Once they were safely on the Finnish side of the border, Edward Barnard got out of the car, followed by his wife. He walked round to the boot. As he did so, Connally pressed the button to raise the lid.
Moments later, a pale and sweating Fyodor Stephanov staggered out. ‘Never been bounced around so much in my life,’ he said. ‘Not since that evening in the Kempinski anyway!’
They had less than a hundred miles to travel from the border to Helsinki. Stephanov sat up front, next to the driver. The Barnards sat in the back.
The road ran along the coast. ‘It’s motorway all the way now,’ Connally said. ‘We take the E18, then join up with the E75 outside Helsinki. You’ll be okay to talk if I put some music on. Shall we stick to Sibelius? We had the “Karelia Suite” already. What about “Finlandia”? You can’t beat “Finlandia”, can you?’
The Rolls Royce Phantom had a brilliant sound system. Since the car retailed at over £300,000 you’d expect a pretty good sound system, thought Barnard. What he didn’t expect was to hear Ronald Craig’s distinctive voice: ‘Are you telling me, General,’ the president was saying, ‘that at this moment in time we don’t actually know whether President Assad was responsible for gassing those poor innocent kids or not? You’re the National Security Adviser. If you don’t know, who the hell does?’
Then they heard the sound of a toilet flushing, and another voice, deeper than the president’s but with a southern twang: ‘Hang on a moment, sir. I’ll be right out.’
Oh my God, Barnard thought. They’re still bugging the president. This is Popov’s way of letting us know.
‘Shall I turn it off, sir?’ Connally asked.
‘No, let’s hear a bit more,’ Barnard replied. ‘They must have picked this up last week, when Liu Wang-Ji, the Chinese president, was making a state visit to the Florida White House as they call it: Hasta La Vista. They had to interrupt their dinner, as I understand it, so that the president could go into a huddle with his advisers. Looks like they met in the loo. That’s got to be the national security adviser, General Ian Wright.’
‘What I mean, sir,’ they heard General Wright say, against the sound of running water, ‘is that it’s quite possible that ISIS or Daish or whatever was responsible for the chemical attack, rather than Assad.’
‘Then why the hell am I about to authorize a Tomahawk strike on a Syrian Government Air Base?’
‘People will expect you to do something, sir. Provided it’s an appropriate and proportionate response, of course.’
Then they heard Craig say, ‘Those little kids! Goddammit, I can’t stop thinking about them.’
That evening, while Jim Connally took Stephanov off to the British Embassy in Helsinki for the first debriefing of many, the Barnards had a quiet dinner on the waterfront.
Edward Barnard raised his glass. ‘Hyvä terveys!’ he said.
‘What does that mean?’ Melissa asked.
‘It means “good health” in Finnish. Years ago I had a Finnish girlfriend.’
He looked at his wife fondly. They were growing old together. That was how things were meant to be.
‘You did brilliantly today, darling,’ he said. ‘I guess Popov knew we were planning to visit the Karelia transnational biosphere reserve. It was on the schedule. That was our cover for the detour into the forest in case anyone asked. Popov just seized the opportunity for some back-channel diplomacy. Did you talk to him?’
‘Of course I talked to him. He’s a human being, isn’t he, not some kind of ogre?’
‘I mean when he was driving. That was tricky terrain.’
‘I don’t think Popov had any problems,’ Melissa said. ‘Most of the time he was driving one-handed.’
‘What was he doing with his other hand?’
‘Had it on my knee. Just for reassurance, of course.’
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Both Wilbur Brown, director of the FBI, and Bud Hollingsworth, director of the CIA, had made time in their busy schedules to respond to the US attorney general’s urgent request.
‘This came in the post today,’ Dirk Goddard, the former Senator for Mississippi explained. ‘Brown-paper envelope. Posted in Washington yesterday.’
They sat round a table in Goddard’s office to listen to the tape.
‘Okay guys,’ they heard Craig say. ‘This is what we’re offering if I’m elected president. Number One, the US is going to drop the current sanctions against Russia, as regards Crimea and the Ukraine. We would hope that NATO will follow us in this, but even if they don’t, we will act unilaterally.
‘Number Two: if I’m elected president, the United States will not challenge the deployment by Russia of the ground-based, nuclear-capable 9M729 missiles, even though possession of these missiles is a violation of the terms of the INF… Bert, what the hell does INF stand for?’
‘INF means the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, Ron.’
‘I guess that’s Bert Rumbold,’ Wilbur Brown commented. ‘Sounds like he’s still on six packs a day.’
‘Thanks, Bert,’ they heard Craig say. ‘We understand the 9M729s have a range of 620 to 3240 miles. Apparently they hit Syria from the Caspian the other day. So if we agree that their use is compatible with the INF, then Russia can legally hit every capital in Europe. More to the point, perhaps, Russia will be able to blast the living daylights out of every city in China.
‘Let’s take China’s build-up in the South China seas. I believe the United States must be ready to go to war with China over these illegal bases. But it would be better still if Russia and the US could take a coordinated approach. We can say to China “Pull back from the Spratlys or the Russians will whack Chengdu or Xian or wherever with their 9M729 missiles can reach.” ’
‘Now we’re going to hear the Russian ambassador to Washington, Georgiy Reznikov,’ Goddard said.
They listened right to the end of the tape, until they reached Reznikov’s damning conclusion.
‘Thank you, gentlemen. This has been a most productive meeting. I can assure you that President Popov will be pleased. In view of what I have heard today I am authorized to tell you that between now and Election Day we will make sure that our cache of emails from the Democratic National Committee, including those from Caroline Mann, the Democratic Presidential candidate, is deployed to the fullest possible extent. We further undertake to offer Craig Shipping and Craig Oil the most favourable terms possible as far as their operations in the Russian Arctic are concerned.’
There was a pause. Then they heard Reznikov say, ‘Of course we will, I hope, have further conversations, many further conversations when Ron – may I call you Ron? – is elected. But perhaps our discussions today will do for starters.’
There was one last intervention from Ronald Craig, the presidential Candidate. ‘Don’t forget about my old friend Mickey Selkirk. Selkirk Global is planning a major expansion in Russia. I think he has his eyes on Pravda and Izvestia as well as RT, Russian television!’
Goddard switched the tape off. ‘So my first questions, gentlemen, are: did this conversation really happen and is this an accurate recording?’
He looked at them expectantly. They were the experts; he wasn’t.
Bud Hollingsworth raised his hand. ‘Hold on a moment, Dirk. Let’s assume for a moment this isn’t a fake. It’s a real recording of a real conversation. What would you say the implications are?’