Kompromat

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The specially constituted inter-departmental team had been studying the video film for more than two hours in the basement of MI5’s Millbank headquarters overlooking the Thames, and they were feeling the strain. Analysing frame by frame the video Barnard had brought back from China was hard work. The constant stream of messages from ‘upstairs’ – the Director-General’s office – asking for a report on progress contributed to the tension.

Joshan Gupta, head of MI5’s technical support services, understood the need to come up with an answer quickly. But he was also deeply reluctant to draw conclusions that the evidence didn’t support. MI5 and its sister service MI6 had been deeply scarred by the ‘dodgy dossier’ at the time of the Iraq war, when Britain’s intelligence services had been accused of distorting, falsifying or, at the very least, ‘sexing up’ evidence relating to Saddam Hussain’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). They didn’t want to be caught twice in the same trap.

‘Let’s try to be clear,’ Gupta said. ‘The Chinese somehow acquire a video which shows the former Secretary of State Edward Barnard in a compromising position. We all accept that Barnard is indeed the man in the lift with the two Russian ladies but we seem collectively to be conceding that the man on the bed is not Mr Barnard. First, there is Barnard’s own statement that he does not believe he is involved, even though he was possibly inebriated or even drugged. Second, CCTV evidence from the hotel shows Barnard entering his room alone, and not in the company of the two Russian ladies. Third, according to Mrs Barnard, Mr Barnard does not normally wear boxer shorts and would certainly never have worn US-Flag boxer shorts.’

Joshan Gupta paused.

‘But surely,’ he continued, ‘it would be going too far to argue that just because Ronald Craig was in the Kempinski Hotel at the same time as the two Russian ladies, the figure on the bed with the said ladies is indeed Mr Craig?’

Jill Hepworth, one of MI6’s Russian specialists, was keen to put forward the alternative point of view.

‘Let’s blow up those boxer shorts again,’ she requested.

As the image of the US-Flag boxer shorts appeared on the giant screen in the MI5 basement conference room, Jill Hepworth took out a laser pointer.

‘Okay,’ she continued. ‘We can all see the way PUT AMERICA FIRST has been printed on, or perhaps sewn into, the waistband of the boxer shorts. But let’s look a little closer. Do you see the embroidered logo on the left leg, the little white “b” inside a black circle? Do you know whose logo that is? Well, I did some research. It’s the Bloomingdales logo. And where is Bloomingdales located? In New York? And where does Ronald Craig spend a good deal of his time? The answer’s New York. I read he even flies back home to New York to sleep in his own bed when he’s on the campaign trail. He could easily send someone over to Bloomingdales from Craig Tower to buy some boxer shorts.’

Gupta was still sceptical. ‘With respect, even if we could establish that Mr Craig buys his underwear at Bloomingdales, this would not necessarily prove that he is the man on the bed.’

Lillian Peters, head of the Foreign Office’s security team, who was chairing the meeting, was anxious to bring the meeting to a close.

‘So what line do you propose we take?’ she asked.

‘I would say we hold our fire,’ Gupta replied. ‘This could be another classic case of Kompromat, like that of Yuri Skuratov. Let me remind you that a few years back, Yuri Skuratov, Russia’s then Prosecutor-General, was in the middle of one of the biggest investigations of his career, tracking down high-profile Russian officials accused of taking huge bribes, when a tape surfaced.

‘Grainy footage, apparently captured on a concealed camera, showed Skuratov having sex with two prostitutes. Hours after it aired on Russian state television, Skuratov was suspended from his post, despite his protestations. Popov, who at the time was working at the Federal Security Agency, which we now know as the FSB, publicly certified that Skuratov was the man pictured on the videotape. Surprise, surprise! Yeltsin appointed Popov prime minister in the same year.’

Gupta paused and looked around the room. He felt he was beginning to win over the waverers.

‘This is very much a part of the way Russia works,’ he continued. ‘Intelligence agencies collect compromising information on individuals, or they fake such information to use later, when it’s to their advantage. The Skuratov affair is a case in point. Those grainy pictures were Skuratov’s undoing but they were almost certainly faked.’

Lillian Peters pondered her options. There was always a temptation to rush to judgement, but she shuddered to think of the consequences if they got it wrong.

She made up her mind. ‘I would propose that we send a holding report up to Dame Jane. We tell her that we are still considering the file.’

Gupta held up his hand.

‘Yes, Mr Gupta.’

‘I hope I have not seemed too negative. There may still be a chance of reaching a firm conclusion, one way or the other. There are images which are obscure and grainy, as in the Skuratov case, and then there are images where the face and other features have been distorted, as a result of a deliberate act of pixelation. Let’s blow up those images again. If they have been deliberately pixelated, we may be able to depixelate them.’

He had their attention. These boffins, Lillian Peters thought, often waited till the last moment before coming up with the goods.

Later that day, Dame Jane Porter went to see the home secretary, with no officials present. Her two close aides, Giles Mortimer and Holly Percy, knew most of what was going on. But they didn’t need to know everything. Not yet anyway.

Mabel Killick ushered her visitor to the sofa in the corner of her large office in the Home Office. She closed the door and pulled up a chair.

‘Well, Jane?’ Mabel Killick was at her most charming. ‘How are you getting on? What’s the verdict?’

‘They’re still working on the Kempinski video,’ Jane Porter said. ‘They hope to depixelate the images.’

‘Ah,’ the home secretary nodded knowledgeably. ‘When do they expect a result?’

‘Hard to say. Apparently this is a long and difficult process with no guarantee of success.’

‘What about the memory-stick the Russians gave Edward Barnard? How are things going there? Are all those documents fake too? The Russians seem to be making a habit of it at the moment, don’t they? Fake news seems to be all the rage. You just don’t know what to believe.’

‘I’m not sure, Home Secretary, that the memory-stick documents are in fact fake,’ Jane Porter said. ‘We’ve been going through them one by one. Virtually all of them are, or appear to be, genuine documents emanating from the PM’s office. The narrative they portray is indeed the narrative that happened: the run-up to the PM’s Bloomberg speech, the PM’s manuscript additions to the manifesto, late in the day, indicating his personal commitment to the Referendum. Those are all genuine verifiable documents, though how they got into the hands of the Russians to form the basis of their Brexit dossier, if I may call it that, is still not clear. That, as you can imagine, is a matter of great concern to us. If Number 10 itself is not secure, who and what is?’

‘Hold on a moment,’ the home secretary said. ‘What about the exchanges the prime minister had with Fred Malkin, Conservative Party chairman, about huge cash transfers into Conservative Party funds in exchange for the Referendum commitment? Surely to heaven those documents aren’t genuine.’

Dame Jane Porter sighed. ‘Things are not looking good. And it wasn’t just the promise Jeremy Hartley gave in the Bloomberg speech. The manifesto commitment was even more explicit. Of course, the PM never expected that he would ever have to deliver on that commitment. The Lib Dems would always have vetoed it. But then the Conservatives won an outright majority and the PM was hoist by his own petard.’

Mabel Killick stood up and walked over to the window. She gazed out at traffic on Horseferry Road. She’d had to take many difficult decisions in her long tenure as home secretary, but this was one of the most difficult.

She turned towards her guest and said in the gravest tones, ‘We’re going to have to pursue this one wherever it leads, even if it leads to the door of the prime minister himself. You’ll have to bring the Met in, and the financial boys. What happened to the money you are talking about?’

Her voice trailed off. For a brief moment she put her head in her hands. If the prime minister had to step down, or was forced out, or – thoughts of the Cayman Islands and illicit personal accounts popped unbidden into her head – yes, conceivably, even went to prison, then who on earth would succeed him?

‘We must keep this one under the tightest of wraps till we’re ready to spring,’ she instructed.

Jane Porter looked down at the home secretary’s trademark leopard-print kitten heels. Mabel Killick was always ready to spring, she thought.