So as the plane taxied down the runway she first prayed to Allah that he would bless her again with a son for “Her Thomas,” then refocused her mind on the weekend, and the African Minister they were to have as a guest.
As Thomas walked into his office and greeted Louise, his secretary, he took in her short cream skirt and matching blouse with her hair up in the process. He smiled at her and then commented that he thought she looked lovely which instantly earned him a blushing thank you from her in return.
Before Nara entered his life, he had been very much the typical description of a rake in the traditional sense of the word with a reputation as a lothario that would have put Don Juan to shame. But that was then and this was now. That didn’t mean though he didn’t like to flirt and look from time to time,
Telling Louise he didn’t wish to be disturbed until one o’clock, Thomas sat down at his desk and gathered his thoughts from the morning.
Feeling his phone buzzing he pulled it out and seeing it was a text from his daughter he opened it.
“Love you daddy enjoy the L this weekend!” it said.
“I see she spoke to her mother this morning!” he replied out loud with a shake of his head.
Looking at his watch, he realized that his daughter had sent this note in a lesson covertly.
“I will call you after prep lessons young lady!” he ordered.
He received an immediate reply of, “Sorry D xxx.”
When he had told Nara he felt the time was right for her to go boarding school they had fought tooth and nail over the decision.
“N-o, m-y T-h-o-m-a-s… PLEASE NIET… do not send my baby away… I B-E-G YOU!” she had pleaded in broken English and Russian like she always did when under stress with tears flowing from her eyes.
She had delivered her wails with such distress Thomas almost backed down and gave in to her before sticking to his guns because he was absolutely convinced that their daughter would have a more rounded education with some level normality.
The point was he had never even considered becoming a father until his little girl was delivered into his arms and now the little girl and her mother were the center of everything he did in his life and would always remain so.
Even his father, the infamous head of one London’s oldest and biggest private Merchant Banks, had sent him a note of congratulations, despite the fact they hadn’t spoken since he left Oxford. Stating only, “Well done! Your mother would be proud! Always, Rufus.” And although he had kept the note all these years it he had never responded back to the old bastard.
His thoughts moved back to Nara, it wasn’t lost on him that she had recently started to become more and more insecure despite him telling her there would never be anybody else. Of course, the direct benefit of this for him was their recent love making—it was almost as if she were using sex to make sure his eye didn’t wander.
“Maybe I should ask her if she would like have another child,” he mused sensing her insecurities were possibly a direct link to her own troubled relationship with her father and of more terrifyingly the life she was forced to lead before he entered her life.
As he waited for the laptop to come to life he confessed to himself that over the last year or so he had begun to worry about Victoria’s future.
He expected his ‘Plum,’ as he thought of her, and who was fast becoming a younger version of mother with every passing day, to run the TLH Group, a company currently worth sixty billion U.S. dollars by herself one day.
“It just isn’t fair,” he reflected as he made a decision that he hoped would rectify it.
He just hoped Nara felt the same as he returned to his paperwork in readiness of a meeting with the technical team of his Oil and Gas division.
The walk back to her office on 18 Old Queen Street took Rebecca just under eight minutes. As she was technically an officer working under “NOC,” meaning Non-Official Cover, she wasn’t located in the imposing building overlooking the Thames. Instead, her office, located in Westminster, was surrounded with small legal firms and lobbyists who had no idea that their neighbors, were the Near East Desk’s operations desk of MI6
As she walked, she mused over the problem she potentially faced with Litchfield. He knew her real identity. A conclusion she had reached by the way Thomas had looked at her. If she reported it up the line she would have been immediately removed from the scene and having spent the last six years watching him and suspecting that he was a traitor, she certainly wasn’t going to allow that to happen.
“I need to meet him!” she silently told herself.
On entering the office, she sat down at her desk, started her desktop computer, entered her password, and then pulled up his extensive file. As she did so, her boss Michael Barnes walked in.
He was a tall black man of second generation West Indian descent, fifty-two years old, wearing the sort of clothing you would expect to find in any Next or M&S of a simple dark blue blazer, white shirt, with a red tie and trousers with a black pair of black shoes. He was married with two teenage children, a house in Maidenhead, and a product of the State school system having gone to school in Reading, before going on to Guildford where he studied Business Studies.
After gaining a First, he then applied on a whim to the Civil Service only to be like Rebecca diverted into SIS. Together over the years they had served all over the world.
“I hear the meeting with the PM turned into a bit of love-in,” he said.
“Oh yes, I thought he was going to beg at one stage!” Rebecca replied uncharitably with a smile making reference to the PM taking advantage of the notice to ask for a media endorsement.
“Just be careful; the DG wants this handled with kid gloves” he said, ever the politician. “If he is an agent rather than a messenger of Ivan we will need to advise the FS. If he isn’t and we get this wrong then the fallout would be disastrous for us!”
Rebecca looked at him one more time, but didn’t say anything as he got up and walked out of her office. She knew the stakes more than anyone.
The African investment although important from a trade perspective and of course to the United States whose interests in the area were dead set against the growth of Russian influence in the Horn of Africa was secondary as far as the SIS were concerned. The real threat they were concerned about was whether the major contributor to the different political parties of the United Kingdom represented a clear and present danger to the ‘Defense of the Realm’ with his ability to mold and form policy. If he was an SVR asset then his reach and influence could have serious implications. The fact he had a Russian passport should have been enough for them all at the SIS in usual circumstances. Still, the game had changed dramatically over the last twenty years; ideology trumped by financial power throughout the fabric of society every time and when aligned alongside his outstanding military record from when he had served in the British Army meant that nobody wanted to risk sending it up the chain that he was suspect.
Being the service experts on the Oligarchs, Rebecca’s department had been tasked to rubber stamp him one way or another. The more political animals of the service considered it a poisoned chalice, so stayed away relieved it was not on their desk.
Get it wrong and it would be career suicide with a posting to the Congo, Michael had warned when giving her the task.
As she stared back at his rakish features on the desktop, Rebecca took the decision to use the high ground.
“Strike while the iron is hot!” she told herself with determination.
The phone buzzing on the desk interrupted Thomas’s thoughts. On pushing the button he was greeted by his assistant’s crisp voice.