Kompromat

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

It was one of those delicate diplomatic compromises. Harry Stokes, the UK’s foreign secretary, had cancelled his visit to Moscow at short notice. Officially, Britain’s position was that it was sick and tired of the way the Russians were supporting President Assad’s ghastly regime in Syria. The Americans had launched their Tomahawk missiles after Assad’s chemical gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun. The least the UK could do was cancel the scheduled bilateral talks. Or at least postpone them.

Unofficially, of course, the government decided that some contacts should be maintained at ministerial level. It wasn’t just a question of not being seen as ‘America’s poodle’. There was more to it than that. Brexit had not been won by the Brexiteers alone. Debts one day might have to be repaid. President Craig might feel he could turn on a dime. Befriend Russia one moment, revile them the next. But Craig had options which were not open to Britain.

Mrs Killick rang Edward Barnard at home on Palm Sunday. The Wilshire countryside was at its most glorious. Barnard’s Ministerial Red Boxes were stacked unopened on the kitchen dresser.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Melissa said. ‘He’s out with Jemima again.’

Later that day, Barnard rang the PM back.

‘I’ve arranged a little trip for you and Melissa,’ Mabel Killick said. ‘I want you to go to St Petersburg – but on holiday this time. You’ve earned it. Drive across the border into Finland. Fly back from Helsinki. Perfect time of year. So much to see. Also, apart from the holiday aspect, we want the Russians to know that even though we’re officially cross with them, life goes on, if you see what I mean.’

‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ Barnard said. Would anyone ever say that to him, he wondered? He shuddered. What an idea!

Next day, he met Mark Cooper, head of MI6, at Whites in St James’s. They sat in two leather armchairs in the far corner of the library.

‘The PM would have liked to join us,’ Cooper began, ‘but I’m afraid women are not allowed here. Except the Queen. We made an exception for the Queen once at the time of the Jubilee celebrations. We invited her to dinner and she very sportingly accepted. But the PM sends her best. She hopes you have a successful trip.’

‘You’d better fill me in,’ Barnard said.

‘I’ve supposed you’ve realized by now,’ Cooper continued, ‘that Jeremy Hartley was always a Leaver, not a Remainer. Did you read what he said in Kiev the other day: how he’s been a Eurosceptic since birth or even before? Or, if you like, think back to that speech he made to the Conservative Party Conference in 2005, when the party first elected him. That was the speech of a Leaver if ever there was one. Hartley wanted to get Britain out of the EU and with the Referendum he found a way to do it. But a lot of people helped him. I was one of them.’

‘Are you sure you want me to hear this?’ Barnard asked.

‘Quite sure. You’ve an important job to do for us.’

‘Us? You mean MI6, SIS, the firm or whatever you call yourselves nowadays?’

A white-coated waiter stopped by to offer them more champagne but Cooper waved him away.

‘That’s exactly what I do mean. There’s nothing in the rule book which says I can’t recruit the chancellor of the exchequer, and that’s what I’m proposing to do. Strictly speaking you should be PV’d – positively vetted – but there’s no time for that. Odd, isn’t it, that civil servants are PV’d, but politicians who – in theory at least – wield so much more power and influence are let through on the nod? Where was I?’

‘In some fantasy land of your own,’ Barnard wanted to answer. Instead he said, ‘You’re probably going to tell me you’ve known Hartley all your life, or at least since you were in the Bullingdon together at Oxford.’

‘All of that’s true,’ Cooper admitted. ‘But that wasn’t the only reason I helped him. I helped him because I thought he was right about us leaving the EU and I could see a way to make it happen. You were the way!

‘That whole Kempinski scenario, the Brexit dossier and so on – Hartley and I dreamed all that up as a way of luring you out into the open. The Leave campaign needed a Leader, and, by Jove, did we get one! But the problem now is that Catfish has been blown.’

‘Catfish?’

‘Our codename for Fyodor Stephanov, the man on the bed in the Kempinski. He worked with Popov years ago in Dresden, in former East Germany, when Popov was head of the KGB office there. Catfish is one of MI6’s assets in St Petersburg and he has turned in a lot of good stuff. But now his life is in danger.’

‘If Catfish has been “blown”, don’t you need to extricate him? How are you going to do that?’

‘That’s where you come in,’ Cooper replied. ‘We’re relying on you. We’ll give you a full briefing later today, but basically you’ll bung Stephanov in the boot of your car and drive him across the border into Finland.’

‘I’ve never met the man,’ Barnard protested. ‘Why should I risk my life and Melissa’s?’

‘He has risked his,’ Cooper replied icily. ‘Without him, Brexit might never have happened.’

‘So you’re appealing to my patriotic spirit?’

‘You should have some fun too. The ambassador’s sending his Rolls Royce down from Moscow. Then you’ll leg it for the border. Top speed 150mph. Nought to sixty in less than five seconds.’

‘We’ll need a big boot.’

‘Plenty of room in the Phantom’s boot, I can assure you,’ Mark Cooper told him.