Inside Enemy (20 page)

‘You should talk to the police.’

They parted after the crowd left for the concert in the church upstairs, Sarah checking her phone as she walked round the corner to their house. There was no message from Charles – a bit
early, perhaps, he might still be giving his statement to the police – but there was, exasperatingly, one from Katya Chester. With her usual breathless urgency and faux intimacy, she said
that Mr Mayakovsky wished to have further discussion and would call on her at her office as he was in the area that evening. Swearing under her breath and irritated with herself for letting Katya
have her mobile number, Sarah called her back but there was no answer. Then she rang the office porter who said yes, a gentleman had called in, hadn’t left a name, said he would call back
later.

She really didn’t want to return to the office and it really wasn’t acceptable for clients, even would-be blackmailers, to call without appointments. But Charles wanted her to play
him along and this was a good opportunity to talk to him without her secretary or anyone else being aware, even though she wouldn’t be able to record it. Maybe she could get him to say enough
for her not to have to see him again. Then she could feel her debt was paid, the debt Charles assured her she didn’t have. And while she waited there were the London Bridge development lease
amendments to be getting on with in the office. She hesitated over whether to take a taxi but decided on her car. Having it with her might make her feel more in control.

The office porter nodded towards the waiting area. ‘He’s over there, round the corner,’ he said with lowered voice. ‘On his mobile. Shall I call him over?’

‘No, thanks, I’ll go up to my office and ring you when I’m ready for him. Make it look as if I’ve been here a while but was too busy to see him.’

She used the stairs as they were out of sight of the waiting area, switched everything on in her office – gratifyingly it all worked – and settled herself. She felt better about
dealing with him when she was in charge of the environment; certainly better than being imprisoned in the back of his Rolls-Royce.

He was still studying his phone when he was shown in and barely had the grace to glance up for long enough to shake hands. They both sat. He resumed his study of the phone. Perhaps he intended
to record her, though he wasn’t being very secretive about it. She said nothing. Eventually he noticed her silence and looked up. She stared at his phone, still saying nothing. After a few
seconds he put it in his pocket.

‘Thank you, Mr Mayakovsky. Now that we have each other’s undivided attention, perhaps you’d like to tell me what I can do for you?’

‘You can give me answer, please.’

Despite her promise to Charles it was an effort to suppress the answer she wanted to give. It was important, she reminded herself, it would help Charles, it was in the national interest that she
should play along just this once, to find out what they wanted to know. But it was hard not to respond to his morose truculence.

‘Perhaps you could remind me of the question.’

‘Have you told your husband about our conversation?’

‘No.’

‘So – you will cooperate?’

‘That depends on what you ask. Also, on your giving your word that nothing of what you know of my previous husband will be published or made known.’

She doubted that pleasure was part of Mr Mayakovsky’s facial repertoire but the intensified stoniness of his gaze – if that was possible – may have indicated satisfaction.
‘You have my word and the word of Moscow.’ He took out a gold pen and small black notebook. ‘Now, please, what can you tell me?’

That was easy. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know. Perhaps you’d better tell me what you’d like me to ask my husband about?’

He stared as if the question came as a surprise, then took out his phone and studied it again. It struck her that he might be one of those comically incompetent men whose menace would evaporate
the moment she saw him like that. Perhaps he was simply not very good at his job. Charles had been rather dismissive of him. But then Charles hadn’t met him.

He looked up from his phone. ‘Mr Peter Tew, this man. We want to find this man.’

‘I told you before, I don’t know him. I don’t know where he is.’

‘You must ask your husband. He can discover him.’

‘I’ll try.’ She made a needless note, thinking it might impress him. ‘But why do you want to know? Why are you so interested in him? Is he still in MI6?”

‘Please.’ He held up his hand. ‘In Moscow they are suspicious of people who ask questions.’

‘All right.’ She put down her pen. ‘Tell me what else you would like to know.’

‘Moscow will tell me and I will tell Katya and she will tell you when you talk with her about houses.’

‘That’s a good idea, it’s always nice to talk to Katya. And very useful for you to have her working for you. She doesn’t attract suspicion.’

‘But sometimes you see me.’

‘Even better.’

‘She will ring you.’

‘Yes. She does that quite often, anyway.’

‘When she ring you it might also be message from me.’

‘I understand.’

‘But also I wish to buy houses. I have money for many houses. I am rich man. Really.’

‘I understand that too.’

After consulting his phone again, he put away his pen and notebook and stood, holding out his hand. ‘I am pleased we work together, Mrs Thoroughgood.’

‘So am I.’

‘It is pleasure for me.’ His smile – the first she had seen – was almost, quite unexpectedly, charming.

There was no need to make conversation in the lift as he was engrossed by his phone. Only when they reached the revolving glass doors did he look at her once more. ‘He uses a computer,
another computer, not his.’

‘Who?’

‘Mr Tew. He uses the computer of Mr Jeremy Wheeler who is the master of Katya. She works for him.’

‘Jeremy Wheeler, yes, I know him. Well, Katya could ask him where Mr Tew is, couldn’t she?’

‘They do not meet, Mr Wheeler does not know, we are sure of this. Katya study him. It is only his computer that is used. Mr Tew has his own computer which can use Mr Wheeler’s. We
want to know where are Mr Tew and his computer. If your husband can discover where is his computer or the numbers to identify it, you can tell me. Moscow would be very pleased with this
information.’

‘I’ll do my best, Mr Mayakovsky.’ That was important, Charles would be pleased. It made it almost easy to tell Mr Mayakovsky that she looked forward to seeing him again.

The porter grinned as she walked back past his desk. ‘You unglued his eyes from his phone, then, Ms Bourne?’

‘But not his brain, I suspect.’

She rang Charles but his phone was off. His statement must be taking a long time. She worked for an hour until she found she was reading every sentence twice, then switched off and left.

‘Gentleman just called for you, Ms Bourne,’ said the porter. ‘Not the same one, different one. Asked for you as Mrs Thoroughgood. I said you were in and offered to ring but he
said not to disturb you but would see you later.’

It was presumably Charles, returned unexpectedly. Odd of him not to have rung.

‘Two gentlemen in one evening,’ said the porter. ‘Must be good for business.’

‘I’m not sure about that.’

The rain which had started as she parked was steady now, forming puddles in the gutters She stood in the entrance, putting up her umbrella, then walked quickly round the corner towards her car.
It was the umbrella that made her unaware of the man approaching from behind her right shoulder until his hand slipped under her arm and gripped her wrist with sudden painful tightness. Almost at
the same time something hard jabbed her ribcage.

‘This is a gun, Mrs Thoroughgood. It’s cocked and ready to fire. Just keep walking and don’t say anything and you’ll be all right. We’re going to your
car.’

He was taller than her and lifted her half off her feet so that she was propelled along almost on her toes, much faster than usual. For the few seconds it took to round the corner she was too
shocked to speak and didn’t even turn her head to look properly at him. It was difficult anyway with the umbrella. She thought afterwards she should have dropped it and struggled – he
might have tripped over it – but he held her tightly and the pain in her ribs prevented her from thinking.

They were standing by her car. ‘Give me the car keys.’ He was well-spoken and deliberate.

‘I can’t, they’re in my bag.’ She heard herself as if from outside. He still gripped her right wrist. She couldn’t open her handbag and search it with one hand.

‘Put it on the bonnet.’

She managed it, with some fumbling. Her hair kept falling in front of her face and she couldn’t brush it back. ‘You’re hurting my wrist.’

‘Leave the key on the bonnet.’ She did that, struggling to close her bag with her left hand. ‘Now get in the driver’s seat.’ He walked her round to the
driver’s door, took the umbrella from her and held it as she got in. Then he pocketed the gun, which she still hadn’t seen, and walked swiftly round to the other side, scooping the key
from the bonnet.

He was quickly beside her, the dripping umbrella folded between his legs. Again, she thought afterwards, she could have done something then, she should have got out and run. But she was shaking
and still not fully able to believe what was happening.

He took the gun from his pocket and held it in his left hand, resting it on his lap and pointing it at her. ‘Just follow my directions and you’ll come to no harm, you’ll be all
right.’

His voice was gentler now but she could still feel where he had pressed the gun in her ribs. There’d be a bruise. And her wrist hurt where he had gripped it. ‘What are you doing this
for? What do you want?’

‘I’m taking you hostage. Just for a while. Start the car and head for Waterloo Bridge.’

‘Hostage for what? What for?’ She looked at him properly for the first time. He was thin-faced and pale, clean-shaven, with greying dark hair. He looked intelligent and alert. Almost
distractingly good-looking, in fact. But the way he looked at her made her feel like the umbrella or the car, an object to be used, of no interest in herself.

‘For your husband. Do as I said. Get going.’

C
harles got up to go to the loo in the early hours. Parting from the camp-bed involved a degree of leverage and calculation he didn’t recall
from his army days, another sign of youth’s silent desertion. His phone showed no text from Sarah. Odd, because even if she finished very late she would surely have sent something in response
to his message. But it was too late to ring her now. Perhaps her battery was flat and she feared to wake him by ringing from a landline.

He reinstalled himself in the camp-bed and lay waiting for the feathers of sleep to fall again. There was no wind, no street noise, no background hum of traffic as in London. Once, distantly,
the sound of a motorbike penetrated the mothy silence, fading like a very long, very thin tail. Then, quite suddenly, the word ‘toast’ lit up his mind, the word itself, unencumbered by
Proustian associations of taste or smell or occasion. Toast was the nickname Jeremy’s chess opponent had chosen for himself. Toast was also an anagram of stoat and stoat was the code name for
the investigation of Peter Tew, which Peter had discovered through papers disclosed to his leaky lawyers. He had always had a fondness for inventing simple nicknames for colleagues, often concealed
beneath harmless anagrams but sometimes cruelly apt. Charles levered himself out of bed again.

The Head Office duty officer had been asleep, as was permitted provided he could be summoned immediately. So, judging by his initial incomprehension, was the GCHQ duty officer. Torn between
wanting to do what Charles asked and fearing to act outside the usual channels with GCHQ authority, he hesitated. ‘Not sure of the best way to do this, sir –’

‘You can either ring your Director at home and ask him or give me his home number and I’ll ring him. It’s important. He won’t mind being woken.’

‘Can it really not wait until the morning, sir? It really requires a warrant from the Secretary of State, you see—’

‘That’s fine. I’ll ring George Greene myself and get him to ring your Director. They’ll both agree, I’m quite sure of that.’

Alarmed now, the duty officer struggled to help while wanting the cup of responsibility taken from him.

‘I’m sure we can find a way through this,’ said Charles, trying to sound considerate and sympathetic. ‘I’m asking for two things. One concerns a target you’re
monitoring already. I just need to know when a particular communication stream within that target started, and when it finished. The other, because it means live interception of an
individual’s laptop, requires a warrant. If you’re prepared to get interception going now, I’ll seek retrospective authorisation from the Foreign Secretary first thing in the
morning as one of our operations, not one of yours. Thus, you’ll be responding to a tasking request on the understanding that it is being authorised. I’ll get our duty officer to email
you on his channels, confirming it in writing and saying that I take full responsibility. Will that help?’

It helped. Next it was the MI6 duty officer’s turn to become uneasy. ‘Sorry, sir, but may I – may I just check I’ve got this right? The laptop whose traffic you wish to
read belongs to a member of parliament who is also a member of the ISC and used to be a senior officer here. The reason for urgency is that the laptop may be transmitting from his home now. Also,
you believe we should have a record of which laptop it is because we supplied the individual concerned with it while he was with us and it might therefore not be on the list of ISC
laptops?’

‘Correct.’

There was a pause. ‘I – don’t want to be awkward, sir – but I believe operations or investigations involving members of parliament require prime ministerial
authorisation, don’t they? And that a case like this would fall more properly to MI5—’

‘You’re absolutely right and if necessary I shall seek authorisation from the Prime Minister. But it needs to be done very quickly while the thing might be live. We may not get
another chance. If we’re doing wrong, on my head be it. Now, would you like me to dictate the Cheltenham email for you?’