“I have never been on an airplane,” said Evgeny.
Steve tousled his hair, “Maybe one day I will take you,” he said.
The boy looked at Maya, then at Steve, “You promise?” said the boy, wide-eyed.
“I promise,” said Steve.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:
London
When King George IV decided to make Buckingham Palace his permanent residence in 1825, Richard Grosvenor, the 2nd Marquess of Westminster, saw a smashing opportunity. He commissioned architect Thomas Cubitt to transform a swath of his country property into exclusive housing on this suddenly very fashionable land. The development would come to be known as Belgravia. It consisted of majestic enfilades of four- and five-story white stucco mansions, built around a series of regal squares and resplendent gardens. It soon became the favored address of the British elite.
No longer. Belgravia today has been transformed into an international ghetto of the world’s super-rich – Russian oligarchs, Gulf sheikhs, Greek shipping magnates, Indian nabobs, and Italian tycoons – all seeking safe haven on Belgravia’s shady streets. The quiet, stately Georgian facades belie the seamy fraud and corruption underpinning the fortunes of many of their venerable proprietors. A good number of the dwellings, in fact, are vacant for much of the year. They are personal trophies, a store of value, not permanent abodes; places to stash wealth of questionable origin, which also serve as a pied- à-terre for occasional shopping sprees at Aspreys or Harrods, or a week of fancy restaurants and West End musicals. There are also scores of embassies and ambassadorial residences located here, watched over by bevies of unblinking CCD cameras.
Arguably, the most eminent addresses of Belgravia are around Belgrave Square. None are more splendid than Number 51, the detached white mansion at the Northeast corner. It was built in 1852 specifically for Lord Thomas Rathbottom, who made a fortune selling munitions to the British army in India. He and his descendants lived there until 1905. There followed a series of sales to other prominent British families, until 2010, when the property was purchased for fifty million pounds by American start-up billionaire, Jake Pearlstein. Pearlstein then spent ten million pounds to transform the mansion, while constantly struggling against Belgravia’s rigid zoning regulations. The hidden underground excavations were as spectacular as the mansion itself. They contained a fifty-seat theater, a twenty-five-meter swimming pool, and a large cantilevered room, balanced on huge springs and totally protected by the most sophisticated electronics. Like the installation in Pearlstein’s home in Palm Desert, it was designed to shield the billionaire from unprincipled competitors and intelligence agencies that might attempt to penetrate the technologies he was developing or the financial moves he was plotting.
It was to use those facilities and escape the omnipresent intelligence services of Russia and the United States that Steve Penn came to London. It was here that Jake Pearlstein invited him to continue his campaign to take down the American president. “It’s all yours,” Pearlstein wrote in an encrypted exchange with Steve in Moscow. “My wife’s cousin was supposed to be using the place next week. I’ll inform her it’s no longer available. She can always get a suite at the Dorchester. Two members of our housekeeping staff will remain. They can be totally trusted. My butler, Mike Rourke, has also been specially trained.”
Steve arrived at Pearlstein’s mansion around 8:30 p.m. after the three-and-a-half-hour flight from Moscow. Mike Rourke answered the door. He was a brawny, sandy-haired Irishman, from Dublin; in his forties, with gray, twinkling eyes and an easy smile. He wore a striped vest under a black cutaway jacket, and made it clear he could shift from Belgravia formal to Irish charm at will. Waiting in the hallway was the head housekeeper, Edith Jones, sturdy, dark eyes, brown hair done up in a bun; wearing a black dress with a white apron.
“Can I fix you something to eat, Mr. Robb?” She asked with a light Welsh accent.
“Thanks, I ate on the plane,” said Steve. “Frankly, I’d just like to get some sleep.”
“Certainly. You’re to have the blue guestroom. It’s on the third floor.” She led Steve to the elevator; Mike followed, insisting on carrying the suitcase. The spacious bedroom was decorated with Austrian art deco furniture and oriental silk carpets; its windows overlooked the square and park below.
“Shall I unpack for you, sir?” asked Mike.
“Thanks, I’ll handle that myself,” said Steve. “By the way, Mr. Pearlstein told me you’ve had ‘special training.’”
“Right, sir. Twenty years with the SAS.”
“Afghanistan? Iraq?”
“And a few more places as well. Also some background in surveillance.”
“We should be able to trade a few stories,” said Steve.
“I look forward to that. What time would you like breakfast tomorrow?”
“Eight would be great,” said Steve.
“Good night, sir,” said Mike, closing the door behind him. Fifteen minutes later, Steve was asleep on the fresh, lilac-scented sheets.
The next morning after breakfast, he asked Mike to take him to the secure bunker in the basement. It seemed indeed to be an identical copy of the facility in Pearlstein’s mansion in Palm Desert, down to the encryption facilities and reinforced blast walls in case of a terrorist attack. Though windowless, it was large and well ventilated. It was the perfect workspace for what Steve hoped would be the climactic chapter of his mission.
The only way to convince reluctant Republican leaders to impeach Stokes was to create a tsunami of popular outrage. It would be generated by the startling facts Steve had uncovered about Stokes and Kozlov. One way to put them out would be via the social networks: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. But a much more potent way to present that information was via Focus, the leading TV news magazine in the United States. It was broadcast every Sunday evening at six on the NBS Network. Even the president, it was said, never missed the show..
The chief reporter on Focus was Ed Diamond, one of America’s most aggressive, yet trusted newsmen. When Diamond had contacted Steve just after he quit the CIA and asked to talk to him about the Russian hacking investigation, Steve had turned him down, but left the door open for the future. Now was the time. But it was too risky for Steve to contact Diamond directly: Stokes’s intelligence agencies would be alerted instantly.
Instead, Sarah Levin would make the approach. She and Steve had already talked about that eventuality before he left for Moscow. She was currently working between Washington, D.C., and New York, consulting, teaching, and doing research on artificial intelligence. She also had a previous connection of sorts with Diamond. She had been profiled by him when she was eleven years old, for a program on child prodigies.
Steve waited until noon in London before he called her on an encrypted line. “The message for Diamond is we’ve now got the facts to take down Stokes,” he said. “It’s a huge story, but you’ve got to get him to move immediately. Once things start rolling, Stokes’s goons will be after us with everything they’ve got. I’ve asked Jake Pearlstein to call to prepare the way for you. Diamond did a profile of him two years ago.”
Pearlstein’s call worked. When Sarah called Diamond that same morning in New York, she was immediately invited to his office. An hour later, she took the elevator to the headquarters of Focus on the ninth floor of the Ford Building at 557 West 57th Street. Producers’ heads turned as the stunning Asian American was ushered into Diamond’s corner office. The floor-to-ceiling window behind him looked out over the Hudson River.