Kompromat

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

They had drinks before dinner on the homestead’s terrace, with its splendid view of the Pentecost River, as it ran through the Lazy-T cattle station on its way to the Indian Ocean.

Mickey Selkirk introduced them to the staff, a middle-aged Chinese couple.

‘Meet Ching and Fung,’ he said. ‘They look after the place. They do the cooking too, I’m glad to say. They’ve been in this country for years. Go over to Broome and you’ll find a whole Chinatown. The Chinese ran the pearl-fishing industry there. Bloody hard work that must have been. They didn’t have any health and safety regulations then. Lost a lot of divers. Lost your father like that, didn’t you, Ching?’

‘Grandfather too,’ the man, Ching, said.

After drinks, they had dinner by the pool.

Mickey Selkirk, overcoming his natural aversion to Limeys, did his best to be polite to Barnard.

‘Been to the Kimberley before, Ed?’ he asked,

‘Been to Perth and Albany but never to the Kimberley. Great time of year, isn’t it?’ Barnard waved in the direction of the river. ‘Can we swim in the river?’

‘Course you can, if you don’t mind the crocs,’ Selkirk replied. ‘Mind you, the freshwater crocs aren’t as dangerous as the salties. The salties can come quite a way upstream. Fella got taken by a saltie a few days back at Pentecost River crossing and that’s a long way inland. Came too close to the bank in his boat. You think they’re asleep on the bank there but they’re not. They can spend days watching. Not moving. Then, bang, you’re gone. They spin you round and round and drown you, unless you can manage to jab a knife in their eye. Lull you into a false sense of security, that’s what they do.’

Was that Selkirk’s preferred modus operandi, Barnard wondered? Lulling the opposition into a false sense of security, before striking, suddenly and ruthlessly?

When Ching and Fung had cleared the table, Selkirk tapped on the rim of his glass. It was time to get down to business.

‘Melanie and I just want to say how much we appreciate the effort you guys have made to get here. I remember when Tony Blair flew out to the Whitsundays back in 1995. “Mickey, I need your support,” he said. “Your newspapers. Your TV. We can’t do it without you?” Well, I gave him that support. We pulled out all the stops. And the Labour Party won with the largest Labour majority ever.

‘So you don’t need to tell me why you’re here,’ Selkirk added. ‘But let me say one thing. I want to be perfectly clear about this. I can’t be bought, but I can possibly be persuaded.’

They all laughed dutifully. When you come to see a king, you first pay homage. Listening to the fella, laughing at his jokes, even when they are shit-awful, is part of the deal.

After that, they got down to business.

Later that evening, sitting with his laptop on the patio outside his room – no mozzies, thank heavens – Barnard skyped Harriet Marshall.

‘Harriet, is that you? Look at the screen. I can only see the top of your head.’

‘I can’t see you at all. Turn the camera on.’

When they had sorted out the technicalities, Barnard explained, ‘We’ve done the deal. Nothing in writing, of course. That’s not the way Selkirk works but it’s in the bag. Rosie Craig said she had the full authority of her father. If they win the election, they’ll rip up the regulator, the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. If they don’t abolish it, they’ll bring it to heel. Appoint a new commissioner. And as far as Russia’s concerned, an incoming Craig administration will press President Popov to allow Selkirk Global to expand throughout the whole of the territory.’

‘Why would Popov agree to that?’ Harriet asked.

Barnard leaned into the screen. He pressed his right forefinger to the side of his nose. ‘President Popov didn’t become one of the richest men in Russia just by sitting around scratching his bum.’

‘What about the UK?’ Harriet asked. ‘Did Selkirk have some specific “asks” there too?’

‘He certainly did. He wants a post-Brexit government in Britain to dismember the BBC. To break it up, like we broke up British Rail. He believes the tax-payer-funded Beeb totally distorts the market-place in Britain. He wants a level playing field as far as the media are concerned.’

‘And what did you say? Did you stick to the script we agreed?’

‘Well, I didn’t give him what he wanted. I told him that even a radical post-Brexit government in Britain couldn’t sacrifice a sacred cow like the BBC, not overnight anyway. But I did point out that the BBC’s Charter was up for renewal at the end of the year and that having a new Brexit-led government in power in Britain could make quite a difference.’

‘I like it.’ Harriet Marshall’s leering face was hugely distorted by the camera angle. ‘Did you fill in the details?’

‘I didn’t need to. Mickey Selkirk may be over eighty but he doesn’t miss a trick. He just said, “Good on ya, mate.” Then we shook hands on it.’

Before turning in, Barnard Skyped his wife as well. He hadn’t spoken to Melissa for days.

‘Where are you?’ she asked.

When Barnard told her that he was staying at Mickey Selkirk’s million-acre cattle station in the Kimberley, Western Australia, Melissa Barnard asked, ‘What about the mosquitos?’

‘The mozzies are fine. I’m sitting here on the terrace outside my room with the doors open.’

They chatted on.

‘If you’re going to be jetting around the world for the next few days,’ Melissa said, ‘I think I’ll go to visit Fiona and Michael in Ireland. They’ve got such a lovely place there. So calming.’

Fiona, their daughter, was a marine biologist. Her boyfriend – partner might be the better word, because they seemed quite seriously taken with each other – was a young Irish lawyer called Michael Kennedy, who specialized in Arctic environmental issues.

‘The Arctic’s done for, Mrs Barnard, unless we act now’, is what he’d told her on her last visit.

‘Yes, do go to Ireland,’ Barnard urged her. ‘God’s own country, isn’t it? Please give my love to Fiona and say hi to Michael too.’

Melissa was about to disconnect, when she suddenly remembered something she had been meaning to say all along.

‘And, Edward, I was thinking about that that disgusting film. I knew all along the man on the bed wasn’t you.’

‘You told me that already,’ Barnard mildly reminded her. ‘You said I wouldn’t have been up for the rumpy pumpy, not that kind of rumpy pumpy anyway!’

‘Oh, Edward. Don’t take things so literally. You’re fine in that department, I promise you. Quite fine enough, anyway, so far as I’m concerned. No, there’s something else. Do you still have the film?’

‘No, I handed it in to MI5.’

‘Can you manage to contact them?’

‘I could try. Why do you ask?’

‘I’m thinking about the boxer shorts.’

‘I didn’t see any boxer shorts. The man who wasn’t me was stark bollock naked as far as I could see.’

‘“The Man Who Wasn’t Me” could be the title of a film!’ Melissa wiped the tears from her eyes.

‘Please get on with it.’

Melissa managed to stifle her laughter before continuing. ‘Remember when the man who wasn’t you pulls the two blondes onto the bed, and one of them sucks his cock and I can’t remember what the other does… pees on him, I think. Well, just as all that’s going on, I’m pretty sure I glimpsed a pair of boxer shorts on the far side of the enormous bed, which the man had obviously taken off in his hurry to get cracking.’

‘And I don’t wear boxer shorts. Have I got that right?’

‘Well, you might wear boxer shorts on rare occasion,’ Melissa conceded. ‘But not these shorts. They were red, white and blue, sprinkled with silver stars, so they looked like the US flag!’

‘Oh, my God!’ Barnard exclaimed. ‘You may just have said something important, tremendously important. Ring up Jane Porter, head of MI5, on her private number. Tell her everything you’ve told me. They’ve got to check that film again.’

Melissa Barnard was thrilled. Helping her husband out with his constituency work was one thing, but this was something else again.

‘What’s Jane Porter’s private number?’ she asked.

‘I’ll text it to you,’ he said. ‘You never know who’s listening.’

Sitting at her desk in the FSB’s Lubyanka headquarters in Moscow, Galina Aslanova, the tall, strikingly pretty, head of the Special Operations Unit, picked up the phone.

‘I need to see the Director at once,’ she said. ‘This is urgent.’

Pavel Golov had been the director of the FSB – the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation – for the last five years. Galina Aslanova was one of his most important operatives. As soon as he heard that Galina wanted to see him urgently, he switched off the television where he had been watching Dynamo playing Spartak (he didn’t normally watch TV at work but this was an historic clash).

‘Send her in, please.’

Galina had recorded both of Barnard’s recent Skyped conversations and she brought the flash-drive with her.

‘Probably best if we see it on the wide screen, Director,’ Galina suggested.

When the first tape ended, which showed Barnard reporting to Harriet Marshall, Golov was enthusiastic in his praise.

‘Superb! So it’s all going to plan?’

Galina Aslanova agreed. ‘You are right, Director. We are quite confident that, as soon as we give the signal, Selkirk Global will – as requested – unleash a mighty barrage of news and comment.’

Golov gazed at Galina with undisguised lust.

‘Please call me Pavel.’ He wondered how long it might be before he could get her into bed.

‘Let’s look at the second tape, the one where Barnard talks to his wife,’ Galina continued.

When it had finished, the Director of the FSB let out a deep breath.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about this before? What do you want from me?’

‘A search warrant, signed by you.’

Later that day, Galina Aslanova summoned the team she had assigned to Operation Tectonic Plate. Four women. All fiercely loyal to her.

The oldest, Lyudmila Markova, grey-haired and well over sixty, had served in the FSB for over twenty years. If she resented the fact that a much younger woman had been promoted over her as the Head of Special Ops, she gave no sign of it.

They all were all curious. They knew that Galina had had a sudden unscheduled meeting with the Director.

‘What’s this all about?’ Lyudmila asked.

Galina came straight to the point: ‘You’ve all watched the Skype conversations. We know there’s a video out there and we need to find it.’

She told her deputy, ‘All the evidence points to some freelance activity in the FSB office in St Petersburg at the time of President Popov’s World Tiger Summit. I want you to take the team down to St Petersburg at once. I want you to find that video and bring it back here under lock and key.’

Her voice hardened. ‘Get cracking, ladies. Don’t let them bullshit you. They’re a pretty macho bunch down there in the St Petersburg office. Do whatever you have to do, even if you have to kick them where it hurts.’