Kompromat

‘Oh, my God!’ Barnard exclaimed. ‘You may just have said something important, tremendously important. Ring up Jane Porter, head of MI5, on her private number. Tell her everything you’ve told me. They’ve got to check that film again.’

Melissa Barnard was thrilled. Helping her husband out with his constituency work was one thing, but this was something else again.

‘What’s Jane Porter’s private number?’ she asked.

‘I’ll text it to you,’ he said. ‘You never know who’s listening.’

Sitting at her desk in the FSB’s Lubyanka headquarters in Moscow, Galina Aslanova, the tall, strikingly pretty, head of the Special Operations Unit, picked up the phone.

‘I need to see the Director at once,’ she said. ‘This is urgent.’

Pavel Golov had been the director of the FSB – the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation – for the last five years. Galina Aslanova was one of his most important operatives. As soon as he heard that Galina wanted to see him urgently, he switched off the television where he had been watching Dynamo playing Spartak (he didn’t normally watch TV at work but this was an historic clash).

‘Send her in, please.’

Galina had recorded both of Barnard’s recent Skyped conversations and she brought the flash-drive with her.

‘Probably best if we see it on the wide screen, Director,’ Galina suggested.

When the first tape ended, which showed Barnard reporting to Harriet Marshall, Golov was enthusiastic in his praise.

‘Superb! So it’s all going to plan?’

Galina Aslanova agreed. ‘You are right, Director. We are quite confident that, as soon as we give the signal, Selkirk Global will – as requested – unleash a mighty barrage of news and comment.’

Golov gazed at Galina with undisguised lust.

‘Please call me Pavel.’ He wondered how long it might be before he could get her into bed.

‘Let’s look at the second tape, the one where Barnard talks to his wife,’ Galina continued.

When it had finished, the Director of the FSB let out a deep breath.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about this before? What do you want from me?’

‘A search warrant, signed by you.’

Later that day, Galina Aslanova summoned the team she had assigned to Operation Tectonic Plate. Four women. All fiercely loyal to her.

The oldest, Lyudmila Markova, grey-haired and well over sixty, had served in the FSB for over twenty years. If she resented the fact that a much younger woman had been promoted over her as the Head of Special Ops, she gave no sign of it.

They all were all curious. They knew that Galina had had a sudden unscheduled meeting with the Director.

‘What’s this all about?’ Lyudmila asked.

Galina came straight to the point: ‘You’ve all watched the Skype conversations. We know there’s a video out there and we need to find it.’

She told her deputy, ‘All the evidence points to some freelance activity in the FSB office in St Petersburg at the time of President Popov’s World Tiger Summit. I want you to take the team down to St Petersburg at once. I want you to find that video and bring it back here under lock and key.’

Her voice hardened. ‘Get cracking, ladies. Don’t let them bullshit you. They’re a pretty macho bunch down there in the St Petersburg office. Do whatever you have to do, even if you have to kick them where it hurts.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Mickey Selkirk ran about 20,000 head of cattle on Lazy-T’s million acres; most of them destined for the lucrative beef export markets of Asia.

‘They’re going to bring in some cows today,’ Selkirk told them at breakfast. ‘We’ve been using helis – R22s – for mustering for the last ten years. Much the best way. A lot of cattle men are using helis for mustering nowadays.’

Jack Varese’s eyes lit up. ‘R22s? I trained on an R22.’

‘In that case, we can use you. The heli-musterers normally work in pairs when they’re driving cattle. But one of the pilots is off duty.’

Selkirk drove Jack Varese to the airstrip where a pair of small, red, two-seater helicopters were parked. A wiry young man, wearing jeans and cowboy boots, was already waiting.

‘We’re in luck, Jim,’ Selkirk said. ‘Ollie’s still sick but I’ve got a volunteer: Jack Varese. Don’t know if you ever go to the movies. You might have seen him.’

The young herdsman touched his hat: ‘Don’t see a lot of movies round here. You flown one of these before?’

Varese nodded. ‘Mother’s milk.’

‘Keep your eye on me when we’re in the air,’ Jim Jackson said, ‘and we’ll work it together. I try to anticipate where the cows might play up and give us trouble. You get to know what sort of move will be able to turn them. To guide them, you’ve got to get right down, almost to ground level. If your engine fails, you don’t have any time to react.”’

Varese nodded sagely. ‘You can’t autorotate out of trouble at that height.’

The two little helis took off and headed west. They had been in the air about ten minutes when they saw the first herd of cattle.