The War of the Spooks[{locked}]

Three


Captain Mark Collins had been at the Stirling Lines meeting the other day. He led a troop (a platoon-sized unit) of the SAS with the parent company, D Squadron, tasked for Counter-Revolutionary Warfare duties – anti-terrorism and such like – before the crisis with Russia came out of nowhere and Operation Castle Moat was drafted. Collins’ 19 Troop were cross trained for many possible missions with their utmost speciality being mountain warfare yet CRW was something they excelled at too. Called upon to remain behind in Britain when so many others in uniform were off to the Baltics and Poland, he and his men were more than capable of the doing what was asked of them. Taking on Spetsnaz striking in the UK? Securing armed spies holding up in a building? You name the mission and 19 Troop could do it. This wasn’t foolish bravado: it was what the SAS were for, especially those pre-alerted to do this. Such things couldn’t be done alone though. That was why there had been that gathering at the SAS headquarters. Working with the police and the spooks with the Security Service, plus Home Office agencies if need be, was essential.

In the days following the mini conference, many scenarios had been gamed out. Collins had taken his troop back into the ‘killing house’ at the Pontrilas camp not far from Stirling Lines. They’d done back-to-back exercises clearing rooms with live rounds used too. It was dangerous, tiring and stressful… just as it would be in real life. As to whether this was all going to be put into practice, Collins hadn’t wanted that. Who would!? War with Russia was, in his mind, insane. He had been hoping that the politicians and diplomats sorted out their differences. But things got worse. There had been briefings which Collins had attended which covered Russian troop movements in Eastern Europe and intelligence summaries of the activities of their commandos & spies preparing for war. Yet, 19 Troop had been sent to London. They’d arrived yesterday afternoon at Regent’s Park Barracks, moving into the accommodation for the TA unit of SAS which had mobilised there and was already flying out to Poland. Collins had kept the faith in common sense and diplomacy only to be let down. He’d been told a few hours ago that the conflict had started: Britain was at war with Russia. Not long afterwards, 19 Troop was called into action. They were needed not far Regent’s Park Barracks either.

The Russian Federation maintained many official diplomatic facilities in the UK. Collins had been briefed on how many there were the day before yesterday. He was unpleasantly surprised to find that there were six of them. They had an embassy, an ambassador’s residence, a defence attaché’s office, a trade representative’s office, a representative office for the International Maritime Organisation (these five in London) and a consulate-general up in Edinburgh. In addition, Belarus had an embassy in Britain’s capital too. The reason he had been looking at this list and supplied with information about each place was because there had been additions to Castle Moat contingencies. At the behest of the government, in particular the Security Minister (a junior ministerial posting within the Home Office), Collins’ troop along with the other SAS unit based in the London area were to be prepared to move against any of these in support of the Met. Police should the need arise. He was told that it had been decided in Whitehall that if British diplomatic compounds in Russia or Belarus were entered, the same would be done to theirs in Britain. Police officers would do that, with the aim of expelling diplomats in accordance with international treaties, but the SAS was to be on-hand in case one of those situations go ugly.

And an ugly situation did just occur. Just before dawn, with Collins’s troop ready to move to a variety of locations all across London where there were contingency plans for, plus also standing by to go anywhere else too, 19 Troop was instructed to go to the Defence Attaché’s Office to resolve an incident there.


They went by road. A lift in helicopters was possible, if need be, but Collins nor those above him who were giving the orders didn’t think it was necessary. A pair of trucks drove out of Regent’s Park Barracks and up to North London. The Defence Attaché’s Office was located in Highgate and almost next to Hampstead Heath, within sight of the famous Parliament Hill which offered fantastic views over the capital. Neither Collins nor his men were off to take in the sights though. They were driven to the Met. Police’s roadblock on Millfield Lane. They had set up an outer cordon several hundred yards back. Collins met with the on-scene incident commander. He’d already been told what was happening but wanted to hear directly from someone present. The story told was as expected. Police officers had been attempting to make a peaceful entry to the diplomatic compound. It was Saturday morning and few people were expected to be there. All were to be removed and detained pending the UK Border Agency (one of those Home Office agencies) taking charge of them so they could be deported from Britain now that Russia was at war with the UK. Unexpectedly, despite initial indications that the compound was almost empty, there were many Russians inside: far more than on staff, let alone that could reasonably anticipated to be there. They’d been armed and opened fire on the police. The Met. had been met not just with shots from pistols, but had also witnessed the firing of a heavy machine gun at them too. No police officers had been killed yet two were seriously wounded. That large weapon had been used to shoot up a police car as well in dramatic fashion. Faced with all of this, Collins understood why the Met. had called upon the military. Even their authorised firearms officers stood no chance against opposition like that.

19 Troop wouldn’t be rushed. Collins wouldn’t have his SAS men be forced to act quickly and lose their lives by charging in. He did this properly. He and two more men took good sighting positions and used binoculars to study the compound. He wanted to know where the Russians were, where they weren’t and to see if the ways in there which looked likely on the map were actually viable. Meanwhile, his second-in-command went ‘next door’. Behind the Defence Attaché’s Office, with an address on Highgate Hill West, was the Trade Representative’s Office. It was another sovereign compound though one which the Met. had walked into only finding a pair of security guards who gave themselves up. From inside there, Collins’ men were in what he regarded as an excellent position. As to what he and his spotters could see, 19 Troop’s commander got a look at that machine gun. On the building’s second floor, a window-pane had been smashed out and the weapon mounted inside and within the office behind that. Deadly fire could be effectively poured out over the main entrance to the compound. The field of fire was limited though. The weapon’s operators were exposed. His men who scouted the compound reported back as well, seeing other armed Russians. They were inside the building, near the entranceways but within cover. No one was outside in the grounds. With recommendations from them, plus what he’d seen himself, Collins chose two positions where to each a pair of his men would be sent to: one man as a spotter, the other a sniper. Off those men went to get set up. He went over to the building next door where his deputy was. They discussed the tactical situation from the ground there. From the second building, the way to end this stand-off seemed to be the best place to move from. Collins would use one diplomatic compound to assault another.

Still refusing to go tearing forward, Collins went back to the edge of the perimeter. He spoke with the senior police commander once more to make sure that the Met. understood what was going on. They were to be out of the way when 19 Troop went into action but would be needed afterwards. He also wanted to check on perimeter arrangements again: if the Russians tried to make a run for it, Collins wanted them if not stopped by the police then at least spotted. The chain of command for Collins ran ultimately to London District. Collins spoke over a secure line to the two-star general officer in command to present his view from the ground on how to end all of this and achieve the Castle Moat mission to securing the Russian compound. The senior man gave permission for an assault to commence. Importantly, the conversation was a ‘party line’: the Director Special Forces (another major-general) and the Security Minister were listening in. Neither interjected into the process of Collins being given to go-ahead but he felt their present regardless. With his orders, Collins made the final preparations. His spotting/sniping teams were spoken to so he could find out if there was anything he needed to know. Back over in the second compound, Collins for seemingly the hundredth time had a look at the building drawings with his deputy. They already had studied these intensively but went through them again. The internal layout of the Defence Attaché’s Office was precise. Collins had been given these by MI-5 who had them (and ones for the Embassy on Kensington Palace Gardens) on file: make of that what you want. Every man in the assault team was then spoken to individually. Collins knew these men. He was potentially sending them all off to their death. He made sure they understand their mission and that the lives of their fellow soldiers were in their hands too. Finally, Collins had one more look at the lay of the ground again from afar. He checked on that machine gun, and the two men with it. Both of them had minutes to live. Even though that weapon didn’t threaten his assault team directly, it was going to be eliminated from this fight straight away. It was too dangerous to be left alone and would change everything if put to use again, especially if those whom 19 Troop was facing were more adaptable than Collins thought they were.

The time to move came. Collins had his communications man with him. A simultaneous order was relayed: ‘go’.


The SAS assault took six minutes. Collins had thought it would be over in four. Three men were barricaded within an internal room where they were shoving documents into a furnace. They caused the delay where they held out until killed. The machine gun operators were shot dead. Armed men at the rear of the building inside a doorway and near a ground floor window being breached too had been dazzled by flashbangs. Five Russians were killed and another two wounded: seven more once more disabled by flashbangs. Eighteen Russians in total, alive and deceased, had been inside the Defence Attaché’s Office. None of them had stopped 19 Troop from taking control of it. The cost was two of Collins’ men wounded. He’d had one trooper shot and another one had been pushed down a flight of stairs. That latter man had gotten into a close fight with a Russian who’d surprised him before being shoved hard. A fire in one of the offices raged for some time before firefighters, coming in with the Met., put that out. There was a bit of damage elsewhere across the compound but it wasn’t that bad. Collins expected that no matter what was happening in Eastern Europe, unless the conflict when nuclear, there would be Russians back here one day. Diplomacy would see to that no matter how crazy it sounded. He imagined them bringing in guys to study the assault he’d commanded too.

Prisoners were taken out when hooded and bound. Collins’ men handed them over to the police. With other Met. officers, ones with intelligence taskings who usually worked with the Security Service (several years ago, Special Branch had been merged into Counter-Terrorism Command), there were proper spooks who went into the Defence Attaché’s Office as well. He saw that Hargreaves woman too. She and Collins had a quick chat. She was very professional but likeable too… Collins wondered if she was single? Her opinion on what had happened here was that the Russians encountered were almost certainly their GRU military spooks who’d been interrupted destroying documents. Someone here went a bit crazy and brought out that big gun when there wouldn’t have been orders to do anything like that. She speculated that the madness back in Moscow had a part in that. It sounded believable to him. The Russians could have distracted the police with other means, burnt theirs documents and kept their lives. Collins left her to it soon enough and went to his see his two wounded once more. The Met. had let through ambulances with medics treating both his hurt guys and a couple of the Russians too. Neither of his were going to walk away from here. Collins was glad they were alive and neither was going died from their wounds, but each was injured bad. He had to suck it up though, deal with it and move on. This was sure not to be 19 Troop’s only firefight of this war. He imagined that spooks like Hargreaves would want his men to come into play into their war soon enough…

…maybe after getting something from information uncovered here among what those unlucky Russians were trying to destroy?

Five


Adam Young wanted to be the Prime Minister. He’d entered politics for that reason. It drove him, that desire to get to the very top. There was no other reason which he saw to be in this game called national politics if it wasn’t to aim for the highest he could go. He was currently a couple of rungs down from the top of the ladder. Yong served as Security Minister, under the Home Secretary at the UK’s Home Office. His career path upwards wasn’t something that he could accurately plot out because it would always be subject to events, but he intended to soon move to a Cabinet job, then one of the Great Offices of State before being in Downing Street eventually. Another few years and he’d be there. There were some crazy people in Moscow who wanted to interfere with this process though. They were trying to put a blot on his career with their insane war which they had launched against Britain and its NATO partners. Just over a day ago now, those coup-ists in Russia’s capital had sent their army into the Baltics. Young was a government minister but he wasn’t fully briefed on the exact details of how the war was progressing there in Eastern Europe. These things were secret, need-to-know. It wasn’t one being lost by NATO but neither, propaganda aside, was it currently being won either. A big mess it all was. Hundreds of British casualties had been taken out there in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The war came here to Britain too. Young wasn’t ultimately responsible for how the fight against Russian efforts with their spies and Spetsnaz was going but he was intimately involved in the political side of things. He wanted to claim credit where there was some to take and to make sure that none of the sticky stuff stuck to him when it was sprayed about. The former would win him one day that position at the top which he coveted; the latter would see a shameful return to vacuum of the backbenches.

Not a core member of government’s crisis committee which was unofficially being called the War Cabinet, Young was still a participant when called in. He went to his second briefing this morning. Whitehall felt like a military camp. There were armed soldiers everywhere, even some light armoured vehicles including a couple mounting air defence missiles pointed up into the bright blue sky. Sandbags, concertina wire and metal barriers were up all around the heart of London’s government district. Young went through the checkpoints along with the Met. Police officer who’d been assigned as a bodyguard for him at a time of war. The Cabinet Office had its main entrance on Whitehall. The road was closed to traffic and pedestrians this Sunday morning. It was still busy though with all sorts of people about. Officials, policemen and soldiers were passed on the way in by Young and his little entourage. He came to the Cabinet Office with that bodyguard, an aide and a spook from MI-5 whom he’d handpicked to join him in meeting with the PM and his top team. There were those at the Security Service whom Young had recently rubbed up the wrong way due to several matters and this was one of them. In the long run, it might not do that spook’s career any good because of how he was making use of her but that didn’t concern Young. On his way to the top, everyone else was disposable. There was a War Cabinet meeting at ten o’clock. Young showed up early but found he wasn’t the only one already here. He spoke with one of the junior ministers from the Ministry of Defence and then the Chief Whip who was also in the building but not due to attend the meeting. Then, going down belowground, Young went with only Hargreaves from MI-5 to the Cabinet Office Briefing Room A: COBRA.


The Foreign Secretary was absent and so too was the Deputy PM. Young knew that the first would be missing – the China issue had her attention – but he was surprised to see the second member not here. In the yesterday’s briefing which had required Young’s attendance, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (the deputy role was de facto for many who held that Cabinet portfolio) had been present and was rather involved in discussions concerning Russian activity on British soil. He’d spoken more at that meeting than Young’s boss the Home Secretary. Missing he was though, not at the PM’s side. If there was something seriously wrong, such as a Russian attempt against his life, Young would know about that. So… it was something else, something political or diplomatic which he might be informed about or might not. Regardless, the man whom Young wanted to impress wasn’t here. This put a dampener on his mood somewhat. The path to power for Young was currently through that man. Alas, that was an issue for later. Meanwhile, there was this briefing to get through. Other top-level attendees beside the PM and Home Secretary were the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Defence Secretary, the Attorney General and the uniformed Chiefs of the Defence Staff & General Staff. Young was joined by other junior people, his most recent pet from MI-5 included, because this gathering was concerning Operation Castle Moat. Other events would be brought up in relation to that ongoing effort to protect Britain at home from the war being fought mainly overseas but it really was about the domestic fight.

The PM asked Young to begin by running through the recent instances of hostile Russian activity which had occurred since the last meeting. The Security Minister did just that. There had been no more military-grade commando actions followed the initial ones which came in the immediate hours following the opening of hostilities. The attacks made by Russian Spetsnaz at the airbases of RAF Lakenheath and RAF Waddington, plus the sinking of that vessel as a blockship off the Royal Navy base at Devonport, hadn’t been followed up. The hunt was still ongoing for the surviving members of the teams which made all three of those big strikes with success achieved in Lincolnshire: four Russian special forces soldiers on the run had been caught and either died fighting or were captured alive. Finding those responsible for the Devonport mission was still not showing any positive sign of progress but there were some breadcrumbs being followed with some men who’d got away their attack in Suffolk against the Americans. As to the fourth Spetsnaz mission, that one which they failed to get going against Army Headquarters at Marlborough Lines in Hampshire, the complete team remained in custody. They’d been caught in uniform, literally minutes after changing out of civilian clothes, and were thus being held as internationally recognised POWs. The wounded were under guard like those uninjured were: this was the case with other prisoners taken in those further enemy actions.

Moving on, Young addressed the issue of Russian operatives acting in a paramilitary role committing semi-terrorist actions rather than as special forces raiders. There had been two further attacks by them overnight. Lone attackers armed with explosives had now committed half a dozen bombings and acts of arson against civilian targets. These latest strikes hadn’t been as high-profile as Heathrow Airport or MI-6 headquarters which had been seen when the war started but instead low-profile, big reward targets out in Buckinghamshire and up in Ayrshire. Civilian power and telecommunications links had been hit at the most exposed places to cause maximum effect. Military wise this did nothing for Russia’s war in Eastern Europe yet these were done to undermine British public morale as part of Moscow’s hybrid warfare geo-political strategy. There were a couple of these terrorists in custody and one was in a body bag; three more were as-yet unidentified. Those who had done this were long time deep cover agents and where their false identity was known, the pretend lives they led were being picked apart. Young was asked if there were likely going to be more of these attacks. He could only say that that was unknown. The chance was there that Russia had shot its bolt – six agents was quite the number to have hidden for so long – but there might be others. This caused several worried looks among the faces of those present. These politicians were more concerned about these than the ‘traditional’ commando attacks. What had happened at Heathrow was still fresh in their minds and Young knew that they, like he, feared another mass casualty event but also knew that there would be public unease when the lights went out and the internet went down across the country.

When it came to Russian spies, Young led in the update given to the War Cabinet by the spook from MI-5 which he had brought here. He himself was on top of his brief when it came to espionage matters but an expert in the field was the best person to tell them what they wanted to know. Young didn’t want to put his foot in it anywhere: if she did, which he doubted, it wasn’t his career on the line. He’d chosen Hargreaves because she could talk with the confidence required but also didn’t ‘frighten’ the PM and others either by being too clever, too mysterious and too arrogant… Young knew there were plenty of other spooks who would love to be here but would fulfil that unwelcome criteria. He turned it over to her at right moment. Sitting back and listening to her, Young revelled in his wisdom of picking her. She was pretty and smart. She could speak their language. Her briefing was missing unnecessary details yet gave them what they needed. Young had arranged with her beforehand what was to be covered. He wasn’t hiding anything from the War Cabinet, it wasn’t a case of that, but there was a way of doing this which he wanted to see done. It had to make him look good. Intelligence agents of Russia’s two principle espionage agencies had been arrested on British soil. There were GRU and SVR officers picked up since the war had started. Police teams, supported by MI-5 who had no powers of arrest themselves, had detained ones known about previous to the opening of hostilities. There had been some incidents yet nothing too dramatic. A few had escaped the net cast with several runners caught though not all. The hunt was on to find the rest of them. None of these had diplomatic cover and had been pretending to be businesspeople, journalists or emigres. MI-5 had surveillance and counter-espionage operations underway against them before the war. Now those operations were blown but the spies were in custody. Of course, there were more: others not previously known about. Multiple lines of enquiry were being followed to identify further spies. There had been some success achieved already. One of those detained early on had expressed a wish to sell out Mother Russia for a better life – naturally, he put it a different way: who would believe it but he apparently actually had a conscience, wanted to do the right thing and loved Britain? – and there had been some good information which came from that: two arrests had been made with one of them a previously unknown spy and the second a traitor to Queen and County. There were some more breadcrumbs to follow from this, to a safehouse in South London. From out of the Russian Defence Attaché’s Office there had come a secondary source of intelligence. Hargreaves went into more detail on that than she and Young had discussed but not enough to steal his coming thunder. All told, one hiccup at the end aside, she did what he wanted from her. He’d chosen well. Young was here for the glory and wanted it all alone.


Both the PM and the Attorney General (the country’s top law officer) had questions. Young handled those. The Security Minister informed the man whose job he wanted that, yes, everything was being done when it came to working with British domestic partner agencies in the fight against Russian spies as well as their commandos and terrorists. Allies were being worked with too, especially the Americans and the French. British sovereignty in the realm of intelligence matters on its own soil was being adhered to in that complicated balancing act: it was all in hand. When it came to the Attorney General, Young struggled a bit with this man’s approach to questioning. The man was a former barrister (other holders of that post in the past hadn’t been when it would have been best if they had) and Young felt like the accused in a court of law! The two of them were party and parliamentary colleagues yet never had had a good relationship. Young gave assurances when demanded that arrested Russian – and Belorussian – diplomats held in detention by the UK Border Force were being treated properly. The Attorney General was more concerned about the treatment of the arrested spies, those without the protection afforded to accredited diplomats. Both the Defence Secretary and the head of the British Army each made remarks about not giving much of a damn about their rights but the rottweiler at the scuff of Young’s neck kept on with it. He wanted to be sure that the law was being followed where it came to them. Young asserted that it was yet the Attorney General still wasn’t happy with the responses on the subject which the Young gave him. Only finally did the Attorney General relent when the PM drove the briefing onwards. He wanted to know about one of those detained spies in particular, the one found with detailed plans of many Whitehall buildings in her home. This was concerning for the PM. Young made sure that his own face and tone shared that concern too. Hargreaves moved to interject but he quickly cut her off and handled the reply. There was a full investigation into that matter with all resources thrown at getting to the bottom of it all. The security situation in the middle of London here had been reassessed in light of uncovering of such plans which could be used to make an attack here while MI-5’s spooks were working on getting that woman to talk.

As the meeting concluded, the Defence Secretary took a moment of Young’s time and told him that he had done well. The Security Minister wasn’t trying to impress him though. Yet, thinking fast, Young realised that when it came to what intelligence nuggets had been gleamed from the SAS raid yesterday up in Highgate, success there would come from the intense cooperation between the armed forces and the spooks. Castle Moat was still on track to be an accomplishment which could only benefit him personally. There was the little matter of that bloody war raging in Eastern Europe, and of course a few thousand nukes pointed at opponents fighting a global war, but Young kept his focus on getting what he wanted in life: the PM’s office in Downing Street. He had his priorities where he wanted them to be.

Seven


Inspector John Cartwright was an old school copper. He’d been with the Met. Police for – as he oft liked to say to younger colleagues – since the Golden Age of Policing. Was there a golden age of policy? Cartwright liked to think there was. He was up for retirement soon, one of the many old guard soon to be gone from the very modern institution which the Met. was forever trying to mould itself into. Back in the good old days, when first in the Met., Cartwright had been a patrol bobby for a few years in West London before working Vice in Soho. That was his golden age. He’d done things then that were impossible now. The perks of the job had been bungs from pimps and freebies from prostitutes. That was Soho, that was the early Nineties. Cartwright caught which way the wind was blowing early on – the Macpherson Report changed more than just race relations – and cleaned up his act. His vices when working Vice were in the past. Married with children, Cartwright had stayed in the Met. and been clean when others had been booted out for being dirty. He’d not spent too long in Vice either, moving to Special Branch. From a lowly Detective Constable, he’d risen to the rank of Detective Sergeant and now Inspector. He had a knack for spotting human weaknesses, the vices that people had. This made him excel in Special Branch. As the Met. modernised for the challenges of the 21st Century, Special Branch eventually became part of the Counter Terrorism Command. Special Branch had always worked with the old Anti-Terrorist Branch but Cartwright had before then worked against domestic extremists and foreign spies: Special Branch had long been the arresting arm of MI-5. Cartwright had not become too long in the tooth to learn new tricks. Islamic nutcases it was now for Cartwright. Alas, he still had the experience when it came to counter espionage and the Counter Terrorism Command maintained those duties. The past decade had seen a refocus when it came to tracking foreign spies with veterans like Cartwright involved. It was the Russians again. No longer the Soviet KGB but instead the GRU & SVR. Russians were Russians to him. Of course, he’d been too young to ever be involved Special Branch activities during the Cold War but so many of the youngsters did think that he had: ‘Grandfather’ they called him and assumed that he had been. That he was though, a grandfather. He had two daughters with the eldest having given him a pair of grandsons. His youngest daughter was twenty-three and on her second marriage already. She was with a soldier now, a lieutenant with the Welsh Guards, and pregnant too. Cartwright didn’t know where his son-in-law was deployed to. He presumed the lad had been sent off Eastern Europe…not knowing that Lt. Linton was much closer to London than that. Regardless, worries about family aside, Cartwright had a job to do. There was a war on. He wasn’t carrying a gun but he was a participant in that conflict raging with a sideshow of that being the current War of the Spooks.

This brought about the detention this afternoon by officers under Cartwright’s command of the Member of Parliament for Haringey, Dennis Rutherford.


Rutherford wasn’t even on Cartwright’s radar. Counter Terrorism Command officers had been tasked to support the Security Service as they defended Britain. They were doing old Special Branch duties and Cartwright told his people they were Special Branch now for all intents and purposes. MI-5 had their eyes on a foreign journalist, a Ukrainian national. There’s got their information about him from somewhere that they didn’t reveal to Cartwright: he strongly suspected it came from one of the earlier arrested spies turning traitor. This guy was an SVR agent, Cartwright was told, and should be meeting a high-level contact. The identity of the contact was unknown. MI-5 shadow teams were in-close but they had Special Branch people nearby. When the time came to make an arrest, Cartwright’s people would be on-hand for that and related tasks. The Ukrainian wasn’t believed to pose a real physical danger yet Cartwright had received permission from his own higher-ups to have armed support. The Met. had mobile armed teams, authorised firearms officers who served either with anti-crime units or specialist anti-terror teams. The latter were very busy this Sunday evening so Cartwright had been given the support of one of the former. A trio of officers, a man and two women in a vehicle – driver, navigator and observer when on the road; all three with semi-automatic rifles when outside of their transport (back-up pistols too) –, were nearby here in the East London area of Bow where Cartwright’s people along with the spooks were all over the property where the Ukrainian was. Cartwright kept that team from SCO19 back and out of sight in their unmarked car. He hoped not to use them.

In close contact with the senior MI-5 man on-scene, Cartwright waited for the word to move in. The spooks wanted to arrest the Ukrainian along with his contact. They weren’t waiting for the second figure to show up and then conduct a wider surveillance op with him. This was the final stage of the pantomime that the Ukrainian was putting on as an innocent when in reality he worked for the SVR and was aiming to pass them top secret information he got from his contact. MI-5 wanted the contact caught red handed. Cartwright and his people, half a dozen of them (not including the standby armed team), waited impatiently for the go order. It came, eventually.

Go, go, go.

Bow was an area undergoing regeneration. It was near to the Olympic Stadium, where West Ham played and their scheduled game today called off due to the sudden outbreak of war. There were many flats in former townhouses as well as bedsits and family homes too. On a busy side street away from one of the main roads, the Met. Police went through a door. Cartwright didn’t bring the SCO19 team in though they stayed waiting close. No intelligence from his own people nor the Security Service spoke of an on-hand threat of the Ukrainian or his contact being armed. That could have been a very costly mistake but, thankfully, it wasn’t. In the flat, there were no weapons. Cartwright would later release the SCO19 team though only after they’d escorted those detained away from here and to New Scotland Yard… just in case there was someone who might want to liberate’ the prisoners taken en route.

Cartwright came into the flat just after the door was taken. He’d let the youngsters show off their stuff with getting in. They had two men in custody. In the living room, cuffed while forced to stay sitting down on the sofa, he recognised the first man from the intelligence briefings given by MI-5 and the second one from the news. There was no doubting that the contact with the Ukrainian was that MP Rutherford. The man was a national figure. Cartwright had many views of the man, none of which were flattering. To put it kindly, Rutherford was a massive sh*t. Here he was caught with a foreign spy. Shouty and self-important – as always –, Rutherford was demanding to be released. He told one of Cartwright’s young sergeants that she had no business asking him what he was doing here. He was a Member of Parliament and thus must be let go. Cartwright shook his head at his subordinate in response to this in case she lost her mind and started listening to this fool. The Ukrainian went out of the flat first and towards one of the waiting cars. Cartwright waited on removing Rutherford until the lead officer from the Security Service showed up. He came in, looked at who Special Branch had because his own eyes had to see this to believe what his ears had heard over the radio and told Cartwright to take him away with the Ukrainian. There’d be issues, yes, but he wasn’t going to be let go!


Back in Cartwright’s early days with Special Branch, those arrested in operations had been taken to Paddington Green Police Station. The custody suite there was the most secure in the country and designed to handle spies, terrorists and such like. Paddington Green had been shut a few years ago, sold off to developers with fancy apartments there now. A purpose-built replacement had been promised and, unsurprisingly, never constructed: politicians told lies. Cartwright had been briefed on Operation Castle Moat with relation to where parts of the Met. fitted into that in the days leading up to the Russians sending their tanks into some godforsaken places in Eastern Europe. He’d been told then that there were facilities being cleared at HMP Belmarsh in Southeast London for detention purposes (that prison often housed arrested terrorists) while the Met.’s headquarters itself would be used for interrogation. New Scotland Yard was behind Whitehall, on Victoria Embankment with the Ministry of Defence next door. To Cartwright, it would have been proper to call the place New Old New Scotland Yard: the current building had once been New Scotland Yard before there had been a move to Broadway followed in recent years a return here. It was madness all that location changing. The current building had seen refurbishment when the Met.’s headquarters returned which included custody and interrogation areas below ground. Cartwright had always preferred Paddington Green for those but this would have to do. Newer wasn’t always better, especially to a grizzly old warhorse like him.

They put the pair of detainees in separate interview rooms. It had been here yesterday where the two arrested yesterday in a similar operation had been taken. Cartwright had been back in his old Soho stomping ground – it still had the low-lives though he hadn’t been bothering them – and had been with the same lead MI-5 officer, this Winters chap, as well as another SCO19 armed team for that mission of nabbing a spy and a traitor. History was repeating itself today. The pair form Soho were now in Belmarsh, where he expected to see these two go… well, he hoped so anyway. The Ukrainian was certainly off there, that being if he really was Ukrainian. The journalist, Cartwright had been told, could possibly have been a Russian. If he was, a military base probably awaited him should that be confirmed. Anyway, the Ukrainian wasn’t his concern. Rutherford was.

Winters had gone from the flat in Bow to Thames House to see his Security Service superiours. There was a woman running things (times kept on changing) when it came to these matters. Cartwright imagined things would have to go higher, up to the political level. An MP being caught with a spy was something that politicians would make the decisions upon. Cartwright had his eyes on the man for the time being. The interview room was full of one-way mirrors. Rutherford sat on a chair on one side of a desk all alone in there. He couldn’t see Cartwright but unless he was daft, with Cartwright knowing he was a lot of things but not that, he had to know that he was being watched. It wasn’t just Cartwright watching him too. Chief Inspectors, Superintendents and even a Deputy Assistant Commissioner had come down to give him a look. Cartwright thought that that was all unnecessary, unprofessional even. The Met.’s senior people had a lot going on. Last night, less than twenty-four hours after the war with Russia started, there had been rioting in many parts of London. It was worse than 2011. Everyone had been called in and the streets had been flooded with coppers. The Commissioner and the Mayor had each come close to asking for military assistance but not done so in the end. It wasn’t a situation for soldiers. Gangs of youths had taken the opportunity to loot and burn parts of the city with the belief that the distraction of the war would allow them to do this unhindered. It wouldn’t be fair to say that the Met. was unprepared but neither were they in a proper position to stop what happened. What real use would soldiers have been though? Part of Cartwright relished the idea of the British Army making example of the worst of them but the sensible side of him knew that that wasn’t something that would turn out good in the end. It was raining today and was apparently going to rain all night too. That more than anything, even soldiers, was something that he knew would keep the rioters at home.

Back to Rutherford… This bloody man! Cartwright had long despised him. He’d been in politics for years, for as long as Cartwright could remember paying attention to politics. The man had come to real prominence in the past dozen or so years. He’d been a backbench non-entity with the then governing party before raising a stink over foreign wars. Booted out, he’d started his own political party. He’d won a parliamentary seat, lost it, formed another party and won another seat. He was an old-fashioned self-styled anti-Imperialist. If there was an unpopular cause which he could turn to his advantage, Rutherford made use of that. There were certain people whose imagination he captured with his particular brand of politics. He showed up in the media at every opportunity, making outrageous statements which Cartwright was sure were designed just to annoy ordinary and decent people. Russia was a cause for Rutherford. Poor old Russia: bullied and threatened by evil Britain. That was what Rutherford would have people believe. As far as Cartwright knew, there hadn’t been a suspicion within the Met. nor the Security Service that when it came to a showdown between Russia and Britain, Rutherford would be involved somehow acting against his country in any meaningful manner. It was anticipated that he would make trouble in the media… but for him to show up at a raided property where an SVR spy was found was something unexpected. Cartwright believed that soon enough there would be those who said ‘I told you so’ but, strangely, they wouldn’t have said that beforehand.


The spook Winters came back. He was with the Assistant Commissioner who led Specialist Operations, one of the highest posts in the Met. just below the Commissioner and his Deputy. Cartwright took his eyes off Rutherford and towards these two men, especially his senior officer. Other officers from the Security Service would be taking Rutherford into their care, out of here too and to another MI-5 location which Cartwright didn’t believe would be their Thames House headquarters. The Ukrainian was to stay here and would be interrogated. When the two of them were caught, they were making an exchange of information. A flash drive had been discovered and was in the process of being worked on to break its security coding. It seemed certain that it was being passed from Rutherford to the Ukrainian though the possibility had to remain open that it could have been going in the other direction. To know more was what Cartwright was to help find out. One of the ways that could be achieved was to uncover Rutherford’s movements before he turned up at that flat in Bow. He’d been seen going in though without it being known then who he was. Now identified, and his improvised disguise seen, his movements could be uncovered. Breadcrumbs would be followed, there would be a walking back of the cat. London was full of security cameras: it was the CCTV capital of the world. Tracking where Rutherford had been and what he had been doing, including who he had been with too, would start with that.

Cartwright began with the transport links in Bow. There was an Underground station and one for the Docklands Light Railway too. London’s public transport service was still running when Cartwright had thought that with the advent of war, it might be shut down. It wasn’t and he hoped that no one had made a colossal error of judgement there. Should the Russians use one of their lone wolf terrorist sleepers to hit that, say at rush hour tomorrow morning… yeah, that could be very bad news. He and his team, using computer assistance with the latest facial recognition technology, would quickly find Rutherford half an hour before that raid where he was at the DLR’s Bow Church Station. Backwards they went, tracking his journey. This didn’t take long. It led them south of the river and into Greenwich. There was a location there which was flagged up already as somewhere of interest in a previous counter espionage operation conducted several years ago. Cartwright found out that that investigation had led nowhere. Well… someone had messed up there. He brought his findings to the Security Service with those going upwards to Winters’ boss Hargreaves before word came back down to move on this. By tomorrow morning, Cartwright’s Special Branch people, SCO19 armed officers and MI-5 would be making a trip to Greenwich.

Nine


Lieutenant Commander Meredith Wardley had been told that she would never make it in the Royal Navy. That had been said several times to her. Who was it who told her that the first time? That had been her father. She’d sure shown him. Meredith was on a career track to take her higher, all the way to the top. Admiral Wardley sounded good, didn’t it? Her thoughts on the past and future both were cut off by the blast of a ship’s horn. The MV Bone was up right ahead, a big vessel coming in towards the Port of Felixstowe. It found two boats barring the way ahead. Meredith was on the smaller one of them, the patrol boat HMS Trumpeter, with the Border Force cutter HMC Vigilant was close-in. If that ship flying the Algerian flag chose to run them down, which it easily could… well, it would be a long swim from Meredith! It wasn’t going to though. Already going slow, the speed decreased. The horn was blasted again. Up high, the captain of the freighter was trying to alert them that he and his ship was here: just in case those on the two small boats didn’t see the Bone. They did and those on the larger ship saw them. All attention from the latter was directed here: no one was looking elsewhere. A third blast of the horn was made, drowning out all other noise.

“Keep looking at me, luv!” Meredith gave the bridge crew a wave. She was out on the Trumpeter’s foredeck, just in front of the superstructure. She was sure that the captain could see her. He’d be looking at her uniform yet also her blonde hair being blown about in the wind. Hopefully, all of those on deck would be doing the same.

“Good day to you!” She shouted again. There would be no chance of them hearing her, not when, for now the fourth time, the horn was used. The Bone was almost at a full stop now. Quieter now, almost afraid that those up there would here, Meredith spoke again: “Don’t look behind you, will you?”

She saw what hopefully no one on the ship did. A pair of black helicopters were coming in from the rear. Meredith had been told that they had silenced engines and would have flown here very high before dropping down out of the clouds suddenly. Brave pilots, whoever they were, and certainly not silly like her in standing on a tiny boat in front of a big ship! She lost sight of the helicopters. There’d been men abseiling down from them because the Bone didn’t have a heli-deck fitted. Meredith had been told that they’d been all in black, balaclava-clad and heavily armed. Apparently, they’d take control of the ship in just a few minutes.

That was underway now. She gave the bridge crew another big wave. “I’m coming up in a few, luvvies: wait for me!”


The Trumpeter had pulled alongside the stopped Bone. A woman she was, but Meredith was a sailor first. She went up onto the freighter without the offered hand from some fool trying to be gallant. Meeting the SAS second-in-command, Meredith asked him if all had gone well. It had, he told her: everyone had gone to plan. The ship was in their hands. He took her to where 19 Troop’s commanding officer could be found. She’d briefed Captain Collins before that British Army officer made the assault. He’d said that he would be ‘doing the job on the Bone’ – an odd turn of phrase – different from how the SBS would do it only with technical changes. Taking a ship via helicopter assault was something that both special forces units practised and had a common way of going about it. He didn’t know why that SBS wasn’t here – needed somewhere else they must be – but Collins had assured her that that his men could do the job.

They had.

Meredith met him up in the ship’s superstructure, in the wardroom for the Bone’s officers. “Someone was killed in here, Ma’am.” Such was his greeting.

“Okay…” She couldn’t see any sign of that.

“There’s traces of blood if you look hard enough. A lot of bleach has been recently used too: maybe a couple of people died here.”

Giving him a nod of acknowledgement where she took his word for it with something that she couldn’t see, Meredith followed Collins when he took her down to the crew’s private quarters. They had a recreation room there – the crew would spend a long time at sea, keeping them from boredom when not working was what this was for – and everyone found aboard was in there… unless they were dead that was.

She looked over the prisoners. Several of them were bruised and bloody. Others had their heads held high, looking defiant. They could strike that pose all they wanted: they’d just had their behinds kicked. “How many have you got, Captain?”

“Sixteen here. They’ll all live. There’s three of them dead elsewhere. They fought with their hands and anything they could grab.”

“No weapons?”

“They didn’t have time. They had them hidden away, ready for the ship to be inspected. We caught two of them damn close to getting their hands on several but my guys got to them first.”

Meredith noted how pleased he looked. He’d said that would be the case. Ambush the Bone at sea and the crew would have weapons ready: catch them a few minutes from docking where they were concerned about an inspection and they’d hide away their weapons.

“Let’s get this ship landed then.” Collins nodded at her when she said this. “We’ll take them off, get them ready to have a talk to and take this ship apart.”

More nods from the SAS man. “We’ll keep these chaps where they are for now, Ma’am, and then get them off ready for your people.”


The Bone was taken into Felixstowe. The freighter was brought in by a harbour pilot who’d come to her aboard the Trumpeter with Meredith as well as a scratch crew off the Vigilant just to get her in: the helicopters had been for the SAS only. The Port of Felixstowe was well known to those who landed her. Soon enough, Meredith was on the quayside watching the SAS take off the prisoners. She followed them.

While a serving Royal Navy officer, Meredith was on temporary duty to Defence Intelligence (DI). DI – once known as the Defence Intelligence Staff – was a military organisation with civilian personnel joined by those in uniform seconded there. To rise as high in the Royal Navy as she wished to, Meredith needed to do her duty here and do it well. There was a wartime DI facility up and running at Felixstowe. ‘Facility’ was an overblown term though. It was trucks and trailers in a car park secured by temporary fencing. There were Royal Military Police here joined with officers from the Port of Felixstowe’s own civilian force. Those from the ship were taken there. Meredith had left the search operation aboard the Bone to a couple of her subordinates. He’d report in soon enough with what she was sure would be some interesting finds aboard. The prisoners which the SAS had grabbed were her interest. Off Collins and his men were going though, before then he went, he took her aside.

“Ma’am, there’s something you should know.”

“Okay…” She thought it was something about these captives or the mission but Collins looked rather upset. This hard man with his hard demeanour had that shattered. What was the issue?

“You were at Credenhill last week, yes?” He didn’t wait for an answer to that. “That spook Rhiannon got killed yesterday in Whitehall.”

“Hargreaves?” Meredith recalled the woman from MI-5. The impression made upon him had clearly been more than it had been upon her. Meredith would deny it if anyone called her a cold fish yet she wasn’t one to wear her emotions on her sleeve. That death was a sad thing, yes. However, worse things had happened in the past few days: there was a global war on.

A sad nod and a grimace from him. “I’d rather doubt these guys had anything to do with it… but… they’re Russians. Their buddies got her.”

“I understand.” She did. Collins wanted her not to go easy on any of them. She had no intention of doing so anyway.

With the SAS gone, Meredith and her people here on land started sorting through the prisoners taken. There were I.D. documents to look through which each gave a false name and nationality for these supposedly innocent sailors. She would start the interrogations with the one which the SAS had said had really been in-charge: the second mate, not the apparent captain.


After a few hours, Meredith and her people took a break. They’d had opening conversations with each captive. A few of them had a story of innocence: others read off name, rank and serial number while talking about their rights as prisoners of war. However, a few more had been more talkative. She went and spoke with her people on the Bone. They’d found a mini-sub. It was among a whole swath of material of interest found within that freighter. Among the captives she had here were a pair of men she’d already tagged as those likely to have been swimming recently. Meredith had to consider that, knowing which waters the Bone had been in through the past few days, those were the surviving commandos who’d hit that American airbase in Suffolk in the war’s opening minutes. A massive hunt for them had been going on for many days now, one which now looked like it had come to a conclusion now. Why on earth they’d used a mini-sub to come back onboard before it went into port – why not get on the ship then? – was sure to be something soon to be found out when everything was got to the bottom of.

From the few prisoners who did talk (they weren’t all battle hardened: the strong, silent & stoic type expected), information as gained here with the interrogations. Things would go easier for them than those who didn’t. MI-5 officers were here now, many of them Meredith knew were cut up that their organisation had recently lost plenty of people. They weren’t keeping things as professional as the majority of those in uniform like her were (Collins excluded). She herself didn’t see this as personal. These guys were the enemy but that was it. Treat them rough, yes, because they’d been fighting this war disguised as civilian innocents, but there was no need to go medieval on them!

The day went on. Some prisoners were taken away. More of the inners of the Bone were torn apart to reveal more secrets. Meredith had been told earlier that the information about this ship at first came from a raid on a Russian diplomatic facility – where and when she didn’t know; she didn’t make the link with Collins’ SAS men – and these were GRU spooks and commandos she had. It seemed that the spies were more talkative than the Spetsnaz were. Odd that was, she found, but she ran with what she available. Meredith was on her guard against trickery yet knew that even within lies, there would be truth to ease out. The spooks who turned up would have clever ways of getting at that too.

When evening arrived, Meredith was back down at the quayside. Trumpeter was gone now, off patrolling the East Anglia coast. That Border Force cutter was still there. It was a nice ship. The Vigilant needed a gun to make it a warship – that water gun on the foredeck didn’t count as a weapon – but Meredith imagined commanding it if it was. Her wandering thought were once again today cut off.

“Commander?” It was the captain (or whatever rank he had: she’d forgotten) of the Vigilant.

“Yes?” He was a man who looked an awful lot like her father. Without realising, her mood towards him hardened at the mental comparison.

“Is it true about the Baltic’s?”

Meredith had no idea what he meant. She shrugged her shoulders. “Enlighten me?” Cold with her response she knew she was… but, c’mon! What else could she say to someone who was so much like her forever unloving dad who was speaking in riddles.

“I heard that we’ve lost in Estonia and those other places there.” He said it like he believed it, not like he was asking her about it. “They say Russia’s claiming victory. They say too that us and the Yanks have lost our army out there. Is it true?”

Meredith shook her head. “Nope,” she wasn’t having any of that, “that’s a lot of rubbish. I’ve heard some baloney today, believe me, but that isn’t true.”

Off the man went, back to his boat.

Meredith shook her head: some people will believe anything! As if NATO could lose a war.