‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then, Captain, you have your orders.’
He disconnected and the sommelier refreshed his glass of claret.
To the wine waiter, the composure of his client did not flicker. Internally, Sir Adrian was seething. The fact that his enemy, Krilov, knew about Chandler’s Court could mean only one thing – there had to be a second mole.
Chapter Eight
THEY RETURNED; THE Night Wolves came back the following night, and they were armed to the teeth. They thought they were taking on an undefended target. Their mission was to invade an old if sprawling house and eliminate a sleeping teenager in one of the bedrooms. Anyone else on that floor would also have to be taken down.
They wore black coveralls and black ski-masks. They parked along a deserted stretch of the boundary wall and, using the roof of their vehicle as a departure point, leapt down into the forest. In single file they padded through the wood until they saw in the moonlight the manor of Chandler’s Court before them. They did not know that inside the manor red lights were flashing angrily on a console. And they did not know that thirteen sets of night-vision goggles were staring at them. And most of all, they did not know about the night-vision rifle sights. Worse, they had never heard of Loughgall.
The Special Air Service Regiment enjoys a privilege (among others) shared only by the other two SF regiments. They are allowed to choose their weaponry from a worldwide menu rather than accept what is allotted to them by the Ministry of Defence.
For a combat rifle they prefer the C8 carbine by Diemaco, now made by Colt Canada. Its barrel is only 15.7 inches long but the gun is cold-hammer forged and very accurate. For a sniper rifle they choose the Accuracy International AX50 with a Schmidt and Bender scope-sight. There were six of each concealed behind the curtains of Chandler’s Court. The moon had not emerged, but it did not matter. The night-vision sights illuminated the intruders in a liquid-green luminescence. And the weapons pointed at them were silenced.
Anton led his comrades as they emerged from the trees on to the grassland. He was no stranger to violence, having put three England football fans on the streets of Marseille into wheelchairs. But he was still surprised when the hollow-point slug hit him in the chest. Half a second later he ceased to be surprised because he was dead.
Seeing him go down, his companions brought their assault carbines to the fire position, but too late. Hollow-point ordnance does not permit debate or post-trauma surgery. Two of the six, realizing they were in a killing ground, turned and tried to make the cover of the trees. They went face down and stayed there.
Within five minutes the six cadavers had been dragged into an outhouse belonging to the manor. They would be removed in a windowless van to the mortuary at Stirling Lines, until a decision could be made. Mother Nature and a long hose-watering would cope with the red splashes on the greensward.
In daylight the parked van outside the wall was traced, hot-wired, driven a hundred miles and torched. The local police in that county traced it to a second-hand-car dealer in London from whom it had been bought for cash by a man who did not exist. The burnt-out carcass went to a car crusher. The slaughter at Chandler’s Court simply never happened.
At Yasenevo, Yevgeni Krilov waited in vain for news. In two days he would realize that his killers were not coming home. But he still had his ace. He would try again. He had to. The Vozhd would insist.
In London, Sir Adrian was woken by another pre-dawn phone call and given an elliptical report that would have meant nothing to any eavesdropper. Something about the weeds having been successfully cleared from the garden.
He sat in his flat as the rising June sun tipped the spire of Big Ben over the Palace of Westminster down the street called Whitehall and stared at the face in the frame. The eyes above the Slavic cheekbones, last seen at a meaningless cocktail party twenty years ago, stared back. The British spymaster seldom swore, but he swore now. With venom. His worst fears had come true.
The name Chandler’s Court had never crossed the Atlantic. He would scan the records, uncover every occasion it had ever been used, where and by whom. Who had heard it? How had Yevgeni Krilov ever learned it?
This second mole, this hidden informant, must be in London, close at hand in the heart of the establishment. Moscow simply knew too much. The FBI had been adamant: the late Harold Jennings, father of the autistic genius, had had no chance to give up the name Chandler’s Court. But they knew. There had to be a traitor. The hunter gene in Adrian Weston came back on-stream.
Back in the Cold War, even after the crushing of the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and the brutal suppression of the Czechs in 1968, when so many Western Communists, disgusted by the ruthlessness of Moscow, had abandoned their deranged faith, there were still diehards who clung to Karl Marx’s dream right to the end.
But that end was well past. Even Moscow and the man who now controlled Russia had abandoned Communism for rabid nationalism. Even the most deluded intellectual – and Sir Adrian had never fooled himself that even a lauded intellectual could not also be as thick as a plank – would no longer spy for Communism. The traitor had to have a motive, and a powerful one. What could it be?
Wounded pride, resentment at ego-affronting treatment, self-importance? As a spotter and recruiter in the Cold War, Sir Adrian had exploited them all.
A life of freedom in the West worked as a motive for prisoners of the Communist world, but something else was behind this leak. Where and in what documents had the name Chandler’s Court been mentioned? Only among a very select few, which would mean that the leak must have come from someone already high up in the British system, someone well paid, privileged, cosseted. He settled on two motives. Blackmail, perhaps to cover up career-destroying private behaviour? That could still work. Or old-fashioned money-greed. Bribery as old as humanity. Then he began to hunt for the leak. He used his influence to call for the transcripts; all the meetings concerning the relocation of the Jenningses had been recorded.
There was COBRA, the Cabinet Office Briefing Room. The ‘A’ might stand for ‘Annexe’ but probably does not. It was simply added to make a word beloved of the media. He remembered one meeting at the long oval table with squared-off ends in that silent room in the basement of the Cabinet Office. Being underground, you could not hear the rumble of traffic on Whitehall, as you could on the ground floor. The attendance list was clear: only five, and from the very top drawer. The transcript made no mention of Chandler’s Court. He would have been the only one to know that he had made the choice of the manor house as the new home of the ultra-secret cyber-unit. And he had not mentioned the name.
There had been a restricted Cabinet meeting inside Number Ten, Downing Street, in the same room where he and the Prime Minister had confronted the US ambassador. Those present were Mrs Marjory Graham, the Home, Foreign and Defence secretaries, the Cabinet Secretary – the highest civil servant in the land – and two note-takers. Again, Chandler’s Court had not been mentioned.
That left only one meeting: of the National Security Council, which he had attended as a guest. And yes, Chandler’s Court had been mentioned once. Those attending were the Home and Foreign secretaries, the heads of GCHQ, MI6, MI5 and the Joint Intelligence Committee. And the Assistant Cabinet Secretary, whose superior was abroad with the Prime Minister on that day.
He decided to concentrate on that meeting. Everyone at it had security clearance to the highest level. But so did Kim Philby. There never was a human machine in history that could not make a mistake. In the Firm they had a saying: if you want to keep something secret and three men know, shoot two of them. He thought about the two possible motives.
Blackmail? He stared at seven faces. Could one be a victim of blackmail? A secret orgiast? A paedophile? An embezzler in an earlier career? All were possible.
Or bribery? Back in the Cold War, falling for pro-Communist ideology had been the British weakness. For the Americans, it had always been money. He recalled the Walker Family, Aldric
h Ames – always traitors for money.
London is a world banking centre and has been for centuries. Add insurance, money management, international finance. Out of London tentacles spread to a thousand banks in a hundred countries, along with personal friendships and connections. Adrian Weston had some contacts in that world, centred on a single square mile of inner London called simply The City. He knew some ex-spooks who had settled after the fray for a life on the board of a bank. He decided to call in some markers. Within days, he had a reply.
The question he had asked was simple. Had anyone noticed, probably in a tax or banking haven – meaning home to dubious transactions – a deposit account recently opened by the Russians? Opened, massively endowed then quickly emptied and closed?
A merchant banker called to say he had heard a murmur. Liechtenstein. The Vaduz Bank. A well-lubricated dinner in Davos not too long ago and a certain Herr Ludwig Fritsch who talked too much.
There is no international airport for Vaduz. Liechtenstein is tiny, a principality situated entirely within the Alps and by head of population the richest country in the world. Its capital, Vaduz, contains twelve large and secretive banks. Sir Adrian secured an interview with Herr Fritsch over the phone. The knighthood helped; he indicated he might be seeking a home for some money and that was enough.
He flew to Zurich, in next-door Switzerland, and rented a car. He always travelled with carry-on luggage, he flew economy class and he dropped the ‘Sir’ on his passport. Old habits die hard. He had had a career dedicated to invisibility, and it had served him well.
With the help of a satnav he arrived an hour early at the bank so he took an extended coffee at a café across the street. Vaduz is a quiet little town; sitting at his window table, he must have seen a dozen walkers on the pavements. People drive in Vaduz. Carefully.
Inside the bank he was escorted across the lobby, up two floors in the lift and into the office of Herr Ludwig Fritsch. His first task was to dispose of the idea that he had come to open a lucrative account.
‘It is a delicate matter,’ he said.
Fritsch was as smooth as a ball of butter and about as communicative. He indicated that he rarely concerned himself with matters that were not delicate. They sipped spring water from crystal glasses.
‘How can I be of assistance, Sir Adrian?’
‘In my country a very large sum of money has been stolen. One of those dispossessed is Her Majesty.’
That shook the buttery Herr Fritsch. In the cyber-age financial crime was pandemic and London could not expect to be immune. But Vaduz did not wish to become a depository for the proceeds of theft – at least not the provable sort. And anything concerning the British queen could go as high as his own head of state, Prince Hans-Adam II. That was serious.
‘Outrageous.’
‘It was, of course, financial. A swindle on a massive scale, involving money-laundering.’
‘It is a scourge, Sir Adrian. Everywhere. I say again, how may I help?’ This time, he meant it.
‘We know the perpetrator. Scotland Yard’s bank-crime division are not fools.’
‘You think he resides here in Liechtenstein? Heaven forbid.’
‘No, no, no. He is a Russian. We know the stolen wealth went to Russia. A very shady billionaire, far too many of whom are permitted to live in London.’
Herr Fritsch nodded earnestly. On that subject there was not a cigarette paper between the views of the two men.
‘You British are very tolerant, Sir Adrian.’
‘Perhaps more than we should be.’
‘Indeed. But how can that affect Liechtenstein and the Vaduz Bank?’
‘All barrels of apples, Herr Fritsch, risk a bad one. We think the fraudster had some help. From inside the barrel. In fact, we know it. And the rogue will insist on taking a very large financial reward. I know I can rely on your discretion …’
‘This bank is known for it.’
‘… when I say that phones have been tapped, communications intercepted.’
Ludwig Fritsch needed no convincing. The expertise of the British at that sort of thing had been established when Sir Francis Walsingham, spy-catcher to Queen Elizabeth I, had kept his monarch alive by intercepting the secret letters of conspirators.
‘There is a possibility …’ Herr Fritsch knew it was beyond a possibility. The bloody British had proof, or what was this obvious spook doing in his office? And the prince’s palace was only a mile away.
‘… that quite recently a person of Russian origin opened a deposit account. That it was quickly endowed with a large sum of money. And that another person came to empty it, possibly to cash. We would, of course, be immensely grateful …’
Herr Fritsch excused himself and left the office. When he returned he held a slim folder.
‘I have conferred with colleagues, Sir Adrian,’ he began. Nothing flickered in Adrian Weston’s face, but he knew he was being lied to. So the buttery Herr Fritsch was part of the scam. A bought man.
‘A month ago a gentleman came here and sat exactly where you now are. He was from the Russian embassy in Bern, across the border. He opened a deposit account. A nominal sum was used for that. A week later the equivalent in euros of five million US dollars was paid in by electronic transfer. No source.’
‘A tidy sum. And the beneficiary?’
‘A week after that another man came. No name. It was not necessary. Under the terms of the account, only a sequence of letters and numbers was required. This man had exactly the necessary identification. But he was certainly a fellow countryman of yours.’
‘And he withdrew it all to cash.’
‘He did indeed. I am authorized to reveal this solely on the basis that I have your word it will go no further.’
‘You have my word, Herr Fritsch. But as he crossed the lobby, the CCTV camera I noticed there would have secured a picture.’
‘You are very astute, Sir Adrian.’
‘One does one’s best, Herr Fritsch.’
‘You understand that I cannot permit this file to leave this room. But if you happened to glance at it, I could hardly prevent you.’
The file lay between them. Herr Fritsch rose and turned his back to stare out of the window at the town below. Adrian Weston leaned forward and flicked open the file. It contained a single print-out of the lobby and the man crossing it. He glanced, closed the file and pushed it back across the desk. Herr Fritsch resumed his seat.
‘Herr Fritsch, I and indeed my country are enormously grateful. I assure you, what I have seen today will go no further. Steps will be taken, but nothing will come back to this bank.’
They shook hands in well-simulated camaraderie. An escort was summoned and the Britisher was accompanied back to the front door. He glanced up towards the mounted camera that had photographed the man carrying the bulging Gladstone bag containing $5 million in high-denomination euro bills.
His rented car was in the bank’s car park. He began the long drive back to Zurich airport. From his second-floor office, Herr Ludwig Fritsch watched him go and reached for the phone.
On the drive, Sir Adrian mulled over what he had seen. The photo image showed a middle-aged senior civil servant in the lobby where he had been a few moments earlier. The face was unmistakeable and he knew it well. It was Julian Marshall, the Assistant Cabinet Secretary in London.
It had long occurred to Sir Adrian that the guilty party must have left London to visit Vaduz and retrieve his Judas money. But it was a needle-in-a-haystack shot. Virtually everyone at the very top of the tree had a country home, regularly visited at weekends. Any mandarin could slip away unnoticed, board a private executive jet, fly there and back, and reappear unspotted. Nothing had come up in his investigations. He stared again at the photo in his mind’s eye. There was something wrong, some tiny detail. Then he saw it.
The Russian in Yasenevo who had concocted the photo had done a brilliant job. The shoes were probably from Lobb’s in St James’s, the beautifully cut suit undoub
tedly from Savile Row. And the face that had been photoshopped on to the torso was certainly that of the civil servant who had chaired the meeting of the National Security Council when the name Chandler’s Court had been mentioned.
The image-creator had been very clever, apart from a single error. The concocted figure was wearing the wrong tie.
Chapter Nine
FOR MOST MEN worldwide, the tie, if worn at all, is a strip of cloth wound around the neck under the collar, knotted at the front and allowed to fall down the chest. The pattern or motif, if any, is at the choice of the wearer. But in England they can be a bit more than that.
The pattern and colours of the stripes or the nature of the design woven into the cloth can indicate in a moment which school the wearer went to, the military unit he served with or the club he belongs to. It is a sort of code, a kind of recognition key.
Julian Marshall had undoubtedly attended Eton College, one of Britain’s most exclusive private academies or ‘public schools’. And those who have attended are entitled to wear the Old Etonian tie. Actually, there are three ties: the standard OE tie on black with slanting pale-blue stripes, and two even more exclusive because they indicate athletic achievement within the school.
There is the Eton Ramblers tie: magenta with purple and green stripes and fine gold lines, so carefully clashing it has to be deliberate. This is for those who have played cricket for their school. And this is what the figure in the photo was wearing.
And there is the Eton Vikings tie: dark red and black stripes with light blue lines, for those who have rowed for the college. The two sports occupy the summer term and thus exclude each other.