Kompromat

They caught Fyodor Stephanov hitching his trousers up on the way back from the toilet. Markova slammed him against the wall and rammed her pistol into his gut.

‘Take him down, girls,’ she ordered.

The dungeons at Cherniavski Street are not as dark and menacing as the dungeons of the KGB’s Lubyanka building in Moscow, but they are the next best thing.

‘Do you want the rack or the thumbscrew?’ Lyudmila asked. She was only half joking.

Two hours later, the FSB SWAT team had all the information they needed. They had all the original footage, as well as a copy of the video that Fyodor Stephanov, with the connivance of his superiors in FSB, St Petersburg, had sold on the black market.

‘That was a nice little scam you had going, wasn’t it?’ Lyudmila had taunted him. ‘That wasn’t the first time you sold Kompromat, eh? Make a practice of it, do you? Hit him again, Maria. Kick him in the crotch. Wrench his arms from their sockets. He’ll talk soon enough.’

Maria duly obliged, so did the rest of the team. They were glad to take their turn. Just warming up for the day ahead. That was how they saw it. Galina Aslanova had instructed them to take a tough line and that was what they did.

‘How did you find out it was me?’ Fyodor Stephanov whimpered as they left.

‘You were the bloody duty officer, that night, weren’t you? You were stupid enough to ring the girls from your duty phone.’ Lyudmila spat at him. ‘Who else could it be?’

Five hours later, back in Moscow, Galina Aslanova reviewed the material her SWAT team had brought back from St Petersburg.

‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘Very interesting.’ She picked up the phone and hesitated for a moment. The FSB director, Pavel Golov, was out of town for the day. Should she wait for him to come back? Or should she go straight to the top?

She made up her mind. This was a matter which couldn’t wait. She had known President Popov for years. He had been her boss for a while when he headed the KGB before going on to higher things. Popov had given her a card with his private number.

She had destroyed the card, but she had memorized the number. She dialled it now.

‘Mr President, I need to speak to you in person. I will bring the material.’

‘What material?’

Galina hesitated. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr President. I’m not sure this phone is secure.’

Igor Popov laughed. ‘Now you’re telling me! I’m at the dacha. Come on over. I’ll send a car.’

The sprawling countryside estate of Novo Ogaryovo – a huge parkland containing several palatial buildings on the banks of the Moscow River – lies about fifteen miles from Moscow on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye highway. If President Popov was travelling there by car, rather than by helicopter (his preferred mode of transport), the police would sideline the traffic so that decoy cars could speed the full length of the route to check for problems. Only then would Popov’s twelve-car armoured motorcade race through at speeds of up to 150mph.

Galina Aslanova didn’t quite receive the full presidential treatment – hers was just a one-car motorcade – but the driver of the BMW switched on the ‘migalka’, or the blue flashing light, which entitled him to ignore legally most rules of the road. Galina arrived at the presidential dacha less than an hour after the telephone conversation with the Russian president.

The term ‘dacha’ was a misnomer. Novo Ogaryovo bore little resemblance to the structures that Muscovites conventionally called ‘dachas’: modest country retreats which they had built or otherwise acquired in the outlying rural districts for weekend breaks or to escape the searing heat of the summer. There was nothing modest about Novo Ogaryovo. ‘Palatial’ would have been a better word. There were half a dozen reception rooms and a dozen guest rooms, a stable to house the president’s horses and a manège where he could practise dressage. There was also a shooting gallery which he used almost daily and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The whole estate was enclosed by an eight-metre high fence: a world within a world.

Whenever he could, Popov worked at Novo Ogaryovo rather than in the Kremlin. Over the years, many visiting heads of state had been entertained at the dacha. Some had even been invited to stay the night, a signal honour.

Yuri Yasonov came to the door of the dacha to greet Galina Aslanova. They knew each other well, of course. They had both been part of Popov’s inner circle during his time as director of the KGB. Galina had stayed on in the KGB, now renamed FSB, when Popov left the director’s post for higher things, but Yuri had moved with his boss to the Kremlin and now served as Popov’s key aide.

‘Wonderful to see you,’ Yasonov said. ‘The president’s waiting in the den.’

Galina had been to the dacha at Novo Ogaryovo before. She had sometimes been summoned at short notice to attend hastily scheduled conferences, which were presided over by President Popov with a degree of formality befitting his position. But she had never before ventured into the president’s own personal den.