“Wait till you reach my age,” said Alf, “you’ll be only too grateful if anyone calls you young man. Now, when you called to say you wanted to discuss a private matter, it wasn’t difficult to work out what was troubling you.”
“And what conclusion did you come to?”
“Naturally I’d like you to become Foreign Secretary, then I could spend the rest of my days telling the lads at the bowls club that I was the first to spot your potential.”
“No more than the truth,” said Sasha.
“I knew you were a bit special the day we interviewed you for Merrifield. So what I’m about to say, Sasha, may come as a bit of a surprise. I think you should resign from the Commons, return to Russia, and, if it’s not too dramatic a statement, fulfill your destiny.”
“But that would mean risking everything, when there’s an easy option still open to me.”
“Agreed, but then it’s never been your style to take the easy option. When you had the opportunity to represent a safe London seat, you chose instead to return to Merrifield and fight a marginal.”
“There’s a lot more at stake this time,” said Sasha.
“As there was for Winston Churchill, when he crossed the floor of the House to join the Conservatives, because he certainly would never have become Prime Minister if he’d remained on the Liberal benches.”
“But I’ve spent the last thirty years in this country,” said Sasha. “So compared to crossing the floor of the House, it would be some walk to Moscow.”
“Lenin didn’t think so, and don’t forget he was stuck in Switzerland when the Revolution began.”
“Can’t you think of a better example?” said Sasha, laughing.
“Gandhi was a practicing lawyer in South Africa when he sensed revolution in the air and returned to India to become its spiritual leader. So my advice, Sasha, is to go back home, because your people will see in you what I spotted over twenty years ago, a decent, honest man, with unwavering convictions. And they will embrace those convictions with relief and enthusiasm. But my opinion is no more than the ramblings of an old man.”
“Made all the more powerful,” said Sasha, “because it wasn’t what I expected.”
* * *
Sasha always enjoyed his visits to the Russian Embassy, not least because no one threw a better party than their ambassador, Yuri Fokin. Gone were the days when the building was surrounded by impenetrable barriers, and few people knew what went on behind its closed doors.
Sasha could remember when, if you asked a Russian diplomat what the time was, he would tell you the time in Moscow. Now, the ambassador would happily answer any question you put to him. All you had to decide was when he was telling the truth.
On this occasion, however, Sasha wasn’t visiting the embassy to enjoy a relaxed and convivial evening. This would be his last opportunity to gauge his chances should he decide to stand for the presidency. Among the guests would be half a dozen Russians who could influence his decision one way or the other, and he needed to make sure he spoke to every one of them. The other guests would be the usual mixture of politicians, businessmen, and hangers-on, who would attend any party as long as the drinks were flowing and there were enough canapés to ensure they didn’t need to go to dinner afterward.
Sasha’s driver took a right off Kensington High Street, and came to a halt in front of a barrier that led into Kensington Palace Gardens, more commonly known as Embassy Row. A long straight road lined with elegant town houses that rarely came on the market.
A guard saluted, and the barrier was raised the moment he saw the minister’s car. They passed India, Nepal, and France before they reached Russia. A valet rushed forward to open the back door of the limousine. The minister stepped out, thanked him, and made his way into the embassy.
The embassy could have been an English country house at the turn of the century, with its oak-paneled entrance hall, grandfather clock, and portraits of historical figures. It always amused Sasha that there was no sign of a tsar, or even Lenin or Stalin. History seemed to have begun, for one of the oldest empires on earth, in 1991.
When Sasha walked into the drawing room, he noticed that some of the guests broke off their conversations, and turned to look at him; something he still hadn’t got used to and wondered if he ever would.
He looked around the packed room, and soon identified four of his targets. One of them, Anatoly Savnikov—diplomatic attaché his official title, head of the Russian secret services in London his real job—was chatting to Fiona. If this hadn’t been the Russian Embassy, Sasha might have thought he was chatting her up. No doubt there were a dozen other spies in the room who would be far more difficult to identify. The Foreign Office rule was simple enough: assume everyone is a spy.
As Sasha turned, he noticed the ambassador was deep in conversation with Charles Moore, editor of the Daily Telegraph. Sasha would have to bide his time before he had a few words with Yuri, words that had already been carefully scripted.
He made his way across to Leonid Bubka, the trade minister, hoping he might show h
is hand, but Bubka changed the subject every time the word “election” came up in conversation. Sasha didn’t give up easily, but Bubka continued to block every attempt to score with the skill of Lev Yashin. When his old friend Ilya Resinev, the second secretary at the embassy, touched his elbow, Sasha moved discreetly to one side and listened intently to what he had to say.
“Have you heard who’s been appointed director of the FSB?” whispered Ilya.
“Don’t tell me Vladimir finally made it?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Ilya.
“The old KGB by any other name,” said Sasha, “being run by the same bunch of thugs, dressed in suits instead of uniforms. Who did he have to blackmail this time?”