Epilogue

IN OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES, Kate might have cracked a smile at the sheer irony of it.

How many weeks had it been since she had sat in that same corner office interviewing Suzy Spencer for the role as her deputy? Four? Five? And yet here she was being questioned in return, their roles – even their seats – neatly reversed.

Alongside Suzy loomed the tall, angular, lugubrious Shirley Grove, the cabinet secretary, a woman so devoid of charisma she might have merged with the wallpaper. Kate was learning too late that these were the most dangerous mandarins of all.

‘So, if we could recap,’ Grove said. ‘In the beginning, you thought Sergei tipped you off about the original meeting on Igor’s super-yacht out of . . . friendship?’

‘Yes.’

‘Though you considered it possible he was also acting on behalf of his bosses in the GRU?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘As a result of a power-tussle at the heart of the Kremlin, as they tried to gain the upper hand on their rivals in the Foreign Service, the SVR?’

‘Yes.’

‘In other words, a win-win for Sergei. He pleased his bosses and the woman he loved?’

‘Something like that.’

‘You therefore thought the conversation you recorded on Igor’s super-yacht genuine?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And that James Ryan was the Russian spy or agent of influence?’

‘Yes.’

‘So when you were later told that the GRU were coming out on top in this power struggle and that Igor wanted to defect, in return for bringing you hard evidence of the prime minister’s treachery, that seemed perfectly credible?’

‘Yes.’ Kate wondered how long this history lesson was going to last.

‘You were further convinced that Stuart was Viper, the agent mentioned in that original overheard conversation?’

‘I don’t think there’s much doubt that Stuart was working for the Russians.’

Grove nodded. She turned the page, moving on. The issue of whether there was another Russian mole at the heart of Whitehall was a much more open question, of course, but Kate wasn’t going to raise that now. Her priority was to get out of there fast, with the minimum chance of any recall.

‘The foreign secretary was reluctant to accept Igor Borodin’s defection at face value,’ Grove went on. ‘She wanted more evidence. That was why you went to St Petersburg and then Moscow in search of Sergei?’

‘Yes.’

‘He confirmed your supposition at the time, that Igor was losing the power struggle and needed to get out of Russia?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you believed Igor Borodin killed Sergei to prevent any potential interference with his planned defection?’

‘Not immediately, but I came to that conclusion shortly after it went wrong.’

‘Why?’

‘It was the only explanation that made sense to me.’

‘At the time.’

‘At the time, yes.’ Kate would dearly have loved to find a way to make Igor pay for Sergei’s murder. But it was too late for that.

Grove turned another page. ‘When Mr Borodin told you on the tarmac at Tbilisi airport that the prime minister was definitely working for Moscow and that Ian had unwittingly passed on information to our enemies by keeping him informed at every turn, you believed that too at the time?’

‘I did, yes.’

‘So, in short, when you took off from Tbilisi, you were firmly of the view that the PM was a traitor and that Ian Granger was, at best, an indiscreet and ambitious fool who had unwittingly assisted him.’

Kate glanced out of the window at Ian, who was pacing the corridor. ‘Yes.’

‘You have not heard anything from Igor Borodin since that conversation on the tarmac?’

‘No one has. Not us, not GCHQ. He and his family have vanished off the face of the earth.’

‘Where did you think they had gone?’

‘I assumed that, if the GRU had won the power struggle and he was caught in the act of defecting, he and his family were probably in a Siberian gulag or dead already.’

‘I see,’ Shirley Grove said, without emotion. She turned over another page and cleared her throat as she approached the climax of this charade. ‘And yet you now say that everything you once believed in relation to this case was wrong?’

‘That’s correct.’ Kate met her deputy’s flinty glaze. How slow she had been to realize that Suzy’s true purpose – as instructed by Grove and her master, the prime minister, no doubt, and, of course, aided and abetted by Ian – had not in fact been to open up the Operation Sigma file but to find the means and the method to ensure it remained closed. For ever.

‘So to be clear,’ Grove went on, ‘you are now saying it was a set-up, right from the start. A great big Fabergé egg of a fake. Far from being rivals, the GRU worked with the SVR to sell us – to sell you – the mother and father of all intelligence dummies. The prime minister was never working for the Russians, the sex video was a fake, Stuart was the only agent working in Whitehall – and he was easily expendable in the cause of creating terrible chaos, confusion and mistrust at the heart of our democratic system?’

It was a moment before Kate realized Grove was expecting an answer. She certainly was exacting her pound of flesh. ‘Yes,’ Kate said. ‘Absolutely.’

If the price of escaping all this was to flip everything she really believed on its head, she might as well do it with conviction.

‘Sergei was killed just in case he blurted out the real truth to you on the train – that you had been deceived and manipulated right from the start?’

‘Yes,’ Kate said again, with excessive conviction. ‘That is correct.’

Grove tapped her pen on the file. ‘A cynic might note, Mrs Henderson, that you have announced you wish to leave the service with immediate effect. This way, the case is conveniently closed. There will be no committee of inquiry, no torturous, complicated, draining search for the truth. Just closure. The prime minister recovers his reputation, the Service can move on and you . . . well, you walk away, with your reputation and references intact. Free as a bird, one might say.’

‘I’m not a cynic,’ Kate said. And when she realized that Grove had truly no sense of humour, she went on: ‘Ian was right all along. It’s not easy to admit that, but it’s true.’

If nothing else, she thought, she was becoming a much better bloody liar.

‘We shouldn’t blame Kate in any way,’ Suzy chipped in. ‘It was all so plausible. Who wouldn’t have jumped at such a sensational story? If true, it would have been the most amazing intelligence coup of the modern era, enough to make anyone’s career.’

Kate didn’t dignify this with an answer.

Grove leant forward, her reading glasses brushing against her clipboard. There were a lot of ticks on her checklist now. ‘After all this,’ she said, ‘you suddenly wake up one day and decide that Ian Granger was right all along and that you were duped?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t meet anyone, see anyone, receive any new information before experiencing this Damascene conversion?’

‘No, but when I had time to reflect, it was the only explanation that made sense.’ She forced another smile. Given they all knew that Grove’s sole aim here was to bury this file in the darkest recess of the Service’s vaults, her show of probity was beginning to grate. ‘You know as well as I do, Mrs Grove, that in our world we never get hard and fast answers. There is no black and white. When you have ruled out all other potential explanations, what remains is the truth, however unlikely. Upon reflection, I decided Ian had been right. I feel no shame in admitting it.’

‘So you accept this matter is closed?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Good. Good.’ Grove nodded sagely. ‘We appreciate your cooperation, Mrs Henderson. I know this has been a tough time for you.’

‘And the prime minister.’ Grove looked confused. ‘I mean, to have been falsely accused in this way,’ Kate said. She was laying it on really thick now, but why not? She might as well enjoy it.

She glanced up at the light above her, in which she suspected a microphone was hidden. Whoever was listening – MI5, certainly, perhaps even the prime minister himself – she hoped they appreciated the effort she was putting into her show of contrition.

‘Yes, yes. Monstrous. Very difficult.’ Grove stood. ‘Thank you, Mrs Henderson.’ She offered her hand. ‘A relief to all of us, I’m sure, to have this matter finally resolved.’

Kate took the proffered hand. She even kissed Suzy, though she didn’t grace Ian with an answer when he asked her in the corridor outside how it had gone. Let his ambition sweat a moment longer.

‘Kate,’ he said, as she turned her back on him. ‘Thank you for your contribution.’

She faced him. ‘To what?’

‘This inquiry. And the Service, of course.’

‘Is that some kind of joke?’

‘No, no. I wanted to thank you for all you have done.’

Kate retrieved her bag and walked away, without bothering to offer him a reply.

She found Julie waiting for her by the lift. ‘Don’t,’ Kate said, raising a hand to forestall any show of emotion, for which she no longer had the stomach.

‘I’m not going to cry,’ Julie replied. ‘Not now, anyway.’

‘One day soon we’re going to meet up and get very, very pissed. And we’re never going to talk about any of it again.’

‘You did the right thing, Kate.’

‘You don’t think that. And I’m not convinced I do, either. So I need to get out of here before I change my mind.’

‘I do think it, actually.’

Julie launched herself into Kate’s arms. They held each other until Kate released herself and belted for the stairs before the emotion welling inside her could find expression. She was damned if she was going to be seen leaving the building for the last time in tears.

Sir Alan was at the last security barrier, readying himself to leave to get back to the hospital. Rose was beside him, her arm still in a sling from the kidnap. The doctors had made clear to all of them that the mental scars would take much longer to heal.

Rose touched Kate’s shoulder in support. Sir Alan did not appear to know what he should do. ‘I thought I’d better pipe you out,’ he said.

‘Off, I think.’ He looked confused. ‘Don’t you pipe someone off? It’s a naval term.’

‘Yes, yes, perhaps so.’ He stared at the floor. ‘I’m sorry it had to end like this, Kate.’

‘I’m not. I should have made this decision a long time ago.’

‘Are you certain you’re doing the right thing? I’m sure my successor—’

‘Your successor?’

He glanced at Rose, as if it was a decision they had reached jointly. Not for the first time, Kate wondered just how far the friendship between her aunt and their superior extended. But she choked off the train of thought. Not her business. ‘I’ve taken the decision to stand down,’ Sir Alan said. ‘The search for my replacement has already begun.’

For a moment, Kate was less sure of her own decision. Perhaps it was the old competitive spirit or, as she would have preferred to see it, her conscience. ‘So Ian got what he wanted.’

Sir Alan glanced at Rose again. ‘We can make sure there’s a future for you here, Kate.’

She wavered for only a moment more. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘To answer a question Stuart once asked of me, I don’t think in the end it is possible to be a warrior for truth and the mother I’d like to be. And if I must choose, then I know what it has to be.’

Kate could have told Sir Alan – and, indeed, Rose – that an agreement to allow Stuart to come and go unhindered in continental Europe had been the explicit quid pro quo with Shirley Grove for lying through her teeth a few minutes ago or, as Grove herself had put it, ‘telling the complete truth of the entire affair’. But they would, no doubt, have guessed as much.

Kate kissed Sir Alan. ‘Bloody good luck, my friend,’ he said.

She hugged her aunt, who whispered only, ‘See you at home.’

She nodded at the security guard, who let her out of the building for the last time.

She swung right and headed westwards towards Battersea in the drizzle.

It was a gloomy night, but warmer than it looked, a close humidity wrapping the capital in its suffocating embrace. Kate shrugged off her coat, slipped it over her arm and glanced back at the organization to which she had devoted most of her adult life.

She walked on, faster and with greater purpose. Tonight, she had her own version of truth or, rather, of her role in this universe.

She was going home.

Where she belonged.

She picked up the pace and burst through the front door of the house to find Fiona and Gus waiting in the kitchen.

Kate took them in her arms, their warm hands wrapped tight around her. ‘It’s over,’ she whispered. ‘It’s all over now.’