returned home eight hours after the end of the match the previous evening. That was how long it took for the police to sift through the football crowd at the exit turnstiles, and search all 35,000 of them. And of course they’d found nothing. That should have been obvious, Adrian thought. Nobody would risk trying to kill Semyonovich with a sniper shot from inside the ground. It took a real pro to kill a man like Semyonovich—he had thirty-five regular bodyguards, all ex special forces and many from Adrian’s old regiment, plus eight armour-plated vehicles—and that was just for his London encampment.
Then there were the other 35,000 people in the ground, who might just have noticed if a man with an assault rifle took careful aim from the seat beside them.
The Mercedes entered Whitehall and pulled up outside the building with the JIC operations room in the basement. Adrian, ostentatiously smoking as he stepped out of the car, told Ray not to wait. He was going on to lunch after the meeting, with Teddy Parkinson at his country home. That, he told himself, not this meeting, was the point of the day, and he cheered up a little.
There were six of them around the long table. Teddy Parkinson (Sir), the head of Joint Intelligence, sat at the head; then there was Foster from the Yard and Evans (Sir) from MI5, on either side; Crudwell (Commander) from NCIS and Adrian himself (newly Sir) at the opposite end of the table; and finally Trevor Lewis, the prime minister’s private secretary (Scum of the Earth).
They’d finished discussing the method of the killing by nine o’clock. The type of weapon used for the kill seemed to have been narrowed down to about half a dozen, all sniper weapons known to Adrian and used by various national special forces. But they were readily available if you knew where to look. The distance was enormous—up to a mile and a half, forensics reckoned, beyond even what Adrian had assumed.
It was all he could do not to say, “Bloody good shot.”
The identity of the assassin was anyone’s guess; which left the motive and the fallout—the implications. Adrian’s time to contribute.
“Adrian,” Teddy Parkinson, the JIC head, addressed him at last. The ponderous preamble that looked into the nooks and crannies of events on the ground had finally been wound up. “The prime minister received a call from President Medvedev last night, a few hours after the killing. The Russian president was expressing concern.”
So that was why they’d been called together this morning for this emergency meeting, Adrian thought. Jump to it for the Russians.
Lewis the private secretary nodded overenthusiastically. Nobody had yet asked for his opinion about anything.
“Why, Adrian?” Teddy Parkinson followed up. “Why a call from the Russian president?”
“Semyonovich was very close to the Kremlin,” Adrian replied. “He helped put Putin into power at the end of the nineties. He’s worth around thirty billion dollars, but worth a lot more to the Kremlin. He was spearheading the Kremlin’s policy of acquiring strategic foreign assets—energy companies in the West, metals combines, you name it. All over the world, but particularly our world.”
“So he had a lot of money that the Kremlin used as if it were its own?”
“That’s about it. All those Russian multibillionaire tycoons are now arms of the state—covert ambassadors with bottomless pockets. That’s why Medvedev called; Semyonovich was like an undercover representative of the Kremlin. The deal is, men like Semyonovich get to keep their private wealth, as long as they put it into the service of the Kremlin and its cronies.”
Adrian knew that Teddy Parkinson was perfectly aware of all this. He was just explaining for the benefit of the others.
“What else? Anything we should know about?”
“We have good intelligence that Semyonovich was caretaking bank accounts on behalf of Putin and other siloviki types; Ivanov,
Then there were the other 35,000 people in the ground, who might just have noticed if a man with an assault rifle took careful aim from the seat beside them.
The Mercedes entered Whitehall and pulled up outside the building with the JIC operations room in the basement. Adrian, ostentatiously smoking as he stepped out of the car, told Ray not to wait. He was going on to lunch after the meeting, with Teddy Parkinson at his country home. That, he told himself, not this meeting, was the point of the day, and he cheered up a little.
There were six of them around the long table. Teddy Parkinson (Sir), the head of Joint Intelligence, sat at the head; then there was Foster from the Yard and Evans (Sir) from MI5, on either side; Crudwell (Commander) from NCIS and Adrian himself (newly Sir) at the opposite end of the table; and finally Trevor Lewis, the prime minister’s private secretary (Scum of the Earth).
They’d finished discussing the method of the killing by nine o’clock. The type of weapon used for the kill seemed to have been narrowed down to about half a dozen, all sniper weapons known to Adrian and used by various national special forces. But they were readily available if you knew where to look. The distance was enormous—up to a mile and a half, forensics reckoned, beyond even what Adrian had assumed.
It was all he could do not to say, “Bloody good shot.”
The identity of the assassin was anyone’s guess; which left the motive and the fallout—the implications. Adrian’s time to contribute.
“Adrian,” Teddy Parkinson, the JIC head, addressed him at last. The ponderous preamble that looked into the nooks and crannies of events on the ground had finally been wound up. “The prime minister received a call from President Medvedev last night, a few hours after the killing. The Russian president was expressing concern.”
So that was why they’d been called together this morning for this emergency meeting, Adrian thought. Jump to it for the Russians.
Lewis the private secretary nodded overenthusiastically. Nobody had yet asked for his opinion about anything.
“Why, Adrian?” Teddy Parkinson followed up. “Why a call from the Russian president?”
“Semyonovich was very close to the Kremlin,” Adrian replied. “He helped put Putin into power at the end of the nineties. He’s worth around thirty billion dollars, but worth a lot more to the Kremlin. He was spearheading the Kremlin’s policy of acquiring strategic foreign assets—energy companies in the West, metals combines, you name it. All over the world, but particularly our world.”
“So he had a lot of money that the Kremlin used as if it were its own?”
“That’s about it. All those Russian multibillionaire tycoons are now arms of the state—covert ambassadors with bottomless pockets. That’s why Medvedev called; Semyonovich was like an undercover representative of the Kremlin. The deal is, men like Semyonovich get to keep their private wealth, as long as they put it into the service of the Kremlin and its cronies.”
Adrian knew that Teddy Parkinson was perfectly aware of all this. He was just explaining for the benefit of the others.
“What else? Anything we should know about?”
“We have good intelligence that Semyonovich was caretaking bank accounts on behalf of Putin and other siloviki types; Ivanov,
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