Kompromat

In the BBC commentary box, Louisa Hitchcock barely missed a beat. ‘Extraordinary scenes here tonight in Oxford,’ she said. ‘The debate has broken up in confusion. A gunman has tried to assassinate Edward Barnard, leader of the Leave campaign, but that attempt appears to have failed. I have just watched Barnard being rushed from the debating chamber by security officers. As I speak, the search continues for the would-be assassin.’

There was a sudden commotion outside the BBC’s makeshift studio on the balcony, as a Swat team rushed past. The camera caught that too.

‘Next time I come to the Oxford Union, I’ll bring a flak jacket,’ Louisa Hitchcock announced, with studied nonchalance.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The attempt on the life of Edward Barnard made headlines around the world. In the confusion following the exchange of gunfire, the would-be assassin had slipped away, apparently down the fire escape, leaving behind a collapsible, high-powered rifle and a stack of leaflets saying ‘KEEP BRITAIN IN EUROPE’.

Back in London the next morning, after the eventful evening in Oxford, Tom Milbourne, chancellor of the exchequer and de facto leader of the Remain campaign, held an emergency meeting of the core Remain team.

‘This attempted murder is already being pinned on us. The KEEP BRITAIN IN EUROPE leaflets found on-site don’t help,’ he told them. ‘Of course, we’ve put out a denial, but that’s not enough. Leave is up two points this morning and the trend is against us. For some reason I can’t understand, people seem to like Edward Barnard. They don’t want Europhile maniacs to take a pot-shot at him. I tell you, if they’d taken a vote at the Union last night, we would have been absolutely hammered.’

Geraldine Watson, MP for Milton Keynes and deputy leader of Remain, chipped in, ‘Maybe it’s not all bad news, Tom. I’ve just received a Google Alert. Harriet Marshall, the Leave campaign’s wonder-worker, has been taken in for questioning this morning. Everything’s very hush-hush. There’s some suggestion that Marshall has been in contact with the Russians.’

‘What kind of contact?’ Milbourne asked sharply. ‘I had dinner with the Russian ambassador last week. Great guy. Gave me a Château Petrus 1957 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. Sharing a bottle of wine with the Russian ambassador doesn’t make me a spy. They’d have to pay me huge sums for that. Or make me editor of the Evening Standard!’

He was joking, of course.

Geraldine Watson was still looking at her phone. ‘They got a search warrant. Seized Harriet Marshall’s computer.’

‘That sounds more interesting,’ Milbourne said.

It wasn’t exactly the third degree but it wasn’t a picnic either.

MI5’s top interrogator, a huge Nigerian called Mnogo Abewa, told Harriet Marshall, ‘You’re being held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. That means we can do pretty much as we like with you without anyone being able to stop us. I could sit on you, for example. I’m twenty stone. I’d just squash you flat. Wouldn’t leave a mark.’

Harriet Marshall said nothing. Her tradecraft, surely, had been perfect. She had never used her phone to communicate with her ‘handler’ and never sent an email or a text. What the hell did they have on her?

‘Okay, you don’t want to talk. That’s fine by me,’ Mnogo Abewa said. ‘So I’ll do the talking. I’ll just run through what we have on you.’

He opened the file, took out a document and passed it over.

‘See that?’ he said. ‘That’s a photocopy of something we found in your dustbin. I’ve got the real thing here,’ he tapped the file, ‘but we’ll keep that for court. If I gave it to you now, you might just pop it in your mouth and swallow it, then where would we be?’

Harriet Marshall examined the document. ‘Doesn’t mean anything to me. Someone’s missing a three-legged black cat, apparently. Looks as though they put a notice on a board somewhere.’

Mnogo Abewa sighed. ‘On the morning you picked up the message, you phoned your handler at the Russian trade mission. No, I don’t mean you phoned the number on the card: 077238954978. We know that’s a fake number. You phoned Nikolai Nabokov’s number, the number you know by heart, from the phone box at the end of your road.’

Mnogo Abewa pushed a button. Harriet Marshall heard herself say. ‘Forty-five minutes.’

‘That could be anyone,’ Marshall said.

‘How about this then? This is a call you made to Nabokov on your office line. Tut tut.’ Abewa shook his head disapprovingly. ‘I thought they would have told you not to use the office line, and certainly not when you’re phoning one of the numbers on our list.’

He punched the button again. This time Marshall heard her own voice even more clearly. ‘Westminster Bridge. Two o’clock. This afternoon.’