To ensure some degree of protection for himself, he deleted all his internet search records, as well as his email exchanges with Grigori. But he was also old-school; he couldn’t stop himself from keeping a notebook full of his findings. He hid it in the last place anyone would look: in his protective clothing locker in his room, strapped to the underside of a low shelf. It was hardly Secret Squirrel, but it gave him some comfort.
So, he wasn’t happy. Certainly, he wasn’t comfortable. And he was on the horns of a dilemma. He needed his job and the hefty final-salary pension that came with it. But he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep his little secret, secret.
The Lubyanka Building, HQ of the Border Guard Service of Russia, Moscow, Russia
Sam couldn’t stop herself from pausing as she crossed the main square in front of the Lubyanka. It was an extraordinary building. A big, orange, late-19th century neo-Baroque monolith – out on its own, every other building giving it space. That was no surprise. Previously it had been the HQ of the erstwhile KGB. Today it housed a political prison and some elements of the FSB – as well as the HQ of the Border Guard Service. It stank of fear. Nobody wanted anything to do with the place – other than those who worked there.
Sam worked there. Well, every so often. It was here that SIS met their Russian counterparts. She was involved with the planning of the FSB’s latest joint operation: Op Michael. The operation was designed to blow a hole in the main opium conduit from Afghanistan; a route which took in Turkmenistan and a sea journey across the Caspian Sea, before entering into the Russian heartland.
The meeting was due to start at 11am, on the third floor. Room 313B. The building was an organised rabbit warren; one which benefited from beautiful parquet flooring and copious amounts of wood panelling. The meeting rooms were all cramped, and the Russians’ technical facilities were at least a decade behind where SIS were. But, the staff were very earnest and uber-organised. It was just a shame that, as the only female on a team of five (she and four FSB agents), they rarely gave her ideas any credence. One small part of her thought that ‘M’ had assigned her to this role as he knew what their reaction would be to having a younger female on the team.
She was building up a long list of disgruntlements against the man.
It can’t last.
Sam had walked the three klicks from the Embassy to Lubyanka. She could have got the metro or the bus, but she needed time out of the office to think. To try and put together a plan – who to talk to, and how best to make that happen. She couldn’t think last night; the shock had taken what little energy she had left. Any room for spare thought was subsumed by trying to come to terms with Alexei’s death. Who would kill him? The nagging pain in her cheek was an ever-present reminder that she could so easily have joined him. She had been exhausted.
After a quick fridge raid, she had had a bath and just about made it to her bed before her mind had shut down, her body rapidly following suit.
She had felt much better first thing – somebody had turned the lights back on. She was energised by the need for answers. And it had been a reasonably productive morning. Using Cynthia’s photofit program, she now had a close-to-exact likeness of ‘Blue Suit’. The computer’s face-recognition program worked on finding a match among the millions of mugshots that were stored on all SIS databases. Sam had drummed her fingers while Cynthia went through every face they had. No luck. Rubbing her chin, she had forwarded Blue Suit’s mugshot to an old pal of hers, Frank, in SIS’s London HQ in Vauxhall (colloquially known as Babylon). He was the senior analyst for the Middle East and southern Europe. He also had connections in the UK with the Met’s CID – who would access Interpol’s database, as well as the National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO) and the British military. Frank, with his usual efficiency, had pinged her back as soon as he had got into work – Moscow was two hours ahead of London. He was now on the case.
By way of a plan, en route to Lubyanka she had made the decision that she would visit the offices of Moscow Talks as soon as she could. It would be a highly irregular move by an SIS case-officer, but needs must. She had checked their website on her mobile as she walked and, as a result, knew the names of a couple of the other journalists. An email exchange, or phone call, might scare the horses; so, an impromptu face-to-face meeting was the way ahead – Sam got so much more from an exchange when she could see the person’s pupils.
Sam reckoned she could tell if someone was lying by looking into their eyes. For inexperienced liars there were other, obvious giveaways: shaking uncontrollably and profuse sweating. But, even when she had dealt with experts, very few could prevent their eyes from telling the real story. To her, at least.
Sam had clocked Moscow Talks’ address and would pop over after her Op Michael meeting. She also had Alexei’s last email which she remembered word-for-word: It would be good to meet as soon as we can, please. We need to talk about SH and his work down south. I hope you’re having a fun time. Pass my regards to Martin.
The ‘Martin’ bit was his teasing; that he knew SIS’s head of mission was called ‘M’. Anyone who watched James Bond, or did a cursory search of the internet, knew who ‘M’ was – but she allowed Alexei his little victory, without pointing out the obvious.
‘SH and his work down south’? Now, that was a different thing altogether. Crimea was down south. So was Ukraine. So was Syria. And Iraq and Sudan. There were so many possibilities. On the other hand, the whole thing could have been a bouquet of flowers to pad out the need to meet. Maybe SH meant nothing?
Her only hope was that someone at Moscow Talks knew what he was onto. And/or, Frank came up with an identity for Blue Suit.
First, though, she had to get through the Op Michael meeting. Without fidgeting. Or thumping a Russian.
She was met at the main entrance by Vladislav Mikhailov, a 40-something FSB officer and her ‘oppo’ at the Lubyanka. He was wearing an open-necked shirt and dark, heavy cotton trousers. Balding, with a pale complexion, he displayed all the hallmarks of a middle-aged, middle-class Russian man: a vodka paunch, a reddening nose, and eyes that needed a good night’s sleep.
Stop being so judgemental!
Notwithstanding appearances, Sam liked Vlad. He was the only Russian in the building who seemed to take what she said remotely seriously. And he had a warm smile, which he used expertly. Sam reminded herself that he was a trained spy, which meant – in the case of the FSB – he was almost certainly a competent shot and useful in a tight spot. As he led her up the stairs to the third floor, she checked out his silhouette for a concealed weapon. You never know. But there was nothing.
Op Michael was a straightforward op. Julie, a contact of hers in the Embassy in Kabul, had recruited a local Afghan who’d agreed to be placed on a drugs convoy that was due to cross the Afghan border on Friday night. (She and Julie had been on the same training course – she’d come out top female, and hence a posting to Afghanistan.) Julie had issued the Afghan with a doctored mobile. As well as receiving locational information from GPS satellites – as all smartphones could – the planted SIS mobile also constantly pinged its position to a couple of European military satellites. This guaranteed that people with the right equipment could follow the phone, no matter the terrain. Even if it were turned off. With mobile towers few and far between outside of the major cities in Afghanistan, having a phone which provided guaranteed location information was an essential link in the Op Michael plan.
In an emergency, the Afghan could phone Julie and, with UK Special Forces (SF) on call, she’d made a half-promise to the man that it might be possible to extract him. When Sam was talking to Julie by phone a couple of days ago, Julie couldn’t hide from Sam that SF would almost certainly not deploy for a lone Afghan informant. The man was on his own.
Sam couldn’t find any particularly deep emotion for the informant. She’d hate for him to be lost. But this operation was as much about stopping drugs getting into Western Europe, as it was about preventing them f
rom finding their way onto the streets of Russian cities. And the Op had the added advantage of forging closer links between the FSB and SIS. Risking a lone Afghan informant was probably worth it. Probably.
Once they were all sat down, one of Vlad’s colleagues and the lead for the operation updated everyone on the plan for the Turkmenistan side of the border. The projector threw up a series of slides as he spoke. On the table in front of them was a 1:25,000 paper map of the operational area. A Spetsnaz (Russian special forces) team would be pre-positioned on the Turkmenistan side of the Afghan border and would intercept the convoy once it was through the crossing. A rep from the Border Guard Service confirmed that his men, who would be working alongside the Turkmenistanis on the ground, would let the convoy through without any hassle. Spetsnaz would then do the business a couple of klicks further down the road.
Sam, who had spoken to Julie briefly this morning, told everyone that the agent was already in place. The phone would boot up at 15.00 on Friday. Its battery should last for at least eighteen hours – well beyond the planned intercept. They had tested the phone with the designated Russian computer in the building, and it had all worked well. On Friday night, they would all be glued to the screen.
The Russian lead finished the briefing and asked for any questions.
There were a couple from his team which he dealt with expertly.
Sam was nervous about a fork in the road, a couple of klicks short of the border crossing. It had the potential to split the convoy, if that’s what the smugglers wanted.
‘Sorry. Ehh…’ Sam, speaking Russian, leant forward so she could point at the junction on the paper map.
‘Have we got any idea if the track leading north here can take vehicles? I’m just concerned that, if spooked, the convoy might take the fork and cross here.’ Sam used her finger to follow the route from the fork to what looked like a second border crossing point.
She had mentioned this before during the pre-planning, but the team had patronised her with their apparent local knowledge. Sam had done the maths. None of them looked old enough to have served in the country during the Soviet occupation in the 80s. So, she wasn’t sure how they’d know. To back up her concerns, this morning she had used Cynthia’s enhanced 3-D satellite mapping to study the junction and the path that led to a second crossing point. She reckoned you could easily get a 4x4 over the border using the secondary route.
She pressed again now.
The lead Russian bristled.
‘Our view is that the only viable vehicle route from Herat to the Caspian Sea is via Dugy, Narzi, and across the border here,’ the Russian used a wooden pointer, placing its tip firmly where the team were planning that the drugs would cross into Turkmenistan, ‘and then on to Serhetabat. This other route you point out is a distraction.’ His pointer described the alternative route.
Grrr.
Sam wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
‘Thanks. Got that. The thing is, I’ve e-recced the route using SIS mapping and I’m pretty sure you can get a 4x4 up the second track and across the border. The route also gives the added advantage of avoiding Serhetabat in Turkmenistan, a choke point for the convoy. Would it not be sensible to split the Spetsnaz team – or at least have eyes on the second crossing? Maybe something remote? Our Afghan agent’s phone should give us some prior warning if the plan changes, but there isn’t an easy route for your team to get from one crossing to another should that happen. We could lose the drugs and the carriers.’ Throughout, she looked the Russian lead directly in the eye.
Vlad glanced across the conference table and caught Sam’s eye. He gave a hint of a smile. Does he agree with me?
‘Out of the question, Miss Green. We need all of the Spetsnaz collocated for maximum impact, should that be necessary. We will not be splitting the team.’ He paused for a second, purposefully not looking in Sam’s direction.
‘Any other questions?’
The room filled with shaking heads. Except Sam’s – she screwed her face up as if she’d sucked on a lemon.
So, that’s that then?
Arbat Village, Eastern Urals, Russia
‘Yes, I’ve done that. Three times. The tests are all negative.’ Sabine was talking in French to her MSF colleague in Moscow. She was sheltering from the biting easterly wind behind a shed on the old school playground. Mobile reception was better there.
Her conversation was about water quality – the most obvious answer to the spate of, now deadly, illnesses that were affecting her village. She’d only been there five days and it was already her village. Last night’s death of the poor young lad, Peter, had ripped out a small piece of her heart. At the same time, it had lashed down a part of her which she knew would make leaving the village without a solution very difficult.
Sabine raised her free hand to her mouth and bit on a finger. She closed her eyes and fought back a tear. She was a doctor. She had seen death more times than she could remember. But there was something about the isolation here, in this forlorn, forgotten place, that made everything much more personal.
‘Sorry Michele, it’s been tough here.’ She forced her mind to clear. ‘Look, to repeat myself, I’ve used the water sanitation equipment to check for the full gamut of nasties. I’ve taken samples from five different taps across the village, and two wells. I’ve looked at all the samples under the microscope. Nothing… well, not quite nothing.’ She paused. ‘As per yesterday’s report, chlorine levels are high, but that’s a good thing in this semi-wilderness. And chlorine’s not going to cause the infections, rashes, nausea, listlessness, dizziness – sorry, you know I could go on.’
‘I understand, Sabine. Have you had the stool samples back from the hospital?’
‘One set. All clear. No sign of salmonella, campylobacter, typhoid – I’ve checked the whole lot. And the combination of the stomach upsets and rashes? It’s bizarre…’
Michele started to speak, but Sabine carried on. ‘And this morning, I’ve had a new case. A 70-year-old woman bleeding from her uterus. It’s madness! The only common thread is that those affected are nearly all old and/or vulnerable.’ The wind blew a particularly strong gust; Sabine’s long dark hair whipped across her face. She used her spare hand to push it behind her ear. ‘Most of the working-age men seem to be fine. They all slave away at the local cement factory. I’ve had one come in with severe headaches, with no prior history. I sent him away with some codeine. But apart from that they seem fit enough.’
Sabine spotted Dimitri walking briskly from the school building toward the shed. He was carrying a blanket which he gently placed around Sabine’s shoulders. She forced a smile. Ce chouchou. She would struggle without Dimitri, that’s for sure.
‘Doctor. You must come. A lady is here. She very sick.’ His tone was forceful, but reverent.
‘Got to go, Michele. I’ll call you later.’ Sabine didn’t wait for a reply. She thrust her mobile into her pocket and hurried into the surgery.
Where she discovered chaos.
Outside, buffeted by the wind that howled all the way from Siberia, she had been protected from the noise that greeted her in the waiting room. In the centre, sat uncomfortably on an infant-sized chair, was a middle-aged woman. Sabine guessed she was mid-30s, but these people age so quickly – she could have been in her 20s. She wore standard village attire: a dark-coloured skirt, a white blouse, a heavy woollen cardigan and leather ankle boots. The colours were bland; the skirt may once have had vibrancy, but now, after countless washes, it was the colour of the local vegetation.
Except it wasn’t. The hem and much of the front of the skirt was dark crimson. Sabine couldn’t see the extent of the staining, as the woman had lifted her skirt up around her thighs, her legs wide apart. Her rounded, heavily-laden belly, which strained the buttons on her blouse, drooped over her pelvis. And the red continued to tell a story as it pooled between her feet. Blood splattered down her inner thighs, onto her calves and all over her off-white ankle socks.
/> She must have lost at least a litre of blood? And more on the way here?
Sabine was shaken from her momentary pause by the accompanying noise.
The woman was screaming at the top of her voice, only to stop and pant four or five times, before screaming again. Next to her, holding her hand, was a man – she guessed her husband. He was shouting all manner of Russian that Sabine didn’t understand. Between them they made Sabine’s ears hurt. As her mind translated her assessment into action, she quickly took in the other people sat around the waiting room. There were five. Only one looked able-bodied enough to be of help.
Now!
At the top of her voice Sabine cut through the noise. She was only 1.55m tall, but she had a big set of lungs.
‘TAIS-TOI!’ She took another breath. ‘SHUT… UP!’
The man stopped yelling immediately, stunned by the petit French doctor. The woman, whose screaming was beginning to fade of its own accord, broke into a series of delirious pants. Her head was lolling on her neck, as though the muscles had been severed. The man used his spare hand to help her keep it upright.
She turned to Dimitri. Quieter now, but still forceful.
‘This woman is having her baby. She has haemorrhaged and has lost a lot of blood. Carry her into the surgery. I will prep. Once she’s on the table, get that woman,’ Sabine pointed at the 20-something girl, sat like a rabbit staring down the barrel of a shotgun, ‘to boil plenty of water. As much as she can. And keep it coming. We might be doing some surgery.’
The husband had started shouting again.
‘And keep him out of my way!’
Those were the right instructions. But they weren’t right enough.
The next 40 minutes were the worst of Sabine Roux’s professional life. She was a moderately competent emergency surgeon, having spent 18 months working in Accident and Emergency at a hospital in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire. She’d dealt with some horrific gunshot injuries, vehicle accidents and knife wounds. But there, she had the benefit of an anaesthetist, a few nurses and some half-decent medical equipment.
The Innocence of Trust Page 4