It was raining when Peggy Kinsolving got out of the cab in Grosvenor Square. She put up her umbrella and peered out from under it at the American Embassy at the west end of the square. As always, armed police stood guarding the entrance, where despite the rain a queue of visa applicants snaked back along the pavement. Concrete crash barriers extended out into the square, and a lane on one of the streets had been closed off with cones. Above the 1960s edifice of pre-stressed concrete, the enormous gold figure of the American eagle spread its wings, as if struggling to fly off. Soon it would get its wish, since the Embassy was moving south of the Thames, to a building safely located without immediate neighbours.
Peggy showed her credentials to the guard in the small shelter outside, put her bag and her wet umbrella under the X-ray machine and went through the entrance, shaking the remaining water off the umbrella. The receptionist on the desk put a call through and Peggy took a seat in the large waiting area. She hoped this meeting wasn’t going to take too long.
Peggy had had a sleepless night, thanks to Tim’s coming to bed at two. He had been working long hours lately, though to her chagrin it was not on the article he was meant to be writing for Essays and Criticism. Instead he was always at his computer, surfing the net for articles about internet surveillance and the intrusions of governments on the private lives of their citizens. When Peggy had tactfully suggested this wasn’t the best way to be spending his time, he had bridled. ‘This is important,’ he’d insisted angrily, and Peggy bit her lip and said no more. At some point she was going to have to have a proper conversation with him about it. He had students to teach, and his own academic work to pursue – he had a book to write in which Oxford University Press had expressed strong interest. Yet Peggy knew that however gently she pointed this out, he would react badly.
She couldn’t understand where this new fascination with half-baked conspiracy theories had come from. In his own subject Tim was indefatigable in his pursuit of source material and a rigorous judge of authenticity. Now he was spending hours in murky chat rooms, exchanging ‘views’. Usually the mildest of men, recently he had become terribly opinionated, and very aggressive in argument – and arguments were what most of their conversations were these days. She felt she was watching him change in front of her eyes, and she didn’t like it one bit. What had happened to the gentle scholar she had fallen in love with?
A tall woman in a bright blue suit came out to collect her. She led Peggy up to the fourth floor, through a series of combination-locked doors, into what seemed to be a waiting room furnished with sofas and low tables, off which led four or five heavy wooden doors, all closed.
‘This looks different from the last time I was here,’ remarked Peggy.
‘Yes,’ replied her escort, in a Southern accent. ‘We’ve had a security upgrade. But nothing’s very secure in this old place.’
Hmm, thought Peggy. Not much faith in our counter-terrorism measures then, but she said, ‘I expect you’re looking forward to the new building.’
The blue-suited woman raised her eyebrows. ‘I’ll be home by the time that’s finished.’ Then, opening one of the doors, she said, ‘Miss Kinsolving is here for you, sir,’ and turning back to Peggy, waved her into the room.
Miles Brookhaven stood up from behind a large steel-and-glass desk as Peggy walked in. He seemed taller and thinner than she remembered him, and no longer wore the heavy horn-rimmed spectacles he’d sported as a younger man. He looks as though he needs feeding up, she thought, and remembered that he had been badly wounded in Syria a year or so before, knifed by an unknown assailant in a Damascus market. Liz had told her that he had almost bled to death and had been lucky to pull through. Since then he had been commended for his work in Yemen, where he’d recruited a source whose information had helped prevent a terrorist attack on Britain. This post as Head of the CIA Station in London was his reward. It was said that he was the youngest ever to hold it. But his responsibilities didn’t seem to be weighing on him; he looked cheerful and friendly as he energetically pumped her hand, then ushered her to a seat on the sofa, while he sat down in an easy chair.
‘It’s really good to see you again, Peggy. We have met before… do you remember?’ he said with a wide grin.
‘Yes. Of course I do,’ she said, finding her own formality starting to melt in the face of such friendliness.
‘And you’re still working for the redoubtable Miss Carlyle?’
‘I am,’ she said with a half-smile.
‘And surviving?’
‘Loving it,’ she replied. She wasn’t used to being teased in this building. Miles’s predecessor, Andy Bokus, was a much grumpier character, but she remembered now that Miles was something of an Anglophile, having spent a year at Westminster School when he was a boy.
‘I was rather hoping …’ and he hesitated ‘… that Liz might come with you today.’
Peggy knew this meant he’d been hoping Liz would come alone. It was well known that he had made a pass at her years ago when he was here as a much more junior officer. But Peggy didn’t take offence; according to protocol, meetings with the CIA Head of Station would normally be conducted by someone more senior than she was. ‘Liz sends her apologies. There’s a meeting at Cheltenham she couldn’t get out of.’ Peggy had prepared this excuse in advance.
Brookhaven seemed to accept it. He nodded. ‘And how is she?’ There was concern in his voice, which his cheerfulness could not disguise.
‘She’s fine,’ said Peggy, knowing the subtext here was the death of Martin Seurat.
‘Good,’ said Brookhaven briskly. ‘So what can I do for you?’
Relieved to turn to business at last, Peggy said, ‘I expect you’ve heard that Liz has moved back into counter-espionage and I’ve moved with her. Liz is concerned that with all the focus on terrorism, we may have got rather out of touch with you on espionage. She wants to set up a channel for a regular exchange of views. I’ve come over really to start the ball rolling with that and also to brief you on some things we have become aware of recently.’
Peggy talked for a few minutes about the increasing number of cyber-attacks on British companies, and also mentioned two recent cases where a couple of employees of defence firms had been subjected to old-fashioned sexual compromise. ‘It all seems very Cold War,’ she said, ‘and the intelligence component at the Russian Embassy here is as high as it’s ever been.’
‘From what I hear, it’s the same all over Western Europe.’
‘Yes,’ Peggy went on, ‘but there’s one added problem that is perhaps unique to us: the possibility of physical attacks on the anti-Putin oligarchs who are living in Britain. The Government is most anxious that there shouldn’t be another Litvinenko.’
Brookhaven was listening closely, occasionally making a note on a yellow legal pad he’d taken from his desk. ‘Have you seen anything to indicate something like that might be in the air?’ he asked.
‘We have – though just the vaguest hint. It’s possible we might have misread it,’ replied Peggy, and told him what Charlie Simmons had revealed at the Counter-Espionage Assessment Committee meeting. ‘Charlie thinks it might mean that some kind of special unit is on the move. What bothers us is the similarity between these new messages and some traffic that was picked up before the Litvinenko murder.’
‘They’ve always kept a close eye on the oligarchs here, haven’t they? It may be that, given the raised tension between Russia and Europe, they want to prevent anything remotely resembling a movement in exile from growing up.’
‘Well, if it involves killing people with radioactive poison, we need to stop it.’