Stanley Johnson - Kompromat

‘We have nothing on Brown,’ Yuri Yasonov said. ‘He’s squeaky clean. And we don’t have enough time anyway to set up a Kompromat scenario, even assuming Brown would fall for it, which he probably wouldn’t.’

‘So what do we do now?’ Galina Aslanova asked.

‘I checked with President Popov this morning. He thinks it’s time for Plan B. Our last best hope to swing this before it’s too late.’

‘Plan B!’ Galina exclaimed. ‘Don’t we always say, “there is no Plan B”?’

‘Well, there is this time,’ Yasonov replied.

Julius Lomax, former congressman for Massachusetts 9th Congressional District, had form. A few years earlier, he had had to resign his seat in the House because of a ‘sexting’ scandal but he was still addicted to this particular form of entertainment.

His wife, Sandra, one of Caroline Mann’s principal aides, had left early for work. His two kids were at school, he had lost his job and he had time on his hands. Only that morning he had met up online with a schoolgirl from Champagne, Illinois, whom he felt, with a bit of help, might be ready to share some of his wilder fantasies.

He typed a brief, lewd message into his smartphone. He had an appropriate photo of himself all ready to upload.

In Moscow, 4,500 miles away from Boston, Galina Aslanova gave a thumbs-up sign as the message pinged into her inbox. ‘Bingo,’ she said. ‘He’s hooked.’

The KSB Moscow office had very kindly supplied a variety of photos of teenage girls in their underwear, all waiting to be uploaded. Galina quickly selected one and pinged it back.

Lyudmila Markova, tough, ferocious Lyudmila, stood behind her with her own mobile, videoing the exchange. Some of these ‘sexting apps’ had self-delete programmes, as soon as the exchange ended, so you had to take care to make real-time recordings.

‘We need to fire him up a bit,’ Markova said. ‘Send him a boob shot. Here what about that one? She’s young and pert and pretty. I wouldn’t mind her myself. I wonder where they found her?’

Seconds later, Julius Lomax fired back. ‘ Great! Loved it. What’s the weather like in Champagne? It’s pretty cloudy here in Boston .’

Galina Aslanova didn’t answer that one immediately. ‘Could be a trap,’ she whispered. ‘He may be checking that I really am in Illinois.’

She Googled: ‘What’s the weather in Illinois today?’

‘ Actually, it’s unseasonably warm here today ,’ she typed. ‘ With highs in the upper seventies .’

Lyudmila punched her: ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t send that. You’re meant to be under fourteen. Talk like a teenager, not like the weatherman!’

‘ The weather here’s great ’, Galina tried again. ‘ You may think this photo’s great too .’

Within seconds the former congressman sent what he considered was his finest literary effort so far: ‘ I can’t help thinking about your pretty little pussy .’

Later that morning, Galina Aslanova phoned Yuri Yasonov.

‘I think we’ve got what we need,’ she said.

‘Attagirl!’ Yasonov replied.

Less than two hours later, the Selkirk Clarion , America’s biggest-selling national newspaper, published both online and in print a series of messages sent by former congressman Julius Lomax to an underage girl in Champagne, Illinois, although fortunately they kept this as a one-sided conversation with words suggestively blanked out.

Within an hour the FBI succeeded in obtaining a court order permitting it to seize and examine Lomax’s mobile and laptop as well.

In seeking the warrant, the FBI indicated it would not only be looking for illegal activity involving the grooming and exploitation of a minor for sexual purposes. It also asked the permission of the court to undertake a complete forensic analysis and review of the files on Lomax’s laptop.

The FBI argued that such a review ‘will also allow the FBI to determine if there is any evidence of computer intrusions into the subject laptop, and to determine if classified information was accessed by unauthorized users or transferred to any other unauthorized systems’.

Harry Stokes, foreign secretary, called his political adviser, a bright and bubbly young man called Owen Griffiths, into his grand office overlooking St James’s Park for an urgent discussion.

‘There have been some developments in the Golden Shower affair,’ he said. ‘The MI5 have somehow managed to depixelate the tape, whatever that means, and they report that Ronald Craig is not, absolutely not, the man on the bed. The original report which gave rise to the Golden Shower scenario seems to have been written by a former MI6 officer, Martin Silver, under contract to the Democratic National Committee. They wanted him to dig up some dirt on Ron Craig. Now they are asking me as the minister responsible for MI6, as well as the Foreign Office, to make it clear that we totally repudiate any suggestion Ron Craig is one of the dramatis personae in the famous Golden Shower event.’

Stokes got up from his desk and strode across to the window. It was late October and the evening was drawing in.

‘Basically, Owen, I think this is a lose-lose situation,’ he continued. ‘If we go public and exonerate Craig, Caroline Mann’s people will complain we are playing politics. They will protest that we are behaving exactly like the Russians, interfering with the US Presidential election by coming out with such a very pro-Craig bit of information just days before the vote. But if we don’t say anything, then Craig’s people will yell blue murder. The Golden Shower rumour has already hurt their candidate. We can be sure Craig won’t put the prime minister at the top of his visitors’ list if he’s elected next week.’

As a SPAD – Special Political Adviser – Owen Griffiths was free from the normal bureaucratic hang-ups. ‘I think there’s some wriggle room here, Foreign Secretary. My advice would be to put nothing in writing. Why don’t you have a quiet word with Warren Fletcher, the American ambassador? You’ll be meeting him at London Zoo tomorrow when the Duke of Edinburgh opens the new tiger enclosure. That way we won’t be making any public statement, but we can always claim that we passed on sensitive information in a timely and appropriate way. What Warren Fletcher does with this particular piece of news is his problem, not ours.’

‘Great stuff, Owen. I know why we pay you.’

Next morning, a select group of invitees, including Foreign Secretary, Harry Stokes, Warren Fletcher, the American ambassador, Gennadiy Tikhonov, the Russian ambassador to the Court of St James’s, and the world-renowned conservationist and broadcaster, Thomas Pulborough, gathered in front of London Zoo’s spectacular new Tiger Territory. The Duke of Edinburgh, former President of the World Wildlife Fund, made a brief but powerful plea for more national and international action to save threatened tigers and all endangered species.

‘The situation of the tiger is getting worse all over the world,’ he said. ‘The Bali, Caspian and Javan subspecies are already extinct. The Sumatran tiger, which you see here today – two adults and three splendid cubs – is critically endangered.’

The duke pointed to the animals in the enclosure. The zoo had done a tremendous job of recreating a pocket of Indonesian rainforest in the heart of London. While the parents lazed in the late October sunshine, the cubs explored their newly enlarged and improved home, climbing up into the trees and splashing in the lake.

‘The Bengal tiger appears to be holding its own and the population of the Siberian or Amur tiger is actually increasing.’