FINN WAS BACK in London on the first Eurostar train from Paris the following morning. He was taken, almost forcibly, at Waterloo station by two look-outs from the Service who picked him up without breaking step and marched him to a car, the two of them standing a little too close to him all the way until they were sitting in the back, one on either side, and the man on the right had given the driver an instruction. Finn was caught off balance by the reception, but unsurprised.
They returned not to the house in Norwood but to another Service safe house in Hackney. They drive in silence, Finn making no attempt, for once, to poke fun or to undermine his own situation.
It is a once-elegant house with chipped white cornicing and broken steps that lead up to it, and with weeds sprouting from the basement steps. The neighbours are plumbers and poets, actors, waitresses and the unemployed.
Finn is escorted up the broken steps a little too fast for comfort and, once the door is secured behind him, down some stairs inside the house which have peeling white banisters, until he finds himself half pushed, half guided into a room with a steel door and without windows.
Standing behind a desk and talking into a mobile phone is Adrian, the head of the Moscow desk and always Finn’s handler. He has been Finn’s mentor since the beginning and maybe, too, his substitute father.
With Adrian is a new young Russia recruit just out of Oxford who reminds Finn of himself, back in 1989, being taken to witness the interview with Schmidtke at Belmarsh prison. There is also a woman whom Finn hasn’t met but who, it transpires, speaks good German. The room is bare but for three chairs, the desk and a metal box containing routing equipment and perhaps a scrambling device fixed to the wall at the back
Finn is offered a chair and the handlers are sent back upstairs, one to find a fourth chair. He is then told to wait outside the door ‘in case we need you’, as Adrian puts it ominously.
They sit down. Finn is in front of the desk, and his three colleagues sit opposite, almost like a respectful interview committee, except that Adrian is picking his teeth with a toothpick. The woman speaks first. She asks Finn in German where he’s been, who he’s seen, why he’s gone to Germany.
Finn speaks of a visit to Frankfurt, on his way to the Hartz Forest, where’s he’s been enjoying the hiking.
‘Why are we speaking in German?’ he asks Adrian, but Adrian hasn’t finished with his teeth, as though they may play a part in the proceedings.
They know much, Finn observes, but from the line of questioning, he hazards a guess that they don’t know about his meeting with Dieter or his trip to Luxembourg.
‘Been frisked?’ Adrian suddenly asks. ‘Have they gone through all your hidden pockets?’ he adds sarcastically.
‘Your boys took everything I have, Adrian,’ Finn says.
‘Which is what?’
‘Nothing much except a Eurostar ticket and some money,’ Finn answers. ‘And a bag of dirty clothes.’
He has cached the box that Dieter gave him somewhere, before returning to England.
‘No receipts from some nice gasthaus in the forest, then?’ Adrian says. ‘No train ticket from Frankfurt?’
‘Nothing, no. I was on holiday. I only keep stuff I can put against tax.’
‘Convenient,’ the Oxford recruit says, and receives a look from Adrian of such histrionically exaggerated admiration that it mocks the boy and reduces him, as intended, to blushing silence.
They’re angry that he’s gone abroad against their friendly but explicit instructions. Adrian has an energy pumping off his body that would melt a small snowfield. Finn knows Adrian’s rage without observing anything. Adrian feels let down, too, he guesses.
So Finn tells them he’s been clearing his head, walking in the Hartz Forest, near the old border, saying goodbye to his old life.
They didn’t believe him, but what could they do.
‘Why didn’t you go walking in the Pennines?’ the young recruit is emboldened to ask him.
‘It’s not next to the Iron Curtain,’ Finn says.
‘Neither is the Hartz Forest,’ the recruit says, a little too quickly. ‘Not any more. Not for eleven years, since eighty-nine.’
Finn shrugs. ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he says.
And then the real purpose of his abduction from Waterloo station enters the proceedings. In a carefully timed pause, Adrian, the Desk head, old friend, and Finn’s long-time ‘spiritual’ adviser, looks up at him and loosens his tie, as if they are all enjoying a balmy spring morning. He snaps the toothpick in two.
Adrian, as Finn describes him, is a red-faced man of middling height, who wears an ordinary-looking grey suit, white shirt, red tie. Finn says Adrian wears red ties because they dampen the glow of his well-lunched face, which has the jolly ruddiness of the Laughing Cavalier, he says. Adrian is an abrupt, sharp and, on the face of it, jovial fellow, coming to the end of a long and distinguished career at the Service—with still the possibility of the ultimate promotion—and, before his Service career began, a leading figure in Military Intelligence. He’s served in the SAS in several of the British postcolonial wars in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East, but still had the time after they were all finished to rise very nearly to the top of SIS, or MI6, whichever you prefer.
Finn told me once that early on in their relationship he’d asked Adrian what he did in his spare time at his country house. Pheasant shooting, perhaps?
‘When you’ve shot as many darkies as I have,’ Adrian informed him, ‘banging away at the odd pheasant doesn’t really cut the mustard.’
But Adrian hides behind this façade of military bluster. It is an artificial construct that lulls others into a belief that his mind is less acute than he sounds. For behind the barked sentences and the politically incorrect sentiments lies a mind as sharp as a mussel shell. And Finn agrees with this estimate. Finn has a great admiration for Adrian’s intellect, if nothing else about him, and he wouldn’t have had if his boss were a fool.
Adrian recruited Finn and there exists between them that special relationship that exists between a recruiter and his subject; like a father Adrian has sought to make Finn in his own image, but like a proud father, too, he admires the differences between them. When Adrian recruited Finn, Finn was Adrian’s shapeless clay, whom he has sought to fashion into a worthy object of his attention. If Finn has let Adrian down with his recent Moscow debacle, Adrian doesn’t show it.
But-so easy to forget-Adrian is also completely ruthless. His generally jovial bonhomie is a convenient disguise for that. Finn was scared at the beginning of his time in the Service of getting on the wrong side of Adrian and he has cultivated a sufficient, though cunningly insubordinate, friendship with Adrian so that finally Finn believes he has manoeuvred Adrian into the role of older brother rather than father.
Either way, he has let Adrian down now and Adrian doesn’t like anyone to let him down.
And so now, at the house in Hackney, Adrian loosens his tie, undoes the top button of his shirt and reaches the reason for his presence at this otherwise routine telling-off of a wandering ex-intelligence officer.
‘You’ve been a good officer, Finn,’ Adrian says, so gently it puts Finn on his guard. ‘Very good. Exceptional. Your work in Moscow could have been done by no one else, in my opinion. Extremely sensitive stuff and well handled from start to finish. I’m very proud of you.’
‘Thank you, Adrian.’
‘Your style may not have been to everyone’s taste, but it was to mine. But that doesn’t matter. You achieved great results.’
This time Finn doesn’t reply, but inclines his head slightly to acknowledge such unusually high praise from Adrian.
‘Never mind the way it all ended. It takes nothing away from your achievements, my boy,’ Adrian says.
‘I’m sorry for the way it ended too,’ Finn says, and in this room he means it. ‘For what it’s worth,’ he adds.
But Adrian ignores this, either because Finn’s regret is not actually worth anything to him, or simply because he doesn’t like to be interrupted when he has the floor.
‘So I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Finn,’ Adrian says quietly. ‘It’s come as quite a blow.’ Adrian sweeps back his lank forelock. ‘Finn, I’m afraid Mikhail was a fraud. Has been all along, I’m sorry to say. It’s come as a great shock to everyone and I know that will include you, above all.’
The young recruit nods slowly and looks down at the table, as if they’re mourning a colleague, as, in a sense, they are.
Finn doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything. He is stunned. He knows exactly what Adrian is saying, who Adrian is talking about.
‘Yes,’ Adrian says cautiously and observes Finn closely. ‘It’s a confusing thing to hear, I agree,’ he continues, injecting a note of sympathy into his voice that fools nobody. But Adrian doesn’t look like a man who’s ever been confused, doubtful or even in two minds about anything in his life.
‘Mikhail has been very useful,’ he continues. ‘A very clever source indeed. And, to us, a very expensive double agent for many years now,’ Adrian says.
Finn watches Adrian’s fingers tap irritably on the table.
‘I’m not saying Mikhail hasn’t provided us with good material, you understand. From time to time,’ Adrian says breezily. ‘Of course he has. That’s why he’s been so bloody successful. He gave us- you’- Adrian flatteringly nods across the table to Finn- ‘some very useful material, valuable both to us and to our friends in Gros-venor Square’ by which Adrian means the Americans. ‘But the big stuff which we- which you too, I know, Finn- set such store by, all this turns out to be the fruits of so much KGB inter-clan warfare and, to be honest, it doesn’t take much light to be shone on it to reveal the flaws.’
Adrian pauses for his peroration.
‘I’m afraid Mikhail allowed this internecine intrigue in the KGB to cloud his judgement on the issues that were most important to us. Mikhail’s been fighting his corner in an internal battle for one KGB clan’s victory over another. In doing so, he’s used us, rather than the other way round.’
Leaning back in his chair and at last stopping the tapping of his fingers by cradling his hands together across his chest, Adrian sighs.
‘This part of Mikhail’s intelligence-the crucial part-is, to coin a phrase, absolutely useless,’ Adrian finishes with a flourish, joining his fingers in a Gothic arch.
Perhaps Finn is too quick in his acceptance of what Adrian has said, or doesn’t break into the protest of anger or frustration that Adrian expects, for Adrian doesn’t take his eyes off him for a second, searching to see how the news is being received. After all, to Finn and all the other people in the room, Mikhail is the apex of Finn’s career, the source that has sustained him for so long. Finn should be devastated. Mikhail is the reason he was kept in place in Moscow for seven difficult, fraught and dangerous years. To the irritation of the Service’s chiefs, Finn was the only person Mikhail ever agreed to communicate with.
But Adrian is sharp. He sees an uncharacteristic meekness in Finn’s calm that suggests his humble acceptance of this momentous news. And Finn sees in Adrian’s eyes that he doesn’t believe that Finn has bought the story. Adrian knows or suspects that Finn is agreeing for the sake of agreeing and that Finn’s complicity in this extraordinary story that he has just unfolded is not guaranteed.
So he asks Finn to lunch with him, and this is something that wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been pre-planned; Adrian’s diary is stiff with lunches. Adrian doesn’t believe that Finn is really in the loop at all, that he accepts the debunking of Mikhail.
Outside the terraced Hackney house, the two of them step into a waiting grey car that matches Adrian’s suit and are whisked towards the West End.
‘I didn’t want to break this to you quite so abruptly,’ Adrian says, and for once avoids in this statement his habitual abruptness. ‘But you understand it couldn’t really wait. It’s too important. It draws a line under your excellent career, Finn, truly excellent career. I know now it must seem to be a deeply unsatisfactory line. But it’s not. You’re one of the best officers I’ve ever had, and I mean that as a friend, not just your boss. Right now, I understand, it must seem a terrible blow to you. You’re thinking that those last years in Moscow were wasted. Well, they weren’t. You got hold of a lot of excellent material for us. Perhaps Mikhail was too good to be true. I should have spotted that. That was my mistake, Finn, not yours. You did everything right, everything. You mustn’t beat yourself up about it. I know you won’t, I know you’re too tough for that. You’re one of us,’ Adrian says at last, by which untrue flattery he means, Finn thinks, one of a notional group of exceptional superheroes like Adrian who, camouflaged and with their faces blacked out, go about Her Majesty’s business in the darkest, most dangerous trouble spots of the world.
‘Fancy a walk through the park?’ Adrian says and, without waiting for a reply, barks at the driver to drive under Admiralty Arch and drop them just before the fountain by Buckingham Palace.
They walk up through Green Park, parallel to St James’s in the leafless grey of a London winter day. Adrian is attentive, full of friendship, says how he really wants to see a great deal of Finn, that they have more than just the Service that binds them.
But Finn is still in shock. He says little. His defences are down. Because he knows. He knows that he is being fed a lie and Adrian knows he knows.
They turn into St James’s and enter the white portals of Boodles.
‘Thank God you’re wearing a decent suit,’ Adrian jokes. ‘Some of our new recruits these days! I don’t know if they even possess one.’
They walk through the sitting room of the gentlemen’s club to the small, cosy bar and Adrian greets several other members along the way. Adrian lunches and dines at Boodles with regularity. He lives in the country, but stays up during the week in town and Boodles is his common room.
‘I’ll have a glass of wine,’ Adrian tells the barman, who knows what wine he wants and in what size glass–large. ‘What’ll you have?’ he says to Finn. ‘Something strong, I should think.’
‘I’ll have a Moscow Mule,’ Finn says and for a moment Adrian is knocked off the treadmill of his platitudes. To Adrian, a mule is a drug mule. Is Finn referring to a man with drugs hidden up his arse arriving by plane from Russia? But Adrian swiftly conceals his confusion.
‘Something they feed you at one of your more louche clubs, is it?’ he says.
Finn describes the cocktail and it causes quite a comical stir. One of Adrian’s friends from a City bank says he’ll have one too and then they tell the barman to mix a jug. And suddenly they’re in a conclave, Adrian, Finn, the banker and some other financial big shots, Adrian at the centre, a real partygoer—–a real goer, Finn thinks. He’s seen Adrian in the office chasing skirt, but he’s just as useful at rallying a bunch of all-male lunchtime drinkers around him.
Finn is knocked off balance and can’t recover from what he’s been told. Perhaps Adrian knows he will be knocked sideways. In normal circumstances, the throng of public school City board directors only makes Finn rise to the occasion, to be as public school, as City board director as the next man. He’s lunched with Adrian here many times before, after all. But now he feels out of his depth, his focus is lost, the game is getting on top of him and he sympathises for a moment with one or two of the Service’s senior but grammar-school figures whom he normally scorns for letting themselves be browbeaten by their public schoolboy colleagues. This, perhaps, is what snaps Finn out of his shock: the need to perform, to be as good as anyone.
‘What about this Russian fellow?’ the banker asks Adrian, in a break in the inconsequential chat. ‘The aluminium tycoon, Pavel Drachevsky. Is he good for it? Will he make a proper company that can list here in London, d’you think?’
‘More Finn’s department than mine, I’m afraid,’ Adrian replies. ‘He’s been our Trade Secretary out there for donkey’s years.’
‘Second Trade Secretary,’ Finn corrects him, and wonders what Adrian’s cover is in Boodles, or if he even has a cover here. The crazy notion flashes through Finn’s mind that Boodles is a sort of official dining room for MI6.
‘What d’you think?’ the banker asks Finn. ‘We’ve got to watch these chaps now, they’ve snapped up everything of value in Russia.’
‘Are you an investor?’ Finn replies gamely. The throng laughs.
‘Wouldn’t know how to,’ the banker says. ‘But I hear Rothschild’s are nosing around this chap,’ he adds seriously, and there is clearly a reason for his interest. ‘He must be better than some of the other candidates.’
‘Rothschild’s have a history in Russia,’ Finn says. ‘They’re the only people who ever sued the Tsar, back in the 1860s. They got a lot of points for that.’
‘And won, no doubt.’
‘Yes, they won. Russians couldn’t believe it. The Tsar, a god, had been successfully sued. Rothschild’s balanced it out nicely by suing the Pope too.’
‘If Rothschild’s are interested in Drachevsky, they must be on to something, don’t you reckon?’ the banker prompts Finn.
‘The Russian oligarchs are still sorting out what they legally own and what they don’t legally own,’ Finn says carefully. ‘Pavel Drachevsky has half of Russia’s aluminium, but he’s sharing it with some other co-owners. One of the men connected with the company’s gone to jail. Others aren’t so easy to deal with. There’s a guy in Israel who really holds the strings. And then there’s Stepanovich, who has a finger in the pie. Maybe others. If Drachevsky can consolidate, my guess is he’ll look to London for a listing. In time. The rules are more lax here than in the States.’
‘That so?’ someone says.
‘Surely you mean “relaxed”,’ another Savile Row suit says. ‘The rules are more relaxed.’
Everyone laughs at this.
‘The Russians like it here,’ Finn persists unnecessarily, and receives a warning shot from Adrian, ‘because, unlike the Yanks, we don’t ask them too many difficult questions. The City will welcome them with open arms when they start to arrive, no questions asked.’
It is the winter at the end of the year 2000 and London is fascinated by gaining access to the oligarchs, their raw materials and their unprecedented wealth. The City of London has spotted a gold seam for several years now and, despite the occasional warnings, London wants into Russia more than ever.
Adrian smiles warmly at his protégé’s expertise, but nevertheless takes him by the arm and they steer through the throng like joined contestants in a three-legged race.
Once in the dining room they sit down at a white-napped table in a corner, away from other ears, and the menus are brought, Finn- and Adrian- as always admiring the waitresses the club gets on the cheap from Eastern Europe.
Finn has potted shrimp and Adrian agrees rather than chooses. They order steak and kidney pie to follow.
Adrian leans across the table.
‘Remember ninety-five?’ he says, not wasting any time, Finn notices. ‘Six years after the Wall came down? Russia was in a total mess. Yeltsin was all over the place, gangsters roamed the streets like wolves and the bubble was going to burst. Russia was going bankrupt and the Communists looked like they might win the next election, get back into power.’ Adrian doesn’t wait for a reply. ‘What they needed was hard currency to save the nation. The rich were getting their money out of Russia as fast as they could because they feared the return of the old regime.’
‘The KGB spirited out four hundred billion dollars, according to our estimate,’ Finn says.
‘Well, we like to say it was the KGB,’ Adrian says vaguely. ‘But it was business interests, organised crime, you name it. Anyway, what Russia needed was our help to save the situation. The oligarchs rallied round Yeltsin to keep him in power and Clinton got together with the heads of the world’s three biggest aluminium producers and told them to fix a price. Completely illegal, of course. But brilliant. And the right thing to do. The price was fixed so the Russians could sell their aluminium at a good price and save the economy. That’s what happened. Russia was saved from a return to Communism. Clinton rewarded the head of Alcoa, the world’s biggest aluminium company, with a job running the US Treasury. There was a hell of a stink, the FBI got involved, all the letter-of-the-law sort of people were up in arms. But Clinton was right. He saw the big picture.’
This is a most subtle approach, Finn thinks. Adrian knows that Finn admires Clinton. Adrian has called Finn a bleeding heart liberal on many occasions and, once, even introduced him as a ‘commie student type’, to much laughter. The fact that Adrian, in his praise of the former president, actually despises Clinton for ‘avoiding the draft’ is, for the moment, forgotten.
So Finn knows that Adrian is getting him onside with this anecdote.
Adrian picks up the wine list and makes a big thing of choosing an extremely expensive Burgundy.
‘Special occasion,’ Adrian says. ‘I want you to know there’s no hard feelings for what happened in Moscow. Let alone your little walk in Germany,’ he added.
‘Thank you, Adrian,’ Finn says, but he is thinking about Mikhail, his source, his raison d’être for seven long years.
‘Well, right now,’ Adrian continues when the waitress has gone, ‘we’re in a situation which is not unlike the one back then, in ninety-five. But this time we have a new president, Putin, who can really put the past behind Russia, get rid of the Communists for good. He’s got terrific ratings with ordinary Russians. Which he needs,’ Adrian protests, ‘in spite of your harsh view of him. The point is, Putin can make a difference. Bring Russia into the community of nations at last.
‘OK, so he’s not whiter than white. Chechnya was–is- a bloody sham. But we’re all grown-ups and we need to see that Russia has to be handled by a strongman for the time being.’ Adrian looks sadly serious. ‘They’re not, actually, ready for a true democracy yet, Finn. It’s too early, you know. You know that.’
Somehow Finn bites his tongue on a number of possible protest points. He suddenly feels he isn’t hungry at all.
But Adrian is off on another tack, no doubt connected in some way to the Clinton and aluminium story.
‘Those special reports you did for us a few months ago,’ Adrian reminds him. ‘One of your last reports, I believe. A round-up of the Russian oligarchs, if you like, and where they stand in the line of power and money. They’re the people we need, here in the West, and we need them to have the support of Putin and, for that, we need to encourage Putin, not tick him off every time he sends an army into Chechnya, or bumps off a bloody journalist. There are bigger fish to fry.
‘Anyway, those reports were bloody good, Finn. You really got beneath the skin. You showed us the oligarchs, warts and all. The mafia network, their KGB connections, the rough and tumble of the way business is being done in Russia today. Brilliant stuff. Most of all you showed us just how vast their wealth is. Well, we need that wealth, Finn, we need it circulating in the world’s economy, making more money, not just stuck in trust accounts in the Caymans, bugger all use to anyone.
‘What I’m saying,’ Adrian taps the table, ‘is that, while the reports you did were damn good, they gave us exactly the wrong message.’
Finn is momentarily taken aback by this hairpin turn in Adrian’s line of thought.
‘They gave us the true message,’ Finn counters finally.
‘The truth is not always the whole truth,’ Adrian says abruptly. ‘Those reports you did were compiled by us at the Office in order to be shown to our banks and our investors here in the City. UK plc, if you like. They were compiled in order to encourage our banks, our institutions, Finn, to go into Russia. What you wrote, old boy, though containing much truth, would scare off anyone in their right mind from ever investing over there in a million years. Not good.’
Adrian sips the wine and it is excellent. Their wine glasses are filled almost to the brim by the pretty Romanian waitress, and Adrian nudges Finn at her inexperience at pouring wine. But when she’s gone with a nervous smile, he continues.
‘We reviewed them, the reports, at Joint Intelligence and, I must tell you, they received high praise from everyone. The PM was very pleased. But. But. The PM issued an advice to us to tone them down. He knew we have to get our banks and big companies over there, into Russia. Blair’s advice was right. Probably written by Alastair Campbell, though,’ Adrian adds and laughs.
But he is not finished yet.
‘So. Tone them down we did. For Tone,’ Adrian continues forcefully. ‘Because that was the right thing to do. Like Clinton in ninety-five, Mr Blair is doing the right thing with Russia. We can’t get hung up on the way business is being done over there, we must get on with actually doing business over there. Get me?’
For Finn, this is a first. He has certainly never heard Adrian heap praise on Clinton and Blair in the same meal, or the same year for that matter. But Adrian has made his point about why Putin must be supported, at apparently any cost-even the falsifying of field reports-and now slices through his steak and kidney pie as if he is partitioning India.
‘Vladmir Putin will be very pleased,’ Finn says.
Adrian halts a second forkful of pie before it reaches his mouth. He puts his knife and fork back on to the plate and looks at Finn. Gone is the camaraderie, the entre nous style of his recent exposition of events, the car journey and the meeting at the house in Hackney. His eyes are black with anger.
‘Be very careful, Finn. You’re treading a very thin line indeed. Don’t try me.’ He leans in towards Finn and starts to jab his knife too close to his face. ‘Remember Tony Cardonus? He was with the Office in Bosnia at the end of the nineties. Remember him, do you?’
‘No, Adrian, I don’t.’
‘Yes you do. Married a German woman,’ Adrian says, without taking his eyes off Finn’s, without even blinking. ‘We pulled him out for rather the same reasons we had to pull you out. Insubordination. We paid him off and he went to live with his German bint in Saxony or somewhere. Then he got chippy. Then he demanded more cash. Then he began to make threats. First of all we turned his house over in Saxony. We took everything we needed, computers, the lot. That apparently didn’t work. So we had to go back and we turned his house over again and really made a mess this time. In fact, they couldn’t even live in it. Then, would you believe it, when he still didn’t back off, his kid got kicked out of the local school, thank you very much. Then Cardonus found he couldn’t get another job. His German bint and their son left him. Know where Cardonus is now? Working behind a bar in the Hamburg red light district. When he can stand up straight enough. Get me? When we came back the third time, we didn’t just do his house in. So don’t try me, Finn.’
Adrian returns voraciously to his steak and kidney pie.
Finn describes how, at that moment, he saw the brute in his old recruiter properly for the first time: the ruthless, single-minded streak that had got Adrian through the Malaysian jungle or the Omani desert thirty, forty years before; not wearing a grey suit in a London club, but a breath away from death, and which has propelled him through the Service nearly to the top.
‘Not hungry?’ Adrian says to Finn between mouthfuls.
Finn picks up his knife and fork and eats so that Adrian won’t know how sick he feels.
‘You must come down to Wiltshire,’ Adrian says when their plates are clean and he’s pouring the rest of the Burgundy equally between them. ‘Pen would love it,’ he adds, as though it has been some third person who, five minutes before, stopped by the table and issued an explicit physical threat against Finn.
They adjourn for brandy as a late appearance by the sun sends a streak of light through the windows at the front of the club.
‘Pen’s very fond of you, Finn,’ Adrian says, returning to the theme. ‘She and I think of you like…well, like family.’
Pen is Penny, Adrian’s wife. At various times in the years since Finn has known and worked for Adrian, Penny has been described by Adrian’s contemporaries as ‘first class’, ‘a top girl’ and, once, as the ‘perfect woman’. This has not stopped Adrian philandering in London during the weekdays and maybe that is part of Penny’s ‘perfection’, Finn thinks: her ability to overlook her husband’s behaviour.
‘I’d love to,’ Finn says. ‘That’s a very kind offer.’
‘I insist you come,’ Adrian says. ‘Pen will call and make a date. Absolutely.’
And they part company on the club’s steps, a deal done, it seems.
I get up and walk around the pink house and look through the windows at the back. I check upstairs and look carefully from behind a curtain out on to the street at the front. There is nothing. It snows still, but there is nothing untoward, nothing that alerts me to the presence of unwelcome visitors.
I keep walking, round and round the house.
When Patrushev finally told me what my assignment was on that night at the Forest, it was to find our enemy within. So this is it. His codename is Mikhail. Within a few weeks of the evening I spent with Patrushev in Moscow, Finn, in London, is being told by his bosses that this enemy within our ranks at the Forest, Finn’s great source Mikhail, is no good; that Mikhail is a mistake.
I pick up Finn’s book again. At the end of this meeting with Adrian, he writes just two paragraphs.
‘But Mikhail has always been the silken thread of truth. He is so far on the inside that he practically shits in Putin’s bathroom. Mikhail is the greatest source the British ever had in Russia. It is Mikhail who has got me this far.
‘It is Mikhail’, Finn writes, ‘who first told me about the Plan, Anna. He is one of them, one of the so-called Patriots, brought down from Putin’s St Petersburg clan. Before that, way before that, he was stationed in East Germany with Putin.’
This denial of Mikhail by Adrian explains so much of the past seven years. It explains why Finn had to go it alone, go feral, as he puts it. He was fighting his own side as well as ours. Finn never stopped believing in Mikhail. I know that, and the Service didn’t like it at all.
Most importantly, perhaps, Patrushev’s personal interest in Finn tells me something now, as I read of Adrian’s denunciation of Mikhail. It tells me that Mikhail was…is real, just as Finn knew he was. Why did Adrian lie about Mikhail back then? And what does it tell me about Finn now, wherever he is? Is the identity of Mikhail the key?