Agent of the State (26 page)

‘Mind your own damned business.’

‘I’ll take that as a “No”, then,’ murmured Kerr, as Weatherall sneezed heavily into a single inadequate tissue, flashing more bra. She dropped the Kleenex on her desk, surreptitiously wiped her hand on her skirt and picked up her pen.

‘I employ you to run my covert policing unit, and you acted way outside your brief. For the second time in less than a week. This is none of your business.’

‘I think it is, ma’am, because of what Karl Sergeyev reported. Anything to do with national security is exactly our business. It’s what we used to do in Special Branch. What SO15 should be doing now.’

‘Let me be the judge of that,’ said Weatherall, grabbing more tissues. She dropped the used one into the bin. ‘I trust you’re not pursuing any other private adventures, Mr Ritchie, that I know absolutely nothing about?’ To give herself more space she pushed aside a couple of files, inadvertently knocking over the family photograph. Her jacket slipped to the floor. ‘Do you have any idea how close I came to disciplining you again today?’ she snapped, disappearing for a moment behind the desk.

Kerr leant over to rescue the photograph and caught a glimpse of Weatherall, her partner and teenage daughter in their Sunday best, as flushed as if they had been at the communion wine. ‘Can I ask, ma’am, what it is about me you don’t like?’

‘You need to become integrated,’ she said, as she reappeared with the jacket, red-faced and nodding at the flip chart, ‘to embrace change. You’re too set on doing your own thing, taking the law into your own hands, as with the whole Jibril thing and now this ridiculous unauthorised search.’

With the mention of Jibril, Kerr guessed Philippa Harrington had also been giving her a hard time about his unauthorised surveillance without putting MI5 on notice. Harrington was notorious for her weaponry of put-downs, condescension and threats veiled as advice. Wondering how many she had brought to bear this morning, he spoke out, undeterred: ‘But we still believe Ahmed Jibril is a terrorist.’

‘We?’

‘I,’ he corrected. Kerr’s priority now was to conceal his team’s secret investigation into Jibril. In the Fishbowl on Friday afternoon they had stepped up to the plate to take risks on his behalf. His duty was to protect them by keeping everything secret, strictly ‘need to know’. If Weatherall could be as worked up as she was over his look inside an empty house, how violently would she react if she knew about Justin’s burglaries over the weekend?

Until he reached the truth Kerr would operate with his team beneath the wire, out of sight of Weatherall and Ritchie.

‘Ma’am,’ he continued, ‘MI6 gave Jibril to us for a reason and I’m still convinced this man is a
jihadi
. And I believe you feel uneasy about his release, deep down.’

‘Drop it,’ snapped Weatherall. ‘This is for MI5. You do nothing more on this man without clearance and a specific request from Philippa’s people.’

‘I understand,’ he said.

Weatherall tried to replace the jacket but gave up and laid it untidily on the air-conditioning vent. Beneath all the bluster she looked chastened, like a victim of bullying. ‘From now on you work only on targets agreed with MI5,’ she said. ‘Nothing else.’

‘Right.’ Yes, he thought, Harrington had been applying serious pressure.

‘So take this as a final warning. We’re a team in SO15. Individualists have no place here, and your corporate profile is practically non-existent,’ she said emphatically, as her shirt gaped open even farther. This time she spotted Kerr’s glance and fastened the button. As she dismissed him she was already reaching for a blue ring binder marked ‘Institute of Management’. ‘Make sure you learn something from this. And on your way out tell Donna to find Mr Ritchie for me.’

Weatherall’s PA was already dialling as Kerr grabbed his raincoat in the outer office. ‘She wants to see . . .’

‘Bill Ritchie. Yes, I know.’

‘You got this place bugged, Donna?’ smiled Kerr. ‘And can you ask Alan Fargo to drop by?’

‘I already did that, too,’ she joked, looking past him.

‘You’re kidding,’ he said, as Fargo appeared in the doorway.

She put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘And Sir Theo Canning rang. National Crime Agency. Asking me for your number. He wants you to call him
tout de suite
.’ She held out a piece of paper. ‘Says he’ll make it worth your while.’

Twenty-nine

Tuesday, 18 September, 11.17, Farnborough airfield

To bring Anatoli Rigov home, Moscow provided a private jet to fly him from Farnborough airfield in Hampshire, south-west of London. In Karl’s absence, the Yard found another liaison officer to escort him from the embassy, a deferential, pinstriped spare from the Royalty Protection Squad with muscle but no background in intelligence work. At the VIP reception desk, Rigov clapped him on the back and sent him away with his deepest respects to all at Buckingham Palace.

Rigov’s Bombardier Learjet 40XR waited among seven others on the tarmac, but he had one more appointment before he could sink into its plush leather seats for the journey home. As Boris disappeared with his escort, Rigov slipped away from the reception area and into another vehicle waiting for him outside, a four-year-old silver Peugeot. The driver was a Russian in his thirties, harder than Boris and twice as sharp, who only addressed Rigov when he was spoken to. They rejoined the M25, then raced west along the M40, Rigov staying silent until they reached the outskirts of Stratford-upon-Avon.

The driver dropped him ten metres from an Italian restaurant off Church Street, within a short walk of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. He handed Rigov an unsealed white envelope and a ballpoint pen, then drove away to wait for him by the cricket ground on the other side of the river. The restaurant was in an ancient building with its original oak beams and uneven doors and windows, a private place with subdued lighting, the tables separated by thick black oak pillars supporting the low ceilings. Rigov’s lunch guest was waiting for him in the corner farthest from any natural light and opposite the staircase leading below ground to the cloakrooms. They had arrived before the lunchtime rush, with only three of the twenty or so tables occupied.

Rigov had chosen the location because it was close to the motorway, where he could quickly lose himself in the traffic, and far enough from Cheltenham, where his secret agent lived and worked. They had met here once before, in the winter of 2007, shortly after Rigov had recruited him; both had enjoyed the risotto.

The agent stayed seated as Rigov joined him and shook his hand. In these public surroundings, both men remained nameless and chose their words with care. The agent was in his late forties, short and paunchy, with lank hair dyed a gingery brown, and stained, roll-your-own-tobacco fingers. He wore the faded jeans, black T-shirt and baseball shoes of a man in midlife crisis. For eighteen years he had been employed as a low-paid technical officer at GCHQ, the British government’s gigantic listening station in Cheltenham. For the past three of these he had also worked for Anatoli Rigov, passing information on logistical planning, strategic priorities and, in two especially bountiful years, passwords and an encryption key.

To the FSB, successor to the KGB and equally deadly, he was the most satisfactory of espionage recruits, a volunteer motivated solely by greed. Their prime asset, born and brought up in Gloucester, displayed none of the politics, ideology or fear that made other cases so demanding. This relationship required nothing more than the occasional heavy drink and regular payments from Moscow into a secret account in Grand Cayman.

No one in the restaurant would hear Rigov’s foreign accent. At his bidding, the agent ordered for them both, risotto and large glasses of red wine. Rigov had already decided this would be their final lunch and the last time they would see each other. The signs that all was not well had been evident to him since May: within a month of being arrested for driving under the influence, his sole intelligence asset in this quiet corner of the world had deserted his wife for a local barmaid twenty years younger, then promptly been accused of drunkenness and sexual harassment at work. He swore on his mother’s life that the allegation was rubbish, but Rigov recognised the crumbling life of a stressed agent in middle age and sensed danger. In the FSB man’s long experience, one indiscretion so easily led to another. Left unattended, the dominoes might collapse all the way to his office in Moscow.

They talked for a while, inconsequential chatter about anything but drink and sex, until the risotto arrived. Rigov waited for his agent to order more wine and offer his
mea culpa
.

The man picked up his fork. ‘Look, I’m sorry about this. Really.’ The voice was West Country, slow and soft, but Rigov picked up the hint of desperation, the plea of a failure needing money for a new life with a younger woman.

Rigov gave him the smile he had used against Karl Sergeyev. ‘No hard feelings. As I always said, we met as friends and that is how we will part.’

‘This stuff in the office is all bollocks.’ He leant forward, invading the Russian’s personal space, his gaze intense. ‘Honestly. It’ll blow over. I can handle it.’

Rigov slowly shook his head. ‘But they may review your security clearance,’ he said quietly, holding his ground, ‘which eliminates your usefulness to me.’

‘No. I’ll dig myself out of this shit. Promise.’

‘And in the meantime you need money. I understand completely.’ The smile was still there as the envelope appeared in Rigov’s hand. He slid the agent’s plate to one side as he handed it across the table. ‘Which is why we are continuing the transfer for two more months, as a goodwill gesture. We wait until things settle, then we meet again.’ He pressed the envelope into the man’s hand. ‘But you have to sign on the dotted line.’

Rigov had remembered his agent wore glasses for reading. As he nervously pulled the single sheet of paper from its envelope and fumbled with the spectacles case, Rigov held the pen directly over his agent’s food and clicked the end twice, squirting two streams of clear liquid into the risotto. ‘These days, we all have to satisfy the bean counters,’ he said. Rigov scribbled on the envelope to demonstrate the pen did not work, then produced another from his jacket and handed it across the table. ‘With a pen that writes.’ He smiled.

The signing was a charade, for the account was already closed and the agent doomed the moment he swallowed his food and settled their bill in cash. The phial in Rigov’s magic pen contained a new poison developed by the FSB, whose scientists had exploited the European
E. coli
epidemic in 2011 to develop an even more aggressive variant, resistant to every known treatment. In the days to come the bacterium would quietly embed itself in the agent’s gut. Within a week he would suffer stomach cramps, quickly followed by diarrhoea, vomiting, collapse of the nervous system, kidney failure and death.

Thirty

Tuesday, 18 September, 13.47, River Thames

Because it was closest to the station exit, Kestrel, John Kerr’s mole within MI5, always travelled to work in the third carriage of his Jubilee Line train from Stanmore to Westminster. Whenever possible he stood by the second set of double doors, so that he could be first onto the escalator for the brisk ten-minute walk to ‘Toad Hall’, the fun name by which MI5 employees referred to Thames House, their headquarters.

For the journey home, around five-forty-five every weekday evening, Kestrel always boarded the fifth carriage. His routine breached the first principle of tradecraft, which required intelligence officers to avoid regular patterns of behaviour. It was a curious lapse from a man whose job was to deal with security breaches.

This morning he was much later than usual, close to lunchtime. Waiting to join Kestrel’s train at Baker Street, Melanie spotted him in the crowded carriage exactly where he was supposed to be, complete with shabby blue raincoat and copy of the
Financial Times
. He was shorter than most other men in the carriage and appeared to be experimenting with a comb-over. He evidently clocked her the moment she boarded the train. This morning she guessed his reliance on the second law of deceit; no overt recognition of people you knew was for personal, not professional, reasons.

As Melanie moved up the carriage towards him, he turned away and buried himself in the newspaper. ‘You didn’t return John’s calls,’ she said quietly, squeezing in close between a couple of rucksacks, ‘and he needs to have a chat today. Right now, in fact.’

They were slowing on the approach to Westminster. Kestrel looked around and tried to appear cool, but Melanie saw panic in his eyes. ‘I’m due in the office, for God’s sake,’ he hissed. ‘I’ve got meetings.’

Melanie’s hand came over the top of the paper. ‘So throw a sickie.’ The train stopped and the doors whooshed open. ‘You know where to go.’

She followed him out of the station and watched him turn left, calling the office with his excuses as he crossed the Embankment towards Westminster Bridge. Then she hurried back down into tunnel, taking the Tube to Tower Hill.

Kerr was loitering by Westminster Pier. He watched Kestrel purchase two boat tickets to Tower Bridge and waited for him to board first.

Kestrel’s real name was Jeremy Thompson, and he was a middle-ranking officer in MI5. Because he doubled as John Kerr’s agent of duress, discretion was vital. They had used this method twice before, and today the river was perfect for their meeting, visibility reduced by grey cloud and drizzle.