wanted a briefing on the whole affair after being briefed that two Russian Illegals had been identified as being active in the country.
Tariq, whose doubt throughout of the matter had aggravated Harriet no end, gave the presentation asked for. She sat with Katie and Rebecca, wondering why there was any need for them to be here when her boss was seeking to claim all of the glory for such a discovery.
He went through the whole thing, starting with the detection of what Goddard was up to and then the long wait for the confession from him. That was Tariq’s work yet he almost boasted of the success that Harriet and Rebecca had had in a manner that only reflected well upon himself as their overall boss.
What an a**ehole!
There were many questions from the deputy chief. A busy, harried civil servant, he had a far less visible role than his superior. Harriet knew him to be good at his job and was the real force behind NISS rather than the service’s head and the politician who served as Security Secretary too. Tariq was asked about the surveillance being undertaken upon David & Natalie Morris; he presented what Harriet had put together right before their identities had been broken open.
Harriet saw the same video footage shown here that she had seen back at Canary Wharf. Both Illegals had been caught servicing dead-drops. Natalie had first been spotted where she had left a message attached to a public bench down in Putney. That had been retrieved by a British national – his identity wasn’t a legend – by the name of Mike Edgecombe. Edgecombe was a taxi driver who was in NISS’ computers due to a year spent in Russia some time ago. He’d never been suspected of espionage directly before he picked up that message. His watchlist status had been upgraded to that of someone engaged in treason afterwards though. Who he had or was going to pass it onto if he was the cut-out suspected that he was, that was yet to be determined. Another video showed David leaving a message at a bench (he and his wife seemed to like them) at Baker Street Underground Station. That was retrieved by a woman in a seemingly innocent hand motion that was anything but when looked at hard.
Michelle Finch was meant to be a journalist for a New Media outlet working the Westminster beat. She wasn’t who she said she was. Her true identity had yet to be revealed, but she wasn’t a Briton like she was pretending to be. More investigations were underway with the thinking that she was a third Illegal. As Harriet had told him, Tariq told the deputy chief that there were likely to be more Russians too with the Morris’ at the centre of a spy ring involving Illegals like them and British traitors too.
Finally, Tariq would talk about Natalie Morris’ friendship with the British Defence Secretary. It was clear that that had been something that the Russian spy had sought to manufacture for the purposes of gaining access to secrets. How that was progressing was unknown. What he didn’t do was what Harriet had been pressing him before the journey over here commenced: that was to strongly suggest to the deputy chief that Charlotte Young needed investigating less she be more than just a gullible innocent. Tariq had said that she was too suspicious and that a warning would be sent to the Cabinet member to get her to end the friendship and make sure that she no longer had any contact with the Russian. The deputy chief said that that would be done though in a way not to alert either of the Morris’.
He wanted to see them, and all of those working for them, caught and exposed rather than being tipped off that something was up.
After the meeting ended, Harriet discussed that with Katie when they shared a taxi.
“The Young issue really worries me.”
“Me too.” The American was in full agreement. “This isn’t how things should be done with that. There’s too much at stake for your country – my country too, to be honest – to just allow those Russians to be roaming free while we wait to uncover more of them. If they weren’t near that minister, then, yes, it would be a good strategy, but she complicates it all. Something could go really wrong there.”
“How do we deal with it?”
“I’m thinking on it…”
Katie left it at that.
As to Harriet, her concern only grew. She didn’t know how it could go wrong, but feared that something bad was going to happen.
The taxi rode on further. The driver had the inter-cab window up and had earphones on. Harriet looked out at the rain in London this evening.
“I’d feel better if we could get into their phones, wouldn’t you?
Katie’s question broke Harriet’s wandering mind.
“Yes.” She agreed with that. “But how?”
Katie slid across closer to her, speaking lower despite all sighs that the taxi driver was paying them no attention.
“Look, I’m going to trust you with something. This is between us, okay?” The Americans didn’t wait for an answer there. “My people back home are going to do something about that. There is no way that we’ll be collateral damage in another British spy drama again. That just cannot stand. We’ll figure out a way of bringing what information we gain into this once the Morris’ phones are hacked on our end.
That’s between you and me though.”
Harriet thought back to what Rebecca had said about Katie drawing her into her orbit. She knew that she had to object.
“I’m not sure if…”
“Harriet,” Katie cut her off, “my country isn’t going to do nothing once again while this happens where your country’s intelligence service bureaucracy threatens the mutual security of both our nations. You have to trust me that I can make this all go smooth.
Tariq isn’t up to the job. Look how he left out our suspicions linking these Illegals to what occurred in Harrow with all your dead British spooks and that Russian defector. There was no one senior at that meeting. Where was your chief, the security secretary or even his junior minister? They don’t think what you uncovered to be serious enough to warrant enough attention being paid. You’ve tried to change their minds and that isn’t working, is it?
Someone has to step up, and that’s going to be me… with you helping.”
Katie said no more.
Harriet opened her mouth to object yet what Katie said was right. Something had to be done and that seemed the only option open at this time.
Re: The Britons
18
David was in Shoreditch today. The portion of East London, close to the edge of the history City itself, was where his deceased father was from. That was the man who had died a drunk in Russia, a traitor on the run from the country he had betrayed, and not the man listed on the birth certificate that the boy born in Russia as Dmitri had used to help himself become David.
The area was on the up and up. There were nicer areas of the old East End but Shoreditch wasn’t far behind them. Gentrification – or hipsterfication as they called it here – was changing a place that he’d never himself known. He’d been wondering since he’d got off the Tube as to what his father would think of his birthplace now.
Then, with a sad reflection, David realised that his father, if he wasn’t the dead drunk that he was, wouldn’t have cared. He’d have just wanted another cheap bottle of poison rather than looking around at all of the new buildings and the smartened up ones too.
There were meetings that David had set up here where he’d chased improbable business leads that he’d usually ignore so he’d have an excuse to come to Shoreditch. It wasn’t to reminisce on his father’s past though. Instead, David was here looking for Claire O’Connor.
Claire was a former Downing Street staffer who’d worked for the Chancellor at his office next to that of the prime minister. Vernon had long ago inherited her as a source of information rather than someone willing to commit acts of espionage herself. She’d turned him onto Luke Goddard as someone who would be willing to trade secrets for cash payments. There’d been a substantial finder’s fee for Claire herself and, before his terrible accident that had seen him forced to leave Britain to return home to the Rodina as Viktor, he’d been seeking to find others through her for the same task.
She’d disappeared after Goddard had been arrested though.
David was looking for her today. This was where she worked, so his little information said, in one of the many tech start up companies off the Old Street Roundabout – Silicon Roundabout it had apparently once been deemed – and no longer at that political consultancy in Westminster. Her old address was empty in addition to most previous contacts having no idea as to her whereabouts, but through another one of the fellow agents that he and Natalie controlled, a lead had been gained on her that put her here in Shoreditch.
His intention wasn’t for himself to walk into her office building today and make contact with Claire, surprising her in doing so, but have Andy do it. The youngster was improving all of the time, long forgetting that he truly was a Russian named Andrei and instead was a British journalist named Andy. David would watch over him and see that it went off without a hitch.
There was no inkling in David that while it had been Shoreditch where it could be argued his spying career started (as it was where his father was born), it would be here that it would end today too.
Natlie had told him repeatedly to leave it alone. David couldn’t though. He refused to accept not knowing what had happened to see Goddard arrested and, as he’d discovered, Claire leave her job and residence too. He just couldn’t have unanswered questions left in his mind. It was too big of a matter to let go. His view was that not knowing meant exposing them to danger. His wife had argued the opposite with Natalie repeatedly saying to him that trying to find out would bring danger upon them.
He hadn’t told her what he was doing today. They always told each other everything, but that wasn’t the case with David’s trip to Shoreditch. He wanted to know what had occurred to start this mess. When he found out, then he’d tell her: such was his plan.
The start of that plan was simple. Andy would approach Claire and, in the middle of talking to her in an innocent conversation, drop in a code-phrase that she and Vernon long had had. Her response to it would tell David where things stood, so he hoped anyway. Getting the whole story out of her wasn’t something he thought very likely would happen today, but he wanted to get the ball rolling. There was no one watching him and Natalie anymore. Andy had been briefed to be careful. Caution was what he and his wife always operated under, and what was being done today would be cautious indeed.
From where he stood across the road, sipping his nice but expensive coffee, David watched Andy walk into the office building. He had a live mic attached to his younger colleague though soon had no eyes on him anymore. David could only listen from where he was and, through the earpiece, he tried to decipher Andy’s progress towards where he would find Claire.
There was a bit of frustrating wait, and David was also concerned for a moment that the mission was a wash out, but then everything fell into place. He heard Andy being introduced to Claire and then, while passing comment on the weather during a bit of chit-chat, Andy said what he was supposed to. It was only a five word sentence. Claire said what David hoped to hear back towards him too with something short in six words herself. Anyone else listening apart from David should have found the whole thing innocuous.
It wasn’t though.
Andy had asked her if she had been subject to police or security services investigations and had she relocated because of that? Was there any danger too?
Claire’s reply had been that there was nothing to worry about at all. She believed that there was no danger to her, nor Andy (whom she’d never met before) either.
The exchange was done with in seconds. David let out a sigh of relief as he listened to Andy moving onwards. His mind started to tick over what that all meant while he waited for Andy to leave the building.
If Britain’s National Intelligence & Security Service hadn’t got to Claire – in a way that she knew of anyway – then how had they discovered what Goddard was up to in the first place?
David was back to where he’d been before. The relief from the exchange he’d heard evaporated with that understanding.
Now what?
Andy came back out of the main entrance. He touched his nose quickly while looking at David and then went walking back down the road. David caught that safe signal out of the corner of his eye, looking away on purpose as Andy had emerged. He then drained the last of his coffee and headed for the public bin that he’d had his eye on to drop it in there.
He was just reaching it when a woman walked past him.
She had light blond hair, cut short high above her neck. Her glasses were slim and fashionable. There were rosy red cheeks that made her look rather appealing to him. The woman was tall and thin with more to please the eye on her chest too.
David recognised her.
He recalled her perfectly from St James’s Park that evening when Goddard had been nabbed. It was seeing her there, her face the same from that book of faces of NISS people that he had through his contact, that had been the cause of the danger signal he had given then to Goddard.
She was here this afternoon, walking past him seemingly without a care in the world.
That wasn’t true though.
The woman was here for Andy and she was here for him as well.
It took every ounce of self-control that he had to not react. He took a deep breath and kept his eyes down as he dropped the paper cup in the bin. He didn’t look around, not at her as she was going the other way in the direction of Andy, nor elsewhere too so as to search for anyone else who he wouldn’t want to recognise.
What exactly was going on, he didn’t know. What he did understand was that the world was going to come crashing down. He went around a corner, taking his phone out of his pocket as he stepped into an alleyway. To Natalie he typed a one word message through the Mitre app:
OCTOPUS
There were footsteps behind, then hurried breathing. Someone had been running to catch up with him.
David raised his hands, one holding his phone still.
There were shouted commands at him: “Armed Police! Stay still!”
He did as he was told.
David understood that Natalie had been correct. He should have left it all alone. He hadn’t though and this had happened. However, he had sent her a warning and could only hope that she, and the children too, could make an escape.
He’d find out in time if that had been the case or not.
David was in Shoreditch today. The portion of East London, close to the edge of the history City itself, was where his deceased father was from. That was the man who had died a drunk in Russia, a traitor on the run from the country he had betrayed, and not the man listed on the birth certificate that the boy born in Russia as Dmitri had used to help himself become David.
The area was on the up and up. There were nicer areas of the old East End but Shoreditch wasn’t far behind them. Gentrification – or hipsterfication as they called it here – was changing a place that he’d never himself known. He’d been wondering since he’d got off the Tube as to what his father would think of his birthplace now.
Then, with a sad reflection, David realised that his father, if he wasn’t the dead drunk that he was, wouldn’t have cared. He’d have just wanted another cheap bottle of poison rather than looking around at all of the new buildings and the smartened up ones too.
There were meetings that David had set up here where he’d chased improbable business leads that he’d usually ignore so he’d have an excuse to come to Shoreditch. It wasn’t to reminisce on his father’s past though. Instead, David was here looking for Claire O’Connor.
Claire was a former Downing Street staffer who’d worked for the Chancellor at his office next to that of the prime minister. Vernon had long ago inherited her as a source of information rather than someone willing to commit acts of espionage herself. She’d turned him onto Luke Goddard as someone who would be willing to trade secrets for cash payments. There’d been a substantial finder’s fee for Claire herself and, before his terrible accident that had seen him forced to leave Britain to return home to the Rodina as Viktor, he’d been seeking to find others through her for the same task.
She’d disappeared after Goddard had been arrested though.
David was looking for her today. This was where she worked, so his little information said, in one of the many tech start up companies off the Old Street Roundabout – Silicon Roundabout it had apparently once been deemed – and no longer at that political consultancy in Westminster. Her old address was empty in addition to most previous contacts having no idea as to her whereabouts, but through another one of the fellow agents that he and Natalie controlled, a lead had been gained on her that put her here in Shoreditch.
His intention wasn’t for himself to walk into her office building today and make contact with Claire, surprising her in doing so, but have Andy do it. The youngster was improving all of the time, long forgetting that he truly was a Russian named Andrei and instead was a British journalist named Andy. David would watch over him and see that it went off without a hitch.
There was no inkling in David that while it had been Shoreditch where it could be argued his spying career started (as it was where his father was born), it would be here that it would end today too.
Natlie had told him repeatedly to leave it alone. David couldn’t though. He refused to accept not knowing what had happened to see Goddard arrested and, as he’d discovered, Claire leave her job and residence too. He just couldn’t have unanswered questions left in his mind. It was too big of a matter to let go. His view was that not knowing meant exposing them to danger. His wife had argued the opposite with Natalie repeatedly saying to him that trying to find out would bring danger upon them.
He hadn’t told her what he was doing today. They always told each other everything, but that wasn’t the case with David’s trip to Shoreditch. He wanted to know what had occurred to start this mess. When he found out, then he’d tell her: such was his plan.
The start of that plan was simple. Andy would approach Claire and, in the middle of talking to her in an innocent conversation, drop in a code-phrase that she and Vernon long had had. Her response to it would tell David where things stood, so he hoped anyway. Getting the whole story out of her wasn’t something he thought very likely would happen today, but he wanted to get the ball rolling. There was no one watching him and Natalie anymore. Andy had been briefed to be careful. Caution was what he and his wife always operated under, and what was being done today would be cautious indeed.
From where he stood across the road, sipping his nice but expensive coffee, David watched Andy walk into the office building. He had a live mic attached to his younger colleague though soon had no eyes on him anymore. David could only listen from where he was and, through the earpiece, he tried to decipher Andy’s progress towards where he would find Claire.
There was a bit of frustrating wait, and David was also concerned for a moment that the mission was a wash out, but then everything fell into place. He heard Andy being introduced to Claire and then, while passing comment on the weather during a bit of chit-chat, Andy said what he was supposed to. It was only a five word sentence. Claire said what David hoped to hear back towards him too with something short in six words herself. Anyone else listening apart from David should have found the whole thing innocuous.
It wasn’t though.
Andy had asked her if she had been subject to police or security services investigations and had she relocated because of that? Was there any danger too?
Claire’s reply had been that there was nothing to worry about at all. She believed that there was no danger to her, nor Andy (whom she’d never met before) either.
The exchange was done with in seconds. David let out a sigh of relief as he listened to Andy moving onwards. His mind started to tick over what that all meant while he waited for Andy to leave the building.
If Britain’s National Intelligence & Security Service hadn’t got to Claire – in a way that she knew of anyway – then how had they discovered what Goddard was up to in the first place?
David was back to where he’d been before. The relief from the exchange he’d heard evaporated with that understanding.
Now what?
Andy came back out of the main entrance. He touched his nose quickly while looking at David and then went walking back down the road. David caught that safe signal out of the corner of his eye, looking away on purpose as Andy had emerged. He then drained the last of his coffee and headed for the public bin that he’d had his eye on to drop it in there.
He was just reaching it when a woman walked past him.
She had light blond hair, cut short high above her neck. Her glasses were slim and fashionable. There were rosy red cheeks that made her look rather appealing to him. The woman was tall and thin with more to please the eye on her chest too.
David recognised her.
He recalled her perfectly from St James’s Park that evening when Goddard had been nabbed. It was seeing her there, her face the same from that book of faces of NISS people that he had through his contact, that had been the cause of the danger signal he had given then to Goddard.
She was here this afternoon, walking past him seemingly without a care in the world.
That wasn’t true though.
The woman was here for Andy and she was here for him as well.
It took every ounce of self-control that he had to not react. He took a deep breath and kept his eyes down as he dropped the paper cup in the bin. He didn’t look around, not at her as she was going the other way in the direction of Andy, nor elsewhere too so as to search for anyone else who he wouldn’t want to recognise.
What exactly was going on, he didn’t know. What he did understand was that the world was going to come crashing down. He went around a corner, taking his phone out of his pocket as he stepped into an alleyway. To Natalie he typed a one word message through the Mitre app:
OCTOPUS
There were footsteps behind, then hurried breathing. Someone had been running to catch up with him.
David raised his hands, one holding his phone still.
There were shouted commands at him: “Armed Police! Stay still!”
He did as he was told.
David understood that Natalie had been correct. He should have left it all alone. He hadn’t though and this had happened. However, he had sent her a warning and could only hope that she, and the children too, could make an escape.
He’d find out in time if that had been the case or not.
Re: The Britons
19
OCTOPUS
Natalie read that one word message several times. Her phone was in her hand as she stood in the garden and her eyes were fixed on the screen.
She knew what it meant.
It was all over and it was time to flee rather than be caught.
Dropping her phone on the concrete path, Natalie crunched it underfoot. She was quick to bend down and remove the SIM card, stamping once again on the phone. There was a quick glance over her shoulder back at the house that she had long shared with David and the children before she ran down the path to the gate at the end. There was a heavy flower pot which she upturned with haste, not caring that it shattered, and she grabbed the set of keys that had lain underneath it. Through the gate Natalie went and down the passageway behind the gardens on her street.
Natalie dared not look back over her shoulder as she ran. If there was anyone after her, she believed that there would be others also in the chase and she wouldn’t get far. Her not looking was about not wasting time. She went through a second gate and towards that lock-up garage where she had only been a few days before. It only took her a few moments to open that up, get the car started and back it out. There was no time wasted in locking that back up.
Like the house, and all of her possessions, she wouldn’t be returning. Natalie was on the run and every moment counted now. There was no time to worry about such unimportant things as locked doors anymore.
Natalie drove in the car that she was certain was on no one’s watchlist towards the school where the children were. She went a different way than she normally would, aiming for the rear of the school. Looking at the clock on the dashboard just after going around a corner, it told her that it was a quarter past one. Lunchtime at their school was an hour from half twelve onwards for her children, those whom she didn’t even think about leaving behind.
She had just enough time to get them with hopefully less drama than it might be should the hour be later than it was. The school was round another corner and as she drove through the quiet suburban streets this winter’s afternoon, she saw not one but two black four-wheel drive vehicles race past her. They had tinted windows though she saw what the driver of the second vehicle was wearing on his head.
It was a blue baseball cap with the word ‘police’ written on the front of it in bold black lettering.
“Too late,” she spoke aloud to herself, “and you’re going the wrong way too.”
The knowledge of that mistake being made in those coming for her, those who’d already likely got David after that emergency message he’d managed to send to her, reminded her of how close things were though. That mistake would be soon corrected.
She didn’t have much time.
Going into the staff car park, Natalie stopped near the side door for teachers, admin staff and the janitorial team. She got out of the car and didn’t lock it. There was a bag in her hand, in it an item that she’d jammed from the garage inside of before starting the car.
4455
That was the code for the electronic door. It was changed bi-weekly and not meant to be known by non-staff like Natalie. However, there was a regular email sent out to staff over what was supposed to be a secure network, and that was one that her and David had illegal access to. Through the door she went and down a corridor. Natalie was ready for anything to happen, for someone to challenge her. Nothing nor no one was going to stop her… unless it was those men and women in those baseball caps who’d be carrying a wide array of weapons.
They weren’t inside the school though, nor in the cloakroom that she walked into through a door that had no security system attached. There were just children – a lot of them – along with two teachers. She knew both of them and each looked at her. The man was more than a bit startled though the woman wore a pleasantly surprised smile.
“Can I help you, Missus Morris?”
“You know you’re not supposed to be in here, don’t you?”
Natalie ignored both of them. Her eyes were on all of the children in front of her: the contents of three early years classes who had all just come inside from the wet playground.
“Jessica, Jimmy: to me.”
She barked that out, louder & harsher than she had wished to.
Jimmy appeared at once from behind a taller boy, stepping forward with a smile: “Mummy?”
“Jessica, where are you?”
The male teacher said something else, stepping forward and almost knocking over two children. Whatever it was he said, it mattered for nought to Natalie. She was looking for her daughter and that was all that was important.
“She went to the toilet with Abigail.” The woman teacher gave that as an answer, one that Natalie paid attention to, though had another question that Natalie only barely heard: “What’s going on?”
Grabbing Jimmy by the wrist, causing him to let out a yelp, causing what sounded like distress from other children, and another demand from that male teacher, Natalie almost scooped him up as she left the classroom and headed for the girl’s toilets.
There was commotion behind her. Time was running out because her actions were causing an alarming, if still confused, reaction here. Natalie had Jimmy and was going after Jessica though. Leaving here before the commotion turned to the arrival of the police – that was what she was expecting in less than five minutes – without her daughter just wasn’t happening.
When she got to the toilets, with Jimmy asking questions and sounding like he was crying, the male teacher started to follow her in there.
“Jessica, come here now!”
Natalie called out once inside before turning to that man behind her. Without any messing around, she struck him. Hard too. She used the edge of her palm to strike him on the side of his face. He recoiled backwards, his hands going up to his face.
“What did you do that for!?”
Jessica was standing in front of her, over by the sinks with Abigail. They were washing their hands, both looking at their hurt teacher.
Abigail, the daughter of Britain’s defence secretary, the best friend of Natalie’s eldest child, suddenly became the centre of Natalie’s attention.
“Abi, your mum sent me for you. Come quick, you too Jessica.” They both stood still, not moving their eyes from the man that Natalie had struck. “I said NOW.”
Natlie got the two of them, Jimmy too, who was by now crying dramatically, out of the toilets. That woman teacher from the cloakroom was outside along with the school’s deputy head.
They both had questions and demands. The deputy head put one arm out to try to block Natalie’s progress and a hand on Abigail as well. In reply, Natalie shoved the woman teacher aside first before she removed from her bag the small piece of metal that was in there. She jammed that in the face of the deputy head, the big man blocking her exit.
“Boom!”
She only had to say that for him to flee. There was no need to make that vocalisation real. He ran down the corridor. Natalie couldn’t help but find that offensive! Someone had a gun around children in his care and he ran away. As to the woman, she dropped to the floor like she had been shot. At any other time, it would be an outrage and she’d be mad at their actions when it came to the wellbeing of these kids.
Not this time though.
Abigail had a remark as Natalie directed her, Jessica & Jimmy away: “That’s not the type of toy that my mum says I should ever play with. Gosh, it does look real.”
“Mummy what’s going on?” There was no panic in Jessica, just wonder.
“Stay with me,” Natalie’s reply was firm, “and hurry because we have to go.”
Moments later, Natalie had all three children in the car. Two more teachers were outside. One was on his phone – she imagined he was making an urgent call to the police – while the other used her phone to take pictures of Natalie… and her car too as she drove away. That couldn’t be helped, not less Natalie wanted to start shooting and stay here for longer to end up caught and lose her children.
She drove away with her children and what she knew was the biggest prize of a hostage imaginable as well. A new car would be needed for her to make it to the safe house but Natalie was confident that that was entirely doable.
OCTOPUS
Natalie read that one word message several times. Her phone was in her hand as she stood in the garden and her eyes were fixed on the screen.
She knew what it meant.
It was all over and it was time to flee rather than be caught.
Dropping her phone on the concrete path, Natalie crunched it underfoot. She was quick to bend down and remove the SIM card, stamping once again on the phone. There was a quick glance over her shoulder back at the house that she had long shared with David and the children before she ran down the path to the gate at the end. There was a heavy flower pot which she upturned with haste, not caring that it shattered, and she grabbed the set of keys that had lain underneath it. Through the gate Natalie went and down the passageway behind the gardens on her street.
Natalie dared not look back over her shoulder as she ran. If there was anyone after her, she believed that there would be others also in the chase and she wouldn’t get far. Her not looking was about not wasting time. She went through a second gate and towards that lock-up garage where she had only been a few days before. It only took her a few moments to open that up, get the car started and back it out. There was no time wasted in locking that back up.
Like the house, and all of her possessions, she wouldn’t be returning. Natalie was on the run and every moment counted now. There was no time to worry about such unimportant things as locked doors anymore.
Natalie drove in the car that she was certain was on no one’s watchlist towards the school where the children were. She went a different way than she normally would, aiming for the rear of the school. Looking at the clock on the dashboard just after going around a corner, it told her that it was a quarter past one. Lunchtime at their school was an hour from half twelve onwards for her children, those whom she didn’t even think about leaving behind.
She had just enough time to get them with hopefully less drama than it might be should the hour be later than it was. The school was round another corner and as she drove through the quiet suburban streets this winter’s afternoon, she saw not one but two black four-wheel drive vehicles race past her. They had tinted windows though she saw what the driver of the second vehicle was wearing on his head.
It was a blue baseball cap with the word ‘police’ written on the front of it in bold black lettering.
“Too late,” she spoke aloud to herself, “and you’re going the wrong way too.”
The knowledge of that mistake being made in those coming for her, those who’d already likely got David after that emergency message he’d managed to send to her, reminded her of how close things were though. That mistake would be soon corrected.
She didn’t have much time.
Going into the staff car park, Natalie stopped near the side door for teachers, admin staff and the janitorial team. She got out of the car and didn’t lock it. There was a bag in her hand, in it an item that she’d jammed from the garage inside of before starting the car.
4455
That was the code for the electronic door. It was changed bi-weekly and not meant to be known by non-staff like Natalie. However, there was a regular email sent out to staff over what was supposed to be a secure network, and that was one that her and David had illegal access to. Through the door she went and down a corridor. Natalie was ready for anything to happen, for someone to challenge her. Nothing nor no one was going to stop her… unless it was those men and women in those baseball caps who’d be carrying a wide array of weapons.
They weren’t inside the school though, nor in the cloakroom that she walked into through a door that had no security system attached. There were just children – a lot of them – along with two teachers. She knew both of them and each looked at her. The man was more than a bit startled though the woman wore a pleasantly surprised smile.
“Can I help you, Missus Morris?”
“You know you’re not supposed to be in here, don’t you?”
Natalie ignored both of them. Her eyes were on all of the children in front of her: the contents of three early years classes who had all just come inside from the wet playground.
“Jessica, Jimmy: to me.”
She barked that out, louder & harsher than she had wished to.
Jimmy appeared at once from behind a taller boy, stepping forward with a smile: “Mummy?”
“Jessica, where are you?”
The male teacher said something else, stepping forward and almost knocking over two children. Whatever it was he said, it mattered for nought to Natalie. She was looking for her daughter and that was all that was important.
“She went to the toilet with Abigail.” The woman teacher gave that as an answer, one that Natalie paid attention to, though had another question that Natalie only barely heard: “What’s going on?”
Grabbing Jimmy by the wrist, causing him to let out a yelp, causing what sounded like distress from other children, and another demand from that male teacher, Natalie almost scooped him up as she left the classroom and headed for the girl’s toilets.
There was commotion behind her. Time was running out because her actions were causing an alarming, if still confused, reaction here. Natalie had Jimmy and was going after Jessica though. Leaving here before the commotion turned to the arrival of the police – that was what she was expecting in less than five minutes – without her daughter just wasn’t happening.
When she got to the toilets, with Jimmy asking questions and sounding like he was crying, the male teacher started to follow her in there.
“Jessica, come here now!”
Natalie called out once inside before turning to that man behind her. Without any messing around, she struck him. Hard too. She used the edge of her palm to strike him on the side of his face. He recoiled backwards, his hands going up to his face.
“What did you do that for!?”
Jessica was standing in front of her, over by the sinks with Abigail. They were washing their hands, both looking at their hurt teacher.
Abigail, the daughter of Britain’s defence secretary, the best friend of Natalie’s eldest child, suddenly became the centre of Natalie’s attention.
“Abi, your mum sent me for you. Come quick, you too Jessica.” They both stood still, not moving their eyes from the man that Natalie had struck. “I said NOW.”
Natlie got the two of them, Jimmy too, who was by now crying dramatically, out of the toilets. That woman teacher from the cloakroom was outside along with the school’s deputy head.
They both had questions and demands. The deputy head put one arm out to try to block Natalie’s progress and a hand on Abigail as well. In reply, Natalie shoved the woman teacher aside first before she removed from her bag the small piece of metal that was in there. She jammed that in the face of the deputy head, the big man blocking her exit.
“Boom!”
She only had to say that for him to flee. There was no need to make that vocalisation real. He ran down the corridor. Natalie couldn’t help but find that offensive! Someone had a gun around children in his care and he ran away. As to the woman, she dropped to the floor like she had been shot. At any other time, it would be an outrage and she’d be mad at their actions when it came to the wellbeing of these kids.
Not this time though.
Abigail had a remark as Natalie directed her, Jessica & Jimmy away: “That’s not the type of toy that my mum says I should ever play with. Gosh, it does look real.”
“Mummy what’s going on?” There was no panic in Jessica, just wonder.
“Stay with me,” Natalie’s reply was firm, “and hurry because we have to go.”
Moments later, Natalie had all three children in the car. Two more teachers were outside. One was on his phone – she imagined he was making an urgent call to the police – while the other used her phone to take pictures of Natalie… and her car too as she drove away. That couldn’t be helped, not less Natalie wanted to start shooting and stay here for longer to end up caught and lose her children.
She drove away with her children and what she knew was the biggest prize of a hostage imaginable as well. A new car would be needed for her to make it to the safe house but Natalie was confident that that was entirely doable.
Re: The Britons
20
“Just how did this get missed?”
Katie asked – in her Mid-Western accent, the one which apparently her date the other week had found quote cute unquote, much to her annoyance – the same question that Harriet had not a few hours beforehand. However, she had practically screamed a demanded answer; her American colleague requested a reply with almost wonder.
“Pure incompetence.”
The reason was the same now as it had been then. Harriet had heard a whole litany of pathetic excuses but she knew what it was and that was what she told Katie.
“Tariq’s gone, so I heard: yes? Do you know his replacement, this Daryl chap?”
Harriet gave a firm nod. “I do.” She walked out of the lock-up garage to where Katie remained standing outside of it. “He’s good people. Daryl’s a spook’s spook. He started at the bottom and has been dragged upwards rather than sought promotion.
If Daryl had been the investigation head, I can tell you now this would never have happened.”
“What a cock up!”
It was raining again. Harriet moved underneath the American woman’s umbrella, keeping her hair out of the rain. She stood next to Katie looking in at the garage first before following her lead when turning around and looking in the direction of the Morris’ home. That two-storey semi-detached suburban home couldn’t be directly seen from where they stood, but it was just a short distance away.
Natalie Morris, whom they knew to be Natalia Vladimirovna Federova, had run across from there to here at the beginning of her escape.
And what an escape that had been!
“Let’s walk her route, shall we?”
Harriet, who’d retraced Natalie’s steps earlier, took Katie back towards the house. Under Katie’s umbrella, they went along the pathway behind the houses and then through the rear gate into the garden of the Morris’ home.
“Daryl’s got his guys and girls at work. They’re tearing apart the house and grounds, looking for clues and any hiding spots where something might be found.”
Katie had nothing to say in reply to that so Harriet just stood with her, looking at the men and women in forensic suits busy at their task. There were more than a dozen here she knew, all searching for an opening to give them a line of tracking down Natalie, her kids and the other child whom she had taken as a hostage. Daryl was up near the back door and Harriet smiled at him. He gave her a thumbs-down in reply.
She took that as him saying that nothing yet had been found.
“For her to pull a gun at that school, it just seems so…”
Katie left that sentence unfinished, seemingly not able to find the right word there.
“It’s the mark of someone losing it, I think.” Harriet had spent some time considering why Natalie had done what she had. “There’s no way that she planned that and I believe that she’ll be regretting it now. It would have gone against all of her training to do that, and to take the Young kid too.”
“Moscow would never have authorised that,” Katie added, “because even they have lines they won’t cross. If they get her before we do, she’ll be for it.”
Harriet could only agree: “Kidnapping the child of a country’s cabinet minister just isn’t on, even for them. She had to have been out of her mind.”
“Abigail Young’s absentee dad is American. You know that Harriet,” Katie didn’t seem to be asking, just confirming, “and Natalie should have known that too unless she hadn’t done her homework. That means that we’re involved now officially as well.”
“Yep.” Another nod.
“Snatching that kid is the type of stuff that starts wars!”
Katie made that bold statement there yet it was one that Harriet didn’t necessarily agree with. There’d be phone lines burning from London to Moscow, and from Washington to Moscow too, that was in no doubt. War though: that sounded too preposterous, even for this mess of a situation.
Her phone rang and Katie stepped away, heading back towards the garden gate to take the incoming call… taking her umbrella! Harriet stayed where she was, getting her hair wet and looking at the work going on where Daryl – ex-MI-5 like she, someone who’d long been in the trenches of counter-espionage work – stood above two of his people who were raising the paving stones that formed the steps down into the garden.
She thought again about Katie’s ‘war’ comment. Perhaps her colleague didn’t mean a real one, one with tanks and missiles etc, but something else. An intelligence war, maybe? Where spies were shooting at each other and kidnappings of others took place?
But…
Harriet had been at Thames House before she’d come back down to Putney once again, this time with Katie who’d been on that trans-Atlantic flight coming back after making a dash home when it all had happened.
The somewhat laid back attitude taken previously when confirmation had come that a Russian spy ring operating in London using deep-cover Illegals had entirely vanished. The Security Secretary himself had been there along with NISS’ chief too: it wasn’t just one for the deputy chief to deal with. Harriet had been told that they’d come directly from Downing Street where the prime minister had his defence secretary in the meeting as well, where she’d been adamant that she wanted to see them get her only child back. All of their careers were on the line. Everything – the kitchen sink included – was going to be thrown at getting Natalie.
She’d missed Tariq’s departure. That would have given her a guilty pleasure to witness. The man was an over-promoted fool, someone who had repeatedly f***ed up starting back in St James’s Park, again in East London and also with the surveillance operation against the Morris’ house. She’d heard he’d got the blame for not making sure that the defence secretary’s daughter was protected as well when it was clear that her mother was a target of the espionage being committed by the Morris’.
In addition, in something that she still found gut-wrenchingly aggravating, only on a third sweep, one led by Daryl’s team, had the bug been found in Young’s house.
Tariq was gone, consigned to a basement oblivion shuffling papers somewhere, and the professionals were now in charge.
“The hack came though. It’s up and running.” Katie returned with her welcome umbrella.
“Better late than never, I guess.”
The National Security Agency, America’s premier hackers, had finally managed to get into the Mitre communications app that the Morris’ had been using. David was in custody, his phone too, while Natalie was on the run with her phone left behind – Harriet knew where it had been dropped and smashed, just feet from where she was currently standing – though her SIM card missing. Possession of neither phone had allowed access to the app that the Morris’ (and hundreds of thousands of other people worldwide) were using. Instead, it had been Katie’s flying visit back to her homeland that had done that.
“We’ll get her now.” There was a lot of confidence in that remark from Katie. “David is in a basement dungeon – or wherever you people have him: damn, I hope it’s a dungeon for all the trouble he’d been giving us! – and you have Andy and Michelle too.
Something tells me that the gang is bigger than just them. Natalie will have help running and that’s how we’ll get her.”
“I hope you’re right on that.”
Harriet really did.
Katie looked up at the house for a few moments in silence before she had something else to say: “All this is still staying secret, out of the media? How’s that working out?”
“Difficult.” It really was too. Harriet didn’t know the details but it would be messy.
“I’d think that…”
Whatever Katie was going to add, it was cut off by Harriet’s own phone ringing.
The caller ID read ‘Rebecca’.
Harriet took the call.
“Hello?”
“Harriet,” Rebecca was full of breathless excitement, “we’ve got a firm lead on Natalie’s escape car, the one from the garage. I’m standing in front of it now!”
“Just how did this get missed?”
Katie asked – in her Mid-Western accent, the one which apparently her date the other week had found quote cute unquote, much to her annoyance – the same question that Harriet had not a few hours beforehand. However, she had practically screamed a demanded answer; her American colleague requested a reply with almost wonder.
“Pure incompetence.”
The reason was the same now as it had been then. Harriet had heard a whole litany of pathetic excuses but she knew what it was and that was what she told Katie.
“Tariq’s gone, so I heard: yes? Do you know his replacement, this Daryl chap?”
Harriet gave a firm nod. “I do.” She walked out of the lock-up garage to where Katie remained standing outside of it. “He’s good people. Daryl’s a spook’s spook. He started at the bottom and has been dragged upwards rather than sought promotion.
If Daryl had been the investigation head, I can tell you now this would never have happened.”
“What a cock up!”
It was raining again. Harriet moved underneath the American woman’s umbrella, keeping her hair out of the rain. She stood next to Katie looking in at the garage first before following her lead when turning around and looking in the direction of the Morris’ home. That two-storey semi-detached suburban home couldn’t be directly seen from where they stood, but it was just a short distance away.
Natalie Morris, whom they knew to be Natalia Vladimirovna Federova, had run across from there to here at the beginning of her escape.
And what an escape that had been!
“Let’s walk her route, shall we?”
Harriet, who’d retraced Natalie’s steps earlier, took Katie back towards the house. Under Katie’s umbrella, they went along the pathway behind the houses and then through the rear gate into the garden of the Morris’ home.
“Daryl’s got his guys and girls at work. They’re tearing apart the house and grounds, looking for clues and any hiding spots where something might be found.”
Katie had nothing to say in reply to that so Harriet just stood with her, looking at the men and women in forensic suits busy at their task. There were more than a dozen here she knew, all searching for an opening to give them a line of tracking down Natalie, her kids and the other child whom she had taken as a hostage. Daryl was up near the back door and Harriet smiled at him. He gave her a thumbs-down in reply.
She took that as him saying that nothing yet had been found.
“For her to pull a gun at that school, it just seems so…”
Katie left that sentence unfinished, seemingly not able to find the right word there.
“It’s the mark of someone losing it, I think.” Harriet had spent some time considering why Natalie had done what she had. “There’s no way that she planned that and I believe that she’ll be regretting it now. It would have gone against all of her training to do that, and to take the Young kid too.”
“Moscow would never have authorised that,” Katie added, “because even they have lines they won’t cross. If they get her before we do, she’ll be for it.”
Harriet could only agree: “Kidnapping the child of a country’s cabinet minister just isn’t on, even for them. She had to have been out of her mind.”
“Abigail Young’s absentee dad is American. You know that Harriet,” Katie didn’t seem to be asking, just confirming, “and Natalie should have known that too unless she hadn’t done her homework. That means that we’re involved now officially as well.”
“Yep.” Another nod.
“Snatching that kid is the type of stuff that starts wars!”
Katie made that bold statement there yet it was one that Harriet didn’t necessarily agree with. There’d be phone lines burning from London to Moscow, and from Washington to Moscow too, that was in no doubt. War though: that sounded too preposterous, even for this mess of a situation.
Her phone rang and Katie stepped away, heading back towards the garden gate to take the incoming call… taking her umbrella! Harriet stayed where she was, getting her hair wet and looking at the work going on where Daryl – ex-MI-5 like she, someone who’d long been in the trenches of counter-espionage work – stood above two of his people who were raising the paving stones that formed the steps down into the garden.
She thought again about Katie’s ‘war’ comment. Perhaps her colleague didn’t mean a real one, one with tanks and missiles etc, but something else. An intelligence war, maybe? Where spies were shooting at each other and kidnappings of others took place?
But…
Harriet had been at Thames House before she’d come back down to Putney once again, this time with Katie who’d been on that trans-Atlantic flight coming back after making a dash home when it all had happened.
The somewhat laid back attitude taken previously when confirmation had come that a Russian spy ring operating in London using deep-cover Illegals had entirely vanished. The Security Secretary himself had been there along with NISS’ chief too: it wasn’t just one for the deputy chief to deal with. Harriet had been told that they’d come directly from Downing Street where the prime minister had his defence secretary in the meeting as well, where she’d been adamant that she wanted to see them get her only child back. All of their careers were on the line. Everything – the kitchen sink included – was going to be thrown at getting Natalie.
She’d missed Tariq’s departure. That would have given her a guilty pleasure to witness. The man was an over-promoted fool, someone who had repeatedly f***ed up starting back in St James’s Park, again in East London and also with the surveillance operation against the Morris’ house. She’d heard he’d got the blame for not making sure that the defence secretary’s daughter was protected as well when it was clear that her mother was a target of the espionage being committed by the Morris’.
In addition, in something that she still found gut-wrenchingly aggravating, only on a third sweep, one led by Daryl’s team, had the bug been found in Young’s house.
Tariq was gone, consigned to a basement oblivion shuffling papers somewhere, and the professionals were now in charge.
“The hack came though. It’s up and running.” Katie returned with her welcome umbrella.
“Better late than never, I guess.”
The National Security Agency, America’s premier hackers, had finally managed to get into the Mitre communications app that the Morris’ had been using. David was in custody, his phone too, while Natalie was on the run with her phone left behind – Harriet knew where it had been dropped and smashed, just feet from where she was currently standing – though her SIM card missing. Possession of neither phone had allowed access to the app that the Morris’ (and hundreds of thousands of other people worldwide) were using. Instead, it had been Katie’s flying visit back to her homeland that had done that.
“We’ll get her now.” There was a lot of confidence in that remark from Katie. “David is in a basement dungeon – or wherever you people have him: damn, I hope it’s a dungeon for all the trouble he’d been giving us! – and you have Andy and Michelle too.
Something tells me that the gang is bigger than just them. Natalie will have help running and that’s how we’ll get her.”
“I hope you’re right on that.”
Harriet really did.
Katie looked up at the house for a few moments in silence before she had something else to say: “All this is still staying secret, out of the media? How’s that working out?”
“Difficult.” It really was too. Harriet didn’t know the details but it would be messy.
“I’d think that…”
Whatever Katie was going to add, it was cut off by Harriet’s own phone ringing.
The caller ID read ‘Rebecca’.
Harriet took the call.
“Hello?”
“Harriet,” Rebecca was full of breathless excitement, “we’ve got a firm lead on Natalie’s escape car, the one from the garage. I’m standing in front of it now!”
Re: The Britons
21
It wasn’t raining up in Luton. Harriet was mightily glad of that. Still, she took her umbrella from the car this time, rather than walk around like she was leashed to Katie with hers, and kept in in her bag when finding Rebecca.
Her NISS colleague was clearly too busy to notice the weather. Rebecca stood watching over a pair of police forensics technicians as they went through the parked black Renault. The doors and the boot were open, so too the bonnet. One of those men wearing the white hooded suits climbed out from underneath the car as Harriet and Katie approached it. It really was getting a thorough going over.
“Cameras? Please, tell me we have footage?”
“No luck on that, Katie.” Rebecca shook her head apologetically. “There are cameras all over this car park, good ones too. The footage – a two hour window – is all gone though. It’s been wiped off the hard-drive and from the cloud back-up too. How? I do not know. But it’s happened and there’s nothing.”
“She had someone do that for her.”
Harriet could only agree: “Yep, there’s no way she did that herself.”
“So,” Katie turned to look towards where the extremely busy M1 motorway was, “where did she go after here?”
Luton was a significant distance away from London, up to the north in England’s Shires. There was a major international airport outside of the town, one advertised as ‘London Luton’ despite how far away it was from the capital. The airport had good transport links to it including a dedicated link to the M1 and also plenty of car parks for airline passengers. The ones closer to the airport were covered by security systems as part of anti-terrorism measures though there were privately-owned facilities elsewhere around Luton too.
It was into one of those where, after fleeing London with three children, the missing Natalie had driven her get-away car.
She hadn’t taken them to the airport. That much was certain: that would have meant her being caught long before Harriet got here. Instead, she’d clearly swapped vehicles, into a standby one left in a long-stay car park. To cover her tracks, there had been that wiping of camera footage on-site. Britain was oft known as a ‘surveillance state’ though. There would be more cameras, one which Natalie and whomever was helping her, wouldn’t have been able to interfere with the recordings made from them.
“North.”
Rebecca answered a question that wasn’t asked of her.
“Why do you say that?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” To Rebecca it looked like it did. “There was a car waiting her just for the purpose: to make an escape further north. She’ll be heading far away from any city, looking for somewhere quiet and isolated for her and those kids to hold up.
There’s more places like that to the north.”
Harriet took a moment to consider that, alongside remembering that this was Rebecca saying it. She remained a policewoman underneath. Good at counter-espionage she might have been, but still a copper. Her thinking about everyone was viewed through police officer’s lenses. That was what a criminal would do and Natalie to her was just someone who’d committed crimes and was on the run.
Regardless, she still had a valid point though. Harriet had been trying to put herself in Natalie’s shoes since the woman had run. Fleeing away from any major population centre and into the countryside, even to the coast, would mean going north from here. If Harriet was in her position, she’d do that.
“You know, she’s only helping us catch her by taking Abigail. Travelling with two little kids provides problems, but three, especially one that isn’t hers, only multiplies that.”
Just as Rebecca did, Harriet turned towards Katie following that remark.
“Explain.”
“Okay…” Katie began her explanation, “To start with, there’s toilet breaks to factor in. A trio of little kids in the car will mean several stops. They’ll want to go to the loo a lot. Natalie will be trying to keep them hushed with snacks and drinks while she’s driving, hoping that they’ll fall asleep too in the car, but there’ll be the need to stop several times. That will give us opportunities to get a lead on her.”
“I can see that now, yes.” Harriet could indeed. “What else?”
“She needs somewhere to stay, when she gets where she’s going that is, that can take three kids. Yes, there’re only small, but where she takes them cannot be. Abigal will be missing her mum. No matter what Natalie tells her, she’ll need to be hushed. There’s a good chance she makes a scene if she starts to understand what is going on. That means that Natalie needs to find somewhere isolated, not with too many people around.”
Rebecca countered that point: “Somewhere quiet means less chance of us finding her though, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe not. There’s only so many places that she can go and I still think that having Abigail makes it more difficult for her.”
Whether Katie or Rebecca was correct, Harriet couldn’t be sure. What she was certain of was that the continued hunt to find Natlie, her kids and the defence secretary’s daughter that she’d taken as a hostage was now focused on all points from here.
“Let’s get to work on camera footage from nearby, shall we?”
Leaving the car where it was, with the forensics team still all over it, Harriet and her two colleagues split up. Rebecca was in charge of seeking to gain access to all sorts of public and private surveillance systems in the wider Luton area. She would be searching for footage of Natalie driving a vehicle so that that one could be then located. Katie was on the phone and in contact with those back at the office in Canary Wharf, seeking to have them do the same thing from afar.
As to Harriet though, she went and had a private chat with Daryl. He was here too, someone else who’d come up from the Morris’ house in Putney. They were old colleagues, old friends. She could trust him.
Harriet spoke to him concerning Katie. Their conversation wasn’t for anyone else’s ears. It concerned comments made during the car journey up here.
The American had no knowledge of that. She was caught up in the camera hunt and then also on her phone to whom she afterwards told Harriet was her fellow US intelligence officers back in London.
“The Mitre’s hack has paid off.” A big smile was on her face. “We know who’s been helping Natalie now.”
The hounds began to close in upon the absent Natalie after that.
It wasn’t raining up in Luton. Harriet was mightily glad of that. Still, she took her umbrella from the car this time, rather than walk around like she was leashed to Katie with hers, and kept in in her bag when finding Rebecca.
Her NISS colleague was clearly too busy to notice the weather. Rebecca stood watching over a pair of police forensics technicians as they went through the parked black Renault. The doors and the boot were open, so too the bonnet. One of those men wearing the white hooded suits climbed out from underneath the car as Harriet and Katie approached it. It really was getting a thorough going over.
“Cameras? Please, tell me we have footage?”
“No luck on that, Katie.” Rebecca shook her head apologetically. “There are cameras all over this car park, good ones too. The footage – a two hour window – is all gone though. It’s been wiped off the hard-drive and from the cloud back-up too. How? I do not know. But it’s happened and there’s nothing.”
“She had someone do that for her.”
Harriet could only agree: “Yep, there’s no way she did that herself.”
“So,” Katie turned to look towards where the extremely busy M1 motorway was, “where did she go after here?”
Luton was a significant distance away from London, up to the north in England’s Shires. There was a major international airport outside of the town, one advertised as ‘London Luton’ despite how far away it was from the capital. The airport had good transport links to it including a dedicated link to the M1 and also plenty of car parks for airline passengers. The ones closer to the airport were covered by security systems as part of anti-terrorism measures though there were privately-owned facilities elsewhere around Luton too.
It was into one of those where, after fleeing London with three children, the missing Natalie had driven her get-away car.
She hadn’t taken them to the airport. That much was certain: that would have meant her being caught long before Harriet got here. Instead, she’d clearly swapped vehicles, into a standby one left in a long-stay car park. To cover her tracks, there had been that wiping of camera footage on-site. Britain was oft known as a ‘surveillance state’ though. There would be more cameras, one which Natalie and whomever was helping her, wouldn’t have been able to interfere with the recordings made from them.
“North.”
Rebecca answered a question that wasn’t asked of her.
“Why do you say that?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” To Rebecca it looked like it did. “There was a car waiting her just for the purpose: to make an escape further north. She’ll be heading far away from any city, looking for somewhere quiet and isolated for her and those kids to hold up.
There’s more places like that to the north.”
Harriet took a moment to consider that, alongside remembering that this was Rebecca saying it. She remained a policewoman underneath. Good at counter-espionage she might have been, but still a copper. Her thinking about everyone was viewed through police officer’s lenses. That was what a criminal would do and Natalie to her was just someone who’d committed crimes and was on the run.
Regardless, she still had a valid point though. Harriet had been trying to put herself in Natalie’s shoes since the woman had run. Fleeing away from any major population centre and into the countryside, even to the coast, would mean going north from here. If Harriet was in her position, she’d do that.
“You know, she’s only helping us catch her by taking Abigail. Travelling with two little kids provides problems, but three, especially one that isn’t hers, only multiplies that.”
Just as Rebecca did, Harriet turned towards Katie following that remark.
“Explain.”
“Okay…” Katie began her explanation, “To start with, there’s toilet breaks to factor in. A trio of little kids in the car will mean several stops. They’ll want to go to the loo a lot. Natalie will be trying to keep them hushed with snacks and drinks while she’s driving, hoping that they’ll fall asleep too in the car, but there’ll be the need to stop several times. That will give us opportunities to get a lead on her.”
“I can see that now, yes.” Harriet could indeed. “What else?”
“She needs somewhere to stay, when she gets where she’s going that is, that can take three kids. Yes, there’re only small, but where she takes them cannot be. Abigal will be missing her mum. No matter what Natalie tells her, she’ll need to be hushed. There’s a good chance she makes a scene if she starts to understand what is going on. That means that Natalie needs to find somewhere isolated, not with too many people around.”
Rebecca countered that point: “Somewhere quiet means less chance of us finding her though, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe not. There’s only so many places that she can go and I still think that having Abigail makes it more difficult for her.”
Whether Katie or Rebecca was correct, Harriet couldn’t be sure. What she was certain of was that the continued hunt to find Natlie, her kids and the defence secretary’s daughter that she’d taken as a hostage was now focused on all points from here.
“Let’s get to work on camera footage from nearby, shall we?”
Leaving the car where it was, with the forensics team still all over it, Harriet and her two colleagues split up. Rebecca was in charge of seeking to gain access to all sorts of public and private surveillance systems in the wider Luton area. She would be searching for footage of Natalie driving a vehicle so that that one could be then located. Katie was on the phone and in contact with those back at the office in Canary Wharf, seeking to have them do the same thing from afar.
As to Harriet though, she went and had a private chat with Daryl. He was here too, someone else who’d come up from the Morris’ house in Putney. They were old colleagues, old friends. She could trust him.
Harriet spoke to him concerning Katie. Their conversation wasn’t for anyone else’s ears. It concerned comments made during the car journey up here.
The American had no knowledge of that. She was caught up in the camera hunt and then also on her phone to whom she afterwards told Harriet was her fellow US intelligence officers back in London.
“The Mitre’s hack has paid off.” A big smile was on her face. “We know who’s been helping Natalie now.”
The hounds began to close in upon the absent Natalie after that.
Re: The Britons
22
Rule #1 for Illegals operating under deep cover:
Do not, under any circumstances, get caught.
Rule #2:
See above.
Rule #3:
If you are stupid enough to go and get caught, and taken into custody for an interrogation, stick to your cover story regardless of all evidence to the contrary when the truth is thrown your way.
They made David watch two sets of videos. The first was a montage of surveillance camera recordings made inside of the school where his children went. He watched his wife enter by a staff door, go to where Jimmy was & take him, move down a corridor, enter & come out of the children’s toilets, lead Jessica & her friend Abigail by the hand, remove a pistol from her handbag to threaten a staff member who tried to stop her, and then leave the building. It was a good quality film complete with sound and laid out well.
Someone had been to film school!
The second was much shorter. It was footage from a pair of phones where videos were made of Natalie putting all three kids in a car and driving away. Unsteady hands held the cameras and the sound was poor.
He sat in a basement interrogation room wearing nothing but paper one-piece suit, the type that they give to criminals when their clothes have been taken for forensics analysis. His had been upon his initial detention and, when standing naked before a room full of half a dozen people, they’d made him put this on. He had no shoes or even disposable slippers. David’s bare feet were on the cold tiled floor at the moment. He sat in the seat that they had instructed him to, on one side of a table with an empty chair across from him. His elbows were in his palms while pulled across his midriff.
There was a readiness in him to literally kill for a cup of coffee to help warm him up.
Well…
…almost.
A woman came into the room. David recognised her from the photo book he’d long studied of Russia-focused NISS employees. Her name was Sophie. She was in her fifties and an experienced counter-intelligence spook. That picture he’d seen beforehand to memorise had greatly flattered her. In person, she was ugly. He didn’t want to look at her but his training kicked in. He followed her with her eyes as she whispered something to the man who entered behind her. Him, David didn’t recognise. He was a big guy, younger than she. He looked like he spent a lot of time in the gym, probably rubbing body lotion into the biceps and thighs that budged through his tracksuit sessions. Intimidation might have been the reason that man was in here. If it was, David wasn’t worried.
Physical violence directed against him wasn’t something he knew they would do, even if they would overtly threaten it in desperation.
Back to the woman. She sat before him, scratching the feet of the chair across the floor and giving him a look of embarrassment as she did so. David wasn’t fooled by what was a deliberate act for purposes he didn’t bother speculating over.
Opening a cardboard file folder, she looked up at him. His eyes met hers. There were documents and pictures below her gaze that’s he’d noted there for a moment yet he looked right at her.
“Good morning, Dmitri Richardovich Boles. I’m Helen and it’s nice to meet you.”
She knew his name and that meant she knew who his father was too. As to herself, she used what would be a working name just as he did: this was no Helen, this Sophie.
“It’s David Morris actually.” The lie came easy to him because it almost wasn’t. That was who had been for a long time. “I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again to you Helen.
All of this is some kind of misunderstanding. There’s been a mix up, someone’s made a mistake. I understand that things can go wrong, but this is getting beyond silly now and I’m really worried.
What are all these videos about, these deep-fakes you’ve been showing me? Why am I under arrest yet not under arrest? Just what is going on with all of this? I’d like to know where my wife and children are too: are they safe?”
David knew that what he was saying was in no way going to be believed. They’d caught him bang to rights, getting Andy at the same time. They’d shown him too what Natalie had done. That was no fake footage, she really had kidnapped a Cabinet member’s child. Denials, pleading innocence, apparent confusion and going around in circles were what he was well prepared to do though.
She laughed at him. He wasn’t prepared for that. It was a belly laugh, one of real seriousness. A hand was raised and a finger pointed at him as her entire face was lit up by a big grin.
Zero reaction came from the man standing against the wall by the door.
“Dmitri, tell where Natalia Vladimirovna Federova has taken that child she snatched?”
Such was her single question in reply.
The game went on. David played it regardless of each time the woman coming back to that question.
He denied that it was his wife Natalie in that footage, claiming that it was a poor set of fakes made for some nefarious purposes that he would like to know the reason for. David repeatedly asked for information about his children’s wellbeing and to be allowed to talk to his wife.
Sophie/Helen hit him with accusations of his spying. She spoke about the broadcasting device for listening in on conversations in the bedroom of Britain’s defence secretary. She raised too his role in helping to set up an attempt to bug a recent meeting in Downing Street between the country’s prime minister when the American president visited.
There was no knowledge about any of that, so he said.
The murders of three people in Harrow recently, one of them a Russian national, were the subject of more questions. There were only more denials from him with David asserting that that sounded like the plot of a bad film, not something than anyone like him would be involved in.
When she called him Dmitri, David’s reply was that that wasn’t his name. Natalie was Natalia either. The British spy who’d defected to Russia before he was born and allegedly married a Russian woman to have a child with her named Dmitri? He knew nothing about that. Another Russian national, this one a young girl called Natalia whose parents were rich emigrees? Again, he declared he had no idea what they were talking about. His schooling, his parent’s deaths, being raised by a granddad, his education & early business career, and his marriage that took place in Cyprus. She said it was all lie. He said it wasn’t.
Leaving messages for spies underneath public benches via magnetic strips? Rubbish. Stocking a getaway car near to his suburban house in a garage? He had no clue about that. Sending someone named Andy, or Andrei apparently, into talk with a woman in an office building in Shoreditch? What a load of baloney. A man who’d lost his leg in a motorcycle accident and David visiting him in hospital while telling a nurse they were lovers? Crazy!
Sophie/Helen said that everything about him and his innocence was all a lie. David argued back with her, taking apart piece by piece all the proof that she said she had to make a mockery of such a fanciful story about him being a Russian spy.
Because he was playing the role of an innocent person caught up in something extraordinary, David staged his growing anger. He let it rise slowly before an explosive outburst. He demanded an end to all of this! Where was his wife? What had they done with her? He wanted a solicitor. If Sophie/Helen continued to insist that he wasn’t who he said he was, and that he was a Russian, couldn’t they get someone over from their embassy to say that he wasn’t?
More than that, where were his children, where was his wife?
“Dmitri,” she continued using that name for him, “quit the lying. You’re caught. We got Andrei and Maria too, your friends Andy and Michelle. Your spy ring has been busted open. We’ve caught your taxi driver cut out too. Your embassy contact is being declared persona non grata and being thrown out of the country.
Confess and we’ll go easy on you. But, before then, tell me where Natalia has taken Abigail.”
An innocent man he was so David stood up. He jabbed a finger at Sophie/Helen: “Stop this game at once! Tell me where my wife and kids are!”
The man by the door stepped forwards though didn’t come too close. The woman stayed seated, looking up at him with a toothy smile.
“Would you call her for us, Dmitri?”
“You took my phone.”
“After you purge deleted everything we did.”
There was an accusation there, one which he pounced upon.
“I don’t even know what that means.” Dramatically, he sat down. His elbows were now on the table, his head in his hands. “Give me a phone and I’ll call her.”
“She destroyed her own phone in your garden. She’ll have another one with her. Give us the number and we’ll dial it for you.”
Without looking up, David had an answer for that: “Are you people insane? What other number? She only has one phone! Stop this game and tell me where my wife is. I’m leaving. Can I leave?”
Sophie/Helen laughed at him again.
“Dmitri, how long can you keep up this charade?”
He didn’t answer that time.
Instead, he just sat where he was with his head in his hands now.
There was at least one camera in the room, maybe two. David hadn’t looked for them all the time that he’d been in here but he knew they were there. They were watching him, just like the people behind the one-way mirror along the wall would be too.
No one would believe any of it.
From the moment that those armed policemen appeared out of nowhere, David knew that his career as a spy was done for good. He would sit here and lie as much as he wanted but it wouldn’t matter in the end. They had plenty of evidence against him, even looking at the matter in Harrow which he wasn’t responsible for.
Worry, dread nor fear he didn’t have. What were they going to do? Threaten to put him in prison for life? They could say that yet he knew that that outcome would never come to pass. No, his fate would be something different indeed.
His thoughts turned to Natalie.
Her future wasn’t as sure as his. Seeing what she’d done, hearing about it too, had been quite a shock. David had showed surprise at the footage from the school the first time it was shown to him with that being a real reaction. His wife had gone off-script with that. Things would end bad for her there.
Yet, with him and Andy, maybe Michelle if it was true that they had arrested her too – Sophie/Helen had said nothing about Yitzhak –, David knew their eventual outcome. After some time in uncomfortable circumstances, they’d all end up back in Russia. An exchange would happen, a trade would be done. When he returned and he was debriefed, David would relate everything that happened here with complete honesty. He had given nothing away and, hopefully, helped even in a small way in allowing for Natalie to remain elusive. Damage would be done to Russia by her capture after what she’d done.
Still…
…on his mind as he congratulated himself on his performance of lies and steadfast loyalty to his own country, David did worry about Jessica and Jimmy. Their presence with Natalie and that Young child was a concern. His mission, his duty was what he told himself to focus on. David was a father at the same time though.
Rule #1 for Illegals operating under deep cover:
Do not, under any circumstances, get caught.
Rule #2:
See above.
Rule #3:
If you are stupid enough to go and get caught, and taken into custody for an interrogation, stick to your cover story regardless of all evidence to the contrary when the truth is thrown your way.
They made David watch two sets of videos. The first was a montage of surveillance camera recordings made inside of the school where his children went. He watched his wife enter by a staff door, go to where Jimmy was & take him, move down a corridor, enter & come out of the children’s toilets, lead Jessica & her friend Abigail by the hand, remove a pistol from her handbag to threaten a staff member who tried to stop her, and then leave the building. It was a good quality film complete with sound and laid out well.
Someone had been to film school!
The second was much shorter. It was footage from a pair of phones where videos were made of Natalie putting all three kids in a car and driving away. Unsteady hands held the cameras and the sound was poor.
He sat in a basement interrogation room wearing nothing but paper one-piece suit, the type that they give to criminals when their clothes have been taken for forensics analysis. His had been upon his initial detention and, when standing naked before a room full of half a dozen people, they’d made him put this on. He had no shoes or even disposable slippers. David’s bare feet were on the cold tiled floor at the moment. He sat in the seat that they had instructed him to, on one side of a table with an empty chair across from him. His elbows were in his palms while pulled across his midriff.
There was a readiness in him to literally kill for a cup of coffee to help warm him up.
Well…
…almost.
A woman came into the room. David recognised her from the photo book he’d long studied of Russia-focused NISS employees. Her name was Sophie. She was in her fifties and an experienced counter-intelligence spook. That picture he’d seen beforehand to memorise had greatly flattered her. In person, she was ugly. He didn’t want to look at her but his training kicked in. He followed her with her eyes as she whispered something to the man who entered behind her. Him, David didn’t recognise. He was a big guy, younger than she. He looked like he spent a lot of time in the gym, probably rubbing body lotion into the biceps and thighs that budged through his tracksuit sessions. Intimidation might have been the reason that man was in here. If it was, David wasn’t worried.
Physical violence directed against him wasn’t something he knew they would do, even if they would overtly threaten it in desperation.
Back to the woman. She sat before him, scratching the feet of the chair across the floor and giving him a look of embarrassment as she did so. David wasn’t fooled by what was a deliberate act for purposes he didn’t bother speculating over.
Opening a cardboard file folder, she looked up at him. His eyes met hers. There were documents and pictures below her gaze that’s he’d noted there for a moment yet he looked right at her.
“Good morning, Dmitri Richardovich Boles. I’m Helen and it’s nice to meet you.”
She knew his name and that meant she knew who his father was too. As to herself, she used what would be a working name just as he did: this was no Helen, this Sophie.
“It’s David Morris actually.” The lie came easy to him because it almost wasn’t. That was who had been for a long time. “I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again to you Helen.
All of this is some kind of misunderstanding. There’s been a mix up, someone’s made a mistake. I understand that things can go wrong, but this is getting beyond silly now and I’m really worried.
What are all these videos about, these deep-fakes you’ve been showing me? Why am I under arrest yet not under arrest? Just what is going on with all of this? I’d like to know where my wife and children are too: are they safe?”
David knew that what he was saying was in no way going to be believed. They’d caught him bang to rights, getting Andy at the same time. They’d shown him too what Natalie had done. That was no fake footage, she really had kidnapped a Cabinet member’s child. Denials, pleading innocence, apparent confusion and going around in circles were what he was well prepared to do though.
She laughed at him. He wasn’t prepared for that. It was a belly laugh, one of real seriousness. A hand was raised and a finger pointed at him as her entire face was lit up by a big grin.
Zero reaction came from the man standing against the wall by the door.
“Dmitri, tell where Natalia Vladimirovna Federova has taken that child she snatched?”
Such was her single question in reply.
The game went on. David played it regardless of each time the woman coming back to that question.
He denied that it was his wife Natalie in that footage, claiming that it was a poor set of fakes made for some nefarious purposes that he would like to know the reason for. David repeatedly asked for information about his children’s wellbeing and to be allowed to talk to his wife.
Sophie/Helen hit him with accusations of his spying. She spoke about the broadcasting device for listening in on conversations in the bedroom of Britain’s defence secretary. She raised too his role in helping to set up an attempt to bug a recent meeting in Downing Street between the country’s prime minister when the American president visited.
There was no knowledge about any of that, so he said.
The murders of three people in Harrow recently, one of them a Russian national, were the subject of more questions. There were only more denials from him with David asserting that that sounded like the plot of a bad film, not something than anyone like him would be involved in.
When she called him Dmitri, David’s reply was that that wasn’t his name. Natalie was Natalia either. The British spy who’d defected to Russia before he was born and allegedly married a Russian woman to have a child with her named Dmitri? He knew nothing about that. Another Russian national, this one a young girl called Natalia whose parents were rich emigrees? Again, he declared he had no idea what they were talking about. His schooling, his parent’s deaths, being raised by a granddad, his education & early business career, and his marriage that took place in Cyprus. She said it was all lie. He said it wasn’t.
Leaving messages for spies underneath public benches via magnetic strips? Rubbish. Stocking a getaway car near to his suburban house in a garage? He had no clue about that. Sending someone named Andy, or Andrei apparently, into talk with a woman in an office building in Shoreditch? What a load of baloney. A man who’d lost his leg in a motorcycle accident and David visiting him in hospital while telling a nurse they were lovers? Crazy!
Sophie/Helen said that everything about him and his innocence was all a lie. David argued back with her, taking apart piece by piece all the proof that she said she had to make a mockery of such a fanciful story about him being a Russian spy.
Because he was playing the role of an innocent person caught up in something extraordinary, David staged his growing anger. He let it rise slowly before an explosive outburst. He demanded an end to all of this! Where was his wife? What had they done with her? He wanted a solicitor. If Sophie/Helen continued to insist that he wasn’t who he said he was, and that he was a Russian, couldn’t they get someone over from their embassy to say that he wasn’t?
More than that, where were his children, where was his wife?
“Dmitri,” she continued using that name for him, “quit the lying. You’re caught. We got Andrei and Maria too, your friends Andy and Michelle. Your spy ring has been busted open. We’ve caught your taxi driver cut out too. Your embassy contact is being declared persona non grata and being thrown out of the country.
Confess and we’ll go easy on you. But, before then, tell me where Natalia has taken Abigail.”
An innocent man he was so David stood up. He jabbed a finger at Sophie/Helen: “Stop this game at once! Tell me where my wife and kids are!”
The man by the door stepped forwards though didn’t come too close. The woman stayed seated, looking up at him with a toothy smile.
“Would you call her for us, Dmitri?”
“You took my phone.”
“After you purge deleted everything we did.”
There was an accusation there, one which he pounced upon.
“I don’t even know what that means.” Dramatically, he sat down. His elbows were now on the table, his head in his hands. “Give me a phone and I’ll call her.”
“She destroyed her own phone in your garden. She’ll have another one with her. Give us the number and we’ll dial it for you.”
Without looking up, David had an answer for that: “Are you people insane? What other number? She only has one phone! Stop this game and tell me where my wife is. I’m leaving. Can I leave?”
Sophie/Helen laughed at him again.
“Dmitri, how long can you keep up this charade?”
He didn’t answer that time.
Instead, he just sat where he was with his head in his hands now.
There was at least one camera in the room, maybe two. David hadn’t looked for them all the time that he’d been in here but he knew they were there. They were watching him, just like the people behind the one-way mirror along the wall would be too.
No one would believe any of it.
From the moment that those armed policemen appeared out of nowhere, David knew that his career as a spy was done for good. He would sit here and lie as much as he wanted but it wouldn’t matter in the end. They had plenty of evidence against him, even looking at the matter in Harrow which he wasn’t responsible for.
Worry, dread nor fear he didn’t have. What were they going to do? Threaten to put him in prison for life? They could say that yet he knew that that outcome would never come to pass. No, his fate would be something different indeed.
His thoughts turned to Natalie.
Her future wasn’t as sure as his. Seeing what she’d done, hearing about it too, had been quite a shock. David had showed surprise at the footage from the school the first time it was shown to him with that being a real reaction. His wife had gone off-script with that. Things would end bad for her there.
Yet, with him and Andy, maybe Michelle if it was true that they had arrested her too – Sophie/Helen had said nothing about Yitzhak –, David knew their eventual outcome. After some time in uncomfortable circumstances, they’d all end up back in Russia. An exchange would happen, a trade would be done. When he returned and he was debriefed, David would relate everything that happened here with complete honesty. He had given nothing away and, hopefully, helped even in a small way in allowing for Natalie to remain elusive. Damage would be done to Russia by her capture after what she’d done.
Still…
…on his mind as he congratulated himself on his performance of lies and steadfast loyalty to his own country, David did worry about Jessica and Jimmy. Their presence with Natalie and that Young child was a concern. His mission, his duty was what he told himself to focus on. David was a father at the same time though.
Re: The Britons
23
Jimmy was enjoying what he’d called his ‘cartoon holiday’. Sat on the floor in front of the television, watching cartoons non-stop, Natalie’s son wore a permanent smile. There was no school for him, just cartoons. She’d given him sweets and fizzy pop too, far more than she should have. That kept him occupied and happy to not question things.
The same couldn’t be said for her daughter and her daughter’s friend.
Questions came from Jessica, ones that Natalie was sure were directed from Abigail. Her own kid was smart and curious, something that she was always so proud of, but Abigail outshone Jessica in the brain’s stakes. The two of them were being difficult. They didn’t want to watch cartoons. When Natalie had given them games consoles – ones with no connection to the internet – they didn’t want to play on them. Sweets weren’t desired either, just fresh fruit. They wouldn’t share a bed with Jimmy, claiming he was a baby, and stating that he was a boy too, so Natalie had had to take him into hers.
As to the queries about what was going on, why they were here, where was David, why couldn’t Abigail talk to her mother… those were relentless. Natalie was glad that she lied for a living. Otherwise, keeping track of the deception, with the layers she kept on having to add to it, would have been a challenge.
This afternoon, Jimmy was in front of the television while the girls were in the garden. There was fencing all around and a locked gate to which Natalie had the key. She watched them through the glass patio doors, not taking her eyes off them. Having been beaten down into letting them go out there, to finally silence the whinging and after her excuses had run out, had been a concession that she’d only made after making certain that there was no way for them to go any further and that no one else but her could see them.
She rubbed her forehead, leaned back in her chair and took pleasure in the silence.
Then the doorbell rang.
“I’ll just leave them on the doorstep then, if that’s what you want.” The man’s voice was loud through the closed door. “Only if you’re sure though. You know, I’ve had all my jabs and can’t catch anything?”
“It’s fine really. I’m infectious and my girls are probably too. Have a good day now, and thank you. I’ll make sure I leave a good review!”
There was some shuffling of boots before a reply: “Okay. I hope you feel better soon.”
The delivery driver left the bags behind and drove away. Natalie watched him leave from the kitchen window, waving at him too, before checking on the girls out back. They were still there, seemingly uninterested at the man who’d been at the door.
Natalie waited five minutes before she went outside. She had her hoodie on with the hood up and her hair tucked in beneath it. Out went her hands and feet only rather than her whole body. She took the bags before closing and locking the door.
Covid: still a good excuse to get people to stay away from you.
The shopping was brought inside and she went through it in the kitchen. There was food, drink and other goods. Everything had been paid for online, just like this holiday home had been rented via as well. Natalie packed away what she needed to and sorted other bits to go into the car. She had that around the side of the building, under the tarpaulin. Later tonight, when the kids were sleeping, she’d go out there, but for now she was staying inside.
Back to the living room she went, where she had Jimmy with her and the girls in view outside, and to rub her throbbing head. There were pills that had come with the shopping to help with that, other medicines to keep the children sleepy too.
For as long as she needed to, Natalie was staying here. The car was going to be restocked ready to be a moving base if needed – not something she’d want – yet Natalie felt entirely safe here in this holiday rental by the sea that had been let out in the depths of winter to keep her and them hidden. All she had to do was to wait for her exit and that of her children, not Abigail though, to come through.
Back to the Rodina she intended to be before the week was out.
*
Yitzhak Rosenblum – born as Yevgeny Konstantinovich Navashin, and certainly not Jewish – had gotten Natalie that holiday home. He’d made the last-minute online booking for her and those children, seeking somewhere for her to isolate. Likewise, he’d provided the car to get her there and also wiped away video evidence of her dumping the last one in that car park.
It had been up to him to get her out of the country too before the British caught her. The task was to do without endangering his own cover identity in the process, something he had increasingly been believing was impossible since she remained holding that hostage like she did.
Things had changed though.
Before the situation had taken its new course, there had been the mess of Natalie’s escape.
She hadn’t told him at first that she’d snatched the other child.
There was no ‘Hi, Yitzhak, I’m on the run because everything’s gone to hell, and David’s been grabbed, oh, also, I’ve kidnapped the defence secretary’s daughter while running’ initial confession.
Natalie – Natalia – had left that last bit out.
It wasn’t something that he thought she’d forgotten to tell him when arranging for the car transfer and for the coastal hideout. Instead, she had deliberately not told him.
Why?
Because she knew what his reaction would be.
She also had to know what they’d say back at Yasenevo too…
…that being for him to take the nuclear option on all of it.
The nuclear option was why he was where he was today over in West London. The huge Westfield Shopping Centre was a dump in his very humble opinion. It’s namesake in East London was far nicer. He hadn’t come to admire the architecture, note the quality of the shops nor stare the dour faces of other visitors though. Yitzhak was here to make a drop.
The retail mall was downstairs with the entertainment bits above, all under the same roof. He went up an escalator, his eyes sweeping around for those he knew were watching yet whom he couldn’t identify, to the food-court. The public toilets were over to his left and he walked straight towards them. Yitzhak felt more eyes upon him. People were looking at him from the walkways and from cameras too. There was nothing he would do about that though. He had firm instructions to put himself out in the open and do what he had to regardless of the exposure.
Into the gents he went, dodging a woman cleaner coming out: there was none of that political correctness at home! He went past a full-length mirror, saw the worry lines on his forehead, and towards the long stretch of sinks resting before more mirrors. At the very end one he stopped. He washed his hands with soap and water before going over to dry them. Eyes fixed ahead, he then walked back out and headed for the centre’s exits and the tube station.
Between the sink and the mirror, he’d left a folded piece of paper.
There were details written on it of where Natalie, her kids and Abigail Young were all being hidden. SVR headquarters had told him that that was what they wanted. That address was being passed over to the ‘principal adversary’ despite Yitzhak’s grave misgivings over such a thing.
He was approaching the Wood Lane station, a mere few feet from the entrance, when the ambush was sprung. Two men, then a woman, came at him from the front and the side. They had guns pointed at him, like others who also moved in from more directions.
They were all screaming instructions at him.
“Get Down! Get Down! Armed Police!”
Without hesitation, he dropped to his knees, his arms going out.
People scattered in all directions. London Underground staff closed the metal railings to the station entrance right in front of his eyes. There were shouts of alarm from a kid, a police car siren blazed too.
Yitzhak stared at the policewoman with a gun in his face.
“You’re British?” He asked. “Don’t you know that there’s a deal with the Americans?”
She moved forward, her gun touching his chin, and a blank expression on her pretty face.
“Get on your belly, face down.” Now she smiled though. “Don’t make me shoot you, Yevgeny.”
He did what he was told while his mind raced trying to work out what had gone wrong. Something certainly had gone completely pear-shaped with all of this happening to him here.
The British weren’t meant to be involved in this strictly Russia-US affair.
Jimmy was enjoying what he’d called his ‘cartoon holiday’. Sat on the floor in front of the television, watching cartoons non-stop, Natalie’s son wore a permanent smile. There was no school for him, just cartoons. She’d given him sweets and fizzy pop too, far more than she should have. That kept him occupied and happy to not question things.
The same couldn’t be said for her daughter and her daughter’s friend.
Questions came from Jessica, ones that Natalie was sure were directed from Abigail. Her own kid was smart and curious, something that she was always so proud of, but Abigail outshone Jessica in the brain’s stakes. The two of them were being difficult. They didn’t want to watch cartoons. When Natalie had given them games consoles – ones with no connection to the internet – they didn’t want to play on them. Sweets weren’t desired either, just fresh fruit. They wouldn’t share a bed with Jimmy, claiming he was a baby, and stating that he was a boy too, so Natalie had had to take him into hers.
As to the queries about what was going on, why they were here, where was David, why couldn’t Abigail talk to her mother… those were relentless. Natalie was glad that she lied for a living. Otherwise, keeping track of the deception, with the layers she kept on having to add to it, would have been a challenge.
This afternoon, Jimmy was in front of the television while the girls were in the garden. There was fencing all around and a locked gate to which Natalie had the key. She watched them through the glass patio doors, not taking her eyes off them. Having been beaten down into letting them go out there, to finally silence the whinging and after her excuses had run out, had been a concession that she’d only made after making certain that there was no way for them to go any further and that no one else but her could see them.
She rubbed her forehead, leaned back in her chair and took pleasure in the silence.
Then the doorbell rang.
“I’ll just leave them on the doorstep then, if that’s what you want.” The man’s voice was loud through the closed door. “Only if you’re sure though. You know, I’ve had all my jabs and can’t catch anything?”
“It’s fine really. I’m infectious and my girls are probably too. Have a good day now, and thank you. I’ll make sure I leave a good review!”
There was some shuffling of boots before a reply: “Okay. I hope you feel better soon.”
The delivery driver left the bags behind and drove away. Natalie watched him leave from the kitchen window, waving at him too, before checking on the girls out back. They were still there, seemingly uninterested at the man who’d been at the door.
Natalie waited five minutes before she went outside. She had her hoodie on with the hood up and her hair tucked in beneath it. Out went her hands and feet only rather than her whole body. She took the bags before closing and locking the door.
Covid: still a good excuse to get people to stay away from you.
The shopping was brought inside and she went through it in the kitchen. There was food, drink and other goods. Everything had been paid for online, just like this holiday home had been rented via as well. Natalie packed away what she needed to and sorted other bits to go into the car. She had that around the side of the building, under the tarpaulin. Later tonight, when the kids were sleeping, she’d go out there, but for now she was staying inside.
Back to the living room she went, where she had Jimmy with her and the girls in view outside, and to rub her throbbing head. There were pills that had come with the shopping to help with that, other medicines to keep the children sleepy too.
For as long as she needed to, Natalie was staying here. The car was going to be restocked ready to be a moving base if needed – not something she’d want – yet Natalie felt entirely safe here in this holiday rental by the sea that had been let out in the depths of winter to keep her and them hidden. All she had to do was to wait for her exit and that of her children, not Abigail though, to come through.
Back to the Rodina she intended to be before the week was out.
*
Yitzhak Rosenblum – born as Yevgeny Konstantinovich Navashin, and certainly not Jewish – had gotten Natalie that holiday home. He’d made the last-minute online booking for her and those children, seeking somewhere for her to isolate. Likewise, he’d provided the car to get her there and also wiped away video evidence of her dumping the last one in that car park.
It had been up to him to get her out of the country too before the British caught her. The task was to do without endangering his own cover identity in the process, something he had increasingly been believing was impossible since she remained holding that hostage like she did.
Things had changed though.
Before the situation had taken its new course, there had been the mess of Natalie’s escape.
She hadn’t told him at first that she’d snatched the other child.
There was no ‘Hi, Yitzhak, I’m on the run because everything’s gone to hell, and David’s been grabbed, oh, also, I’ve kidnapped the defence secretary’s daughter while running’ initial confession.
Natalie – Natalia – had left that last bit out.
It wasn’t something that he thought she’d forgotten to tell him when arranging for the car transfer and for the coastal hideout. Instead, she had deliberately not told him.
Why?
Because she knew what his reaction would be.
She also had to know what they’d say back at Yasenevo too…
…that being for him to take the nuclear option on all of it.
The nuclear option was why he was where he was today over in West London. The huge Westfield Shopping Centre was a dump in his very humble opinion. It’s namesake in East London was far nicer. He hadn’t come to admire the architecture, note the quality of the shops nor stare the dour faces of other visitors though. Yitzhak was here to make a drop.
The retail mall was downstairs with the entertainment bits above, all under the same roof. He went up an escalator, his eyes sweeping around for those he knew were watching yet whom he couldn’t identify, to the food-court. The public toilets were over to his left and he walked straight towards them. Yitzhak felt more eyes upon him. People were looking at him from the walkways and from cameras too. There was nothing he would do about that though. He had firm instructions to put himself out in the open and do what he had to regardless of the exposure.
Into the gents he went, dodging a woman cleaner coming out: there was none of that political correctness at home! He went past a full-length mirror, saw the worry lines on his forehead, and towards the long stretch of sinks resting before more mirrors. At the very end one he stopped. He washed his hands with soap and water before going over to dry them. Eyes fixed ahead, he then walked back out and headed for the centre’s exits and the tube station.
Between the sink and the mirror, he’d left a folded piece of paper.
There were details written on it of where Natalie, her kids and Abigail Young were all being hidden. SVR headquarters had told him that that was what they wanted. That address was being passed over to the ‘principal adversary’ despite Yitzhak’s grave misgivings over such a thing.
He was approaching the Wood Lane station, a mere few feet from the entrance, when the ambush was sprung. Two men, then a woman, came at him from the front and the side. They had guns pointed at him, like others who also moved in from more directions.
They were all screaming instructions at him.
“Get Down! Get Down! Armed Police!”
Without hesitation, he dropped to his knees, his arms going out.
People scattered in all directions. London Underground staff closed the metal railings to the station entrance right in front of his eyes. There were shouts of alarm from a kid, a police car siren blazed too.
Yitzhak stared at the policewoman with a gun in his face.
“You’re British?” He asked. “Don’t you know that there’s a deal with the Americans?”
She moved forward, her gun touching his chin, and a blank expression on her pretty face.
“Get on your belly, face down.” Now she smiled though. “Don’t make me shoot you, Yevgeny.”
He did what he was told while his mind raced trying to work out what had gone wrong. Something certainly had gone completely pear-shaped with all of this happening to him here.
The British weren’t meant to be involved in this strictly Russia-US affair.
Re: The Britons
24
At RAF Mildenhall, an American airbase in Suffolk for their exclusive use, a shiny new Gulfstream private jet landed. It was contracted aircraft, one not owned by the US Air Force nor the American government. The crew and passengers were all federal employees though who’d made the trans-Atlantic flight overnight to arrive in the early hours of the morning. Security Forces troopers (American air police) ensured that no one without authorisation went near the aircraft as it taxied towards a hangar. It was met there were non-uniformed personnel with the head of the party that came out to see those aboard wearing a disappointed look as the air-stairs were folded out. He delivered the unfortunate news to the senior of the two CIA officers aboard: the mission was cancelled.
Both spooks who’d flown across the North Atlantic were long-serving employees who’d been involved in clandestine operations globally for a good couple of decades. They’d seen successful missions and ones go bad. Others had been called off at the last minute just like this one had been too. While it was no fun to hear such news, it wasn’t the end of the world for them.
Their fellow passengers weren’t so philosophical when told. There were six of them, all former military personnel who’d been Green Berets, Rangers & SEALs before working for the CIA. They came with weapons and equipment into Britain uninvited just like the spooks and aircrew. The mission details for them were short at that point ahead of a planned later full brief. What they had been told before flying was that they were to snatch a Russian spy operating in Britain under deep cover from under the noses of that country’s police and security services. She wasn’t to be shot in any circumstances though she was expected to be armed and very dangerous. They were prepared for her though, that was until they were told that the mission was aborted.
The spooks still pondered over whether they could continue. Rather than fly back home, the junior one asked whether they should still stage near to the snatch site and be ready to strike, just in case the information on how their mission was blown was faulty or changed. The answer was negative. The British knew. This was no time to make things worse, to cause an international incident with a close ally. The spooks, the former soldiers and the Gulfstream was going back home.
As to the matter of the Russian spy that the CIA wanted to gain custody of for their own uses, something that didn’t want to involve the British with and were willing to do what they planned to, there would be discussions afterwards back at Langley towards other means of putting her into play down the line. She remained important to those there at CIA headquarters.
*
RAF Waddington was another airbase, this one a wholly British affair.
Britain’s air force flew armed drones from there, their versions of the Predator and the Reaper. The military base in the Lincolnshire countryside had a closed off section where uniformed personnel from the RAF weren’t allowed access to though. Inside there, flight control and mission tasks for a detachment of Cuckoos were run from.
The Cuckoo was a third of the size of the RAF drones. It didn’t carry weapons either. British-made, it was a national success story that remained a state secret despite its value if marketed. NISS operated those aircraft and flew them on ‘black’ missions across the country, sometimes beyond Britain’s shores too.
It was three am. The skies over Northern England were dark and rain threatened. Coastal winds blew angrily, especially above the tiny resort village of Sewerby near Bridlington where Yorkshire met the North Sea. Circling above Sewerby as residents and only a bare few winter holidaymakers slept was one of those Cuckoos. It was carrying a payload of sensors. Distant controllers back at Waddington guided it to a bungalow complete with its own grounds where intelligence said a woman and several children could be found.
Infrared thermal imaging and low-light television cameras displayed what was below the aircraft. There were four people within that bungalow, only one of them adult-sized. Analysts determined that they were all in bed, lying horizontal with one of the children with the adult. Their positioning was confirmed alongside images of the internal structure of the building already at-hand.
Natalie Morris, Jessica Morris, James Morris & Abigail Young were all within sight. Who the first was was easy to tell, which was which with the smaller ones wasn’t though. The third child, the kidnap victim, could have been anyone of the three children that the Cuckoo was seeing. While talking among themselves, those at Waddington momentarily missed the rising from bed of the adult; those watching the feed remotely from the NISS building at Thames House didn’t. They saw Natalie get up and out of bed. By the time she reached the rear door to the building, everyone was paying note.
She was seen to look upwards and the cameras focused on her. An aide to the security secretary, a usually timid woman, wandered aloud why no one had thought to fit a sniper rifle to the Cuckoo. Surely that was doable? Her boss, shocked to hear her talk of shooting people when that was so unlike her, yet had to agree.
It would have made things so much easier.
Meanwhile, the woman being watched from above raised an arm. There was no weapon in sight though a feeling of dread hit so many viewers of the feed from the aircraft all at once. They knew something unfortunate was coming.
With an unheard ‘Zap’, the feed went dead before Waddington would report moments later that the Cuckoo was down.
*
A sixteen-man troop from the SBS raided the house moments later. The better known SAS was usually on-call for counter-terror missions within the UK, but there was a rotation with the Special Boat Service too where they were available to provide aid to the civil power. Just as the home secretary had the authorisation to make the call for military support, the security secretary did as well. It had been decided that this wasn’t a job for the police, even elite armed units, but instead a SBS team would be best suited to liberating the hostage held and arresting the Russian spy who’d snatched her.
Don’t shoot anyone, especially any child: the commandos donned all in black carrying weapons & armed with gear had been repeatedly told that.
They did what was asked of them. Commandos came up the driveway towards the front of the house. More of them went over the hedgerow and through the gate to the rear as well. Bursting into the house just behind the woman who’d gone back inside, the swept through the rooms as per detailed planning for their assault. No shots were fired and no one got hurt.
Two little girls, one of them the hostage sought, were found under a bed. They were huddled together while terribly frightened. Carefully, with soothing words to them, the girls were coaxed out of there and into the arms of the men who’d broke their way into the house. They would cry when separated yet that was entirely necessary.
The boy was in his mother’s arms. She had no weapon carried, just him. At the moment when the SBS men appeared in front of and behind her, she was trying to get him to the car. He screamed and screamed as he was taken from her, refusing to stop for some time. One of the commandos was rather adversely affected by all of that and, in time, he would no longer be able to undertake missions.
The woman was cuffed, hooded and searched thoroughly. There was a phone in one pocket, a strange-looking electronic object in another. It was her pistol the SBS were looking for. That was found afterwards under her pillow back in the bed that she’d left. She said nothing and made no emotional outbursts like the others found. Quickly swept away from the bungalow, her silence continued.
Into a black van with no windows outside of the partitioned-off driver’s cab the woman went. She was handed over to spooks from NISS. Her children, one of the girls and the boy too, went into an ambulance. There was nothing outwardly wrong with them but a doctor and two nurses fussed over them just in case. A police detective rode in the vehicle went it departed after the black van and she was experienced in dealing with young kids who’d been through trauma. She’d have her hands full.
As to Abigail Young, she got a ride in a helicopter which landed nearby. There was a doctor as one of the passengers while a spook was with him. So too was Britain’s defence secretary. She’d come to collect her rescued daughter.
There’d be tears all round.
At RAF Mildenhall, an American airbase in Suffolk for their exclusive use, a shiny new Gulfstream private jet landed. It was contracted aircraft, one not owned by the US Air Force nor the American government. The crew and passengers were all federal employees though who’d made the trans-Atlantic flight overnight to arrive in the early hours of the morning. Security Forces troopers (American air police) ensured that no one without authorisation went near the aircraft as it taxied towards a hangar. It was met there were non-uniformed personnel with the head of the party that came out to see those aboard wearing a disappointed look as the air-stairs were folded out. He delivered the unfortunate news to the senior of the two CIA officers aboard: the mission was cancelled.
Both spooks who’d flown across the North Atlantic were long-serving employees who’d been involved in clandestine operations globally for a good couple of decades. They’d seen successful missions and ones go bad. Others had been called off at the last minute just like this one had been too. While it was no fun to hear such news, it wasn’t the end of the world for them.
Their fellow passengers weren’t so philosophical when told. There were six of them, all former military personnel who’d been Green Berets, Rangers & SEALs before working for the CIA. They came with weapons and equipment into Britain uninvited just like the spooks and aircrew. The mission details for them were short at that point ahead of a planned later full brief. What they had been told before flying was that they were to snatch a Russian spy operating in Britain under deep cover from under the noses of that country’s police and security services. She wasn’t to be shot in any circumstances though she was expected to be armed and very dangerous. They were prepared for her though, that was until they were told that the mission was aborted.
The spooks still pondered over whether they could continue. Rather than fly back home, the junior one asked whether they should still stage near to the snatch site and be ready to strike, just in case the information on how their mission was blown was faulty or changed. The answer was negative. The British knew. This was no time to make things worse, to cause an international incident with a close ally. The spooks, the former soldiers and the Gulfstream was going back home.
As to the matter of the Russian spy that the CIA wanted to gain custody of for their own uses, something that didn’t want to involve the British with and were willing to do what they planned to, there would be discussions afterwards back at Langley towards other means of putting her into play down the line. She remained important to those there at CIA headquarters.
*
RAF Waddington was another airbase, this one a wholly British affair.
Britain’s air force flew armed drones from there, their versions of the Predator and the Reaper. The military base in the Lincolnshire countryside had a closed off section where uniformed personnel from the RAF weren’t allowed access to though. Inside there, flight control and mission tasks for a detachment of Cuckoos were run from.
The Cuckoo was a third of the size of the RAF drones. It didn’t carry weapons either. British-made, it was a national success story that remained a state secret despite its value if marketed. NISS operated those aircraft and flew them on ‘black’ missions across the country, sometimes beyond Britain’s shores too.
It was three am. The skies over Northern England were dark and rain threatened. Coastal winds blew angrily, especially above the tiny resort village of Sewerby near Bridlington where Yorkshire met the North Sea. Circling above Sewerby as residents and only a bare few winter holidaymakers slept was one of those Cuckoos. It was carrying a payload of sensors. Distant controllers back at Waddington guided it to a bungalow complete with its own grounds where intelligence said a woman and several children could be found.
Infrared thermal imaging and low-light television cameras displayed what was below the aircraft. There were four people within that bungalow, only one of them adult-sized. Analysts determined that they were all in bed, lying horizontal with one of the children with the adult. Their positioning was confirmed alongside images of the internal structure of the building already at-hand.
Natalie Morris, Jessica Morris, James Morris & Abigail Young were all within sight. Who the first was was easy to tell, which was which with the smaller ones wasn’t though. The third child, the kidnap victim, could have been anyone of the three children that the Cuckoo was seeing. While talking among themselves, those at Waddington momentarily missed the rising from bed of the adult; those watching the feed remotely from the NISS building at Thames House didn’t. They saw Natalie get up and out of bed. By the time she reached the rear door to the building, everyone was paying note.
She was seen to look upwards and the cameras focused on her. An aide to the security secretary, a usually timid woman, wandered aloud why no one had thought to fit a sniper rifle to the Cuckoo. Surely that was doable? Her boss, shocked to hear her talk of shooting people when that was so unlike her, yet had to agree.
It would have made things so much easier.
Meanwhile, the woman being watched from above raised an arm. There was no weapon in sight though a feeling of dread hit so many viewers of the feed from the aircraft all at once. They knew something unfortunate was coming.
With an unheard ‘Zap’, the feed went dead before Waddington would report moments later that the Cuckoo was down.
*
A sixteen-man troop from the SBS raided the house moments later. The better known SAS was usually on-call for counter-terror missions within the UK, but there was a rotation with the Special Boat Service too where they were available to provide aid to the civil power. Just as the home secretary had the authorisation to make the call for military support, the security secretary did as well. It had been decided that this wasn’t a job for the police, even elite armed units, but instead a SBS team would be best suited to liberating the hostage held and arresting the Russian spy who’d snatched her.
Don’t shoot anyone, especially any child: the commandos donned all in black carrying weapons & armed with gear had been repeatedly told that.
They did what was asked of them. Commandos came up the driveway towards the front of the house. More of them went over the hedgerow and through the gate to the rear as well. Bursting into the house just behind the woman who’d gone back inside, the swept through the rooms as per detailed planning for their assault. No shots were fired and no one got hurt.
Two little girls, one of them the hostage sought, were found under a bed. They were huddled together while terribly frightened. Carefully, with soothing words to them, the girls were coaxed out of there and into the arms of the men who’d broke their way into the house. They would cry when separated yet that was entirely necessary.
The boy was in his mother’s arms. She had no weapon carried, just him. At the moment when the SBS men appeared in front of and behind her, she was trying to get him to the car. He screamed and screamed as he was taken from her, refusing to stop for some time. One of the commandos was rather adversely affected by all of that and, in time, he would no longer be able to undertake missions.
The woman was cuffed, hooded and searched thoroughly. There was a phone in one pocket, a strange-looking electronic object in another. It was her pistol the SBS were looking for. That was found afterwards under her pillow back in the bed that she’d left. She said nothing and made no emotional outbursts like the others found. Quickly swept away from the bungalow, her silence continued.
Into a black van with no windows outside of the partitioned-off driver’s cab the woman went. She was handed over to spooks from NISS. Her children, one of the girls and the boy too, went into an ambulance. There was nothing outwardly wrong with them but a doctor and two nurses fussed over them just in case. A police detective rode in the vehicle went it departed after the black van and she was experienced in dealing with young kids who’d been through trauma. She’d have her hands full.
As to Abigail Young, she got a ride in a helicopter which landed nearby. There was a doctor as one of the passengers while a spook was with him. So too was Britain’s defence secretary. She’d come to collect her rescued daughter.
There’d be tears all round.
Re: The Britons
25
Rebecca had named the technical whizz guy ‘Q’s apprentice’. A gadget man, Stuart Hobbs wasn’t an armourer assistant to any 007s though. Instead, his job was to examine and explain captured foreign specialist equipment.
He was also a bit past his prime to be an apprentice: Harriet reckoned he had to be almost sixty years-old.
Hobbs had come up to the Yorkshire coast and was inside the house with Harriet as well as Rebecca, Katie and Daryl. He had three objects laid out on the dining room table around which they all stood.
“This is a Zapper.” He held up the phone-shaped device. “There’s a proper Russian name for it, I’m sure, but we don’t know what it is. We’ve seen them before too, yet nothing like this one. It must be the latest model. If you want to call it something else, if Zapper doesn’t float your boat, one name I’ve heard for it, which I don’t agree with but is often used, is an ‘Electronic Signals Disabling Device’.
That’s kind of what it does. Point and shoot, it sends out either a strong burst that has a powerful immediate effect or, turn it on and let it warm up and it will gently do the same job at a better range in time. Phones go off so do lights. Any recording devices, a toaster, even a car’s electronic systems will do down.
That drone was brought down with the Burst setting. It’s navigation, communications and power train were all blasted. Think of it like an E.M.P weapon you see in fiction: that’s what it is.”
He put it back down on the table. Harriet marvelled at its small size with the power it must have used to do what it did.
“Do our agents in the field have their own Zappers?”
“You’re a field agent, do you have one?”
Rebecca had asked that question of Hobbs yet it was Daryl who countered it.
Harriet’s colleague shook her head disappointedly.
“Now,” Hobbs was back with his demonstration, “this is something else really fancy.” He held up the closed briefcase before opening it and putting it back down on the table. “We’ve seen these before too. They make them in Russia for commercial sales and, using middlemen in the Gulf, they’ve turned up in the hands of a diverse group of people. Transnational crime groups – think Mexican and Columbian drug smugglers – have been using them, so too a couple of major terror groups in Asia and elsewhere. There’s been reports that a couple of well-off American survivalists, the tin-foil hat anti-government militia mob, have brought some too.
Those are the ones that the Russians have been willing to sell, but they’ve never let one of these out on the market.
Its a radar in a briefcase. Open it up, switch it on, the radome folds out and leave it somewhere high to point at the sky. It looks like the range on this one is anywhere up to three miles, twice the distance that the ones we’ve seen before have. Like the Zapper, the power source is built in but needs quite the recharge when it does: this can’t be plugged into the kitchen socket either or it’ll burn your house down.”
“She had it strapped onto the roof above us?”
Hobbs nodded at that. “It comes with its own tie-downs. Bad weather will damage it but it can be held in place against the wind.
The radar will pick up aircraft, helicopters and drones. It’s a last-minute warning device giving those receiving it’s signal a few moments to react. Working like a military radar, not a civilian unit that uses transponder signals, this device detected your drone and sent out an alert.
“To?” Rebecca had yet another question.
“To her phone, this one that she didn’t smash like the last one.”
Now Hobbs had her phone, the last item.
“We got right into this, lifting her fingerprint and also getting an eye scan off the lady you took away too. She downloaded the app that comes with the radar and it sent her an alert that there was something overhead circling the bungalow.
Of course, we got so much more out of the phone too, all already sent onwards remotely back to London.”
Looking pleased with himself, Hobbs finished his mini presentation with that. He turned away from them and fiddled with the Zapper some more. Like she herself was doing, Harriet watched Rebecca’s jealous eyes on that.
They both wanted one to play with.
Daryl took them all outside. Katie, who hadn’t said very much at all since they got her, not her usual friendly self at all, trailed behind. Harriet saw that her American friend’s eyes were down, suitably complimenting her frown.
Poor Katie.
As they’d agreed, it was Rebecca who did all of the talking. She was the one to confront Katie. Harriet stood alongside Daryl to witness it, too angry at someone who’d she’d thought her friend to trust herself to put it all out in the open.
“We know about the guys who came into Mildenhall, the ones who flew back out again empty handed.”
“Excuse me?” Katie looked up, feigning confusion.
“You had a snatch team brought in. They were meant to grab Natalia and spirit her away back to the States. Forget about rescuing that little girl, forget detaining the spy we’ve all been chasing. You were going to steal her away from us.”
“I,” more cluelessness in her expression, “have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
Katie looked at Daryl first, opening her palms out. She turned to Harriet next, opening them further as her chin jutted forward.
If that was supposed to be the look of innocence, Katie needed to attend some drama classes.
“We know, we know. You tried to bring Harriet in on it. This is after you went out of your way to win her friendship, be her best buddy. It was all a scam just so you could get what you wanted and leave us all screwed in the end.” Rebecca’s face was inches from Katie’s: it had the look of something about to get physical. “You’re a liar, a fraud.
Get back in your car and bugger off, will you?”
Katie once more swung her gaze around. It went to Daryl first again, he used his thumb to indicate where Katie’s car was over his shoulder while shaking his head in disappointment at her.
To Harriet came Katie’s pleading eyes next.
There was so much to say. It all would have been worse than what Rebecca had. The deception, the lies… they’d all been too much. Katie had attempted to rope her into treason. That was all alongside how she would have thrown away all of this hard work done too.
Harriet said nothing, she just stared Katie down.
“You can’t do your job without cooperation, Katie.” Rebecca hadn’t finished. “Gaining our trust and being alongside us is your bread & butter. Frozen out,” Rebecca placed a finger on Katie’s chin, “is what you are.
They’ll recall you, that lot back at Langley will once they understand you’re useless to them here and send someone else. That’ll do your career no good. Next time, find some idiots instead of professionals to try this game with. You’re luck that we don’t persona non grata,” Harriet suppressed a smile as Rebecca said that, remembering how earlier on what talking about this her colleague had hilariously mispronounced that, “you after all that you’ve done.
Now, what did I say: f*ck off!”
“You’re all mad.”
Katie gave that quick reply, one that had zero meaning to it, before she turned and walked away.
Ruefully, Harriet watched her former friend do just as Rebecca had told her to.
It was over.
Dmitri and Natalia, aka David and Natalie, had been caught.
Three more Russian spies posing as Britons long-term had been caught as well with another one who’d already left the country missing a leg in a motorcycle accident identified. Several Russian active espionage operations that they’d been running had been exposed, British traitors caught up in that too. In addition, the kidnapped daughter of Britain’s defence secretary had been returned to her mother.
Then there was what Katie Parker, the American CIA liaison assigned to the investigation, had been up to. She’d been busted cold.
It had been the other day during the car journey up to Luton, where Natalia had first swapped vehicles, that Katie had put a proposition to Harriet. She listened to it carefully, all while making no objection. The Americans wanted Natalia, Katie had said. It would be worth Harriet’s while to see that allowed to happen.
Instead of going along with it, she’d done the right thing. Harriet had spoken to Daryl, bringing Rebecca in on it as a witness to previous instances of Katie’s behaviour. Harriet had quoted exactly what Katie had suggested, reciting afterwards her terms of service with NISS when it came to how an employee was meant to respond to attempts by foreign agents – even ones from ‘friendly’ powers – to try and recruit them. There was the terms of the UK-US intelligence agreement too which Harriet knew by heart when it came to what wasn’t supposed to be done with each other’s officers.
Katie had broke the rules but Harriet had followed them.
A bigger blow up could have happened. The Chief of NISS, ministers and the CIA chief-of-station themselves could have gotten involved. Rebecca had suggesting doing it the way they had, all after getting approval from the top. It was less messy the way it was done… and would stuff Katie’s career more.
Katie drove off.
Once she was gone from sight, Rebecca had a question: “Why do they want Natalia?”
Harriet had no idea.
Daryl had an inkling though.
“I heard on the rumour mill that there was someone working at Langley who walked out of there with a couple of memory sticks, complete with many terabytes of data, who took a flight to Moscow via Seoul when making a run for it.”
“They’ll want to swap him for her, yes?”
That was how Harriet thought it would go when thinking on it.
“Yes, I’d think so. The data will be written off as lost, but Langley would want to see if they could trade one of Russia’s for one of their own.”
“Our craven government,” Rebecca had never hid her feelings about those in Downing Street, “would likely have agreed to help with that. Natalia, Dmitri and the others are bargaining chips of note, are they not?”
“I’m not going to disagree.”
“Surely not?”
Harriet couldn’t see it.
She would be proved wrong soon enough though.
Rebecca had named the technical whizz guy ‘Q’s apprentice’. A gadget man, Stuart Hobbs wasn’t an armourer assistant to any 007s though. Instead, his job was to examine and explain captured foreign specialist equipment.
He was also a bit past his prime to be an apprentice: Harriet reckoned he had to be almost sixty years-old.
Hobbs had come up to the Yorkshire coast and was inside the house with Harriet as well as Rebecca, Katie and Daryl. He had three objects laid out on the dining room table around which they all stood.
“This is a Zapper.” He held up the phone-shaped device. “There’s a proper Russian name for it, I’m sure, but we don’t know what it is. We’ve seen them before too, yet nothing like this one. It must be the latest model. If you want to call it something else, if Zapper doesn’t float your boat, one name I’ve heard for it, which I don’t agree with but is often used, is an ‘Electronic Signals Disabling Device’.
That’s kind of what it does. Point and shoot, it sends out either a strong burst that has a powerful immediate effect or, turn it on and let it warm up and it will gently do the same job at a better range in time. Phones go off so do lights. Any recording devices, a toaster, even a car’s electronic systems will do down.
That drone was brought down with the Burst setting. It’s navigation, communications and power train were all blasted. Think of it like an E.M.P weapon you see in fiction: that’s what it is.”
He put it back down on the table. Harriet marvelled at its small size with the power it must have used to do what it did.
“Do our agents in the field have their own Zappers?”
“You’re a field agent, do you have one?”
Rebecca had asked that question of Hobbs yet it was Daryl who countered it.
Harriet’s colleague shook her head disappointedly.
“Now,” Hobbs was back with his demonstration, “this is something else really fancy.” He held up the closed briefcase before opening it and putting it back down on the table. “We’ve seen these before too. They make them in Russia for commercial sales and, using middlemen in the Gulf, they’ve turned up in the hands of a diverse group of people. Transnational crime groups – think Mexican and Columbian drug smugglers – have been using them, so too a couple of major terror groups in Asia and elsewhere. There’s been reports that a couple of well-off American survivalists, the tin-foil hat anti-government militia mob, have brought some too.
Those are the ones that the Russians have been willing to sell, but they’ve never let one of these out on the market.
Its a radar in a briefcase. Open it up, switch it on, the radome folds out and leave it somewhere high to point at the sky. It looks like the range on this one is anywhere up to three miles, twice the distance that the ones we’ve seen before have. Like the Zapper, the power source is built in but needs quite the recharge when it does: this can’t be plugged into the kitchen socket either or it’ll burn your house down.”
“She had it strapped onto the roof above us?”
Hobbs nodded at that. “It comes with its own tie-downs. Bad weather will damage it but it can be held in place against the wind.
The radar will pick up aircraft, helicopters and drones. It’s a last-minute warning device giving those receiving it’s signal a few moments to react. Working like a military radar, not a civilian unit that uses transponder signals, this device detected your drone and sent out an alert.
“To?” Rebecca had yet another question.
“To her phone, this one that she didn’t smash like the last one.”
Now Hobbs had her phone, the last item.
“We got right into this, lifting her fingerprint and also getting an eye scan off the lady you took away too. She downloaded the app that comes with the radar and it sent her an alert that there was something overhead circling the bungalow.
Of course, we got so much more out of the phone too, all already sent onwards remotely back to London.”
Looking pleased with himself, Hobbs finished his mini presentation with that. He turned away from them and fiddled with the Zapper some more. Like she herself was doing, Harriet watched Rebecca’s jealous eyes on that.
They both wanted one to play with.
Daryl took them all outside. Katie, who hadn’t said very much at all since they got her, not her usual friendly self at all, trailed behind. Harriet saw that her American friend’s eyes were down, suitably complimenting her frown.
Poor Katie.
As they’d agreed, it was Rebecca who did all of the talking. She was the one to confront Katie. Harriet stood alongside Daryl to witness it, too angry at someone who’d she’d thought her friend to trust herself to put it all out in the open.
“We know about the guys who came into Mildenhall, the ones who flew back out again empty handed.”
“Excuse me?” Katie looked up, feigning confusion.
“You had a snatch team brought in. They were meant to grab Natalia and spirit her away back to the States. Forget about rescuing that little girl, forget detaining the spy we’ve all been chasing. You were going to steal her away from us.”
“I,” more cluelessness in her expression, “have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
Katie looked at Daryl first, opening her palms out. She turned to Harriet next, opening them further as her chin jutted forward.
If that was supposed to be the look of innocence, Katie needed to attend some drama classes.
“We know, we know. You tried to bring Harriet in on it. This is after you went out of your way to win her friendship, be her best buddy. It was all a scam just so you could get what you wanted and leave us all screwed in the end.” Rebecca’s face was inches from Katie’s: it had the look of something about to get physical. “You’re a liar, a fraud.
Get back in your car and bugger off, will you?”
Katie once more swung her gaze around. It went to Daryl first again, he used his thumb to indicate where Katie’s car was over his shoulder while shaking his head in disappointment at her.
To Harriet came Katie’s pleading eyes next.
There was so much to say. It all would have been worse than what Rebecca had. The deception, the lies… they’d all been too much. Katie had attempted to rope her into treason. That was all alongside how she would have thrown away all of this hard work done too.
Harriet said nothing, she just stared Katie down.
“You can’t do your job without cooperation, Katie.” Rebecca hadn’t finished. “Gaining our trust and being alongside us is your bread & butter. Frozen out,” Rebecca placed a finger on Katie’s chin, “is what you are.
They’ll recall you, that lot back at Langley will once they understand you’re useless to them here and send someone else. That’ll do your career no good. Next time, find some idiots instead of professionals to try this game with. You’re luck that we don’t persona non grata,” Harriet suppressed a smile as Rebecca said that, remembering how earlier on what talking about this her colleague had hilariously mispronounced that, “you after all that you’ve done.
Now, what did I say: f*ck off!”
“You’re all mad.”
Katie gave that quick reply, one that had zero meaning to it, before she turned and walked away.
Ruefully, Harriet watched her former friend do just as Rebecca had told her to.
It was over.
Dmitri and Natalia, aka David and Natalie, had been caught.
Three more Russian spies posing as Britons long-term had been caught as well with another one who’d already left the country missing a leg in a motorcycle accident identified. Several Russian active espionage operations that they’d been running had been exposed, British traitors caught up in that too. In addition, the kidnapped daughter of Britain’s defence secretary had been returned to her mother.
Then there was what Katie Parker, the American CIA liaison assigned to the investigation, had been up to. She’d been busted cold.
It had been the other day during the car journey up to Luton, where Natalia had first swapped vehicles, that Katie had put a proposition to Harriet. She listened to it carefully, all while making no objection. The Americans wanted Natalia, Katie had said. It would be worth Harriet’s while to see that allowed to happen.
Instead of going along with it, she’d done the right thing. Harriet had spoken to Daryl, bringing Rebecca in on it as a witness to previous instances of Katie’s behaviour. Harriet had quoted exactly what Katie had suggested, reciting afterwards her terms of service with NISS when it came to how an employee was meant to respond to attempts by foreign agents – even ones from ‘friendly’ powers – to try and recruit them. There was the terms of the UK-US intelligence agreement too which Harriet knew by heart when it came to what wasn’t supposed to be done with each other’s officers.
Katie had broke the rules but Harriet had followed them.
A bigger blow up could have happened. The Chief of NISS, ministers and the CIA chief-of-station themselves could have gotten involved. Rebecca had suggesting doing it the way they had, all after getting approval from the top. It was less messy the way it was done… and would stuff Katie’s career more.
Katie drove off.
Once she was gone from sight, Rebecca had a question: “Why do they want Natalia?”
Harriet had no idea.
Daryl had an inkling though.
“I heard on the rumour mill that there was someone working at Langley who walked out of there with a couple of memory sticks, complete with many terabytes of data, who took a flight to Moscow via Seoul when making a run for it.”
“They’ll want to swap him for her, yes?”
That was how Harriet thought it would go when thinking on it.
“Yes, I’d think so. The data will be written off as lost, but Langley would want to see if they could trade one of Russia’s for one of their own.”
“Our craven government,” Rebecca had never hid her feelings about those in Downing Street, “would likely have agreed to help with that. Natalia, Dmitri and the others are bargaining chips of note, are they not?”
“I’m not going to disagree.”
“Surely not?”
Harriet couldn’t see it.
She would be proved wrong soon enough though.
Re: The Britons
I've enjoyed reading this.
I actually feel quite sorry for Jessica and Jimmy. Either they find their way into the UK care system, or they end up in Russia, not speaking the language, with two likely separated parents.
I actually feel quite sorry for Jessica and Jimmy. Either they find their way into the UK care system, or they end up in Russia, not speaking the language, with two likely separated parents.
Re: The Britons
“I heard on the rumour mill that there was someone working at Langley who walked out of there with a couple of memory sticks, complete with many terabytes of data, who took a flight to Moscow via Seoul when making a run for it.”
“They’ll want to swap him for her, yes?”
That was how Harriet thought it would go when thinking on it.
“Yes, I’d think so. The data will be written off as lost, but Langley would want to see if they could trade one of Russia’s for one of their own.”
Hang on a sec, maybe I'm missing something here, but I thought that Intelligence Agencies swapped your captured agents for their captured agents (getting their own people back being good for morale), but this is swapping someone who came to them with valuable intel for a captured agent. Would they do that? If they did and word got out (and it'd be in the oppositions interest to see that it did) then that discourages potential info sources from approaching them - shooting yourself in the foot.
What am I missing?
“They’ll want to swap him for her, yes?”
That was how Harriet thought it would go when thinking on it.
“Yes, I’d think so. The data will be written off as lost, but Langley would want to see if they could trade one of Russia’s for one of their own.”
Hang on a sec, maybe I'm missing something here, but I thought that Intelligence Agencies swapped your captured agents for their captured agents (getting their own people back being good for morale), but this is swapping someone who came to them with valuable intel for a captured agent. Would they do that? If they did and word got out (and it'd be in the oppositions interest to see that it did) then that discourages potential info sources from approaching them - shooting yourself in the foot.
What am I missing?
Re: The Britons
You're spot on.
The Russians have a CIA contractor - let's call him Adam. The Americans wanted Natalia / Natalie to swap for Adam. They never got her, let alone made the approach.
In Moscow, they'd say "Neyt." But that was the plan, a foolish one.
There's one more part before this story finishes. Then, in time, there will be a third to complete the Kompromat series. With the third, we'll see swaps, but by people who'd want to go. Adam won't be on the table.
The Russians have a CIA contractor - let's call him Adam. The Americans wanted Natalia / Natalie to swap for Adam. They never got her, let alone made the approach.
In Moscow, they'd say "Neyt." But that was the plan, a foolish one.
There's one more part before this story finishes. Then, in time, there will be a third to complete the Kompromat series. With the third, we'll see swaps, but by people who'd want to go. Adam won't be on the table.
Re: The Britons
Thank you.
There were the kids of the 2010 Illegals Programme I've been reading about in readiness for how to proceed. They're innocent but faced horrible circumstances as their lives were a lie.
Re: The Britons
26
Harold Parkinson served as Britain’s prime minister. He was a caretaker in that role, doing his duty until the inevitable electoral oblivion arrived. There was nothing official about his caretaker status but that was the truth of it. Come next May, he’d be forced out of Downing Street. Before then, Parkinson was trying his best. He did what he did for the good of the country, damn his party whose members appeared to have signed up to a mutual suicide pact. MPs and ministers misbehaved. The economy was on the ropes. By-elections had been lost one after another while the opinion polls were too terrifying to read. The press was actively hostile against his government, working hand-in-glove in lickspittle fashion with a disciplined & united Opposition ready to take over the reins.
History wouldn’t be kind to Parkinson the Caretaker.
He’d never wanted the job. Parkinson had been happy being Chief Whip, the pinnacle of his political career. They’d been a few moments of jest from colleagues where they questioned his ambitions, asking if he was in fact a secret Francis Urquhart, but there had never been the intent in him to be where he was now. At the moment of crisis though, there was no one else who could step up like he did. Plenty wanted the job but the collegial agreement in government had been that only he could do it.
What had caused all of that?
Alicia bloody Manningtree!
A spy for Russia, someone whom they’d blackmailed into doing their bidding with quite the kompromat, she’d been in Downing Street as his predecessor. Her activities had been exposed. A lot of people had realised at the end what she was. Robert Barton had known… before the ambitious foreign secretary who’d used that knowledge to try and take her down so he could take her post had been mysteriously poisoned to end up dead. Another positively awful character involved was Catherine Wyatt. She’d been the idiotic home secretary who’d let it all happen under her nose, not intervening when it was clear as day that Manningtree and Barton were tearing everything down. It had given Parkinson personal satisfaction to fire her in his reshuffle upon taking office. However, he’d been less pleased when she’d resigned from parliament to force a by-election that had been lost.
Barton was dead and Wyatt now a nonentity. Parkinson had taken a cleaver to Britain’s top two spy services, MI-5 & MI-6, both of which had chiefs who knew what was happening yet didn’t act properly in such circumstances. He’d formed a combined intelligence organisation with the new Ministry of Security having a Cabinet-level secretary. Such a situation was never going to happen again.
That had been by no means the end of it though. Exposure by an American website specialising in intelligence leaks had occurred when Manningtree was on an official visit to Russia. Her response? She stayed there as a guest of Russia’s president. The other by-election had gone as the first had. That was nothing in comparison to the public revelation of her treachery. In addition, the leaks on the Angleton site had revealed all all the deaths linked to her treason, all the government incompetence too. Britain was a global laughing stock, Parkinson’s government left on its knees as part of that. Manningtree had spent more than a year now in Russia. She’d had spoken openly to state broadcasters there about British – and American – national secrets, her actions directed by the Kremlin. Denying all she was accused of, Manningtree had claimed she was framed. It was all a stitch-up, she’d done nothing wrong and been removed from her democratically-elected role so forced to stay in Russia.
The scandal just went on and on, and on some more.
Such was why Parkinson was soon to be tossed out of Downing Street, his party swept from power too, once May arrived.
In Downing Street this afternoon, Parkinson was getting a briefing concerning more Russian spies in the UK. These ones were from that foreign country though, Illegals posing as Britons this time. They’d been identified days ago – he’d been first told then – right before one of them snatched his defence secretary’s little kid as some sort of hostage to make her doomed effort at escape.
When tracked down, Parkinson had sent in the SBS.
The girl had been rescued earlier today, his colleague no longer distraught as any parent would be, though she and her child were certain to not easy get over what had happened. He could see that now in Charlotte’s pained eyes.
Parkinson sat opposite her, the two of them in his office with several other senior ministers and a couple of officials from NISS. The chief of that new intelligence organisation finished his briefing and, as Parkinson watched, the security secretary gave the professional spook a telling nod.
“Prime Minister, I’d like to recommend that we exchange them – all of them, I should add, even the kidnapper – in a deal to be made with the Russian Federation.
There’s some people they have that we’d like back ourselves.”
The home & foreign secretaries shared a look which Parkinson caught. He took that as the two of them not liking what they were hearing. As to his own feelings on the matter, this didn’t come a surprise to him as it apparently did to some of his colleagues in the room. After the first pair had been detained, he and the security secretary had discussed their fate.
“Who?” So asked the deputy prime minister.
She had what Parkinson determined to be a look of hopefulness at an idea which he believed had come as a shock to her too.
“We,” the security secretary answered that one, “have a list of five names. Five-for-five is what we’re thinking would be the scale of the exchange.”
In reply to that, the defence secretary had something to ask: “Harold, we’re sending those kids – the Morris children – back too, aren’t we? We’re not going to use them as additional pawns?”
Parkinson shook his head firmly.
“Oh, no, Charlotte. They go with their parents with no conditions attached.”
Using children as bargaining chips was nothing that Parkinson would never want to be involved in.
“How old are they?”
“The children?” The security secretary got a nod from Parkinson’s deputy as he asked that. “The girl is six and the boy is three: his fourth birthday is tomorrow as a matter of fact.”
“Those children go.” Once more, Parkinson made that clear.
There was a spook in the room, a woman intelligence officer whom NISS’ head had brought with him here. She handed out a single sheet of paper to all six cabinet members at her boss’ cue before stepping back against the wall where she’d been standing.
Her first time inside of 10 Downing Street, Harriet’s job was to say nothing unless asked. That she did and instead of talking, she listened to the prime minister’s top people remark on what she had given them.
“An interesting list…”
“How many of you remember Twenty Ten? The Americans had ten Russians and got three or four returned in a swap. Eight years later, we had the Salisbury mess! I’m not sure if we want to be involved in such a situation again. I think we should put each of these spies on trial.”
“You’ll never get number five, Martin.”
“Do we really think the Russians will want to do a trade like this?”
“Her?” A finger was jabbed at a printed name. “I’d rather see her rot there. If we bring her back here, we’d have to put her on trial.”
“This chap here: he’s ill and we owe him, I think. If we’re going to push on any number of them, he surely has to be top of the list.”
Harriet could pretty much guess as to who to specific remarks were made about. It wasn’t really that hard to work out.
She watched as the home secretary used a pen to circle three names – one of them twice too – and show his list to the prime minister.
“You’ll get these three, Harold, maybe. As to the rest, especially the final name which Tim and I agree should share that fate… c’mon! That’s never going to happen.”
Harriet agreed with that. She didn’t know what her ultimate boss’ thinking was on the matter but was aware that it was the security secretary who’d insisted on putting that name forward for reasons which she could only silently speculate on.
There were more spirited discussions between the politicians, mostly over the last name of people that the plan was for the UK to request Russia swap, all while Harriet continued to preform her task of just observing.
Parkinson cast his gaze over the woman by the wall, behind his top spook. She was the one who’d been instrumental in detecting, tracking and capturing those Russians posing as Britons. He’d been briefed on all of the details where it was clear that she was one of the few people at the sharp end of NISS counter-intelligence operations who appeared to have had their head screwed on properly.
There were a good number of them who were otherwise idiots.
He’d like to see that woman go far, rise higher in NISS. Whether that would be the case, he didn’t know. It was a typical civil service bureaucracy full of the expected problems. Parkinson had hoped that when he had authorised its creation, things would be different. Such was the way of things though and he had no real control over these matters. In addition, the woman – Harriet Spencer was her name, wasn’t it? – had also been tied up in the mess with the interfering Americans who’d stuck their nose in. Parkinson had called the US Ambassador in here to explain himself and was expecting that the next time he spoke with President Flores, there’d be more of the issue there with her. This spook with him now would likely be caught up in the fallout of all of that too, much to her later detriment.
Now, back to his colleagues.
“It’s my belief that we should ask for the five-for-five swap. I support Martin on this and I’d like you all to back me.
Objections?” Parkinson was ready to hear them out.
“I don’t like it all but it’s probably for the best. I’m with you, Harold.”
His deputy was on side.
“I back the motion.”
Four words of support was what he got from the defence secretary.
“If you get number five, that’s going to cause us problems.” A huff of resignation. “I support making the swap and asking for as many as we can get.”
The foreign secretary made his point clear on what he didn’t like but fell in line.
“Harold, Martin,” the home secretary moved uneasily in his chair, “do you both really believe this is the best idea? I’m thinking we go through the motions of bringing charges against these spies we have. We’ll go down the legal route and then wait for the Russians to make us an offer. And, the last name, the one I circled twice… as Tim says, that will cause us a lot of problems.”
“You’d rather see her rot, Gareth, and I agree somewhat there.” The security secretary expressed enough sympathy in his face and tone for Parkinson to believe he meant that. “But, this really is the best course of action. We can achieve something with all of this. We’ll take a political hit over that last name, but it’s right we get her back and see her punished for what she’s done. Even if we don’t get her, and just a few of the others, I consider it best that this has to be done.”
Parkinson’s colleague suddenly seemed swayed by that. He didn’t think that the security secretary had put it in the best of manners yet the home secretary breathed heavily, looked upwards and then opened his palms.
“Okay, I’ll support it. Just keep in mind my reservations for when we come back to this down the line.”
An often annoying man, worried about the I-told-you-so comments later on, the home secretary now backed his prime minister on the issue at hand.
Parkinson had all of his inner Cabinet colleagues on side now.
“Tim,” he addressed the foreign secretary, “let’s get the ball rolling on this. We’ll send these faux Britons home and try to get all of those who we want in return.”
Parkinson ended the meeting after that. He went back to other tasks of government, doing his job before May.
Harriet left Downing Street with her boss. Once they were in the car driving away, she couldn’t help but ask the question.
“Do you really think that they’ll get Manningtree?”
She didn’t but was curious to know what he thought about the woman who was #5 on that list.
He smiled: “Yes, actually. There’s things you don’t know, including why the Russians would want to let her go. Remember too that she didn’t actually defect to them: she’s there as a ‘guest’.”
Her boss looked like he was going to say no more.
She turned to stare out of the window with Harriet’s attention not on the rain falling on London’s streets but instead wondering what would happen if they got the country’s former prime minister back here to answer for her crimes.
The NISS chief had one further thing to add: “She’ll be yours to debrief should we likely get her too.”
That took Harriet by surprise.
The End
Harold Parkinson served as Britain’s prime minister. He was a caretaker in that role, doing his duty until the inevitable electoral oblivion arrived. There was nothing official about his caretaker status but that was the truth of it. Come next May, he’d be forced out of Downing Street. Before then, Parkinson was trying his best. He did what he did for the good of the country, damn his party whose members appeared to have signed up to a mutual suicide pact. MPs and ministers misbehaved. The economy was on the ropes. By-elections had been lost one after another while the opinion polls were too terrifying to read. The press was actively hostile against his government, working hand-in-glove in lickspittle fashion with a disciplined & united Opposition ready to take over the reins.
History wouldn’t be kind to Parkinson the Caretaker.
He’d never wanted the job. Parkinson had been happy being Chief Whip, the pinnacle of his political career. They’d been a few moments of jest from colleagues where they questioned his ambitions, asking if he was in fact a secret Francis Urquhart, but there had never been the intent in him to be where he was now. At the moment of crisis though, there was no one else who could step up like he did. Plenty wanted the job but the collegial agreement in government had been that only he could do it.
What had caused all of that?
Alicia bloody Manningtree!
A spy for Russia, someone whom they’d blackmailed into doing their bidding with quite the kompromat, she’d been in Downing Street as his predecessor. Her activities had been exposed. A lot of people had realised at the end what she was. Robert Barton had known… before the ambitious foreign secretary who’d used that knowledge to try and take her down so he could take her post had been mysteriously poisoned to end up dead. Another positively awful character involved was Catherine Wyatt. She’d been the idiotic home secretary who’d let it all happen under her nose, not intervening when it was clear as day that Manningtree and Barton were tearing everything down. It had given Parkinson personal satisfaction to fire her in his reshuffle upon taking office. However, he’d been less pleased when she’d resigned from parliament to force a by-election that had been lost.
Barton was dead and Wyatt now a nonentity. Parkinson had taken a cleaver to Britain’s top two spy services, MI-5 & MI-6, both of which had chiefs who knew what was happening yet didn’t act properly in such circumstances. He’d formed a combined intelligence organisation with the new Ministry of Security having a Cabinet-level secretary. Such a situation was never going to happen again.
That had been by no means the end of it though. Exposure by an American website specialising in intelligence leaks had occurred when Manningtree was on an official visit to Russia. Her response? She stayed there as a guest of Russia’s president. The other by-election had gone as the first had. That was nothing in comparison to the public revelation of her treachery. In addition, the leaks on the Angleton site had revealed all all the deaths linked to her treason, all the government incompetence too. Britain was a global laughing stock, Parkinson’s government left on its knees as part of that. Manningtree had spent more than a year now in Russia. She’d had spoken openly to state broadcasters there about British – and American – national secrets, her actions directed by the Kremlin. Denying all she was accused of, Manningtree had claimed she was framed. It was all a stitch-up, she’d done nothing wrong and been removed from her democratically-elected role so forced to stay in Russia.
The scandal just went on and on, and on some more.
Such was why Parkinson was soon to be tossed out of Downing Street, his party swept from power too, once May arrived.
In Downing Street this afternoon, Parkinson was getting a briefing concerning more Russian spies in the UK. These ones were from that foreign country though, Illegals posing as Britons this time. They’d been identified days ago – he’d been first told then – right before one of them snatched his defence secretary’s little kid as some sort of hostage to make her doomed effort at escape.
When tracked down, Parkinson had sent in the SBS.
The girl had been rescued earlier today, his colleague no longer distraught as any parent would be, though she and her child were certain to not easy get over what had happened. He could see that now in Charlotte’s pained eyes.
Parkinson sat opposite her, the two of them in his office with several other senior ministers and a couple of officials from NISS. The chief of that new intelligence organisation finished his briefing and, as Parkinson watched, the security secretary gave the professional spook a telling nod.
“Prime Minister, I’d like to recommend that we exchange them – all of them, I should add, even the kidnapper – in a deal to be made with the Russian Federation.
There’s some people they have that we’d like back ourselves.”
The home & foreign secretaries shared a look which Parkinson caught. He took that as the two of them not liking what they were hearing. As to his own feelings on the matter, this didn’t come a surprise to him as it apparently did to some of his colleagues in the room. After the first pair had been detained, he and the security secretary had discussed their fate.
“Who?” So asked the deputy prime minister.
She had what Parkinson determined to be a look of hopefulness at an idea which he believed had come as a shock to her too.
“We,” the security secretary answered that one, “have a list of five names. Five-for-five is what we’re thinking would be the scale of the exchange.”
In reply to that, the defence secretary had something to ask: “Harold, we’re sending those kids – the Morris children – back too, aren’t we? We’re not going to use them as additional pawns?”
Parkinson shook his head firmly.
“Oh, no, Charlotte. They go with their parents with no conditions attached.”
Using children as bargaining chips was nothing that Parkinson would never want to be involved in.
“How old are they?”
“The children?” The security secretary got a nod from Parkinson’s deputy as he asked that. “The girl is six and the boy is three: his fourth birthday is tomorrow as a matter of fact.”
“Those children go.” Once more, Parkinson made that clear.
There was a spook in the room, a woman intelligence officer whom NISS’ head had brought with him here. She handed out a single sheet of paper to all six cabinet members at her boss’ cue before stepping back against the wall where she’d been standing.
Her first time inside of 10 Downing Street, Harriet’s job was to say nothing unless asked. That she did and instead of talking, she listened to the prime minister’s top people remark on what she had given them.
“An interesting list…”
“How many of you remember Twenty Ten? The Americans had ten Russians and got three or four returned in a swap. Eight years later, we had the Salisbury mess! I’m not sure if we want to be involved in such a situation again. I think we should put each of these spies on trial.”
“You’ll never get number five, Martin.”
“Do we really think the Russians will want to do a trade like this?”
“Her?” A finger was jabbed at a printed name. “I’d rather see her rot there. If we bring her back here, we’d have to put her on trial.”
“This chap here: he’s ill and we owe him, I think. If we’re going to push on any number of them, he surely has to be top of the list.”
Harriet could pretty much guess as to who to specific remarks were made about. It wasn’t really that hard to work out.
She watched as the home secretary used a pen to circle three names – one of them twice too – and show his list to the prime minister.
“You’ll get these three, Harold, maybe. As to the rest, especially the final name which Tim and I agree should share that fate… c’mon! That’s never going to happen.”
Harriet agreed with that. She didn’t know what her ultimate boss’ thinking was on the matter but was aware that it was the security secretary who’d insisted on putting that name forward for reasons which she could only silently speculate on.
There were more spirited discussions between the politicians, mostly over the last name of people that the plan was for the UK to request Russia swap, all while Harriet continued to preform her task of just observing.
Parkinson cast his gaze over the woman by the wall, behind his top spook. She was the one who’d been instrumental in detecting, tracking and capturing those Russians posing as Britons. He’d been briefed on all of the details where it was clear that she was one of the few people at the sharp end of NISS counter-intelligence operations who appeared to have had their head screwed on properly.
There were a good number of them who were otherwise idiots.
He’d like to see that woman go far, rise higher in NISS. Whether that would be the case, he didn’t know. It was a typical civil service bureaucracy full of the expected problems. Parkinson had hoped that when he had authorised its creation, things would be different. Such was the way of things though and he had no real control over these matters. In addition, the woman – Harriet Spencer was her name, wasn’t it? – had also been tied up in the mess with the interfering Americans who’d stuck their nose in. Parkinson had called the US Ambassador in here to explain himself and was expecting that the next time he spoke with President Flores, there’d be more of the issue there with her. This spook with him now would likely be caught up in the fallout of all of that too, much to her later detriment.
Now, back to his colleagues.
“It’s my belief that we should ask for the five-for-five swap. I support Martin on this and I’d like you all to back me.
Objections?” Parkinson was ready to hear them out.
“I don’t like it all but it’s probably for the best. I’m with you, Harold.”
His deputy was on side.
“I back the motion.”
Four words of support was what he got from the defence secretary.
“If you get number five, that’s going to cause us problems.” A huff of resignation. “I support making the swap and asking for as many as we can get.”
The foreign secretary made his point clear on what he didn’t like but fell in line.
“Harold, Martin,” the home secretary moved uneasily in his chair, “do you both really believe this is the best idea? I’m thinking we go through the motions of bringing charges against these spies we have. We’ll go down the legal route and then wait for the Russians to make us an offer. And, the last name, the one I circled twice… as Tim says, that will cause us a lot of problems.”
“You’d rather see her rot, Gareth, and I agree somewhat there.” The security secretary expressed enough sympathy in his face and tone for Parkinson to believe he meant that. “But, this really is the best course of action. We can achieve something with all of this. We’ll take a political hit over that last name, but it’s right we get her back and see her punished for what she’s done. Even if we don’t get her, and just a few of the others, I consider it best that this has to be done.”
Parkinson’s colleague suddenly seemed swayed by that. He didn’t think that the security secretary had put it in the best of manners yet the home secretary breathed heavily, looked upwards and then opened his palms.
“Okay, I’ll support it. Just keep in mind my reservations for when we come back to this down the line.”
An often annoying man, worried about the I-told-you-so comments later on, the home secretary now backed his prime minister on the issue at hand.
Parkinson had all of his inner Cabinet colleagues on side now.
“Tim,” he addressed the foreign secretary, “let’s get the ball rolling on this. We’ll send these faux Britons home and try to get all of those who we want in return.”
Parkinson ended the meeting after that. He went back to other tasks of government, doing his job before May.
Harriet left Downing Street with her boss. Once they were in the car driving away, she couldn’t help but ask the question.
“Do you really think that they’ll get Manningtree?”
She didn’t but was curious to know what he thought about the woman who was #5 on that list.
He smiled: “Yes, actually. There’s things you don’t know, including why the Russians would want to let her go. Remember too that she didn’t actually defect to them: she’s there as a ‘guest’.”
Her boss looked like he was going to say no more.
She turned to stare out of the window with Harriet’s attention not on the rain falling on London’s streets but instead wondering what would happen if they got the country’s former prime minister back here to answer for her crimes.
The NISS chief had one further thing to add: “She’ll be yours to debrief should we likely get her too.”
That took Harriet by surprise.
The End