Thinking along these lines made him reflect on the fact that Tally had earlier told him that this was the ninth Ebola outbreak that DRC had had to deal with. It was surprising that they had any economy left to worry about. He resolved to find out more about this when he had more time. In the meantime, he had to prepare for a meeting with John Macmillan and the Home Secretary in the morning to discuss his own progress.
The Home Secretary opened proceedings by asking, ‘How are things looking from your perspective?’
‘Rich Russian expats living in London are involved in a scheme to make themselves even richer,’ said Steven. The man I believe to be the brains behind it all is another Russian, who is not an expat, but does tend to come and go despite still being resident in Moscow.’
The Home Secretary’s eyes widened. ‘Russian government?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ Steven replied. ‘His name is Sergei Malenkov and he has always had an uneasy relationship with the Kremlin. He’s a businessman first and foremost with a huge fortune accumulated through mining interests across the Russian Federation. I came across him by discovering him as the one who recruited Martin Field and Simon Pashley to the operation and arranged payment, firstly through the expats’ laundryman, Jeremy Lang. He in turn passed them on to his contact, Marcel Giroud in Paris. It’s possible he also recruited and arranged payment for the other two, Lagarde and Petrov, but I don’t know that for sure.’
‘Do you know anything at all about what they’ve been doing to annoy the Chinese government so much?’ asked the Home Secretary.
Steven shook his head and said, ‘Contrary to what MI6 thinks, I’m not so sure the Chinese government had anything to do with it. I think we may be looking at private enterprise.’
‘But surely the sheer amount of money involved would suggest...’
‘Access to huge wealth,’ Steven interrupted, ‘the Chinese equivalent of the Mafia perhaps. I think what we’re seeing may be a collision between Russian and Chinese private enterprise with monumental sums of money at stake.’
‘For lovers of communist irony everywhere,’ said Macmillan with a world-weary shake of the head.
‘So, where do we go from here?’ the Home Secretary asked.
‘You know,’ said Macmillan, ‘we don’t even know for sure that what Malenkov has been up to is illegal. We’ve been assuming it is because of the huge amounts of money being invested, but we don’t know that is the case.’
‘The direct route would be to take Sergei Malenkov in for questioning,’ said Steven, ‘but I’m not sure that would get us anywhere. We don’t have anything to charge him with and he’s hardly likely to invite us all into the library to hear him fess up to what he’s been doing.’
‘True,’ agreed the Home Secretary, ‘The only crimes committed on British soil apart from possibly tax evasion have been the murder of his two collaborators, Field and Pashley and we can safely assume he had nothing to do with that: they were on the same side.’
‘But he did come back to London again...’ said Steven thoughtfully.
‘Sorry, I’m not with you.’
‘Well, his operation goes pear-shaped in a big way with multiple murders of the people who made it all possible. He must realise that the opposition must be after him too, and yet, he takes the risk of leaving the relative safety of Moscow to come to London to meet with Petrov senior. That suggests to me that his operation might still be up and running, but maybe he needs support.’
The Home Secretary cleared his throat before saying, ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Steven.’
‘How bad?’
‘The Prime Minister’s plan to have you work alone without the knowledge of the police and security services became impractical when these good folks began to suspect that their work on the case was being leaked. They, of course, did not realise it was being leaked to Sci-Med by the Prime Minister of all people and it became a bit of a mess.’
‘The best laid schemes o’ mice and prime ministers...’ said Macmillan.
‘Quite,’ said the Home Secretary, sounding less than amused. ‘Anyway, her original plan was that you could work on the case without anyone leaking that fact to the opposition and you becoming a target.’
‘Are you going to tell me that I have become a target?’ said Steven, sensing that the slight silence that followed was a politician’s way of avoiding the word ‘yes’.
‘Last night, you requested help from Special Branch.’
‘And very grateful I was to them.’
‘You sent them to an address in Islington in pursuit of a Russian heading for a limousine that was parked there?’
‘Yes, but they were too late.’
‘One of the officers noticed something on the building at that address, something he had come across before, an array of small camera lenses spaced along the front elevation of the house, hardly noticeable to anyone not looking for them. He tells me that they are not just normal security cameras; they are the type that are permanently linked to high-grade face recognition software. It’s of course, highly possible that you in the position you have been in for years would be on it. The house owner would have been able to alert his guest to anyone outside who was recognised.’
‘And I was standing across the road.’
‘Precisely, the Russian you met last night was not some thug going over the top in pursuit of a jogger with a mobile phone, he was a professional going after Dr Steven Dunbar of Sci-Med with the intention of killing him.’
‘Good to know,’ said Steven, putting a brave face on things, but feeling sick inside.
‘The same will probably apply to the two Special Branch officers,’ said Macmillan, ‘the cameras will have recognised them too if they’ve been in the service for any length of time.’
‘Indeed,’ said the Home Secretary.
‘Well, the fact that our Russian friends know that the British security services and Dr Steven Dunbar are on to them, could work in our favour,’ said Macmillan, ‘especially if they’ve got the Chinese mob going after them as well. Can’t be too comfortable.’
Steven smiled at Macmillan’s skill in making everything seem hunky dory. ‘Thank God I’m not one of them,’ he said with merest suggestion of sarcasm and getting a slight smile in return from Macmillan. The Home Secretary missed the joke.
Ten
Steven opened the safe in his flat and took out the 9mm pistol he had been issued with. He sat looking at it for a few moments with a heavy heart before conceding the need for it in his current situation. He loaded it, slipped on the Burns Martin shoulder holster he had asked for and adjusted it for fit before inserting the weapon and putting on his jacket to see how well it would be concealed. It would do.
Although he was really no stranger to firearms and what they could do, he hated having to carry one on the streets of London. It was so contrary to what British life should be about. It seemed to him that we had done so well for so long with an unarmed police force enforcing law and order and, in doing so, avoiding the mayhem seen so often on the streets of so many other countries, but he had to accept that things were changing, and for the worse. It was no longer unusual to see news reports featuring heavily armed police officers bursting into premises like Star Ship troopers on the rampage. Holiday makers had become accustomed to seeing them patrol the concourse at UK airports, seemingly carrying enough firepower to take over a small country. Just what they imagined they were going to do with these weapons in a crowded airport escaped him.
It had not been pleasant to hear that the attempt on his life last night had been targeted and deliberate and not the over-the-top action of a trigger-happy heavy to a snap-happy jogger, but — and it was a big but — he reckoned the attempt had been made to prevent the photo he’d taken leading to the identification of Sergei Malenkov and the announcement of his presence in London and now it was too late to do anything about that; the cat was well and truly out the bag. All the security services would be working overtime on Mr Malenkov. He personally and his phone pics were no longer relevant.