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MARCIE OPENED THE BACK door than went to divert Jonathan. Orlov entered the house without incident and went straight to the bathroom for a shower. When he emerged onto the landing, Hartley-Brown was knocking on his door.
“Is everything okay?” Orlov asked.
“Everything’s fine, sir. It’s just ... Marcie’s had an idea. It cost me a few moments off duty, but I think it’s got mileage. There’s an old tunnel under one of the carpets downstairs. If you like, I could accompany you through it and we could get you out of here.”
“Have you - ever done it before?”
“No, but she swears there’s a map in the library somewhere. I’m just saying it’s a possibility.”
He put his teeth together. “I think we’ll take our chances.”
Breakfast was a buffet of bacon, eggs, fried bread and kidneys. Joy and Sir Anthony were first downstairs and they waited for everyone to assemble before starting. The men wore suits. Joy was dressed exactly as she had been yesterday. Marcie wore a pinafore dress, heels, bronze lipstick and an air of self-consciousness, and Anya wore trousers. They helped themselves to food and sat down where they’d been last night. Geoffrey poured the tea.
“Bit overdressed for a fry-up,” Marcie’s father told her.
Her eyes flashed annoyance. She put a whole kidney on her fork and nibbled the edge of it.
“Only saying,” he added. “You look marvellous, as usual.”
“Please be quiet, Daddy.”
“What are we going to do about the chaps outside?” Jonathan asked.
“Just bide our time,” Sir Anthony said, in a tone of being pleased to change the subject. “They’ll have to show their hand today, surely. And I don’t suppose they can mean us any harm. No army in its right mind attacks in full daylight when it’s had the place surrounded overnight.”
“Eat your kidneys,” Joy told Anya.
“They’re all gristly,” Anya said.
“They’re good for you.”
“I don’t like them.”
“Let her get the ketchup from the kitchen, Mummy,” Marcie said.
Sir Anthony pointed at Orlov with a downturned fork. “I had an excellent idea last night. Believe it or not, there’s supposed to be an old escape tunnel under the entrance hall. It’s probably flooded now, but we could hide you there while they search the premises if it turns out they’re hostile.”
“You could even go along it,” Marcie said. She winked at her brother. He winked back. “If it’s really ‘an escape tunnel’.”
Sir Anthony scoffed. “You’d have to be mad. Slightest noise, the whole thing would probably come down on your head. Assuming there’s even anything left of it.”
The door opened and an elderly woman entered, wearing an apron and carrying an aerosol. She went straight to Geoffrey, addressed him in a whisper then left.
“What is it, Geoffrey?” Sir Anthony said with his mouth full.
“There are some gentlemen at the door to see you, sir.”
“See me or Colonel Orlov?”
“See you in the first instance, sir, although going by what Geraldine’s just told me, I believe that’s a courtesy. They wish to request access to Colonel Orlov and Mr Bronstein and young Mr Hartley-Brown.”
“They want to see us two as well?” Bronstein said. “Why?”
“I - I don’t know, sir. I - ”
“Ask Geraldine to put them in the lounge, Geoffrey, if you’d be so kind. Tell them we’ll be about twenty minutes. More tea or coffee, anyone?”
Geoffrey opened the door and Sir Anthony entered the lounge – a hangar-sized room with a sofa and two armchairs huddled like orphans round a fireplace and an over-ambitious nineteenth century landscape - followed by Orlov, Bronstein and Hartley-Brown. Two men in their early forties with crew cuts and black brogues stood up. One had blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses. The other had brown hair and a Rolex. Otherwise, they were identical.
“Good morning and welcome to my house, gentlemen,” Sir Anthony said. “I wonder if you’d mind telling me where my security team is and why you’ve cut the phones off?”
“It’s quite simple, sir,” said the blond haired man. “Yesterday there was an attempt made on Colonel Orlov’s life. We’ve been assigned to protect him. Too many cooks spoil the broth, so to speak, so we took the liberty of sending your team home. They didn’t argue. We cut the phones to stop you calling the police. We apologise for any inconvenience.”
“Why have you been loitering in the grounds? Who are you?”
“We wanted to ensure Colonel Orlov got a good night’s sleep,” the blond man said. “We’re MI5 operatives.”
“The phones are back on now,” the brown haired man said.
“What about my security men? Are they back?”
“They’re ready to report for duty.”
“Sit down, then,” Sir Anthony said, “do sit down.”
“We’d like to talk to the three gentlemen you’ve brought in, sir, if that’s not too much of an imposition.”
“Privately?”
“Please.”
“Colonel Orlov?”
Orlov turned to Bronstein and Hartley-Brown and exchanged nods. Sir Anthony left with Geoffrey and closed the doors. The five men still in the room remained standing, facing each other as if they were about to draw Smith & Wessons.
“We’ve been instructed to request all three of you to accompany us to London,” the blond-haired man said.
“Request or demand?” Orlov said.
“Request. The chief was quite specific about that. If you choose not to, we’ve money for your flight back to Moscow or wherever else in Russia you choose to go, by whatever means. We’ll even arrange transit.”
“What’s the catch?” Orlov said.
“And what do you want from me and Jonathan?” Bronstein said.
“I’m not authorised to answer those questions. All I can say is that if we were considering forcing you to do anything, you wouldn’t be in any doubt by now.”
“I’m just thinking good cop, bad cop,” Bronstein said.
“And you can choose never to find out,” the brown-haired man said.
Orlov looked at his watch. “I’d like a few moments to thank Sir Anthony and his family for their hospitality, then we’ll be with you. We’d like to travel together, if that’s acceptable.”
“We’ll bring the car to the front.”
Sir Anthony and his family stood on the steps to wave goodbye, exactly as they’d been assembled yesterday except this time Marcie was there. Hartley-Brown thought he’d never seen her looking so weary or miserable before. It was okay, though. Now he was unemployed he could take her to a flick or rent a caravan in Wales or whatever it took to put a smile back on her face. Time wasn’t an issue. Maybe they could even get a flat together some place. House arrest was clearly sapping all the life out of her. Their parents obviously meant well, but they were suffocating her with their good intentions.
There was a lorry go-slow protest on the A1 so what should have taken fifty minutes took two and a half hours. The three men endured the crawl in silence until the London suburbs came into view. The tinted windows of the Land Rover didn’t open or close, but the air conditioning worked well. The morning papers were all provided, so they read until the Post Office Tower came into view.
Bronstein leaned over to Hartley-Brown. “You’ve got a wonderful family.”
Hartley-Brown folded The Times and looked out of the window. “We’ve got our problems.”
“If there’s such a thing as a family without, I’d like to see it. You must come and meet mine, now you’ve resigned.”
“Certainly, if I’m ever in New York City.”
“Purim’s always a good time. We have lots of dressing up, so it’s impossible to tell who’s who, and you’re commanded to get drunk.”
Hartley-Brown smiled. “Commanded?”
“At least, that’s how I interpret it. What about you, Colonel? Your parents got any quirks?”
“I can’t remember. They died when I was young.”
“Sheesh, sorry ... Got a wife? Any kids?”
“A wife and one daughter. Both dead.”
Bronstein furrowed his brow then said quietly, “How? ... If you don’t mind me asking?”
Orlov drew a breath. “I’m an ethnic Russian. I had the good or bad fortune - depending on how you look at it - to be born in the Chechen Republic. I married a Muslim woman and we had a daughter. Then in 2000, the Russians shelled Grozny. I was serving with the thirty-second tank regiment on the Polish border at the time. I thought – I was told - they’d long since been evacuated.”
“Geez.”
“Are you a Muslim, sir?” Hartley-Brown asked.
“No.”
“Aren’t you bitter?” Bronstein asked. “Why aren’t you anti-Russian?”
“Because the men who killed my wife and daughter were conscripts. You have to understand what it is to be a conscript in Russia. I’m not anti-Chechen because of Beslan or Stavropol. There are evil people on all sides. When war happens, good people get trampled - on all sides. And we can get hoodwinked into a row about which side started it, but the answer’s always in internal hierarchies rather than flags. The money, the preferments. It’s why I went to prison.”
They drove through the streets of the City without saying anything further. Twenty minutes later, they crossed Lambeth Bridge and turned into Thames House – a sombre grey cross between a Lancashire cotton mill and a Norman Keep - where they disembarked. Hartley-Brown realised that until now, there’d been nothing to prove beyond a doubt it really was MI5 that was transporting them. There were so many double-bluffs in this particular walk of life, anything was possible. Thames House confirmed it, though. He felt relieved before he even realised he’d been anxious.
The blond and the brown haired man accompanied them across a cobbled courtyard, through a set of double doors and into a carpeted foyer with a front desk stretching almost its width. Three receptionists sat with headsets, talking and writing and ignoring new arrivals. The blond haired man and the brown haired man signed a register and took them along a corridor to an open elevator. They stepped inside, the doors chimed shut and they seemed to descend for a long time.
When it opened, they found themselves looking along a long corridor with cream walls, closed entrances on each side, and a panelled door at the end. There were no windows. The complete silence augmented the air of something not quite right. Hartley-Brown felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising again.
“Walk straight ahead,” the brown haired man said.
Orlov led the way to the end and stopped. The blond man knocked and someone inside the room – a woman – called Enter. He opened the door to admit Orlov and Bronstein and Hartley-Brown and closed it without following them.
By now, they were half-expecting a dungeon. Instead they were met by a late middle-aged black woman - grey skirt suit, court shoes and stiff hair – in a whitewashed room just large enough for a desk, a PC, In and Out trays, a large tropical fish tank and a variety of house plants on different levels. Three comfortable chairs had been set out. In the corner an old white woman with grey hair in a bun sat leaning on a walking stick looking oblivious. The aerator bubbled.
“Please sit down,” the black woman said. “My name is Ruby Parker. You may have heard of me, Colonel, since you once worked in intelligence, although I think it’s unlikely. I’m known in some quarters as the Red Maiden, although obviously I don’t encourage people to call me that except in certain categories of official memoranda. You may call me Ruby.”
Orlov looked to Bronstein and Hartley-Brown for any glimmer of recognition or sense that she was dissembling. None came. “I’m afraid you have me at an advantage,” he said, at last.
“Maiden or not, there’s something I need to get off my chest,” Bronstein said. “According to Sir Colin Bowker, your people said I’m from the CIA, yes?”
She smiled. “We told him that because we were certain it would be the final straw. Which it was. Of course it was a lie.”
“Why?”
“Because we want you to come and work here. The three of you. As a unit.”
There was silence. The central heating awoke and hummed softly and the room filled with a renewed sense of unreality. Hartley-Brown felt it intensely. This was Thames House, he’d seen that. And yet – surely it wasn’t.
“And what do you expect in return?” Orlov said, at last.
“Nothing.”
He clicked his tongue. “No information about networks of dissidents, details of global intelligence strategies, names of agents, induction protocols, site locations – none of that?”
“As I said, no thank you.”
Bronstein sat forward with a grin. “Let me get this straight. You’re offering him – a Russian – a chance to come and work here, at MI5. That right?”
“Roughly, yes.”
“Gee whiz, I thought I’d heard everything.”
She smiled dryly. “You obviously don’t know there are Russians working at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Lieutenant Bronstein.”
There was another protracted silence.
“I don’t believe you,” Bronstein said.
Hartley-Brown drew a deep breath. “With respect ... Ms Parker? ... I think I’m speaking for all of us when I – when I say it’s difficult to understand what MI5 has to gain from what you seem to be proposing.” It was more than that. He wondered if there could be two Thames Houses, and this was the dummy.
“I’m trying to take the whole thing in increments,” she said. “I know from experience that someone sitting where you are now, with your background, offered this opportunity, is apt to experience a period of incredulity. I’m waiting until that’s passed.”
“May we assume it’s passed now?” Hartley-Brown said uncertainly, scanning his colleagues’ faces.
“The reason you’re incredulous,” she went on, “is because you haven’t the faintest conception of how MI5, MI6 and the FBI and CIA now work. Which is very good news for us, very bad news for the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, not to mention the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure and the Bundesnachrichtendienst. We’ve managed to keep our rivals in the dark for over a decade.”
“Bravo,” Bronstein said. “Now maybe you could fill us in on what the hell you’re talking about.” He folded his hands together. “No disrespect.”
She sat down. “I won’t bore you with the details. There is no MI5. Not any more. It merged with MI6 nearly a decade ago to create MI7, the result of an initiative to bring intelligence – in the cybernetic sense of the word – into Intelligence. We continue in public under the MI5, MI6 designation for obvious reasons. And because people seem to like it.”
“Right,” Bronstein said.
She chuckled. “We’ve had effective departments of spies in this country since Francis Walsingham in the sixteenth century, Lieutenant Bronstein. The author of Robinson Crusoe was a spy. There was nothing special about MI5 or MI6.”
“So in what way is MI7 different?” Hartley-Brown said.
“Instead of a bipartite division we now have a number of ‘levels’, physical and conceptual, run by different colour ‘Maidens’. Five of us. The White Maiden operates on the old MI5 and 6 remit, defending the realm, narrowly conceived. Beneath her, the Red, the Blue, the Grey, the Black. The latter works alone at a depth of two miles, one and three quarter miles beneath where you’re sitting.”
Bronstein blinked several times in quick succession, then drew back his head and grinned. “Five maidens, no misters. My kind of town.”
“Maiden is a formal designation. It doesn’t specify the gender of the role’s occupant.”
“And you all work together, yeah?”
“On the contrary.”
Bronstein looked as if he was about to burst out laughing. “No?”
“The idea is that providing every individual does his or her job conscientiously, and every department sticks to its brief, the behaviour of the whole is more rapid and rational than anything the previous pyramidal model could hope to offer. ‘Intelligence must be intelligent’.”
“A bit like a beehive,” Hartley-Brown said, diplomatically, though his head was spinning just as much as he knew Bronstein’s was.
“Each of us knows the brief of those above her,” Ruby Parker continued, tapping a small tub of flakes delicately over the fish tank and watching as a group of Gouramis came to feed, “although not what steps she’s taking to fulfil it. More, she’s authorised to facilitate or to sabotage her projects depending on whether she chances to discover them. But none knows the brief of those below. We make our guesses naturally – I happen to think the Blue Maiden has a more military remit than I do, for example - but precise knowledge isn’t possible, even if it were desirable. MI7 today is a different animal to MI7 in say 2000 or 2005, and it’ll be different again in 2020. And no one can predict how.”
Bronstein was still grinning. “So you’re actually authorised to sabotage operations carried out by your own organisation?”
“If we discover and disapprove of them, yes.”
“It’s original, I’ll give you that.”
“It’s how intelligent systems sometimes work, Lieutenant Bronstein.”
Orlov looked at her. “What’s your brief?”
“I can’t tell you everything. Very roughly, the Red Maiden exists to disrupt despotic and protect democratic regimes.”
“And who defines democratic?”
“We all do. Everyone.”
Hartley-Brown raised his eyebrows. “But what if we all decide that democracy involves getting the trains to run on time or killing all the Jews?”
“Then we define it as the separation of the powers, Mr Hartley-Brown, or as universal suffrage or Mill’s Harm Principle. We may think we need a definition when we’re having a discussion like this, but in practice it’s nearly always unnecessary.”
A silence fell. For the first time, Hartley-Brown had the sense that at least part of what he was hearing made some sort of sense. Maybe time and his subconscious were cooperating to weave a spell. It had happened before. Whether it was a good or a bad thing ...
Orlov stroked his chin. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I came to work for you. What would I be doing?”
“You’d be continuing the investigation with which Inspector Hartley-Brown and Lieutenant Bronstein have already made commendable progress. You recognised the gunman instantly, I imagine?”
“Dmitri Vassyli Kramski.”
“Which was as much of a surprise to us as it probably was to you. Have you any idea what he’s up to?”
“None at all.”
“Then that’s what you’d be trying to find out.”
“Any news on the man who attacked me at the airport?”
“So far the police have drawn a complete blank. White, mid-thirties, six-two, almost certainly an illegal. You’ve got lots of enemies, so the rest is guesswork. They’re still working on it, obviously.”
Orlov lapsed back into thought.
“Lieutenant Bronstein,” she said, “I’ve cleared it with the NYPD for you to work here, if you choose. They’re anxious not to lose your services for good, so you may prefer to accept my offer as an extension to your secondment. You can confirm that in person. There’s a CIA substation on Canary Wharf, I’ll give you the address and a pass. Or you can contact One Police Plaza in Manhattan. Despite your surface antagonism, I very much hope you’ll say yes.”
Orlov shook his head as if he was still having difficulty. “And you’re saying you don’t want any information from me?”
“With respect, I doubt you could tell us anything we don’t already know.”
“And I wouldn’t be ... betraying Russia?”
“We’re not interested in that kind of war.”
He let out a flute of air and nodded. “Provisionally then, I’m happy.”
“And it just so happens,” Bronstein said with a conciliatory shrug, “that I’m looking to escape from New York. It’s why I came to London in the first place.”
“Oh?” Ruby Parker said.
“My folks keep trying to marry me off to Sarah, Rebekah and Esther. I’ll still have to check with HQ. But if they’re up for it, I guess count me in.”
She turned to Hartley-Brown. It was what the cliché called a ‘no brainer’. If only she’d told them they’d be working on the Kramski case when they arrived, there would have been no need for her to explain the ‘Maiden’ business. Which frankly, still sounded bizarre.
He smiled. “If everyone else agrees, I see no reason to decline.”
She handed each a large envelope. “This contains your new address, a month’s pay, bank account details and identification documents to present at the desk each morning. This lady” – she indicated the woman with the bun, who had stood up without smiling – “is Celia Demure. She headhunts and trains new agents. If you know anyone you think might be suitable, tell me in the first instance. But I warn you, she’s very discriminating. Settle in to your new addresses today. Report back here at eight am sharp and I’ll show you your shared office. And Colonel Orlov, I was asked to give you this.”
She reached into her drawer, took out a gun and placed it on the table. His Ots-33. He looked incredulously at it then slipped it into his pocket.
