Kompromat

As Sir Oliver Holmes showed his guest to the door, he murmured, ‘By the way, we’ve finished our work on that file you brought back from Russia. Our report’s with the home secretary. She seems to be sitting on it at the moment. I must say I don’t blame her.’

He held the door open. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but we think most, if not all, of those documents are genuine. Let the chips fall where they may,’ he concluded cryptically.

‘Do you mean…?’ Barnard began.

‘I don’t mean anything at this moment,’ Sir Oliver said. ‘We were asked to report on the authenticity or otherwise of the documents we examined. That we have done. It is for others to draw the appropriate conclusions. I’m a policeman, not a politician.’

After leaving New Scotland Yard, Barnard walked back into St James’s Park. Girls in summer dresses walked around the lake. Some were sunbathing in bikinis. He sat on a bench and mentally ticked off the names of the waterfowl: Mallard, Shelduck, Wigeon, Gadwall, Teal, Pintail, Shoveler…

A hundred yards away, Jerry Goodman, one of the ‘watchers’ Sir Oliver had put in place that very afternoon, spoke quietly into his radio. ‘Not much going on. He’s watching the birds in St James’s Park. No, I mean the real birds. The birds on the lake. Not the dolly birds. Plenty of those around today too. Over and Out.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The Turkish president, Ahmet Ergun, was in a foul mood. He felt betrayed. There were three million Syrian refugees in his country. Turkey had fed them and watered them. Europe might complain about the ‘flood’ of migrants. That was garbage. Turkey, under his leadership, had made heroic efforts to stem the tide. But he expected a little something in return.

And what had he got? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Turkey was still out in the cold. They’d been talking for years about Turkey joining the EU and they didn’t mean a word of it. Those guys in Brussels looked on the Turks as though they were some kind of barbarians, conveniently forgetting that the Ottomans had ruled half of Europe for over 500 years. Why did the French eat croissants for God’s sake?

Sitting in one of the many receptions rooms of his enormous new palace in Ankara, the nation’s capital, the Turkish president called for more coffee.

‘Please bring my wife too,’ he said.

When Nuray came and sat down beside him on the sofa, he said to her, ‘Today, I’m going to do it.’

Nuray Ergun nodded. ‘It is time.’

For decades now she had been her husband’s rock and support. She had even chosen to wear the headscarf, sending a message to the nation which had not gone unnoticed.

‘It is time,’ she repeated. ‘For too long we have grovelled to Europe. You should rip up the agreement with the EU about the refugees. Europe has not kept its side of the bargain. We applied to join the EU since 1987. They told us there are thirty-five chapters to negotiate and most of them haven’t even been opened. Be serious, Ergun.’

‘I am being serious,’ Ergun said. ‘I have given the instruction this morning.’

What Ergun did not tell his wife was that the precise timing of his decision, as well as important details relating to scope and method, had been thrashed out in detail on the occasion of President Ergun’s recent visit to Moscow. As Turkey sought to distance itself from the EU and to seek allies elsewhere, for example with a new agreement on Turkey-Russia collaboration, there had been one issue where Popov had insisted that urgent action by Turkey would be tremendously helpful.

‘Just open the taps, Mr President,’ Popov had urged. ‘And do it now. That’ll make them squeal.’

That afternoon, President Ahmet Ergun flew down from Ankara to S¸anliurfa airport in southern Turkey. From there he was escorted to Suruç, Turkey’s largest refugee camp. He arrived at around noon and almost at once mounted a makeshift stage to make one of the most important speeches of his career.

As the sun beat pitilessly down, bouncing off the bleached, almost white, soil, Ahmet Ergun looked out over at the rows of tents and at the crowds of refugees – men, women and children – who now gathered around the podium.

He began on a serious patriotic note. ‘Today, I want to say how proud I am of the effort Turkey has made to deal with an unprecedented crisis. We have over three million refugees in our country, more than any other nation in the world. Here in Suruç, we have the largest refugee camp in Turkey. Just over the border in Syria, the fighting is still raging. Refugees are still coming. Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.