Kompromat

CHAPTER FIVE

Barnard hadn’t expected to find himself having dinner with President Popov that evening, but when the message was brought to him in his hotel room overlooking the Amur River in the heart of Khabarovsk, he responded immediately.

‘Please tell the president I will be delighted.’

What a peculiar day it had been, Barnard reflected. It had started with the tiger hunt; it was going to end in a tête-a-tête encounter with one of the most powerful men in the world.

Actually, it wasn’t quite a one-on-one. Barnard was already sitting at a corner table in the hotel dining room when Popov entered, accompanied by a slim, dark-haired man around forty years of age.

‘Let me introduce you to Yuri,’ Popov said without preamble. ‘Yuri Yasonov. Yuri’s been with me a long time. He speaks English better than I do. Went to Oxford. Very classy!’

Popov was clearly in a good mood, and he’d possibly already had a shot of vodka or two. Shooting Ronald Craig in the backside with a tranquilizing dart might also have had something to do with it, Barnard reflected.

The restaurant manager quickly came over to take their orders, bowing and scraping. It wasn’t every day that the Russian President dropped by. Security men hovered by the door. What the hell was going on, Barnard wondered?

The waiter brought over a large jar of caviar. ‘No shortage of caviar in this part of the world.’ Popov laughed. ‘The rivers in Kamchatka are positively leaping with sturgeon.’ He waved his hand at Barnard’s empty glass. ‘More vodka please for my British friend here.’

Back in London, before he left for St Petersburg – how long ago it seemed! – Barnard had had a security briefing.

‘Get alongside Popov, if you can,’ the MI6 man had said. ‘This is a unique opportunity. You’re going to be in a totally informal setting. But watch out. Popov served for years as the head of the KGB in East Germany. Recruiting agents, running agents, that’s meat and drink to him. Once a spy-master, always a spy-master. He’ll never get that out of his system. He may try to recruit you. A British Cabinet minister would be a big fish to land. Be sure to keep us posted.’

Popov didn’t beat about the bush. He was a busy man. He would be flying back to Moscow later that night.

‘May I call you Edward? You may call me Igor.’

‘Thank you,’ Barnard replied. ‘But I’d feel more comfortable sticking to Mr President. We British are pretty conscious of this sort of thing, and you are a Head of State after all.’

‘As you wish.’ Popov seemed mildly put out, but he rallied quickly. ‘Let me put something to you, Edward. When I’ve finished, you can say yes, you can say no or you can say maybe. But if I were you, I’d say yes.’

For the next half-hour Barnard sat there as Popov outlined his proposal. Of course, he didn’t come to the punch line – the money shot, as it were – straight away. He put the whole thing in context.

‘Frankly, Edward, Russia at this point in time feels very aggrieved. I feel aggrieved. We went along with the break-up of the former Soviet Empire, and what did the West do? It tried to ram NATO down our throat. The European Union wooed Ukraine shamelessly. Did you ever look at the so-called EU–Ukraine Treaty? Garbage. Total garbage. For many Russians, Ukraine is still part of our motherland. Can we just sit there while they fire missiles at us from just across the border? But of course we don’t want a war. Not with anyone.’ Popov laughed. ‘Russia’s not rich enough to fight a war with the West. That’s right, isn’t it, Yuri?’

Yuri Yasonov nodded. ‘That’s right, Mr President.’ Over years of working closely with President Popov, he had learned that it was always safer to say ‘yes’ when Popov was in full flow. You could try to row back later if you had to.

‘If we fought a war with the West, we’d be outgunned. That’s the reality,’ Popov continued. He drummed his fingers on the table to emphasize his next point. ‘America is sixteen times richer than we are in terms of GDP. We’re just a middle-ranking nation. And yet… and yet…’

Barnard could see the man’s eyes misting over. What the hell was coming next, he wondered? Popov was working himself up towards the climax.

‘And yet, this is literally the largest country on earth. Even today in its diminished form, without its satellite states, Russia still covers one-sixth of the earth’s surface. You saw yesterday when you flew out here how vast this land is. Do you know there are nine time zones between here and Moscow? And think of the culture, the history, the literature, the music, the art and architecture. How the hell do they think they can treat us the way they do? For God’s sake this is Russia, the greatest country on earth! How dare they?’

Popov was overcome by a sudden fit of coughing. ‘You take it from here, Yuri,’ he spluttered. ‘I’ve got to go anyway. Goodbye, Edward. I’m leaving you in good hands.’

As Popov stood up, the ‘doughnut’ of security guards closed round him. An armoured car would be outside the hotel to convey him to the airport, Barnard was sure. Back in Moscow, the private lift which served the president’s office in the Kremlin was connected directly to an underground garage. But out here in the boondocks it was a different matter.

Once Popov had gone, Yuri Yasonov took up where he had left off.

‘You should know, Mr Barnard, that I am speaking with the authority of the president when I say we believe there is a better way ahead for all of us. And at this particular moment in time, we believe that you personally have a key role to play.’

Barnard frowned and gave a small shake of his head.

Yasonov’s voice took on a firmer tone. ‘Let me be clear. For the last decade or more, you have been one of the leading lights of the so-called “Eurosceptic wing” of the Conservative Party. As I understand it, you have a lot of support among Conservative MPs. In spite of that, or possibly because of that, the UK prime minister Jeremy Hartley, has given you an important job in the British Cabinet.’

‘I don’t hold one of the “great offices of state”. Being head of DEFRA isn’t the same as being foreign secretary, home secretary or chancellor of the exchequer,’ Barnard countered a trifle nervously.

‘Don’t sell yourself short. Gennadiy Tikhonov, our ambassador in London, rates you very highly. As he puts it, you’re one of the players. What you do matters. It matters a lot.’

Yasonov paused. ‘Please think very carefully before you answer my next question. In all your dealings with Jeremy Hartley, what was the single act, the single decision if you like, that most took you by surprise?’

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Barnard replied in a more assertive tone. ‘Wednesday January 23rd, 2013. The day Prime Minister Jeremy Hartley promised the country an In-Out Referendum on Europe. He was making a speech at the Bloomberg office in London. I listened to it on the radio. I couldn’t believe my ears. Speaking personally, I was over the moon. As Eurosceptics, we all were. We had been hoping for something like that – giving the country a say on the UK’s membership in the EU after forty years – but we never imagined we’d actually get it. A lot of us went out and got drunk.’

‘Why did the announcement of a Referendum take you by surprise?’

‘Politically speaking, it was quite unnecessary. The government wasn’t under any kind of threat. The prime minister wasn’t under any kind of pressure, and so at the time, however delighted I might have been in a personal sense, I simply couldn’t imagine why he had done it. Of course, Hartley made it clear later on in his speech that he would fight hard – “heart and soul” I think were the very words he used – to ensure that the UK stayed in the EU, but that wasn’t the point. The genie was out of the bottle.’

Yuri Yasonov pushed a flash-drive across the table and after a pause Barnard surreptitiously pocketed it. ‘Take a look at this.’