Chapters (124)
- Cover
- About the Author
- Acclaim for Frank Gardner’s Luke Carlton thrillers
- Also by Frank Gardner
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- 109
- 110
- 111
- 112
- 113
- 114
- 115
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
IN THE BRITISH ambassador’s office the lights were still on, long after darkness had descended on the Russian capital. At this hour on a Friday evening, when most of his staff had packed up their work and left for the weekend, Jeremy Houghton was still at his desk and his PA was still at work in the connecting outer office. The PA took the call at 7.13 p.m., trying not to register his surprise, and patched it through to the ambassador. Exactly nine minutes later Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Moscow was downstairs, climbing into his official car, flanked by his close-protection team. As they drove out into the Moscow night, the regular FSB tail moved neatly into place behind them, making no attempt to disguise their presence. Squat and ugly, the black Mercedes Geländewagen stayed close, even jumping the lights at one point so as not to get left behind. Other members of Britain’s diplomatic mission were being followed in more subtle ways.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation on Smolenskaya-Sennaya Square is an imposing building – some would say Orwellian in its towering, sinister appearance. As one of seven Stalin-era skyscrapers in Moscow, its daunting ‘wedding cake’ architecture soars 172 metres above the city. It was to here that Jeremy Houghton was summoned that evening, his car pulling up amid the grey-brown slush of old snow in the forecourt, where he was greeted curtly and escorted by broad-chested men in black suits with earpieces and bulges beneath their jackets.
It was what is commonly known in diplomatic parlance as ‘an interview without coffee’. The ambassador was told, via the interpreter who sat in the room, that Britain’s recent ‘neo-imperialist’ lobbying at the United Nations was totally unacceptable. The British government’s allegations of Russian activity in the sphere of biological warfare were completely without foundation. What had occurred on Svalbard was of international concern, including to Russia. The Russian Federation abided by all its international treaty obligations and any suggestion to the contrary, he was informed, would be met by Russia taking appropriate measures that Britain would come to regret.
Jeremy Houghton left the building tight-lipped, ears ringing, feeling as if he had just stepped down from a boxing ring. He would need to call London now from the SSR, the secure speech room, back inside the embassy – the electronically secure construction more commonly known as the Box. On the journey back his driver turned up the volume on Vesti FM, the Russian-language news channel that was preset on the car’s radio. It was a lengthy item all about Britain’s history of espionage against Russia. Even today, it said, Britain’s ‘arrogant and colonialist actions around the world proved conclusively its malign intentions. Every single British expatriate in Russia should be considered a potential spy. From now on,’ concluded the broadcast, ‘they should all be viewed with the utmost suspicion.’