by Ian Miller
"Worried he might kill us," Svetlana said, but strangely enough she seemed not to be that worried at all.
"He wouldn't –"
"Why not?" Svetlana challenged. "You're threatening to put him in jail for quite some time, and as I think I told you once before, his eyes are killer's eyes. He wouldn't worry at all about killing you."
"You seem sure? You're familiar with killer's eyes?"
She paused, as if struck, then said almost apologetically, "OK, you're right. I haven't met a bunch of killers so maybe I'm wrong, but I still think we should stick to what we're supposed to be doing," she said. "The only firm evidence you have is what you've got by behaving illegally. You might think you know what they've done, but you've got –"
"I know," Burrowes said, "but –"
"No buts! You're not really hired by Rutherford. It's the government that's paying you, and if you mess up, they'll be very unhappy with you."
"I guess so," Burrowes said. He was accepting reality, but he was not happy about it.
"Get back to work. If you can stop putting your foot in your mouth, and we stay here long enough, I rather suspect you'll get your evidence."
"OK, OK, I hear you."
Svetlana stared at him, as if she did not believe he would be convinced. Burrowes returned to his keyboard, but he could not do very much. He was disappointed that Svetlana seemed almost eager to let these people who in his mind were criminals, get away with what was still theft, even if they did return it. However, there was little he could do about it.
* * *
For two weeks, nothing much happened. Burrowes and Svetlana were busy exploring Russian websites and Kapralov's mail, but they were getting nowhere.
"According to his mail, he's a model citizen," Burrowes finally said, when Svetlana again asked him how he was going. "It's not helped by the general reluctance to tell us what we’re looking for. If we knew, we could stop wasting time on –"
"And find something that looks like what we were asked to look for," Svetlana said with a shrug. "I guess they think if we keep looking, we shall find something."
"I've got something," Burrowes muttered. "It's a pile of statistics of manganese movements. Basically, it's boring."
"Any modest sales to somewhere unexpected?"
"Here's a hundred kilograms of manganese dioxide to the main Russian supplier of laboratory chemicals."
"That's hardly suspicious," Svetlana said. "Russia is less likely to buy that sort of thing from a Western supplier, especially with these sanctions."
"Maybe," Burrowes said, "but we don't know what happened next. It could go almost anywhere."
"Do you see any that are smaller?"
"Why would anyone want manganese dioxide?" Burrowes asked.
"I'll Google it and see," Svetlana said. "Ha! It's the major natural source of manganese. Anyone making something involving manganese probably starts there, or buys something from someone else who started there. So, keep looking."
"Yes, Ms Antonovna." Burrowes said that with a smirk that spoiled the mock subservience. Svetlana ignored it.
About four hours later, when Dennis and Brian had already gone for the day, Burrowes finally said, "I may have found something, but it's odd."
"In what way?"
"Fifty kilograms went to, well, almost nowhere. It was delivered to what I gather is something akin to a post office box in Ufa."
"Ufa?" Strangely, Burrowes thought, she is not surprised. Then again, maybe she knows something about Ufa.
"Yes, it is the capital of Bashkortostan," Burrowes added, in as much an informative tone as he could muster.
"Yes, a major scientific, technological and cultural centre," Svetlana said. "Most Russians would have heard of it, even if most Westerners haven't."
"Oh, so I suppose this isn't that surprising, although . . ."
"Although?" Svetlana challenged.
"Well, Bashkortostan produces manganese. I would have thought such a small amount would be –"
"What I find more surprising is, if you've got this right, it went to a post office box. In a city with major technology companies, why wasn't it delivered to one of them?"
"Hey, you might have something. I didn't think of that. That suggests," he added, after a little thought, "that someone is trying to hide which organization it's going to."
"More likely the destination is hidden," Svetlana suggested. "If it were military, the facility might be secret, at least generally."
"The locals would know it was there," Burrowes pointed out.
"Yes, but they would hardly be interested in the fate of a small parcel of manganese dioxide."
"So, where does this get us? We have a small parcel that has almost certainly been delivered to somewhere unknown, and there appears to be no way to know where it went?"
"Suppose it's a secret place, where would it be?" Svetlana challenged.
"I suppose either in plain sight, or hidden somewhere."
"So, you could try the latter," Svetlana suggested. "Use satellite surveillance to see if there is anything out of place around Ufa."
"A bit of a long shot," Burrowes grumbled.
"Maybe," she replied, "but have you got anything better to do?"
"Fair point," he replied.
The rest of the day was spent examining close-up images of the territory around Ufa. What surprised him the most was the amount of relatively dense woodland nearby, the number of small villages, and the number of rivers and streams. He had not expected the region to be so verdant. Then, he accidentally found something really odd. Towards the limit of resolution, in the middle some woodland, was a relatively large building that had no reason to be there, and more to the point, it seemed to have imitation trees on its roof, and trees around it. It was camouflaged. Very clever, but not quite clever enough.
"Ms Antonovna, take a look at this."
"You could manage Svetlana," she grumbled as she came over.
"Well, Svetlana, what do you think of this? I think we might have found something."
"And that is?"
"Look, a building that seems to be trying to hide its existence from satellite surveillance."
"Buildings don't hide," she snorted, then after inspecting the image, she added, "but you're right. There does seem to be a building there. How did you find it?"
"There's this funny little road here," he said, pointing to a part of the image, "and it doesn't seem to go anywhere. Why build a road that goes nowhere? So I looked more closely at the end of it."
"Very good," she said. "You'll get a bonus from the boss."
"Doubt it," he replied. "He still hasn't paid that hundred bucks and –"
"I'd forget that if I were you," she said, "but take your findings to him."
"Of course," he said. He paused for a bit, with a pensive expression on his face.
"You want to say something?" she asked, with a slight smile.
"Don't take this wrong," he said, "but I don't quite understand. You're Russian. Don't you feel badly about spying on your own country?"
"No!" she said, her eyes flaring. "They shot my father. They can –"
"Yes," he interrupted, "and I can see why you want to get out of there, but your father was apparently carrying secret documents. He was a spy, trying to escape. Now I can see why you don't want to go back, but don't forget all your school friends. They all live there. Surely you don't want to hurt them." He paused, then added, "What I'm getting at is, why don't you just find a more neutral way of making a living?"
She looked at him, and seemed to calm down suddenly, almost as if she switched her anger off. She almost seemed grateful that he was sympathizing with her predicament. "It's simple. They've told me to do this if I want to stay here," she said. "If I don't, they'll send me back."
"They wouldn't do that," he said with a frown, although his tone showed he had doubts about what he was saying.
"You may be right," she replied, "but I can't afford to test that theory."
Chapter 12
"Well, Ruth, here we are again, awaiting Ms No-name."
"Bernie, you know better than that," Telfar teased him. "Of course she has a name. It's just we're not permitted to use it. Ms Anonymous would be better."
Lawton shrugged as the door opened as the White House Ms Anonymous strode in. "So," she said, as she arranged some documents on the table and took a seat. "You have progress, Mr Lawton?"
"I have placed our agent in a black ops site as requested, and we have made some progress. Our agent has monitored the messages from Saveliy Kapralov, who is the oligarch of manganese, and has found that he sent a package of manganese dioxide to Ufa, but not to one of the recognized technology companies, nor for that matter, to anything else. Our agent also located what appears to be a reasonably large building in a rather remote piece of woodland, with little reason for its being there –"
"If you're linking the two, isn't that the stretch of the century?" the woman interrupted.
"It would be, except for some reason whatever is going on, the Russians seem to have tried to camouflage its very presence. Given that, we are thinking there is some very secret activity going on –"
"Isn't camouflage itself suspicious," Telfar interrupted. "Once it is seen through, it acts like a flag."
"I know," Lawton said. "That worries me too. They have technology that would see through this, but . . ."
"But?" Ms Anonymous prodded.
"If the military were coming and going, people might get curious. If it were something that involved some action that could not be concealed easily, people would start talking. Word might get out. So you go somewhere remote, where they won't see the building, but we do, through satellite. If we saw a building in a place where there is no obvious reason for it to be there, that too is a flag, so why not try and conceal it?"
"In fairness," Telfar said, "the CIA monitors Russia, but it's a big place. We never noticed this building, so Bernard does make a fair point."
"So, how do we find out what's going on there?"
"Difficult," Telfar responded. "Surveillance gives us no clues, and worse, we have only one agent in Ufa. That agent has no idea the building even exists."
"Can whoever it is do a ground recce?"
"No. That person has no skills in that sort of action, and is too valuable to send out when failure is pre-ordained, assuming they have some sort of security, and if they haven't, we don't want to know."
"Can you send someone from somewhere else?"
"Of course, but from where? If it's someone from inside Russia, yes we can find a reason to go to Ufa, but going to that building is another matter. What is that person doing out there in the forest?"
"Also," Lawton said, "the person will have to assume there are defences there. At the very least, a razor wire fence, but maybe something worse."
"Point taken," the White House woman said, "but we still need to know. Maybe a special forces man to scout about."
"If he doesn't speak fluent Russian he will stick out a bit and –"
"We can cover that," the White House woman said.
"And how will he or she be extricated?" Telfar asked.
"And more to the point, if he or she gets inside and somehow gets to see information," Lawton continued, "How will whoever it is know what we're looking for? We can assume they could tell the difference between important stuff and a local bus timetable, but we don't want whoever making off with the orders for constructing the building they're in."
"Good points," the White House woman said, "but we've still got to try. There's some sort of festival on in Ufa next month, coupled with a scientific conference. We'll send a chemist there to ask questions of the university professors, and so on, and we'll send a man to look after the chemist, and he can take a day off. Since they'll probably search people exiting Russia fairly closely, he needs someone to give any documents to."
"That can be arranged," Telfar said. She was clearly not happy about how things were turning out, but she did not have a good objection.
"There're usually a number of international conferences in Ufa," Lawton offered. "Why not send a few real scientists there, and embed whoever else you want? If the international conference is big enough, and as long as your person acts more or less like a delegate but keeps to himself, and attends some sessions and can make the odd platitudinal comment when forced to say something, there's a good chance nobody will take much notice. Most people going to such conferences spend much of their time making contact with people they've heard of. They're not going to worry much about a nobody."
"That's a good suggestion," the White House woman said. She had perked up. She could see a way out of this. What Lawton had not said was that a trained military man might have to have quite a bit of unusual training at "blending in". "We'll find a conference immediately. Bernard, keep your man searching. He seems to be lucky, or very skilful, and we need both right now."
* * *
It was in principle a good idea. A ranger was trained as well as they could manage, and given a passport in which he was stated to be an engineer on the staff of a well-known company. However, it fell down because the Russian authorities apparently did a simple internet search and found out there was only one person with the stated name at that company, but the age was wrong by twenty-two years. The visa was declined. Four scientists did get visas, and they attended the conference. Since one arrived two days early, it was only natural for her to visit the local Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences involving chemistry. She had a fruitful day there, conversing with various people, particularly involving organometallic chemistry, and eventually she focused on manganese.
She was met suddenly with what she was later to describe as stonewalling. Where before the Russian scientists had been friendly, once manganese came up, the one scientist who was allegedly doing important work on manganese compounds became quite reserved, apologised, and said she had to be elsewhere.
When this report came back to the US, it made the White House believe even more that the Russians had something.
* * *
The next step involved Ruth Telfar being asked to arrange for an agent to interview this scientist.
"With respect, Ma'am, that's ridiculous," Telfar protested.
"Maybe, but it is an order."
"But we don't have anyone in Russia who could talk intelligently to a Russian chemist and understand whether what was coming back was utter blah, or –"
"You don't have to understand it. We just need to know it exists."
"Why? If you know it exists, you're not much further ahead than you are now, and just suppose it doesn't exist?"
"Then we'll know –"
"No you won't. The chemist will know something exists. She will gush effusively about her latest research work, and our agent risks his or her life just to find out what is publicly available on the web."
"Your agent can read up the web before –"
"Yes, but he won't know whether what the chemist says is relevant, and I am using he as a generic." Telfar was becoming quite agitated, but she knew she had to control herself. Losing control to this rather silly request would cost her her future. "The agent will have no idea what the details about some manganese chemistry mean."
"How about asking specifically about aircraft?"
"How about announcing he is an undercover CIA agent! He might as well go down to the local FSB office and request incarceration."
"Look, just do what you can. I know it's difficult but, well, I've been ordered to at least try."
"I don't like this one bit," Telfar protested.
"You don't have to like it. You have to do it."
That did not leave any choice. She knew the name of the chemist in question, and she knew she had one agent only in Ufa. That agent could be given the job of trying to find out what this chemist did in her spare time. The agent was too valuable to lose through messing up an encount
er, but it might be possible to find some hobby, some outside weakness, where another agent could be brought in and apply some pressure. There was one problem. The chemist was a young and apparently attractive female. The last thing she needed was the agent being picked up for stalking. She would have to bring in another female agent from somewhere, just to do this job. The more she became familiar with this project, the less she liked it.
* * *
Doctor Olga Bazina felt she had no choice. That so-called scientist had no knowledge of manganese chemistry, but had asked some quite perplexing questions that had nothing to do with her research. Something was wrong here. There were various possibilities, but some of them were extremely dangerous. The most obvious one was that this was some sort of test. There was only one way to respond to such a test: she must report it to the FSB. This in itself could be dangerous. It was well understood from a considerable time back that sticking your head up could invite it to be chopped off, but on the other hand, sitting on such information could lead to you being considered a traitor.
Her worst fears were coming to fruition. This FSB officer seemed to think she was a spy, or at best, a foolish young woman who had given away secrets.
"You gave him information. What was it?"
"We were discussing some fundamental manganese chemistry, and it was then I realised she had no idea what I was talking about. There's nothing secretive about –"
"I'll decide on that. Give me the exact details."
"I can't remember the exact –"
"Then maybe we can persuade you to remember. A few nights in the cells, maybe."
"Please, I just came to report –"
"There is an alternative. I am sure you can think of it."
Doctor Bazina let out a sigh of despair. So much for doing the right thing. This man was asking for money.
"What is it you want?" she asked softly, and shrunk back.
"I think a few thousand roubles would go a long way."
"It will for you!" The door burst open and a man who was probably about forty stood there. "Doctor Bazina –"