weekend. The Russian Anatoly Semyonovich was dead, but why did they need to have a bloody Joint Intelligence meeting about it? It was first of all a job for Scotland Yard and the National Criminal Intelligence Service—maybe MI5 at a pinch—but not a matter for MI6, to which he had recently been appointed head, with a knighthood to match. Not at this stage anyway.
As he willed himself over the effects of too much excellent claret the night before, he vaguely supposed they wanted to pick his brains about Semyonovich the billionaire; Semyonovich the asset predator; Semyonovich the Kremlin stooge.
They would want his special knowledge of the Russian’s connections both inside and outside Britain, which Adrian had on a few occasions discussed with his opposite number at MI5. He would explain the web of obscure and secret shell companies of which the Russian’s business apparatus largely consisted. But mainly Adrian’s role would be to reveal Semyonovich’s closeness to those who ruled in the Kremlin.
Find the killer, that was Adrian’s prerequisite for delving into the whole bad business.
And then his mind turned to what really preoccupied him.
While his son had been at the game yesterday afternoon, Saturday, in a friend’s merchant banker father’s private box (“Enjoy it,” Adrian had told him, “the bloody bankers won’t be able to afford boxes for much longer”), the Russians had finally made it clear, through their London ambassador, that they wouldn’t be extraditing Grigory Bykov for Finn’s murder, not under any circumstances.
So now Adrian was going to insist that his original plan, to take Bykov down in retaliation for the assassination, must go ahead. The time for negotiating was over. They had nothing to exchange for Bykov. The KGB colonel Anna’s whereabouts were still unknown, even if she was a bargaining chip, which it seemed she wasn’t any longer. An impasse had been reached. Now Adrian wanted Bykov’s head. That was the way of the secret world, and the Russians knew it.
But first he was going to have to deal with the party now being gathered at the JIC. Only afterwards would he be able to collar Teddy Parkinson, its head, to make this special request.
As the black Mercedes cruised down through Victoria and onto Parliament Square, Adrian decided to have a cigarette, in his government-issue car, and damn the rules.
Adrian’s son had returned home eight hours after the end of the match the previous evening. That was how long it took for the police to sift through the football crowd at the exit turnstiles, and search all 35,000 of them. And of course they’d found nothing. That should have been obvious, Adrian thought. Nobody would risk trying to kill Semyonovich with a sniper shot from inside the ground. It took a real pro to kill a man like Semyonovich—he had thirty-five regular bodyguards, all ex special forces and many from Adrian’s old regiment, plus eight armour-plated vehicles—and that was just for his London encampment.
Then there were the other 35,000 people in the ground, who might just have noticed if a man with an assault rifle took careful aim from the seat beside them.
The Mercedes entered Whitehall and pulled up outside the building with the JIC operations room in the basement. Adrian, ostentatiously smoking as he stepped out of the car, told Ray not to wait. He was going on to lunch after the meeting, with Teddy Parkinson at his country home. That, he told himself, not this meeting, was the point of the day, and he cheered up a little.
There were six of them around the long table. Teddy Parkinson (Sir), the head of Joint Intelligence, sat at the head; then there was Foster from the Yard and Evans (Sir) from MI5, on either side; Crudwell (Commander) from NCIS and Adrian himself (newly Sir) at the opposite end of the table; and finally Trevor Lewis, the prime minister’s private secretary (Scum of the Earth).
They’d finished discussing the method of the killing by nine o’clock. The type of weapon used for the kill seemed to have been narrowed down to about half a dozen, all sniper weapons known to Adrian and used by various national special forces. But they were readily available if you knew where to look. The distance was enormous—up to a mile and a half, forensics reckoned, beyond even what Adrian had assumed.
It was all he could do not to say, “Bloody good shot.”
The identity of the assassin was anyone’s guess; which left the motive and the fallout—the implications. Adrian’s time to contribute.
“Adrian,” Teddy Parkinson, the JIC head, addressed him at last. The ponderous preamble that looked into the nooks and crannies of events on the ground had finally been wound up. “The prime minister received a call from President Medvedev last night, a few hours after the killing. The Russian president was expressing concern.”
So that was why they’d been called together this morning for this emergency meeting, Adrian thought. Jump to it for the Russians.
Lewis the private secretary nodded overenthusiastically. Nobody had yet asked for his opinion about anything.
“Why, Adrian?” Teddy Parkinson followed up. “Why a call from the Russian president?”
“Semyonovich was very close to the Kremlin,” Adrian replied. “He helped put Putin into power at the end of the nineties. He’s worth around thirty billion dollars, but worth a lot more to the Kremlin. He was spearheading the Kremlin’s policy of acquiring strategic foreign assets—energy companies in the West, metals combines, you name it. All over the world, but particularly our world.”
“So he had a lot of money that the Kremlin used as if it were its own?”
“That’s about it. All those Russian multibillionaire tycoons are now arms of the state—covert ambassadors with bottomless pockets. That’s why Medvedev called; Semyonovich was like an undercover representative of the Kremlin. The deal is, men like Semyonovich get to keep their private wealth, as long as they put it into the service of the Kremlin and its cronies.”
Adrian knew that Teddy Parkinson was perfectly aware of all this. He was just explaining for the benefit of the others.
“What else? Anything we should know about?”
“We have good intelligence that Semyonovich was caretaking bank accounts on behalf of Putin and other
“Siloviki?” Lewis the private secretary interrupted.
“Men of power,” Adrian said. “In Russian,” he added caustically.
“So . . . but a call from President Medvedev would rather highlight that, wouldn’t it?” Lewis leaped into the gap he’d been waiting nearly an hour to fill. “It would draw attention to the Kremlin’s unhealthy—covert interest, you called it—in Semyonovich. Surely they wouldn’t want to do that.”
“The Kremlin,” Adrian said carefully, though without disguising his distaste at being even on the same planet as Lewis, “. . . the Kremlin doesn’t care what the world thinks. In fact, it has taken a delight in recent years in demonstrating openly that it couldn’t give a shit. You may have noticed that it invaded Georgia last month. And since then it’s not taken a blind bit of notice what the rest of the world says or thinks.”
“Diplomatic channels are working with the Russians on that,” Lewis said confidently. “The EU—”
“But they haven’t got anywhere, have they?” Adrian interrupted with icy patience. “That’s the point.”
“This is another matter,” Teddy broke in smoothly. He knew from old that Adrian was spoiling for a fight. “Who would want Semyonovich dead?” he asked baldly.
“There’s a long list.” Adrian shrugged. “Some individual, or clan, from the Kremlin itself, perhaps. The internecine power struggles in the Kremlin don’t exactly represent one voice. Then there’s a string of businessmen whose toes and other vital extremities Semyonovich has crushed over the years; there are Chechen bandits and other ne’er-do-wells with a grudge. Not to mention the owner of Manchester United,” he added facetiously.
“Why the Kremlin? Why would they murder one of their own? If he looked after their cash?” Lewis demanded.
“As I tried to explain, the Kremlin isn’t one entity, one single interest. It’s a snake’s nest of competing interests, with Putin prefering to keep it that way. Divide and rule, it’s called. That’s why Medvedev, the nominal president, is just a Putin clone, running the place on behalf of Putin’s clan, which happens, at this moment, to be in the ascendant. We don’t know why anyone in the Kremlin might want Semyonovich dead, but certain interests there, which want to damage Putin’s clan, might well use the murder of Semyonovich as a lever to exert their power.”
Adrian relaxed into his exposition.
“Alternatively, maybe Semyonovich had outlived his usefulness with his actual supporters there, Putin included. Maybe he’d got too big for his boots. Maybe he was bucking orders from Moscow. Maybe it’s
