‘I thought not. So let’s continue. We know that earlier this year you took possession of a three-bedroom apartment in a building named Les Asphodèles in Cap d’Antibes on the French Riviera, and that last month you bought a forty-two-foot motor yacht named Babydoll, presently moored at the Port Vauban marina. We also know about your association with twenty-eight-year-old Ms Gabriela Vukovic, currently employed by the fitness club and spa at the Hotel du Littoral.
‘At present neither MI5 nor your family know about any of this. Nor do the Metropolitan Police or the Inland Revenue. Whether that state of affairs continues is up to you. If you want us to remain silent – if you want to retain your freedom, your job and your reputation – you need to tell us everything, and I mean everything, about the organisation that’s been paying you. Short-change us, hold a single fact back, and you will spend the next quarter-century in a Belmarsh Prison cell. Unless you die first, obviously. So what do you say?’
The faint drone of traffic. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of an ambulance alarm. ‘Whoever you are, you can fuck yourself,’ Dennis says, his voice low and unsteady. ‘Assault and kidnapping are crimes. Say whatever you want to whoever you want. I don’t give a shit.’
‘You see, here’s the problem, Dennis,’ the tinny voice continues. ‘Or maybe I should say, here’s your problem. If we send a report to Thames House, and there’s an investigation and a prosecution and all that sort of thing, it will be assumed that you’ve talked to us, and the people who are paying you all that money – and fifteen mill is a lot – will be forced to make an example of you. You’ll be dealt with, Dennis, and it’ll be nasty. You know what they’re like. So really, you don’t have a choice. There’s no bluff to call.’
‘You haven’t the first idea what you’re talking about, have you? I may have concealed certain things from my wife and my employers, but having an affair isn’t a crime, at least it wasn’t when I last checked.’
‘No, it isn’t. But treason is, and that’s what you’ll be charged with.’
‘You’ve got no grounds whatever to charge me with anything of the sort, and you know it. This is just a cheap attempt at blackmail. So whoever you are, like I said, go fuck yourself.’
‘OK, Dennis, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get out of that van in five minutes’ time, and ride your bike home. You might want to pick up some flowers for your wife; they’ve got some very reasonably priced roses at the petrol station. Tomorrow morning a car will pick you up at your house at 7 a.m. and drive you to Dever Research Station in Hampshire. Your deputy at Thames House has been informed that you will be spending the next three working days there, attending a counter-terrorism seminar. In the course of that time, you will also, in another part of the station, be privately interviewed about the subjects we’ve discussed. No one else there will be aware of this, and there will be no outward sign of any break in your usual duties. Dever, as I’m sure you know, is listed as a government secret asset, and is completely secure. If these interviews go well, which I’m sure they will, you will be free to go.’
‘And if I say no?’
‘Dennis, let’s not even begin to think about what happens if you say no. Seriously. It would be a total shit-storm. Penny, for a start. Can you imagine? And the kids. Their dad on trial for treason? Let’s not even go there, OK?’
A long silence. ‘You said 7 a.m.?’
‘Yes. Leave it any later and the traffic will be impossible.’
Dennis stares into the hazy twilight. ‘OK,’ he says.
Laying the phone on her desk, Eve Polastri exhales and closes her eyes. The tough, authoritative character she’s been playing for Dennis Cradle is nothing like her own, and face to face with him she wouldn’t have been able to keep up the mocking tone, not least because he seemed so stratospherically senior to her when she worked at MI5. But with that final ‘OK’, he’s effectively conceded his guilt, and if he’ll almost certainly be shocked to see her sitting opposite him tomorrow, it won’t be anything she can’t handle.
‘Neatly played,’ says Richard Edwards, removing the headphones through which he’s been listening to Dennis and Eve’s conversation, and settling back into the Goodge Street office’s least uncomfortable chair.
‘Team effort,’ says Eve. ‘Lance scared the hell out of him, and Billy drove like an angel.’
Richard nods. The head of MI6’s Russia desk, Richard is technically Eve’s employer, although he’s an infrequent visitor to the office, and her name is not on any official Security Services personnel list. ‘We’ll give him tonight to meditate on his situation, ideally in the presence of that short-tempered wife of his. Tomorrow you can set about stripping him to the bone.’
‘You think he’ll be there at 7 a.m.? You don’t think he’ll cut and run tonight?’
‘No. Dennis Cradle may be a traitor, but he’s not a fool. If he runs, he’s finished. We’re his only chance, and he’ll know that.’
‘No chance he’ll . . .’
‘Kill himself? Dennis? No, he’s not the type. I’ve known him since we were at Oxford together, and he’s a ducker and diver. The sort who thinks you can sort out any problem, no matter how tricky, over a decent bottle of wine in a good restaurant, preferably on someone else’s expense account. He’ll tell us what we need to know, and he’ll keep quiet about it. Because scary though our people can be, the lot he’s betrayed us to have got to be infinitely more so. Any suggestion he’s compromised, they’ll shut him down straight away.’
‘With prejudice.’
‘With extreme prejudice. They’d probably send your lady friend to do it.’
Eve
