52 Zoetermeer
Zoetermeer
The headquarters of the AIVD, the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service, were located a few kilometers west of The
Hague in the drab suburb of Zoetermeer. Like every other security professional in western Europe that morning, Anton de Graaf,
AIVD’s director-general, had one eye on the Downing Street summit. A part of him was relieved it was Jonathan Lancaster who
had convened the meeting and not the prime minister of the Netherlands. Russia’s intelligence services, he feared, were no
longer rational actors. Anything and everything was possible.
The brutal murder of Yuri Ivanov the previous evening in Copenhagen was proof of that. The first documented use of a killer
miniature drone was an alarming development, to say the least. De Graaf had already assembled an AIVD working group to determine
whether anything could be done to protect Holland’s political leaders and senior government officials, short of locking them
away in sealed rooms. His own opinion was that the Kremlin could now kill any leader, anywhere, at any time—unless, of course,
intelligence professionals like De Graaf could provide the leaders with advance warning of an assassination plot.
The AIVD was better positioned than any other Western intelligence service to meet the emerging threat, for it had once again managed to digitally breach the Aquarium, which was how ordinary Russians referred to the GRU’s imposing headquarters in downtown Moscow.
Anton de Graaf, who no longer trusted the Americans, had shared this information only with the director of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service.
And yet even the British did not know the full extent to which their Dutch allies had penetrated the GRU.
In the lexicon of the signals intelligence trade, the AIVD owned them.
And so Anton de Graaf’s heart seemed to skip a beat when, at 12:10 p.m. Central European Time, he lifted the receiver of his secure internal phone and heard the voice of Jaan Hendriks, the chief
of the AIVD’s cyber division.
“You’d better get down here,” he said.
It was a walk of five full minutes from De Graaf’s top-floor suite to the underground lair inhabited by the cyberwarriors,
a realm of eternal darkness where the sun neither rose nor set. Jaan Hendriks stood before the video wall, eyes on the center
screen.
De Graaf went to his side. “The drone room?” he asked.
Hendriks nodded.
“What are they up to?”
“We can’t say for certain yet.” Hendriks pointed to a stout figure with iron-gray hair. “But his presence would suggest that
something big is in the works.”
It was General Igor Karpov, commander of GRU Unit 29155.
“How long has he been there?” asked De Graaf.
“About fifteen minutes.” Hendriks pointed toward the adjacent video screen. “That’s Fancy Bear, the hacking unit. And the
man standing over their shoulders is General Karpov’s deputy.”
Two rooms in downtown Moscow, two elite teams of Russian intelligence operatives, two senior officers, five leaders gathered beneath the same roof in London—it was more than enough to send Anton de Graaf rushing back to his office.
Upon arrival he phoned Graham Seymour in London.
The call was answered by Nigel Whitcombe, Seymour’s longtime private secretary.
“Where’s your boss?” asked De Graaf, slightly out of breath.
“He’s at Downing Street for the summit.”
“I need to speak to him, Nigel. This minute.”
Though Anton de Graaf did not know it, three teams of analysts were at that same moment scouring the contents of the late
Yuri Ivanov’s captured mobile phone—one at PET headquarters in the Copenhagen suburb of S?borg, another at SIS headquarters
in London, and a third in a maisonette located at 18 Queen’s Gate Terrace in Kensington. Of the three, the Kensington team
was the smallest but arguably the most capable, for it included Ingrid Johansen, a master computer hacker who could have taught
the cyberwarriors of the AIVD a trick or two.
She was perched atop a stool at the kitchen island, searching for patterns and nodes in Yuri Ivanov’s telephone metadata.
Sarah Bancroft, seated opposite, was reading the emails and text messages. Gabriel, having no laptop of his own, was scrutinizing
Ivanov’s photographs on the desktop computer upstairs in Christopher’s office.
An hour into his work he checked the headlines and saw a brief item from his friend Samantha Cooke of The Telegraph. It seemed Amanda Wallace had just been spotted at Downing Street. Gabriel quickly rang Christopher, who explained why the
director of MI5 had popped into Number 10 in the middle of a high-stakes summit.
“What do you mean, they lost her?” asked Gabriel.
“Evidently she gave them the slip in Trafalgar Square.”
“Intentionally?”
“MI5 can’t say for certain. Needless to say, they’re using all the tools and resources at their disposal to locate her.”
“Every square inch of Metropolitan London is covered by CCTV cameras. How hard can it be?”
“If memory serves, you evaded detection a time or two back in the day.”
“That’s because I was good.”
“So is Chloé Lamont, it seems.”
“May I give you a piece of advice?” asked Gabriel.
“By all means.”
“Find her.”
“You know,” said Christopher before ringing off, “it’s quick thinking like that that made you a legend.”
Gabriel replaced the receiver with a frown and resumed his scrutiny of Yuri Ivanov’s photographs. At 11:22 a.m. London time, he found what he was looking for.
The rapidly increasing concern of the various spymasters and security professionals notwithstanding, the mood inside Number
10 was all business. The five leaders seated around a table in the ornate Pillared Room made swift progress on a declaration
of principles regarding the war in Ukraine. First and foremost was a rejection of the Kremlin’s demand that, in exchange for
peace, Ukraine surrender a large swath of territory in the eastern half of the country. The declaration was sure to ruffle
feathers at the White House, as the territorial concessions were a key part of the American president’s Ukraine peace plan—a
plan dictated largely by the Kremlin.
Next the five leaders discussed additional military and financial support for Kyiv.
During a particularly long-winded lecture by the French president, Geoffrey Sloane slipped into the room and presented Jonathan Lancaster with a handwritten note.
The prime minister read it quickly, then said, “Not now, Geoffrey.”
“He was quite insistent.”
“He usually is.”
“When shall I tell him to expect your call?”
“When our meeting is over, I imagine.”
“I’ll let him know,” said Sloane with a smile, and withdrew. Lancaster looked at Prime Minister Kalla Eriksen, who was seated
to his right. “The American president,” he said sotto voce, “would like a word.”
“If it’s about Greenland,” she whispered in reply, “tell him it belongs to Denmark.”
“Don’t worry, I already have.”
“So have I,” she said. “But he doesn’t seem to get the message.”
After reaching broad agreement on the aid package, the leaders turned to the thorny issue of seizing frozen Russian assets.
Twenty minutes into the discussion, Geoffrey Sloane once again stole silently into the Pillared Room, note in hand.
“Is it really that serious?” asked Lancaster.
“Apparently so.”
Lancaster rose to his feet and, with apologies to his four counterparts, followed his chief of staff into the White Drawing
Room. Graham Seymour and Christopher Keller were waiting for him. The tension in the small chamber was palpable.
“This had better be good,” said Lancaster.
“I’m afraid it isn’t,” replied Graham. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”