Backhouse shook his head. ‘No, no, he left her there – which was actually the clever bit. During the attack, he broke in through her bedroom window, and managed to convince her that he was on her side. Matt then briefed her on what she could do to help.’
‘Why didn’t he get her out, there and then?’
‘Because doing that would have told the police immediately how much we knew, and Matt reckoned that it would have made us more of a target. Besides, from a timing point of view, he wanted to get the most out of Yegor being a witness for the prosecution while he was still being manipulated.’
‘So what did Matt tell the mother when he broke into her bedroom?’
‘He made the most of the situation there, too,’ answered McMahon. ‘We discovered a key fact about Mrs Baryshnikov: the poor woman suffers from serious kidney trouble. She needs regular dialysis.’
‘How did that help?’
‘On its own, probably wouldn’t have done,’ replied Backhouse, ‘but it was a useful factor for what came later. Matt wanted a coup for the second day of your trial, when we expected Yegor to be called to give evidence. Matt's aim, therefore, had been to release Baryshnikov from being an enforced prosecution witness. The sweetness was that this happened while he was still in the witness box. As he was then free to come clean, of course, he completely undermined the evidence he had already given and, with it, a large part of the prosecution's case.’
Sabatino gently shook her head before saying: ‘How did you manage to release Yegor from the police's grip – so that he wasn’t being manipulated any more?’
Backhouse took a hurried sip of champagne. ‘Matt planned the springing of his mother from captivity for a specific time, predicting the procedure in court. During the evening of the break-in, he showed Mrs Baryshnikov how to sabotage her dialysis machine. He also gave her a morphine tablet. She was to take the pill when she heard three blasts of an air horn near her house. That would be the signal. The morphine was meant to put her into a stupor. Pretty quickly after taking it, she would be harmlessly sedated. Matt reckoned if we could induce her into a state of apparent distress, the police in the house would panic and call an ambulance. Which is precisely what they did. Our ambulance was parked just up the road, and was easily first on the scene. We had some of our guys dressed as medics who attended Mrs Baryshnikov. They were briefed to throw in words like “uraemic” and told the police that the patient needed to be taken away for immediate hospital treatment. Luckily, the police were so panicked by her collapse that they didn’t ask any questions. The moment we got her away she was to be given a dose of Naloxone, which was expected to counteract the effects of the morphine. Mrs Baryshnikov responded almost at once, meaning we could bring her straight to the trial. Yegor was still in the witness box when we walked her in. The moment we presented her, from the back of the courtroom, Yegor could see she was no longer a police hostage – and he understood that his emotional shackles were off. He started telling the truth straight away, even accusing the police of kidnapping his mother. That, of course, completely undermined all the testimony he had given on behalf of the prosecution so far.
‘That was the first major undermining of the prosecution's case,’ said Backhouse.
Nazar pulled a face in admiring disbelief. ‘What were the others, then?’
‘Matt convinced me,’ answered McMahon, ‘that we could not get you two out of Russia if we only fought the trial in court, even if we won the case. He was determined to undermine the politics behind it as well.’
‘I don’t even know why you would think about doing that, let alone how?’
‘We’ve come to learn about Sun Tzu,’ replied McMahon.
‘What?’
‘Some ancient Chinese strategist,’ she replied. ‘Colonel Straker became fascinated with the political situation in Russia, having gained some important insights during his meeting with Mr Obrenovich. Matt was convinced that the key lay in the uneasy relations between the president and the mayor of Moscow, as well as the fear of this Kondratiev mobster. Matt wanted to find a way of getting each of these parties to be even more suspicious of each other. He also wanted to stage something big – something so massive that the political stakes would be raised so high they would be too nervous to continue with the trial.’
‘How …?’ muttered Nazar.
‘Matt didn’t know much about Russia when he arrived,’ explained McMahon, ‘but hearing more about the recent political deaths fascinated him: those of Sergei Magnitsky, Alexander Litvinenko, Boris Nemtsov. What struck him was the damage these “assassinations” did to Russia's standing in the world, as well as the damage done by the subsequent international sanctions. Matt reckoned that another example of that kind of barbarism could get the Russian political system really jumpy.’
‘So,’ said Backhouse, ‘he set about staging his own and Sandy's death.’
Sabatino's face fell.
‘You should take a look at this.’
A laptop, sitting on a low ornate table in front of them, was swivelled round. A file was booted up and a clip of video was set running.
‘This stroke was as bold as it was technologically ingenious,’ explained Backhouse as the CCTV footage appeared on the screen.
‘That, there, is the Brandeis car – which Matt and Sandy had been using since Matt's arrival in Moscow.’
Backhouse hit Pause.
‘Matt had rigged it up so this car could be driven remotely by radio control; it was to be aided by a drone flying overhead – which relayed back these pictures. All that was arranged to stage this,’ said Backhouse as he re-pressed Play.
Sabatino and Nazar watched the screen as the car was shown making its way onto the bridge. They actually flinched at the sequence of blasts – and the explosion that obliterated the vehicle.
‘Holy cow,’ said Sabatino.
Backhouse stopped the clip. ‘Matt had packed that car – to the roof – with highly specialized Quartech explosive. He didn’t want anyone on board, obviously, so he put three dummies inside. He also didn’t want anyone else to get hurt, which was crucial given the size of the explosion. His hotel room overlooked the bridge and he’d spotted that it was typically empty in the middle of the night.’
‘Did it need to be that big?’ asked Sabatino.
‘Matt had to obliterate all the remotely operated equipment inside, as well as conceal the absence of human remains in and around the car,’ replied Backhouse, ‘because of course there weren’t any. However, Matt had arranged for Sandy, the Brandeis chauffeur and himself to give a pint of blood each, bags of which were then strapped to the underside of the car. These were expected to burst onto the road during the explosion, meaning there would be some – verifiable and even identifiable – human remains at the scene.’
Nazar smiled and shook his head at the thinking behind all this.
‘Matt had arranged for the scene to be filmed by the accompanying drone. He then asked Bernie Callom to doctor the footage – to make it look like CCTV taken from a lamppost camera – and made sure it was sent to Fox News, to give them the scoop. Matt and Bernie reckoned that Fox were likely to go nuts for this story, giving them the chance to slag off a bad regime.’
‘No wonder it made such good copy,’ said Nazar. ‘Sensational footage like that would send any news channel into a masturbatory frenzy. A monumental car explosion, right in front of the floodlit Saint Basil's Cathedral and Kremlin – creating a spectacular visual. What more could you want for over-sensationalized drama?’
‘To give it even more,’ added McMahon, ‘Matt, Mr Callom and I went to see the mayor of Moscow, whom we knew from Mr Obrenovich was incensed by the actions of the Kremlin and Kondratiev, not to mention the corruption in the legal process. When Matt explained to the mayor the intended political impact from his plan, she bought into it straight away. Straker impressed upon Mayor Pavlova the need to liken the deaths of Sandy McMahon and Colonel Matt Straker to those of Magnitsky, Litvinenko and Nemtsov – so as to fuel the right media reaction.
‘To make sure the mayor was ready to make a statement to the press first thing the morning after, Matt got Mr Callom to prepare relevant pictures and biog details of the supposed victims.
‘Those images went all round the world. It was then followed by the mayor's press conference, in which she deliberately used the word “assassination”. The media readily declared the deaths of Matt and Sandy to be another indictment of Russia's attitude to justice, and condemned the State for having rubbed out yet more of its opponents.
‘And it worked,’ declared McMahon. ‘In a matter of hours, the United States Congress was even talking about introducing a new round of sanctions against Russia.
‘The next coup came from using the apparent assassinations of Matt and me to escalate the political risk of continuing with the trial. Matt's masterstroke was to get Oscar Brogan to say – in court – that, as a result of the death of the leading lawyer for the accused, he would call the mayor of Moscow as a witness. She was the last person the president would want to appear. Our trial, in the Russian Supreme Court, would have given Mayor Pavlova a platform to speak to the world and criticize the corruption in the Russian regime and State institutions – as well as the chance to condemn the “assassinations”. Matt's reckoning was that giving so much profile to his chief political rival would be too much for the president to bear.
‘Within twelve hours of the car bomb, the case was dropped by the prosecution.’
