Zoya said, “Now that we know this might involve a bioweapon, please tell me Five Eyes leadership is smart enough to call off the conference now.”
Brewer shook her head. “It would make the Five Eyes look impotent if it got out there was some threat to the annual conference that presented itself the day before it began and they shut the whole thing down. These are intelligence agencies; they would be admitting they had poor intelligence. They’ll increase security, I’m sure, but the show will go on.” She pointed to the back room where Won was chained up. “What we need are answers.”
She headed for the door now. “I’ll be outside. Get her talking.”
When Brewer left the room the three Poison Apple assets stood together. Zoya looked to Court. “You want to do ‘good cop, bad cop’?”
Court shook his head, then pointed at himself. “Bad cop.” He pointed at Zoya now. “Worse cop.” Then he turned and motioned to Zack. “Psycho cop.”
Hightower and Zoya answered as one. “Got it.” And they sat down in the living room to go over their plan.
CHAPTER 55
Castle Enrick was stunningly beautiful, and Matthew Hanley assumed that when the sun rose the next morning he would find the Highlands to be equally breathtaking. He and his entourage of assistants and Ground Branch security men were led to a suite of guest rooms, and along the way Hanley stopped a dozen times to greet cohorts from other agencies already here for the three-day conference.
Hanley had made a call while on the aircraft to Inverness and secured a meeting with one of the most senior and well-connected people in the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service. Sir Robert Holly was the number one man in the operational pecking order at Vauxhall Cross, the name given to the SIS’s headquarters. Holly had been a friend to the United States on many occasions, and while he wouldn’t say a thing he wasn’t allowed to say to any of the other Five Eyes organizations, Hanley had found him utterly candid and trustworthy in his actions before.
They had reserved a small drawing room to speak in, and the countersurveillance technicians were just finishing their sweep for bugs as Hanley stepped inside. Walt Jenner and Art Greer stood outside, while the rest of the GB unit walked the grounds to meet with the various security officials working the conference to coordinate movements.
Sir Robert Holly was a handsome man well into his seventies, perfectly dressed even late in the evening, and in possession of a blond toupee that fooled no one. The men shook hands, pleasantries were exchanged, and a vetted member of the castle staff brought tea for them both. Hanley had no use for tea, but the Englishman poured himself a cup from the service and sipped it immediately.
“Right. So, you said this was time sensitive.”
“Very much so. It involves a potential threat to this conference.”
“Good lord,” Holly said. “Sounds like you need to talk to our security folks. Not my department, but maybe I should take the opportunity to slip off to do some fishing? Hear the rivers around here are full of perch and brown trout. Might be safer on a stream somewhere.”
Hanley smiled at this. “We are working to get a handle on the situation. I need to talk to you, not security. I need information about an MI6 operation about fifteen years ago.”
The Englishman cocked his head. “Well, then. The past is definitely my department. Go on.”
“It’s regarding an assassination.”
Holly sat back in his chair. “Iraq?”
Hanley shook his head. “Moscow.”
The intelligence chief said, “I don’t believe I have any information relating to that.”
Hanley did not back down. “The victim was the son of the GRU chief at the time, General Zakharov.”
Holly made a face, leaned forward, took his teacup, and held it to his mouth. “His son?”
“Yes, Robert.”
Before Holly took a sip he said, “Who’s telling you we killed that boy?”
“His father.”
Holly almost spilled his tea as he chuckled. “Langley is quite behind the curve on that one, old boy. General Zakharov is long dead.”
Hanley shook his head. “We aren’t the ones behind the curve at the moment. Zakharov has been in London for over a decade, Robert. Operating under the alias David Mars.”
“You’re completely mental.”
“Sorry. It’s true.”
“My God!” He then spoke softly. “The Black Wolf.”
“He says you killed his wife and then killed his son.” Hanley did not mention Zoya and her defection to the United States. He was here to get information, not give it.
Holly sipped tea in silence for nearly a minute. Hanley was rushed, but he knew his colleague would be weighing all the pros and cons about talking to the Americans about this subject. Finally he said, “Do I have your assurance that what I am about to say does not leave this room in any official capacity?”
“You have my word.”
Holly nodded. “Well . . . we bloody well did kill the wife. She was creating sleepers, long-term penetration agents, SVR assets to come into the UK to operate against us. A linguist, a native of England, she was good at her craft and we saw no other way to stop her. Had a proxy from Belarus run her down on a Moscow street. Problem solved.” The erudite man gave a halfhearted shrug about the killing. He wasn’t conflicted about it at all.
Hanley nodded. He felt certain he would have given that kill order himself if he’d been in a position to do so. “What about the kid?”
Holly shook his head. “We didn’t kill the boy. He died by accidentally exposing himself to polonium-226.”
“How the hell did he do that?”
“We kept it all hidden; there was too much riding on Russian-British relations at the time to reveal our findings publicly. But our investigation concluded that young Zakharov was ferrying the isotope into the UK for his father. We didn’t know General Zakharov was already here at the time, only sussed that out later. This was before Dagestan, mind you. He was mad about his wife’s death and came up with his own plan to get revenge. His plan was to kill top intelligence officials with the polonium, and at the time he knew we had assets in the Kremlin. He didn’t have sanction, but he did have men and women in the intelligence services who owed him. He got the polonium and had it stabilized and processed for travel but couldn’t acquire someone who could get into and out of the UK without the chance they would be identified as GRU. So he used his own son, under doctored papers; had him come to London. Poor sod had no idea what he was doing. The bloody polonium was in a chocolate bar, wrapped in foil made out of some material that prevented it from leaking out. The candy was given to the boy by a friend of the general, obviously an agent of the GRU, ostensibly as a gift for his old friend in the UK. The poor lad got hungry on the plane, I guess, ate some of the bar, and was sick within hours. Dead within days.”