The Manganese Dilemma

by Ian Miller

"Well, from the file you gave us, it seems Kapralov has acquired a near monopoly on manganese in Russia. However, there's no evidence he is taking advantage of that position. His prices to other Russians seem to be more or less the same as other world prices."

  "So how did he get this near monopoly?" Rutherford asked

  Interesting, Burrowes thought. Rutherford is just an agent, commissioned to do certain work, so why this detailed interest? It was only this morning he did not care how Kapralov got to where he is, other than through a detailed account of his debt. Of course, he realized, it might be no more than Rutherford wanting to make sure he had something sensible to put in a report, to ensure his funding continued. "Don't know," he confessed. He turned to Svetlana who, in his opinion, had not really done much that day, other than watch closely what he was doing. "Have you any idea?"

  "Not really," she replied. After a few seconds she realized that perhaps a firm 'No' might have been better, so she felt she had to add an explanation. "My guess is when the old Soviet Union collapsed, somehow he managed to pick this up in a coupon auction."

  "Check it out tomorrow," Rutherford ordered.

  * * *

  The following morning, Svetlana took more control over the search, and had Burrowes search where he would not normally have thought to search. The answer to Rutherford's question was reasonably straightforward, if not exactly complying with standard business ethics.

  "When the USSR collapsed, there was chaos in the business sector, and some jumped in with a clever way of getting rich. This manganese monopoly fell to Yeremey Averin, a man with Georgian friends who had somehow got control of the Chiatura mines."

  "At the time, that was not particularly extraordinary," Svetlana added as an explanation.

  "So, Kapralov got –" Rutherford started.

  "No, Kapralov came later," Burrowes said with a smile. "What seems to have happened is Averin had got rich through arbitrage of certain Russian resources, and he was also a friend of Mikhael Khodorkovsky, which led to his getting the loan from the Menatep bank to purchase the coupons for the shares in an auction. That got him the monopoly rather cheaply because at the time manganese was not one of the big-ticket items. The average greedy wanna-be oligarch had probably never heard of manganese."

  "So how does Kapralov fit into the picture?"

  "Exactly how is not clear. What I have found out is that Kapralov had friends who were very strongly favoured by Putin, and when Khodorkovsky got into trouble with Putin, Kapralov approached Averin and –"

  "Told him that while Khodorkovsky was sufficiently well-known in the West that he would have to be kept alive and in reasonable condition in a Russian jail, who the hell had heard of Averin?" Rutherford guessed.

  "That's my guess. Kapralov must have promised him and his family an escape to the West as long as Averin handed over the manganese shares and rights. Averin turned up later in Finland, and he was permitted to keep about twenty million dollars, so while he is not exactly an oligarch, he is not destitute either."

  "And, presumably, neither is Kapralov?" Rutherford asked.

  "The evidence is, he is rich, but he is not behaving altogether like the average oligarch," Burrowes said. While this conversation had been going on, he had kept an eye on Svetlana. She had been trying to look disinterested, but she had not exactly succeeded. Burrowes caught her eye, and said to her, "I wonder why that would be?"

  Svetlana gave a wry smile, and replied, "It's the definition of average. Hardly anybody is actually average, and there will be roughly equal numbers on each side of average. I rather suspect your idea of the average oligarch is one indulging in drunken orgies all the time, which will be off to one extreme."

  "I suppose those who indulge in drunken orgies do get a disproportionate amount of publicity," Burrowes admitted.

  "What's puzzling me," Svetlana continued, "is why are we so interested in Kapralov? From what you've told me, he has a hold on the supply of manganese, but so what? If you want to know about the annual consumption of manganese in Russia, you could try Yandex. I'm sure it's there."

  "Well?" Burrowes added, staring at Rutherford.

  "He's one of the names on a list that the guy who's paying you gave to me," Rutherford said. "He must think there's more to him."

  "He could be wrong."

  "Yes, he could, but there's the golden rule to follow," Rutherford said. When he noticed Svetlana appear puzzled, he explained, "The guy with the gold rules."

  "Then, what now?"

  "Telephone calls, emails, money transfers."

  "I've looked at the last ones and there's nothing odd," Burrowes said, "unless, of course, Kapralov has been ultra careful and has some offshore accounts that are highly secret. But from what I've seen, his money transfers are in accord with his manganese business, and on some of the luxuries a guy with a lot of money might indulge in. And, of course, on his bodyguards. None of that is terribly suspicious."

  "No suspicious income?"

  "Nope, but then again, if he got paid for some extra tonnes of manganese or manganese steel alloy, I wouldn't know. A tonne of alloy could go anywhere, and I can't really check all the shipments."

  "Then it's emails and phone calls," Rutherford shrugged.

  "There's a huge number of emails, and I don't have access to phone calls."

  "Then sort the emails."

  "Sort them?" Burrowes turned towards Svetlana. "Ms Antonovna, how would you sort them?"

  Svetlana frowned, as if this was an unpleasant development, but then she quickly said, "Depends what you want. Get a computer to sort those containing 'manganese'. Then from those without manganese, sort out those from family, and then sort out those from inside his business, which should be identified from the server address. Then from the rest, sort out those from anyone who calls him Sava, because they will be familiar with him, but not in one of the groups you have already eliminated. Then you start reading whatever you are looking for."

  Dennis stuck his head up over his computer and announced, "Now our Sveta's cooking with gas."

  Svetlana gave a look of irritation.

  "Dennis, I strongly recommend you concentrate on your own work," Rutherford said icily, "because if you piss her off, you piss me off."

  Dennis pulled his head down.

  "Now, where were we?" Rutherford asked.

  Burrowes bit back his desire to address Svetlana as Ms Antonovna, and instead said, "We're trying to decide how we find what we want to know about Saveliy Kapralov."

  "As an aside, what are you looking for?" Svetlana asked. "It's a lot easier to find something if you recognize it when you find it."

  "You are looking for something other than ordinary manganese transactions, messages to his wife, messages setting up meetings with mistresses –"

  "So how do I know whether some Natasha is a mistress or a CIA agent, or whatever?"

  "That's what makes this such an interesting exercise," Rutherford said with a shake of his head. "The guy paying for this's not giving clues."

  "Then I hope he keeps paying," Burrowes said. However, he had a feeling that he would keep paying. He recalled that rather oblique reference in the CIA download of manganese in paint. He had done a search, and found that manganese dioxide was sometimes used as a pigment in black paint, but that was hardly secret. What was going on?

  * * *

  By the middle of the next week, Burrowes was somewhat tired of this exercise. He had put in long hours, but he had no obvious clue. Either this exercise was a waste of time, or any clue was subtle. He had got himself and Svetlana a coffee, and between sips he would stare morosely at the chart on the screen on his computer. He had drawn up a "map" of all Kapralov's communications, excluding close family and obvious business messages, with lines showing the frequency. He rather fancied that he was expected to find a number of calls to Putin, or senior politicians, but in that he was going to disappoint them. According to Svetlana, none of the communications were with senior Russian politicians or offi
cials, and those to minor officials tended to be what might be expected from a company dealing with supplying special steels to companies manufacturing items for the military.

  "You don't look happy," Svetlana noted.

  "What he needs is a –"

  "Shut up, Dennis." Both shouted in unison. Dennis retreated behind his computer screen, after a hurried look over his shoulder to see whether his boss had noticed.

  "No, I'm not," Burrowes explained to Svetlana. "I've got nowhere so far."

  "Then maybe you should pay more attention to the business stuff."

  "That's what's depressing. There's so much of it."

  "Try sorting it out into companies," Svetlana suggested. "Some might be more promising than others."

  Burrowes had to admit that that at least gave him something to do that put off the most boring part. This did not take long because he could get the computer to sort based on the addressee. For the moment he felt he could put aside those going to the companies mining manganese on the grounds that the NSA would hardly be interested in skulduggery in the financial aspects of selling the ore. Manganese was reasonably plentiful so its supply would have no strategic interest to America. That left its being used for something important. He cursed the NSA. If he had a clue what he was looking for, this would be a lot easier. Had he known that all references to the paint had been blocked by the White House, which was why his information from the CIA hack had told him so little, he would have been even more livid. What he did not know was even that one little reference was accidental; it should have been deleted, but it had been overlooked. Knowing that somebody might have used some manganese compound in paint was not, by itself, very interesting.

  If there were to be anything of interest, he thought, it would involve the supply of something. Nothing went to a paint company. There were regular shipments going to a variety of steel making companies, so the next step was to try to find out what the companies made. Was there anything unusual?

  As the hours ticked by, he was becoming more than a little frustrated with this exercise. These steel companies were making steel, and their product range had been unchanged for decades, leaving aside some claimed minor improvements, none of which specifically involved manganese or Kapralov.

  That left him with the "miscellaneous" category. It was just after he had sorted this into companies, and had looked at what each one claimed to do, he sat back and stared at the screen. Was this more promising?

  "Ha! It looks like you've made progress," Svetlana said, as she handed him a mug of coffee. It was late afternoon, and already Dennis and Brian looked as if they were about to close down for the day.

  "I'm not sure," Burrowes said, "but at least I've found something interesting."

  "Which is?"

  "Kapralov is branching out. He seems to have taken an interest in some fine chemical companies, and this is the one thing that seems to connect him with the Russian government, although not necessarily directly."

  "How come?" Svetlana seemed interested.

  "Well," Burrowes said, "in the old Soviet Union, they made something like twenty thousand different fine chemicals, but after its collapse, the industry was gutted and production fell to about two hundred different chemicals."

  "Yes, that was not a very pleasant time," Svetlana said. "The adoption of western style economic thinking wiped out enormous wealth."

  "Yes, well what has happened now is the Russian government wants to reverse that, and it looks as if Kapralov is doing his part. He is investing in two companies that are making fine chemicals."

  "Are they interesting?"

  "I suppose it depends on your point of view. It turns out that manganese is important for a lot of catalysts, and they have a lot of uses." He paused, then said, "I wonder if this exercise is nothing more than industrial espionage?"

  "Surely not?" Svetlana was clearly unsure. "What happens if it is?"

  "I don't know," Burrowes said. "I'd hope that our government would be above that sort of assistance to private companies, but I suppose these days you can never tell."

  "At this stage," Svetlana advised, "you should just keep going. I doubt they would put important process secrets on the web, and if they did, maybe they deserve to have it stolen." She paused, then asked, "Are any of the uses of potential strategic interest?"

  "I don't know," Burrowes replied. "I don't understand them. There's one making a special hydrogenating catalyst to replace catalysts like ruthenium."

  "Is that important?"

  "Up to a point. If you are making pharmaceuticals, apparently ruthenium is highly toxic, so you have to make special efforts to remove it, while manganese is a valuable trace element. But that is known anyway, and was discovered in the West first, or so they say."

  "So what are you going to do?"

  "Make notes and go home," he said with a wry smile. "I can't get any further without knowing what I am looking for. Tomorrow it will be financial transactions."

  * * *

  His last day on Kapralov was frustrating. He had decided to pursue the financial transactions at the end of his allocated time on the grounds that once he knew who was doing what, it would be easier to separate money transfers for business from those on whatever nefarious activities he was supposed to locate. Once again he unlocked his briefcase and took out one of his more sophisticated hacking procedures. His hands were shaking slightly as he did this because programs such as this had a certain style, and those at the NSA would know he was using it, if they ever bothered to look. Then there was the question, why were they letting him have this? In the wrong hands . . . It did not bear thinking about, so thinking about it made him even more nervous.

  Svetlana was watching. She seemed to be bored, and her eyes were usually somewhere else, but he knew she was interested.

  Eventually he was in, and had a very short list of banks that Kapralov had used. He noted the banks and the account numbers in banks in four different tax havens. There were also two rather unexpected personal payments from some organization he did not recognize, but which had also paid his company. Was this an advance? A sign of bribery? Burrowes recorded the accounts, then closed down his hacking and this time used his program to erase his path. Time to see Rutherford.

  Burrowes was to be disappointed with this meeting. He was fairly excited as he pointed out there was a mysterious company or organization, but Rutherford merely told him he had done well, and he should await further instructions. He then seized on the tax havens, and suggested that he should hack into these accounts and determine how much was in each of them.

  "That's illegal," Burrowes pointed out, although he had a fairly good idea what the response would be.

  "You're part of a black op.," Rutherford said. "Of course it is strictly illegal, but you are not to touch any of the money, and, of course, the money itself is probably illegal in Russia. If they protest, we could always ask Putin to arbitrate."

  "That would go against us," Burrowes countered, "even if Kapralov ended in a gulag."

  "Probably," Rutherford agreed, "but you have to do something, so, back to work."

  Burrowes did what he was ordered to do. He used a simple program to hack into each bank, and recorded what was in each account. The deposits totalled a little over three hundred million dollars, and was presumably Kapralov's private reserve for should he decide to depart from Russia. If someone wanted to put pressure on Kapralov, that would do it, except for one thing: a man with that amount of money could hire someone to remove the threat.

  He wondered whether Rutherford was interested in stealing money from these accounts, so he left enough on his computer to show how he had got into these specific accounts, but he erased everything else before he closed down the computer. He then sent a memo to Rutherford containing the amounts in each account, following which he went home early.

  The following morning, Svetlana came in almost two hours early, and her first move was to check Burrowes' computer. She had inserted a means of tracin
g exact activity, and as she expected, someone had followed Burrowes' path and checked the accounts. Whoever had done this also took an electronic copy, presumably to a memory stick, and not only a copy of the accounts, but also the last stages of the procedure for getting into them. The device in Burrowes briefcase had apparently driven the early stages. That would mean, she realised, that anyone could use this information to get into these specific accounts, but it might not work for other accounts. Also, if they did not disguise their path properly, they might leave a trace of the location of where they were operating.

  She was about to close out, but then, on second thoughts, she decided to check the accounts. Each of the four had had twenty million dollars removed during the night. Of course Kapralov might have done that, but she was rather certain that that was not the case. She was convinced the villain was Dennis, and that raised the question, did Dennis have the necessary skill to hide their location?

  She had a problem. Was Dennis doing this on his own initiative, or was he doing this because that was what this organization did? Up to a point, she did not care what happened to Kapralov's ill-gotten gains. However, she did care whether or not some version of American police would descend on them for theft. Anyone could be arrested. Worse than that, if Rutherford was involved, he might well ensure that all the evidence would point straight at the most susceptible, and that was probably her or Burrowes.

  She did a quick check on Dennis' computer, but there was no sign of usage since Dennis had left early yesterday. She quickly closed it down, and hoped Dennis would be too lazy to check. She returned to her own desk and hoped she could look busy but this was going to be difficult as she could not concentrate on what little she had to do. What was she going to do about what she had found? On balance, she really did not know very much at all. While she was reasonably convinced she knew what had happened, she also knew she had no real evidence. For the time being, she would do nothing.

  Dennis was the next to arrive. Svetlana gave him a nonchalant, "Good morning," as he passed by, then when he sat down and opened up his computer, she interrupted his thoughts by asking him about sports. Dennis was surprised, and a little flattered by her attention, so he began to explain the subtleties of hockey. Svetlana could have mentioned that ice hockey was a popular sport in Russia too, but she did not. Much better to let Dennis think he knew so much more.