He worked for oil and gas companies as a foreign affairs and security director, and under the economic reforms brought in by the new Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, he was allocated shares in some of those companies. Severinov made a lot of money and at the same time built a good network of contacts in Russia’s political community.
The siloviki—Putin’s gang of ex-KGB and military men who took charge of Russia—liked Severinov’s KGB background, his business mind, and his political views. This helped him as he established Besoi Energy and paved the way for a quiet nod of the head when he wanted to execute a series of increasingly high-profile acquisitions.
That was how he had made his fortune. But now the hands that had helped him on the way up were the same ones that could push him back down if things went awry. It had already started to happen.
If a military conflict escalated in the Black Sea, shipping would be disrupted, which would almost certainly impact the flow of essential crude oil—the juice on which his hungry refinery fed in vast quantities every day.
But more than this, there would be close monitoring of vessels by the Russian navy, unannounced searches, checking of cargoes. And if he was found to be carrying arms destined for the Syrian rebels, and the president found out . . . well, it would be curtains.
On all fronts Severinov felt he was coming under siege once again. And all his instincts told him to follow the advice his father had instilled in him: when trapped in a corner, go out fighting. It was a lesson his father had learned from seven years working under Josef Stalin.
He walked back to his chair, took his phone out of his pocket, and dialed a number for Vasily Balagula. He might not be able to do much directly about the US destroyer in the Black Sea, but he could do something about Joe Johnson and the investigation he was starting. This time, he would not screw up.
Friday, April 4, 2014
Berlin
The small secure conference room had sealed doors and soundproofed walls, floors, and ceilings that isolated it from the rest of the CIA station. Johnson, Jayne, Vic, and Neal were ensconced in there discussing their next moves when Vic received a secure message from Nicklin-Donovan. He wanted them all to join him on a call, urgently.
On a call the previous evening, Vic had already given Nicklin-Donovan what he had termed “the good news and the bad news”—that the MI6 chief didn’t have a mole in Berlin, as originally suspected, but that he definitely did have one in London. Predictably, the latter piece of information had not gone down well.
The team now teed up the call as requested, using a secure squawk-box conference phone in the room that was connected to a similar facility at MI6’s Vauxhall Cross headquarters.
After the usual round of opening banter, which in Nicklin-Donovan’s case related to the soccer team he supported, Arsenal, having beaten Wigan Athletic on penalties in the semifinal of the Football Association Cup, they got down to business.
“I still have limited progress to report in locating this mole,” Nicklin-Donovan began in his rounded English tones. “But there are two things to report. First, the analysis of the various leaks we’ve seen in recent months, relating to timings and the logs we have of personnel arrivals and departures at the Russian embassy over recent months. As you know, the number and significance of the security breaches increased from September and October last year onward.”
Vic leaned forward to speak into the microphone. “And what was the catalyst at that time?”
“I’m coming on to that. My current thinking focuses on a new arrival in July last year at Kensington Palace Gardens: the SVR’s Major General Anastasia Shevchenko.”
“She’s the current rezident, right?” Jayne said.
“Indeed. She’s number two in counterintelligence behind Kutsik and is seen as a potential director, in time. She’s also a known recruiter, which is why we immediately covered her 24/7. But she’s good. There have been a significant number of occasions when she’s slipped surveillance, but always without it being obvious that that was what she was trying to do. It always looks like our fault in losing her, not her skill in evading us.”
Vic shook his head. “Okay, get to the point, Mark. The Russians have a recruiter in the rezident’s chair at Kensington Palace Gardens, and she’s given surveillance the slip, as they do. It’s her job. You think she might be the handler for the mole?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I think,” Nicklin-Donovan said. “But we have also picked up some intelligence from an agent at the Russian embassy that Shevchenko is going to leave London on April 14. She’s already made arrangements to head back to Moscow, apparently. It’s a very early departure, given she only arrived last July.”
“And?” Vic asked, catching Johnson’s eye across the table and raising his eyebrows.
“An illegal replacement,” Johnson murmured.
“What was that?” Nicklin-Donovan said, his voice sounding distorted through the loudspeaker.
“Joe said he thinks Moscow will put in an illegal replacement for her,” Neal said, exchanging glances with Johnson, who nodded to confirm that that was precisely what he meant.
“Yes, exactly,” Nicklin-Donovan said. “My concern—no, more than a concern—my worry, my panic, is that if she’s been handling the mole in our midst and now she’s leaving, then she’s not going to abandon the mole. Of course not. Instead, she will replace herself with some illegal whom we are going to be desperately hard put to trace. It might be almost impossible.”
There was silence in the Pariser Platz meeting room. There was complete logic in what Nicklin-Donovan was saying, Johnson thought.
Johnson sipped from a glass of water. “So, we’ve possibly got ten days to do this job.”
Friday, April 4, 2014
Berlin
The task now facing Johnson was simply too great and spread too wide geographically for him to continue operating together with Jayne. They needed to divide up the workload. It was vital to reach Varvara Yezhova in St. Petersburg but equally important to follow up on the leads they now had in London.
After they had finished the call with Nicklin-Donovan, it took the team little time to decide on their next course of action.
“You should go to St. Petersburg, Joe, and charm Varvara,” Vic said. “That’s your specialty.”
“What, charming older Russian women?” Johnson asked. He had met a few Russian women he might like to charm, but he doubted very much that Varvara Yezhova would be one of them.
Jayne snorted, and a faint smile crossed Vic’s face. On the other side of the table, Neal guffawed loudly.
“No,” Vic said. “I meant pursuing the historic aspects of the inquiry. Although I have no doubt you’re highly capable of both.”
“He’d bloody well better not be,” Jayne muttered.
“Jayne, you should head to London,” Vic continued, ignoring her mock protest. “It’s your home territory, and you can start mapping out a plan there with Mark.”
Johnson glanced at Jayne and then nodded. What Vic was saying was logical.
“I need a good cover story and a good legend to go with it,” Johnson said. “I’ve got an idea for that.”
“What’s that?” Vic asked.
“I need to put in a call to someone over in DC. Then I’ll tell you if I get the green light from them.”
Vic nodded. “We can get the team to beef up the legend and road test it to make sure it’s robust and stands up under pressure, in case you get questioned.”
Johnson scrutinized Vic. “What about you? Are you going to stay here?”
Vic shook his head. “No. I need to get back to Langley tonight. I’ve got an important meeting with the director tomorrow morning, part of which I will now spend updating him on developments here. We’ve got Neal here who can control the operation until I’m able to get back.”
Neal nodded. “Yes, makes sense. We don’t want Veltman complaining that all his lieutenants are living it up in Berlin.”
Vic turned to
Johnson. “When are you aiming to go?”
“I need to get this thing moving. I’m worried that the FSB thugs will realize that’s likely to be our next move and get to Varvara before I do. So I am thinking as quickly as possible—ideally Monday. There is a big legal conference starting that day in St. Petersburg. I would like to attend it.”
Chapter Eighteen
Friday, April 4, 2014
Moscow
The smart-suited aide bowed at the heavy double wooden doors of the president’s Kremlin office, his heels pressed tight together, then walked deferentially across the parquet floor inlaid with an intricate design of light and dark blocks and onto the hand-woven Russian Bokhara carpet that stretched across the center of the room.
“Mr. President, I have this from Mr. Kruglov’s office, sir,” the aide said. He placed the beige folder carefully on the glass-like polished wooden surface of the desk, bowed again, and withdrew.
Vladimir Putin picked up the folder, removed the report from inside, and settled back in his beige leather-covered chair. Behind him, the Russian national flag and the president’s standard hung limply from their poles against a wooden paneled wall.
“Dermo. More shit from Kruglov,” the president said to his visitor, the Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. He glanced up and caught Medvedev’s eye, a thin smile on his face.
Medvedev was sitting on one of two chairs that stood on either side of a small chess-style table that jutted out at right angles from Putin’s main desk. The president used it for informal face-to-face discussions.
Putin received regular missives from Kruglov, whom he viewed with a healthy disdain—a perspective he shared with Medvedev. Although Putin had been a long time out of the KGB—twenty-three years, to be precise—he took a critical view of how his intelligence chiefs operated, and he still retained his old mind-set: the mistrust of everyone he met and everything he was told.
“Kruglov is deeply concerned about the Crimea,” Medvedev said. “He is overanxious, in my view.”
“Maybe. Actually, this report is about the Crimea,” Putin said as he read. He sat up straight and placed the report on the desk. His eyes narrowed as he read.
“Is it significant?” Medvedev asked.
“Yes. It’s about material received from ANTELOPE in London,” Putin said, his voice level. “The Americans are considering sending at least one destroyer into the Black Sea soon. Maybe more.”
Medvedev stiffened in his chair. “They will play their game, but it is meaningless. Is this solid information?”
“It appears concrete, yes. This report paraphrases naval documents seen by ANTELOPE, and it names the USS Donald Cook. Maybe it is meaningless. Maybe it is just posturing,” Putin said, still reading the document. “But I am not going to allow them to get away with doing this unchallenged. They are trying to slap Russia in the face. To slap me in the face. It is our reputation at stake.”
He continued to read, tracing his forefinger down the page as he did so. Beside him, his secure cell phone vibrated on the desk, but the president ignored it.
“We will monitor this situation,” Putin said. “If they send this destroyer in, we will take action. I want fighters and tactical bombers put on standby. We will then play the situation as it evolves. I am not making any decisions now, but I want all options to be open.”
“I agree,” Medvedev said. “But we’ll need to clear the area of our merchant shipping if we do this. You can’t be certain how the Americans will respond. They have a carrier in the Mediterranean within range with Super Hornets on board. We can’t put container ships and tankers at risk in a conflict zone.”
Medvedev was referring to the Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet supersonic twin-engine fighter aircraft that operated from the carrier USS George H. W. Bush.
“The Hornets are for show,” Putin said. “I think you can be certain how the Americans will respond—they will likely do nothing. But yes, get the whole Black Sea cleared from Tuesday onward. The oil and freight shippers will squawk about it, but that can’t be helped.”
“Yes, I will get this organized,” Medvedev said.
The two men had worked hand in glove since the 1990s to bring about huge changes in Russia’s political landscape. They effectively seized control when Putin became president in 2000 and used the power and far-reaching tentacles of the military, the FSB, and the siloviki to retain it.
Putin took a second report from the folder and scrutinized it. He shook his head as he read.
“Fools,” he murmured.
“Also from Kruglov?” Medvedev asked.
“Yes. It’s more information from ANTELOPE. The idiots at Langley and Vauxhall Cross are furious about Redtail. What did they think we would do if one of our senior SVR officers was defecting and going to destroy one of our top assets in the process? Did they just think we would stand by and watch Yezhov go with his secrets and his stack of confidential documents? It’s a joke.”
“What are they doing?”
Putin continued to read, turning the page and finishing the second sheet before answering.
“They are going to carry out some kind of off-the-books investigation. They don’t have the courage to do anything that would leave them open to accountability. They are employing some freelancer to try and find out ANTELOPE’s name, which undoubtedly Yezhov would have given them if he had made it. They also want this freelancer to try and source the other information Yezhov was carrying.”
“A freelancer?”
“Yes, a US investigator, Joe Johnson. Ex-CIA, war crimes investigator, who—”
“Is that not the same man who ruined our Afghanistan oil and gas bid last year?” Medvedev interrupted. “The one who Yuri Severinov failed to eliminate, despite our instructions?”
Putin stared at Medvedev. “Yes, I believe you are correct. It’s the same man.” He tapped his fingers on the desk for a couple of seconds. “Well, if the Americans are going to employ some freelancer to try and decommission ANTELOPE, we can play them at their own game. Go and find Severinov and tell him we’re giving him a chance to put right his screwup from last year. Tell him he needs to do whatever is necessary with this Johnson and any associates of his and put an end to this investigation that they are conducting. Understood?”
“Yes, it makes sense to have deniability,” Medvedev said. “Especially given what’s about to happen in the Black Sea. I will talk to Severinov.”
“Good. But tell him he needs to operate on his own with this one—I don’t want to be seen helping him. He is not to contact us for assistance.”
Friday, April 4, 2014
London
ANTELOPE had decided from the outset never to copy sensitive files from a work laptop or desktop computer and load them directly onto a flash drive or SD card. That was far too dangerous and left too many electronic fingerprints.
Instead, a much safer albeit slower, alternative was to use a micro digital camera to photograph the documents on-screen.
The Japanese camera that ANTELOPE kept hidden at home in the Maida Vale apartment was less than one and a half inches long and stored its images on a micro SD card of a similar size to a phone SIM card. It was a flexible solution in that the portable card could be inserted directly into an appropriate SD port or card-reading device or, using an adaptor, could be plugged into a USB port on a computer.
ANTELOPE scrolled through the daily cluster of classified reports that arrived in batches during the day and gave updates on highly sensitive top secret operations across the globe. Only very senior officers had such access, and most of the documents had very secure distribution lists.
Every so often, ANTELOPE stopped and photographed a document or an intel report, then continued to scroll. There was no way all of them could be copied—that would be far too time-consuming. But the most important would go onto the SD card and then on to Moscow Center.
Today there was another update on the gathering crisis in the Black Sea. A report from the US Department of De
fense, classified as top secret—the highest level of sensitivity in US circles—noted that the USS George H. W. Bush had been ordered to delay its scheduled departure from the Mediterranean and instead push up into the Aegean Sea, just south of Istanbul, to put it within reach of the Bosporus Strait and to ensure its aircraft could reach the Black Sea in short order.
ANTELOPE, who was copied on a whole raft of Department of Defense program intelligence, photographed all three pages in that report.
The next document was also photographed. It was a UK Ministry of Defence document, stamped TOP SECRET STRAP3 UK/US EYES ONLY, that gave a perspective on the Black Sea crisis from the UK’s secretary of state for defence, containing similar details as the US report. ANTELOPE only very occasionally saw documents marked STRAP3, which indicated the very highest level of sensitivity in the UK.
The fifth report that came up caused the skin to tighten a little on ANTELOPE’s scalp. It was a short two-paragraph update from Vic Walter to Mark Nicklin-Donovan on the investigation into the failed Operation Blackbird and outlined the next step that Joe Johnson was to take. He had somehow obtained valuable information from an unnamed SVR agent in Berlin and was now planning to try and reach Yezhov’s wife in St. Petersburg.
Yezhov’s wife? Of course, ANTELOPE thought, reading through the material again. It made absolute sense for Johnson to visit her.
It was the first time ANTELOPE had heard of the St. Petersburg initiative. There was no detail on how or where Johnson would make contact with Yezhov’s wife, or how or when he would travel, but nevertheless, this seemed like priceless intelligence.
And the SVR agent referenced in the report? Moscow Center would be desperate to find out who it was.
The camera made no sound as ANTELOPE depressed the shutter.
Another one for Shevchenko. They’ll like this at Yasenevo.
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