Peggy suddenly looked embarrassed. ‘Could it be another day, Liz? You see, Miles has just asked me out to dinner.’ She blushed and Liz realised why she had recognised the back of the youthful man heading off towards Horseferry Road. It was Miles Brookhaven.
Fane was only slightly late and had clearly lunched well. He had the flushed face and the faint smell of good food and wine that spoke of a couple of hours spent in his club. Liz introduced him to Pearson, and Fane gave the newcomer a quick once-over with suspicious eyes. Liz was amused to see that even with his new lady friend, if indeed she existed, Fane was still alert for any competition for the position of top dog in the room. But something about Pearson’s quiet confidence seemed to soothe Fane’s proprietary vigilance when it came to Liz.
‘Chief Constable,’ she said, addressing Pearson and feeling slightly absurd using his title, ‘thank you for joining us. We will want to discuss the fallout from events in Suffolk shortly, but I’d like first to finish up where we left off this morning. Geoffrey,’ she said, turning to Fane, ‘we were discussing why the various Russian operations have been so easily discovered.’
‘Easily? Did I say that?’ mused Fane.
‘Not exactly, but let’s take a minute to think about what we know. The scandal in Germany that you were describing this morning came about because of a leak; otherwise the death of Irma and Dieter Nimitz would have passed as a violent domestic quarrel – nasty but not remarkable. But someone told the media that they were Cold War spies. Who knew that? We did, but we didn’t leak it; Herr Lamme swears it wasn’t from his people. The only others who knew the story were… the Russians.’
‘But why would they want to do that?’ asked Peggy. ‘Surely they’d want to protect their operation and the fact that they’d planted these two Illegals?’
‘Not necessarily. Think about what’s happened because of the leak. It’s caused havoc in Germany and may even bring down the government. It has the German security services tied up in knots, wondering if anyone and everyone is secretly working for the Russians. And it hasn’t actually hurt the FSB at all. It’s magnified their reputation for disruption while maximising that disruption in their traditional enemy – Germany.’
Fane chipped in. ‘What about in America?’
Peggy said, ‘That operation was stillborn because Petersen died. They couldn’t put anyone else in to take his place; Petersen had been there several years. And young Aziz wasn’t a trained agent; he couldn’t take on the operation. He was just there to do what Petersen told him to do – but Petersen went and died.’
‘And what about here in Suffolk?’
This time it was Liz who replied. ‘Ah, that’s where they were really clever. They set up their operation in an existing college, got their recruits – these young men from the Hamburg school – chosen for them by Irma Nimitz, and went to work, preparing to do as much cyber damage as they could. We’ll have to wait till the cyber security team have done their enquiries to see exactly what was going on. I expect some of it would have been plain destructive hacking – what our young friend Thomma was being trained to do. Some of it would, I’m sure, have been a lot more sophisticated and damaging.’
‘But we found them easily enough,’ said Fane.
‘Well… think about it. The actual operations were intelligent, well thought out and well run – they could have gone on longer and done a lot of damage. We were lucky because we got on to it through Dieter, who via the Burnside couple in Brussels provided us with the name of Bartholomew Manor School. Even if we hadn’t had that tip-off, I’m sure it would have still come to our attention before long. How could you ever expect to hide the fact that sixteen young immigrants were smuggled into the UK to work on high-level software projects? The answer is – you couldn’t. That’s true, Chief Constable, isn’t it? Even in rural Suffolk?’ She looked at Pearson.
‘Particularly in rural Suffolk, I’d say,’ he replied. ‘Odd happenings stand out a lot in the country where mostly life goes on to a pattern.’
‘The Russians must have known that. They may have been surprised when I showed up at the college so quickly – even before the students had arrived. But once they learned who I was, they didn’t abort the project. I do wonder though whether Cicero and Sarnat knew the whole thing was meant to be discovered eventually. If so, why did they kill Miss Girling when they suspected her of snooping, and why did they pursue Thomma when he escaped?’
‘That would also explain why Sarnat and Cicero and the other teacher tried to cover their tracks by destroying documents,’ said Pearson. ‘That would make no sense if the whole thing was always intended to be discovered.’
Liz nodded. ‘Once they had killed Miss Girling they had to get away. None of them would have fancied a life in prison, and the FSB was never going to tell them they were supposed to stay and face the music as sacrificial lambs. Look at the escape plan: they left hours after Thomma escaped; they were picked up at the same place as the students had arrived, a pretty basic no-no; their getaway ship had roughly the speed of a tricycle. That’s not what I’d call a brilliant fallback plan if things went wrong, and it was only through sheer luck that they got away.’
‘So they were meant to be caught?’ asked Fane sceptically.
‘Not necessarily, though they would have been if there hadn’t been such a stupid cock-up between Border Force and the Coastguard.’
‘And if they had been caught, how would that help the FSB?’ Fane asked, but intrigued now.
‘Because then the whole affair would have blown up – just like it did in Germany. The press would have been on to it in a shot. I can see the headline now: Private School a Secret Nest for Spies. The broadsheets would have run with it for days. Major Security Lapses, The Enemies Within. Etc etc. I don’t know if this government would have fallen, but it would have taken a hell of a knock. And so would we – MI5 and your Service, Geoffrey. We would have looked like fools. An internal inquiry would have been the least of it. Heads would have rolled.’
Fane smiled wryly, perhaps recalling his visit from HR suggesting he could take his pension any time. ‘As it is, aren’t people going to be asking questions?’
Pearson replied, ‘They already are. The local papers have been ringing us about the events at the college. But I think it can be handled.’
‘Really? And what do you propose, Chief Constable?’ Fane asked a touch condescendingly.
Pearson was unruffled. ‘Well, I can’t guarantee anything. But we’ve devised a cover story that I’m pretty confident will fly. Child refugees arrive here thinking they are in the hands of kind people who are helping them to resume their disrupted education. At first, things go swimmingly. But unbeknownst to these young immigrants, their supposed patrons are crooks – no better than traffickers – who have brought them here specifically to defraud the authorities and philanthropic individuals for whatever they’re worth. Once suspicions are aroused, the trio do a runner and the kids are left behind, innocent victims yet again. That is near enough to the truth to satisfy my conscience, and my police commissioner agrees.’
He stopped and Liz said nothing, her eyes on Fane. But he nodded grudgingly. ‘I can see that working.’ Then as if unwilling to concede too much, he added, ‘Mind you, don’t overdo it.’
Pearson smiled. ‘We won’t.’
Fane turned back to Liz. ‘So, what you’re saying, if I understand it correctly, is that in fact it’s a good thing these men got away.’
Liz thought for a moment. ‘Yes. No scandal, no press, no publicity. It’s not as if we did anything brilliant. We were just lucky all the way through, particularly in failing to catch the Bartholomew three.’