Kompromat

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Harriet Marshall met Edward Barnard at Heathrow on the latter’s return from Australia. They drove down to Wiltshire together.

Melissa Barnard was still in Ireland, so Marshall, who by now was very much at home in Coleman Court, fixed breakfast while Barnard showered and changed. It had been a long flight.

‘You did a great job with Mickey Selkirk,’ Harriet said over the coffee. ‘The great Selkirk machine is primed and ready to go.’

‘What are they waiting for?’ Barnard asked ‘Shouldn’t they be moving into action with all guns blazing?’

‘We’ve got to give them some real ammunition. It’s not enough to talk about the Greek crisis, or the problems of the Eurozone or “faceless Brussels bureaucrats”. What we’ve been saying about spending money on the NHS is helping. Our slogan “Take Back Control” appears to resonate. But that’s not going to swing it.’

‘What is?’

‘Concerns about immigration. That’s what’s going to swing it. The fear that we’re being overwhelmed by foreigners. The fear that before our very eyes the whole structure of the country is changing and changing fast. Too fast for people to adapt. All the research we’ve done – and we’ve really researched this – tells us that immigration is the issue which has come to the top of the pile. Of course there’s non-EU immigration, as well as immigration from the EU, but in people’s minds it’s all jumbled up. Our job is to keep it that way. We don’t need clarity here. We don’t need to break down the statistics. We just need to keep pointing the finger at the EU as the source of the problem. We need to build on that. Ram the message home. That’s what’s going to get us first past the winning post.’

‘I’m not being defeatist,’ Barnard said, ‘but I wonder what more we can do.’

‘Oh, we can do a lot more and we’re going to,’ Marshall said. ‘I’m just waiting for the signal.’

That signal wasn’t long in coming. Harriet Marshall drove back to her home in north-west London later that morning. She stopped – as she did every day as a matter of routine – at the newsagent on the street corner which had a bulletin board outside on which locals could display messages of interest, such as ‘cleaner required’, ‘watches repaired’, ‘reliable mother’s help offers services’.

Some of the messages had been there a long time. The ink had faded; the edges of the cards were curled. But she noticed one recent addition.

‘Three-legged black cat found. Call 077238954978.’

Instead of going home, she drove to the other end of the street where, amazingly, she found a working phone box. She dialled a number. Not the number displayed on the card about the three-legged black cat, but a different number. A number she knew by heart.

A recorded voice instructed her to ‘Please leave a message’.

‘Forty-five minutes,’ Marshall said and then replaced the receiver.

Instead of going home, Marshall did a U-turn and headed for Hampstead Heath. Thirty minutes later, she parked the car and strode off across the huge, wild and open expanse which, miraculously, still managed to survive within the confines of the ever-expanding metropolis of modern-day London.

Of course, historically, Hampstead Heath had provided many opportunities for activities which could be generically described as nefarious. Chief of these was espionage. For decades, controllers had been meeting their agents on park benches or beneath ancient oak trees. And they were right to take advantage of the possibilities that the Heath offered, Harriet reflected. Hotel rooms were routinely bugged, telephones were tapped and emails were gathered by the thousand, like standing wheat in front of a combine harvester. If you could find the right spot on the Heath, with a clear field of fire, as it were, you could get a lot of business done without having to wonder how many people were listening in.

The Russians, of course, with their massive so-called ‘trade’ mission in nearby Highgate had, over the years, found Hampstead Heath tremendously handy.

Marshall had already installed herself on an oak bench, inscribed ‘In Loving Memory of Lucy Penstock Who So Much Loved This Wonderful Place’, when a jowly man in a dark suit, about forty years old, sat down next to her. The man leaned forward to do up his shoelace as though this was simply an unscheduled stop at a convenient location, then he spoke out of the side of his mouth. (There were people who could lip-read at four hundred yards, if they had a good pair of binoculars.)

‘Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Next Tuesday. Night watch, 5pm,’ he instructed.

Harriet Marshall arrived a few minutes before five at the appointed place. A cluster of tourists stood in front of the huge canvas. That wasn’t surprising since Rembrandt van Rijn’s ‘The Night Watch’ was certainly the most famous painting in the Rijksmuseum and probably one of the most famous paintings in the world.

She joined the group of sightseers. If you want to look inconspicuous, merge in with the crowd.

At two minutes past the hour, she felt a light tap on her shoulder. She turned round at once.

‘Good heavens, Yuri,’ she exclaimed. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

Harriet Marshall hadn’t just been acting surprised when Yuri Yasonov tapped her on the shoulder. She really was surprised. She had no idea that the ‘contact’ she was scheduled to meet in Amsterdam would turn out to be a friend from her university days.

Admittedly they weren’t close friends then. Harriet Marshall came from a modest background. Her father was a planning officer in Yorkshire. Yasonov by contrast was stinking rich, the son of an oligarch, who had cleaned up when President Yeltsin sold off Russia’s crown jewels – the gas, the oil, the minerals, the forests – to the highest bidder.

Yasonov had gone to Oxford’s upper-class Christ Church College while Harriet had enrolled at brainier Balliol. But they had both been on the university chess team. Early on in their acquaintance, Yasonov had come to appreciate Harriet’s sheer intellectual brilliance. He was a highly competent chess player himself, but Harriet simply wiped the floor with him.

They had also both played a part in the affairs of the Oxford Union. Yuri Yasonov had been President of the Union in his last year at Oxford and Harriet Marshall had succeeded him. Though the outgoing President normally gets to select the motion to be debated at the Farewell Debate, Harriet had good-humouredly suggested to her friend that a suitable topic would be: ‘This House believes that the power of the Russian Federation has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished’.

Yasonov had gamely agreed and had been delighted when the motion was resoundingly defeated.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ Yasonov suggested.

They left the Rijksmuseum to stride along the canal. How beautiful Amsterdam was, Harriet thought, as the late evening sun caught the roofs of the tall buildings which lined each side of the waterway. They called it the ‘Venice of the North’ and they were not far wrong. She watched the sightseeing boats pass under the bridges, cameras at the ready. Instinctively she turned her head to one side. She didn’t want her face to appear, by accident or design, on someone’s Instagram account. Officially, she wasn’t in Amsterdam at all. She was taking a bit of time off in Wales, recharging her batteries before the big push. She certainly didn’t want to be photographed in the company of a senior FSB official, especially if the said official was chief of staff to the president of the Russian Federation.

They talked as they walked. As they approached the Stadhous, the City Hall, Yuri Yasonov said, ‘Our information is that the British government is throwing everything they have at this one. Jeremy Hartley, the prime minister, has really gone out on a limb. He’s convinced he’s brought back a winning package from Europe with the so-called “renegotiation”. And the chancellor, Tom Milbourne, is pushing Project Fear for all its worth.’

‘I don’t think it’s worth very much,’ Harriet countered. ‘Scare tactics by the Treasury. That’s how I see it.’

‘I’m afraid our people in the UK see things differently. Our ambassador sent in a report two days ago. He’s convinced the Leave campaign is going to lose. Frankly, Popov is rattled. I don’t often see him rattled but he is now. You’re one of us, otherwise I wouldn’t speak like this, but I’m telling you that as far as Popov’s key foreign policy objectives go, Brexit is top of the list.’

‘Ahead of Ronald Craig winning the US election?’ Harriet interjected.

‘I stand corrected. Let’s give both objectives equal billing.’

‘So what does Popov think we can do that we’re not already doing?’ Harriet was nettled. She’d been working her socks off.

Yasonov paused, picked up a pebble and tossed it into the water.

‘That was just a little splash,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a much bigger splash in prospect. President Popov is on his way to Berlin as I speak. Tomorrow he’s having informal meetings with the chancellor, then on Friday he is going to give a speech in the Bundestag at the invitation of the German government. I need hardly say that this is a great honour.’

‘And he’s going to make some key announcement in his speech, is that it?’ Harriet asked. ‘Something we can seize on, ammunition for our big guns as D-Day approaches?’

‘Helga Brun is the one who is going to make the big announcement, not Popov. After Popov’s speech to the Bundestag, Brun’s going to reply. Mark her words carefully. She’s going to give you the opening you need. A great wide-open goal. You’ll be able to drive a coach and horses through it.’

‘I’ve got to run,’ Yasonov said. ‘The plane to Berlin leaves in 90 minutes and I want to be on it. I’ve got to brief Popov at the Russian Embassy tonight.’

He tapped his nose with his finger. ‘We’re still working on Helga Brun’s speech!’

‘Don’t tell me anything I don’t need to know.’

‘Why would I do that?’ Yasonov smiled. He stepped off the pavement into the road to hail a passing cab.