The Innocence of Trust

by Roland Ladley

  And she’d be fine.

  The Department of State’s latest advice on travel to Turkey was: The U.S. Department of State continues to warn U.S. citizens of increased threats from terrorist groups throughout Turkey. U.S. citizens should still carefully consider the need to travel to Turkey at this time. She knew that. After all her research, she didn’t need to check the DoS’s travel advice on Turkey. She could have written it herself.

  That’s why she so wanted to go. She hadn’t told her family, but her ambition was to be a war correspondent. New York Times? CNN? All her family thought she was hoping to become a government administrator. And maybe later, a politician – like her daddy. That had been an early ambition of hers. But the latest Presidential election had shown politicians for what they really were: child-like narcissists; or elitist, self-serving bureaucrats. No, she wanted out. Out of the politics that had surrounded her life for as long as she could remember, and out of a country that was being torn apart by bigotry and in-fighting. And where better than the front line? OK, so Turkey wasn’t Afghanistan, Syria, or Iraq. But it was the only half-dangerous country that was taking interns where her father had some reach.

  And Istanbul looked such a fabulous place. East meets west. Christianity meets Islam. Asia meets Europe. The Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar – Topkapi Palace! She could smell the spices from 6,000 miles away. Holly really couldn’t wait.

  Her father was holding her hands in his. He had that ‘deep concerned’ look, the one that worked so well on the TV when Florida had been battered by storms. Or after there had been a mass shooting. And that was also part of the problem. Did she really know her daddy? He was perfect. Kind, loving, attentive… Just what any daughter wanted. But, how much of that was for show, even for her? Was it an act? Did he really love her? How could he love her that much, when he showed the same affection for everyone he met? Where did Daddy stop and Congressman Chad Mickelson start? Were they one and the same?

  Holly smiled her biggest smile. She’d learnt a lot from him. She could act as well as he could. If he expected joy and laughter – she could deliver; homeliness – she could do that too; frightened? – that was easy. He was a master and she had been a very adept learner.

  ‘I’ll be fine, Daddy, I really will.’ She held the smile. ‘The staff are meeting me at Atatürk airport and I promise to follow every rule. I will hardly ever go outside of the Embassy grounds. My job is to listen and learn. Prepare for Princeton.’ She paused, the smile still planted on her face. ‘I promise.’

  Her father tilted his head to one side and then bent forward to kiss her on the cheek.

  ‘OK, sweetie. You are your mother’s daughter! Determined and persuasive.’ He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and ceremoniously wiped an eye. ‘Go now, and call every day. You have endless credit on your cell.’

  She reached up and gave him one last kiss on the cheek.

  Stay in the Embassy grounds? You’ve got to be kidding.

  ‘I’ll miss you, Daddy. But I’ll come back a woman – you’ll see.’

  And with that final farewell, Holly Mickelson picked up her carry-on luggage and made her way into the security zone prior to departure.

  Salekhard Airport, Northern Russia

  Sam was waiting for the ‘fasten seat belts’ sign to be extinguished. The Aeroflot-badged Boeing 737 had taxied to its tie-down on the small concrete apron; the engines were whirring down. Looking out of the window she picked out a single set of travelling steps (she was sure they had an official name – she would Google it) moving into place beside the aircraft’s front door. They would be getting off soon.

  The weather looked workable. She’d checked the outside temperature on her in-flight screen as soon as they’d touched down: +2oC. There was snow on the ground, but just a smattering, like a thinly iced Christmas cake. The windsock on the conning tower fluttered; there was little wind. And no sun. A blanket of high cloud prevented that.

  The airport looked small-to-medium sized. Sam had counted five commercial aircraft on the pan, an assortment of smaller prop planes and a handful of brightly coloured helicopters – mostly Russian Mi-8s. The Mi-8 was the workhorse of most air forces and businesses when they wanted a cheap and effective minibus with rotor blades. Sam had travelled in one a couple of times in Afghanistan, when the British had been collaborating with the Afghan air force. They were remarkably agricultural in comparison to the RAF’s Merlin troop carriers. But, with over 12,000 in service across the world, they clearly were well thought of. She looked again at the four on the pan. One was painted in ExtraOil livery. Tick!

  The journey had been remarkably easy so far. Last night, once Rich had left, she’d quickly pieced together an outbound route that worked. She booked a return Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Salekhard, leaving today at 12.25pm; returning Monday, leaving Salekhard at 17.15. Getting to the ExtraOil fields was more complicated, but it seemed that there were two options. She’d come across an angler’s blog called Fishin’ Freezing. It featured a sturdy Dutchman who went out of his way to fish in extremely cold climates. Nordkapp, the most northerly point of Europe, was his favourite place – although it was often ‘full of tourists’, which seemed to get right up the blogger’s nose. Second on his list was the Yamal Peninsula, where she was now. The blog (which had too many photos of dead fish with their eyes popping out for Sam’s taste) offered two options to get to the Arctic Ocean from Salekhard. First, hire a 4x4 – although the route was often dangerous; broken by ice melt during the short summer and fractured by the deep freeze for the rest of the year. Second, was the ‘oil train’, which ran twice daily between Salekhard and the sea; it took a few paying passengers.

  Sam had checked the ExtraOil website and, after 20 minutes of interrogation, had found a map of the rigs they operated on the Yamal Peninsula. There were two, side by side: No. 6 and No. 7. And it seemed that the train served both rigs. Perfect.

  By the time she’d booked her flight, worked out how to get to the oil field, and packed her things, it was 6am. She had six hours before her flight: an hour to check in; an hour to get to the airport; four hours spare.

  Breakfast. Ibuprofen (the wine had set like cement in her head; it was making the gap between her ears throb). Write report.

  As the coffee bubbled away on her hob and her Shredded Wheat (with dried cranberries) soaked up the milk, she tapped away at her Chromebook. She may be a maverick, and what she was about to do blew all SIS protocol out of the window and propelled it into space, but more often than not she did as she was told. M wanted a brief by Monday morning; M would get a brief by Monday morning. In fact, he would get one in 30 minutes’ time.

  Sam drafted reports quickly and accurately. Yes, she needed to check them, and there were always things she wanted to amend. But her first draft was always just about good enough. As she typed up her thoughts on why Op Michael had failed, she reminded herself of what Rich had said before he left: ‘all these things may be connected; someone’s ahead of you.’ Who might be ahead of her? M? Frank? Rich? Someone else in the organisation?

  No, can’t be. She dismissed the notion.

  Rubbish.

  Her report was standard SIS style: conclusions and recommendations to start; supporting documentation following on. She reread the front page:

  Op Michael - Post-Op Report

  Conclusions

  1. Michael failed because the FSB disregarded SIS advice to cover a second, minor border crossing point into Turkmenistan. FSB procedures allow for reviewing enemy options, but resources were limited and only one crossing was covered.

  2. There is currently no int that allows us to unpick why the smugglers chose to reroute their consignment. Options include: standard operating procedures that we were unaware of; a leak/informant within the Taliban/smugglers’ operation.

  3. Liaison between SIS in Kabul/Moscow worked well.

  4. Kabul’s agent and planted mobile worked extremely well. The agent gave timely information at the crux of
the operation - an action which almost certainly cost him his life.

  Recommendations

  5. SIS/FSB joint operations should continue. However, the competence, seniority and gender of the assigned SIS case-officer requires further consideration.

  (Yeah, like I was clueless…)

  6. Further investigation is required to establish Taliban/smugglers MOs; in the meantime, always assume secondary routes and methods.

  She made a couple of changes and then pressed ‘Send’. She blind-copied Julie in; Sam didn’t want her outflanked by anything she’d written in the report. She’d send a further email to M tomorrow, making excuses for not being in the office on Monday. He’d probably get off on ‘period pain’, so she thought that it was safer to say something along the lines of ‘a heavy cold’. Doubtless he would cast aspersion as to her flakiness – ‘hasn’t the backbone to face a good bollocking’.

  The idiot could go and… She didn’t finish the sentence in her head.

  Her most knotty decision had been: ‘who to travel as?’ If someone was ahead of her, they would get a ‘ping’ if she booked a flight in her own name. If that someone was SIS, then it wouldn’t matter which alias she used – she would be monitored. An added factor was that she had decided to take her work phone and tablet with her; she needed the intelligence horsepower. The phone was trackable from any SIS desk. That unnerved her a little. It would certainly give M all the ammunition he needed to sack her when she got back, if he bothered to check that she was above the Arctic Circle, rather than under her duvet. But, at least it meant that should she get into trouble, Rich would know where she was.

  Then there was the tricksome question of getting onto the oil field to see Jim Dutton. She didn’t think any of her foreign aliases would get her past the security guards. However, as an English-speaking cousin of Jim Dutton’s, with family news that was best delivered face-to-face – that might just work.

  Stuff it. Sam Green it was – Jim Dutton’s English cousin. Coming all the way to Salekhard to tell him the good news – that he’s been left a sizeable chunk of money in his aunt’s will. That will have to do.

  The seats in front of her were emptying. She stood, retrieved her only bag – a 45-litre grass-green Osprey rucksack (which she loved), and followed the queue to the aircraft’s exit. Before she got there, a cold front of air from the outside hit her; the exposed tips of her ears, her tangled hair tucked away behind them, feeling the drop in temperature.

  Damn. I forgot to bring a hat. Idiot.

  The next 20 minutes passed quickly enough. Inside the not-unpleasing, curvy, metal and glass terminal, she followed the signs for security control. All flights to Salekhard were internal, but the Russians took their own brand of Islamic and Chechen terrorism seriously. After a five-minute wait she made it to the head of the queue.

  Behind the glass front of a security pill box was a walrus of a woman; she was only short of a pair of tusks.

  ‘Papers.’

  Sam hadn’t thought through whether to speak in Russian or English; would Jim’s cousin be fluent? Probably not. She went for ‘colloquial’. She handed over her UK passport.

  The walrus was wearing a light brown, short-sleeved shirt which was struggling to contain the blubber she hoarded to keep her warm during the long winters. She looked at Sam’s passport and work visa from every conceivable angle.

  ‘British?’ She spat it out. Since the numerous EU embargoes enforced on Russia after their annexation of Crimea, many Westerners were given a hard time from your average Russian. Sam was sympathetic to their predicament.

  ‘Yes.’ It says so, on the front of the passport and in several places on the pretty pages in between.

  Flippancy was an ammunition of Sam’s. It was an army thing. You weren’t trained in it; well not exactly – you were smothered in it as soon as you joined up. It was hugely powerful in helping you to deal calmly with stressful situations. Humour was a glue among the ranks. It was as central to the British Army as corned beef hash. The Americans didn’t get it. They had the Humvee instead. Thousands of them.

  The walrus needed more information.

  ‘Reasons for travel.’

  Here goes…

  What fascinated Sam about her new job as a ‘spy’ was that she wasn’t a very good liar. She was, even if she said so herself, good at many other things: photo and image analysis; document review and dissection; as a HUMINT controller (natural empathy helped here – she and Alexei had hit it off immediately; she exuded trust).

  But a good liar, she wasn’t.

  She gulped, trying to look unflustered. Her freckles hid a small rush of blood to her head.

  ‘I’m visiting a cousin of mine. He’s Scottish…’ she was remembering to mispronounce some words, ‘and works for ExtraOil, on the oilfields north of here.’ Sam kept her response short, but accurate. Her interrogation training was unforgettable: be factual, but minimal; give them something to chew on, but don’t overdo it; if they want more, they will come back to you.

  That was OK?

  The walrus looked at her as though she was manky seaweed caught in her flippers. She hesitated for a second. And then threw Sam’s papers back at her, motioning with a flick of her head for Sam to move on.

  You have a nice day too…

  She was through.

  Once in the main auditorium she got her bearings. She clearly recalled her route from a photographic replica of the Google Map overhead she’d seen last night: airport terminal to taxi rank; taxi to the train station.

  Taxi rank: forward left.

  But she didn’t shift. The fleeting movement of a recognisable face transited through her left peripheral view. She turned her head sharply. Nothing. No one. If it were someone, and she couldn’t place the blur, then that someone was gone. Or was her mind running away with itself?

  Bugger.

  Her mouth dried. Her heart rate quickened.

  Slow down – calm.

  Flippancy was banished. Adrenalin kicked in. Focus took over.

  With her feet rooted to the spot, she dropped her rucksack from her shoulder and bent down to tie up her Doc Martens. A very quick panorama at knee height spotted a couple of further suspects. A middle-aged woman sat at a cafe, legs crossed and seemingly reading a paper, or completing a Sudoku, pencil in hand. She caught Sam’s gaze and dropped her eyes back to the paper. She scribbled something. Click. Sam had her face and stature, even though she was sitting.

  A man pulling a black cabin bag behind him. Tall, 6’ 2”, slim. Rugged attire, all beiges and browns, trousers with more pockets than you could possibly need, keys hanging from his belt; likely to be an oil worker. He was stationary when Sam had clocked him looking across at her. He was moving now. Right then left, toward the sign that pointed to the loos. Click: two out of two.

  Any more?

  She finished tying her second shoelace. She had ignored everyone in uniform, and there were plenty of those – all colours: blues, greys and greens. Uniformed military and police were incapable of blending in in a public space. They couldn’t follow the yellow brick road. Tailing was an undercover job. It wasn’t for them.

  Nothing. No one. She steadied her breathing.

  Move now.

  Sam stood and quickly made her way right, away from the taxi rank, but toward the small bus station. She exited the terminal through a single glass door, and was immediately reminded by the tops of her ears that she’d forgotten her hat. She turned hard left and, as close to running as was comfortable, walked quickly along the front of the terminal to the taxi rank. There were five taxis, yellow Datsuns with a red ‘taxi-nn.ru’ etched on their doors. Against the protestations of the first two, she took the third.

  With no ceremony whatsoever, she got in the passenger seat and ordered the driver to drive. In perfect Russian. No destination.

  ‘Of course.’ If the driver was confused, he didn’t show it. He was dressed casually and looked very much a local – round face, thick, tough s
kin, black hair. And he didn’t smell of vodka. Result.

  Sam knew the route from the airport to the train station. She had used SIS’s e-planner to visualise it; it was the last thing she had done before she left the apartment. She knew the local road network, where the traffic lights were, and where the road underpassed the main, southbound dual carriageway.

  She kept an eye on the traffic behind her using the passenger wing mirror. She reached into her gilet pocket and pulled out her leather card holder. She opened it at her Embassy ID and flashed it at the driver. It was too quick for him to have seen any detail.

  ‘FSB. Turn left here.’ Sharp. Decisive. She pointed late, but the taxi driver, sensing he was dealing with someone not to be messed with, swung the car left just in time, its tyres protesting at the turn.

  Sam checked behind. Nothing.

  Then a black Mercedes 190 screeched round the corner 50 metres behind them. Shit. The taxi driver sensed what was happening; he was now alert. He looked across at Sam, fear in his eyes. Dilated pupils. Hold it together, fella.

  Sam’s mind was racing. What am I involved with? These people, whoever they are, don’t know where I’m going. They can’t, can they? Could they have squared the circle as she had done last night?

  Maybe. Possibly.

  How did they know I was here?

  She had to get to the train station without them realising that was where she was heading.

  ‘Left, here. Step on it.’ Finger pointing, as well as verbal directions. The driver followed her instructions. ‘Right here.’ The taxi driver, sweat now dripping from his forehead, did exactly as he was told. They were now in traffic, the Merc five cars behind. ‘Right again, next junction.’ Sam kept giving orders as a plan coalesced in her mind. She reached into her wallet and took out a $100 bill. She waved it in front of the taxi driver and then forced it down between his legs; he involuntarily brought his knees together.