Stella Rimington - Illegal Action

“Just a minute ago,” he said. She looked even tenser than usual. “Is something wrong?”

Tamara ignored his question and turned on her heel. Leaving the kitchen to go upstairs, she called back over her shoulder, “Sir will be down shortly.”

Sir, thought Jerry sarcastically, who was happy enough to address his employer that way, but was buggered if he’d use the expression when the man wasn’t even there. He looked at Mrs. Grimby. She and her late husband had run a pub in South London, then a boarding house in Poole; Jerry couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen a thing or two. “What’s got into her?” he asked.

“Takes all sorts,” said Mrs. Grimby philosophically, starting to sift some flour.

Jerry picked up his mug, then went outside, where the car sat in a narrow cul-de-sac, next to the small garden between the back of the house and a mews house which the Russian also owned. It was going to be a fine day, he thought, watching as the sun began to eat up the early-morning haze, and the dew on the close-cropped lawn began to dry.

Ten minutes later, he had worked his way to the sports page when Brunovsky came out. Jerry put the paper down, got out and opened the back door. “Morning,” said his boss. Usually he was openly cheerful, even expansive if the day was fine. But this morning he looked preoccupied, and got into the car quickly.

Jerry had just backed up the car to turn around and leave, when there was a sudden exclamation from the back seat. “ Bozhe moi! ”

“Sir?” said Jerry tentatively, stopping the car.

The Russian had his computer open on his lap and had opened a copy of the FT . He raised both hands to his head in a parody of despair. “I’ve left my folder.”

“Shall I run in and get it, sir?”

“Please do.” Brunovsky gestured to his lap and made a gesture of helplessness. “It’s right on the desk in my study.”

Jerry turned off the engine and got out. In the kitchen Mrs. Grimby was rolling out pastry on a butcher’s block. Jerry went straight through and climbed the stairs to the ground floor, two at a time. In the front hall, two storeys high and boasting a splendid curved staircase to the upstairs bedrooms, he turned and strode down a thin corridor lined with watercolours of Russian landscapes.

At the back of the house he found the door of Tamara’s office open. He walked through it into the study where his boss worked, a cosy room with vivid scarlet wallpaper, two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves at one end and a small sofa and TV at the other. Between the bookshelves hung a large oil painting of a Cossack bestride a horse—normally, that is, for now the Cossack picture was on the floor, leaning upright against the wall. In its space was a square wall safe, its door wide open.

Jerry stared at the safe for a moment, then, overcome with curiosity, took two steps closer and peered inside. He saw a couple of large envelopes and a leather jewellery case. Not unexpected, nor was the existence of the safe—a man as rich as Brunovsky must have plenty of valuables he’d want to protect. What did take Jerry aback though was the sight of a small handgun, lying flat on the safe floor.

He turned quickly and went towards the large partner’s desk in front of the window overlooking the back garden, where he saw the file and picked it up. He was about to turn to leave when Tamara suddenly came into the room. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, almost shouting. Her eyes shifted towards the safe, then moved back, blazing, to Jerry.

He calmly waved the file, deliberately keeping his gaze on her, well away from the open safe door. “Mr. Brunovsky left this behind. He asked me to fetch it for him.”

There was nothing she could object to in this. “Go on then,” she ordered, and Jerry nodded and left the room. Christ, he thought, as he made his way downstairs and returned to the car. What sort of bloke am I working for? He could understand Brunovsky’s having a gun, but it was the type of gun that shook him. The Izhmekh MP 451 packed the punch of a .38, and was the weapon of choice for Russian detectives and intelligence officers wanting a compact weapon with maximum firepower. So lethal was this gun that private citizens there were not allowed to own them.

Damn, thought Jerry, for he had grown to like his peaceful chauffeur’s routine, and had almost forgotten that he was also being paid to protect his boss. Not peaceful any more, he thought, suddenly alert, recognising that if Brunovsky felt he needed an MP 451, then there must be something to protect him from.

“Couldn’t we just show the photograph to the people at reception?” complained Michael Fane, drawing up a chair next to Peggy Kinsolving in the open-plan office. He held a sheet of paper in his hand, and flapped it irritably. “This is like searching for a needle in a haystack, when we could easily blow all the hay away. Whoosh! ” He blew air like a mechanical leaf-blower.

Peggy shook her head. Michael must be my age, she thought, yet sometimes he acted like an undergraduate. He certainly looked like a student, with a boy’s thin build and unruly hair. There was no doubting his cleverness—not with a Double First from Cambridge—but he was also impatient and quick to criticise, even when what he took for stupidity was actually something he didn’t fully understand.

Peggy said, “Come on, get real. If we start asking around, somebody in the building will talk. We’ve got to try it this way.” She pointed to her laptop, where the most recent Google search showed thirty-seven hits.

“Safer maybe,” grumbled Michael, “but pretty slow.”

So far, Peggy had to concede, Michael had a point. She looked at her list of the tenants in the building in Berkeley Square. She’d trawled through the register from Companies House and found three-quarters of the tenants; now she hoped Google would further illuminate the nature of their businesses.

But how could one tell whether the man A4 had followed had entered the offices of Stringer Fund Management or Piccolo Mundi, importers of fine Italian foodstuffs? Or gone into McBain, Sweeney and White, an up-and-coming ad agency, or Shostas and Newton, lawyers specialising in intellectual property law?

She looked at the next name on the list and typed “The Cartwright Agency” into the Google query box, then sighed. Doubtless another advertising firm, or a casting agency for films.

Almost a minute later, Michael Fane finally broke the silence. “What’s the matter, Peggy?” he asked, noticing she was staring at the screen.

He leant over and read:

The Cartwright Agency is a new consultancy but with veteran credentials, specialising in providing advice and other forms of assistance on matters of corporate and individual security.

“Where are you going?” he said, for Peggy was on her feet and already moving fast.

“I’m going to see Liz,” she called back over her shoulder. “I think we may have found our mystery man.”

Her appointment was at noon, and when Liz Carlyle emerged from the Underground at Green Park she had half an hour to spare. After a week of steady drizzle, the sky had suddenly brightened and the temperature was in the mid-sixties.

Mayfair must be one of the nicest places in the world to kill time, she decided as she strolled along New Bond Street looking in the shop windows. It was interesting to have the occasional glimpse into a world of people where money seemed to mean nothing (or was it everything?), but Liz had neither the time nor the inclination to follow fashion or to know who was who among the famous designer names in the shop windows. It was not that she had a puritan’s aversion to a life where what was fashionable mattered; she simply didn’t have the time—or the money.