Georgetown, Washington, DC
‘Oh my God … oh my God!’ Terri screamed as Hunter fell on her. She lay still for several moments, unable to think, unable to move as his weight and warmth gently suffocated her. A moment frozen in time that seemed to linger forever but in reality lasted no more than a handful of seconds. The room was silent, save for her ragged breaths as a gentle breeze blew in through the window.
‘Does that mean I hit the spot?’ Hunter asked lazily as he rolled off.
‘Y … Yes … you did.’ Her voice was still strained, as she panted for breath.
‘Glad to be of service.’
‘Not bad for an old man.’
‘Old? I’m thirty-seven!’
‘Sorry, very old!’
‘Cheeky cow.’
‘Simon, you know I love it when you talk dirty.’ She rolled to her left and grabbed their half-drunk bottle of Californian white and took a large swig. She nimbly straddled him, looked down and then blew her mouthful of wine over his head and chest. ‘Cow indeed!’
Hunter burst out laughing. ‘And your udders are first rate!’
‘Udders?’ She ground her hips into him, then bent forward and gently bit his lower lip. ‘I’ll show you udders!’
*
As he lay next to the woman he now knew he loved, Simon Hunter was happier than he’d been since he was a child. Twice his life had been ripped apart, when he’d lost those he’d cared for, and he had doubted if he would ever achieve true happiness. He didn’t know what it was; perhaps the two bottles of wine they had managed to put away since lunch had made him philosophical but Hunter found himself reliving his past like an old man. Shit. His thoughts were all over the place. Old man. He loved Terri, he really did, but that was what she called him. In jest. He was thirty-seven now and although Terri joked that he was an old man he did not consider himself to be one, no old men were “Boomers” like his dad …
His feelings for Terri had troubled him at first as the scars caused by his past somehow seemed to be more livid. He’d not told Terri about either event, not wanting to saddle her with his sadness. He’d lost an ex, his first love – Sofia Antonova. She’d died at the wheel in a fatal car crash. But lying there he felt guilty about remembering her. He had loved her, and he hadn’t been a kid – they’d been in their twenties. Occasionally over the years he’d dreamed that she was alive, and with him. He sighed. He had to forget her, if he was going to move on.
But he couldn’t forget his parents. It was late August and the anniversary of their deaths was approaching. Yet all this was the past; Terri was with him in the present and he hoped she would be a large part of his future.
Perhaps soon, if Terri felt the same way about him as he did about her, he would have to have “the conversation” – after she had been fully vetted of course, where he would come clean and tell her what he really did at the British Embassy in Washington. He was a fool for not openly declaring his relationship to the SIS, and knew that if found out he would receive a reprimand but he hadn’t wanted to go through what he saw as the humiliation of potentially vetting Terri only to lose her. Beside him Terri started to gently snore. Hunter cracked a wide smile; perhaps he should record it so that finally she’d believe him? The gentle sounds of a Washington summer evening wafted in on the air as he closed his eyes, drifting off into what he hoped would for once be happy dreams …
He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep for but far away Hunter heard a duck quacking. He was a boy, walking with his parents in the park. He tossed a chunk of bread to a mallard and another bird jostled for a piece of its own, but the quacking persisted and grew louder. It was rhythmic, it was mechanical …
‘That friggin’ phone!’ an irritated, but sleepy voice mumbled.
Hunter opened his eyes; he’d been asleep, dreaming. The quacking was the ring tone, which he found funny, of his secure iPhone on the bedside cabinet.
‘Ignore it,’ Terri ordered tersely.
‘I can’t.’ Hunter stretched for the phone, grabbing it as it rang off. He looked at the display, a colleague from the embassy. He was about to return the call when a text message arrived, a single word, a code word he had never received before and had hoped he never would. It was a security protocol introduced two years before to battle the ever-growing sophistication of foreign intelligence agencies and enemies of the Crown. Awake, alert, with all thought of sleep vanquished, his chest was tight. ‘I need to get to the embassy.’
‘Now?’
‘Now.’ Hunter sat up. ‘Something has come up.’
‘Again?’ Terri reached for him.
Hunter got out of bed. ‘I’m serious. I’m needed there.’
‘What is it? What’s happening?’
‘Terri, I’ve got to go.’
‘Ugh.’ She pushed her head back into the pillow. ‘You are a diplomat not friggin’ 007.’
‘I know. I love you.’ Hunter dressed in fresh boxers and socks then grabbed a pair of chinos. He searched the room for a top. Terri threw the Hulkamania T-shirt at him. He shook his head and retrieved a blue oxford shirt from the wardrobe.
‘How long will you be?’
He shrugged. ‘Sorry, I really don’t know. I’ll call you.’
‘You’ve abandoned me!’ Terri declared dramatically. She closed her eyes and pulled the covers back up.
Still in a state of shock, Hunter got into his eight-year-old Land Rover Defender. The code word meant that a member of the diplomatic mission had been killed. He knew nothing more than that, and there was no way he was going to risk making a telephone call. Secure or not, he had no doubt that somewhere, someone could listen in to his every word. He swung the boxy 4×4 away from the kerb and powered up the deserted street, the diesel engine roaring like an angry lion. At this time of day, he’d make the office in seven minutes, less if he put his foot down.
The British Embassy, on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Observatory Circle, was an unremarkable red-brick building that reminded Hunter of a comprehensive school. Usually lined with parked cars, Observatory Circle was all but empty. Hunter noticed a solitary taxi stood at the corner facing Massachusetts, the driver apparently killing time or waiting for a fare or whatever else taxi drivers did. Hunter brought his Land Rover to a halt at the barrier, and a security guard checked his ID before waving him through. After pulling into the parking lot, he quickly made his way into the embassy building itself. The front desk was manned by Karen King, one of the locally hired support staff. She had a worried expression on her face.
‘Hi, Karen.’ Hunter forced a smile as the American did the same.
‘Everyone is in the conference room.’
‘Thanks.’ He marched along the hallway then peered through the door. He saw that “everyone” amounted to half a dozen junior staff. He continued on to his own office but was intercepted by Eric Filler, the Cultural Attaché. Hunter liked the man, despite that fact that he was known for his notoriously bad short-term memory, which resulted in him constantly misplacing memos, his reading glasses and his phone. Filler was dressed in khaki cargo shorts and a baggy yellow polo shirt, all but unrecognisable without his bespoke Savile Row suit. Hunter asked him, ‘What’s happened?’
Filler took Hunter by the shoulder and led him into his office, two doors down. He sat heavily before his desk. A sprinkling of Post-it Notes with scribbled reminders cluttered the workspace. ‘Dudley Smith is dead.’
Hunter sat, shocked. ‘How?’
‘He was shot.’
‘What?’
‘The police are still trying to determine exactly what happened.’
Hunter blinked; this was horrible. ‘And Dawn?’
Filler smiled ruefully. ‘He wasn’t with his wife; he was off humping that blonde girl from the coffee shop.’
The impact of the news started to sink in … Dudley Smith was the Military Attaché, the highest representative of the British armed forces in the United States of America. Hunter had known about the man’s wandering eye but this was different. All single diplomats in sensitive positions had been specifically warned that anyone they became “involved with” needed to be vetted, something that Hunter himself had guiltily failed to do with Terri, to safeguard against extortion from criminals and foreign agents. For Smith this also safeguarded against sullying the reputation of HM Armed Forces. And on top of all this he was a married man. ‘He told me they just met for coffee.’
‘He lied.’
‘How? I mean why? Who?’ Hunter was still in a state of disbelief.
‘Those are the questions the police will be asking us all, but I was hoping you had some idea.’
‘Without any details from the police, it’s all speculation. Get shot back home it’s a big thing, but here everyone and his granny has a gun. For all we know, it could have been an accident, or a robbery.’
‘Or “coffee girl’s” jealous boyfriend?’ Filler pronounced.
‘Shit.’
‘Shit indeed.’
Both diplomats were shaken. The death of a colleague was not something they ever got used to dealing with. Hunter asked, ‘Where’s the boss?’
‘Karen couldn’t raise him. That’s why she called me and why I sent out the alert.’
‘Any idea where he might be?’
‘On his bike?’ Anthony Tudor, the United Kingdom’s Ambassador to the United States of America, was known to disappear – official functions permitting – at the weekends. He loved bicycles and hated cities. Filler checked his watch. ‘I’ll start the briefing in twenty minutes. In the meantime, I’m going to speak to the police to see if there is anything extra they can tell us.’
Hunter nodded. In the absence of the ambassador, as the most senior diplomat, Filler was in charge. He knew he had to contact the Foreign Office but would wait until he was fully briefed.
Washington, DC
Li Tam had been a registered taxi driver for twenty years, ever since immigrating to the US. He had worked hard, providing a good home for his wife and putting his daughter through college. Friends and family saw him as the poster boy for the American Dream, the epitome of honest, hard work. But they were all wrong.
Li Tam was not a taxi driver. Before being transferred to his new master, Li Tam had been an agent of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, a spy. With a sub sandwich in his hands and his light turned off, Li Tam seemed like a man taking a few minutes of “me time” before searching for his next fare. This also was wrong. Li Tam was observing the British Embassy and mentally ticking off who had or had not arrived for the crisis meeting. It had been almost ninety minutes now since the alarm had been raised, and all but three of the diplomatic staff had turned up.
Worryingly for Li Tam, this hadn’t included the ambassador. Li Tam counted the staff in and he counted them out again. Yes, he was sure. The British Ambassador had not been in the building. It was time to let the Russians know that the mission had a kink.
*
‘Da?’ Maksim Oleniuk said, through a mouthful of filet mignon.
‘We do not have the ambassador.’
‘What?’ Oleniuk spluttered and reached for his wine.
‘He did not come to the embassy, and he is not at his residence.’
‘Suka!’ Oleniuk cursed in Russian. ‘He must be found; we have a matter of hours left before the event!’
‘I am aware of that.’
‘I have new orders for you. Collect my man and take him to this location.’
Li Tam listened as Oleniuk dictated a Georgetown address. ‘Understood.’
Oleniuk ended the call. He clicked his fingers for the cheque. A Hispanic server quickly handed him a piece of paper inside a leather wallet. Without examining the amount, Oleniuk thrust three hundred-dollar bills inside and left. Years of planning had been put into this project and now it all seemed to be unravelling. Someone would pay, and it would not be him. He stepped onto the sidewalk and the rear passenger door of the limousine was opened by one of his men. Oleniuk paused to take in the view of the boulevard, lit up and humming with nightlife, before he clambered inside and they pulled away.
Through the tinted, ballistic glass he watched late-night Washington go about its business. Let them live tonight, he mused, as tomorrow they will have nothing to enjoy. He checked his wristwatch and corrected himself; tomorrow was already here in Moscow.
It was Oleniuk’s belief that for too long Russia had been the butt of jokes, the once powerful nation made pauper by the collective actions of the international community. They had meddled with her affairs, unfairly attacking her trade and business links all because she had liberated lands that had rightfully been hers. Crimea was Russian land! It never was and never should have been part of Ukraine, yet the international community could not see this. They had sided with Ukraine, which in his opinion was a made-up place, not a sovereign country, and because of this would forever be his enemy and an enemy of Mother Russia.
But he, like Russia, had bided his time. Pretending to fawn over canapés at innumerable society events, laughing at jokes told by buffoons with wives like baboons. One aspect of the operation irked him; the world and his homeland would never know that it was he – a true Russian patriot – who had eliminated Russia’s enemies and masterminded the attack that had brought the United States to its knees.
Oleniuk had been a GRU officer, a soldier, a planner but believed most of all that he would be remembered as a leader. After leaving the Russian military he had continued to follow the development of military technology, and with extensive funding from his Chinese billionaire partner, had privately taken over certain research programs, which the long-standing Russian president had insisted be scrapped. Whilst the Russian state concentrated on bankrupting itself by producing quicker tanks, larger submarines and stealthier fast jets, Oleniuk had restarted the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) program. Unburdened from the shackles of the moribund post-Soviet state, five years of continuing research and Chinese cooperation had resulted in an operational weapon. A unit that could be delivered by an airframe and detonated unseen a mile above its target.
But Oleniuk had not shared his breakthrough with Russia. He knew the Russian military and intelligence apparatus inside out. The officers and men on the ground were hardworking, trustworthy, but the higher up the ranks you went the higher the frequency of imbecility was to be found. In short those in power would squander his weapon, his technology and his chance to make a difference. It was his weapon now, not theirs, and he alone would decide how it was used. And as a patriot, he had made the decision that it would be used to get his motherland out from under the yoke of the United States of America.
Oleniuk knew the technology was limited. An EMP weapon was a single-use force multiplier. He had been assured that the technology could not be copied, or reverse engineered but within months its effects could be counteracted. Nation states would rush to create their own shielding, rendering all but the poorest adversaries susceptible to an EMP attack. Perhaps he should order another unit be detonated over Afghanistan as payback for all the Soviet lives lost in the 1980s?
But no. Such thoughts were corrosive. The EMP strike was a one-off event, with a fall guy and a concrete strategy to ensure no blowback. Meticulously detailed fake intelligence was in place to paint North Korea as the aggressor.
His billionaire Chinese partner, a woman well respected by “the party” would persuade China that it must come to the aid of its strategic trading partner – the US – and rebuild their now defunct industries and infrastructure. Trillions were to be made. In the meantime, China, with the tacit agreement of the international community, and before the US was in a position to do so, would invade North Korea and once and for all bring to heel the embarrassing Third World dictatorship on their doorstep. Overnight the regional paradigm would shift, as would the balance of global power.
The vast sum of money to be made and the will to bloody the nose of the US was enough for his Chinese partner, but Oleniuk had a far loftier goal. Oleniuk knew that the ailing health and popularity of the Russian president may be enough to see him win one more term in office but after that the strongman would be a spent force. Oleniuk had been out of the military for five years, in public life for that five and in five more would have enough wealth and political capital to take the Kremlin. He would be leader of a new, resurgent Russia.
The EMP technology, and the resulting power plays derived from it would kick-start his new Russia but it would be his mind and eventually the work of his men that would bolster this. In any endeavour what was bigger than the game were the rules, and he who controlled the rules decided who played the game and how.
Revenge was Oleniuk’s salient motive. The hit list encapsulated this. Curated by Oleniuk, it contained a list of enemies of the Russian state. Several had been taken care of in Maine, one already eliminated in Washington and two more to go. But there was another name on the list. A third man to kill. A personal enemy. A man whose actions had wounded him, twice. His name was etched into his very being. His direct actions had come very close to destroying Oleniuk, turning him to drink, to despair, to the edge of suicide. Two of the men still to kill were serving diplomats at the British Embassy in Washington, DC; one of them was his nemesis.
Oleniuk rubbed his neck and felt for the scar he’d received in Mariupol. It was the result of the second time the man had wronged him.