Breaking Cover

20

‘You ready?’ It was Peggy, knocking on Liz’s open door and walking into her office.

‘Ready for what?’ asked Liz, looking up from what she was reading. ‘Oh, yes, of course. I forgot Miles brought the meeting forward. I was thinking he was coming this afternoon.’

‘Reception’s just rung to say he’s in the waiting room. Shall I go and get him?’

‘Perhaps I’d better go down. It seems only polite, as I haven’t seen him for a few years.’

‘I thought you didn’t want to encourage him?’ said Peggy with a grin.

‘I don’t. But we’ve both grown up a bit since those days and he is the senior Agency man here now. Have you booked a meeting room? It’s a bit of a squash in here.’

On first catching sight of Miles Brookhaven through the glass door of the waiting room, Liz was quite surprised by the change in the man. When she’d first encountered him – it was at a meeting in Whitehall when he was the junior officer at the CIA London Station – he had been like a large puppy. An Ivy League puppy, she thought with a private smile. He’d sported light-coloured suits and striped ties and she remembered an absurdly new-looking Burberry raincoat that he always wore, whether it was raining or not. In those days he had admired everything English. She wondered if time and experience had changed that.

As she walked into the room he leaped to his feet. He still towered above Liz, though he seemed thinner than she remembered and his face had lost its boyish openness. He was wearing a well-cut dark grey flannel suit and a plain tie, and looked distinguished and serious.

‘It’s wonderful to see you again, Liz,’ he said, shaking her hand.

‘You too. You look fit.’

‘Never fitter,’ he said, and smiled at her; Liz knew that his return to work had involved a long climb back to health.

They took the lift upstairs, standing for a moment side by side in silence. Then Miles said, ‘I heard about your friend, Liz. I just wanted to say how very sorry I am.’

‘Thanks, Miles,’ she said, feeling relieved when the lift doors opened. She didn’t want to talk to him about Martin and risk showing her feelings. As they walked down the corridor, she changed the subject by mentioning that Peggy would be joining them.

‘Good,’ said Miles emphatically. ‘I was very impressed with her when I met her the other day.’

They settled around the table in a small meeting room where Peggy was waiting. A window looked east down the Thames, giving a fine view of the flurry of buildings being erected along the South Bank. ‘How was your trip?’ Peggy asked Miles. ‘I was expecting a suntan.’

‘You were?’ he replied, puzzled.

‘Yes. But I suppose you didn’t spend a lot of time outside.’

Miles continued to look puzzled, then his face cleared. ‘Oh, yes. I told you I was going to the Middle East to meet a new source.’

Peggy nodded. ‘I’ve been looking forward to hearing what he had to say. That is, if you can tell us.’

‘I certainly can. In fact, that’s what I’ve come to talk to you about. I should first admit that I misled you slightly when I said I was meeting him in the Middle East. In fact I only passed through Dubai on my way to Ukraine.’

‘Goodness,’ said Peggy. ‘I can see why you haven’t got a suntan.’

Miles grinned broadly. ‘More like frostbite,’ he said.

Liz and Peggy listened while he described his journey and the meeting with Mischa. ‘He’s a source of our Kiev Station’s. They don’t know his name, though his story seems to check out. The stuff he’s been giving them has been very useful, they say.

‘Anyway, when he suddenly announced that he had information about activity in Western Europe and the States, they brought me in. I found him pretty impressive.’

Miles went on to relate what Mischa had said about the two-pronged operations in the West. ‘Destabilising or killing the anti-Putin oligarchs is no surprise, of course,’ he said. ‘We’ve seen it already.’

‘Yes,’ replied Peggy. ‘But if we can get advance information on targets and methods, that will be very helpful. We were completely taken by surprise with Litvinenko. And we still don’t know if any of the others who’ve died over here were murdered.’

‘It’s the other part of this programme that interests me most,’ said Liz. ‘The use of Illegals to destabilise societies in the West. Put like that, it’s ludicrously ambitious. They were very successful in Ukraine but how on earth could they hope to make any impact here? Ukraine must have gone to their heads.’

‘It sounds to me like something from the Cold War,’ said Peggy. ‘You remember how the KGB tried to infiltrate peace movements, and anti-nuclear movements in Europe, to try to weaken the West’s ability to defend itself if the Cold War ever turned hot?’

‘Yes. But they had a large British Communist Party to work with in those days and plenty of members who were happy to help them make trouble,’ said Liz. ‘They poured money into it, but at the end of the day I don’t think they got much benefit from it at all.’

‘But our two countries never went to war. It might have been very different if we had.’

‘True. But what could the Russians do here nowadays that would have any real weakening effect?’ Liz looked sceptical.

‘Ruin the economy,’ suggested Miles. ‘Though I imagine they’d try to do that remotely by cyber-attack.’

Liz said, ‘Maybe it’s nothing as fundamental as that. I think they’d save financial attack until we really were at war.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Peggy slowly, ‘it’s just an effort to disturb and confuse. To damage morale and confidence; encourage separatism; try to magnify our problems, in some way, so we don’t have the resources or the will to intervene in Ukraine, say, or the Baltic States if Putin decides to go for them – that sort of thing,’ she ended uncertainly.

‘That’s a pretty big programme for one Illegal,’ said Liz with a smile.

‘Let’s just think about that,’ said Miles, coming to Peggy’s defence. ‘Remember, he said that one Illegal was just the start. What are the current troublesome issues? Non-economic, I mean. One is young people being recruited to fundamentalist groups. Then there’s the possible break-up of the UK through separatist movements. And the possibility that you might leave the European Community – that might please Russia, as they’d hope it would weaken Europe. And what about the non-renewing of Trident? I’m sure they’d like that. There’s quite a lot when you come to think about it.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Liz was getting into the spirit now. ‘And what about the anti-snoopers who nearly knocked me out the other day? I’m not sure they need much encouraging, but they could do our intelligence effort quite a lot of harm if they got the law changed on interception, for example, so GCHQ’s powers were restricted. I bet the FSB would love that. But,’ she added, coming down to earth, ‘this all sounds terribly far-fetched. I can’t believe the Russians would spend resources on it.’

‘Well, if we are to believe Mischa, they are doing just that. And not only here. He said there were two Illegals already placed in France and another in the US. Langley and the FBI are working on that. But… and this seems to me to add urgency to the situation… he said that in Britain their Illegal has had some recent success. His brother was crowing about it. I took him to mean success in getting access to information or being alongside people with access. Mischa implied they’d got something they wouldn’t normally expect to secure so soon.’

There was silence in the room while they all considered the problem. ‘So,’ said Liz, ‘we are looking for a person, could be a man, could be a woman, who has fairly recently appeared in some milieu or other, we don’t know what. All we do know is that he or she won’t be Russian and they won’t be English. That’s right, isn’t it?’ She turned to Miles.

He said, ‘Yes, I’d say the one here is almost certainly not English. The country’s just too small for him to masquerade as a native very easily.’

Peggy put her head in her hands. ‘How are we going to get anywhere with this? I wouldn’t know where to begin. It really is looking for a needle in a haystack.’

‘I’m sorry to be giving you such a headache,’ said Miles with a smile. ‘I wish I had more information. But I’m hoping to get something else out of the source before too long. My Kiev colleagues have set up a communication link with him, but they have to be very careful.’

‘Let’s not forget about their campaign against the oligarchs,’ said Liz.

‘That may be just as hard to pin down,’ Miles acknowledged. ‘I’m not sure how much my source’s brother has to do with it. The anti-Putin ones will be the ones most at risk, of course, but they don’t always make that obvious to outsiders.’

‘Mmm,’ said Liz. She was thinking of her lunch with Pearson, and his story about the new arrival in Altrincham. ‘At least we can track down those who live here and make sure they are aware of the risks.’

‘Yes,’ said Peggy, ‘and I’ve just remembered what Charlie Simmons said at our meeting. He’d analysed some traffic that reminded him of the pattern that occurred before the Litvinenko murder. It suggests this might all be connected. It could be coincidence, of course, but I wouldn’t want to count on that.’