The Old Enemy by Henry Porter (read with me .TXT) 📕

you didn’t recognise him from the film, but given you spent time in the Balkans, I wonder if that name has any meaning for you.’

She shrugged. ‘No. Did you say was a thirty-eight-year-old Serb? Was?’

‘He poisoned himself by accident at a motel near Fredericksburg, Virginia. Drasko called the desk clerk to summon help but died before it arrived. The motel is being decontaminated, and the rental car examined, and EMS personnel who attended are under observation.’ He paused for a couple of beats. ‘How much do you know about nerve agents like this one, Mrs Hisami?’

‘Nothing, I’m a psychologist. I don’t even know what substance was used to poison my husband, though the TV news says it may be Novichok.’

‘Not exactly, but it’s related to the group of nerve agents developed by the Soviets in a programme before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Novichok is what is known as a binary agent, which means that it activates after two harmless inert substances are combined. The material that poisoned your husband was an antecedent of Novichok. It’s a unitary agent, which means that it becomes lethal the moment it’s manufactured. No combination is required – there’s just one substance. For obvious reasons, this greatly concerns us. The idea that Mr Drasko brought the material into America in a sealed flask is highly disturbing. Though we’re satisfied that we now have that container and the remaining agent, we’re treating this very seriously.

‘This brings me to information that has come from British intelligence. A few hours before your husband was poisoned, there were two other attacks: Robert Harland, a former senior operative with MI6 – who you knew – was killed by a lone gunman in Estonia, and in London, Paul Samson, who was involved with you and your husband in the Macedonian incident – the CIA has given us a full briefing on that – was attacked by a man with a knife in the street. You know all these individuals: you’re close to two and a friend of the third.’

Her stomach turned over. ‘Is he all right?’

‘He wasn’t hurt. He fought off the attacker. Film of the incident has emerged on social media, but he’s not identified in it.’

‘I knew about Harland but had no idea about Samson.’

‘He seems to have made light of it. According to Mr Tulliver, he didn’t mention the attack when they spoke last night.’

‘That’s like him.’

Reiner was silent. He looked from Anastasia to Agent Berg and back again.

Berg glanced at her phone. ‘We’re about to be joined by our friends from the Agency,’ she said, looking up.

‘Three men in your life, and they were all targeted. Why? Apart from you, what’s the connection, Mrs Hisami?’

She opened her hands incredulously. ‘Are you saying I’m somehow responsible?’

‘No, no – of course not. Apart from anything else, you could easily have been contaminated, along with Mr Steen and your husband. But you’re the link and we need to understand what that means for this investigation.’

‘Honestly, I have no idea. I just can’t help you.’

There was a knock at the door and two men entered. They nodded to her, but didn’t give their names. A middle-aged man with a brush of stiff grey hair and a dark moustache took the only available chair, while the second, who was younger and wore square tinted lenses and a light grey suit, leaned against the wall and folded his arms. Reiner pointed to the two men with his index finger and a cocked thumb. ‘These gentlemen are from the CIA.’ He waited for the lead CIA agent to put a recorder on the low table in the middle of the room then continued. ‘The British have told us that they believe this is a revenge attack by certain parties, maybe Russian, following the death of the two men during your rescue by Paul Samson. What do you say to that?’

‘What can I say? Paul Samson and I were both shot. I have very little memory of what happened that night. I can tell you that I was kidnapped in the Italian countryside, saw two migrants murdered and woke up in a container on a ship alongside the bodies of the men who had killed the migrants and abducted me. I was held in an isolated compound in western Russia. I escaped, was recaptured and threatened with execution beside an open grave.’ She held Reiner’s gaze. ‘So, no, I don’t remember a lot from that evening except it was even more terrifying than anything I had experienced on the ship, or locked in a box in the freezing cold. Later I developed PTSD and I was in treatment for months. I had little understanding of exactly what my husband was involved in until some weeks after I was freed. Now I know he exposed the laundering of Russian money that was being used by fascist groups in Europe. Seems like he did a really good job, though, naturally, he was never thanked for it and, as requested by you people, he has never spoken of what happened. No one has. It remains a secret.’

‘I’m sorry ma’am, but we have to ask these questions. This is a matter of national security.’

‘Would you like water, a Diet Coke?’ offered Agent Berg.

‘No, thanks.’

‘May I?’ asked the older CIA man. ‘Mrs Hisami, it is hard for us to know where to start. Are we dealing with some crazy Russian slash Balkan blowback to the first drama you were all involved in, when it is known your husband wiped out an entire IS unit, or is this about our friends in fur hats reacting to the second drama – the one in Estonia which you’ve just referred to? The British, for reasons best known to themselves, want to relegate these attacks to the category of gangster revenge. They say it was all about the money that went missing after you were released. Really? Two years on? That sounds like a whole lot of flapdoodle to us.’ He looked impatiently around the room. ‘There were three