But when she presses the bell at the side of the entrance, she is buzzed in immediately. A staircase leads to the first floor, the headquarters of a recruitment agency, and thence by narrower stairs upwards. The door to the BQ Optics office is ajar. Feeling a little foolish, Eve pushes it open and stands back. Nothing happens for a moment, then a tall figure in an overcoat steps into the dusty light.
“Miss Polastri? Thank you for coming.”
“It’s Mrs. And you are?”
“Richard Edwards, Mrs. Polastri. My apologies.”
She recognises him, and is astounded. Former station chief in Moscow, now head of the Russia desk at MI6, he is a very senior figure indeed in the Intelligence world.
“And the cloak and dagger. Sorry for that, too.”
She shakes her head, bemused.
“Come in, take a seat.”
She walks through. The office is unheated and dusty, its windows almost opaque with grime. The only furniture is an elderly steel desk, with two takeaway cups of Costa coffee on it, and a pair of rust-scarred folding chairs.
“I guessed milk but no sugar.”
“Thank you, perfect.” She takes a sip.
“I’ve become aware of your situation at Thames House, Mrs. Polastri.”
“Eve, please.”
He nods, his gaze austere in the dim light of the window.
“Let me save time. You are being held responsible for failing to prevent the murder of Viktor Kedrin at the hands of an unknown female. Your initial judgement was not to request Metropolitan Police protection for Kedrin, but you then changed your mind, and found this decision blocked. Correct?”
Eve nods. “Substantially, yes.”
“My information, and you’re going to have to take my word on this, is that this was not due to administrative inflexibility or departmental budget issues. Certain elements at Thames House, and indeed at Vauxhall Cross, were determined that Kedrin should be unprotected.”
She stares at him. “You’re saying that officers of the Security Services conspired to assist in his murder?”
“Something like that.”
“But… why?”
“The short answer is that I don’t know. But there has definitely been pressure brought to bear. Whether this is an issue of ideology, corruption, or what the Russians call kompromat—essentially blackmail—it’s impossible to say, but there’s no shortage of individuals and institutions who would have liked to see Kedrin silenced. What he offered was the blueprint of a new, fascist superstate, implacably hostile to the capitalist West. It wouldn’t have come into being tomorrow, but look a little further downstream, and the prospects are grim.”
“So you think those responsible might belong to some pro-Western, pro-democracy group?”
“Not necessarily. Could easily be another hard-right outfit, determined to do things their own way.” He stares at the traffic on Tottenham Court Road. “I contacted the Russian foreign minister last week via… let’s call it the old spies network. I promised him that as Kedrin was murdered on British soil, we would find his killer. He accepted this, but made it quite clear that until such time as we did so, a state of diplomatic hostility would exist between our respective nations.”
He turns to face her. “Eve, I want you to go to Thames House tomorrow morning, and offer your resignation, which will be accepted. Then I want you to work for me. Not from Vauxhall Cross, but from this office, which we appear to own. You will receive an SIS executive grade salary, a deputy, and full tech-com support. Your mission, which you will prosecute by any means necessary, is to identify the killer of Victor Kedrin. You will discuss this with no one outside of your team, and you will answer only to me. Anything you need in the way of extra personnel—watcher teams, armed backup—you will clear through me, and only through me. In effect, you will operate as if in hostile territory. Moscow rules.”
Eve’s thoughts are ricocheting all over the place. “Why me?” she asks. “Surely you’ve got—”
“To be brutal, because you’re the one person that I know not to be compromised. How far the rot spreads, I can’t say. But I’ve looked pretty closely at your record, and my judgement is that you’re equal to the task.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. This is going to be hard and dangerous. Whoever this shooter is—and there are echoes of several high-profile international kills by a woman in the last couple of years—she’s dug in deep, and she’s very, very well protected. If you take this on, you must do the same thing. Dig in deep.” He looks around the bare, cold room. “It’s going to be a long winter.”
Eve stands there. She has the dizzying impression that the world has slowed. There’s a moment of intense silence.
“I’ll do it,” she says. “I’ll hunt her down. Whatever it takes.”
Richard Edwards nods. Holds out his hand. And Eve knows that nothing will ever be the same again.
3
It’s almost seven in the evening when FatPanda leaves the rain-streaked building on Datong Road. June in Shanghai is a time of sweltering humidity and frequent downpours. The roads and pavements shine, cars and trucks hiss by in a shudder of exhaust, and the heat rises in waves from the wet tarmac. FatPanda is neither a young man nor a fit one, and his shirt is soon clinging sweatily to his back.
But it’s been a good day. He and his White Dragon crew have launched a successful spear-phishing assault against a Belarusian company named Talachyn Aerospace, and have just begun the wholly satisfying business of draining the company’s data, stealing passwords and project files, and generally making merry with its most sensitive information.
In the eight years of its existence, the White Dragon crew has hit the best part of a hundred and fifty military and corporate targets. Initially in the U.S., more recently in Russia and Belarus. Like most of its victims, Talachyn has offered only token resistance. A week ago, a junior employee received an email that purported to come from the company’s director of security, inviting him to click on a link
