The Devil's Handshake (19 page)

“
I need to meet him!” she
silently told herself.

On entering the office, she sat down at her
desk, started her desktop computer, entered her password, and then
pulled up his extensive file. As she did so, her boss Michael
Barnes walked in.

He was a tall black man of second generation
West Indian descent, fifty-two years old, wearing the sort of
clothing you would expect to find in any Next or M&S of a
simple dark blue blazer, white shirt, with a red tie and trousers
with a black pair of black shoes. He was married with two teenage
children, a house in Maidenhead, and a product of the State school
system having gone to school in Reading, before going on to
Guildford where he studied Business Studies.

After gaining a First, he then applied on a
whim to the Civil Service only to be like Rebecca diverted into
SIS. Together over the years they had served all over the
world.

“
I hear the meeting with the
PM turned into a bit of love-in,” he said.

“
Oh yes, I thought he was
going to beg at one stage!” Rebecca replied uncharitably with a
smile making reference to the PM taking advantage of the notice to
ask for a media endorsement.

“
Just be careful; the DG
wants this handled with kid gloves” he said, ever the politician.
“If he is an agent rather than a messenger of Ivan we will need to
advise the FS. If he isn’t and we get this wrong then the fallout
would be disastrous for us!”

Rebecca looked at him one more time, but
didn’t say anything as he got up and walked out of her office. She
knew the stakes more than anyone.

The African investment although important
from a trade perspective and of course to the United States whose
interests in the area were dead set against the growth of Russian
influence in the Horn of Africa was secondary as far as the SIS
were concerned. The real threat they were concerned about was
whether the major contributor to the different political parties of
the United Kingdom represented a clear and present danger to the
‘Defense of the Realm’ with his ability to mold and form policy. If
he was an SVR asset then his reach and influence could have serious
implications. The fact he had a Russian passport should have been
enough for them all at the SIS in usual circumstances. Still, the
game had changed dramatically over the last twenty years; ideology
trumped by financial power throughout the fabric of society every
time and when aligned alongside his outstanding military record
from when he had served in the British Army meant that nobody
wanted to risk sending it up the chain that he was suspect.

Being the service experts on the Oligarchs,
Rebecca’s department had been tasked to rubber stamp him one way or
another. The more political animals of the service considered it a
poisoned chalice, so stayed away relieved it was not on their
desk.

Get it wrong and it would be career suicide
with a posting to the Congo, Michael had warned when giving her the
task.

As she stared back at his rakish features on
the desktop, Rebecca took the decision to use the high ground.

“
Strike while the iron is
hot!” she told herself with determination.

The phone buzzing on the desk interrupted
Thomas’s thoughts. On pushing the button he was greeted by his
assistant’s crisp voice.

“
Sir Thomas, sorry to bother
you I have a Mrs. Elizabeth Field from the Home Office on the
line.”

“
Put her through please,” he
replied without hesitation.

Greeting her politely and choosing not to
reveal that he knew her real name as he knew the call would be
recorded her end and was almost certainly being monitored by SVR,
he arranged to meet her for a coffee at Connaught around the corner
from his office at three just before heading off to Nice.

As he put the phone down he reflected, “That
was quick!”

In the back of his mind, Thomas had suspected
that the charade of this morning’s meeting was actually about two
things.

For the PM, it was getting his covert support
for him as the election approached. That was positive because it
showed him that the British government would at worst take a
neutral position with respect to the Adwalland deal. Something he
would “pass” up the line to Moscow at a suitable moment.

For the SIS, he initially assumed it was to
report back to the Americans under the terms of their shared
intelligence platform, but it wasn’t until Rebecca brought up his
discreet Russian passport granted by the Mayor all those years ago
to test his reaction did he realize what they really concerned
about: that he was an enemy agent of the Special Services of
Russia.

He pondered on that thought for a moment. He
had considered the passport of limited importance. A mere piece of
theatre created by the Mayor all those years ago to justify his
expectation of his continued loyalty and ensure that he knew his
place within the political fabric he had created within Russia.

Most of the time the bloody thing sat in the
safe at Holland Park except of course whenever he traveled into
Russia and the former Republics of the Soviet Union.

To the SIS, he summarized it appeared it was
much more important, something he had gauged by the approach of her
questions.

The appearance of Rebecca in the sitting room
at Downing Street had been a pleasant surprise.

The years had treated her well as far Thomas
was concerned, she was now even more elegant and beautiful than
when he last saw her all those years ago in Moscow, of course only
then he didn’t know she was in fact, a young officer of the SIS. As
he remembered about that moment he smiled, it pleased him his
photographic memory never failed him.

His wandering mind’s attention moved back to
his inbox. Seeing an email from Angus in reference to her, he
opened it. Reading it, he noted that she had never married, had a
private life, which couldn’t be at best described as a threat to
national security as none of her recent lovers actually knew what
she did. He also noted with a chuckle that she was considered the
expert in the service on the Oligarchs.

“
That explains a lot!” he
thought out loud before continuing with his reading.

A rotation in Iraq as a support member in the
‘Green Zone,’ keeping an eye on the contractors then a placement in
Nairobi monitoring the area in the early 2006 showed him that she
was highly thought of in the service.

His mind returned to the fact she had never
married and then to a collection of newspapers reports that were
attached as files.

It appeared that one of her lovers, the man
she planned to marry, was a member of the Red Cross and had been
tragically killed in Somalia when his Land Rover had driven over a
landmine.

The death of her fiancée he guessed had to be
linked to her career, an assumption he reached by its lack of
reference of him in Angus’s notes.

“
Nice to see some secrets
are still kept!” he concluded.

Experience told him that Rebecca had to enjoy
the power of knowledge. In her work it was a function that was an
essential prerequisite, for him he considered it a weakness.

It was then he decided that he would use to
his advantage as he tested her this afternoon over afternoon tea.
Bored, he skimmed the rest of the notes that were pretty standard
on her background in terms of family and friends.

Truth be known he was actually quite
disappointed that Angus could get that much information within an
hour from former colleagues on a dedicated officer who had served
faithfully her country in spite of the lack of background on the
death of the one person that she appeared to be close to.

Closing the file down he reflected about the
stepped up interested in him again by the SIS. The simple fact was
though he wasn’t a fully paid up agent of the SVR he was certainly
and had been whether he liked it or not an asset of the Mayor and
as such, was his instrument just as Achilles was of King Agamemnon
in the Trojan War.

He didn’t believe, like the beautiful
Rebecca, in the concept of blind loyalty to one’s country rather
like Dostoevsky.

“
The line between good and
evil is drawn, not between nations or parties, but through every
human heart.”

To him the said heart was those he was sworn
to protect, gave him their loyalty, and those of his blood no
matter the cost, with Nara and Victoria at its epicenter.

The deal he had brokered in East Africa had
originally been driven by the huge profits. The fact it had to
include the interests of Russia was merely a by-product that he had
no escape from.

He stroked his chin. “So let see where the
game takes us Rebecca?” he mused in a final reflection as he leaned
back in his chair.

At ten to three on leaving his townhouse
office, Thomas with his ever-present guards led by Mikhail walked
around the corner to Mount Street, up and into the famous Connaught
Five-Star Hotel. On entering, Espelette, the General Manager warmly
greeted him by informing him that his guest Mrs. Field was waiting
for him by the window. Signaling Mikhail and his men to stay in the
lobby of the hotel, he walked towards the beautiful woman.

“
Thank you for seeing me on
short notice, Sir Thomas,” she said offering her hand as he sat
down in front of her continuing with her cover.

Taking a moment to look at her as he had done
earlier in Downing Street, this time Thomas replied as he took her
hand firmly. “Rebecca, you don’t need to call me Sir Thomas,” he
said with a twinkle in his eye, thereby acknowledging and proving
her initial conclusion that he had recognized her in an instant
although Thomas didn’t know that.

“
Gosh!” Rebecca exclaimed,
playing along. “How on earth can you remember that it was almost
twenty years ago!” she said, regaining her composure.

“
One always remembers the
ones that got away!” Thomas answered with a chuckle releasing her
hand.

“
Well I can see your charm
hasn’t mellowed over the years, Thomas,” she fenced back at him
dropping the ‘Sir’ in front of his name. “In any case, thank you
for not embarrassing me this morning,” she answered
sincerely.

Acknowledging her thanks with a simple nod to
put her at ease as the waiter turned up, Thomas offered a glass of
champagne. She politely declined before they both settled on a cup
of tea each.

Knowing he had to leave so he could make his
slot time at Farnborough in the late afternoon, Thomas immediately
got down to business with her.

Rebecca, as he was offering her the
champagne, was sizing up her person of interest and wondering what
was his angle. She didn’t need to wait very long.

“
So SIS is concerned that I
am an asset of Foreign Power?” he said matter of
factually.

“
The sledgehammer approach,
Thomas?” Rebecca replied with a slight smirk that earned in return
one back from him as the waiter arrived then theatrically poured
their tea through the strainers into the signature bone china cups
and then placed the silver teapot on the table and left.

Their conversation resumed.

“
Why don’t I put you at ease
as it appears an African Oil deal and the building of a Russian
Naval base stopped being of interest to the Great British Empire in
1990s,” he answered in reference to the fact that Britain’s
interests were no longer Cold War focused.

Using her skills to spot micro-expressions
that linked to deceptions during interrogations during the next
twenty minutes, Rebecca concluded that though Thomas had admitted
he was close to the President of Russia, the relationship was best
explained by Thomas’s way of a cricketing analogy.

“
That whether I like or not,
I have no choice but play each ball as it comes.”

“
Much like the messenger
from the Iliad?” She fenced with him.

A look of surprise appeared on Thomas’s face.
She knew all about his background, including his love of the
classics and the teachings of Homer and by using the response in
the manner she had just done told him that.

After a moment Rebecca noted his initial
shock had dissipated well enough to laugh.

“
Indeed,” he acknowledged.
“But I certainly don’t want to end up like the poor messenger from
Troy!” In Homer’s poem, King Agamemnon messenger had been stoned to
death upon the delivery of his message because they did not like
its contents.

“
More like Bellerophontes,”
Rebecca replied with a piercing stare preferring to use the part of
the epic poem when Argos sent the hero with message saying, “Kill
this messenger” to the ruler of Lycia but instead ended up becoming
Greece’s greatest hero for killing the Chimera, the monster that
Homer depicted with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s
tail.

This time he didn’t say anything for a few
moments. Instead he smiled and kept her stare before breaking it by
looking at his watch.

“
You’re most welcome to
liaise with Angus for your report, I promise I have nothing to hide
from you,” he offered.

“
I do apologize, but I am
running late,” he said with sincerity. “When I get back to London
let’s get together again,” he further offered. “That’s if you have
any more questions?” he quickly added with warmth.

“
Absolutely,” Rebecca
answered back.

“
Of course, it’s only so I
can recruit you for Ivan!” he joked attempting to gain the upper
hand to which Rebecca smiled in return but chose not to
comment.

As she watched him walk away, Rebecca felt
something she hadn’t felt since Christopher lost his life, but
being a professional she quickly banished so to focus on her work
at hand something now made more complicated by the fact Thomas knew
almost certainly everything about her, if he was connected as she
expected him to be.