Illegal Action (3 page)

6

B
rian Ackers looks knackered this morning, thought Liz. Normally he was almost zealously energetic.

“Bad news,” he announced to start the weekly meeting of the Counter-Espionage Branch. That’s motivating, thought Liz caustically. The third-floor conference room was too large for the twenty intelligence officers present, bunched together at one end of the room.

In the Cold War, there had been specialised teams of investigators and agent runners, focusing on different aspects of the espionage threat from the Soviet Union and its allies. With the Cold War over and terrorism now the priority, the Counter-Espionage Branch had been reduced to two largish sections—one directed at Russia and one at everywhere else. As well as being acting director, Brian Ackers was directly in charge of the Russia Section, agent runners and investigators working together.

Now, next to Liz, Peggy Kinsolving was scrabbling in her briefcase. She was leaving the meeting early to attend a European conference on the current threat from the Russian intelligence services.

“The Foreign Office has come back to me,” announced Ackers. He always spoke loudly at these meetings, as if a booming voice could somehow bring back the days when the sixty-odd seats in this room would all have been occupied. He was a gaunt, thin-faced man with pale grey eyes. Today he wore an old tweed jacket and a narrow club tie of some kind that had seen better days.

Propping her chin in her hand, Liz gazed at him with an expressionless face. She was thinking how typical it was of a certain kind of male to cover up an unshakeable conviction with a nondescript appearance. Of his conviction there was no doubt—Liz was impressed as well as slightly amused by Ackers’ insistent denial that the world had changed irrevocably with the end of the Cold War. To Ackers, the Russians remained Enemy Number One, and Liz knew that he regarded the relegation of the Russians in MI5’s ranking of threats as deeply misguided. The Red menace might have changed, Ackers would grudgingly concede. It was no longer red, but it was still a menace.

He said now, “They’ve accepted that we have the right man, and the proof of unacceptable activities.” He paused to heighten the effect. “But they refuse to take any action against him.”

Liz was not altogether surprised, though she shared Ackers’ disappointment. For the last three months she had been involved in the case in question. A government scientist named Maples had reported an approach from a member of the Russian Embassy he had met at a defence exhibition in Cardiff. The Russian had wasted no time in offering Maples money in return for information about the plans for the renewal of Trident.

Once informed, MI5 had moved in. Liz had become case officer for the scientist, Maples, whom she had told to play along with the diplomat, a young man named Sergei Nysenko. After several meetings in London suburbs, Maples had pretended to agree to Nysenko’s proposals, and four days later in Kew Gardens had given Nysenko an attaché case containing a fabricated government policy paper classified Secret. In return, Nysenko (surreptitiously photographed by A4 surveillance officers) had handed over £40,000 in cash.

Once UK officialdom would not have hesitated: Sergei Nysenko would have been on the first flight home. But the British attitude had changed, as Brian Ackers was now explaining. “The FCO says they’ll have a word with the Russian ambassador, and suggest Nysenko confine himself to more conventional activities in future.” He shook his head. “The SVR will be laughing at us.”

“Why won’t they expel him, Brian? It was an attempt to suborn a British official. He’s an undercover intelligence officer. He’ll go on being a problem for us.” The question came from Michael Fane, a recent MI5 recruit who had joined the branch only a month before, after an initial year in Protective Security. He was quick-witted, keen, and seemed—to Liz—very, very young. He was a bit of an oddity in the Service, since his father, Geoffrey Fane, was a senior controller in MI6. Liz had got to know Geoffrey Fane when she was working with Charles Wetherby in Counter-Terrorism; the two men were opposite numbers. Geoffrey was a smooth operator in the labyrinthine politics of interdepartmental relations, and a man to be wary of.

“All the usual reasons,” Brian said with a sigh. He picked glumly at his tie. “The prime minister has plans to go to Moscow next month and they don’t want to rock the boat right before his trip, or risk reciprocal action against the embassy there. Expelling Nysenko would jeopardise the ‘new cooperation’ between us in the fight against terrorism.” He looked angrily out the window of the conference room at the plane trees lining the pavement, as if even they should share his low opinion of this “new cooperation.”

“These fellows in Eastern Department nowadays have no idea how to deal with the Russians. They’ve only been involved with them since the Cold War ended and we became so-called allies. They can’t seem to see that if we show any weakness at all, they’ll be all over us.”

Liz spoke up. “Surely the operation has done some good, Brian. It tells the Russians that we haven’t gone to sleep, and that we know what they’re up to.”

“Perhaps,” said Ackers, and rested his gaze on Liz. “Though why should they worry if we can’t act?”

There wasn’t a good answer to this, thought Liz, and she couldn’t help sympathising with Ackers. Charles Wetherby had been right—there were more Russian intelligence officers in London than ever before. The day she’d arrived on the third floor Ackers had briefed her on the extent of SVR activity known to MI5, and she’d been in his office most of the afternoon.

The difference now lay in the targets of Russian espionage. In the Cold War they’d been largely British: the combat-readiness of British troops in Germany, high-tech programmes and British firms, even the views and character of British politicians. Now the targets were just as often not British. London’s international community and its rise as the world’s financial hub meant there wasn’t a country of importance that wasn’t doing business on British shores. London was an excellent listening post for one of the world’s most aggressive intelligence services. Particularly if MI5 had one hand tied behind its back.

The meeting moved on. An old hand named Hadley explained that, now the Nysenko episode was over, A4 were beginning random surveillance on other identified intelligence officers in the embassy.

“How much coverage have we got?” asked Brian.

Hadley shrugged. “With the resource we get,” he said pointedly, “not much.” He inspected his notes. “We’re focusing on the economic and trade people for now. Our friends Kaspovitch, Svitchenko and Rykov.”

Brian Ackers’ eyes glinted, and it was clear to Liz that after thirty years of hunting Russian spies he still lived for the chase, even if today’s terrorist priorities meant he was hobbled. Liz couldn’t help but respect his commitment.

With the Nysenko case concluded, Liz herself was taking a look at the wave of Russian oligarchs who had been establishing themselves in the UK. Peggy Kinsolving called them the “New Arabs,” and there was truth to the sobriquet. London hadn’t seen anything like this burst of new money since the arrival of oil-rich Arabs in the seventies. The Russian billionaires were rapidly buying up large country houses, whole blocks of Knightsbridge flats, the occasional football team and most of the masterpieces sold at high-class art auctions. The Bentley and Rolls-Royce dealers hadn’t had it so good since the days of the Indian maharajahs.

With the billionaires came some unsavoury connections to the Russian mafia, which were more the concern of the new Serious and Organised Crime Agency than MI5. But the presence in the UK of so many characters of dubious origin with so much Russian money, a number of them openly hostile to the regime in Moscow, was bound to interest the Russian intelligence officers in London. And that, as Brian Ackers insisted, was in turn interesting to the Counter-Espionage Branch.

Liz felt a tap on her arm and Peggy pushed across a note. “Got to go” it read. She nodded, and Peggy slipped out as Brian Ackers asked for other reports. Liz’s mind began to wander. She wondered what was happening in Counter-Terrorism and how they were getting on without Charles. She was jolted back to the meeting by the sound of people beginning to stir in their chairs, sensing the meeting was coming to an end. But Ackers wasn’t finished yet. “If we could go back to Nysenko for a moment,” he said, and Liz thought she heard a small groan from Michael Fane.

“I have to say, the approach to Maples strikes me as very poorly executed. Almost amateurish, in fact,” Ackers mused, and it struck Liz that he was almost feeling let down by the incompetence of his old adversaries.

He looked over at Hadley. “Nysenko’s very young, isn’t he?”

Hadley nodded. “In his twenties.”

“So he’s green,” said Ackers. “Too green. I’m puzzled. They needed an experienced officer for that kind of operation. Someone who’d have taken more time to sound out Maples before making his approach.”

Michael Fane spoke up. “Maybe Nysenko was the best they’ve got in London.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute. We know they’ve got some much more senior officers here.” Ackers didn’t look at Fane, and Liz sensed he was thinking out loud. “Unless,” he said, his eyes slowly widening, “the whole thing was intended as a distraction. From something more important.”

No one said a word. Brian Ackers’ pale eyes swept across his audience, as if daring anyone to challenge his reasoning. “That certainly could be the answer,” he declared firmly, with an unmistakable note of elation. “Yes. There could well be something else going on that we don’t know anything about. That’s the worrying part.”

But if he were worried, thought Liz, he didn’t sound it. Brian Ackers was scenting the enemy and that made him a happy man once more.

7

G
eoffrey Fane was not a modest man, but neither was he ostentatious. He moved quietly and unobtrusively among a wide group of acquaintances in various overlapping circles at the upper end of London society. He knew the inside of most of the embassy dining rooms, and all of the St. James’s clubs, but Rupert’s Club, where he had been invited to meet Sir Victor Adler, was virgin territory.

As he lifted the knocker on the front door of the small Georgian town house in a quiet street on the west side of Berkeley Square, he allowed himself to wonder for a moment what he would find inside.

Adler was a man he had known for a very long time—socially they had met at the occasional dinner party and embassy function—but their contact was mainly professional. Adler had for years supplied MI6 with what was perhaps little more than gossip which he had picked up on his regular visits to the Soviet Union and now to Russia. When Fane, who kept a close eye on these things, knew that Adler had returned from a visit, he would invite him to MI6’s headquarters at Vauxhall Cross for a chat. The contact was low-key, very civilised and understood by everyone, including the Russians. Fane was curious to know what had caused Adler to break the pattern and initiate a meeting.

The front door was opened silently by a short, frog-eyed man in a tailcoat. To Fane’s enquiry for Sir Victor, he inclined his head, and without speaking motioned towards an inner room where about a dozen men and a few women sat in groups in high-backed, well-padded armchairs. Conversation stopped for a moment as Fane walked in, and eyes were raised as quick assessments of the newcomer were made. Victor rose from his seat in a corner and indicated the chair opposite him.

As Fane sat down, he looked around. The room was highly decorated, over decorated in fact, almost vulgar to Fane’s ascetic eye. On the high ceiling were painted scenes of nymphs and swags of flowers, the walls were hung with gilt mirrors and every available inch was covered with assorted pictures in gold frames. The curtains were heavy brocade with tasselled tie-backs and the side tables were fruitwood. It was quite obvious from the general air of opulence that to become a member of Rupert’s Club a man could be tall or short, fat or thin, Christian or (as with Adler) Jew, but the one inflexible requirement was that he be rich.

Which Adler indisputably was. He had social cachet from birth, since his mother came from one of the earliest Sephardic families in Britain. Any residual doubts about their Englishness had long been assuaged by a series of canny marital alliances made over the course of several centuries—including, a century before, marriage to a Curzon.

But it was from Adler’s father’s side that Victor had inherited the cash that supported the cachet. The Adler clan descended from a single banking patriarch who, like the original Warburg and the early Rothschilds, had come to London from Germany in the 1840s—as if sensing a hundred years ahead of time that it was better for a Jew not to stick around in Frankfurt.

Sir Victor Adler himself had never shown the slightest interest in joining the family bank, but then, thought Fane, why should he have? He owned enough of it to finance his other, far greater interest. From adolescence, curiously perhaps considering his own Germanic antecedents, Victor was deeply, passionately interested in Russia. Its art, literature, music, food and particularly its politics.

Adler was one of a small elite band of international figures who wielded “influence,” that strange, difficult-to-define commodity, which if examined too closely, seemed to dissolve into thin air like a djinn. But it was real to those who believed in it, and there were many such believers who sought Adler’s advice—companies doing business with Russia, banks investing there and, of course, politicians. Fane was not one of the believers, but he knew that Adler talked to people he and his colleagues were interested in. And that was enough for him.

Now he looked at his host and waited for him to speak. A heavy cut-glass tumbler of whisky materialised on the table by Fane’s arm. Victor pushed across the jug of water, then leant back in his chair, crossing his well-padded legs at the ankles. “Let me tell you why I wanted to see you. As you will know, I returned from a short visit to Russia a few days ago. I was there for a week, seeing mainly old acquaintances. Some of it was social, some political, some business; most of it all three.” He smiled briefly. “Then the day before I left I had a message at my hotel from someone I have known for years. He said he had something of the utmost importance to tell me. I was curious, so we met in the morning before I left for the airport.” Victor paused and leant forward almost imperceptibly in his chair. He didn’t whisper but spoke in a low voice that Fane had to struggle to hear. “I am sure you know the name Leonid Tarkov?”

Fane nodded. “One of the oil ministers.”

“That’s right,” said Adler, and chuckled. “That’s part of his problem—that he is
still
a minister. Do you remember when the Russians nationalised Yukos Oil?”

“Of course.” How could he forget? It was a notorious act of expropriation which seemed to reverse the trend towards privatisation begun under Yeltsin, and warned that the Russian state could still bare its autocratic Communist teeth whenever it wished.

“Tarkov was slated to become a senior official in the new nationalised company. After twenty years in the Kremlin, he was looking forward to working somewhere else—and to the perks of the job. At the last minute, Putin gave the post to someone else. Who knows why? But it served to alienate Tarkov from Putin. He still has a government position but is no longer on the inside track. Which may explain what he told me.”

Fane could see Adler was enjoying himself, so he took a sip of his drink and leant back. There was no point in trying to rush the old boy.

“Last summer, Tarkov attended a wedding, at a dacha outside Moscow. It was a lavish affair—the groom’s father had made a fortune in platinum during Yeltsin’s time, I believe—attended by many senior political figures and businessmen. There was a lot to drink—perhaps you have been to a Russian wedding—and towards the end of the evening Tarkov found himself sharing a bottle of vodka with a colleague named Stanislav Stakhov.”

Fane nodded. Stakhov was one of the few senior Yeltsin aides who had managed to prosper under Putin.

“He and Tarkov have known each other since they were boys. They grew up together in Minsk; they even joined the Party in the same year. Yet, Tarkov told me, he was careful when they talked, since Stakhov is a Putin man and always much in favour. Tarkov says he didn’t grumble about the president or about his own fall from grace, though I take that with a grain of salt since the man seems incapable of opening his mouth without complaining.”

Fane smiled. He had long ago learnt that Victor Adler performed best before an appreciative audience. Adler continued, “However, according to Tarkov, the drunker Stakhov got, the more he became critical of Putin. He said Putin was starting to act erratically, power was going to his head. He was growing insecure, almost paranoid.”

Fane nodded, not entirely surprised. It was almost an axiom in his experience that the greater the accumulation of power, the greater the fear of losing it. One had only to look at Stalin, without a challenger to his authority in sight, yet obsessed with conspiracy phobias by the time he died. Fane asked quietly, “Any particular people he’s paranoid about?”

“That is the odd thing.” Adler paused and took a sip of whisky. “Apparently, he’s not worried by the Russian mafia—most of them are on his side anyway—and internal political opposition is negligible. What seems to concern Putin are the new oligarchs.”

“But they’re utterly dependent on him. He can ruin any one of them just by nationalising their company.”

“Indeed, so. But it’s the oligarchs who’ve
left
Russia that he’s scared of.”

“Most of them are here,” said Fane. There were said to be thirty Russian billionaires living in London alone.

“Exactly. Putin is terribly uneasy that so many are in one place.”

Fane frowned. “What does he think, they’ll form a government in exile?” he asked. “That’s just the old Bolshevik neurosis about émigrés, like the White Russians congregating in Paris before the war. They never stood the slightest chance of toppling the Communists.”

The little man in tails reappeared, and placed a bowl of macadamia nuts on the table next to them. Adler offered them first to Fane, who shook his head, then took a handful himself, with a large hairy hand, munching thoughtfully for a moment. Then he said, “I doubt it’s anything that extreme. Stakhov can be a little dramatic.”

“I know Putin a little,” Adler continued, and Fane knew this was true. “I don’t view him as paranoid. Stakhov might call him that, but I think the appropriate word would be ‘careful.’ He can see a threat before anyone else can even imagine it. Of course on a personal level, Putin despises these expatriate oligarchs because he thinks they are decadent. He is, after all, ex-KGB. But their money makes them powerful. They don’t like him and some of them have become quite vocal. They could help fund opposition to him within Russia and certainly on Russia’s borders. That’s what concerns Putin.”

Though President Putin’s concerns were interesting, Fane didn’t imagine for a moment that Victor Adler would have asked him here just to relay high-level Kremlin gossip emanating from a late-night session with a vodka bottle. He waited patiently, looking as if he had all the time in the world. No one would have guessed he had a dinner to go to.

“Tarkov claims he didn’t react when Stakhov started spouting about Putin. He just waited to see what would come next. It seems that Stakhov thought he didn’t believe him. It was then he told Tarkov about the plot.”

Fane raised an eyebrow and crossed one leg languidly across the other. Only those who knew him very well would realise this indicated a sudden raised interest. “Plot?” he asked mildly.

Adler nodded vigorously. For the first time, he looked around the room, which was slowly emptying as its occupants moved to the dining room or left for engagements elsewhere. He leant forward and spoke again in a lowered voice. “It has been decided to make a pre-emptive strike against the oligarchs. One of them is going to be silenced,
pour encourager les autres
. By removing one thorn in its side, the government intends to convey a very strong warning.”

“‘Silenced’?” asked Fane.

Adler merely shrugged in reply. They both knew what it meant.

“Here in England?” Fane asked casually, as if it happened all the time.

“Apparently.”

“Which oligarch has been selected for this privilege?” He kept his tone light, but he was watching Adler intently.

“That Tarkov couldn’t tell me. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he didn’t know. He said he had the distinct impression the plan hadn’t been finalised yet.”

“Would he be able to find out?”

Adler looked doubtful. “Probably not. He told me he phoned Stakhov a week later to ask him to lunch, but Stakhov didn’t take his call.”

Fane was thinking hard. “Wouldn’t they try and lure their target back to Russia? Surely, he’d be easier to deal with there than here.”

“Of course. But then it would lose its symbolic power. If they’re hoping to show that no enemy of the state is safe, wherever they live, it will happen abroad.”

“God knows it’s happened often enough before,” said Fane grimly. The Kremlin’s assassination of opponents overseas had a pedigree dating back to Trotsky’s murder. In Mexico, of all places. But then, thought Fane, the story might be nothing more than a rumour, inflated into certainty by too much vodka, relayed to Sir Victor for some Byzantine Muscovite motive, as impenetrable to British observers as tarot cards. And what about Sir Victor himself? He was not exactly a spring chicken, thought Fane, taking the last sip of his whisky. Might he not be mistaking some tittle-tattle for a state secret, out of some inflated sense of self-importance perhaps, or even incipient dottiness?

“Did he have any more specific information about this plot?”

“He said he had told me all he knew,” said Adler, and his dark, sad eyes were unwavering.

“If Tarkov attended this wedding in the summer, then he’s waited long enough to tell anyone.”

“I know. But I think it was only this autumn that Tarkov’s hopes of a job in the private sector were extinguished. After that, he decided to approach me.” Adler reached down and scooped up another handful of nuts. But he paused before popping them into his mouth. “I think Tarkov is intent on an old-fashioned act of revenge. Not professional perhaps, but perfectly understandable in personal terms. That’s why I believe him.”

Fane nodded. It made sense. He looked around the room and realised that he and Sir Victor were alone. “So,” Adler said shortly, “I was asked to communicate this to the appropriate person—someone who would know who should be informed. You and I have seen each other over the years, and I knew I could trust both your discretion and your judgement.”

The flattery was wasted on Fane, for already he was thinking about what to do with this interesting piece of information. “But I mustn’t keep you from your dinner,” said Adler, now lighthearted. The implication was clear: he’d done his bit.