That’ll be difficult for you, if you know where she is. It’s a long way to the Urals. He smiled at his quick thinking.
‘Ehh, okay. Is there anything else, M?’
‘No, no. That’s all. Have a good night.’ He knew he slewed his last couple of words. Would the man know that he’d been drinking? Who gives a shit? What he does in his own time is his own business.
Wasn’t it?
Arbat Village, Eastern Urals, Russia
So, this was it. Arbat. A hamlet of a place, blistered to the side of a rising escarpment with higher hills in the distance. Ignoring the church, with its light blue, peeling plaster and flaking, gold, onion-shaped dome, it was a bleak place. If Sam hadn’t spotted old-style power and telephone lines coming into the village from an adjacent field, and a couple of 70s cars (one of which was a yellow and rust Lada Niva; the other she didn’t recognise, which frustrated her – she’d have a look at some point), it might have been a scene taken from any of the previous three centuries. Most of the houses were wood-framed and clad, big, half-trunks of old forest and corrugated roofs; windows with glass, but only just. One or two were brick built from the bottom, but the upper stories were constructed of wood. The whole place looked like it might blow down in a mild breeze; but had obviously been standing for years.
She parked up in a crumbling tarmacked square, next to a school-shaped building with a small front garden, enclosed by a fence that needed a good coat of creosote. She got out and stretched. Everything ached. Her legs, her back – her eyes. Other than a three-hour stopover at Vuktyl, a further pee-break in the trees on some desolate strip of road, and an unscheduled stop to fix the Navara, she’d driven throughout the night. The 4x4 had performed perfectly. It was she who had let the side down. At o’Christ-thirty hours she had fallen asleep at the wheel and found herself in a ditch still doing 30 miles an hour. Her reactions had been sharp and had saved her from a looming one-on-one with a pine tree, which doubtless would have come off the better. Somehow, with Sam’s help, the Navara had slewed out of the ditch and made it back onto the road. She threw on the brakes and waited for a minute as her heart gradually made its way from her mouth back down into her chest. She was shaking – and she couldn’t stop. She looked at her hands in the half-light of the dashboard LEDs; they wouldn’t stop jumping about.
And then came the tears. It was shock, that was for sure. But it was also culmination of so many things, so much rubbish that had filled her days recently – the enormity of what she had taken on: her versus the oligarch, with no one to turn to. Tiredness, beyond understanding. And now, another near-death experience caused by her own stupidity. She hated the tears. Hated them. It was a weakness – a weakness she had no control over. But still they came.
The madness was that she knew from experience that when her body had had enough, it shut down – without her permission. She’d fallen asleep at the wheel before, back in her army days. Then, thankfully, her passenger had been awake and saved them from leaving a German autobahn well before their planned exit.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
When her pulse rate had returned to something sensible, she’d got out of the Navara and had a look around. Even though tall, black fir trees pressed onto the track as if to reclaim it for their own, a half-moon gave her enough light for a cursory inspection of the Navara. The passenger side was bashed and dented, and the front-right headlight was out.
And, shit, she had a puncture.
At that point Sam had screamed at the top of her voice: ‘Fuck, fuck, FUCK!’ That had helped. A bit.
She wiped the dampness from her eyes and dribbling nose with the sleeve of her favourite Lowe Alpine fleece, and got to work. She found the spare and the jacking equipment. In poor light, and at temperatures hovering around freezing (and suffering from monster exhaustion), she managed to replace the wheel. It had taken an hour.
Back in the driver’s seat, she looked at herself in the rear-view mirror. Already in desperate need of a change of clothes, she now looked like a car mechanic after a long week in the inspection pit. There was more carbon and oil on her hands, sleeves and trousers than there probably was on the whole of the rest of the truck. And her face and hair were a complete mess. She looked like she’d applied camouflage paint and was going to into the bushes to hide for a year.
In this state, she still hoped Dr Sabine Roux would take her seriously. That is, if she were in the village at all. In that respect, it had been a bonkers idea to drive all the way to Arbat. She could have gone to the MSF offices in Moscow and spoken to someone in authority. But, something told her she wouldn’t have been listened to. And, in any case, she’d ruled out driving to Moscow just in case she’d been tracked down by a predatory Mi-8.
Sabine Roux would be here. She would.
An elderly woman carrying a packet of pills shuffled out of the school building, picking her flowery dress up with her spare hand to prevent the hem getting muddy. She smiled at Sam and nodded her head.
‘Good morning! A lovely day?’ Her voice was a croak, and she dragged her left leg. But she was stoically polite.
‘Yes, it is,’ Sam replied in perfect Russian, mimicking the woman’s accent. ‘I’m guessing this building is the doctor’s surgery?’ She already knew, but thought the woman would want to help.
‘Yes. The doctor is in, if you need to see her.’
‘Thank you.’
Thank you.
Sam smiled. She then reached into the cab and took out her rucksack.
She jogged over to the only door and entered. There were five people sat around on infant chairs, a man kneeling next to a young woman having a conversation, and in the far corner of the undecorated room, was a door. Standing in the frame was a short, slim woman, more western than everyone else. She had soft, attractive features, dark hair tied in a bob, and from this distance, she looked as exhausted as Sam felt.
That’ll be Dr Sabine Roux then.
Sam raised her hand in a half-wave.
When she caught a glimpse of Sam, the doctor’s expression changed from ‘will this line of patients never end?’ to one of, ‘who the heck is that?’ She hesitantly waved back. And then beckoned Sam over.
Sam knew she looked like she’d just come off the set of 28 Days Later, and that she’d probably need all her persuasive powers to get through to Dr Sabine Roux. But she had the professor’s notebook in her rucksack, and SIS delivered the best negotiation training of anywhere in the world. If she could coax a local to turning informant, she could persuade the doctor that she knew what was causing all of these people to become unwell. In any case, what did Sabine Roux have to lose?
‘Hi, I’m Sam Green. Can we have a chat, Dr Roux? Please?’ Sam spoke in English. She was shaking the doctor’s hand.
The doctor’s face didn’t shift from bewilderment. How could this scruffy English woman, Sam, know her name?
‘Ehh, look, I’ve another six patients to see this morning, and then I’ve got to get across to the other village. Anyway, who are you?’ The accent was unmistakably French. And gorgeous. Sam let the tone ring in her ears for a split second.
‘Can we talk in your office?’ Sam pointed to behind the doctor. ‘I read your report over the weekend, and I think I can help with your predicament – the, erm, number of unexplained illnesses you have here.’
That was enough for the doctor. Sabine turned sharply and walked into the room. Sam followed, apologising for the way she looked; something about driving through the night and having had a puncture. Sabine didn’t bat an eyelid. She was an MSF doctor; she’d obviously seen worse.
Sam closed the door behind them. They both sat.
‘Look, I really don’t have much time. Please tell me what you need to, and then let me get on with treating my patients.’
‘Okay.’ Sam took a deep breath. ‘I understand that you have assessed the village’s water sources?’
‘It’s actually nothing to do with you, whoever you are. But, yes.’
/> ‘High in chlorine – from the purification tablets?’
‘Yes. And that’s perfectly normal.’ Sabine looked puzzled, which was turning to anger.
‘But you haven’t checked…’ Sam paused, not for effect, but to summon the energy for the multitude of questions that would follow, ‘for radioactive isotopes?’
There wasn’t a reply. Just a stunned silence. Sam was sure she could hear cogs turning in Dr Sabine Roux’s head.
The silence remained unbroken. That surprised Sam; she was expecting an onslaught. The doctor stood up and turned to stare out of the window.
‘Bien sur! Comment pourrais-je être aussi stupide?’ she said under her breath.
Sam managed to translate without asking for help.
Sabine turned back, sharply.
‘How do you know? From where? And, who are you?’
‘This may take a while. I’m Sam Green. Sit down, please, and I’ll explain.’
‘No. First I must tell Dimitri to hold the patients. I will tell him to give us half an hour. Yes, we need that time. Would you like some coffee? We only have instant, I’m afraid.’ She was on her feet, her sentences pouring out without punctuation; Sabine was in a rush. She wanted to know more – now. Sam had underestimated her. She knew Sam was right as soon as she had heard the word ‘radioactive’. It all made sense now. She didn’t need any persuading.
Over two cups of steaming coffee, Sam took half an hour to explain what Jim Dutton had uncovered in Salekhard. Sam didn’t mention people’s names, nor that of the oil company, but added gravity to the story by showing Sabine her British Embassy ID card. They had both had a laugh at her photo, compared to what she looked like now. At that point Sabine had offered her kettles of hot water, and the bathtub, once they were finished.
The engineering was complicated, but Jim had explained it well using a couple of line diagrams. Sam did her best to explain what she had learnt from the notebook; there was a lot of hand gesturing. She remembered everything. She could have made an exact copy of what Jim had drawn, and recited every word.
Sam explained that most oil from a conventional well naturally rises to the surface, as it’s under pressure below ground. This mixture that comes out is called ‘formation water’, which is a combination of crude oil and all manner of other liquids and particulates. Once the oil is separated, what is left is known as ‘produced water’. In older fields, where the pressure in the seams has dropped, fluid is pumped into the well. In these cases, more ‘produced’ water is returned. Much depends on the geology of the rock, but nearly all ‘produced’ water is contaminated, and most is laced with traces of radioactive material – although levels are low and generally safe. Normally these traces are dealt with by separating the solids, which include the radioactive elements, from the liquid – and digging the remaining sludge back into the soil in an agreed, environmentally safe location.
The radioactive materials are mostly: barium, strontium and radium; the latter is more likely to stay in solution, so is often more difficult to purge. Sam didn’t need to explain that all three elements were harmful to man.
So far everything Sam had mentioned was normal, legal practice. She made that point to Sabine who nodded vigorously.
‘Now, let’s come closer to home. There is an oil fracking site just over the ridge of the escarpment behind you. About 20 kilometres away.’ Sam pointed aimlessly toward the hill.
‘I didn’t know that. I’m not sure I fully understand the difference between normal drilling and fracking?’
Sam closed her eyes. She was shattered. Come on, almost there.
‘Fracking is like well-drilling. But the oil, and often gas, is suspended in minute seams in the rock – normally in horizontal layers of shale, rather than reservoirs. It is not naturally under pressure and needs to be helped out of the ground. Since the mid-50s, the US, who lead the world, have been extracting oil and gas by drilling down to shale, and then, working horizontally, forcing highly pressurised fluid into the rock. The fluid cracks open, or fractures, the seams of shale and displaces the oil and gas – which returns by a separate well back to the surface. What comes out is pretty much your average ‘formation water’ and is dealt with in the normal way. The difference is with the fluid that is used to do the fracking. It contains a ‘proppant’: silica, sand and sometimes bauxite, which stays in the cracks in the shale preventing them from closing when the formation water has been extracted. Like props down a gold mine?’ The last line had just come to Sam and she thought it painted a simple enough picture.
‘And the fracking fluid contains additional additives, such as acids, salt, polyacrylamide, ethylene glycol, borate salts and other things – these reduce friction and turbulence of the fluid, help clean the fissures and prevent scale deposits in metal pipes. Fracking fluids are not that cheap to manufacture. And the whole process is more expensive than normal land-drilling; costs add up.’
Sabine was transfixed. Sam took a sip of her coffee, which was starting to get cold.
‘The problem with fracking, and the one which environmentalists and protesters cite more than others, is small earthquakes. These are “allegedly” caused by the fractures closing – the silica being crushed by the weight of the earth.’
Sabine was ahead of her. ‘But that’s not the problem here – well, not the main problem?’
‘No. Another issue is water contamination, but the environmentalists have struggled to make a coherent case – anywhere. There’s always been another explanation if water quality is poor near a fracking site. However, in Arbat, the scale of the problem, as you have found out, is in a different league.
‘What the oil company has realised is that the “produced” water from their northern oil site is an incredibly efficient fracking fluid – proppants and everything. In fact, the radioactive materials, which are all metals in their own right, work as friction reducers and allow pumps to work at higher pressures. And there’s a lot of radioactivity – radium in particular, that is associated with the northern fields. Levels are dangerously high in the Arctic Circle.’
Sabine finished the story, her French accent entrancing Sam. ‘The oil company pumps highly radioactive fracking fluid into the watercourse here at Arbat. The village is supplied by relatively new fresh water, which falls as rain. The permeable chalk layer that forms the escarpment, supplying wells at its base where chalk meets impermeable clay. We covered this in geography when I was at school. So here, the rainwater mixes with the radioactive fluid, and the mixture pours out in abundance as springs; there are two in the village. And, as a result, we are all drinking radium-flavoured water?’
Sam could see the lights turning on behind Sabine’s eyes.
‘Worse than that, I’m afraid. The fracking process also dislodges its own radioactive material in the local shale – so your villagers get a double whammy: radiation from the fracking fluid, and radiation that naturally comes from your local geology.’
‘And the oil company know this?’ Sabine’s face was turning from one of enlightenment, to one of anger.
‘Oh yes. They benefit twice. They don’t have to pay to produce an effective fracking fluid. And they don’t have to fork out to get rid of their higher-than-normal radioactive “produced water” from their northern wells, other than transport it the 800 kilometres to get here. It’s a cheap and effective alternative.’
‘Les enfoirés!’
Sam looked confused.
‘The bastards.’ Sabine translated.
‘Is it only happening here?’
‘No, there are at least two more sites in Russia where the oil company are using the same process – as far as I am aware. But, my understanding is that the geology at those two sites make the emergence of radioactive water a much longer-term process – by which time the radioactive material may have…’ Sam repeated for effect, ‘may have, dissipated.’
What Sam didn’t add was that Sokolov’s oil interests were spread much wider than just the boundar
ies of Russia. And that Jim Dutton had just started to piece together a scenario which would impact on considerably more people than a small hamlet in the eastern Urals – with much more devastating effects.
Headquarters Secret Intelligence Service, Vauxhall, London
Jane Baker had a lot on her plate. The Syrian situation was testing her teams to the limit. She had only six case-officers in the country. Four of them worked alongside the SAS and Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) – it wasn’t a job for the faint-hearted. Their role was to evaluate the efficacy of coalition airstrikes against Daesh/IS, and report on the intent and damage caused by the joint Russian and Regime’s bombardment. Whilst the army members of those teams had eyes on, and designated suitable targets with laser markers, SIS staff worked hard to recruit local agents and informants to get their information. Jane pretty much operated with a blank cheque. But, even so, there were limited opportunities to find help on the ground. Finding Syrians who weren’t too shell-shocked to be effective, or so scared that any amount of cash couldn’t recruit them, was nigh on impossible.
A fifth member of her in-country team was based in Damascus, overseeing an agent in the national government and two senior officers in the Regime’s army. Finally, a sixth worked alongside the rebels, providing intelligence support and advice, which was collated daily by her multi-agency team based here in Vauxhall.
As the Middle East lead she also ran operations in Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Jordan, Israel, Palestine and the whole Saudi Peninsular: 72 case-officers on the ground and 30 analysts and support staff here in Babylon. It was the biggest desk in the building – and she loved it. If anyone thought that SIS operated with a woman-proof glass ceiling, she was evidence that that wasn’t the case. Today, the only thing that mattered was getting results – which, for Area Leaders, required a basket of skills. These included: operational planning; the ability to hold onto multiple briefs; a thorough understanding of the gathering and exploitation of data (and all its sources); leadership acumen to get the best out of among the brightest young minds in the country; risk analysis; tact and diplomacy, for dealing with staff from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), GCHQ, Special Forces, the Met, the Anti-Terrorist squad, MI5… She could go on.
The Innocence of Trust Page 14