Two to one, Q-Division came up with it.Nik_SpeakerToCats wrote: ↑Sat Feb 11, 2023 8:22 pm "The phone was inexplicably dead..."
Time for Q-Division to take a very close look, as the pattern of damage will be educational...
Kompromat
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jemhouston
- Posts: 4230
- Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:38 am
Re: Kompromat
Re: Kompromat
Nik_SpeakerToCats wrote: ↑Sat Feb 11, 2023 8:22 pm "The phone was inexplicably dead..."
Time for Q-Division to take a very close look, as the pattern of damage will be educational...
I'm still unsure myself as to where to go with that. I'll make my mind up eventually.jemhouston wrote: ↑Sat Feb 11, 2023 10:45 pmTwo to one, Q-Division came up with it.Nik_SpeakerToCats wrote: ↑Sat Feb 11, 2023 8:22 pm "The phone was inexplicably dead..."
Time for Q-Division to take a very close look, as the pattern of damage will be educational...
Also, the background stuff in the story with Pakistan isn't just background too.
Now, for Svetlana doing something stupid.
Re: Kompromat
Seventeen – Naïf
“Svetlana, can you tell us how exactly you knew the details of the S.I.S set-up in Gibraltar?
In addition, the names of the principal people working in that office. You knew their real identities, that of Grace Miller especially. How did that come about?”
They’d moved her again, to somewhere else that they thought was safe. The last place was supposed to be safe too though and it clearly hadn’t been. Svetlana hadn’t been told where this place was. She’d been looking out of the windows, trying to figure out the location. It was a market town and the registration plates of several cars she’d seen when looking down at them from above had the ‘YY’ regional identifier.
This was East Yorkshire.
Inside a third floor apartment she was, up high and in comfort again. The front door was quite solid and there was no way up the side of the building as far as she could see. The windows wouldn’t open far with much noisy effort and were all alarmed.
Having just come into the living room with a request to talk to her was that man whom she’d spoken to when the last safe house had been attacked in Wales. It was Neil MacDonald, a senior figure from MI-6, who had sat her down for what he’d called a ‘friendly chat’ but, as far as she wasn’t concerned, was starting to become a hostile interview.
“I went through all of that with Grace at the first debriefing that we had. But, if you want me to go through it again I will.”
That Svetlana did. She told him the details of the counter-surveillance task that had been run by her and Mikhail when they were in Sevilla against the known interest in them there coming from Gibraltar. Much of what they knew had been passed onto them beforehand from Yasenevo. The SVR had for some time been watching MI-6 operations coming out of that overseas territory that the UK had there. As to Grace, Svetlana had watched her personally before deciding that if she should ever defect, it would be to either her or the other female spook at that station, one Jessica Harrington.
“So you never met Grace before that day you turned up at the office?”
“No.” She certainly had followed her but hadn’t met her. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s just a question.”
Svetlana knew she was right to be paranoid. The British had failed to protect her from two killers sent by her former employers. They couldn’t be relied upon, not when one of their own people was missing after that attempt on her life. None of them had talked to her about that woman, which only made her more concerned.
They should have asked. Instead, the only questions were about Grace… who wasn’t here.
“Can I talk to Grace?”
“She’s unavailable.”
The way that he said that wasn’t in a manner that Svetlana was comfortable with. She got the feeling that something serious was wrong when it came to the MI-6 officer to whom she first fled to, someone whom she’d put her life in the hands of.
“How so?”
“You just cannot talk to her.”
“Is,” a terrible thought came to Svetlana, “she still alive?”
“What makes you think that?”
Grace was dead.
There was no doubt in Svetlana that that was why she couldn’t talk to her, why questions were being asked about Grace. Moreover, what MacDonald was asking her concerning Grace that were hardly innocuous.
It occurred to Svetlana that not only was Grace dead but that MacDonald doubted her loyalty.
“She’s bloody well dead, isn’t she? And, you think that she had something to do with what happened back in Wales, don’t you?”
“Calm down, please.” MacDonald didn’t look like a man trying to calm her down. He’d stood up when she’d stood up, backing away from her. He was frightened of her she realised.
“Do you think that I’ve somehow had her killed?” It sounded crazy to hear herself say it but it was what she thought they were thinking. "I haven't done anything to her!”
After MacDonald left, Svetlana went back to the bedroom. One of those ex-soldiers who were working security was outside of her door. It wasn’t locked but he had a gun and she felt like a captive.
This safe house was becoming her prison. She was being held here to apparently keep her from harm yet the questioning sessions were becoming more intense in the seeking by those interrogating her – pretending that they weren’t – to try and get her to admit to doing something she hadn’t. Svetlana hadn’t arranged for that massacre that had occurred in Wales and nor was she responsible for what she was certain had become of Grace. As Svetlana had told her in their last conversation, the British prime minister was behind it all.
Svetlana didn’t know all of the details but that didn’t matter. What she could work out was that she was being set up. The one person whom she knew had steadfastly stood by her side since that morning in Gibraltar was now out of the picture. There were dead MI-6 people and fingers were being pointed at her. A concern hit her as she sat on the bed that another attempt would be made to finish her off and this time she wouldn’t be capable of stopping that.
Britain’s spooks might even look the other way when it came, especially if they thought she was responsible for the death of their people.
“No.”
Quietly she said that as she looked over at the mirror.
“No, they won’t get to kill me.”
There was vehicle noise outside. Svetlana went over to the window and looked down onto the street below. She saw someone coming out of one of the houses opposite yet her attention was on the flat-bed truck parked right below her window. Two men in overalls had gotten out of it and stood at the front of it.
Assassins?
If they were, they were sloppy. They started smoking. She listening to them talking, discussing the weather, and heard the distinctive accent of East Yorkshire… the same one as Grace had had.
Svetlana looked at their truck.
She looked too at the window frame and then the mattress on the bed.
Again, without really meaning to, she spoke to herself: “That’ll work.”
For two men who’d just watched her drop a mattress – a small, single one – out of a window high above them onto their truck, and then jump down onto it, their reaction wasn’t much. Svetlana doubted that either of them had ever seen anything so dramatic yet they were quite non-pulsed.
“Afternoon.” One of them said.
“It’s goin’ to rain today, isn’t it?” So asked the other one.
Svetlana climbed off the mattress, aware that her out of place skirt gave them a quick flash of her underwear. She stood next to them. “Where are the truck keys?”
“These?” The first one who’d spoken to her, the older man, held them out in his open hand. While he wasn’t offering them to her, he might as well have been.
She snatched them away.
“Hold on there, Missy.” Shock ran across his face before anger came.
That was too late though.
Svetlana was in the truck cab and closed the door behind her. The two men stood gaping at her for a second before each of them started to go for a door. She was faster though and locked both quickly. The key went in the ignition and the engine revved.
“You really need to get outta my truck!”
Edging it forward, Svetlana winced as the gears crunched. It was old and she needed a moment to get the hang of it. The younger man was banging on the door while the older one was getting out his phone.
It was time to go.
Svetlana drove away in her stolen truck. Only as she did so, did she start to think of a plan for what to do next.
*
At first, Svetlana thought she was in Beverley.
The town seemed too small to be that one though and she was worried that she might have been mistaken in thinking that she was in East Yorkshire. That concern quickly passed when she saw several shop signs telling her that she was instead in Market Weighton. Another small town that one was, located not far from Beverly if she remembered correctly what she’d once seen on a map of the general area. Hull was to the south though the far bigger York, with more transport connections, was just away to the west.
It was to York which she headed.
Opening the glove box, Svetlana didn’t find a map-book. She’d been hoping for that. Instead, she found a box of condoms and a half-opened pack of breath mints there.
“Someone was going to be having a party tonight!”
She said that with a smile as she stopped at the traffic lights where the road left Market Weighton for the bigger one to York. Svetlana noticed that a woman in the car next to her gave her the strangest of looks. Grinning back just as the lights changed to green, she drove off.
The truck had plenty of petrol and the roads were clear. Soon she was on the outskirts of York. Looking throughout the passenger cab while stopped at another set of traffic lights, Svetlana found a wallet. She went though that fast, seeing by the picture on the driving license card that it belonged to the younger man. There was no money it though plenty of further plastic cards including a bank card and a credit card. Hidden in the back she discovered a picture of a little girl, one with a beaming smile and a cute hairstyle (for a kid anyway), with numbers on the back. Those were four digit numbers.
“PIN numbers.” That was what they were. “You fool.”
Svetlana parked the truck on the edges of the city centre, down a residential road. She didn’t pay for the parking despite the signs telling her too because it wasn’t her vehicle, was it?
She cut through an alleyway and went down another residential street. Her eyes were upwards. She was looking for an information sign pointing to the train station though also looking for cameras. There would have been plenty which would have caught her already for this country was full of them, but Svetlana wanted to avoid any that she could.
A teenage boy bumped into her when she went around a corner. She’d been looking up, he’d been looking down at his phone.
“Sorry.”
Polite enough to say that, his tone told her that he didn’t mean it though.
Svetlana wasn’t exactly one to care about manners at a time like this.
“Which way’s the train station?”
“Up there,” he pointed ahead, “left and under the walkway. You cannot miss it.”
He walked away, looking back down at his phone.
Svetlana didn’t call out a thank you after him because she was too engrossed in moving as fast as she could.
His directions were correct.
Inside the train station, Svetlana used the debit card to buy a train ticket to Glasgow and another to Leeds. With the credit card, which she found was connected to the second PIN number so conveniently left for a wallet thief to use, she bought a ticket to London King’s Cross and a fourth one for Plymouth.
Those tickets went in the bin. She found an ATM machine and withdrew as much money as she could from both cards. Cash was noticeable when used as opposed to the anonymity of card payments but it didn’t leave an electronic trail like card use did.
This was Britain and a surveillance state where there weren’t just cameras, oh so many of them in here, to be worried about but electronic tracking via purchases too.
Svetlana went back out of the train station and looking for a naïf.
She found him in the car park. He was a middle-aged man with thick glasses and in a grey suit. His hairline was receding and he needed a shave. There was a huge belly on him too. The man had his eyes down with a look that screamed to Svetlana that he had the weight of the world upon his shoulders. There was no wedding ring on his finger, as expected.
He was perfect.
“You couldn’t let me have one of those, could you?”
He had just lit a cigarette as she approached. His eyes – nice eyes too – came up and opened wide as he took in the woman standing in front of him.
“Erm… okay, yes.”
“Oh, thank you.” She took one he offered and then the lighter too. “You cannot understand how much appreciated this is. It’s so kind of you. I’ve been having the worst day and you’re so kind. Thank you.”
Maybe, Svetlana cautioned herself, that was a little too much.
“I’m happy to help a lady in need.”
No, I didn’t lay it on too thick.
He said that while looking downwards again, almost afraid to take a proper look at her again.
“You are the nicest man I think I’ve ever met.” Svetlana puffed on the cigarette, fighting off the nausea that came with it. “I’m in so much trouble and the kindness you’ve shown me here tells me that you’re a real gentleman. Those are so hard to find these days, don’t you agree?”
Now he looked up. His nervous, crooked smile was forced and betrayed what she’d known when she’d first seen him: this was a lonely and naïve man, someone who’d be the dupe she needed.
“Yes, I guess so.”
Svetlana kept him talking. She needed him to ask her what she wanted of him, not the other way around. “It’s just a really bad day and I’m in so much trouble that I really just am amazed that someone is willing to help me.”
“How can I help you?”
There it was. He asked to help her and so he would.
They were in his car within a minute and Svetlana, sure that her pursuers were hot on her tail without being distracted by the few false leads she’d left to distract them, continued to make her escape.
Running would make her look guilty but she saw no other choice.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Lee.”
“Well,” Svetlana replied, slipping back into an old identity, “I’m Sarah and I’m so glad that we’ve met today.”
That was the only true thing she had and would tell him.
“Svetlana, can you tell us how exactly you knew the details of the S.I.S set-up in Gibraltar?
In addition, the names of the principal people working in that office. You knew their real identities, that of Grace Miller especially. How did that come about?”
They’d moved her again, to somewhere else that they thought was safe. The last place was supposed to be safe too though and it clearly hadn’t been. Svetlana hadn’t been told where this place was. She’d been looking out of the windows, trying to figure out the location. It was a market town and the registration plates of several cars she’d seen when looking down at them from above had the ‘YY’ regional identifier.
This was East Yorkshire.
Inside a third floor apartment she was, up high and in comfort again. The front door was quite solid and there was no way up the side of the building as far as she could see. The windows wouldn’t open far with much noisy effort and were all alarmed.
Having just come into the living room with a request to talk to her was that man whom she’d spoken to when the last safe house had been attacked in Wales. It was Neil MacDonald, a senior figure from MI-6, who had sat her down for what he’d called a ‘friendly chat’ but, as far as she wasn’t concerned, was starting to become a hostile interview.
“I went through all of that with Grace at the first debriefing that we had. But, if you want me to go through it again I will.”
That Svetlana did. She told him the details of the counter-surveillance task that had been run by her and Mikhail when they were in Sevilla against the known interest in them there coming from Gibraltar. Much of what they knew had been passed onto them beforehand from Yasenevo. The SVR had for some time been watching MI-6 operations coming out of that overseas territory that the UK had there. As to Grace, Svetlana had watched her personally before deciding that if she should ever defect, it would be to either her or the other female spook at that station, one Jessica Harrington.
“So you never met Grace before that day you turned up at the office?”
“No.” She certainly had followed her but hadn’t met her. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s just a question.”
Svetlana knew she was right to be paranoid. The British had failed to protect her from two killers sent by her former employers. They couldn’t be relied upon, not when one of their own people was missing after that attempt on her life. None of them had talked to her about that woman, which only made her more concerned.
They should have asked. Instead, the only questions were about Grace… who wasn’t here.
“Can I talk to Grace?”
“She’s unavailable.”
The way that he said that wasn’t in a manner that Svetlana was comfortable with. She got the feeling that something serious was wrong when it came to the MI-6 officer to whom she first fled to, someone whom she’d put her life in the hands of.
“How so?”
“You just cannot talk to her.”
“Is,” a terrible thought came to Svetlana, “she still alive?”
“What makes you think that?”
Grace was dead.
There was no doubt in Svetlana that that was why she couldn’t talk to her, why questions were being asked about Grace. Moreover, what MacDonald was asking her concerning Grace that were hardly innocuous.
It occurred to Svetlana that not only was Grace dead but that MacDonald doubted her loyalty.
“She’s bloody well dead, isn’t she? And, you think that she had something to do with what happened back in Wales, don’t you?”
“Calm down, please.” MacDonald didn’t look like a man trying to calm her down. He’d stood up when she’d stood up, backing away from her. He was frightened of her she realised.
“Do you think that I’ve somehow had her killed?” It sounded crazy to hear herself say it but it was what she thought they were thinking. "I haven't done anything to her!”
After MacDonald left, Svetlana went back to the bedroom. One of those ex-soldiers who were working security was outside of her door. It wasn’t locked but he had a gun and she felt like a captive.
This safe house was becoming her prison. She was being held here to apparently keep her from harm yet the questioning sessions were becoming more intense in the seeking by those interrogating her – pretending that they weren’t – to try and get her to admit to doing something she hadn’t. Svetlana hadn’t arranged for that massacre that had occurred in Wales and nor was she responsible for what she was certain had become of Grace. As Svetlana had told her in their last conversation, the British prime minister was behind it all.
Svetlana didn’t know all of the details but that didn’t matter. What she could work out was that she was being set up. The one person whom she knew had steadfastly stood by her side since that morning in Gibraltar was now out of the picture. There were dead MI-6 people and fingers were being pointed at her. A concern hit her as she sat on the bed that another attempt would be made to finish her off and this time she wouldn’t be capable of stopping that.
Britain’s spooks might even look the other way when it came, especially if they thought she was responsible for the death of their people.
“No.”
Quietly she said that as she looked over at the mirror.
“No, they won’t get to kill me.”
There was vehicle noise outside. Svetlana went over to the window and looked down onto the street below. She saw someone coming out of one of the houses opposite yet her attention was on the flat-bed truck parked right below her window. Two men in overalls had gotten out of it and stood at the front of it.
Assassins?
If they were, they were sloppy. They started smoking. She listening to them talking, discussing the weather, and heard the distinctive accent of East Yorkshire… the same one as Grace had had.
Svetlana looked at their truck.
She looked too at the window frame and then the mattress on the bed.
Again, without really meaning to, she spoke to herself: “That’ll work.”
For two men who’d just watched her drop a mattress – a small, single one – out of a window high above them onto their truck, and then jump down onto it, their reaction wasn’t much. Svetlana doubted that either of them had ever seen anything so dramatic yet they were quite non-pulsed.
“Afternoon.” One of them said.
“It’s goin’ to rain today, isn’t it?” So asked the other one.
Svetlana climbed off the mattress, aware that her out of place skirt gave them a quick flash of her underwear. She stood next to them. “Where are the truck keys?”
“These?” The first one who’d spoken to her, the older man, held them out in his open hand. While he wasn’t offering them to her, he might as well have been.
She snatched them away.
“Hold on there, Missy.” Shock ran across his face before anger came.
That was too late though.
Svetlana was in the truck cab and closed the door behind her. The two men stood gaping at her for a second before each of them started to go for a door. She was faster though and locked both quickly. The key went in the ignition and the engine revved.
“You really need to get outta my truck!”
Edging it forward, Svetlana winced as the gears crunched. It was old and she needed a moment to get the hang of it. The younger man was banging on the door while the older one was getting out his phone.
It was time to go.
Svetlana drove away in her stolen truck. Only as she did so, did she start to think of a plan for what to do next.
*
At first, Svetlana thought she was in Beverley.
The town seemed too small to be that one though and she was worried that she might have been mistaken in thinking that she was in East Yorkshire. That concern quickly passed when she saw several shop signs telling her that she was instead in Market Weighton. Another small town that one was, located not far from Beverly if she remembered correctly what she’d once seen on a map of the general area. Hull was to the south though the far bigger York, with more transport connections, was just away to the west.
It was to York which she headed.
Opening the glove box, Svetlana didn’t find a map-book. She’d been hoping for that. Instead, she found a box of condoms and a half-opened pack of breath mints there.
“Someone was going to be having a party tonight!”
She said that with a smile as she stopped at the traffic lights where the road left Market Weighton for the bigger one to York. Svetlana noticed that a woman in the car next to her gave her the strangest of looks. Grinning back just as the lights changed to green, she drove off.
The truck had plenty of petrol and the roads were clear. Soon she was on the outskirts of York. Looking throughout the passenger cab while stopped at another set of traffic lights, Svetlana found a wallet. She went though that fast, seeing by the picture on the driving license card that it belonged to the younger man. There was no money it though plenty of further plastic cards including a bank card and a credit card. Hidden in the back she discovered a picture of a little girl, one with a beaming smile and a cute hairstyle (for a kid anyway), with numbers on the back. Those were four digit numbers.
“PIN numbers.” That was what they were. “You fool.”
Svetlana parked the truck on the edges of the city centre, down a residential road. She didn’t pay for the parking despite the signs telling her too because it wasn’t her vehicle, was it?
She cut through an alleyway and went down another residential street. Her eyes were upwards. She was looking for an information sign pointing to the train station though also looking for cameras. There would have been plenty which would have caught her already for this country was full of them, but Svetlana wanted to avoid any that she could.
A teenage boy bumped into her when she went around a corner. She’d been looking up, he’d been looking down at his phone.
“Sorry.”
Polite enough to say that, his tone told her that he didn’t mean it though.
Svetlana wasn’t exactly one to care about manners at a time like this.
“Which way’s the train station?”
“Up there,” he pointed ahead, “left and under the walkway. You cannot miss it.”
He walked away, looking back down at his phone.
Svetlana didn’t call out a thank you after him because she was too engrossed in moving as fast as she could.
His directions were correct.
Inside the train station, Svetlana used the debit card to buy a train ticket to Glasgow and another to Leeds. With the credit card, which she found was connected to the second PIN number so conveniently left for a wallet thief to use, she bought a ticket to London King’s Cross and a fourth one for Plymouth.
Those tickets went in the bin. She found an ATM machine and withdrew as much money as she could from both cards. Cash was noticeable when used as opposed to the anonymity of card payments but it didn’t leave an electronic trail like card use did.
This was Britain and a surveillance state where there weren’t just cameras, oh so many of them in here, to be worried about but electronic tracking via purchases too.
Svetlana went back out of the train station and looking for a naïf.
She found him in the car park. He was a middle-aged man with thick glasses and in a grey suit. His hairline was receding and he needed a shave. There was a huge belly on him too. The man had his eyes down with a look that screamed to Svetlana that he had the weight of the world upon his shoulders. There was no wedding ring on his finger, as expected.
He was perfect.
“You couldn’t let me have one of those, could you?”
He had just lit a cigarette as she approached. His eyes – nice eyes too – came up and opened wide as he took in the woman standing in front of him.
“Erm… okay, yes.”
“Oh, thank you.” She took one he offered and then the lighter too. “You cannot understand how much appreciated this is. It’s so kind of you. I’ve been having the worst day and you’re so kind. Thank you.”
Maybe, Svetlana cautioned herself, that was a little too much.
“I’m happy to help a lady in need.”
No, I didn’t lay it on too thick.
He said that while looking downwards again, almost afraid to take a proper look at her again.
“You are the nicest man I think I’ve ever met.” Svetlana puffed on the cigarette, fighting off the nausea that came with it. “I’m in so much trouble and the kindness you’ve shown me here tells me that you’re a real gentleman. Those are so hard to find these days, don’t you agree?”
Now he looked up. His nervous, crooked smile was forced and betrayed what she’d known when she’d first seen him: this was a lonely and naïve man, someone who’d be the dupe she needed.
“Yes, I guess so.”
Svetlana kept him talking. She needed him to ask her what she wanted of him, not the other way around. “It’s just a really bad day and I’m in so much trouble that I really just am amazed that someone is willing to help me.”
“How can I help you?”
There it was. He asked to help her and so he would.
They were in his car within a minute and Svetlana, sure that her pursuers were hot on her tail without being distracted by the few false leads she’d left to distract them, continued to make her escape.
Running would make her look guilty but she saw no other choice.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Lee.”
“Well,” Svetlana replied, slipping back into an old identity, “I’m Sarah and I’m so glad that we’ve met today.”
That was the only true thing she had and would tell him.
-
MikeKozlowski
- Posts: 1517
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 9:46 pm
Re: Kompromat
,,,Freaking amazing. Trying to imagine now who will be in the BBC series.
Mike
Mike
Re: Kompromat
I picture the people in my mind when I'm writing them so I have a good idea of what they look like.MikeKozlowski wrote: ↑Tue Feb 14, 2023 6:53 pm ,,,Freaking amazing. Trying to imagine now who will be in the BBC series.
Mike
Re: Kompromat
Eighteen – For the money
Lauren let the woman who said she was from the police into the flat. She was home alone with the other half at work. The front door was closed behind them by her afternoon visitor.
“So, you’re from the Met., then?”
“Sort of.”
That remark made Lauren look back at the door in front of which the woman stood. She regretted opening it now, regretted not asking for some identification and asking too why the woman was not with a partner.
“Perhaps, maybe…”
“Don’t worry.” The woman spoke calmly and with reason in her tone. “There is no need to be alarmed.”
“But you’re not with the police as you said you were.”
“I’m with an investigative service that is part of the government.”
“You’re a spook then with the Security Service?” Lauren translated the vagueness.
A firm nod and a nice smile came in reply. “Put the kettle on, will you? Let’s have a cuppa and a talk, Miss Worthing.”
Into the kitchen the spook followed Lauren. She leaned beside the worktop while Lauren started on their tea.
“Everything is fine,” she said. “I just want us to have a quick talk and then I’ll be on my way.”
“Sugar?” Lauren was doing her very best to stay calm. That question came from that effort. Inside she was shaking but she fought to maintain an exterior coolness.
“Two, please.”
They went into the living room with the woman following Lauren again.
The visitor pointed over to a chain: “Can I sit on that one?”
“Go right ahead.”
After taking a sip of the tea and smiling in what appeared to be appreciation, Lauren’s unexpected house guest stretched herself out and let out a yawn. Lauren meanwhile sat cross-legged opposite her while trying to understand such an odd reaction. She stared over at her before then picking up the television remote and turning off the news.
It was all about Pakistan again, all unpleasant stuff to hear.
“You’ve have to forgive me. It’s been far too long since I’ve had a proper night’s sleep. Too much going on, no time for my eight hours.” Another yawn came and then she had some more of her tea (Lauren hadn’t touched her own) before she finally got to the point. “I don’t think it’s going to surprise you to hear that for some time you have been the subject of an espionage investigation, one looking into possible treason, by elements of this government’s intelligence services. Were you aware of that?”
Many different responses came to Lauren as to how to reply to that. Lies, angry denials and complete befuddlement were options. Instead, thinking it was the best thing to do, she chose honesty.
“Yes.”
“That’s okay. Keep telling me the truth and everything will go fast and smooth.”
If that was meant to be reassurance, Lauren didn’t feel very reassured.
“I really don’t have much to say. To be honest, because of my job, there are a lot of things I cannot talk about and…”
“We were getting somewhere, Miss Worthing.” The woman who was her own age yet spoke to her as if she was a child cut her off with that and also a raised hand. “I’m going to talk and you’re just going to answer me rather than giving me any of that silly nonsense. Just stop the games and have an honest, grown-up conversation with me.”
“Okay.”
Told off, Lauren wasn’t happy. She bit her tongue though.
“That investigation into you has been ended.
It’s closed firmly and the outcome of it has been decided that it was all a big fuss about nothing. There are people who remain suspicious of what you have been getting up to but their organisations, and more importantly, their bosses, have shut it all down. It’s over. No firm evidence has been found that anything you’ve been suspected of actually occurred despite the opinions of several people that you were doing what they feared you were.
The reason it ended is unimportant. What matters is that no one is looking any more and no one will again. Not forever I must caution to add, but for a good long time.”
“I see.”
Not knowing was to believe, Lauren gave that meaningless answer. Her visitor yawned again and had some more of her tea. There were eyes that looked around the flat, swinging left to right as they did.
“This is a nice place.” She sounded genuine. “It’s your boyfriend’s, right? He’s a banker and rich so I heard.”
“Actually, he’s in finance rather than banking itself. He came from nothing though – a broken home on a council estate in South London – and has worked for everything he has.”
Like she’d done many times before, Lauren got defensive about her boyfriend and all of his wealth. It was a natural reaction because so many people who have something unpleasant to say.
“That I know.” A shrug of her shoulders. “You want to keep him, I guess? It’s best that you continue to tell him nothing about all that has happened: that includes you and Alicia Manningtree too, what you two have been getting up to while alone.”
Lauren saw red at that. “Now, hold on there. You cannot come in here and…”
“Stop!” The woman almost shouted at her. “Don’t go there.” Her hand was up again. “Let’s just pretend I didn’t say that last part, shall we?”
Lauren wanted to say more though, once more, bit her tongue and kept what she was thinking to herself. “Okay.”
“When it comes to Manningtree, I’m not going to say some more things which you won’t like to hear. You’ve going to have to accept what I say. Be a grown up about it, as I said before, and hear me out.
You’re going to have to go back to work for her. And, you’re going to have to do what you were beforehand in delivering and receiving packages at her request. It’s important that you do so. I’m pretty sure that you want to ask ‘why’ and have a million questions on that note concerning who I am, but none of that is anything I’m going to answer. The reason isn’t something you need to know.
I’m just telling you that you have to do it.”
There was utter firmness there in that statement, that instruction. Internally, defiance screamed at Lauren though.
“What if I don’t?”
“Then a whole ton of hurt will come down on you. Your world will be destroyed. Everything that you have will be gone. It’ll be all over the media. You’ll end up in prison and be the one to go too, not Manningtree who’ll likely worm her way out of it with some excuse.
Just do it.”
The woman stood up and drained her cup. She took a look downwards at Lauren and in those eyes that stared at her, Lauren saw something she was scared of.
“We had a row.”
“Go fix it.” Again, there was an order which gave no room for compromise.
Lauren folded at that. She gave in her will to resist. “Okay. I will.”
How things were going to be fixed was a difficult matter though.
“Now,” the visitor was walking towards the door, “why don’t you show me out? It’s been a nice visit but a short one. Please take no offence, but I hope we don’t meet again.”
Moments later, the woman was going out the front door and back onto Portobello Road. She waved at Lauren before the door closed.
Lauren went back to the living room, sat down and told herself that she could make her hands stop shaking if she tried hard enough.
Could she do what that woman had told her to do?
*
On a bench in Greenwich Park, over to the south of the river, Georgy was sitting up on high. He looked nothing like the Russian he was but instead a middle-aged Briton taking in the view with a sandwich and a cup of coffee.
Debbie sat down beside him.
“There’s no one watching you, Georgy.”
“I know.” There was complete confidence in such a statement. “We are safe to talk here.”
Opening her bag, Debbie took out her own lunch. She had a sandwich in a plastic tub and a bottle of fruit juice brought from a shop just outside the park. Fast to tuck in, Debbie looked around some more. She’d said what she had about there being no one watching them but there was still a lot of caution in her.
Meeting with Georgy like this was dangerous.
"Where did you get the gun? More importantly, what craziness overtook you to kill that lady?”
“I did what had to be done.”
Where she had gotten the pistol from was none of his business. As to killing Grace, she didn’t consider that crazy. It was a mistake all of her own making but there was a rational reason for it all.
“My dear Debbie,” Georgy reverted to the patronising older man whom she’d had to deal with before, “you are not the first agent to do such a thing. There have been things done that I have been told of that you wouldn’t believe your ears to hear.
That doesn’t excuse your actions though. You cannot do what you are doing. Your actions are out of control as far as the Centre is concerned. They are worried. I am worried too.
We – I – am the one who should be seeing to it that these things are done.
You are acting as if you yourself are running an intelligence operation.”
Debbie had some of her juice before she responded to that. She didn’t appreciate the telling off though did, at the same time, understand where Georgy was coming from.
Carefully, clearly she explained.
“I have had to do what I have had because your side is – excuse me for saying so – shockingly incompetent.
Right from the beginning, Georgy, I have had to do what you and your Centre should have done. I came to you and I told you what was happening. You then disappeared, back off to Moscow for consultations, I presume.
Things moved fast.
That fool Pishvanov in Prague nearly told all.
The people sent to kill Svetlana were sloppy and were killed because they were no good.
No one got to Manningtree to tell her to shut up and not talk anywhere near the bug that was in her phone.
I made an error with Grace Miller and I had to kill her so, yes, mea culpa, but the situation should never have gone that far: it was only down to your side messing things up.”
Georgy finished up his lunch and stood for a moment to reach over to the bin. He sat back down, closer to her this time.
“The Manningtree operation is S.V.R. I am G.R.U. You know the difference, Debbie, and you know how complicated that makes things. Add into that the mess in Moscow now with the new men in charge to that as well.
My boss took a walk in the woods, one followed by two men who likely put him in a freshly-dug grave. In case you don’t know, and this is now public knowledge too, the deputy of S.V.R went home from work to shoot his family then himself: believe me, that was a staged murder-suicide.
The new men in the Kremlin are playing us off against each other, exploiting old rivalries.”
“That you’ve told me before.” Debbie was exasperated with the excuses. “It’s getting old, Georgy.”
He huffed and puffed some before he had something to say to that: “And it was as true then as it is now. You spoke to the Worthing girl? Will she do it? Can she do it?”
“She will.” Debbie had seen the other woman’s eyes. Those were ones of frightened compliance.
“It is a G.R.U operation now.
The S.V.R nearly lost, might even still lose, the most valuable asset imaginable because of their own stupidity. They compromised the head of this country’s government yet almost threw that away because they couldn’t control one crazy officer of theirs.
Things will change with how Manningtree is exploited. Everything else, between us that is, will stay the same though.
The money is where it always is.”
He got up and walked away after that remark. Georgy had left his folded newspaper behind though.
Debbie watched him leave the park and head in the direction of the Tube station. She sat and finished eating before depositing her rubbish in the bin. She did the same with that newspaper too, though removed the envelope that was inside it first.
When back in her car, Debbie checked the amount. It was what it should have been. She pushed the envelope down the front of her skirt and drove away. Soon she was back into Central London, far from the suburban meeting point.
Back to Thames House she went.
In her new office, down in the basement, Debbie got back to her work. They’d put her back in counter-terrorism the same day that her mother had been forced to take what they were calling a leave of absence. The elder Smith would never return here, that Debbie was sure of. As to herself, there probably wasn’t any future for her here either.
That would be a shame yet was inevitable. When that happened, the money would stop. She had plenty of it already though. More would be nice, as much as she could get before that day when there was nothing she could give to the Russians of value any more.
It had been almost a dozen years that she’d been doing what she had been: spying against her mother and her country both. It was all about the cash too. From the first approach to today and onwards to whenever the new boss at MI-5 decided that she was an embarrassing example of nepotism that needed to be forced out of the door, it had through all that time been about money for Debbie.
There were people who betrayed their country for ideological reasons, others who were coerced into doing so for various reasons.
Debbie just did it for the money…
…but the money didn’t make up for what she’d had to do to her friend Grace.
Lauren let the woman who said she was from the police into the flat. She was home alone with the other half at work. The front door was closed behind them by her afternoon visitor.
“So, you’re from the Met., then?”
“Sort of.”
That remark made Lauren look back at the door in front of which the woman stood. She regretted opening it now, regretted not asking for some identification and asking too why the woman was not with a partner.
“Perhaps, maybe…”
“Don’t worry.” The woman spoke calmly and with reason in her tone. “There is no need to be alarmed.”
“But you’re not with the police as you said you were.”
“I’m with an investigative service that is part of the government.”
“You’re a spook then with the Security Service?” Lauren translated the vagueness.
A firm nod and a nice smile came in reply. “Put the kettle on, will you? Let’s have a cuppa and a talk, Miss Worthing.”
Into the kitchen the spook followed Lauren. She leaned beside the worktop while Lauren started on their tea.
“Everything is fine,” she said. “I just want us to have a quick talk and then I’ll be on my way.”
“Sugar?” Lauren was doing her very best to stay calm. That question came from that effort. Inside she was shaking but she fought to maintain an exterior coolness.
“Two, please.”
They went into the living room with the woman following Lauren again.
The visitor pointed over to a chain: “Can I sit on that one?”
“Go right ahead.”
After taking a sip of the tea and smiling in what appeared to be appreciation, Lauren’s unexpected house guest stretched herself out and let out a yawn. Lauren meanwhile sat cross-legged opposite her while trying to understand such an odd reaction. She stared over at her before then picking up the television remote and turning off the news.
It was all about Pakistan again, all unpleasant stuff to hear.
“You’ve have to forgive me. It’s been far too long since I’ve had a proper night’s sleep. Too much going on, no time for my eight hours.” Another yawn came and then she had some more of her tea (Lauren hadn’t touched her own) before she finally got to the point. “I don’t think it’s going to surprise you to hear that for some time you have been the subject of an espionage investigation, one looking into possible treason, by elements of this government’s intelligence services. Were you aware of that?”
Many different responses came to Lauren as to how to reply to that. Lies, angry denials and complete befuddlement were options. Instead, thinking it was the best thing to do, she chose honesty.
“Yes.”
“That’s okay. Keep telling me the truth and everything will go fast and smooth.”
If that was meant to be reassurance, Lauren didn’t feel very reassured.
“I really don’t have much to say. To be honest, because of my job, there are a lot of things I cannot talk about and…”
“We were getting somewhere, Miss Worthing.” The woman who was her own age yet spoke to her as if she was a child cut her off with that and also a raised hand. “I’m going to talk and you’re just going to answer me rather than giving me any of that silly nonsense. Just stop the games and have an honest, grown-up conversation with me.”
“Okay.”
Told off, Lauren wasn’t happy. She bit her tongue though.
“That investigation into you has been ended.
It’s closed firmly and the outcome of it has been decided that it was all a big fuss about nothing. There are people who remain suspicious of what you have been getting up to but their organisations, and more importantly, their bosses, have shut it all down. It’s over. No firm evidence has been found that anything you’ve been suspected of actually occurred despite the opinions of several people that you were doing what they feared you were.
The reason it ended is unimportant. What matters is that no one is looking any more and no one will again. Not forever I must caution to add, but for a good long time.”
“I see.”
Not knowing was to believe, Lauren gave that meaningless answer. Her visitor yawned again and had some more of her tea. There were eyes that looked around the flat, swinging left to right as they did.
“This is a nice place.” She sounded genuine. “It’s your boyfriend’s, right? He’s a banker and rich so I heard.”
“Actually, he’s in finance rather than banking itself. He came from nothing though – a broken home on a council estate in South London – and has worked for everything he has.”
Like she’d done many times before, Lauren got defensive about her boyfriend and all of his wealth. It was a natural reaction because so many people who have something unpleasant to say.
“That I know.” A shrug of her shoulders. “You want to keep him, I guess? It’s best that you continue to tell him nothing about all that has happened: that includes you and Alicia Manningtree too, what you two have been getting up to while alone.”
Lauren saw red at that. “Now, hold on there. You cannot come in here and…”
“Stop!” The woman almost shouted at her. “Don’t go there.” Her hand was up again. “Let’s just pretend I didn’t say that last part, shall we?”
Lauren wanted to say more though, once more, bit her tongue and kept what she was thinking to herself. “Okay.”
“When it comes to Manningtree, I’m not going to say some more things which you won’t like to hear. You’ve going to have to accept what I say. Be a grown up about it, as I said before, and hear me out.
You’re going to have to go back to work for her. And, you’re going to have to do what you were beforehand in delivering and receiving packages at her request. It’s important that you do so. I’m pretty sure that you want to ask ‘why’ and have a million questions on that note concerning who I am, but none of that is anything I’m going to answer. The reason isn’t something you need to know.
I’m just telling you that you have to do it.”
There was utter firmness there in that statement, that instruction. Internally, defiance screamed at Lauren though.
“What if I don’t?”
“Then a whole ton of hurt will come down on you. Your world will be destroyed. Everything that you have will be gone. It’ll be all over the media. You’ll end up in prison and be the one to go too, not Manningtree who’ll likely worm her way out of it with some excuse.
Just do it.”
The woman stood up and drained her cup. She took a look downwards at Lauren and in those eyes that stared at her, Lauren saw something she was scared of.
“We had a row.”
“Go fix it.” Again, there was an order which gave no room for compromise.
Lauren folded at that. She gave in her will to resist. “Okay. I will.”
How things were going to be fixed was a difficult matter though.
“Now,” the visitor was walking towards the door, “why don’t you show me out? It’s been a nice visit but a short one. Please take no offence, but I hope we don’t meet again.”
Moments later, the woman was going out the front door and back onto Portobello Road. She waved at Lauren before the door closed.
Lauren went back to the living room, sat down and told herself that she could make her hands stop shaking if she tried hard enough.
Could she do what that woman had told her to do?
*
On a bench in Greenwich Park, over to the south of the river, Georgy was sitting up on high. He looked nothing like the Russian he was but instead a middle-aged Briton taking in the view with a sandwich and a cup of coffee.
Debbie sat down beside him.
“There’s no one watching you, Georgy.”
“I know.” There was complete confidence in such a statement. “We are safe to talk here.”
Opening her bag, Debbie took out her own lunch. She had a sandwich in a plastic tub and a bottle of fruit juice brought from a shop just outside the park. Fast to tuck in, Debbie looked around some more. She’d said what she had about there being no one watching them but there was still a lot of caution in her.
Meeting with Georgy like this was dangerous.
"Where did you get the gun? More importantly, what craziness overtook you to kill that lady?”
“I did what had to be done.”
Where she had gotten the pistol from was none of his business. As to killing Grace, she didn’t consider that crazy. It was a mistake all of her own making but there was a rational reason for it all.
“My dear Debbie,” Georgy reverted to the patronising older man whom she’d had to deal with before, “you are not the first agent to do such a thing. There have been things done that I have been told of that you wouldn’t believe your ears to hear.
That doesn’t excuse your actions though. You cannot do what you are doing. Your actions are out of control as far as the Centre is concerned. They are worried. I am worried too.
We – I – am the one who should be seeing to it that these things are done.
You are acting as if you yourself are running an intelligence operation.”
Debbie had some of her juice before she responded to that. She didn’t appreciate the telling off though did, at the same time, understand where Georgy was coming from.
Carefully, clearly she explained.
“I have had to do what I have had because your side is – excuse me for saying so – shockingly incompetent.
Right from the beginning, Georgy, I have had to do what you and your Centre should have done. I came to you and I told you what was happening. You then disappeared, back off to Moscow for consultations, I presume.
Things moved fast.
That fool Pishvanov in Prague nearly told all.
The people sent to kill Svetlana were sloppy and were killed because they were no good.
No one got to Manningtree to tell her to shut up and not talk anywhere near the bug that was in her phone.
I made an error with Grace Miller and I had to kill her so, yes, mea culpa, but the situation should never have gone that far: it was only down to your side messing things up.”
Georgy finished up his lunch and stood for a moment to reach over to the bin. He sat back down, closer to her this time.
“The Manningtree operation is S.V.R. I am G.R.U. You know the difference, Debbie, and you know how complicated that makes things. Add into that the mess in Moscow now with the new men in charge to that as well.
My boss took a walk in the woods, one followed by two men who likely put him in a freshly-dug grave. In case you don’t know, and this is now public knowledge too, the deputy of S.V.R went home from work to shoot his family then himself: believe me, that was a staged murder-suicide.
The new men in the Kremlin are playing us off against each other, exploiting old rivalries.”
“That you’ve told me before.” Debbie was exasperated with the excuses. “It’s getting old, Georgy.”
He huffed and puffed some before he had something to say to that: “And it was as true then as it is now. You spoke to the Worthing girl? Will she do it? Can she do it?”
“She will.” Debbie had seen the other woman’s eyes. Those were ones of frightened compliance.
“It is a G.R.U operation now.
The S.V.R nearly lost, might even still lose, the most valuable asset imaginable because of their own stupidity. They compromised the head of this country’s government yet almost threw that away because they couldn’t control one crazy officer of theirs.
Things will change with how Manningtree is exploited. Everything else, between us that is, will stay the same though.
The money is where it always is.”
He got up and walked away after that remark. Georgy had left his folded newspaper behind though.
Debbie watched him leave the park and head in the direction of the Tube station. She sat and finished eating before depositing her rubbish in the bin. She did the same with that newspaper too, though removed the envelope that was inside it first.
When back in her car, Debbie checked the amount. It was what it should have been. She pushed the envelope down the front of her skirt and drove away. Soon she was back into Central London, far from the suburban meeting point.
Back to Thames House she went.
In her new office, down in the basement, Debbie got back to her work. They’d put her back in counter-terrorism the same day that her mother had been forced to take what they were calling a leave of absence. The elder Smith would never return here, that Debbie was sure of. As to herself, there probably wasn’t any future for her here either.
That would be a shame yet was inevitable. When that happened, the money would stop. She had plenty of it already though. More would be nice, as much as she could get before that day when there was nothing she could give to the Russians of value any more.
It had been almost a dozen years that she’d been doing what she had been: spying against her mother and her country both. It was all about the cash too. From the first approach to today and onwards to whenever the new boss at MI-5 decided that she was an embarrassing example of nepotism that needed to be forced out of the door, it had through all that time been about money for Debbie.
There were people who betrayed their country for ideological reasons, others who were coerced into doing so for various reasons.
Debbie just did it for the money…
…but the money didn’t make up for what she’d had to do to her friend Grace.
Re: Kompromat
Asshole quotient is going through the roof…wow…
Re: Kompromat
More inbound.
I was thinking that since I had Grace bumped off, there is no one nice/good left. Svetlana is (hopefully) exciting but that's not the same. I need a vengeful warrior to take on these b*stards, and Barton isn't it either.
Re: Kompromat
Nineteen – Feign ignorance?
Barton had the two top officials from the Secret Intelligence Service in his office with him. Quinn–Browne and Philips had been briefing him on the matter that continued to grow in dominance with regard to current international affairs: the crisis in Pakistan.
It had been grim listening.
The prime minister had been assassinated, and then the security minister too. Elements of the Pakistani Armed Forces had mutinied while others had fired on civilian protesters. The president had left Islamabad to the rule of the mob. The neighbouring Indians were losing their minds with worry over fears of a destabilised Pakistan leading to a war.
There was later tonight to be a virtual summit of more than a dozen of his counterparts to discuss the crisis. The Americans, the French, the Germans and so on were included in that: the major powers of the West. Against his wishes, the Russians too were going to be involved. That wasn’t the work of their arch-spy Manningtree but instead the Americans with their useless president believing that Russia could calm the Indians down and stop what was a domestic crisis in Pakistan from uncontrollably spilling into a ‘preventative war’ on the subcontinent.
Barton wasn’t looking forward to taking part in that at all.
When the Chief and Deputy Chief of MI-6 were done with their briefing, and in the gap before the summit, Barton asked everyone else in the room to leave. He kept the two top people from Vauxhall Cross with him.
“About this defector and your officers… tell me the worst of it then.” From these two he’d recently only heard bad news.
Philips began: “She ran from the safe house. There wasn’t a kidnap nor did anyone else help with her escape. A jump was made from a high window onto a truck bed – a mattress was dropped to land on, so that is almost literally – and the vehicle was stolen. We discovered the truck in York and traced her to the railway station. Train tickets to different locations in the country were bought using a stolen credit card though none appeared to have been used.
The defector vanished from there. In a side car park next to the station, the lone camera had recently been vandalised and we believe that she either stole a car from there or talked her way into someone else’s. Either way, entering there was the last which sighting of her. That was two days ago now with no trace surfacing since of where she has gone to.”
“Have you been working with the Security Service to try and locate wherever she’s run to?”
“There’s been minimal contact on that matter. There are issues there.”
“Back when you first told me of this Russian,” Barton recalled clearly what he’d been told in this very room, “there was the fear that this was all some very complicated disinformation job coming out of Moscow to sow seeds of discord.
Discord here in London among the government and within the intelligence services. Maybe discord internationally too.
This disappearance act of hers would suggest that that is the case, doesn’t it, Paul?”
“It does, to be honest.” He looked like he didn’t want to agree to that.
“But, we know for sure that everything said about our prime minister by that Russian woman was true. Oh, I know that your sister service says it cannot be proved for certain and that even now they are backing away from everything, yet we all know that there is complete truth in what was alleged. In speaking to Manningtree myself, she all but confirmed it behind that nasty smile of hers.”
Barton was still smarting from the meeting he’d had at Downing Street the other night with Manningtree.
“What exactly did she say though? Did she confess without confessing, or was it all dark hints?” Quinn–Browne asked him that.
“She had a lot to say. She also threatened to make it so that if things all came out into the open, my daughter would be caught up in it all and blame would fall upon her somehow.
Did either of you know that Siobhan has been asked to take a leave of absence from Defence Intelligence?”
“No.”
“Not that I was aware of, Robert. Is there an investigation against her?” Quinn–Browne asked with evident concern there.
“Not that I know of.”
Both of them didn’t know what Barton had only this morning heard, let alone anything else on that matter.
They were supposed to be his eyes and ears on all of this but things were moving forward with Manningtree’s efforts to protect herself. It had started with the head of MI-5 taking an enforced leave of absence and now his estranged child, caught up in Manningtree’s web, having fingers pointed in her direction.
“The two missing officers of yours?”
Philips looked downwards as he responded to that enquiry: “The bodies of both missing women have been recovered.
They were found together after an anonymous phone call to the emergency services though the two of them were killed several days apart. We’re trying to piece together the last movements of each, the second officer killed especially. She was in close contact with our defector since the very beginning and also on the day that our officer went missing too.”
“That contact muddles things even more so, Robert.” Quinn–Browne gave the appearance of being more than a little concerned at that. “It makes it look to outsiders, those looking now and those who will in the future, see a picture that doesn’t tell the truth of the whole thing. A compelling argument could be made that it was a scam all along, even if things didn’t go as planned for those behind it.”
“Do you know who killed them?”
“No, Robert: we do not.”
Has the prime minister asked you to consider your position over at Vauxhall Cross, Suzannah?”
As he asked that, he saw on the face of the Chief of SIS that the answer would be in the affirmative.
“Not directly, but yes, that is how things are playing out.
It’s come from the Cabinet Office, Robert. They are already talking about my planned retirement and have added in the ‘failings’ seen recently due to my – how the cabinet secretary put it – ‘questionable leadership decisions at such a key time’. The Canadian connection is being played up there, especially since their C.S.E leaked the joint operation that had running with G.C.H.Q.
Of course, Manningtree is behind it all. The Home Secretary is applying the pressure too and that is also all directed from Downing Street. They want me out and aren’t going to disguise that either.”
Philips added to that some unfortunate news. “If they force the Chief out, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’d be in line to take over too. My part in all of this is known over at Thames House and I would expect that the Acting D.G will let them know that I am of the conviction as to our prime minister’s treason.”
Barton went to the window. It was dark outside in the inner courtyard within the FCO Building. There had been some rain earlier and while that had stopped, everywhere was still wet. He took more than a few moments to stand in silence with his face touching the glass.
As had been the case when he had come back from that meeting in the Downing Street Gardens, Barton sought out in his mind a new plan of action. He had with him two of those entirely capable of assisting him even if their time in post was soon to end.
What to do?
What to do?
“I saw that story that came out in the newspapers this morning, Robert?”
Quinn–Browne’s remark interrupted his empty thoughts there.
“It came from Downing Street, no matter what the media might say.” Barton knew the source. “It’s a stich-up job designed to set the mood music for what Manningtree openly moves against me.”
“What’s this all about?”
Barton turned back around, walking over to Philips as he spoke. “A cache of secret F.C.O documents ended up in the hands to journalists from two different newspapers and were this morning on the front pages.
It’s about the Republic of Ireland last year and their accession into the Schengen Zone, leaving the Common Travel Area behind. They suggest that I was responsible for the failure of government policy to see that move stopped through London-to-Dublin diplomacy. Nothing there is damming, I didn’t do anything wrong, but it’ll just be the start of more to follow.
She’d have excuses ready to see me fired when the moment is right for her, once the mood music is fully going.”
“First it was Beth Smith,” Quinn–Browne started listing those whom the prime minister was getting rid of, “then it’s going to be me before you are finally pushed out of the door too.”
“It’s going to have to be you that stops her.”
Philips wore a look of determination as he said that, something that Barton found odd considering it was him that Quinn–Browne’s deputy was saying had to act.
“What do you suggest, Paul?”
“Let’s look at your options, shall we?” He now stood over against the window. “You could reveal all to the Cabinet and the top levels of the Civil Service too. It would have to be an all-or-nothing move so you would need everything that we have gathered beforehand and be able to present it as compelling proof… rather that strong suspicions and fragmentary evidence. The best move there, I’d think, would be to keep saying the word ‘treason’ as many times as you could too.
The problem there though is the gaps where evidence isn’t really proof. I’d assume by now that Manningtree has already poisoned the well. She could say it’s all a Russian disinformation job or institutional paranoia along with a political motive by yourself. Additionally, I’d expect her to go all out and claim that the actions of her and her aide were to do with a secret personal relationship between them: she might very well admit that and make innuendo against your motives in relation to that connection her and Worthing have.”
Quinn–Browne nodded with regards to that part. “That would be a wise play on the prime minister’s part,” she said, “and would deflect a lot more questions were people didn’t want to pry or be accused of bigotry. Tell me, have you spoken to any other Cabinet colleagues about it all?”
Her question there didn’t come across to Barton as just exploratory. He was sure that she knew he had.
“Yes, but not that long ago.”
He lied. It had been a while ago and, while he couldn’t say so, he shared her concern that that had only warned and emboldened Manningtree through his actions.
“So,” Philips continued, “the other option is to go public. Talk to the media, either on the record or off. You must know a couple of friendly reporters, yes? Talk to them and let them get to work. It would have to be several publications: print and broadcast media, not just the one where the story could be crushed by a proprietor looking for a backroom deal with Downing Street.
That route would mean a serious risk for you though. I’ve got to ask: are you really to lose everything if that doesn’t all work out as it might? Is there a willingness in you to face ruin yourself should that backfire?”
Those questions caught Barton off-guard. Quinn–Browne and Philips were both silent and looking right at him now. They were seeking assurance, hope was on each of their faces that they would receive an answer that they wanted.
Was he really to lose everything if it all went wrong?
Hell, no!
“That isn’t a scenario that I would like to see occur.” Barton chose his words carefully though saw the sparkle drop from the eyes of Quinn–Browne; Philips still looked hopeful though. “I’d rather, bring her down and see the security of this country restored.”
It was weak, he knew, but the best he could manage when put on the spot like that.
He’d lost the Chief of SIS by failing to live up to the heights that he assumed she had believed for him but her deputy was still with him.
“You cannot do nothing. There can be no feigning of ignorance, no pretending that Manningtree isn’t doing what she has been.
Forget the defector and all the mess she caused: focus on what she gave us first.
Forget whom Manningtree choses to jump into bed with: focus on what she had that young woman doing for her.
She’s a traitor and we all know it. We aren’t the only ones either. She can be taken down and you’re the one to do it.”
Such words instilled confidence in him. To hear someone else’s expressed faith in his character and his ability invigorated Barton. He needed to hear what he had.
“I’ll do it. I’ll take her down.”
He made that firm statement though didn’t add that the primary reason for it – everything else was secondary – was so that he could replace her in Downing Street and take the national leadership that was rightfully his.
That wasn’t said to these two because they had different priorities to his own.
After they were gone, right before the virtual summit with foreign ministers from other countries, Barton brought his trusted junior minister back into the room.
“Chris, I need your help.”
Barton set about bringing Christopher Dale up to speed on it all.
He did so because he had complete trust in the younger man.
How foolish of him.
Barton had the two top officials from the Secret Intelligence Service in his office with him. Quinn–Browne and Philips had been briefing him on the matter that continued to grow in dominance with regard to current international affairs: the crisis in Pakistan.
It had been grim listening.
The prime minister had been assassinated, and then the security minister too. Elements of the Pakistani Armed Forces had mutinied while others had fired on civilian protesters. The president had left Islamabad to the rule of the mob. The neighbouring Indians were losing their minds with worry over fears of a destabilised Pakistan leading to a war.
There was later tonight to be a virtual summit of more than a dozen of his counterparts to discuss the crisis. The Americans, the French, the Germans and so on were included in that: the major powers of the West. Against his wishes, the Russians too were going to be involved. That wasn’t the work of their arch-spy Manningtree but instead the Americans with their useless president believing that Russia could calm the Indians down and stop what was a domestic crisis in Pakistan from uncontrollably spilling into a ‘preventative war’ on the subcontinent.
Barton wasn’t looking forward to taking part in that at all.
When the Chief and Deputy Chief of MI-6 were done with their briefing, and in the gap before the summit, Barton asked everyone else in the room to leave. He kept the two top people from Vauxhall Cross with him.
“About this defector and your officers… tell me the worst of it then.” From these two he’d recently only heard bad news.
Philips began: “She ran from the safe house. There wasn’t a kidnap nor did anyone else help with her escape. A jump was made from a high window onto a truck bed – a mattress was dropped to land on, so that is almost literally – and the vehicle was stolen. We discovered the truck in York and traced her to the railway station. Train tickets to different locations in the country were bought using a stolen credit card though none appeared to have been used.
The defector vanished from there. In a side car park next to the station, the lone camera had recently been vandalised and we believe that she either stole a car from there or talked her way into someone else’s. Either way, entering there was the last which sighting of her. That was two days ago now with no trace surfacing since of where she has gone to.”
“Have you been working with the Security Service to try and locate wherever she’s run to?”
“There’s been minimal contact on that matter. There are issues there.”
“Back when you first told me of this Russian,” Barton recalled clearly what he’d been told in this very room, “there was the fear that this was all some very complicated disinformation job coming out of Moscow to sow seeds of discord.
Discord here in London among the government and within the intelligence services. Maybe discord internationally too.
This disappearance act of hers would suggest that that is the case, doesn’t it, Paul?”
“It does, to be honest.” He looked like he didn’t want to agree to that.
“But, we know for sure that everything said about our prime minister by that Russian woman was true. Oh, I know that your sister service says it cannot be proved for certain and that even now they are backing away from everything, yet we all know that there is complete truth in what was alleged. In speaking to Manningtree myself, she all but confirmed it behind that nasty smile of hers.”
Barton was still smarting from the meeting he’d had at Downing Street the other night with Manningtree.
“What exactly did she say though? Did she confess without confessing, or was it all dark hints?” Quinn–Browne asked him that.
“She had a lot to say. She also threatened to make it so that if things all came out into the open, my daughter would be caught up in it all and blame would fall upon her somehow.
Did either of you know that Siobhan has been asked to take a leave of absence from Defence Intelligence?”
“No.”
“Not that I was aware of, Robert. Is there an investigation against her?” Quinn–Browne asked with evident concern there.
“Not that I know of.”
Both of them didn’t know what Barton had only this morning heard, let alone anything else on that matter.
They were supposed to be his eyes and ears on all of this but things were moving forward with Manningtree’s efforts to protect herself. It had started with the head of MI-5 taking an enforced leave of absence and now his estranged child, caught up in Manningtree’s web, having fingers pointed in her direction.
“The two missing officers of yours?”
Philips looked downwards as he responded to that enquiry: “The bodies of both missing women have been recovered.
They were found together after an anonymous phone call to the emergency services though the two of them were killed several days apart. We’re trying to piece together the last movements of each, the second officer killed especially. She was in close contact with our defector since the very beginning and also on the day that our officer went missing too.”
“That contact muddles things even more so, Robert.” Quinn–Browne gave the appearance of being more than a little concerned at that. “It makes it look to outsiders, those looking now and those who will in the future, see a picture that doesn’t tell the truth of the whole thing. A compelling argument could be made that it was a scam all along, even if things didn’t go as planned for those behind it.”
“Do you know who killed them?”
“No, Robert: we do not.”
Has the prime minister asked you to consider your position over at Vauxhall Cross, Suzannah?”
As he asked that, he saw on the face of the Chief of SIS that the answer would be in the affirmative.
“Not directly, but yes, that is how things are playing out.
It’s come from the Cabinet Office, Robert. They are already talking about my planned retirement and have added in the ‘failings’ seen recently due to my – how the cabinet secretary put it – ‘questionable leadership decisions at such a key time’. The Canadian connection is being played up there, especially since their C.S.E leaked the joint operation that had running with G.C.H.Q.
Of course, Manningtree is behind it all. The Home Secretary is applying the pressure too and that is also all directed from Downing Street. They want me out and aren’t going to disguise that either.”
Philips added to that some unfortunate news. “If they force the Chief out, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’d be in line to take over too. My part in all of this is known over at Thames House and I would expect that the Acting D.G will let them know that I am of the conviction as to our prime minister’s treason.”
Barton went to the window. It was dark outside in the inner courtyard within the FCO Building. There had been some rain earlier and while that had stopped, everywhere was still wet. He took more than a few moments to stand in silence with his face touching the glass.
As had been the case when he had come back from that meeting in the Downing Street Gardens, Barton sought out in his mind a new plan of action. He had with him two of those entirely capable of assisting him even if their time in post was soon to end.
What to do?
What to do?
“I saw that story that came out in the newspapers this morning, Robert?”
Quinn–Browne’s remark interrupted his empty thoughts there.
“It came from Downing Street, no matter what the media might say.” Barton knew the source. “It’s a stich-up job designed to set the mood music for what Manningtree openly moves against me.”
“What’s this all about?”
Barton turned back around, walking over to Philips as he spoke. “A cache of secret F.C.O documents ended up in the hands to journalists from two different newspapers and were this morning on the front pages.
It’s about the Republic of Ireland last year and their accession into the Schengen Zone, leaving the Common Travel Area behind. They suggest that I was responsible for the failure of government policy to see that move stopped through London-to-Dublin diplomacy. Nothing there is damming, I didn’t do anything wrong, but it’ll just be the start of more to follow.
She’d have excuses ready to see me fired when the moment is right for her, once the mood music is fully going.”
“First it was Beth Smith,” Quinn–Browne started listing those whom the prime minister was getting rid of, “then it’s going to be me before you are finally pushed out of the door too.”
“It’s going to have to be you that stops her.”
Philips wore a look of determination as he said that, something that Barton found odd considering it was him that Quinn–Browne’s deputy was saying had to act.
“What do you suggest, Paul?”
“Let’s look at your options, shall we?” He now stood over against the window. “You could reveal all to the Cabinet and the top levels of the Civil Service too. It would have to be an all-or-nothing move so you would need everything that we have gathered beforehand and be able to present it as compelling proof… rather that strong suspicions and fragmentary evidence. The best move there, I’d think, would be to keep saying the word ‘treason’ as many times as you could too.
The problem there though is the gaps where evidence isn’t really proof. I’d assume by now that Manningtree has already poisoned the well. She could say it’s all a Russian disinformation job or institutional paranoia along with a political motive by yourself. Additionally, I’d expect her to go all out and claim that the actions of her and her aide were to do with a secret personal relationship between them: she might very well admit that and make innuendo against your motives in relation to that connection her and Worthing have.”
Quinn–Browne nodded with regards to that part. “That would be a wise play on the prime minister’s part,” she said, “and would deflect a lot more questions were people didn’t want to pry or be accused of bigotry. Tell me, have you spoken to any other Cabinet colleagues about it all?”
Her question there didn’t come across to Barton as just exploratory. He was sure that she knew he had.
“Yes, but not that long ago.”
He lied. It had been a while ago and, while he couldn’t say so, he shared her concern that that had only warned and emboldened Manningtree through his actions.
“So,” Philips continued, “the other option is to go public. Talk to the media, either on the record or off. You must know a couple of friendly reporters, yes? Talk to them and let them get to work. It would have to be several publications: print and broadcast media, not just the one where the story could be crushed by a proprietor looking for a backroom deal with Downing Street.
That route would mean a serious risk for you though. I’ve got to ask: are you really to lose everything if that doesn’t all work out as it might? Is there a willingness in you to face ruin yourself should that backfire?”
Those questions caught Barton off-guard. Quinn–Browne and Philips were both silent and looking right at him now. They were seeking assurance, hope was on each of their faces that they would receive an answer that they wanted.
Was he really to lose everything if it all went wrong?
Hell, no!
“That isn’t a scenario that I would like to see occur.” Barton chose his words carefully though saw the sparkle drop from the eyes of Quinn–Browne; Philips still looked hopeful though. “I’d rather, bring her down and see the security of this country restored.”
It was weak, he knew, but the best he could manage when put on the spot like that.
He’d lost the Chief of SIS by failing to live up to the heights that he assumed she had believed for him but her deputy was still with him.
“You cannot do nothing. There can be no feigning of ignorance, no pretending that Manningtree isn’t doing what she has been.
Forget the defector and all the mess she caused: focus on what she gave us first.
Forget whom Manningtree choses to jump into bed with: focus on what she had that young woman doing for her.
She’s a traitor and we all know it. We aren’t the only ones either. She can be taken down and you’re the one to do it.”
Such words instilled confidence in him. To hear someone else’s expressed faith in his character and his ability invigorated Barton. He needed to hear what he had.
“I’ll do it. I’ll take her down.”
He made that firm statement though didn’t add that the primary reason for it – everything else was secondary – was so that he could replace her in Downing Street and take the national leadership that was rightfully his.
That wasn’t said to these two because they had different priorities to his own.
After they were gone, right before the virtual summit with foreign ministers from other countries, Barton brought his trusted junior minister back into the room.
“Chris, I need your help.”
Barton set about bringing Christopher Dale up to speed on it all.
He did so because he had complete trust in the younger man.
How foolish of him.
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jemhouston
- Posts: 4230
- Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:38 am
Re: Kompromat
They're running out backs to stab.
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MikeKozlowski
- Posts: 1517
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 9:46 pm
Re: Kompromat
....Getting a sense that everyone knows that things are very quietly spinning out of control, and the best-case scenario is a train wreck of Philbyesque proportions or worse.
Mike
Mike
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jemhouston
- Posts: 4230
- Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:38 am
Re: Kompromat
Best case would be a plane crash taking them all out.MikeKozlowski wrote: ↑Thu Feb 23, 2023 12:37 pm ....Getting a sense that everyone knows that things are very quietly spinning out of control, and the best-case scenario is a train wreck of Philbyesque proportions or worse.
Mike
Re: Kompromat
Would be a nice anticlimaxjemhouston wrote: ↑Thu Feb 23, 2023 1:55 pmBest case would be a plane crash taking them all out.MikeKozlowski wrote: ↑Thu Feb 23, 2023 12:37 pm ....Getting a sense that everyone knows that things are very quietly spinning out of control, and the best-case scenario is a train wreck of Philbyesque proportions or worse.
Mike
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jemhouston
- Posts: 4230
- Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:38 am
Re: Kompromat
Jotun wrote: ↑Fri Feb 24, 2023 12:32 pmWould be a nice anticlimaxjemhouston wrote: ↑Thu Feb 23, 2023 1:55 pmBest case would be a plane crash taking them all out.MikeKozlowski wrote: ↑Thu Feb 23, 2023 12:37 pm ....Getting a sense that everyone knows that things are very quietly spinning out of control, and the best-case scenario is a train wreck of Philbyesque proportions or worse.
Mike
Re: Kompromat
The answer to infection is always to nuke 'em from orbit.
Re: Kompromat
Twenty – Buried box of treasure
Svetlana had spent two days with Lee.
She had been in his house outside of York, sharing his bed and thus keeping him happy. What was done was so that she could survive. Certain that there were those looking far and wide for her, Svetlana stayed close to where she had (hopefully) disappeared from without a trace.
Lee was a simple chap to keep happy. He was also just as gullible as she thought he was when she first met him, maybe more so in fact. Believing the story that she told him, Lee vowed to keep her safe. Svetlana saw the excitement in his eyes when she spoke of how she had at once come to rely upon him to ensure that those mysterious people out to kill her wouldn’t be able to do because of him. As to who they were, he asked few questions at all. The whole story that she’d crafted was barely heard by him.
Keeping her safe was his stated priority, and that came with her cooperation in his bed.
The time had come to leave though. Svetlana had felt temporarily secure but knew that couldn’t last. Escape continued to dominate her thoughts and that meant getting far away from where she had been lying low.
Another fantastical story was told to Lee, one that he lapped up without blinking. Never had Svetlana meet such a complete naïf.
He drove them both half way across Britain, down into the Berkshire countryside.
“This is where he lives then? Your half-brother?”
“Step-brother. His mum married my dad. I told you that, Lee.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure.”
Svetlana was sure that it was ‘step-brother’ she’d said. It was odd that Lee had got that wrong… but then when she’d been talking before taking the trip, he had been looking at her chest rather than her face.
“Wait here for me. I’ll be fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. I’d have you come in with me but he’s paranoid, he’s crazy, he’s quite simply nuts.”
None of that was true.
“Sarah,” he still believed that that was her name, “I should really meet him considering we’re soon to get married.”
That certainly wasn’t going to happen!
“Just trust me and wait here in the car. I’ll be quick, I just have to get something and will return with haste.”
Svetlana kissed him and got out of that car.
Noah Addison lived in the big country house. He was an old flame, someone whom Svetlana had been involved with back when she was in Britain for the first time all of those years ago. She remembered how Grace had several times asked her if there was anything that she had left out during her post-defection debriefing. Noah had been omitted with Svetlana not talking about him. Yet, she had never told her in-country SVR handlers about him too. Theirs had been an affair of the heart and nobody else’s business.
After waiting for the door to be answered, Svetlana put that omission alongside her behaviour back in Spain before she did that runner from the SVR. She’d scoped out Grace as someone to defect to without ever purposely planning to do that. It was the same with Noah: she hadn’t talked about him thus leaving open the opportunity here today.
She told herself that she was untrustworthy, yet, at the same time, never foolish enough to put all of her eggs in one basket.
“Sarah, is that you? You’ve changed your hair. Blonde suits you. And, I’ve never seen you in glasses before either.”
It wasn’t Noah who answered the door. Instead it was his friend, someone whom Svetlana had met once, maybe twice before all that time ago.
She struggled to remember his name.
“It’s me, Reece.”
His name came to her just as he – seeing her struggles – reminded her.
“Of course!” She hugged him and stepped inside the door. “Mind if I come in?” She was, regardless of what he said.
“Noah isn’t here. You’re looking for him, right?”
That she was, sort of anyway.
“Is he back in London?”
Reece shook his head. “No,” he told her, “he flew out with Annabelle to the Maldives this morning.”
Svetlana didn’t know who Annabelle was but she suspected that Noah wouldn’t have a platonic friendship with her: he wasn’t that type of guy, not at all. Hearing that he wasn’t here was disappointing but maybe it was for the best if there was another woman on the scene who might ask questions and make things awkward.
“Are you here all on your own, Reece? House-sitting?”
As she asked that, Svetlana stepped off the doormat and into the foyer properly. She stood at the base of an impressive staircase, one here to have admiring looks at it. The whole house, inside and outside, was like that. It had belonged to Noah’s parents, both deceased for many long years who’d left it to Noah along with a small fortune in the bank too. Noah had never worked a day in his life and led quite the privileged existence because he came from real wealth.
Lucky him.
“Oh, no. Craig and I are here together.”
As was the case with Annabelle, Reece spoke of whom Svetlana realised was his latest boyfriend in a manner that suggested she would know who they were. She recalled that he was always like that: speaking of people as if everyone knew them, regardless of circumstances or time spent absent.
It was odd but harmless.
Just like him and Noah: posh boys who were easy to know.
“Is this Craig chap here?”
“He’s out back in the garden.” With a thumb, Reece pointed back over his shoulder.
Svetlana smiled. “Oh, good. That’s where I’m going.”
Reece had followed Svetlana through the house and into the garden at the rear. He had questions, none of which she gave him an answer to. She had neither the time nor the motivation to tell him anything.
Craig was nice and friendly. When she asked him for the spade he had in his hand, he handed it over and asked her if he could help her. Another lovely helpful guy, one full of ripping muscles.
Was she digging something up?
“That, I am.”
It was a buried box of treasure. Noah knew it was here and knew too to leave it alone. He’d had questions back when she’d buried it in his garden yet there had been no answers given then.
Quickly, Svetlana retried it from the ground.
“What’s in it?”
“Sarah, is that yours to take? Shouldn’t we wait until I can email Noah and get permission for you to take it?”
She ignored what Craig had to say and turned on his boyfriend to answer his own questions.
“Do what you want. Tell Noah I said hello and that I hope to see him soon.
But, Reece, listen to me on this. The box is mine and Noah knows all about it. I’m taking what’s mine and that’s just the way that it is.”
He had nothing else to say after that. Reece had been more than a little taken aback at the way which spoke to him. She could see that but there was no time to mess around and try to smooth things over. What had been said had been said.
There was a downstairs loo, one right near the front door. Svetlana went in there, closing entrance to it when Reece continued with his concerned queries.
“Give a lady some privacy, will you?”
He had something else to say but was also trying to apologise for almost following her into the loo. She’d already stopped listening.
The mud on the box was washed off in the sink and Svetlana opened it. The entire contents were within a zip-tie plastic bag within. Looking over at them, a smile came to her lips.
Two passports in different names, neither of which had ever been known about by her employers nor anyone else. One said she was British and other Irish.
A smartphone and a power-bank complete with USB cable.
A trio of debit cards, all connected to online bank accounts which matched two of the names on the UK passports, with access to the funds in them available through already installed apps on the phone.
A small yet evil looking foldable knife with a wickedly serrated edge.
A pistol magazine full of hollow-point bullets.
And, finally, an automatic handgun to go with that item.
Svetlana looked in the mirror over the sink. With the glasses on and her hair straightened some, she was an identical match to the picture in one passport. The other would match her face if she took off the glasses and added some colour to her hair, maybe shortened it a little bit.
Everything went back in the box. She spoke to herself as she did that, not looking up again.
“You can do this. You can escape.”
With the reclosed box in her hand, something that she firmly believed every spy living undercover aboard surely must have for emergencies, she left the bathroom.
“Is that your fella in the car outside? He looks interesting.”
Craig had that helpful, irrelevant comment.
“Sarah, what’s going on?”
That was from Reece, looking at the box as she walked past him.
“I’m getting married and we’re eloping overseas, don’t you know?”
The lie just fell out of her mouth as she walked out.
Back in the car, Lee wore the strangest of looks as he sat there chain smoking. She closed the passenger side car door and turned to look at him.
“Was I too long?”
“No,” someone else, someone unseen answered instead of him, “you’re just in time.”
There was a woman who rose up – like some undead creature from a movie which Svetlana recalled recently seeing – from the back-seat. She had a pistol in her hands whilst Svetlana’s was still in the box in her lap.
“Who are you?”
As she asked that, not caring what the answer was, Svetlana slid a hand to start opening that box.
“Don’t do that.” The barrel of the gun was tapped on Svetlana’s shoulder. “I am one of those people Lee has been telling me is chasing you. It’s quite the story you’ve spun him with the whole ‘damsel in distress’ routine. Anyway…
…Gotcha!”
The woman laughed.
A tear ran down Lee’s cheek.
“She says she’s called Debbie.”
They drove for a while, heading down the M4 motorway westwards. Debbie had taken Svetlana’s box though – as far as she could tell – not opened it. The tip of the pistol that the woman in the rear had was pushed into the back of the seat and Svetlana was told just that.
“Turn the radio on. Let’s have some music instead of this awkward silence.”
Lee did as Debbie instructed.
Svetlana saw that he had stopped crying yet was still an emotional wreck. She told herself that she should have chosen someone stronger rather than looking for weakness to exploit. Lee would be no hope in getting her out of this.
The music was interrupted. There was a BBC news report that cut off a song midway through.
Like the other two in the car with her, Svetlana heard what was said about Pakistan.
It was only she who had something to say though.
“Oh. My. God.”
Svetlana had spent two days with Lee.
She had been in his house outside of York, sharing his bed and thus keeping him happy. What was done was so that she could survive. Certain that there were those looking far and wide for her, Svetlana stayed close to where she had (hopefully) disappeared from without a trace.
Lee was a simple chap to keep happy. He was also just as gullible as she thought he was when she first met him, maybe more so in fact. Believing the story that she told him, Lee vowed to keep her safe. Svetlana saw the excitement in his eyes when she spoke of how she had at once come to rely upon him to ensure that those mysterious people out to kill her wouldn’t be able to do because of him. As to who they were, he asked few questions at all. The whole story that she’d crafted was barely heard by him.
Keeping her safe was his stated priority, and that came with her cooperation in his bed.
The time had come to leave though. Svetlana had felt temporarily secure but knew that couldn’t last. Escape continued to dominate her thoughts and that meant getting far away from where she had been lying low.
Another fantastical story was told to Lee, one that he lapped up without blinking. Never had Svetlana meet such a complete naïf.
He drove them both half way across Britain, down into the Berkshire countryside.
“This is where he lives then? Your half-brother?”
“Step-brother. His mum married my dad. I told you that, Lee.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure.”
Svetlana was sure that it was ‘step-brother’ she’d said. It was odd that Lee had got that wrong… but then when she’d been talking before taking the trip, he had been looking at her chest rather than her face.
“Wait here for me. I’ll be fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. I’d have you come in with me but he’s paranoid, he’s crazy, he’s quite simply nuts.”
None of that was true.
“Sarah,” he still believed that that was her name, “I should really meet him considering we’re soon to get married.”
That certainly wasn’t going to happen!
“Just trust me and wait here in the car. I’ll be quick, I just have to get something and will return with haste.”
Svetlana kissed him and got out of that car.
Noah Addison lived in the big country house. He was an old flame, someone whom Svetlana had been involved with back when she was in Britain for the first time all of those years ago. She remembered how Grace had several times asked her if there was anything that she had left out during her post-defection debriefing. Noah had been omitted with Svetlana not talking about him. Yet, she had never told her in-country SVR handlers about him too. Theirs had been an affair of the heart and nobody else’s business.
After waiting for the door to be answered, Svetlana put that omission alongside her behaviour back in Spain before she did that runner from the SVR. She’d scoped out Grace as someone to defect to without ever purposely planning to do that. It was the same with Noah: she hadn’t talked about him thus leaving open the opportunity here today.
She told herself that she was untrustworthy, yet, at the same time, never foolish enough to put all of her eggs in one basket.
“Sarah, is that you? You’ve changed your hair. Blonde suits you. And, I’ve never seen you in glasses before either.”
It wasn’t Noah who answered the door. Instead it was his friend, someone whom Svetlana had met once, maybe twice before all that time ago.
She struggled to remember his name.
“It’s me, Reece.”
His name came to her just as he – seeing her struggles – reminded her.
“Of course!” She hugged him and stepped inside the door. “Mind if I come in?” She was, regardless of what he said.
“Noah isn’t here. You’re looking for him, right?”
That she was, sort of anyway.
“Is he back in London?”
Reece shook his head. “No,” he told her, “he flew out with Annabelle to the Maldives this morning.”
Svetlana didn’t know who Annabelle was but she suspected that Noah wouldn’t have a platonic friendship with her: he wasn’t that type of guy, not at all. Hearing that he wasn’t here was disappointing but maybe it was for the best if there was another woman on the scene who might ask questions and make things awkward.
“Are you here all on your own, Reece? House-sitting?”
As she asked that, Svetlana stepped off the doormat and into the foyer properly. She stood at the base of an impressive staircase, one here to have admiring looks at it. The whole house, inside and outside, was like that. It had belonged to Noah’s parents, both deceased for many long years who’d left it to Noah along with a small fortune in the bank too. Noah had never worked a day in his life and led quite the privileged existence because he came from real wealth.
Lucky him.
“Oh, no. Craig and I are here together.”
As was the case with Annabelle, Reece spoke of whom Svetlana realised was his latest boyfriend in a manner that suggested she would know who they were. She recalled that he was always like that: speaking of people as if everyone knew them, regardless of circumstances or time spent absent.
It was odd but harmless.
Just like him and Noah: posh boys who were easy to know.
“Is this Craig chap here?”
“He’s out back in the garden.” With a thumb, Reece pointed back over his shoulder.
Svetlana smiled. “Oh, good. That’s where I’m going.”
Reece had followed Svetlana through the house and into the garden at the rear. He had questions, none of which she gave him an answer to. She had neither the time nor the motivation to tell him anything.
Craig was nice and friendly. When she asked him for the spade he had in his hand, he handed it over and asked her if he could help her. Another lovely helpful guy, one full of ripping muscles.
Was she digging something up?
“That, I am.”
It was a buried box of treasure. Noah knew it was here and knew too to leave it alone. He’d had questions back when she’d buried it in his garden yet there had been no answers given then.
Quickly, Svetlana retried it from the ground.
“What’s in it?”
“Sarah, is that yours to take? Shouldn’t we wait until I can email Noah and get permission for you to take it?”
She ignored what Craig had to say and turned on his boyfriend to answer his own questions.
“Do what you want. Tell Noah I said hello and that I hope to see him soon.
But, Reece, listen to me on this. The box is mine and Noah knows all about it. I’m taking what’s mine and that’s just the way that it is.”
He had nothing else to say after that. Reece had been more than a little taken aback at the way which spoke to him. She could see that but there was no time to mess around and try to smooth things over. What had been said had been said.
There was a downstairs loo, one right near the front door. Svetlana went in there, closing entrance to it when Reece continued with his concerned queries.
“Give a lady some privacy, will you?”
He had something else to say but was also trying to apologise for almost following her into the loo. She’d already stopped listening.
The mud on the box was washed off in the sink and Svetlana opened it. The entire contents were within a zip-tie plastic bag within. Looking over at them, a smile came to her lips.
Two passports in different names, neither of which had ever been known about by her employers nor anyone else. One said she was British and other Irish.
A smartphone and a power-bank complete with USB cable.
A trio of debit cards, all connected to online bank accounts which matched two of the names on the UK passports, with access to the funds in them available through already installed apps on the phone.
A small yet evil looking foldable knife with a wickedly serrated edge.
A pistol magazine full of hollow-point bullets.
And, finally, an automatic handgun to go with that item.
Svetlana looked in the mirror over the sink. With the glasses on and her hair straightened some, she was an identical match to the picture in one passport. The other would match her face if she took off the glasses and added some colour to her hair, maybe shortened it a little bit.
Everything went back in the box. She spoke to herself as she did that, not looking up again.
“You can do this. You can escape.”
With the reclosed box in her hand, something that she firmly believed every spy living undercover aboard surely must have for emergencies, she left the bathroom.
“Is that your fella in the car outside? He looks interesting.”
Craig had that helpful, irrelevant comment.
“Sarah, what’s going on?”
That was from Reece, looking at the box as she walked past him.
“I’m getting married and we’re eloping overseas, don’t you know?”
The lie just fell out of her mouth as she walked out.
Back in the car, Lee wore the strangest of looks as he sat there chain smoking. She closed the passenger side car door and turned to look at him.
“Was I too long?”
“No,” someone else, someone unseen answered instead of him, “you’re just in time.”
There was a woman who rose up – like some undead creature from a movie which Svetlana recalled recently seeing – from the back-seat. She had a pistol in her hands whilst Svetlana’s was still in the box in her lap.
“Who are you?”
As she asked that, not caring what the answer was, Svetlana slid a hand to start opening that box.
“Don’t do that.” The barrel of the gun was tapped on Svetlana’s shoulder. “I am one of those people Lee has been telling me is chasing you. It’s quite the story you’ve spun him with the whole ‘damsel in distress’ routine. Anyway…
…Gotcha!”
The woman laughed.
A tear ran down Lee’s cheek.
“She says she’s called Debbie.”
They drove for a while, heading down the M4 motorway westwards. Debbie had taken Svetlana’s box though – as far as she could tell – not opened it. The tip of the pistol that the woman in the rear had was pushed into the back of the seat and Svetlana was told just that.
“Turn the radio on. Let’s have some music instead of this awkward silence.”
Lee did as Debbie instructed.
Svetlana saw that he had stopped crying yet was still an emotional wreck. She told herself that she should have chosen someone stronger rather than looking for weakness to exploit. Lee would be no hope in getting her out of this.
The music was interrupted. There was a BBC news report that cut off a song midway through.
Like the other two in the car with her, Svetlana heard what was said about Pakistan.
It was only she who had something to say though.
“Oh. My. God.”
Re: Kompromat
It's as bad as that, yes.
Re: Kompromat
Twenty–One – Ice Maiden
The US Vice President was on the video call that came across the ocean to Barton and the top tier figures of the British Government. He was using terms which the foreign secretary hadn’t heard before.
Nucflash–Pinnacle.
Ice Maiden.
Emergency Disablement.
Helpfully, one of the Ministry of Defence uniformed staffers who’d come under the tunnel from the MOD Building with the defence secretary explained what they meant. Barton, like all the others, listened to that brief explanation while Jonathan Prince carried on talking to the prime minister.
Nucflash: a nuclear detonation detected by American satellites. Pinnacle: an override codeword denoting a message vital to the United States’ national command authority.
Ice Maiden: a previously unknown codeword here in London but one which related to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
Emergency disablement: the destruction in an emergency situation of nuclear weapons to stop them falling into the wrong hands.
Prince was on the line from Washington because his president was clearly elsewhere, likely aboard an aircraft and extremely busy with all that was going on. The briefing that her vice president was giving Manningtree’s government was a courtesy because he too was likely needed elsewhere. It was a hurried briefing, one full of more of that terminology that the Americans liked to use.
What Barton had been told when dragged into this meeting below the Cabinet Office, into the principle secure briefing room, was far simpler.
Not an hour ago, faced with the certainty that a significant stockpile of their nuclear arsenal was about to be seized by soldiers engaged in mutiny, Pakistani forces guarding that particular stockpile had used one of those weapons to destroy the rest. The detonation had occurred in the Punjab, not that far from the city of Faisalabad. There were going to be a lot of casualties.
His whole day had been upended.
At the same time, Barton was well aware that this was going to be a defining moment in world history.
Before he’d been dragged here, Barton had been with Rachel Young for an early lunch… and one memorable chat too.
A mouse-like young woman who was short, loud and not very attractive, she was a journalist with one of the big broadsheet national newspapers. Barton had met her a few times and she wasn’t someone he liked much. However, she and his prime minister had a personal history full of dispute going back to their days together at the ‘paper which Rachel previously worked at when Manningtree had been there too. Rachel had the job of one of the most experienced political reporters where she was now and a background in stories concerning the intelligence world. Smart and serious, she was put in touch with him though Quinn–Browne. The Chief of SIS had made the connection because, as she’d told Barton, Rachel was the ‘right journalist’ for such a story.
Two streets away from the Foreign Office, over in St. James’ within a little restaurant where privacy had been given, Barton had told her everything. He’d been remarkedly honest with her, telling Rachel more than he had first intended to. She listened carefully, scribbling notes (she was rather old-fashioned like that) and asking few but important questions where clarification was wanted. There wasn’t as much eagerness as he’d anticipated yet he let that slide as he told it all.
To a journalist whom he barely knew, Barton covered the arrival of the defector & what that Russian had to say, the investigation conducted into Manningtree & her aide (which uncovered their affair), the excuse of the terrorist outrage in Manchester used by the prime minister to shut down most of the investigation once she was aware of it, the near-admissions of guilt caught on tape, an outline of what had happened in Prague, the shooting incident in Wales, Manningtree forcing out the UK’s top spy chiefs, the deaths of two MI-6 officers and then the disappearance of that defector.
Summarising, Barton told Rachel that their country’s prime minister was a Russian agent who was committing treason on the grandest scale. That she did so because she had been compromised through blackmail didn’t excuse it: not one bit. It couldn’t be proved in terms of what would be necessary for a court of law, but Manningtree was as guilty as hell. Once Rachel put that in her newspaper, especially uploaded it online ahead of it going to print, the whole world would know.
When he finished with all of that, Rachel had quite something unexpected to say in reply.
“I just don’t believe that there’s any truth to it, Robert.”
“Excuse me?”
Shell-shocked, Barton was. He was left completely taken at that instant dismissal.
“I’ve got another source,” so Rachel and her beady little eyes said “and the way that they tell it, you’ve been taken for a fool. They’ve duped you and you’ve fallen for it because you want to believe it.”
He leaned across the table to her: “Who got to you?”
In COBRA, Barton listened as Prince left the video call. He’d told Manningtree that he was going to talk to other allies with Israel being next on his list. Then the connection to the vice president went dead and all eyes – Barton’s included – turned towards their prime minister.
“Richard,” Manningtree had the defence secretary beside her, “can you run through everything we know so far, please?”
“That I will.” Attention moved to him now with Barton joining everyone else in wanting to hear what he had to say but dreading it all. “Gojra is a city just over thirty miles from Faisalabad. It’s home to close to two hundred thousand people, and an important manufacturing, agricultural & administrative centre.
There’s an army base on the edge. For a good week now, the Americans have been watching it via satellite under that Ice Maiden surveillance that Prince was talking about. They’ve been concerned, as we have been too, that the situation in Pakistan might explode and noted the increased security around that country’s nuclear weapons. The Pakistanis were spotted moving their warheads to several concentrated sites and guarding them extensively in response to the various munities we’ve been seeing on the back of all of that civil unrest too.
At five twenty-seven p.m. – local time there that is – a thermonuclear detonation went off. That American satellite’s cameras caught it all including the intensive fighting going on at the army base right beforehand. A trio of tanks had crashed into the base and there were soldiers fighting each other all over it. One particular building was reported to be housing the warheads from what the Americans were able to gather pre-blast, and a tank had just smashed through the front of that warehouse.
At that moment, the explosion occurred.
It was a ground burst, which is good and bad at the same time. On one side that means that the destruction has been limited due to so much of the warhead’s power being washed when on the ground. However, an almighty amount of fallout comes with any ground burst. That is going to be spread far and wide while having more of a lasting impact that if the explosion had occurred while the warhead was up high at the moment of detonation.
Gojra is just gone. The Americans cannot see much through a debris cloud but what they can see is a levelled city. The wind is blowing there and that is fanning what appears to be a firestorm that will destroy what little is left standing of buildings within what was once that city.
The wind I mentioned is going to blow that fallout away from Gojra. There’s quite a gust going on there. Ahead of the fallout is Faisalabad… and Lahore too. Those are cities of millions. The Indian border isn’t that far past them as well. A lot of local weather factors will influence how far that fallout spreads and its density, but the Pakistani portion of the Punjab is about to get drenched in it.
There is going to be some serious devastation and casualties from that fallout – immediate and long-term – are going to be the stuff of nightmares.”
Barton listened to all of that in horror. He saw the faces of Cabinet members around him with all of them just as aghast as they were. This was an event happening far away, on the other side of the world, yet he knew, like he was sure that they all did too, that there would be ramifications here in Britain too.
Pakistan was a Commonwealth country and there was a million plus Britons of Pakistani heritage, if Barton remembered that number right.
“How big was the bomb?”
Singh, the deputy prime minister, had that question. She was British with an Indian background and Barton silently chastised himself for thinking that just because of her family history she would have more concern than most.
“There’s nothing definite, Pramila, but the Americans think it was in the twenty to thirty kiloton range?”
“Is that a particularly large weapon?”
Just as Singh didn’t know, the size estimate meant nothing to Barton either.
“Bigger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. It’s a small weapon in the strategic sense though packs quite the punch.
Soon enough we’ll get a firmer number.”
“I’ve got a couple of questions, ones which I meant to ask Jonathon before he went off the line.” Manningtree was also seeking answers from her defence secretary, a man who was getting what he knew from the Americans. “Why didn’t they use a small bomb if they wanted to destroy the stockpile? If one went, why didn’t all of them go up? Was it authorised in Islamabad?”
After holding his palms out open momentarily, Richard answered her.
“We don’t know the exact situation on the ground there. Maybe it was the smallest weapon at-hand, one that could go through that ‘emergency disablement’ that the vice president spoke of in the quickest time. Or, whomever was pulling the trigger on that, who won’t be around to ask the question of, made an error.
Nuclear weapons don’t work in the manner of sympathetic detonations like conventional explosives do either. It takes an awful lot to see one go off. The others will just be destroyed and no more rather than going off too.
Authorised? We don’t think so. The Pakistani president is in Rawalpindi, Alicia, and I am certain that he wouldn’t have authorised such a thing. The Americans don’t think so either.”
Seemingly satisfied with that, Manningtree moved to have something to say to Barton next. She was seated across the table from him and caught his eye.
“Robert, what’s likely to be the situation in Rawalpindi now? In New Delhi too among Pakistan’s itchy trigger finger neighbours?”
Barton’s mouth fell open. No words came out. There was just nothing that he could say.
“No one ‘got to me’, Robert.
I’m not going to say for how long, nor who first tipped me to the matter, but I’ve been digging around myself before today. People talk and sometimes those people talk to little old me.
I didn’t know half of what you’ve told me today though, to be perfectly honest, none of what you said is much of a surprise. I can see how things got that far yet I also can see at which point the craziness happened.
You have the whole thing wrong, Robert. It’s all backwards what you’ve been telling me here today.”
Barton looked right into her dismissive eyes and saw that she was entirely serious. The woman looked like she was enjoying herself too!
“Tell me who spoke to you, who poisoned the well.”
She shook her head empathically and gave him a devilish grin.
“Hell, no! My sources are my sources.
I’ll tell you what I know though. There’s a Russian disinformation job that started right after Koshkin grabbed the top job in the Kremlin though it seems doubtful that he had anything to do with it. More likely than not, its part of a powerplay among elements of their security services there jockeying for position and influence. That aside, they’ve been playing a trick on this country’s intelligence services.
The aim looks to have been to destabilise the government and the trust in the country’s leader from the security establishment. It’s all a complicated plot, with undiscovered pieces to the puzzle still out there. The Manningtree stuff is made up overall though there’s been use of a few bits of secret knowledge about her private life brought into it all to add more than just some spice to the story but to use as a cover for her own secretive behaviour.
You’re a target of this disinformation operation too, Robert.
The Russians picked you out because they – like everyone else – know that you feel cheated that Manningtree took Downing Street from right under your nose. I can attest to the fact that she is the sneakiest of sneaks when it comes to getting her way, and I don’t bloody well like her either because I hold grudges, yet that doesn’t change anything really.
She’s being framed. You’re the one who they choose to lead the charge against her. I don’t know how your daughter got caught up in all of this but that’ll be part of it too: so as to make it personal for you.”
“It’s Alicia, isn’t it? She’s your source. Am I correct?”
It had to be the prime minister who’d spoken with Rachel and pre-empted him, leading him into this ambush that he was in.
“No.” Utter dismissal came there. “But, even if it was, which it isn’t, none of that matters because I’ve seen what you haven’t: proof that Manningtree is innocent and the victim of a frame-up targeting her and you both.”
“It’s her.”
It just had to be.
“I’m not the only one, Robert. There’s another journalist on this story, one from a different ‘paper. He and I have spoken on it and we agree too.
Let me ask you something. Are you thinking now that regardless of what I say, you’re going to find another reporter at another publication to put the theories of you and a couple of discredited, paranoid, see-Russians-behind-every-bush spy chiefs out there?
How do you think that’s going to go work out? If you do that, you’ll be doing the Russian’s work for them. You’ll be ending your own career.”
An ice cold stare came back at him from the young woman opposite him. She waited for him to say something yet Barton bit his tongue. He was trying to formulate a new plan.
Nothing short of the end of the world, so he told himself, is going to stop me exposing her and for the whole world to take notice either.
Rachel wasn’t the only journalist on Fleet Street.
Everyone in the briefing room was looking at him.
“Are you still with us, Robert?” Manningtree, opposite, locked her gaze upon him. There was impatience there.
“Sorry… yes… well…”
And that was it.
Never a man lost for words throughout his career, Barton was completely stumped. It wasn’t just the shock of what he was hearing about the incident in the Subcontinent, but he was recalling just what he had thought when back with that journalist who had, in effect, ambushed him like she had.
Only something unimaginably shocking that was going to take everyone’s full attention was going to bring a halt – temporarily anyway – to what he was trying to achieve in exposing his prime minister for what she was: a traitor. Now that had come.
“What will be going on with Pakistan’s president right now?” Singh joined Manningtree in questioning him with there being a strong note of her patience being tested in her voice too.
“I think…”
Nothing else came from him.
This time Barton did have something to say where is mind was getting back on track. However, he was interrupted by a deep, sharp stinging pain within his gut. His first thought was that there might have been something wrong with what he’d eaten at that aborted lunch meeting before he came here.
But then he suddenly felt dizzy, realised he was sweating all over and there was a pain in his head which forced him to close his eyes.
“We need some help here!”
He could hear Fieldhouse, Manningtree’s chief-of-staff, shouting loudly. Barton saw nothing though because his eyes were shut. He knew he was off his chair and on the floor. Barton was holding his belly and wanting to throw up as the pain at the front of his head grew in intensity too.
Someone else in the room had something to say though he didn’t know who that was.
“Has he been poisoned?”
It sounded entirely speculative to Barton’s ears. It was ridiculous, a mad idea which was beyond belief.
Who would do such a thing?
Those were the last thoughts he had before he lost consciousness.
The US Vice President was on the video call that came across the ocean to Barton and the top tier figures of the British Government. He was using terms which the foreign secretary hadn’t heard before.
Nucflash–Pinnacle.
Ice Maiden.
Emergency Disablement.
Helpfully, one of the Ministry of Defence uniformed staffers who’d come under the tunnel from the MOD Building with the defence secretary explained what they meant. Barton, like all the others, listened to that brief explanation while Jonathan Prince carried on talking to the prime minister.
Nucflash: a nuclear detonation detected by American satellites. Pinnacle: an override codeword denoting a message vital to the United States’ national command authority.
Ice Maiden: a previously unknown codeword here in London but one which related to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
Emergency disablement: the destruction in an emergency situation of nuclear weapons to stop them falling into the wrong hands.
Prince was on the line from Washington because his president was clearly elsewhere, likely aboard an aircraft and extremely busy with all that was going on. The briefing that her vice president was giving Manningtree’s government was a courtesy because he too was likely needed elsewhere. It was a hurried briefing, one full of more of that terminology that the Americans liked to use.
What Barton had been told when dragged into this meeting below the Cabinet Office, into the principle secure briefing room, was far simpler.
Not an hour ago, faced with the certainty that a significant stockpile of their nuclear arsenal was about to be seized by soldiers engaged in mutiny, Pakistani forces guarding that particular stockpile had used one of those weapons to destroy the rest. The detonation had occurred in the Punjab, not that far from the city of Faisalabad. There were going to be a lot of casualties.
His whole day had been upended.
At the same time, Barton was well aware that this was going to be a defining moment in world history.
Before he’d been dragged here, Barton had been with Rachel Young for an early lunch… and one memorable chat too.
A mouse-like young woman who was short, loud and not very attractive, she was a journalist with one of the big broadsheet national newspapers. Barton had met her a few times and she wasn’t someone he liked much. However, she and his prime minister had a personal history full of dispute going back to their days together at the ‘paper which Rachel previously worked at when Manningtree had been there too. Rachel had the job of one of the most experienced political reporters where she was now and a background in stories concerning the intelligence world. Smart and serious, she was put in touch with him though Quinn–Browne. The Chief of SIS had made the connection because, as she’d told Barton, Rachel was the ‘right journalist’ for such a story.
Two streets away from the Foreign Office, over in St. James’ within a little restaurant where privacy had been given, Barton had told her everything. He’d been remarkedly honest with her, telling Rachel more than he had first intended to. She listened carefully, scribbling notes (she was rather old-fashioned like that) and asking few but important questions where clarification was wanted. There wasn’t as much eagerness as he’d anticipated yet he let that slide as he told it all.
To a journalist whom he barely knew, Barton covered the arrival of the defector & what that Russian had to say, the investigation conducted into Manningtree & her aide (which uncovered their affair), the excuse of the terrorist outrage in Manchester used by the prime minister to shut down most of the investigation once she was aware of it, the near-admissions of guilt caught on tape, an outline of what had happened in Prague, the shooting incident in Wales, Manningtree forcing out the UK’s top spy chiefs, the deaths of two MI-6 officers and then the disappearance of that defector.
Summarising, Barton told Rachel that their country’s prime minister was a Russian agent who was committing treason on the grandest scale. That she did so because she had been compromised through blackmail didn’t excuse it: not one bit. It couldn’t be proved in terms of what would be necessary for a court of law, but Manningtree was as guilty as hell. Once Rachel put that in her newspaper, especially uploaded it online ahead of it going to print, the whole world would know.
When he finished with all of that, Rachel had quite something unexpected to say in reply.
“I just don’t believe that there’s any truth to it, Robert.”
“Excuse me?”
Shell-shocked, Barton was. He was left completely taken at that instant dismissal.
“I’ve got another source,” so Rachel and her beady little eyes said “and the way that they tell it, you’ve been taken for a fool. They’ve duped you and you’ve fallen for it because you want to believe it.”
He leaned across the table to her: “Who got to you?”
In COBRA, Barton listened as Prince left the video call. He’d told Manningtree that he was going to talk to other allies with Israel being next on his list. Then the connection to the vice president went dead and all eyes – Barton’s included – turned towards their prime minister.
“Richard,” Manningtree had the defence secretary beside her, “can you run through everything we know so far, please?”
“That I will.” Attention moved to him now with Barton joining everyone else in wanting to hear what he had to say but dreading it all. “Gojra is a city just over thirty miles from Faisalabad. It’s home to close to two hundred thousand people, and an important manufacturing, agricultural & administrative centre.
There’s an army base on the edge. For a good week now, the Americans have been watching it via satellite under that Ice Maiden surveillance that Prince was talking about. They’ve been concerned, as we have been too, that the situation in Pakistan might explode and noted the increased security around that country’s nuclear weapons. The Pakistanis were spotted moving their warheads to several concentrated sites and guarding them extensively in response to the various munities we’ve been seeing on the back of all of that civil unrest too.
At five twenty-seven p.m. – local time there that is – a thermonuclear detonation went off. That American satellite’s cameras caught it all including the intensive fighting going on at the army base right beforehand. A trio of tanks had crashed into the base and there were soldiers fighting each other all over it. One particular building was reported to be housing the warheads from what the Americans were able to gather pre-blast, and a tank had just smashed through the front of that warehouse.
At that moment, the explosion occurred.
It was a ground burst, which is good and bad at the same time. On one side that means that the destruction has been limited due to so much of the warhead’s power being washed when on the ground. However, an almighty amount of fallout comes with any ground burst. That is going to be spread far and wide while having more of a lasting impact that if the explosion had occurred while the warhead was up high at the moment of detonation.
Gojra is just gone. The Americans cannot see much through a debris cloud but what they can see is a levelled city. The wind is blowing there and that is fanning what appears to be a firestorm that will destroy what little is left standing of buildings within what was once that city.
The wind I mentioned is going to blow that fallout away from Gojra. There’s quite a gust going on there. Ahead of the fallout is Faisalabad… and Lahore too. Those are cities of millions. The Indian border isn’t that far past them as well. A lot of local weather factors will influence how far that fallout spreads and its density, but the Pakistani portion of the Punjab is about to get drenched in it.
There is going to be some serious devastation and casualties from that fallout – immediate and long-term – are going to be the stuff of nightmares.”
Barton listened to all of that in horror. He saw the faces of Cabinet members around him with all of them just as aghast as they were. This was an event happening far away, on the other side of the world, yet he knew, like he was sure that they all did too, that there would be ramifications here in Britain too.
Pakistan was a Commonwealth country and there was a million plus Britons of Pakistani heritage, if Barton remembered that number right.
“How big was the bomb?”
Singh, the deputy prime minister, had that question. She was British with an Indian background and Barton silently chastised himself for thinking that just because of her family history she would have more concern than most.
“There’s nothing definite, Pramila, but the Americans think it was in the twenty to thirty kiloton range?”
“Is that a particularly large weapon?”
Just as Singh didn’t know, the size estimate meant nothing to Barton either.
“Bigger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. It’s a small weapon in the strategic sense though packs quite the punch.
Soon enough we’ll get a firmer number.”
“I’ve got a couple of questions, ones which I meant to ask Jonathon before he went off the line.” Manningtree was also seeking answers from her defence secretary, a man who was getting what he knew from the Americans. “Why didn’t they use a small bomb if they wanted to destroy the stockpile? If one went, why didn’t all of them go up? Was it authorised in Islamabad?”
After holding his palms out open momentarily, Richard answered her.
“We don’t know the exact situation on the ground there. Maybe it was the smallest weapon at-hand, one that could go through that ‘emergency disablement’ that the vice president spoke of in the quickest time. Or, whomever was pulling the trigger on that, who won’t be around to ask the question of, made an error.
Nuclear weapons don’t work in the manner of sympathetic detonations like conventional explosives do either. It takes an awful lot to see one go off. The others will just be destroyed and no more rather than going off too.
Authorised? We don’t think so. The Pakistani president is in Rawalpindi, Alicia, and I am certain that he wouldn’t have authorised such a thing. The Americans don’t think so either.”
Seemingly satisfied with that, Manningtree moved to have something to say to Barton next. She was seated across the table from him and caught his eye.
“Robert, what’s likely to be the situation in Rawalpindi now? In New Delhi too among Pakistan’s itchy trigger finger neighbours?”
Barton’s mouth fell open. No words came out. There was just nothing that he could say.
“No one ‘got to me’, Robert.
I’m not going to say for how long, nor who first tipped me to the matter, but I’ve been digging around myself before today. People talk and sometimes those people talk to little old me.
I didn’t know half of what you’ve told me today though, to be perfectly honest, none of what you said is much of a surprise. I can see how things got that far yet I also can see at which point the craziness happened.
You have the whole thing wrong, Robert. It’s all backwards what you’ve been telling me here today.”
Barton looked right into her dismissive eyes and saw that she was entirely serious. The woman looked like she was enjoying herself too!
“Tell me who spoke to you, who poisoned the well.”
She shook her head empathically and gave him a devilish grin.
“Hell, no! My sources are my sources.
I’ll tell you what I know though. There’s a Russian disinformation job that started right after Koshkin grabbed the top job in the Kremlin though it seems doubtful that he had anything to do with it. More likely than not, its part of a powerplay among elements of their security services there jockeying for position and influence. That aside, they’ve been playing a trick on this country’s intelligence services.
The aim looks to have been to destabilise the government and the trust in the country’s leader from the security establishment. It’s all a complicated plot, with undiscovered pieces to the puzzle still out there. The Manningtree stuff is made up overall though there’s been use of a few bits of secret knowledge about her private life brought into it all to add more than just some spice to the story but to use as a cover for her own secretive behaviour.
You’re a target of this disinformation operation too, Robert.
The Russians picked you out because they – like everyone else – know that you feel cheated that Manningtree took Downing Street from right under your nose. I can attest to the fact that she is the sneakiest of sneaks when it comes to getting her way, and I don’t bloody well like her either because I hold grudges, yet that doesn’t change anything really.
She’s being framed. You’re the one who they choose to lead the charge against her. I don’t know how your daughter got caught up in all of this but that’ll be part of it too: so as to make it personal for you.”
“It’s Alicia, isn’t it? She’s your source. Am I correct?”
It had to be the prime minister who’d spoken with Rachel and pre-empted him, leading him into this ambush that he was in.
“No.” Utter dismissal came there. “But, even if it was, which it isn’t, none of that matters because I’ve seen what you haven’t: proof that Manningtree is innocent and the victim of a frame-up targeting her and you both.”
“It’s her.”
It just had to be.
“I’m not the only one, Robert. There’s another journalist on this story, one from a different ‘paper. He and I have spoken on it and we agree too.
Let me ask you something. Are you thinking now that regardless of what I say, you’re going to find another reporter at another publication to put the theories of you and a couple of discredited, paranoid, see-Russians-behind-every-bush spy chiefs out there?
How do you think that’s going to go work out? If you do that, you’ll be doing the Russian’s work for them. You’ll be ending your own career.”
An ice cold stare came back at him from the young woman opposite him. She waited for him to say something yet Barton bit his tongue. He was trying to formulate a new plan.
Nothing short of the end of the world, so he told himself, is going to stop me exposing her and for the whole world to take notice either.
Rachel wasn’t the only journalist on Fleet Street.
Everyone in the briefing room was looking at him.
“Are you still with us, Robert?” Manningtree, opposite, locked her gaze upon him. There was impatience there.
“Sorry… yes… well…”
And that was it.
Never a man lost for words throughout his career, Barton was completely stumped. It wasn’t just the shock of what he was hearing about the incident in the Subcontinent, but he was recalling just what he had thought when back with that journalist who had, in effect, ambushed him like she had.
Only something unimaginably shocking that was going to take everyone’s full attention was going to bring a halt – temporarily anyway – to what he was trying to achieve in exposing his prime minister for what she was: a traitor. Now that had come.
“What will be going on with Pakistan’s president right now?” Singh joined Manningtree in questioning him with there being a strong note of her patience being tested in her voice too.
“I think…”
Nothing else came from him.
This time Barton did have something to say where is mind was getting back on track. However, he was interrupted by a deep, sharp stinging pain within his gut. His first thought was that there might have been something wrong with what he’d eaten at that aborted lunch meeting before he came here.
But then he suddenly felt dizzy, realised he was sweating all over and there was a pain in his head which forced him to close his eyes.
“We need some help here!”
He could hear Fieldhouse, Manningtree’s chief-of-staff, shouting loudly. Barton saw nothing though because his eyes were shut. He knew he was off his chair and on the floor. Barton was holding his belly and wanting to throw up as the pain at the front of his head grew in intensity too.
Someone else in the room had something to say though he didn’t know who that was.
“Has he been poisoned?”
It sounded entirely speculative to Barton’s ears. It was ridiculous, a mad idea which was beyond belief.
Who would do such a thing?
Those were the last thoughts he had before he lost consciousness.