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Nik_SpeakerToCats wrote: ↑Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:18 pm
My apologies for not keeping up with the tale.
When my eyes are working better and their changed Px corrected, I'll be back...
There's a lot going on!
In fact, we are heading for a conclusion at - some point - soon.
jemhouston wrote: ↑Fri Mar 28, 2025 9:45 pm
We're rather good at that.
There'll be plenty of breadcrumbs to follow as well.
Then there will be hell to pay, despite the politics: killing a sitting senator, even by accident, is a no-no and begging for a return strike.
The dead German girl in America, the one whose picture was on the screen before Hannah, looked a heck of a lot like her little sister Holly. A non-identical twin alongside her brother Hamish, Holly was the spitting image of the young woman who was embroiled in a sex scandal after her murder. The American news media were having a field day. No one did such a thing like they did. Truths, half-truths, rumours and outright lies were being told. On-the-record stern statements were issued by politicians and commentors while there were off-the-record briefings full of slander too. Senator Daniel Goldberg was the centre of the scandal though Lieselotte Schick had her name and reputation dragged through the gutter as well. It was horrible to read and listen to.
Hannah had to pay attention though, not just because that deceased mistress of the senator shared a likeness to her sister.
MI-5 and the rest of the British intelligence establishment were all over the issue regardless of the political dirt being dished because of Goldberg’s position. His role on the Senate Intelligence Committee brought about that keen interest. Hannah was reading through the detailed report on what was known about what had happened in Georgetown. The FBI were not very keen to be sharing what they knew though the CIA was all over the ongoing investigation and were sending what they knew – editing out unknown portions though – across the Atlantic.
None of it made Hannah comfortable.
The American media was focusing upon the secret relationship between Goldberg and his stepson’s girlfriend yet what FBI agents and spooks at Langley were looking at was what wasn’t on the surface: could this all have been part of a foreign espionage effort. The Schick girl was the focus of their enquiries. There were a lot of questions in her background, a lot of worry too that she might have been a ‘sparrow’ now being brought up. Goldberg had access to a lot of intelligence secrets, all of which would have been more than interesting to various hostile foreign intelligence services. The deaths of them both was being speculated upon as some sort of murder-suicide by the media.
Spooks across the Atlantic, and Hannah too here in London, were thinking with grave concern that it instead might have been some sort of assassination. She didn’t have access to the thinking of CIA operatives, just her own suspicions. Hannah knew that the leak that there was a spy for Britain operating in the SVR’s London rezidentura had come from Washington.
Could it have been from Goldberg via Schick originally?
Is that why the two of them were now dead?
Hannah talked it over with both Amanda & Leighanne, the two of them whom she remained difficulty working alongside & reporting too respectively. The former could see what Hannah was imagining: the whole thing made sense to her. She went as far as giving the Russians credit for doing such a thing. It impressed her, what they’d done with a sparrow seducing an old fool to gain information via pillow talk, as it was the type of operation that she was usually involved in with attempts to do similar back to them. The latter was less sure. Leighanne didn’t believe that SVR would go as far as killing a sitting senator. The blowback on them, she assured Amanda & Hannah, would be too feared so as to make sure nothing like that was done.
Amanda had an answer for that, almost exactly what Hannah was thinking: “Maybe an accident happened?”
Leighanne shook her head dismissively. She wasn’t convinced. She also wanted to move on to the matter at hand, the reason why she had called into her office her two subordinates.
“Tell me, Hannah: why has Katerina done another runner again?”
Early this morning, during the rush-hour where commuters were ten-a-penny at Canning Town Station in East London, Katerina had made a dramatic dash to escape anyone following her. She gone through a staff access door, setting off an alarm. The Underground station out there was all aboveground though with many staff-only areas just like a station belowground. It was dangerous to go where Katerina had, as well as illegal. Through a door, along a staff route and then out of the station the Russian woman had ran. There had been a Transport for London worker who had tried to stop her.
Katerina had kneed him in the groin.
The whole incident had been caught on various cameras with the footage watched repeatedly by Hannah. Katerina had then got out of the station through an area not covered by CCTV cameras and done a vanishing act.
Who was she running from? There were no MI-5 Watchers on her at that time – coverage was patchy; there were many other people to get the close monitoring treatment from a team stretched thin – and neither could any other known Russians be seen at the station. Katerina had made sure that no one could have followed her though, even remotely via camera footage. She was gone.
This wasn’t the first time that such a thing had been done. It was now the fourth such incident of Katerina suddenly doing a runner to make sure that she couldn’t be followed. The last time had been that recent afternoon when she had surprised Hannah out in Hammersmith… something which she hadn’t reported in the end as she was supposed to. What happened at Canning Town had consequences though. Katerina’s actions brought attention onto her. The Met. Police had been issued with an instruction to look the other way on the whole thing: they’d initially sent officers to investigate the assault as well as what else Katerina had done. From Thames House, the order went for them to cease their inquiries and ask no questions.
But Katerina had done a runner and just because the police couldn’t ask why, that didn’t mean that Leighanne couldn’t.
“I think we’re going to lose her.”
“Lose her?” Amanda sounded unsure of what she was hearing.
“This is Katerina getting ready to pull a disappearing act.” Leighanne clarified herself. “Not just on the Russians but on us too.”
Hannah shook her head. Yes, Katerina was acting strange, rather out of character recently, but ‘doing a disappearing act’ wasn’t on the cards.
“I don’t think so, Leighanne.”
“Then,” the counter came fast, “why is she doing what she is?”
Hannah tried to explain what she thought was going on: “It’s in her training. Not us, but what they gave her. Doing what she wants to do, always about the secrets and not having anyone track her, is just Katerina. It’s what she has always done since I’ve known her. They drummed it into her back home and since she’s been sent to the London rezidentura, working for us here, she keeps on doing it.”
Before she’d said that, when she’d thought of the reason why in her head, Hannah had more confidence in such an explanation. When she said it, it didn’t sound believable at all.
The looks on the faces of Amanda and Leighanne told her that they didn’t believe it either.
“We’re going to up the surveillance on her.” Leighanne wasn’t going to be caught out by Katerina if she made a run for it. “Amanda, employ your bag of tricks. Get more than one tracker on her. Do what you have to with that.”
“Will do.”
Neither of the two other women explained exactly what that meant though Hannah had a good idea what they were talking about. Tiny tracking devices would be attached to Katerina’s clothes and closest belongings. They wouldn’t be something that could be seen nor detected with counter-tracking equipment… hopefully anyway. Several would likely be used, to make sure that if Katerina managed to deliberately or accidentally get rid of one or two, others would remain in place.
“Brief the Watchers, make sure that they understand that losing Katerina isn’t going to stand. They are to do what they must to stick with her no matter what she might do to try and shake them.
If someone needs replacing on the team, Amanda, then you have my authority to do that.”
That was Richard’s authority to be correct though Leighanne was comfortable speaking on behalf of him. Momentary jealousy hit Hannah: she used to be able to speak for Richard before she had lost his confidence and Leighanne had taken her place.
The issue at hand, that of the belief here that Katerina was going to run away, hadn’t gone yet. Hannah was determined not to let that take hold among her colleagues. She set about arguing again that their Russian agent working inside the SVR’s den of spies within London wasn’t about to flee and leave MI-5 high-and-dry.
“Katerina is on our side.
She’s work for us for some time now, she’s always delivered, she’s always come through. What she did up in Edinburgh was fantastic: the whole S.V.R set-up that they had operating out of their consulate there was put an end to for a good long time. When she was in Canada, loaned out to Six, she did wonders there too.
And back here, she’s keeping SPEARMINT clear of suspicion so that no one suspects that Ksenia is our agent-in-place. After this London posting, there’s a good chance I think that they’ll send her to America. Katerina can do some real damage to whatever the Russians are up to in Washington or New York.
Yes, yes, yes: I agree she is unpredictable, wild even. But she’s on her side and isn’t going to run off!”
Hannah thought that this time she’d made her argument well.
Yet, again, neither Amanda nor Leighanne looked in any way convinced.
Before any reply could come, there was a knock on the door to Leighanne’s office and, without being bidden, a young aide of hers came in with undue haste.
“It’s important, sorry.” The aide whispered something to Leighanne with Hannah tried, and failed, to overhear. She did note though that Amanda appeared just as keen to try and overhear what was being said too.
When her aide was finished, Leighanne let her go. “Okay. Yes. Do that.”
Hannah impatiently waited during the pregnant pause of that woman leaving to see if Leighanne would tell her what was going on.
“The Americans,” Leighanne began, “have been in touch with regard to the Goldberg death. They have in custody one Martin Eaglesfield: he’s apparently the ‘Special Assistant to the Deputy for Legislative Affairs’.
I’ll be honest and say that I’m not quite such what such a job that man has but he’s C.I.A and I assume he works on Capitol Hill a lot.
It appears that he came forward himself – clearly not a man who believes in the whole Cover Your Behind principle – to clear some matters up. That’s turned into an arrest with charges probably pending for the chap. Doing the right thing has cost him greatly.
I do not know how but he was in knowledge of the name of SPEARMINT. He says he told Goldberg.
We know that there was a leak at Langley that came to the S.V.R, and the current presumption of mine is that it went through this Eaglesfield to Goldberg, that we had someone inside the rezidentura here. That looks like that happened first and then, somehow, Eaglesfield has gotten hold of Ksenia’s name.
There’s all sorts of unexplainable gaps, maybe ones which Eaglesfield will clear up, but to me, this is looking why Goldberg and his sparrow might have got themselves killed.”
Amanda swore.
Hannah put her hand to her mouth before taking a breath and then adding something of her own: “We need to pull Ksenia out.”
“Oh yes, we really do.” Leighanne was in agreement.
“Either the Russians know and are waiting for an excuse to deal with her, or they are damn close to knowing and closing in.” Amanda was thinking aloud. “I say pull her too.”
Leighanne was nodding. “We are doing just that: today.”
“What about Katerina?”
“She stays where she is for now, Hannah, while we try to figure out what is going on with her. Ksenia is whom now is important. I’ll talk to Richard and get final approval but I’m sure he’s going to give the go ahead.
SPEARMINT’s time is up and, even if she objects, as I suspect she might, she’s out of there less they snatch her, get her out of the country to forcibly debrief her to find out everything she’s ever given us and who she’s worked with here: Katerina included.
Let’s get to that now.”
Katerina’s safety was forefront in Hannah’s mind as the meeting broke up with haste. She went to discuss that with her team, Phoebe included.
Phoebe, whose treacherous mind she was unable to read.
Katerina was away from the rezidentura this morning. She took part in nothing more than a farce therefore missing the events back there, all for the sake of appearances and a bigger cause than the one which she was fighting for.
Her absence was due to the need to meet with Zach Montgomery. He worked in Downing Street and was considered a source of first-rate political intelligence that they craved back home in Yasenevo. There was a personal debriefing to be had with him, one which the rezident, Ilya, directed her to undertake. One-on-ones with British traitors were rare, done sparingly due to the need for caution. Off she went to see him as instructed though and that was the farce.
Some time previously – a year, maybe more: Katerina hadn’t been told the exact details –, Montgomery had been turned by MI-5. They’d learnt of his treason, confronted him with threats of punishment and had him deliver carefully-crafted false information to the SVR set-up here in London. Through SPEARMINT, aka Ksenia, they had done that, with her knowledge that what was being given to her was junk…
...of part of a complicated disinformation plot, so the British said.
And now Katerina was wasting her time taking part in it too.
When she returned to the embassy, coming up to midday, she slipped through the communications room and towards the doorway which led to the belowground rezidentura. Yevgeny was, as always, waiting for her on the other side.
“Are you okay?”
She asked that of him because he didn’t seem himself. He was always off, but today was different. Yevgeny was quiet, withdrawn even.
In addition, below his left eye there were what Katerina was sure were a pair of scratch marks.
A dismissive wave of his hand: “It is nothing for you to worry about. Go down.”
No jokes.
No foolishness.
No comments about tunnels and spiders and dwarves and elves and dragons and magic rings.
Yevgeny was very un-Yevgeny today.
It was more than Yevgeny who wasn’t their usual self. Everyone in the rezidentura was.
Katerina went to get some tea. Lyudmila barely had anything to say. She looked shaken up, ruffled. Oleg was at his desk. Katerina watched him for a moment, seeing him staring vacantly eyed at his computer screen. He was there in body, just not in spirit.
Over in one corner there usually sat a ceramic vase which Polina would always take the time to fill with a wide selection of fresh flowers. The contents of the vase were in the bin, so too the scattered container.
Oddly, there were show scuffs marks on one wall, up at waist height.
Something had happened here...
Katerina started to put things together. Yevgeny had been in a physical struggle of some sort. Lyudmila and Oleg, maybe others not currently present, had witnessed it. Some of the damage had been cleaned up, more of it missed though.
She started to look for more clues. Katerina was moving towards her desk yet Ilya came out of his private office before Katerina could discover anything else.
“Katya, come with me.”
It wasn’t a request delivered in his usual fatherly manner. Instead, it was an order.
Katerina followed him, away from the office and out into the tunnel that stretched quite some distance away from the rezidentura itself.
The tunnel, the one which she had come down into on the first day at the rezidentura, led from the embassy’s chancery building to Ilya’s domain. Katerina had been told that it went on further, right up to where the ambassador’s splendid official residence lay but she had never been that far down it. There was a doorway in the fashion of a submarine hatch, one which blocked progress further than where the rezidentura lay.
Katerina didn’t have the access code for the lock.
Ilya did though. As per procedure, only because of that, she purposely turned her head away when the rezident entered the code. Katerina wasn’t supposed to know it and if he saw her looking, he’d have uncomfortable questions to ask.
The tunnel layout was identical beyond the hatch.
“Up there,” Ilya broke the silence that had been present since his order to follow him, “is the way to the residence. Have you been in there?”
“Nyet.”
He smiled: “It’s fancy in there. You’d like it.” Then he laughed.
It was some sort of private joke, one which she wasn’t privy too.
“Okay…?” She tried to encourage him to explain.
“Here we have three rooms.” He had moved on. “Each is sound-proof and secure.”
Katerina looked at the trio of steel doors as she stood in the gloom of the longer portion of the tunnel to which she had been brought into. They were lifeless clunks of metal, shorter than even she. Each had a keypad entrance as well as bolts top & bottom.
What was beyond them she couldn’t fathom.
Ilya filled her in though.
“A second, bigger safe than the one out in the rezidentura. For paper files and electronic copies. This one, even Lyudmila doesn’t get access to.” He had placed a palm flat against the first door before now moving the same hand to the second door. “This one, and the next one too, Katya, are containment spaces.”
Katerina looked at him unsure. She had no idea what he meant. When he wasn’t forthcoming with an explanation, she sought one. “They are ‘containment spaces’, Ilya?”
“Officially, that is their name.” He sighed and pulled a face of resignation. “They are cells for captives.
One is currently empty while the other I had Yevgeny put into it Ksenia Alekseyevna Kazankina.”
So SPEARMINT had been caught.
Questions as to how that had happened, what exactly had occurred down in the rezidentura too, flooded Katerina’s mind. She kept schtum though. Now was not the time to ask them. Ilya would be on edge. She was confident she wouldn’t make a mistake, that she could play him for a fool as she had always done, but if she did make a mistake – Katerina had a quite unhealthy doze of self-confidence yet remained un-stupid –, well… there were two cells there weren’t there?
“A source made an approach,” unbidden, Ilya started to give some details of what had gone on, “and they are keeping their identity hidden. Naturally, Katya, I was suspicious about the nature of that: I feared a trap. I was going to wait for you to return. They sent you here to find the spy that the British have and I was going to wait.
Something spooked Ksenia though: I don’t know what. She went to leave. I tried to find a plausible excuse for her to wait but she was determined to leave. Thus, a regrettable incident occurred.”
“You did your duty.” Katerina was careful with what she said. “Is she okay?”
Ilya nodded: “Nothing but scraps and bruises. Yevgeny didn’t get too rough with her. Her trying to run confirmed her guilt to me.”
“I want to debrief her.”
Taking back control of the situation was Katerina’s aim, one secondary to protecting herself though.
“I have been a fool.” Now the rezident was shaking his head. “Ksenia did more that just deceive me: she has made an idiot of me. I’ll be for it too once Yelena back at Yasenevo is told all. She’ll find out that Ksenia wormed her way into my affections – I don’t have to tell you what I mean by that, do I? – and so blinded me as to what she was up to.
How long has she been doing this? Think of all of the damage that she has done, not just here but to the Rodina as a whole!”
“I should debrief her, Ilya.” Lost in his own sorrowful woe, he hadn’t allowed her to do what was necessary.
Ilya stepped back from the door and led Katerina away towards the intra-tunnel access hatch.
“I have instructions from Yelena already. We are to send her back to Yasenevo with haste. There she will be debriefed. I expect too that they will want both of us back as well. Ha! They will leave Lyudmila in charge: she has long wanted my job.”
None of this was what Katerina wanted to hear.
“When?”
“As soon as possible. Transportation is being laid on from Moscow’s end. I will need your help arranging the logistics here. It will be difficult, but I am relying on you, Katya.”
What Ilya wanted was help with smuggling Ksenia out of Britain. That wasn’t going to be an easy task at all.
She was an accredited diplomat. There was therefore no anonymity with her person. Whatever state she was in at the moment, inside the cell which Katerina walked away from, Ksenia might not be in the same frame of mind or physical shape when it came for her to head home to Russia. Regardless, there was no way that she would leave by a commercial aircraft to be flown home to the fate which awaited her. Ksenia could try and run. The British could try and snatch her. All sorts of possibilities were on the table.
She could also start talking about Katerina too.
Ksenia was going to have to leave Britain without anyone knowing.
With that, Katerina saw an opportunity.
Ksenia was no friend of democracy, no willing agent-in-place for the British. They’d forced her to spy upon the rezidentura, maybe even pushed for her to climb into the married Ilya’s bed as well to gain more of what intelligence that they sought. Katerina didn’t feel anything warm for Ksenia either. She was one of them, one of the people ultimately responsible for her father’s death.
Like Ilya was.
Like everyone who willingly worked for the SVR.
Once Ksenia reached Russia, she’d face hell. Even if she fully cooperated and told her interrogators everything, she would still suffer. There would be physical pain, mental anguish and whatever else they could think of. They would drain her for information. Everything she had ever done, not just against the Rodina, but in her entire miserable life would be dragged out of her. They’d use drugs. They’d beat her. They’d electrocute her. They would simulate drowning her. They’d dangle her upside down for days. They’d burn her. They’d mutilate her. They’d let a gang of rowdy soldiers have their way with her.
And, then afterwards they’d shoot her and dump her body in a lonely grave.
Did Ksenia deserve that?
Katerina, consumed by vengeful hatred, wasn’t sure if she did or not.
But…
...stopping that from happening would hurt the SVR.
If she could rescue Ksenia, or at least stop Yelena and her people in Yasenevo from interrogating her alive, that would be quite the blow that Katerina would inflict against them. They’d need to know the damage done and without such knowledge would be left reeling.
Her mind turned to what else she could do.
Walking back into the rezidentura proper, pretending to listen to Ilya as he talked, Katerina took a moment to stare at Lyudmila. He’d been correct in what he had said: Lyudmila would replace Ilya, at least on an acting basis here in London when the rezident would be recalled as she was – to expect anything else was stupid – to the Rodina.
The smaller safe was behind Lyudmila, the one full of secrets. Perhaps there were more in the bigger one next to those cells, perhaps there weren’t. Either way, there was a goldmine of intelligence located behind where Lyudmila sat. The British would love to get their hands on that.
Such a thing would gravely hurt the SVR if it happened.
The plan now fully formed in Katerina’s mind.
She was going to do them so much damage!
And she was going to have to run too.
Ksenia hadn’t gotten away. Someone had betrayed her, even Ilya himself didn’t know who. If they knew about Ksenia, who was to say they – whomever they were – didn’t know about Katerina either.
It was time to go. But before she did, she was going to break things.
