4. London. The following morning.
I wasn't. Lucky, that is. Sleeping on the subject had done exactly nothing and the full briefing the next morning just threw up more murk. Everything had, apparently, been perfectly normal for that sort of event although, surprisingly, Harry and his side-kick (identified as an analyst who worked closely with him – that registered in the back of my mind because hadn't the 'woman' involved in the events leading up to his enforced leave been his analyst?) had walked straight up to the Gavriks and, to all appearances, had a pleasant discussion. The two women had gone off for a chat together, leaving Ilya and Harry sizing each other up, politely but definitively, as they continued to talk. All that was overheard was something about Gavrik's success in business – the waiter hadn't been able to hang around, but I could bet the barbs had been flying both directions no matter how polite the words. Later, our other insider had observed a very brief meeting between Harry and Elena in a corridor outside the main reception room and my immediate gut response to that was along the lines of 'Jesus Christ, don't tell me she's still got you on a string after 25 years, Hal?' It left me feeling strangely down but also unsettled: it couldn't have been that simple. For starters, I knew for a fact that he had never actually loved Elena Platonovna, even when he had been trying to believe that he did. However, as the purported mother of his son it was a different story and all his ancient protective instincts came to the fore. If you believed that rumour, that is, and I for one had never completely bought it. There had to be something else to it. According to our assets, he hadn't looked exactly happy during the short discussion while Elena had been watching him like a snake, then and during the entire evening.
Later, of course, had come the assassination attempt. There had been some sort of altercation in the back corridors not long beforehand: that was something we still didn't have any information on but first all the wait staff had been pulled off the floor and then all the security and intelligence personnel stopped moving just as the would-be assassin had pulled his gun. Harry had dropped the man with one blow (despite the disbelief of my underlings I didn't doubt that – he had always been a handy man in a fight, our years in the military had often stood us in good stead in everything from bar-room brawls to 'disagreements' with KGB and Stasi agents in Berlin) but he still managed to get a shot away before scrambling back to his feet and out of the room, a young, glamorous piece in light blue satin hot on his heels and one of Harry's field officers hot on hers. The glamour-puss was believed to be his Section Chief, Erin Watts; whoever she was, she wasted no time in dealing with the assassin, leaving him dead on the floor in a nearby banquet hall. The Gavriks had been rushed out and away while most of the rest of the guests were doing the same thing of their own accord. And that had been pretty much it.
I stared absently at the table top as I listened, slowly drumming my fingers as I thought about what had happened and tried to summarise events. I couldn't do that while I was surrounded by people but instead snapped to the room in general,
"Has the wanna-be assassin been identified yet?"
"Yes, Sir." It was the same bright young thing who had yesterday delivered the news about the Gavrik's movements. Young enough to be my daughter, blonde, blue-eyed, very pretty and tended to play ditzy although she obviously wasn't. Irritating. "We managed to obtain some of the surveillance footage from inside the venue at the time of the attempt and ran some facial recognition on him. He got inside as a waiter called Luc Marquand but his real name was Marcus Collison. English, a former corporal in the SAS and an arms and explosives expert. He spent time in the Gulf, was injured in Bosnia and ended his official military career with NATO in Iraq in 2003." She stopped to catch her breath but I fixed her with a stare that made her squirm, impatient to hear the rest. She cleared her throat and went on, "He reappeared in Iraq in 2005 with Weland Smithy, that ultra-clandestine, highly suspect South African based assassination arm of Aegis Defence Services, but didn't stay long, popping up as an extremely thorough, albeit expensive and totally independent gun-for-hire the following year. That's what he's been doing ever since. He was very much in demand, registering on our radar everywhere, from Chechnya to Libya to Colombia and India. However, his strongest links seem to be with Chechnya. They pay the best, they've provided him with regular work and they don't care how he achieves their aim. We're still working on it but he seems to have the closest links with these two war-lords." Their photos flashed up on the screen. I didn't recognise the first – yet another jumped up Sunni cleric, this time from the back woods of Nozhay-Yurtovsky - but the second one rang a few bells. His name was Aslan Maximovitch Ulyanov and he was a friend of Ilya's, dating from their time together firstly in the Soviet Army and later the GRU in the late 1960's and the 1970's, including a stint in Afghanistan during the invasion in 1979, and then through similar careers in the KGB. Ulyanov had been getting rich from the connection for the past 15 years, being very adept at playing both sides against each other for his own gain and without the slightest compunction, although it had long been noted that he always trod very carefully around his former army buddy. So why the Hell would he now try to kill the goose that was providing his golden eggs over an agreement between Russia and Britain which would have no effect on his own operations whatsoever and, in fact, was likely to provide him with more opportunities? That really did make no sense at all: my staff didn't know the half of that, of course, but I would have to send them back to look at it again. It wasn't that Ulyanov wouldn't do it if he thought it would outweigh the benefits he would lose but I couldn't see how that would ever be the case.
I came back to the present with a start, realising that the room had gone quiet while I was thinking. Everyone was looking at me expectantly but I still needed time and a bit of quiet to sort things out in my own mind before I spoke to anyone else so I looked back at them, suddenly realising that there was more to the silence than them waiting for me. There was a distinct atmosphere so I sighed and said,
"Alright, what is it? Spit it out, I don't have time to sit here playing staring games."
Another one of the children – with every passing year the juniors were getting ever younger, making me feel like a grizzled old man from some holler in the Appalachians somewhere – finally spoke up. A trendy Gen Y Latino kid from Corpus Christi called Raul Silva, with spiked hair, an eyebrow stud and tattoos peeking out above his collar and below his cuffs, he looked as brash as any of his generation but at least managed to speak with some deference.
"We identified a couple of other people while we were running the facial recog." The first photo flashed up and my attention suddenly sharpened. "Aleksandr Gavrik is in town and was also there. Not just as their son. He is part of their FSB security team." My heart sank. Shit, that was all we needed. If Hal found out about that, Christ knows what he would do in his current state of mind. If he hasn't found out already. In fact, he probably did know: he must have seen the boy there, even if he hadn't heard about it before- The second photo replaced Sasha's and very effectively re-focussed my attention. "This woman was also there, apparently as a guest. On the list of attendees as Miriam Chapman. Not her real name. That is Veronica Duran. One of our best deeply deniable assets in this part of the world, ex-Royal Air Force, the Defence HUMINT Organisation branch of Defence Intelligence and, very briefly, MI6—"
"I know who she is, I've been utilising her for years," I interrupted, wondering why I felt like the plot had just thickened to the consistency of wet concrete.
"Yes, Sir." He didn't look even faintly crushed. "Before you ask, she wasn't there on our behalf, or any of the other Governments that she works for, as far as we can tell, but she was seen on the phone after the attempt, looking pleased with herself."
"Is there any way you can track that call?"
"We're trying but probably not, unless we can get hold of the phone itself."
"You won't, not with Veronica. But keep at it. Is that all?" Heads bobbed around the table. "Okay, thank you all. Good work, now keep it up. Brontee—" I looked at the flaxen analyst "—you keep working on what you can find about the Gavriks. Not just Ilya, see what you can dig up about Elena, going back as far as you can. Before she married Ilya she was known as Elena Struchkova and was a member of the Kirov Ballet. While you're at it, see if you can find any medical records for her, from either Berlin or Moscow, for the period 1980-1982, and do some more trawling on the son as well. Also go back and review Collison's contacts in Chechnya: I don't buy the connection with Ulyanov, he has no reason to take out a contract on Ilya, he would lose too much. I'll bring you up to date on what I know about that connection shortly. Do as much hacking as you like and pull in as much assistance as you need. If anyone argues tell them to come and see me."
She looked like I'd just presented her with a carte blanche to go shopping for Manolo Blahniks (come on, I've got a wife, two daughters, two ex-wives and a sister, of course I know who Manolo Blahnik is).
"Yes, Sir."
"Raul." The tattoo-ed Latino youth lifted his gaze from Brontee's chest to meet my eyes. "You, D'wane and the rest of the crew get to both assist Brontee with checking out Collison and run surveillance on Ilya and Elena at the same time. I want to know everywhere they go and everything they do but be very, very careful. Ilya was one of the best of his generation for the KGB and he will see you coming a mile off, if you give him the remotest opportunity. And believe me, you don't want to give him that opportunity. Also keep digging up what you can on what Veronica Duran is up to, who she's been in touch with lately, all the usual." Finally I turned to my local Section Chief. Tallulah Zanon was almost as old as me, thin as a rail, looked like everyone's sweet and gentle grand-mother and was one of the most fearsome field agents we had ever had. Period. Still was. She looked back, perfectly composed, probably half-guessing what I was about to lay on her plate.
"Tallulah, I've got something special for you."
"Sir." Ice cold, with a brain like a computer.
"It's going to be almost impossible for you to get much but I want you to commandeer the best people you can and use them to find out anything you can about what's going on inside Section D in Thames House. On top of that I would like you, personally, to track Harry Pearce for a few days. My gut is telling me that something is going on and he's involved. I'd like to know what."
A remote smile was all I got, along with,
"My pleasure, Sir," in her quiet New Orleans drawl.
"What I said about Ilya goes treble for Harry. Ilya will be a little out of practice. Harry is not. That's why I want you to do the job yourself. But be careful."
She inclined her head and said no more so, looking around at all of them I added, "I'm sure all of you know that part of the operation is not to be mentioned outside this room, on pain of instant dismissal and imprisonment." I dismissed them all and went back to my office to consider the past 24 hours in peace. I didn't come up with much and there were as many questions, if not more, than anything resembling an answer. Even the time-line was vague.
The Russkies and the Brits decide to formalise a relationship that has been getting steadily cosier for years. Any particular reason why, or why now? Or was it just pique that Uncle Sam was turning his focus away from London?
Ilya Gavrik, now an oligarch and a powerful Russian Minister, arrives in London on the QT for the formalisation ceremony. Accompanied by his former MI6/CIA asset wife. And Harry, temporarily suspended and under investigation, is suddenly reinstated to his job just in time to save our old Nemesis from an assassination attempt. Now I can see why Ilya turned up but was it a coincidence that Harry suddenly gets his job back at the same time?
Sasha Gavrik arrives as part of his parents' security detail. That was odd as well – perhaps Ilya had pulled some strings but it seemed unlikely, he knew it wasn't a good idea as family often forgot their official position when under duress and could be extremely unreliable as a result. It was more likely that Elena, who had always been obsessed with the boy, had manipulated his inclusion onto the team. She had always been Ilya's weak point and he would do anything to keep her happy.
Having been spirited out of Moscow to London with no-one, including the CIA and, probably, MI5 being the wiser, there is an assassination attempt on Ilya at his very first public appearance. Something didn't gel there, either: who knew, far enough ahead, where he was going to be and what he was going to be doing, in order to organise a hit? Collison was good – one of the best – but hits still needed time to be put together and he was only the hired help, after all. So who had leaked? And why the hit, anyway? Collison's employers were apparently Chechen. But were they behind the hit or were they middle-men?
Henry James Pearce. Make that Sir Henry. I knew he was still the only one of his circle who didn't understand why he'd been given the handle. Just as I knew he was seriously worried about something (what?) relating to the Gavrik's – specifically, Elena's – reappearance in his lifeand I suspected that he may have been as lost in the dark about that as I was. The one thing I did know was that for some totally bizarre reason he thought I was still either in touch with, or running, Elena. After what had played out between us all in Berlin, that left me the most puzzled of all…
My head hurt and I needed coffee. Hauling myself to my feet and, for once, feeling every day of my age, I went out for a walk and to find some coffee. English coffee was generally rubbish but there was a little café owned by a bunch of Aussies just down the road and they made the best coffee I'd had since visiting Italy with Gianna on our honeymoon. I liked the atmosphere there as well, it reminded me of home – bright, breezy, casual – and I had become so much of a regular that they knew me by name and inevitably had my order under way by the time I made it to the counter so I headed there for my morning fix and tried not to think.
I failed again, of course.