Kompromat

‘I guess I must have been.’ Barnard sounded defeated. Totally defeated. Suddenly his world had been turned upside down. He wondered if Melissa would leave him. ‘The truth of the matter,’ he continued, ‘is that I don’t actually remember what happened. I admit I’d drunk a certain amount at the dinner in the Winter Palace. This is Russia, remember. And it was a festive occasion. Drinking is what you do, unless you want to give offence to your hosts. Then we came back to the bar in the Kempinski. Did someone slip something in my drink at some point? Perhaps. I remember being in the lift with the two women. I remember punching the button for the eighth floor. But after that my memory is blank, I’m afraid, totally blank. I admit it looks like it could be me on the bed there, though you can’t see my face.’

Mark Cooper let it run on. The way he saw it, Barnard deserved to suffer, for being careless, if for nothing else. But he realized that it was time to call a halt. They’d all had their bit of fun. It wasn’t every day you had ministers, or former ministers, in the dock wondering where the next blow was coming from.

‘I’m going to get the technicians in here now. I’ve just heard they’ve finished their analysis of the video.’

He pressed a buzzer beneath the table and two young men, one bearded, the other clean-shaven, entered the room.

‘Gentlemen, don’t keep us waiting. Are these tapes fake or not? If they are fake, fabricated or whatever, can we prove it? If the man in question looks like Mr Barnard, talks like Mr Barnard and fucks like Mr Barnard, can we plausibly say this is not Mr Barnard? If we can’t say – and say convincingly – that it’s not Mr Barnard, then the tapes can show up anytime, anywhere with devastating effect.’

‘I’m sure that my wife could be of some help,’ Barnard interjected, in a still small voice. ‘When Melissa had calmed down, eventually, she told me that she realized all along it couldn’t be me. “Wow, Edward.” she said. “I’d love to think you could do all that, but I know you can’t!” ’

It was a feeble joke but it served to defuse the tension. On the crucial issue, the verdict of the young technicians was clear. The tapes were fake.

James the Beard explained: ‘The images of the two Russian ladies are genuine, no doubt about that. The image of Mr Barnard in the lift is genuine, though he is – it must be said – looking a bit worse for wear. The three of them appear to walk seamlessly into the room. But they don’t actually enter the room. Mr Barnard enters the room by himself.’

‘You’re absolutely sure of that?’

‘We got in touch with Moscow as soon as those tapes came in to us. Our people there know the Kempinski well, and it’s not the first time they’ve asked our contacts for some CCTV output from the hotel. On this particular occasion, we knew the day Barnard had been there, we knew the time, we knew the hotel floor, and the number of the room: the CCTV clips they sent over to us earlier today tell the whole story. Barnard gets out at the 8th floor, but the two Russian ladies go on up to the 12th floor, the penthouse suite.’

‘And?’ Mark Cooper pressed him. ‘What next?’

‘There is no next,’ the other young man chipped in. ‘Mr Barnard goes to bed alone and wakes up alone. There are no shenanigans of any kind.’

Edward Barnard felt so relieved he could have cried. Disaster had for a time loomed, but now help was at hand. ‘So who’s the chap in bed with the two Russian ladies, pretending to be me?’

‘He’s not pretending to be you, Edward, for heaven’s sake. He’s doing whatever he’s doing, then someone takes that image and makes out it’s you.’ Mark Cooper sounded irritated. Didn’t these politicians understand what they were dealing with? They used to say the camera didn’t lie. Balderdash. The camera lied all the time. You could scramble the pixels just like you could scramble eggs.

‘Well, who is he then anyway?’ Barnard persisted. ‘I know who was in the penthouse at the Kempinski that evening.’

Mark Cooper raised a warning hand.

‘I think we had better leave that question for the time being.’

The meeting went on for another hour. These were Britain’s top security officials. They couldn’t afford to leave stones unturned or avenues unexplored.