The Blind Spy

by Alex Dryden

  Logan opened the file he’d brought with him – the same file he’d distributed to the others in the room and which they had studiously kept unopened. ‘We didn’t think it should wait,’ he said flatly, with a trace of contempt and without acknowledging Pasconi’s hostility. ‘Intelligence is coming in all the time and it’s of a very disturbing colour.’ He looked up with what passed for a helpful expression on his face, but everyone else saw it as merely cheeky. ‘Cougar is very conscious of the fact that our embassies around the world want to know anything with any terrorist implications immediately. They want to know like the day before yesterday. And, naturally, the terrorists are aware that our defences are most likely to be lowered on occasions like a presidential election in a foreign country, as well as on our own national holidays.’ He paused. ‘We want to set the agenda here, not allow them to. Cougar didn’t want our embassy here to be caught napping.’ He leaned towards Pasconi. ‘We’re just trying to help.’

  The nerve of this approach was lost on none of the others in the room. Pasconi bristled again, her face contorted in an ugly grimace, but she stayed silent. MacLeod himself was feeling a deep resentment at the incursion of Cougar on to his territory, never mind that it had been endorsed by his chief. The implication that, without Cougar, the agency – and his station, in particular – would be caught napping now infuriated him and he struggled to retain his studied aloofness.

  Logan watched a similar struggle competing on all of their faces. But he was following Burt’s instructions to the letter. Mention terrorism right at the top, Burt had told him. Then they can’t afford to ignore you. The potential blow-back is too risky for them.

  ‘When you care to take a look at this,’ Logan continued smoothly, indicating the file, ‘you’ll notice that Russia has been ramping up its hostile, or potentially hostile, actions in Ukraine over the past few months. And they were high enough already. You have all the facts, I’m sure. But Cougar also has evidence that smuggling across the—’

  ‘Smuggling what?’ Pasconi loudly demanded to know. ‘Smuggling terrorists!’

  ‘Perhaps. And it could very well be so. But I’ll get to that later. Right now I’m talking about the smuggling of materiel. And what kind of materiel is something that Cougar is currently investigating,’ Logan replied, unruffled by the interruption.

  ‘So you’re saying the KGB could be smuggling paper towels, or pork fat or spare parts for jeeps.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ Logan replied. ‘Unless Russia’s spetsnaz – specifically the Vympel division – have fallen on very hard times.’

  There was a prolonged silence in the room this time. Then Pasconi, who seemed to be the only other person in the room with a voice, spoke.

  ‘What’s the evidence? What’s the threat? What have Russian special forces got to do with terrorism – even if we could disengage that from their normal activities?’

  Logan paused, a change of pace again. ‘We have satellite pictures from our own hardware, and we’ve also had a piece of luck. Or what Burt Miller, in his great wisdom, calls a dodo.’

  Logan enjoyed watching the expressions around the table change from hostility to bemusement. He was getting into his stride now; a pleasantly nasty thought crossed his mind that, if he didn’t pass on Burt’s instructions, they might all, like he had once, lose their jobs when some crisis blew up. But he continued in a relaxed voice.

  ‘A dodo, according to Burt, is the reappearance of something that you thought doesn’t or couldn’t possibly exist. In this case, the dodo is a face recognition from satellite pictures of one of the officers who took part in these border missions. This KGB officer is leading the smuggling operation. He’s a colonel in the Vympel Group – the special forces team based at the KGB’s headquarters east of Moscow known as The Forest – who was jailed two years ago for atrocities committed in Chechnya in the late 1990s. His jail sentence was one of Moscow’s regular transparent attempts to make us believe they are abiding by the rules of international law. However, this colonel served only five months for the murder and torture of Chechen civilians in Russia’s last war there. His release was kept secret from everybody. But one of our senior analysts and field personnel recognised him.’

  ‘You mean Resnikov,’ Pasconi demanded.

  ‘I can’t reveal who,’ Logan said. But everyone around the table knew that only Anna Resnikov would be able to recognise a colonel in the spetsnaz Vympel group from a satellite picture.

  ‘What else?’ Pasconi said, evidently unwilling to be denied an answer for a second time.

  ‘Burt Miller is setting up an operation on the ground with the intention of intercepting one of these border smuggling operations.’

  ‘Resnikov again,’ one of the terriers said triumphantly.

  Logan looked at the young officer with a pitying contempt. ‘So you have a tongue that doesn’t just hang out,’ he replied, and received an evil look in return. Then he turned back to Pasconi.

  ‘We hope to have evidence from on the ground in the next two weeks,’ Logan continued. ‘In view of any terrorist implications, Cougar is requesting that the CIA offers its help. But with or without your help, we believe the Russians are preparing something from across their border with Ukraine.’ He leaned in now. ‘The background to this leads in one direction only, Miller believes. For years the Kremlin has been interfering with oil and gas supplies that have to come through Ukraine before they can get to Western Europe. Threatening Western European energy supplies, in other words. On top of that – and in another theatre of their Ukrainian operations entirely – there are tensions in the south, mainly in and around the Crimea. These tensions are deliberately being raised by Russian actions on the ground. The Russians’ provocation of the Ukrainian border police there, and even the Ukrainian military, is on the rise. Russian foreign intelligence teams have been on the increase in this southern sector too. While this is going on, up in the north-east of the country – in the Donetsk region – there are reports of weapons caches and planned artificial labour strikes. Some of these reports suggest that these preparations are being made in order to disguise an armed uprising against the government in Kiev. A labour strike followed by a “spontaneous” armed rebellion.’ He paused to let this sink in. ‘It seems the Russians are throwing a bewildering number of different strategies at Ukraine in order to destabilise the country.’ Then he dropped his voice so that the two terriers in black suits had to lean closer from the end of the table to hear him. This was his coup de grâce, and it was the real reason Burt had called the meeting together this evening. This is what they really want to hear, was the way Burt had put it. Logan looked at MacLeod directly as he spoke. ‘But we believe the most alarming aspect of all of this Kremlin-inspired provocation is the ongoing information we’re receiving that suggests an al-Qaedabacked group in the Crimea is being armed by the Russian foreign intelligence service for an attack on the Crimean parliament.’

  Logan sat back slightly in his chair and casually watched the reaction of the group that sat around him at the table. He could see immediately that he had hit his mark dead on. As Burt had anticipated, it was a bullseye.

  It was undoubtedly known to the agency’s Kiev station that the Ukraine’s semi-autonomous territory of the Crimean peninsula, which jutted out into the Black Sea, was a region of seething discontent. In fact, that was common knowledge in the media, whenever editors applied their desiccated attention to the subject. As with most of the current problems in the former Soviet Union, the Crimea’s problems dated from Stalin’s time. Hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars had been deported in 1945. Then, since 1991, a quarter of a million of them had returned. The Tatars were Moslems, not extreme Moslems and not even all practising ones, that was true. But they were Moslems, nevertheless. The building of mosques and madrasahs on the peninsula had increased tenfold in the past few years. Burt had briefed him – though God knows on the basis of what information – that the region was ripe for trouble from various different quarters;
Russians with their military and empire-building interests in the region; a restless, growing and politically marginalised Moslem population, and a general desire for Crimean self-rule, apart from Ukraine, among its pro-Russian population.

  At some point in the pause that followed Logan’s final remarks, MacLeod finally looked up and back into Logan’s eyes which hadn’t left him.

  However they treat you at first, Burt had told Logan, once you introduce the words al-Qaeda, you’ll have their attention. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. Just plant the seed. ‘But is it true?’ Logan had asked him. ‘I said it doesn’t matter,’ Burt had replied, rather testily for him, and Logan was none the wiser.

  ‘What group do your intelligence reports point to?’ Pasconi said disbelievingly.

  ‘Qubaq,’ Logan replied.

  ‘They’re a non-violent Islamic organisation,’ she shot back at him immediately. ‘They’ve never committed a single attack.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Logan replied. ‘The perfect peaceable Islamic organisation. Something in the West we should be courting, but alas we haven’t been. And something the embassy and the CIA have consequently taken their eyes away from.’

  Once more, the other four in the room bristled with indignation at the implications. MacLeod’s face growled back at Logan. So Burt Miller was powerful enough to go behind their backs to the CIA chief and then send his minion – his disgraced minion – to push Cougar’s weight around and insult him in the process.

  And now Sam MacLeod could no longer remain aloof. The idea that the station in Kiev wasn’t doing its job properly was too much for him. ‘Kind of reverse logic, isn’t it, Halloran?’ he said acidly. ‘Because someone has done nothing fundamentally wrong, then they must be on a suspicion list.’

  Logan didn’t hesitate this time. ‘I think the point is, Sam, that the Qubaq support others who do perform terrorist acts,’ he said, knowing that the use of the station head’s first name would rile him more. ‘That’s the question. If someone supports terrorist acts, even tacitly, then they’re complicit. That’s the dictum. Qubaq also supports the re-establishment of the Caliphate, sharia law, a unified Moslem world. The question is, surely, what are they doing promoting radical Islamic culture in a secular country? Ukraine isn’t the northern Caucasus. It’s an Orthodox Christian country.’

  But Logan could see the Pavlovian reaction he was getting simply from the mention of an Islamic group that Cougar believed came under some suspicion. The CIA will take it from there, Burt had said. All you have to do is cast suspicion. The last thing the CIA dare risk is to be upstaged by a private intelligence company, let alone ignore a potential terrorist group. Once we reel them in, we can use their resources and direct the play.

  Logan continued now, confident that finally he had broken down their refusal to listen. This was the final play of the evening. ‘We are receiving information that funding for Qubaq is coming from the Centre in Moscow, right from Department S, in fact, the secretive heart of the SVR. It’s coming from the very top of Russia’s foreign intelligence operations, in other words. We also have information that Russia’s military intelligence, in the form of the GRU, is actually now recruiting agents from within the Qubaq group. It’s common knowledge that the GRU and Department S recruited Moslems in Chechnya and other parts of the northern Caucasus, not to mention the Middle East. It’s a potent combination, Burt Miller thinks – Russian foreign intelligence and a radical Moslem group with a clean record.’

  ‘Evidence?’ Pasconi demanded.

  ‘Page eleven,’ Logan replied and at last the four CIA employees opened their files.

  The initial part of the thesis was Anna’s. She had seen the training of foreigners, and particularly radical Moslems, at first hand when she’d been the KGB’s darling at The Forest. The thesis began with a history of the KGB’s and, specifically, Department S’s involvement in the training of foreigners – in this case Moslems – to commit terrorist acts back in their own countries. Then it narrowed down into an account of Moslems being trained at The Forest outside Moscow to commit terrorist acts specifically in Western countries deemed hostile by the Kremlin. Finally, it was brought up to the present day with several of Cougar’s inside agents’ accounts from Russia of how this training continued to be performed in the highly secret ‘Foreigners’ Area’ of the Russian intelligence services outside Moscow at Balashiha-2. One such trainee had been abducted by Cougar’s heavy boot brigade in Jordan and had given much interesting insight into the methods and purpose of such KGB training. This man was now under lock and key in one of Cougar’s private military bases in the United States. The report didn’t mention what kind of pressure the abducted man had been put under in order to get him to reveal the information.

  Pasconi was reading avidly, looking for objections. ‘No mention of Qubaq here,’ Pasconi said, looking up from the report.

  This was always going to be the most difficult moment for Logan to carry off. Burt had refused to put the name in writing. Logan found that disturbing. Did the group really have a connection, Logan wondered, or was Burt just unsure? And why, anyway, did Burt want the CIA’s resources? Cougar had more than enough of its own. Normally, in fact, Burt strained to keep the CIA at arm’s length from Cougar’s operations. This was evidently one of Burt’s long and opaque games, and he hadn’t given Logan any more information than was in the file and in his personal briefing to Logan.

  ‘There’s hearsay, there’s rumour, there’s suggestion and, finally, there’s the record of the KGB’s activities in this field,’ Logan said and pointed casually at the file. ‘All of that is what, initially, an intelligence agency needs to pay attention to. That is how an alert comes into existence and how ultimately the evidence will be found. This group needs to be on a watch list – at the very least.’

  ‘Bit circumstantial, isn’t it?’ Pasconi said.

  ‘Follow every lead, Sandra.’ Logan smiled in acknowledgement. ‘That’s been our country’s mistake in the past. Leaving stones unturned.’

  Pasconi in turn looked absolutely furious that Logan addressed her once again by her first name.

  MacLeod put his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together. ‘Perhaps when you see Burt Miller, you’d tell him that we aren’t exactly idle here,’ he said coldly. ‘And we aren’t exactly stupid. So. If Russia is going to get what it wants with a new president of Ukraine,’ he said, ‘assuming Yanukovich wins in three weeks, then why would it be going to the trouble of stirring things up?’

  ‘Cougar is working with evidence that it is stirring things up,’ Logan replied. ‘Read the report, Sam.’

  ‘Seeing as how you’re just the messenger boy here, perhaps you’d convey my question anyway,’ MacLeod said dismissively.

  After the meeting had broken up, Logan left the embassy and walked into the freezing night. He decided to continue walking rather than take a taxi. He admitted to himself that pinning the agency’s station chief to the wall like a captured butterfly had caused him a rush of adrenalin-filled satisfaction that came from his resentment at the treatment meted out to him by the CIA ten years before. But this rush was quickly followed by enervation and finally a feeling of emptiness. MacLeod’s parting jibe didn’t help his falling mood. For that was exactly how he felt himself to be – Burt Miller’s messenger boy. While all the time, Burt’s favoured individual, Anna Resnikov, seemed to get all the glamorous, headline-grabbing jobs. One day he wanted to be Burt. But all the glory at Cougar nowadays went to her, his one-night stand in New York two years before, who had then cast him off. Unlike Burt treated him, Burt treated her as an equal.

  Once he had shaken off the hostility and unfrozen the atmosphere of the meeting in the freezing cold outside he was left with a feeling of deep discontent. Burt didn’t recognise him for the smart agent he’d been and, in that sense, Burt was no different from the CIA.

  He walked on, aimlessly at first, trying to digest his sudden dissatisfaction. He guessed that this meeting
was only one of Burt’s plays in the country, and that he was just getting into his stride. Indeed, Burt had given him another task to perform in Kiev, one that was more long-term than the meeting. Logan’s presence in Kiev on behalf of Cougar was two-fold and now he looked at his watch and decided it was time for his second rendezvous of the evening. He turned off to the left and headed for a bar just off Independence Square where he’d planned to meet his recently made Ukrainian contact, Taras Tur. Burt wanted information from the Ukrainian side and Taras was an officer in the SBU, Ukraine’s secret service, who might be willing to accept some extra money for a little work on behalf of Cougar. Logan had met him twice already – they’d drunk and dined and visited a few clubs, two men in their thirties and on the loose. He was a rather formal man, for Logan’s liking, and didn’t enjoy the pursuit of Kiev’s teenage hookers as Logan did, but Logan liked him and he felt he was beginning to insert a wedge into Taras’s reluctance to become close to a Western agency. Tonight, he hoped he’d gain a little more leverage.

  Taras was Logan’s favourite among the contacts he had attempted to make in the previous few months. There was something oddly honest about him. He treated Logan with respect, was grateful for the material Logan fed him now and again – and at Burt’s instructions – and occasionally bought him lunch or a drink. He was generally a civilising influence in Logan’s resentful life. And so Logan was glad that it was Taras he was meeting now. The Ukrainian would, perhaps, revive his spirits.

  He turned on to Dymitrova and walked the short distance on to Independence Square. Then he crossed the road that took him into the centre and walked across until he saw the street he was looking for. He crossed this road on the far side from where he’d entered the square and walked up Chervonoarmils’ka and entered the bar that was their prearranged rendezvous. At that moment he noticed his mobile phone had a message. It must have come while he was in the meeting. He sat at the bar and ordered a large Macallan malt whisky and took two satisfying slugs before he turned back to his phone. He opened the message box and read a brief text. It was from Taras. ‘Not possible tonight,’ it said. Damn him, Logan thought, and he finished the whisky and ordered another.