Stanley Johnson - Kompromat

He handed the flimsy back to the duty officer. ‘You’d had better get going,’ he said. ‘Pass the word. And make sure the women know what to do.’

Stephanov rubbed his hands and smiled. ‘They know all right.’ In due course, he would be well paid for the video he would offer for sale on the now well-developed market for such material. He always welcomed a little freelance action. He was saving up for that Baltic cruise with his new girlfriend.

Barnard glanced at his watch as he got out of the car at the Kempinski Hotel. 10:30p.m. St Petersburg time. The night was still young. In London it would be two hours earlier.

He paused for a moment to pick up his key from reception – one of the new-fangled plastic card affairs he rather disliked – and headed for the bar.

Ron Craig, the large, sandy-haired American who sat there with a glass of bourbon in front of him, had one of the most famous faces on American television. He hosted a panel show watched by millions. He was also running for president.

‘Great to see you, Mr Craig,’ Barnard introduced himself. ‘I saw you at the dinner, but you were tied up with President Popov and we didn’t have time to talk.’

Craig laughed. ‘That Popov! He’s quite a guy.’ He heaved himself out of his chair and slapped Barnard on the back. ‘Did you meet Rosie? Rosie’s my daughter. She’s passionate about wildlife. But she’s also my right-hand man, if you see what I mean. Say hello to Rosie.’

Barnard made a gallant little bow in the direction of the slim and lovely young woman sitting in a plush upholstered seat beside her father.

‘Oh, I’m so glad to meet you properly, Mr Barnard,’ she said. ‘I was stuck next to that Chinese gentleman at dinner and I couldn’t understand a word.’

‘Rosie’s flying with us to the Ussuri tomorrow in Jack’s plane,’ her father added. ‘You’re coming too, Jack says. That’s great. God knows where we’re going to land.’

Barnard pulled up a chair. ‘I’m just so pleased we were able to fix this up. I’ve seen tigers in India, I’ve seen tigers in Bangladesh, but it’s been one of my dreams to see a Siberian tiger in the wild. I told the prime minister that I wasn’t coming all the way to Russia to a tiger conference, and then passing up the chance to actually get out in the field to see one.’

‘It’s going to be tough, isn’t it? Cold too?’ Rosie looked a bit glum.

‘Don’t you worry,’ Craig patted his daughter on the arm. ‘They’ll have tents and a campfire. It will do you good. Do us all good.’

Craig slapped his tummy. ‘I could lose a few pounds, and a hike will help. Actually, it’s happening anyway. If you hit the campaign trail in an American presidential election, you’ve got to work your socks off. We’re not over the top yet. The contest may go all the way to the Convention, but I’ll tell you something: there’s no way in hell that this train is going to be stopped.’

Barnard was intrigued. More than intrigued. Impressed. In the UK, even now, when he was virtually home and dry, people were reluctant to take Ronald Craig’s presidential campaign seriously. All that tweeting. All that tub-thumping, the bombast and the rhetoric. They seemed to think the style of the man was wrong. That it wasn’t the way presidential candidates ought to behave. And apart from the style, there was the content of the message. ‘Build the Wall!’ ‘Drain the Swamp!’ ‘Lock her up!’ Strong meat indeed. Too strong for tender stomachs.

But with Craig standing proud and manly before him, haloed in a swirl of feral testosterone, Barnard could see how charismatic he might be to a certain type of voter.

But how had Craig found the time to come to St Petersburg? Barnard found himself wondering a few minutes later, once the aura of the powerful man had dropped a notch or two. What kind of business did he have with President Popov that was important enough for him to take a break from campaigning at this crucial stage?

Twenty minutes later, Barnard headed for the lift. He felt decidedly woozy. Don’t mix the grain and the grape, his father had always told him. Well, he’d had a lot of wine at the dinner, and several large tots of whisky sitting there in the Kempinski Bar. They were heading for the airport early the next morning for the long flight to Russia’s Far East. He hoped to hell his head had cleared by then.

Two young and glamorous Russian women dressed to the nines and wafting clouds of expensive perfume drifted across the hotel foyer to join him as he waited for the lift.

Barnard had noticed them earlier, sitting at a neighbouring table in the bar.

‘Good evening, ladies,’ Barnard said in what he hoped was a debonair manner. ‘Going up too? I’m heading for the eighth floor.’

The two Russian women allowed their lips to curve into what – in this dim light – might almost pass for a smile. ‘Eighth floor. Yes, that is good floor for us too,’ they purred.

‘All aboard then,’ Barnard hiccoughed as the doors opened. ‘Eighth it is!’

One of the reasons – indeed possibly the principal reason – Jack Varese had bought the Gulfstream 550 was that he liked to fly it himself. It wasn’t just a question of keeping up his flying hours, though with the hectic schedule he led that was always a consideration.

What he loved above all was being alone with his thoughts. Okay, his was one of the world’s most famous faces. Quite apart from his latest Oscar, he had starred in a score of movies that had been box-office successes. Women threw themselves at him. Over the years the glamour magazines had speculated about the possible outcome of the many ‘relationships’ with beautiful women that Varese had had pursued, but none of them, so far as the Hollywood gossip-mill knew, had come to anything.

The truth of the matter was that Varese liked to keep his private life private. Was he looking for a soulmate? Someone who, like him, believed that the world’s wild places needed to be preserved? If he was, he wasn’t saying, not even to himself.

On that particular late April morning, as the Gulfstream 550 took off from St Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport, Jack Varese was looking forward to some uninterrupted ‘quality time’ at the controls. In fact, since the distance, airport to airport, between St Petersburg and Khabarovsk in Russia’s Far East was around 4,000 miles, and since the Gulfstream 550 could cruise comfortably at 40,000 feet at around 600 mph, Varese reckoned that he had at least seven hours ahead of him to reflect on the state of Planet Earth.

And they wouldn’t have to refuel. The Gulfstream 550 had a range of 6,700 nautical miles. Hell, Varese thought, if the airport at Khabarovsk was closed in by fog or snow or by storm conditions, as it sometimes was apparently, they would have easily enough fuel to head for Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky or even Vladivostok.

As it happened, the weather that morning was perfect. Sometimes when you are flying at 40,000 ft. all Varese could see were the clouds below, but the control tower at Pulkova gave the forecast as they cleared the plane for take-off.

‘You’ve got good weather all the way to Khabarovsk, Mr Varese,’ the tower said.

As he taxied to the end of the runway Varese noted that the Russian presidential plane, an Ilyushin Il-96, and Russia’s own equivalent of Air Force One, was still parked on the tarmac, surrounded by armed guards. There was a bowser next to the plane. It looked as though they had just finished refuelling. Was President Popov still in St Petersburg? Was he about to depart? If so, where was he heading? Moscow? Somewhere else? Did the presidential plane have to file a flight plan? And if someone did file a flight plan, would anyone seriously believe them?