Kompromat

David Cole: MP, Justice Minister

Andromeda Ledbury: MP, Leave leader

Eric Forster: MP, Speaker in House of Commons

Miles Pomfrey: MP, leader of the Opposition

Fred Malkin: Conservative Party Chairman

Monica Fall: MP for Blyth

George Wiley: Editor of the Sun newspaper

Louise Hitchcock: BBC journalist/broadcaster

Arthur Pemberton: President of the Oxford Union

Lord Middelbank of Upper Twaddle, Conservative Grandee

Jerry Goodman: Security aide for Edward Barnard

Mnogo Abewa: MI5 interrogator

Noel Garnett: Veteran BBC journalist

Thomas Pulborough: Conservationist

HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Simon Henley: Leader of UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party)

Nancy Ginsberg: BBC political correspondent

Warren Fletcher: US Ambassador in London

Gennadiy Tikhonov: Russian Ambassador in London

Nicolai Nabokov: First Sec at Russian Trade Mission, London

AUSTRALIA

Mickey Selkirk: Head of Selkirk Global media empire

Melanie Selkirk: Selkirk’s wife

Ching Ze-Gong; Mrs Fung: couple who work for Selkirk at Lazy-T ranch

Hu Wong-Fu: Owner of Chinese restaurant in Kununurra

Jim Jackson: Cattleman and helicopter pilot at Lazy-T ranch

Dr Phillips: Doctor at Kununurra Hospital

Professor Cohen: Consultant at the Kununurra Hospital

Professor Irwin Jones: Australian Toxicologist

IRELAND

Fiona Barnard: Daughter of Edward and Melissa Barnard

Michael Kennedy: Fiona’s partner

BRUSSELS/BELGIUM

Michael O’Rourke: President of European Commission

Mary Burns: O’Rourke’s Chef de Cabinet

Arne Jacobsen: Danish Prime Minister

Eloise Pomade: Senior Official in EU Council Secretariat

Lazlo Ferenczy: Prime Minister of Hungary

Jacques Petit: President of France

Martine Le Grand: French Presidential candidate

Otto von Wiensdorf: German Ambassador to EU in Brussels

Sir Luke Threadgold: UK Permanent Representative to EU

TURKEY

Ahmet Ergun: President

Nuray Ergun: His wife

General Aslan Bolat: Turkish Army

KEY INSTITUTIONS AND AGENCIES

CIA: US Central Intelligence Agency

FBI: US Federal Bureau of Investigation

FCC: Federal Communications Commission

FCO: UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office

FSB: Successor agency to KGB

KGB: Main security agency for Soviet Union from 1954–1991

MI5: UK Counter-intelligence agency

MI6: UK’s Secret Intelligence Service

MSS: China’s Ministry of State Security

KEY ANIMALS

Amur tiger: crosses border into China

Helga: tiger cub presented by President Popov to Berlin Zoo

Jemima: Edward Barnard’s bay mare

Sydney Funnel Web Spider: Atrax Robustus

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Kompromat is, to use an old-fashioned term, An Entertainment.

Although the book borrows from recent events, it is a very loose borrowing, being self-evidently a work of fiction and satire, and not a work of history – an antidote to the maxim that truth is stranger than fiction. Readers of this novel should not conclude in any way that any living person misbehaved in the manner that some of the characters in the book regrettably seem to have done.

CHAPTER ONE

Jack Varese, winner of the most recent Best Actor Oscar, was late. Very late. Sitting in the front row of the celebrity audience in St Petersburg’s famous Mariisnky Theatre, Russia’s long-serving president, Igor Popov, muttered to an aide, ‘Where the devil is he? We’re going to have to start without him.’

Popov glanced across the aisle to where the German chancellor, Helga Brun, stared stony-faced at the empty stage in front of her. Next to her was China’s prime minister, Liu Wang-Ji, and next to him in the VIP line-up came India’s prime minister, Nawab Singh.