Alexandra’s apartment smelled musty, and when she went to open the window she needed to bang on the frame to shake it loose. She’d lived there for nearly twenty years, having bought it with the bonus that had followed her work on the successful defense of a TransBank CEO for insider trading. “Ill begotten,” her father had called the place when he visited on a rainy afternoon and made the offer of a job. It was wrong, he told her, that a banker could walk for financial crimes, while a teenager from the estates could spend a year in jail for smoking a blunt. “Don’t you want to be on the right side of history?” he’d asked in his high-bred Russian.
“I want to be on the right side of my bank account,” she’d answered, but that was just her wanting to get one over on the old man.
A decade and a half later, she put on some tea to brew and opened up her computer on the kitchen counter. She closed a tab for the RSPCA, where she’d been looking at a particularly adorable Shiba Inu, and did a quick search for Conservative MP Catherine Booth, age thirty-nine, narrow-gauge glasses and severe dark bangs. She’d been representing Sheffield Hallam since 2015, when she’d run on bank deregulation and the review of the National Curriculum. After winning, she aligned herself closely with the Brexit camp. Her office, Alexandra found, was among the overflows in Portcullis House. And there was a telephone number.
It took her a while to get through the Westminster switchboard, but eventually she was speaking to a soft-sounding young man who took the MP’s calls. She caught a whiff of tension in his lower octaves when she said she was writing a series on the history of the Brexit campaign for The Guardian.
“Hasn’t that been beaten into the ground?” he asked.
“We’ve uncovered a fresh angle.”
“Yes?” he asked. “Not the Russians, I hope.”
“No,” she told him. “Worse.”
That earned her a respectful pause. Then: “What could be worse?”
“Many things. But I’d prefer to speak about it with the MP.”
“Guardian, you said?”
“Yes, but I’m freelance.”
“And what did you say your name was?”
She hadn’t, but she had a name ready. “Vivian Wall.” It was a legend that she had used now and then when they wanted to get information out to the public quickly. And when Booth’s soft-spoken gatekeeper Googled the name—which she guessed he was doing at that very moment—he would find two recent pieces, one in The Telegraph, the other in The Times of Israel.
There—a quick intake of breath. He now knew from the sensational bylines that Vivian Wall wasn’t someone to brush off. “Yes, well. I do have an opening tomorrow morning. Can you be at Portcullis by eight-thirty? Twenty minutes, then she needs to be in a meeting. Will that do?”
“Why, yes, it will. Thank you very much.”
She went out for sushi and had a nice chat with a Bolivian banker she would have taken home, were it not for her morning meeting. Instead she went for a half bottle of rioja in front of the telly, absorbing the news of the world. A far-right candidate was set to win the presidential election in Brazil. Nigerian pirates had kidnapped the crew of a Swiss cargo ship. In the States, a Supreme Court nominee was being accused of sexual assault, while over in Afghanistan a protest against Northwell International soldiers had turned violent; three Afghans had been killed.
She thought of wily Leticia Jones, whom she’d spent a few hours speaking with in that Zürich hospital. She still didn’t entirely trust the woman, but felt like she understood her a little better. Leticia was, as Milo used to be, an action-oriented human being, but unlike Milo, Leticia felt obligated to take responsibility for things that weren’t her fault, or even her business. Alexandra disagreed. The world was as it was, and to think she could change it was hubris—which was the perfect word to describe Leticia Jones, and, before life had knocked him down a few pegs, her brother, Milo.
In the morning, she disembarked from the bus in front of Portcullis House fifteen minutes early. Across busy Great George Street, Big Ben was covered in scaffolding, looking like a half-undressed monster. On the ground floor, she showed a clerk her Vivian Wall press papers, had her photo taken for security, and was asked to wait in the large glass-ceilinged atrium. She took a seat at one of the scattered tables, looking up at the muddy sky, then eyed young people sipping coffee and communing with their phones. She checked her own. Nothing from Milo. So in preparation for her conversation she started a recording app that ran in the background, then switched over to her email.
“Ms. Wall?” asked a thin voice. She looked up to find the bangs and narrow glasses of Catherine Booth. An unsure smile and an outstretched hand.
Alexandra rose and took the hand. “Ms. Booth, pleased to meet you.”
Though she’d assumed she’d be whisked upstairs to an office, she was wrong. Catherine Booth sank into a chair, touched her fingertips together, and looked into Alexandra’s eyes in the manner of a born politician: I’m hearing you. “Nigel mentioned something about the Brexit vote?”
“Yes,” Alexandra said, then touched her phone on the table. “Do you mind?”
“I’d rather not,” Booth said without hesitation.
“Of course.” Alexandra pushed the phone to the side but still near. “I’m actually not interested in Brexit.”
“No?” A hint of surprise, but only a hint.
“I’m working on a story about Joseph Keller. A British accountant who worked at MirGaz in Moscow until he disappeared a month ago. An Interpol Red Notice was issued for him.”
Booth’s face, smooth from a lifetime of creams and shade, did not reveal a thing. “Yes?” she asked.
“My understanding,” Alexandra said, “is that the request for the Red Notice came from your office. From you, in fact.”
Finally, Booth’s face changed, but it was so well trained that Alexandra could find no irritation in it. “Your story,” she said. “It’s not about Brexit but about Joseph Keller.”
“Correct.”
“And what, specifically, about him?”
“The charge against him has to do with computer hacking. However, I can find no one in law enforcement who has any record of it. No complaints. No warrants. Nothing.”
There—a momentary hesitation, a decision being made. Booth nodded, pursing her lips, then spoke gently. “Well, there wouldn’t be. The intelligence on him didn’t come from the Met.”
“Who did it come from?”
“From the intelligence services.”
“Special Branch? MI6?”
“I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you, Ms. Wall. Official secrets and such.”
“Then perhaps you can explain why the notice was withdrawn only a couple of days later. I’m unable to track the original notice down, just a record that it existed. Was Keller found?”
“It was taken care of, Ms. Wall. That’s all I’m at liberty to say.”
“I understand,” Alexandra said. “But the notice was a public document, and as such it calls for some sort of explanation. Is there someone from the intelligence services I could speak to, who would be cleared to say something on the record?”
Catherine Booth drummed her nails on the edge of the table, just once, then nodded. “I’ll have my people check on that and get back to you. Do we have your number?”
“Nigel does.”
“And an address?”
Alexandra almost hesitated. “I’m staying at a friend’s now.”
Booth nodded again and rose, sticking out her hand. In the distance, Alexandra noticed, a young man with a sad mustache and an iPad was looking on expectantly—Nigel, she guessed. As they shook hands, Booth said, “A pleasure, Ms. Wall. I don’t suppose you’re one of my constituents, are you?”
“If I lived in Sheffield Hallam, I wouldn’t be getting up this early to chase leads.”
Booth let out a full, throaty laugh. “Well, fortune favors the bold. And if it weren’t for Oliver, I wouldn’t be able to live there either.”
“Oliver Booth?” Alexandra said, only now making the connection that she should have made long ago. “Of TransBank?”
“You know of him,” Booth said, then shrugged. “My husband has always been more recognizable than me, sadly.”
“He’s in London?”
Booth frowned. “Berlin, I’m afraid. Do take care.”
Alexandra watched Booth join Nigel, and as they walked away the assistant glanced warily back at Alexandra. He had the expression of someone who was being scolded for putting a nutter onto his boss’s busy schedule. But she didn’t care. She remembered Oliver Booth very well. The bonus she’d gotten from helping represent his business partner, Sir Edward Acton, had bought her a lovely old flat in Hampstead.