Execution

THIRTY-THREE

Richard Ballatyne was waiting to greet Harry on the second floor landing of a building in Great Scotland Yard. The security guard nodded and left them to it, and Ballatyne walked away trailing a crooked finger.

‘Sorry about the rush,’ he said quietly. ‘But this was an opportunity to get several important heads together on record without going through a full-blown meeting with everyone and their brother from the Sec of State down. We’ve got two gofers on a watching brief from the wider cabinet office and one from COBRA; a sit-in for the Joint Intelligence Committee; Commander John Crampton from CO19. . and Candida Deane of the Russian Desk.’ The pause there was, Harry sensed, deliberate. A warning.

‘Nobody from Five?’ His old employers. He was surprised. Anything involving the activities of foreign agents in the country should have had MI5 representatives here in droves, jostling for the prize.

‘No. For reasons I’ll tell you about later, they’ve agreed to let us run with this. But they are still involved.’

‘Great,’ Harry murmured. ‘And Deane? Should I be worried?’

Ballatyne threw a brief smile over his shoulder as he turned a corner in the corridor and walked towards a heavy oak door at the far end. Unlike the others, it bore no number or name plate. ‘Not really — not inside this place, anyway. She’ll be muzzled by the presence of the others, although she might still try to bite. And she’s no friend of Clare Jardine’s. You’d do well to remember that.’

‘Any specific reason?’ Clare had worked the Russian department. It wouldn’t be too surprising if there was history involved.

‘Deane was a protegee of Sir Anthony Bellingham.’

Christ. That was more than reason enough.

Ballatyne opened the door and ushered Harry through, stepping past a tall man with a flat-top haircut and broad shoulders standing just inside. Clearly a minder. The room was functional and spare, with a long table bordered by chairs and a sideboard holding a stack of notepads and, oddly, a Bible. The walls were panelled with oak and hung with pictures that had probably been there since the place was built. It smelled to Harry of paperwork, ink and dry, dusty talk, and possessed all the soul and atmosphere of a coal bunker. Just right, he thought, for disposing of embarrassing issues. It reminded him of another room not far from here, where his own career in MI5 had been consigned to a skip by a committee of faceless suits, before being posted on what had very nearly been a one-way trip to Georgia.

He nodded at the faces around the table as Ballatyne made introductions, instantly forgetting the names of the civil servant attendees. He received a cordial enough smile from Commander Crampton, which told him that the Met’s firearms unit officer didn’t know who or what he was, and a cool look of assessment from Candida Deane, a blonde with a cool, businesslike stare behind large glasses, who undoubtedly did. Crampton looked like a rugby player who had played just a little too close to the ball.

Deane looked even tougher.

‘This is a little off the cards,’ Ballatyne began, once they were all settled, ‘because the situation is a little unusual. You all know the basics, but just so that we’re all up to speed, I’ll outline it in extremely simple terms, to save time.’

‘Just a moment.’ Candida Deane was looking at Ballatyne but flicked an imperious finger towards Harry. ‘Does Tate have clearance for this meeting? I don’t recall his details being submitted for approval.’

Ballatyne appeared to have been expecting the interruption. He merely smiled and said, ‘Mr Tate is a former MI5 officer and has my full confidence. He has completed various assignments for us both here and overseas, and worked with the UN in highly confidential circumstances. He is also carded which, as some of you might not know, means he has been security vetted to carry a firearm. That places him higher on the secure list than many people who habitually sit in this room. May I?’

Deane nodded grudgingly and made a pointed note on a pad in front of her. But not before shooting Harry a final glance of assessment.

‘Earlier this afternoon,’ Ballatyne continued, ‘two gunmen shot and wounded an unarmed police officer on Pimlico Road, SW1. The officer was answering a call by a member of the public standing on the pavement. The two men had left their car in a reserved bay and entered a Starbucks cafe in search of a former MI6 operative named Clare Jardine. Miss Jardine left the cafe pursued by the men. They fired shots at her, which is when the officer was hit, but I understand she managed to escape unharmed.’

‘Who were the gunmen?’ one of the suits from the Cabinet Office queried, pencil poised to make a note. ‘And why would they be after a former officer? Is this a revenge thing?’

‘I was coming to that. They are thought to be Russian FSB operatives, most likely from their Special Purpose Centre, and responsible for the death of Roman Tobinskiy in King’s College Hospital’s Major Trauma Unit three nights ago. As you might know, Tobinskiy was a close friend and associate of Alexander Litvinenko, and shared his disenchantment with the Russian government. He had also made public those views, like Litvinenko. However, the reason for their attack on Miss Jardine was because she was a patient in the same corridor as Tobinskiy and witnessed the men’s presence in the unit.’

‘Was a patient?’ Deane lifted an eyebrow as if this was news. All heads swivelled her way, then back.

Ballatyne didn’t miss a beat. ‘Yes. She speaks Russian and had heard Tobinskiy rambling while sedated. It told her enough to know that he considered himself at severe risk — a fact already reinforced by his own shooting in Brighton several days before, which was why he was in the unit in the first place. . as you know.’ He waited a brief second for the meaning to sink home to the others, then continued, ‘The attacker then was thought to be East European, most likely also FSB or at least a contractor. The moment Jardine heard the two men speaking, she guessed what they were going to do and that they wouldn’t want any witnesses. There was nothing she could do to stop them, so she left the hospital before they could return.’

‘What did they do to Tobinskiy?’ asked a woman from the Joint Intelligence Committee. ‘I mean, I suppose they weren’t there for his health, were they?’

‘No. They weren’t. They held him down in his bed and suffocated him.’