Kompromat

That signal wasn’t long in coming. Harriet Marshall drove back to her home in north-west London later that morning. She stopped – as she did every day as a matter of routine – at the newsagent on the street corner which had a bulletin board outside on which locals could display messages of interest, such as ‘cleaner required’, ‘watches repaired’, ‘reliable mother’s help offers services’.

Some of the messages had been there a long time. The ink had faded; the edges of the cards were curled. But she noticed one recent addition.

‘Three-legged black cat found. Call 077238954978.’

Instead of going home, she drove to the other end of the street where, amazingly, she found a working phone box. She dialled a number. Not the number displayed on the card about the three-legged black cat, but a different number. A number she knew by heart.

A recorded voice instructed her to ‘Please leave a message’.

‘Forty-five minutes,’ Marshall said and then replaced the receiver.

Instead of going home, Marshall did a U-turn and headed for Hampstead Heath. Thirty minutes later, she parked the car and strode off across the huge, wild and open expanse which, miraculously, still managed to survive within the confines of the ever-expanding metropolis of modern-day London.

Of course, historically, Hampstead Heath had provided many opportunities for activities which could be generically described as nefarious. Chief of these was espionage. For decades, controllers had been meeting their agents on park benches or beneath ancient oak trees. And they were right to take advantage of the possibilities that the Heath offered, Harriet reflected. Hotel rooms were routinely bugged, telephones were tapped and emails were gathered by the thousand, like standing wheat in front of a combine harvester. If you could find the right spot on the Heath, with a clear field of fire, as it were, you could get a lot of business done without having to wonder how many people were listening in.

The Russians, of course, with their massive so-called ‘trade’ mission in nearby Highgate had, over the years, found Hampstead Heath tremendously handy.

Marshall had already installed herself on an oak bench, inscribed ‘In Loving Memory of Lucy Penstock Who So Much Loved This Wonderful Place’, when a jowly man in a dark suit, about forty years old, sat down next to her. The man leaned forward to do up his shoelace as though this was simply an unscheduled stop at a convenient location, then he spoke out of the side of his mouth. (There were people who could lip-read at four hundred yards, if they had a good pair of binoculars.)

‘Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Next Tuesday. Night watch, 5pm,’ he instructed.

Harriet Marshall arrived a few minutes before five at the appointed place. A cluster of tourists stood in front of the huge canvas. That wasn’t surprising since Rembrandt van Rijn’s ‘The Night Watch’ was certainly the most famous painting in the Rijksmuseum and probably one of the most famous paintings in the world.

She joined the group of sightseers. If you want to look inconspicuous, merge in with the crowd.

At two minutes past the hour, she felt a light tap on her shoulder. She turned round at once.

‘Good heavens, Yuri,’ she exclaimed. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

Harriet Marshall hadn’t just been acting surprised when Yuri Yasonov tapped her on the shoulder. She really was surprised. She had no idea that the ‘contact’ she was scheduled to meet in Amsterdam would turn out to be a friend from her university days.

Admittedly they weren’t close friends then. Harriet Marshall came from a modest background. Her father was a planning officer in Yorkshire. Yasonov by contrast was stinking rich, the son of an oligarch, who had cleaned up when President Yeltsin sold off Russia’s crown jewels – the gas, the oil, the minerals, the forests – to the highest bidder.

Yasonov had gone to Oxford’s upper-class Christ Church College while Harriet had enrolled at brainier Balliol. But they had both been on the university chess team. Early on in their acquaintance, Yasonov had come to appreciate Harriet’s sheer intellectual brilliance. He was a highly competent chess player himself, but Harriet simply wiped the floor with him.

They had also both played a part in the affairs of the Oxford Union. Yuri Yasonov had been President of the Union in his last year at Oxford and Harriet Marshall had succeeded him. Though the outgoing President normally gets to select the motion to be debated at the Farewell Debate, Harriet had good-humouredly suggested to her friend that a suitable topic would be: ‘This House believes that the power of the Russian Federation has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished’.

Yasonov had gamely agreed and had been delighted when the motion was resoundingly defeated.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ Yasonov suggested.