Wall came down, appeared to be far too friendly with the Russian’s latest rival, Mikhail Shimko, who had replaced Ashimov as Colonel in Charge of London Station KGB.
The CIA man was called Jackson, and by chance, his name came up at one of the joint intelligence working parties. News had come in that he was having a series of meetings at an address in Holland Park with members of a Ukrainian faction resident in London. Curry kept a watch at the appropriate times and noticed that Jackson always walked for a mile afterwards, following the same route through quiet streets to the main road where he would hail a taxi.
After the next meeting, Lang was waiting in a small Ford van – provided by Belov, of course – at an appropriate point on the route. As Jackson passed, Lang, wearing a knitted ski mask in black, stepped out and shot him once in the back, penetrating the heart. He finished him with a head shot, got in the van and drove away. He left the van in a builders’ yard in Bayswater, as instructed by Belov, and walked away, whistling softly to himself.
It was half an hour later that a young reporter on the newsdesk of the Times took the phone call claiming credit for the killing by January 30.
The British Government allowed the Americans to flood London temporarily with CIA agents intent on hunting down Jackson’s killer. As usual, they drew a complete blank. That the killings claimed by January 30 from Ali Hamid onwards had been the work of the same Beretta 9-millimetre was known to everyone, as was the significance of January 30. The Bloody Sunday connection should have indicated an Irish revolutionary connection, but even the IRA got nowhere in their investigations. In the end, the CIA presence was withdrawn.
British Army Intelligence, Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist department, MI5, all failed to make headway. Even the redoubtable Brigadier Charles Ferguson, head of the special intelligence unit responsible to the Prime Minister, could only report total failure to Downing Street.
It was in January 1990, following the collapse of the Communist-dominated government of East Germany, that Lang and Curry attended a cultural evening at the American Embassy. There were at least a hundred and fifty people there, including Belov, whom they found at the champagne bar. They took their glasses into an anteroom and found a corner table.
‘So, everything is falling apart for you people, Yuri,’ Lang said. ‘First the Wall comes tumbling down, now East Germany folds and a little bird tells me there’s a strong possibility that your Congress of People’s Deputies might soon abolish the Communist Party’s monopoly of power in Russia.’
Belov shrugged. ‘Disorder leads to strength. It’s inevitable. Take the German situation. West Germany is at present the most powerful country in Western Europe economically. The consequences of taking East Germany on board will be catastrophic in every way and particularly economically. The balance of power in Europe will once again be altered totally. Remember what I said a long time ago? Chaos is our business.’
‘I suppose you’re right when you come to think of it,’ Lang said.
Curry nodded. ‘Of course he is.’
‘I invariably am.’ Belov raised his glass. ‘To a new world, my friends, and to us. One never knows what’s round the corner.’
‘I know,’ Rupert Lang said. ‘That’s what makes it all so damned exciting.’
They touched glasses and drank.
Rupert Lang was more right than he knew. There was something round the corner, something profound and disturbing that was to affect all three of them, although it was not to take place until the Gulf War was over and done with. January, 1992 to be precise.
Grace Browning was born in Washington in 1965. Her father was a journalist on the Washington Post, her mother was English. When she was twelve tragedy struck, devastating her life. On the way home from a concert one night, her parents’ car was rammed into the kerb by an old limousine. The men inside were obviously on drugs. Afterwards, she remembered the shouting, the demands for money, her father opening the door to get out and then the shots, one of which penetrated the side window at the rear and killed her mother instantly.
Grace lay in the bottom of the car, frozen, terrified, glancing up only once to see the shape of a man, gun raised, shouting, ‘Go, go, go!’ and then the old limousine shot away.
She wasn’t even able to give the police a useful description, couldn’t even say whether they were white or black. All that mattered was that her father died the following morning and she was left alone.
Not quite alone, of course, for there was her mother’s sister, her Aunt Martha – Lady Hunt to be precise – a woman of considerable wealth, widowed young, who lived in some splendour in a fine town house in Cheyne Walk in London. She had received her niece with affection and firmness, for she was a tough, practical lady who believed you had to get on with it instead of sitting down and crying.
Grace was admitted to St Paul’s Girls’ School, one of the finest in London, where she soon proved to have a sharp intelligence. She was popular with everyone, teachers and pupils alike, and yet for her, it was a sort of performance. Inside she was one thing, herself, detached, cold; but on the surface she was charming, intelligent, warm. It was not surprising that she was something of a star in school drama circles.
Her social life, because of her aunt, was conducted at the highest level: Cannes and Nice in the summer, Barbados in the winter, always a ceaseless round of parties on the London scene. When she was sixteen, like most of the girls she knew, she attempted her first sexual encounter, a gauche 17-year-old public schoolboy. It was less than rewarding and as he climaxed, a strange thing happened. She seemed to see in her head the shadowy figure of the man who had killed her parents, gun raised.
When the time came for Grace to leave school, although her academic grades were good enough for Oxford or Cambridge, she had only one desire – to be a professional actor. Her aunt, being the sort of woman she was, supported her fully, stipulating only that Grace had to go for best. So Grace auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and they accepted her at once.
Her career there was outstanding. In the final play, Macbeth, she played Lady Macbeth, absurdly young and yet so brilliant that London theatrical agents clamoured to take her on board. She turned them all down and went to Chichester, the smallest of the two theatres, the Minerva, to play the lead in a revival of Anna Christie – so triumphantly that the play transferred to the London West End, the Theatre Royal at the Haymarket, where it ran for a year.
After that, she could have everything, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, establishing herself in a series of great classic roles. She went to Hollywood only once to star in a classy and flashy revenge thriller in which she killed several men, but she turned down all subsequent film offers except for the occasional TV appearance and returned to the National Theatre.
Money, of course, was no problem. Aunt Martha saw to that and took great pride in her niece’s achievements. She was the one person Grace felt loved her and she loved her fiercely in return, dropping out of the theatre totally for the last, terrible year when leukaemia took its hold on the old woman.
Martha came home at the end to die in her own bed, in the room that overlooked the Thames. There was medical help in abundance, but Grace looked after her every need personally.
On the last evening it was raining, beating softly against the windows. She was holding
