rose and walked out of the cell; the door was shut behind him by a second officer. The three men walked down a harshly lit corridor to an interview room. The door opened and he was ushered inside. A further two officers were sitting at the metal table.
‘Please take a seat, Mr Fox.’ DCI Mincer was fifty-five and had a round face that tended to put those he questioned at ease. These were enviable traits in a member of the anti-terrorist squad. Fox sat and Mincer started the tape recorder.
‘Interview with James Celtic Fox. Officers present, DC Flynn and DCI Mincer.’
Fox smirked at the second name; Mincer gave him a look that said, ‘I’ve heard it all before’.
‘Interviewee has declined the offer of counsel.’ Mincer started the interview. ‘Mr Fox. Can I call you James?’
‘Only my mother calls me James. My name’s Paddy.’
‘Can I call you Paddy?’
‘Knock yourself out.’
‘Paddy, we’ve checked the information you gave to our desk sergeant and I have a couple of questions.’
‘Fire away.’
Mincer ran his right index finger down a page of text. ‘You were in the army?’
‘Correct, man and boy.’
‘The Gordon Highlanders? You left the service in 2004.’
‘When I turned forty.’
‘Right, but after looking further at the army records you left the Highlanders in ’85 after serving four years. How do you account for this?’
Fox rolled his eyes. ‘I’m afraid that’s classified.’
‘Classified?’ Flynn snorted. ‘What do you mean?’
Paddy shrugged. ‘I’ve signed the Official Secrets Act. I can’t discuss that with you. I could tell you but I’d have to shoot you.’
Flynn blanched. ‘Is that an appropriate comment?’
Mincer placed his hand on Flynn’s shoulder. ‘Well, let’s move things on a bit. Ray?’
Flynn nodded and took over the questioning while Mincer listened. ‘You shot four men. Did you know them?’
‘No.’
‘What about Sawyer?’
‘Yes.’
‘So why did you shoot him?’
‘I didn’t know it was him.’
‘But you shot him.’ Flynn folded his arms.
The scene flashed in his mind. The cars, the girl, the X-rays, and then Leo Sawyer. ‘Yes. He was running, I thought he had a weapon.’
‘But he didn’t.’
‘No.’
‘You shot an unarmed man. An innocent man.’
‘I also shot three X-rays. I thought Sawyer was the fourth. I made a mistake.’
‘You murdered three men and attempted to murder a fourth.’
Fox’s eyes flashed. So Sawyer was alive? ‘I rescued a girl. A girl who was the victim of a kidnapping. Where is she now? How is she?’
Mincer spoke. ‘She was taken away by her uncle. She’s safe.’
‘Who was she?’
Flynn undid his top button. ‘A schoolgirl studying at Roedean. Now back to you…’
‘What about the other two, in the other car. Are they in custody?’
Flynn took a deep breath but Mincer, playing ‘good cop’, spoke. ‘No.’
Fox shook his head. ‘If your officers had listened to me first, rather than arresting me, there wouldn’t be two terrorists running free on the south coast!’
Flynn was breathing deeply. Fox could tell this wasn’t a game to him; he really was ‘bad cop’. ‘You shot an innocent bystander who was your former boss. Coincidence?’
Fox smiled; he would not rise to the bait. In the jungles of South America he had been interrogated by people with no rules and was now being snarled at by a man wearing an M&S machine-washable suit. He spoke slowly. ‘Yes, Mr Flynn. It was a coincidence and an accident. I didn’t know it was Sawyer when I pulled the trigger. It was a decision I took, but it was wrong. Unless you’ve been in a firefight, Mr Flynn, you have no frame of reference.’
Flynn fumed. ‘This was Shoreham beach not bloody Baghdad!’
‘But the guns were the same,’ Fox replied.
‘OK, OK.’ Good cop again. ‘Now, let’s go through your statement from the beginning.’
Residence of the President of Belarus, Minsk, Belarus
Crushing the sheet into a ball with his fist, the special adviser to the President of Belarus bellowed, ‘No… No… NO!’
Having never seen him so angry, the head of the Ministry of Energy shook as he spoke. ‘Eduard Alexeievich, what will be our response?’
Eduard Kozlov put his left hand on his hip and held the crushed memo up in his right. His eyes were burning with fury, his fist trembling as he spat. ‘Our response? They dare to prevent the nation of Belarus from receiving its gas? Our response will be to demand that they continue to supply us!’
Kushnerov hardly dared speak further but forced himself to do so. ‘I understand, Eduard Alexeievich, but what of the $500 million we owe them?’
‘They are thieves, Yarislav Ivanovich, thieves! Nothing more. When we were one country it was our shared gas, but now they expect us to pay $100 per 1,000 cubic meters! Our “strategic partner” wants to bankrupt us!’
Kozlov sat heavily at his desk. Kushnerov remained standing while the presidential adviser rubbed his eyes hard with his fists before gesturing that his visitor should take a seat. There was an uneasy silence. Both men had been part of the brokered agreement late the previous year that had fixed the price of gas for the next. Russia had already attempted to increase the price for several of her largest customers, including neighbouring Ukraine, stating that all such prices were based on ‘outdated Soviet agreements’. The result: Russia had turned off the supply to Ukraine for several days in late December. Deliveries to Russia’s largest European customers fell in turn as Ukraine allegedly ‘skimmed’ the gas it needed from an export pipeline transiting its territory.
Belarus, too, faced the taps being turned off. Under immense coercive pressure, and minutes before ringing in the New Year, they had hastily agreed a price: $100 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas – a massive increase from the previous price of $47. To soften the blow, however, Russia agreed that Belarus would pay just $55 per 1,000 cubic meters for the first half of the year, then make up the difference of nearly $500 million by the end of July.
It had been a delaying tactic – both sides knew this, but Russia had a further objective. Concerns were voiced in the EU parliament about the union’s reliance on Russian fuel; RusGaz supplied a quarter of Europe’s gas. Member states were starting to get nervous, looking into the possibility of finding alternative suppliers. In the Kremlin, worried words were exchanged. This was exactly the opposite image that RusGaz wanted to promote. In order to secure the transit of gas, thus allaying the fears of the Brussels ‘Eurocrats’, Russia threw Belarus a bone: sell half of your national pipeline company, Beltransgaz, to our gas company, RusGaz; your bill will then be paid and we will guarantee no more price increases. More importantly, the Russians didn’t need to add that the EU’s fears would be dismissed.
The ultra-nationalist President of Belarus was loath to sell off his country’s assets until told by his own people that they couldn’t afford to run them. Feigning indignity in public,