Kompromat

‘Galina! Thank you so much for coming. Wonderful to see you!’ President Popov wasn’t usually so effusive. There were occasions when he could be gruff and taciturn. But this wasn’t one of them. He pulled Galina towards him, enveloping her in a muscular embrace.

‘You and your team did a great job in St Petersburg, I heard,’ Popov said. ‘I hear some of our people down there had been carrying out unauthorized surveillance and selling reports on the black market. But you set him straight. Gave him what for, so I understand. Good show! Now let’s see what you’ve got.’

Galina Aslanova thought she was going to swoon. They sat side- by-side on the sofa, knees touching. God, the man was sexy, she thought.

As the video played on the wide screen in front of them, she managed, somehow, to concentrate on the matter in hand.

‘What we got in St Petersburg,’ she explained, ‘was the raw material and that’s what we’re seeing now. The first part shows Barnard having a drink in the bar of the Kempinski and then going up in the hotel lift with the two girls. The second part shows the two girls and Mr X playing around on one of the Kempinski’s king-size beds.’

Popov whistled. ‘And you think you can identify Mr X, do you?’

‘I think we can,’ Galina Aslanova said. ‘In fact, I’m pretty sure we can.’

For the next thirty minutes, the three of them sat, totally absorbed by the degrading spectacle, faithfully recorded by the FSB’s concealed cameras.

‘Are you sure this is being filmed in the presidential suite at the Kempinski?’ Popov asked at one point.

‘Yes, we’re sure. See all the gold curtains and marble tops. That’s the presidential suite all right,’ Galina replied. ‘And the CCTV shows the girls outside the suite, knocking on the door.’

Popov had spent too much of his career as an intelligence officer to be fobbed off with circumstantial evidence, however convincing it might seem.

‘What about the man’s face? I agree the body seems right in terms of size and shape. But we need to see the face? Most of the time the man’s face seemed to be occupied in ways we can’t see.’

‘We see the hair, don’t we?’ Galina was sure she had got it right. ‘That sunburst of hair, like a halo. No mistaking that, surely?’

Popov let out a great roar of laughter. ‘Halo! That’s rich. That’s the first time anyone has suggested to me that he has a halo round his head!’

Popov was a man who knew how to weigh up the pros and cons. He was used to that.

‘I congratulate you, Galina Aslanova. You deserve a medal and I shall see that you get it. Will you stay for dinner?’

Galina Aslanova didn’t just stay for dinner. She stayed the night.

‘I don’t have any pyjamas,’ she protested half-heartedly.

‘I don’t see why you need pyjamas,’ Popov countered. ‘I don’t.’

To say that Galina Aslanova and Igor Popov slept together that night was, in a strict sense, misleading. They hardly slept at all.

For Galina, it was a dream come true. She had admired this man for so long and now here she was, in his bed, in his arms.

Funny, she thought, how when it came to making love, all that macho stuff went right out of the window. It was almost as though he cared for her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Harriet Marshall met Edward Barnard at Heathrow on the latter’s return from Australia. They drove down to Wiltshire together.

Melissa Barnard was still in Ireland, so Marshall, who by now was very much at home in Coleman Court, fixed breakfast while Barnard showered and changed. It had been a long flight.

‘You did a great job with Mickey Selkirk,’ Harriet said over the coffee. ‘The great Selkirk machine is primed and ready to go.’

‘What are they waiting for?’ Barnard asked ‘Shouldn’t they be moving into action with all guns blazing?’

‘We’ve got to give them some real ammunition. It’s not enough to talk about the Greek crisis, or the problems of the Eurozone or “faceless Brussels bureaucrats”. What we’ve been saying about spending money on the NHS is helping. Our slogan “Take Back Control” appears to resonate. But that’s not going to swing it.’

‘What is?’

‘Concerns about immigration. That’s what’s going to swing it. The fear that we’re being overwhelmed by foreigners. The fear that before our very eyes the whole structure of the country is changing and changing fast. Too fast for people to adapt. All the research we’ve done – and we’ve really researched this – tells us that immigration is the issue which has come to the top of the pile. Of course there’s non-EU immigration, as well as immigration from the EU, but in people’s minds it’s all jumbled up. Our job is to keep it that way. We don’t need clarity here. We don’t need to break down the statistics. We just need to keep pointing the finger at the EU as the source of the problem. We need to build on that. Ram the message home. That’s what’s going to get us first past the winning post.’

‘I’m not being defeatist,’ Barnard said, ‘but I wonder what more we can do.’

‘Oh, we can do a lot more and we’re going to,’ Marshall said. ‘I’m just waiting for the signal.’