Stella Rimington - Breaking Cover

Within seconds the African man had come back into the room, and Kozlov motioned at the television set. ‘Turn it this way, so she can see,’ he ordered.

The African went over and twisted the screen so it faced the chair. It was the same picture, but this time Jasminder saw it clearly and knew why it was familiar. The row of shops it showed ended in a larger store on the corner, with a sign above its windows: Kapoor & Sons . It was early afternoon in Leicester, and the pavement was crowded with Saturday shoppers. People were going in and out of the Kapoors’ mini-market, and she could imagine the scene inside – one of her brothers would be there, supervising the tills, occasionally going back to the meat counter where the butchers would be working flat out to serve the customers buying their Sunday roasts.

‘You recognise this place, don’t you?’ Kozlov said.

She nodded, confused. Why were these people filming one of her brothers’ shops? What did it mean?

Kozlov went on, his voice low and menacing: ‘We know quite a bit about your family. They’ve done very well, haven’t they? Hard graft, I think the English call it. But they’re proud of their little sister, too, I think. You were the clever one, but you’ve stayed close. It helps, your not having children, I suppose; it keeps you interested in them, and their families.’

There was something ominous in his tone now, though the words were innocuous enough. He said to Siyamba, ‘Switch cameras now.’

The man held a remote in one hand and he clicked it. Immediately the screen shifted, and it took Jasminder a moment to make sense of it. The view now was from a pavement across a leafy, tree-shaded street. On the opposite side there was a gate and what looked to be a playground, with buildings behind it. A group of people, mainly women, waited by the gate; in the background a door opened in the largest building and dozens of small children poured out, then rushed towards the gate.

‘This was yesterday. It’s a school as you can see. Full of lovely little children. All sorts – some white, some black, some Asian. You have a niece called Ali, don’t you?’

The apple of Jasminder’s eye; she liked all her nieces and nephews, but Ali was her favourite. ‘You dote on that child,’ her brother had once said, laughing. ‘But I won’t let you spoil her.’

Kozlov said now, with chilling cheerfulness, ‘I think you may see your niece in a minute.’

Sure enough, from out of the helter-skelter mob of little kids, the camera focused on one who was running ahead, already halfway to the gate. It was Ali, tiny in her little grey blazer and skirt, with a smile of such high-spirited innocence that it touched Jasminder’s heart. The girl suddenly jumped into the waiting arms of her mother – Jasminder’s sister-in-law, Laxme. Then the screen went blank.

‘You see,’ Kozlov said, in a sinister whisper. ‘We know exactly where she is. It would be a terrible thing if Ali had an accident… so I want to give you another chance, just to make sure that little girl can go on running out of school each day to her mother. Shall we have another look at my list?’ He bent down and picked the paper off the floor.

And now Jasminder saw that she would have to say yes after all. She wasn’t going to be doing it for money, or for love – she thought bitterly of how Laurenz had betrayed her. She wasn’t doing it, in fact, for any shameful reasons. She was doing it for Ali – to keep the little girl from harm. She didn’t have any choice.

Laurenz was acting like a marriage guidance counsellor, trying to help a client understand that her marriage was over. He said, ‘Things change, Jasminder, and that includes relationships. Think of it like this: we’re entering a new phase. No longer lovers, it’s true, but still close. Terribly close.’

They were sitting in the lounge area of a Lear jet. The owner, a Russian Jasminder hadn’t seen during her brief stay in Bermuda, was not travelling with them; Laurenz said the jet would return for him the following day. So Jasminder and he had the cabin to themselves, and sat opposite each other in the white leather extra-wide seats by the wings. A steward had placed two glasses of champagne on the table in front of them, then retreated discreetly to the galley behind a curtain up by the cockpit. None of the rules of commercial aviation seemed to apply to private jets, for they had bypassed security checks and watched as their bags were put straight into the Lear jet’s hold.

Jasminder hadn’t touched her champagne. She watched Laurenz as he talked on. He didn’t seem aware that her love for him had turned to contempt. Though she was still struggling to take in what had happened to her, still stunned by the transformation in… everything in her life, one thing was clear in her mind: she despised this man. He had played on her emotions to exploit her and now she would do whatever she could to damage him.

After her traumatic encounter with Kozlov, she had been desperate to see Laurenz, hoping against hope that this nightmare would turn out to be just that – a bad dream – and that what Kozlov had said about Laurenz knowing everything that was happening to her would turn out to be a monstrous lie.

But when Laurenz had returned from Hamilton, she knew at once that Kozlov had been telling the truth. The man who came back to the bungalow was not the charming, loving figure she had fallen for, but a new Laurenz – one who greeted her with a distant, perfunctory smile and an air of calculated detachment.

The rest of the weekend had gone by in a blur. There had been another awful dinner at the club, with Sam pretending to be her friend – Jasminder knew better – and Laurenz placed yet again far down the table. She had been unable to eat a thing, sitting there nauseated by the smell of the heaped plates of food and the great goblets of drink that the men were liberally swilling down, thinking of the threat to little Ali. She had tried to stay awake that night, determined to question Laurenz about what had happened, but he had remained behind at the club and she had fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion, feeling utterly miserable and deeply scared, before he returned.

‘We’ll still be seeing a lot of each other,’ Laurenz told her, as the plane taxied down the runway. ‘In fact, it’s crucial that we do.’

She spoke at last. ‘I don’t know how you think I’m going to get all this information you want. I’ve already told you that I don’t have that kind of access.’

‘But you’re well placed to get it.’ He spoke loudly, to be heard over the noise of the engines as the jet accelerated forward.

‘How can you be so sure?’ Shock was turning to anger now. ‘You know nothing about my work. You’ve completely misled that hideous Koslov, just to boost your own position with whoever it is you really work for. How dare you tell me what I can do when I tell you I can’t?’

‘Of course you can. You just need to use your imagination a bit… and I’m going to help you with that.’ He sighed as though confronted with a stubborn child. ‘Jasminder, you are highly intelligent and very attractive. You must know that.’

‘Don’t you patronise me! I thought you were something different, someone to be admired, and I fell for you, I’ll admit that. But now I know better – you are a ruthless, dishonest bastard and your friend Koslov is worse. If I do anything it will be for Ali – certainly not for you.’

Laurenz shrugged his shoulders as the plane lifted off. It shuddered briefly as it hit a patch of low-lying cloud, then stabilised as they climbed steeply into the clearer sky above. He said, ‘Have it your own way.’

She went on, ‘But I don’t know how you expect me to get hold of all this stuff. What I said to Koslov was true. I don’t see all the things he thinks I do. His list is ridiculous.’