Kompromat

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Sir Andrew Boles, KGB, KCVO, was delighted by his transfer from Moscow to Washington. With the United Kingdom heading for the door, as far as the European Union was concerned, it was obvious that the UK–US bilateral relationship would be absolutely pivotal.

Mabel Killick, the new prime minister, had called him personally.

‘Obviously we don’t know at the moment which of the US presidential candidates is going to win in November,’ she said. ‘Caroline Mann has a brilliant track record, but I can’t help feeling that Ronald Craig may surprise us all. It could be Brexit all over again.’

‘Well, if Craig wins, I’ll make it my priority to ensure that you’re the first world leader to be invited to the White House.’

World leader! Maybe that was laying it on a bit thick, Boles thought, as he put the phone down. Mrs K had served a long apprenticeship in the Home Office. She had yet to show her mettle on the international stage.

Two weeks later, Boles was already en poste in Washington, as the new British ambassador. Apart from his pleasure at being promoted to this top diplomatic assignment, the move to Washington had contributed massively to domestic harmony. His wife, Julia, had been only too happy to exchange Moscow’s stresses and strains for a new life in Washington. The magnificent Lutyens-designed mansion at 3100 Massachusetts Avenue, North-West Washington, was a consummation devoutly to be wished.

If life in Washington slows down over the summer (and it does), it resumes with a vengeance in September after Labor Day. Whenever they could, the ambassador and his wife tried to have breakfast together. This was, above all, an opportunity to fine-tune their diaries. The vital relationships in Washington, with senators and congressmen, with key government officials and White House staffers, were formed not so much through official contacts but in the course of much more personal interactions: on the golf course, at exclusive downtown clubs (some didn’t even have a name-plate on the door) and above all at small intimate dinners at home.

Around 6:00p.m. in the first week of September 2016, the car carrying Edward Barnard, Britain’s newly appointed chancellor of the exchequer, on his first official visit to Washington, swept through the imposing wrought-iron gates of the British Embassy. In spite of the residual ache in his injured leg, Barnard did his best to bound up the double staircase, to be greeted at the top by Sir Andrew Boles.

‘Edward. How good to see you. You’re looking well.’

‘I’m feeling well,’ Barnard said. ‘Even though I’ve just got off a plane.’

Half an hour later, after Barnard had had a quick shower and changed his clothes, the two men sat together on the terrace, pre-dinner drinks in hand.

They hadn’t seen each other since Moscow.

‘My God, what a summer!’ Boles began. ‘I can’t help wondering whether Mabel Killick didn’t do some kind of a deal with Jeremy Hartley. Go quietly or the coppers will be feeling your collar.’

‘Let’s not go there,’ Barnard replied. ‘We are where we are.’

He stood up as Julia Boles came to join them on the terrace. The butler served champagne and the evening sun bathed the Embassy’s vast lawn in a soft golden light.

‘We’re going to be a very small party tonight,’ Boles said. ‘We know you’re friends with Rosie Craig, so invited her. Her office said she was thrilled. Having you here was obviously a major draw. Big plus for the Embassy. Rosie’s not just her father’s daughter. Apparently he consults her on just about everything.’

‘She’s bringing Jack Varese too,’ Julia Boles added. ‘I gather you were all in Australia together a few weeks back.’

‘We were indeed. That was quite an adventure,’ Barnard said.

While they waited for Rosie and Jack to arrive, Andrew Boles summarized the current political scene:

‘Basically, Caroline Mann is in trouble. For some reason best known to himself, Wilbur Brown, who, as you know, is the director of the FBI, with only a few weeks to go before the election, has just announced that the FBI is reviewing some 30,000 of her emails, all of them mailed to or from her private, unauthorized server. This has been a total bombshell as far as her presidential campaign is concerned. Caroline has slumped in the polls.’

‘How did the FBI get the emails?’ Barnard asked.

‘Well, they haven’t told us so directly, but the most likely source seems to be WikiLeaks.’

‘And how did WikiLeaks get them? From the Russians?’

‘Almost certainly.’

‘So how did the Russians get them?’

‘This is where it gets a bit murky,’ the ambassador replied. ‘It looks as though some FSB-related units hacked into the Democratic National Committee and then into Caroline Mann’s own emails. But all this is still pretty speculative. The odd thing is that apparently the FBI has also got a whole lot of compromising material on the Craig campaign, too. But so far it hasn’t announced any plan to release it.’

‘No favouritism there then?’ Barnard chuckled.

They spent a few moments checking Barnard’s schedule for the next day. ‘You’ve got meetings at the Treasury in the morning, then lunch at the IMF,’ Boles told him. ‘Then drinks here tomorrow evening. Lots of people keen to meet the new chancellor of the exchequer. We’ll get you to Dulles in time for the last flight back to Heathrow.’

‘Sounds fun,’ Barnard said.

‘Oh, by the way,’ Boles added. ‘We left a gap in your schedule after lunch. If you’re up for it, you could call in at the FBI. Wilbur Brown is very keen to see you. Nothing to do with finance. That’s why we haven’t put it on your formal schedule. As far as I understand, it’s something to do with that trip you made to the Russian Far East. Something they need to check. He didn’t say much on the phone. Just said he would greatly appreciate it if you could spare a moment.’

‘Pretty much like a Royal Command, isn’t it?’ Barnard commented.

‘That’s what I thought too,’ said Boles. ‘You can use my car tomorrow. I won’t need it. If you’re summoned to the FBI, you may as well arrive in an armour-plated Rolls Royce, don’t you think?’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Barnard agreed. ‘I don’t want anyone else taking a pot-shot at me.’

Rosie Craig arrived moments later. She gave Barnard a big hug.

‘It’s so good to see you again,’ she said. ‘Last time we met you had just been bitten by a deadly poisonous spider and now you’re the new secretary of the Treasury.’

Barnard returned the greeting. ‘In the UK, I’m called chancellor of the exchequer. Pretty much the same job as your Treasury secretary’s, except you guys have a lot more money.’

Rosie turned to her hosts. ‘Jack’s on his way. He’s on the phone to Dad. Dad wants Jack to endorse his candidacy, but Jack’s playing hard to get. Says Dad has to change his tune on global warming and promise to stand by the Paris agreement. Just for starters.’

Sir Andrew Boles laughed. ‘Good luck with that. There’s going to be a sigh of relief all round, if your father changes tack on that one.’

When Jack Varese finally arrived, they went straight on into dinner in the small, private dining room.

‘Rosie was telling us before you arrived that you’ve been talking to her father about global warming,’ Andrew Boles said, once they were settled. ‘Can you tell us what he said, or it a secret?’

Jack Varese laughed. ‘Nothing’s a secret in this town. People know what you’ve said, before you’ve said it.’

He was suddenly serious. ‘Rosie and Edward will remember the time I flew them from St Petersburg to Khabarovsk earlier this year to look for Siberian tigers in the Russian Far East. I was piloting my Gulfstream 550. Rosie’s father, Ronald, was with us on that amazing trip and he came up front to sit in the co-pilot’s seat. We were flying a great circle route over the Arctic. That’s one of the most magnificent spectacles you will ever see. The Inuits live up there, the polar bears, the seals, the walruses. Makes you want to cry, it’s so beautiful.

‘There was I, flying the plane, and thinking how global warming was already working a massive change in the Arctic environment. The ice cap is shrinking, year by year. The polar bears are starving because they can’t get out on the ice to hunt seals. The oil rigs will soon be sprouting in the ocean where the ice used to be.

‘Then I saw Ron looking out the window and I realized that he wasn’t seeing what I was seeing. He wasn’t looking at a magnificent, pristine environment, now seriously threatened. No, what he saw was a massive opportunity for Craig Shipping. He was thinking that he could cut thousands, literally thousands of miles off a journey from Europe to Asia if he could get rid of the ice in the Arctic Ocean. And he was thinking about the possibilities for Craig Oil if he could do a deal with Russia over exploitation rights. There are billions of barrels of oil up there. Never mind the risk of blow outs or maritime disasters.

‘Do you know what Ron Craig’s precise words to me were?’ he concluded. ‘They were “Roll on global warming”!’

‘I’m totally with Jack on this one,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m giving him all the help I can. My father listens to me sometimes.’

‘That’s the understatement of the year. He listens to you all of the time,’ Jack Varese countered. ‘If he’s elected, they’ll be giving you your own office in the West Wing, right from the get-go.’

After dinner, Julia Boles showed Rosie Craig around the house. The three men went out on to the terrace.

‘I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re raising some of these key environmental issues with Ronald Craig,’ Barnard told Varese.

‘Actually, I’m raising them with both candidates,’ Varese replied. ‘Caroline Mann has got a better track record, that’s all. Also,’ Varese lowered his voice, ‘there are people around Craig who believe any future deal between the US and Russia can’t just be limited to sanctions, human rights, weapons or whatever. They want an agreed regime for the Arctic too, a regime which gives pride of place to Craig Oil and Craig Shipping, not to speak of Craig Hotels.

‘Well, I’m all for an agreed Arctic regime,’ Varese continued. ‘I just want to make sure it has the strictest standards of safety for shipping and a ban on oil wells in the Arctic Ocean and full protection for wildlife and native peoples.’

‘Are you sure you ought to be saying all this?’ Boles asked.

‘Hell,’ Jack Varese replied. ‘I’m in love with Rosie. I’m not in love with her dad.’

Edward Barnard went to bed that night in a sombre mood. The stakes were suddenly so much higher than he had realized. You could at a stretch sympathize with Russia over the Crimea and even Ukraine. You could argue that Russian intervention on Syria had not been wholly negative. But that didn’t mean you had to buy in to the whole Popov agenda, including accelerating, not reversing, global warming!

Was it too late to get Ronald C. Craig to change his mind?