He said, ‘Yes, I’d say the one here is almost certainly not English. The country’s just too small for him to masquerade as a native very easily.’
Peggy put her head in her hands. ‘How are we going to get anywhere with this? I wouldn’t know where to begin. It really is looking for a needle in a haystack.’
‘I’m sorry to be giving you such a headache,’ said Miles with a smile. ‘I wish I had more information. But I’m hoping to get something else out of the source before too long. My Kiev colleagues have set up a communication link with him, but they have to be very careful.’
‘Let’s not forget about their campaign against the oligarchs,’ said Liz.
‘That may be just as hard to pin down,’ Miles acknowledged. ‘I’m not sure how much my source’s brother has to do with it. The anti-Putin ones will be the ones most at risk, of course, but they don’t always make that obvious to outsiders.’
‘Mmm,’ said Liz. She was thinking of her lunch with Pearson, and his story about the new arrival in Altrincham. ‘At least we can track down those who live here and make sure they are aware of the risks.’
‘Yes,’ said Peggy, ‘and I’ve just remembered what Charlie Simmons said at our meeting. He’d analysed some traffic that reminded him of the pattern that occurred before the Litvinenko murder. It suggests this might all be connected. It could be coincidence, of course, but I wouldn’t want to count on that.’
21
As Jasminder woke up she became aware of noise in the street outside. It was normally fairly quiet in the mornings, with just an occasional car going past, but she could hear raised voices and what sounded like people talking on telephones. She got out of bed and peeped out from behind the curtains to see what was going on.
On the pavement outside her house a group of about twenty people had gathered. Some had cameras, one man was standing on top of a small stepladder, some were holding microphones. Most were clutching cardboard coffee cups from the shop round the corner in Upper Street. She peered at them in astonishment, wondering what it was all about. She wished Laurenz were here with her, but he had gone off for almost a week to see clients.
Then the phone rang and Jasminder flinched. But it was Catherine Palmer calling her.
‘Good morning, Jasminder,’ she said. ‘Sorry to ring you early but I’ve just been told that there’s a lot of media interest in your first day with us.’
‘I was wondering why there was a posse of cameramen and reporters outside the house. I’ve just seen them from the window.’
‘Are they there already? It’s going to be on the Today programme too. There’ll be a discussion just after eight o’clock about whether we’ve done the right thing in appointing you. C is going to take part, arguing against some MP who thinks the heavens have fallen in. It should be worth hearing.’
‘I’ll catch it on Listen Again when I get to the office. I was thinking of setting off before eight.’
‘That’s what I was ringing about. I think you should stay put for the moment. We’ll send a car for you at about nine. We’re going to try and get the media called off on the grounds that they pose a threat to your security. Some of them will have got bored by then anyway as they’ll have missed the morning news deadline but I expect others will hang around. Our advice is that you should just walk straight out of the house and into the car. Look pleasant, smile at them and say ‘Good morning’, but don’t answer any questions. We don’t want this to be more of a news story than we can help – not until you’ve got your feet under the desk and can plan how you are going to deal with media attention in future.’
Jasminder moved well away from the window. ‘OK. Will the driver call me from the car when he gets here? I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the journalists don’t ring the bell before long. They’ll start getting impatient if nothing happens and I don’t want to answer the door to them.’
‘Yes, I’ll tell him to do that. And we’ll have to send a security team round to survey your house now it’s become public knowledge where you live.’ Catherine’s voice was sympathetic. ‘I’m sorry about all this, Jasminder. It’ll die down before too long.’
‘I hope so.’ Jasminder sat down heavily on a kitchen chair, near to tears. ‘I don’t know what my neighbours will think of all this. It’s always been a rather quiet street.’
‘I’m sorry – it would have been better if it could have stayed like that. But the cat’s out of the bag now so we’ll have to cope with it.’
As she sat in her kitchen, drinking coffee and listening to C justify her appointment by making a case for greater openness, Jasminder wondered if she had made a dreadful mistake in accepting the job. She had been very happy in her old life, establishing what she knew was a growing reputation. Though she had frequently found her students irritating, she had loved her work at the immigration charity and felt that she was really making a difference to people’s lives.
After her clash with Geoffrey Fane she had resolved not to take the MI6 job, even if it were offered to her. But she had been invited in to Vauxhall Cross for further discussions with Peter Treadwell, and had been more and more impressed by him and his clear views on where the Service should be heading. She had also met several of the senior people and had liked them. She had even re-encountered Geoffrey Fane on one of her visits and had found him rather polite in a formal, courteous sort of way – she remembered what Catherine Palmer had said about how good he was at the job and how he would get behind change once it had happened. So when a letter came offering her the job, Jasminder had decided to accept. Now she had to live with the consequences.
22
Jasminder had a good deal of experience of the British media. Not only did she edit a monthly magazine, she’d written articles for the broadsheets, she’d been doorstepped by the Daily Mail, she’d done Start The Week on Radio 4 as well as joining panels in discussion programmes. She’d even done Question Time, the television programme that had made her mother so proud. So she thought she understood the methods and madness of the British press.
What she hadn’t experienced before was being at the heart of a media frenzy. She hadn’t realised how explosive a story combining a spy agency with a young, attractive, ethnic-minority woman would be, or how long the excitement would last.
It was bad enough finding the same gaggle of photographers and reporters outside her front door on the second morning that she went to work, but many of them were also there when she came home, and some were still around on her third day in the new job. Someone had even tweeted her presence at the local bistro when she’d had supper there with Emma.
Jasminder hated the intrusion. But it got worse when a decision was taken by MI6 (C himself apparently) that her private residence had to be made more secure. Since she had become such a celebrity editors had been warned not to identify her house, but some of the photographs they had published made it pretty clear where she lived.
So Jasminder came home one evening to find a small team of technicians installing new locks on her front and back doors. The carpet was rolled up and wires had been laid for panic buttons. Her front door sported a shiny new video entry system and the lady who lived in the upstairs flat was standing on the stairs complaining about the effect all this was going to have on her. Was she safe? she wanted to know. Were they going to be murdered in their beds? Jasminder’s once cosy place no longer felt like home; she was living in Fort Knox.