Now as an intelligence officer, a situation like that looks like a big opportunity - and that’s how your father saw it. Pretty soon his whole raison d’etre for being out in Central Asia was to recruit members of the Soviet armed forces and medical staff as agents for British Intelligence. The Russians had made Afghanistan into a big black market and soldiers with nothing better to do would just wander around bartering gasoline, food rations, military clothing and footwear, even selling their own weapons and ammunition to get hold of drugs or alcohol. So it was possible for an experienced intelligence operative, fluent in Russian as your dad was, to engineer situations in which he encountered the enemy at first hand.
One individual like this was a young soldier who began there and then to spill his guts about everything that had been happening, not aware who your father really was, and probably not caring too much either. His name was Mischa Kostov and Christopher couldn’t have known it at the time but he was just about the best potential Soviet agent he was ever going to get his hands on. Mischa - I never met him, of course, but I know he was a sweet kid - was recruited to the army at the age of twenty, and drafted, I think, in April of ‘85. As he told it to your father, he’d done about ten weeks of basic training in desert and mountain warfare at a camp in Termez before being sent by train to a Soviet assembly point in Ashkhabad and then on to Kabul by air. This was standard procedure and at this point in his military career the kid’s excited - not only does he get to serve Mother Russia, but the future looks rosy once he gets home. Afghan veterans were given preferential treatment when it came to getting jobs or a place at a good university, a decent apartment in Moscow. Added to that, a guy from the Russian army serves two years in Afghanistan, it’s counted as the equivalent of six back home, so if everything goes OK, Mischa is on to a fast-track promotion and treble his salary.
Only he finds there were guys in his unit who are only fighting for personal gain. There’s nothing ideological going on. Mischa’s a young man and he’s starting to realize that this is a selfish world we live in, that everybody’s out for themselves. Patriotism? Forget it. Most of his comrades have been told they’re going to Afghanistan to fight Iranian and Chinese mercenaries, to build kindergartens and schools for Afghan kids. And then they get there and see that this is bullshit. The soldiers are bored, too, restless and - in 85/86 - increasingly conscious that they’re never going to win the war. These are men quite a bit younger than yourself, Ben, with no women around and nothing to do but smoke hashish or opium, maybe shoot up some koknar. Sure we smoked some weed in Vietnam, but Afghanistan was like goddam Woodstock. The Agency later estimated that at least half a million young Soviet men were exposed to narcotics of one kind or another while serving tours of duty in Afghanistan. And when they went back home, they took that problem with them.
Then, of course, there was alcohol. These are Russians, after all. At one point - independent of Christopher and Mischa - I interrogated a Soviet soldier who told me the guys on his unit used to drink eau de cologne, antifreeze, glue, even brake fluid just to get themselves drunk. But far as your dad could tell, Mischa was more clear-headed. The army was rife with smug gling, pillaging, reprisals, torture, but he stayed out of it, keeping his head down. Only the gradual effect of the corruption on his morale was taking its toll and that’s what your father relied on, that’s the cynical line we had to take. There were men coming into Mischa’s unit from the front lines every day and the stories they had to tell were just horrifying. Hygiene, for one, non-existent. Here they are trying to fight one of the most sophisticated, battle-hardened resistance armies in history and the Russian soldiers are having to contend with dysentery, hepatitis, yellow jaundice, malaria, typhus, skin infections brought about simply by not having access to a shower or even hot water - sometimes for a month at a time. Clean sheets, clean underwear, are unheard of for these men. When they eat, it’s off aluminum plates that haven’t been cleaned in weeks. In the desert areas there’s sand and lice everywhere, heatstroke and dehydration, then frostbite in winter. Mischa was tough, and he could cope with this, but what he couldn’t stand was listening night after night to guys who were being destroyed by war.
After a while he was posted west towards the border with Iran and became involved in some of the heaviest fighting any unit had known out there. Your father began to worry that he wasn’t going to make it back. Forgive me for saying this, Ben, but I think in a sense Mischa had become almost like a son to him. Of course he did return to Kabul and it was then that he told Christopher that several of his comrades had come into conflict with older soldiers in their unit. The Soviet army has what they call ‘stariki’, veterans who, regardless of rank or ability, have an unwritten right to make life as tough as they can for younger conscripts. If you’d served less than six months in the army, it could get rough and young recruits, some of whom were just sixteen or seventeen years old, were forced to scrub toilets with toothbrushes, run around camp wearing gas masks until they fainted or just woken up in the dead of night for no better reason than that’s what the stariki wanted. The culture was so ingrained you could even get higher ranking officers at the mercy of their subordinates simply because they were younger or had served less time. And of course if they tried to complain to their commanding officers the treatment was only going to get worse. The irony was that these soldiers were out there to fight the mujahaddin, but their real enemy turned out to be themselves.
There was one Muslim guy on Mischa’s unit who, as far as we could tell, was straight out of high school in Uzbekistan. Like I said before, there was a lot of bad feeling between the Slav majority and the ‘churkas’, Soviet Muslims from the southern republics. The bullying in this case got so bad he went missing for two days. The regiment drove themselves crazy looking for him, wondering if he’d deserted to the rebels, but eventually he got tracked back to his village in Uzbekistan. Somehow he’d managed to get a pass back home and just run away. So the Soviets put him in solitary for three weeks and then he gets called back to the front and life in the barracks deteriorates further. Bullying and punishment on a level Mischa didn’t even want to talk about. He was ashamed, I think. This is a proud son of Soviet Russia with scales falling from his eyes. Christopher later found out that the stariki beat this Muslim kid every night with an iron bar and that he was raped by another soldier on at least two separate occasions. He wrote a letter home to Uzbekistan, begging his father to get him out of there, but what could his dad do? The kid’s already gone AWOL once, he’s a stain on the family. So no help comes and the inevitable happens. One night he crept out of bed at2 a.m., took a knife into the bathroom and slit his own throat. He was eighteen years old.
That spring, Mischa was posted back to the front, this time south towards Kandahar, but a new company commander, name of Rudovski, had been assigned to his unit because the previous guy got killed. Rudovski came with a sidekick, Domenko, a sergeant smacked out on liquor and char 24 hours every day. This was when the atrocities started, a summer of mindless slaughter to which Mischa bore terrible witness. The worst of it came in August when the unit captures a dozen Afghan kids armed only with a few bird guns, just trying to do their bit for the resistance. The Russians are only about ten clicks from their base and Mischa suggests handing them over to the Afghan Security Service. But Rudovski has other ideas. He orders the Afghan kids to strip naked and starts tying them up, hands and feet. Then he lays them on the road and Rudovski tells one of the drivers to run them over with an armoured personnel carrier. The BMP driver said he wouldn’t do it and neither would several of the other soldiers. Rudovski knew enough not to ask Mischa. So eventually he turned to Domenko and says something like ‘Show these cowards how to love the motherland’, and then Domenko climbs into the BMP and just drives over the kids and crushes them.
When Mischa got back to Kabul he told your father about all of this and the information went into a CX that was read at the highest levels of government in both the UK and the United States. Bu
t by then he was a changed man, addicted to opium, couldn’t function without it, and he’d become sloppy. Christopher, who was maybe more involved than he should have been, and too upset about what was going on, was intent on somehow getting Mischa out of Afghanistan, even if it was only as far as Islamabad. He was afraid, as I was, that Mischa would blow his cover. But he couldn’t get authorization from SIS. Nothing could be allowed to disturb the illusion that Western intelligence agencies were adopting a passive role in the Afghan conflict, offering humanitarian assistance and nothing more. No matter that the Soviets knew all about CIA and SIS activity by that stage. What happened is that Mischa was blown. The army had gotten suspicious and he was observed en route to a clandestine meeting with your father and then later executed by court martial.
This is highly classified information, Ben, but it’s central to my theory about what happened in London and I don’t think it’s right that you and Mark should be prevented from knowing the truth. When the Soviet archives were opened up and Western intelligence analysts were able to unravel many of the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War, I discovered that Mischa’s father had worked for the KGB.SIS and Christopher had always believed that he was simply a middle-ranking civil servant in Moscow, but through my old contacts at the Agency - I quit in ‘92 - I was able to find out that Dimitri Kostov had operated within a First Chief Directorate section known as Department V. Department V was a relatively new section of the KGB created in the late sixties to replace the Thirteenth Department of the FCD, which organized what we used to call ‘wet jobs’. Assassinations, for want of a better word. Nominally Department V was tasked only with carrying out acts of sabotage, but under the control of Andropov there’s strong evidence to suggest that assassinations continued.
My fear is this. When Mischa was blown, SIS was concerned that he may have divulged your father’s identity to the Soviet military prior to his execution. Christopher was taken out of Afghanistan as a precaution and reassigned to China. His career never recovered and when SIS was overhauled under McColl in the early 1990s, he was pushed out. Something very similar happened to Mischa’s father, almost like a mirror. When it was discovered that his son had been betraying secrets to the British, Kostov was discharged from the KGB and sent to Minsk to process employment records. He turned to drink, lost his wife, and only came back to Moscow after the putsch when his old KGB friends, most of whom were running the country in one guise or another, were able to find him work.
That’s what I know. Kostov had numerous aliases - Kalugin, Sudoplatov, Solovyov - and I’ve never been able to track him down. Time and again I would talk to your father about the possibility of Kostov coming after him but he just wouldn’t talk about Mischa. He felt like he’d killed a man, sent him to his death. And coupled with the guilt he felt about you and Mark, the pain was often hard to bear.
Your father was a proud man and would just laugh off my concerns. ‘How would Kostov ever find me?’ he used to say. ‘He doesn’t even know my name.’ I was just a conspiracy theorist, another paranoid Yank who couldn’t let go of the job. But nobody’s identity was secure - a list of SIS officers worldwide was posted on the Internet about five years ago. Your father’s name was on that list.
I would urge you to take this information to the police if I thought they would be permitted to act on it. I tried to alert SIS to the problem a long time ago, but my bridges are burned there now. Everything falls on deaf ears.
It frustrates me to end on such a downbeat note but I loved Christopher and his loss has affected me. Please contact me at the address stated if you want to talk through any of what I’ve written here today. Together I believe we can solve this situation and maybe help to put the past behind us.
Yours sincerely,
Robert M. Bone
When he had finished reading the letter, Ben continued to stare at the base of the final page, as if expecting further words to appear. For some time he remained like this, a cross-legged figure in the centre of the room, unsure of how to proceed. Oddly, there was still an instinctive part of him that wished to remain ignorant of his father’s past, a stubborn refusal to grapple with the truth. Under different circumstances, he might even have scrunched up Bone’s letter and thrown it petulantly into the nearest bin.
That, after all, was how he had survived for the best part of twenty-five years.
But almost every sentence Bone had written, every one of his recollections and theories, had been revelatory, clues not simply towards the solving of a murder, but vital pieces in the jigsaw of his father’s life. Ben immediately wanted to share the letter with Mark, and yet a part of him enjoyed the buzz of privileged information. This was the breakthrough the police had been searching for, but it was also a secret glimpse into a world that his brother could only have guessed at.
30
Mark called Bob Randall from a phone booth in the ticket hall of Leicester Square underground station. He lost his first twenty-pence piece in the teeth of a broken callbox, but reached the contact number at his next attempt. A man answered, sneezing as he picked up.
‘Can I help you?’
‘This is Blindside.’
‘Hold the line.’
Taploe was put through in under ten seconds.
‘Randall,’ he said.
‘We may have a problem.’
‘Elaborate, please.’
‘I just got to the office. Macklin’s breakfast was cancelled. Lunch as well. It looks like he’s going to be there all day. I told him I was going out for a coffee so I could get to a phone and tell you.’
‘I see. So do you still want to go ahead?’
‘Do you?’
‘There’s no problem at our end. The network will go down at 11 a.m. as arranged. We have the team standing by waiting for your call. But you sound unsettled.’
Mark had not wanted to betray any of his anxiety. Think of Dad, he had said to himself. What would my father do? He braced his foot against the wall of the callbox and said, ‘I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. I just thought you should know.’
‘Well, I’m pleased to hear that. So let’s press ahead. This is information that we need. Now, where are you?’
‘Leicester Square tube.’
‘Well, it’s almost half-past. Get backto the office. We’ll expect to hear from you within the next forty minutes.’
‘Sure.’
‘And Mark?’ Taploe said.
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t forget the coffee.’
‘What?’
‘You told Macklin you were going out for a coffee. Make sure to bring one back to work.’
Half an hour later Mark was sitting in an armchair in his office when he heard the distinct rumble of a Macklin ‘Fuck’ coming through the walls. Another voice - Kathy’s - cried out, ‘What the hell happened?’ and then a door opened in the corridor.
‘Why’s the fucking email not working?’ Macklin shouted. ‘Where’s Sam?’
‘Maternity leave,’ somebody said.
‘Fucking great.’
He swerved into Mark’s office, a shirt button popped open on his belly. Mark lowered the magazine he was pretending to read and tried to look distracted.
‘Your computer working, mate?’ Macklin asked him.
‘Mine just crashed as well,’ Kathy said, coming in behind him.
Mark stood up with perhaps an exaggerated non-chalance and walked across to his desk. Hitting a key at random, his stomach a swell of nerves, he prayed for total system failure.
Granted.
The small, frowning face of an Apple icon appeared onscreen and nothing Mark could do would remove it. Turning to face Macklin and Kathy he said simply, ‘Shit.’
At the reception desk, thirty feet away, Rebecca, a temp who had replaced Sam as office manager, answered a telephone call just as her own computer froze irreparably. She had been in the middle of writing a frankand erotic email to a one-night stand and was worried that it would now be discove
red on the system.
‘Well, that’s fucking great, isn’t it?’ Macklin was saying. ‘I had twenty fucking messages downloading and now they’re all shot to fuck. Some cunt in the Philippines, probably, a prepubescent anorak who thinks it’s a fucking laugh infecting every computer in the civilized world with Macintosh Clap. Doesn’t he have something better to do? You know, watch football, play Virtual Cop or something?’
Mark caught Kathy’s eye and grinned. ‘It may not be that bad,’ he said. Momentarily forgetting the temp’s name, he called out to her, ‘Is yours down too?’
‘Yes,’ Rebecca replied from across the room, covering the telephone with her hand. The conspiratorial way she then soundlessly mouthed the word ‘Frozen’ made Mark wonder if she fancied him. ‘Well then, I’ll get someone to fix it,’ he said.
‘Who does Sam normally call?’ Macklin asked. ‘Of all the fucking days to be on holiday…’
‘The number’s in her magic book,’ Kathy told him. At this, Mark stepped in.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll call them,’ he announced, and then panicked that he might have sounded too enthusiastic. Why would he do it, after all, when Kathy was around and knew where to find the book? Rescue this. Say something. ‘Mack, you go next door. Kathy, make him a cup of tea. Virus or no virus, it’ll be fixed by lunch.’
‘What makes you so sure?’ Macklin asked.
‘Vibes, man,’ Mark said. ‘Just vibes.’
He was impressed by how precisely the men from A Branch looked exactly like computer technicians. For some reason he had been expecting lab engineers wearing white coats and protective helmets, but the three men who came to the Libra offices within half an hour of Mark’s call were spotty, unwashed, socially inept youths. None of them looked at Mark. They had already performed a complete dry-run of the operation the preceding weekend and knew exactly which rooms to target and where to locate the safe.
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