by G D Harper
‘Oh, there were shots fired.’ Tanya gave a bitter laugh. ‘My younger brother, Taras, was living in Donetsk at the time, biggest city in eastern Ukraine. All of a sudden there were thugs on the street, fighting to have even more of Ukraine back in Russia. Moscow denied being involved, but the guns and bombs they were using were all Russian. And one of these bombs killed Taras.’
I was shocked. ‘Your brother was killed in Ukraine’s civil war? I had no idea.’
‘Of course not. How could you?’ Her tone was snappy and she attempted a smile to soften the impact. ‘Oh sorry, Duncan. I am being shitty bitch. But I not often talk about it. Taras and Donetsk are part of Ukraine’s dirty little secret that everyone wants to ignore. But I not forget.’
I dropped the subject. I should have asked more, but I couldn’t help but compare Tanya’s openness with the fact that I still hadn’t told her about my political blog and the new investigative reporting I was getting into. She knew nothing about my Richard Foxe alter ego; I was sticking to my rule to tell no one, no matter how close. Bobbie knew, but that was only because I had told her when it was starting up a few years ago.
Then Tanya said something to me. Something I had to act on, something that would be a betrayal of the very trust that bound our friendship together.
It started innocently enough. We had been due to meet up at the weekend, but she called to ask if it was okay to cancel. She had an old boyfriend coming to the UK, and he’d invited her to Northumbria for the weekend. I said fine, and instead we met for a drink before she left, at a subterranean wine bar near the Thames Embankment.
‘It’s very understanding of you to let me cancel,’ she told me after we’d squeezed into a table in the stygian gloom. ‘I promise I make it up to you; I will invite you to my flat and cook you best-ever spaghetti a vongole.’
‘Not a problem. Who is this guy? I don’t think you’ve mentioned him before?’
‘Anton Shub. Have you heard of him?’
‘No. Should I have?’
‘Big oligarch playboy in charge of Axos Technology. His father bought the government operation that ran Chernobyl reactor after the accident. When everything in old Soviet Union was being privatised. Paid almost no money for it, then used their scientists and technology to build nuclear reactors all over Africa and Central Asia. Now the father has retired, Anton is new big boss. Half his time he is high-powered businessman, half his time he is party animal.’
She shot me a grin to show she approved more of the latter.
‘He came to my openings in Kiev, always good to me. We dated a few times, nothing serious, but now with Ukrainian crisis we don’t do shows in Kiev anymore, so I not seen him for a while. Now he come to visit Northumbria, wants me to spend weekend with him. Says if things go well, he might be spending lot of time in England and maybe we should be couple again. So, I said, why not?’
It was good that the few candles lighting up the darkness in the wine bar were not able to show the expression on my face. When I’d done my investigative blog about Saudi Arabia building more nuclear reactors in Britain, the angle had been that we should be worried about foreign governments being responsible for our energy requirements. I had speculated that with Act Now! in charge, there might be a move to bring the nuclear expansion programme back under British control. That would certainly fit with their protectionist and isolationist tendencies. Now the Russians seemed to be involved. It didn’t make any sense.
All of a sudden I had something for Nigel to investigate. I contacted him as soon as I’d said goodbye to Tanya. It was late, but we arranged to talk. If there was a story around Shub’s visit to England, I had to make sure I got to it before anyone else.
I Skyped him as soon as I got back to my flat.
‘I’ve got a young Ukrainian friend who dates dodgy Russian oligarchs,’ I told him.
Nigel stared at me blankly, then burst into that annoying laugh of his. ‘He-he-he-he. Is she pretty?’
‘She is, actually, but that’s beside the point. She has an old boyfriend called Anton Shub, who is in charge of a company called Axos Technology. They build nuclear reactors based on the same technology that was used in Chernobyl. He’s coming to Britain for a meeting next week to explore doing business here. I want you to find out who Axos Technology are, and what they are up to. Whether they’re about to take over from the Saudis.’
To my surprise, I could see Nigel starting to rock in his chair. I thought he was having a panic attack, but it turned out he was getting excited. His voice quickened.
‘I know all about Chernobyl. It wasn’t an accident, have I told you that? Everyone was told it was a nuclear power station, but it was making weapons-grade plutonium for a secret missile base next door, disguised as a goods factory. Less than a thousand miles from Germany.’ Nigel was speaking louder and louder as his excitement built. ‘When the CIA found out, they ordered a crack team of US Navy Seals to break into the plant and sabotage it, but they did too much damage and exposed the reactor core, causing it to go into meltdown.’ Nigel jiggled about on his chair so much that he knocked his webcam over. All I could see was the edge of a keyboard and a pile of papers.
‘Really?’ I replied. ‘That’s all very interesting, Nigel, but let’s discuss this another day. And can you fix your webcam, please?’
The image on my screen jumped about as Nigel righted the camera.
‘But I haven’t told you the really good bit yet,’ his disembodied voice continued. ‘It could have been worse. There was an eyewitness at the scene who saw a ball of fire in the sky, six or eight metres in diameter, and two rays of crimson light came out of the ball and fired on the reactor, stopping it from melting all the way to the earth’s core. Then the ball sped off; it was tracked by air traffic at Kiev-Zhulhany Airport, until it disappeared.
The camera was upright again, pointing to his excited face.
I said, ‘Aliens came down from outer space and averted nuclear disaster? That was lucky they were passing.’
‘Yes, very lucky. So, this is what you want me to investigate?’
‘No. Listen carefully, Nigel. I want you to find out what Axos Technology are doing in Britain. I don’t want you investigating what happened at Chernobyl with US Navy Seals or anything to do with aliens. And you need to show me proof of everything, no theories. Solemn promise, okay?’
Nigel looked like a balloon slowly deflating. ‘All right. Solemn promise.’
‘Thanks, Nigel. When you’ve finished, we can talk some more about Chernobyl, if I’ve got time. That’s a promise, but not a solemn one. And please, be discreet when you’re investigating. I need to be careful about my friend. She doesn’t know anything about my Richard Foxe blog, and I don’t want to tell her. She told me something not realising the implications. It could be nothing, or it could be very interesting, and we need to find out what’s going on without anyone suspecting her. I don’t want to get her into any trouble.’
‘There’s a lot of chatter about Russian dirty tricks at the moment,’ Nigel said. ‘Let me see what I can find out.’
‘But no one is to know about Anton Shub. That’s really important, Nigel. I don’t want anyone to pick up on any chat room gossip about who he is or what he’s getting up to. Whatever story comes out of this, it’s not going to mention my friend.’
Saying these words out loud made me stop and think about what I was doing. I had stumbled over this story because of what Tanya had told me. As a friend. Someone she thought made his living writing amusing blog posts. She had no idea who I really was, that her indiscretion could lead to all sort of problems for Shub, even for her.
I ended the call with Nigel and sank into a state of sullen self-absorption. I had to be sure the story could never be traced back to Tanya. But I had already stupidly blurted out to Nigel where the story had come from. He spent all his free time hanging out in dark corners of the web,
creating theories and trading secrets about anyone and anything. I could see him being tempted to divulge more than he should about what he was investigating. No matter what I said to him, I was kidding myself that I could completely control the story.
In the end, I agreed on a compromise with myself. Wait to see what Nigel comes up with. If nothing, the problem solves itself. If it’s a scandal, then decide whether to tell Tanya or carry on deceiving her.
I hadn’t decided which of the two options I was hoping for when Nigel messaged me two days later telling me he had come up with something. I found myself wishing that he hadn’t. We arranged to meet face-to-face; this was too big a deal to do over the phone. When I arrived at his flat, I sat myself down on my usual chair. Unease crept through my bones. I found myself hoping that I was about to listen to a load of make-believe, to Nigel spinning out his wildest fantasies.
Nigel was looking pleased with himself.
‘Shub’s company, Axos Technology, had been applying for operating licences in the UK, Germany and Portugal, the three countries where Act Now! is the party in power. The UK licence was waved through a couple of weeks ago without any fanfare, only the statutory announcement buried in the Department of Energy’s website. But I found it. He-he-he-he.’
‘Can you show me?’ I still hadn’t got it out of my head that I’d be hearing something about ET landing in northern England.
‘Here.’ He opened up a bookmark to a page on the Department of Energy website. I looked over Nigel’s shoulder, careful not to touch him, which he always detested. I peered at the screen. The announcement looked genuine enough.
‘What do you think is going on?’
‘Boring. Some business deal. I wanted to tell you what the chat rooms were saying about Axos, but I made you a solemn promise only to tell you about things which have proof. This is all I’ve got. They’re expanding out from the countries who don’t care that much about safety as long as the reactors are cheap enough, and coming into western Europe. They’re going to get the contract for supplying Britain’s long-term nuclear energy needs instead of Saudi Arabia.’
‘All without a word of public debate.’ I gave a low whistle of surprise. ‘Nigel, this story is going to be shocking. A big thing about Act Now!’s appeal is that they mean different things to different people. To idealistic kids, they present a challenge to the status quo, a questioning of society’s sacred cows. To the disenchanted and dispossessed, they provide an opportunity to rage against wealth and privilege. And for right-wing Little Englanders, they are the people who will take back our sovereignty from European bureaucrats and American multinationals, no Johnny Foreigners meddling in our affairs. That last lot are going to be furious about this, and the idealistic kids are going to be up in arms that we’re building any new nuclear power stations at all. You’ve done a great job.’
‘I know,’ replied Nigel. ‘It was very tricky to find this. It’s been kept well hidden.’
I began saying my thoughts aloud as the implications sank in. ‘The party of protectionism and nationalism, the one that wants to rip up our global free-trade agreements, has been secretly planning to hand over our nuclear future to the Russians. And not only that, but to the company that built Chernobyl.’
‘No, the people who built Chernobyl were the Soviet government. Then it was all sold to Axos. You made me make a solemn promise to tell you the truth.’
I laughed. ‘I know I did, Nigel. But it’s how some people will see the truth. It’s called perception.’
This was huge. It challenged everything Act Now! stood for. And I had stumbled across it all because Tanya had told me she was off for a shagfest with an old boyfriend.
That’s where the guilt came in.
It was an important story, and I knew I should publish it. People had a right to know. I was an investigative journalist now, and investigative journalists shouldn’t have any scruples in breaking a story. Tanya certainly didn’t seem to have been told Shub’s visit was supposed to be hush-hush. From what I could find out, Anton Shub didn’t seem to be the most disciplined of international businessmen. If he was stupid enough to meet up with an old girlfriend on a clandestine trip to England, he deserved all he got.
So, I wrote the story. Axos Technology, the company that built its nuclear expertise on the work of the scientists and the technology responsible for the Chernobyl disaster, was in secret talks with the British government to construct the next generation of Britain’s nuclear reactors. I had double-checked and triple-checked everything that Nigel came up with. He would not exaggerate deliberately, but I had to make sure that not a single word of fantasy had crept into what he had told me. As I went through all the sources of his data, I became more and more amazed by his ability to hold so much information in his head, to be able to spot the links and disparities between two pieces of information that, on the surface, seemed miles apart. Whatever his problems as a human being, he was a phenomenon as an investigator.
All that checking meant it was two weeks before I wrote up the story, which had the extra bonus that it didn’t look like it was linked to Tanya and what Shub told her during his visit. I told myself that that justified writing the story without Tanya’s knowledge. But in truth, I just wanted the whole shitty business to be over so that I could put it behind me and never think of it again.
The Chronicle offered to match their payment for the fracking scoop, but I decided to dig my heels in. I didn’t know if I’d ever get a story this big again, and I wanted to use it as a bargaining tool to redefine my relationship with the paper. In the end, I negotiated a fee equal to six months of my old retainer, and when the story was syndicated in France, Germany and Italy, I was able to pay off Nigel’s year one advance and still come out ahead in terms of income. For the first time, my plan to survive as a journalist looked like it could work.
The Department of Energy issued a flat ‘No comment’, but there was enough media noise to mean that wasn’t going to hold for long. When they changed their stance to say they wouldn’t provide a running commentary on commercially sensitive negotiations, it was clear they’d been rumbled. There was a flurry of follow-up stories and Anton Shub’s photo was in all the papers. It didn’t help that he had a surname reminiscent of a Bond villain and an appearance that, shall we say, didn’t immediately convey honesty and integrity.
Then the next political story came along: Act Now!’s decision to hold a referendum to abolish all government quangos in three years, unless a quango was able to justify itself to the electorate and secure a majority in an online vote to save itself from the chop. ‘Only pay for the experts you believe in’ ran the slogan. All hell was breaking loose over the idea, but the establishment was finding it impossible to counter the populist appeal of letting people vote on just about anything.
In all the furore, Anton Shub and Axos Technology being let in the back door to run our nuclear industry were blown off the front page. But it didn’t matter; I reckoned the story had run its course anyway. I sent Nigel off to go digging on the quango abolition, to see if there was anything dodgy about it.
After our last success, he couldn’t wait to get started.
chapter six
I deliberately avoided meeting with Tanya while the Shub story was in the news. She didn’t call, and I wasn’t going to mention it first. But there was little point in putting off meeting up again forever. I texted to take her up on her offer of spaghetti a vongole and headed off to her flat a few days later. A basement in Battersea, tucked away in a back street. I arrived and texted her to tell her I was standing outside. Doorbells seem to be a thing of the past with young people.
She greeted me warmly. That was a relief. But her flat was a surprise – sterile, lacking in personality, nothing that reflected the vivaciousness of her character. She showed me into the small kitchen and poured me a glass of wine from a half-finished bottle she produced from the fridge.
‘Nostrovia,’ she said. ‘Welcome to humble abode.’
‘Slange var.’
We clinked our glasses.
‘So, how was Northumbria?’ I asked. I tried to make it sound like small talk. ‘I’ve never been.’
‘Windy,’ Tanya replied, as she threw the clams into the frying pan with garlic and ginger. She popped on the lid. ‘Strange place to run a training course. That’s what Anton said he was doing there when he invited me up. But I found out later he was there for secret deal with government. It was in newspapers; did you see it? Anton called me asking if I’d spoken to newspapers about his visit. When I said no, he told me to tell him if anyone made snooping around me.’
‘That was him?’ I tried my best to look shocked. ‘I knew the name sounded familiar. It all sounded a bit dodgy. I thought Saudi Arabia and the French were building the new nuclear power stations.’
‘When we were in Northumbria he told me all is to change. He drank too much champagne the first night, was boasting that Russian government is owed big favours from Act Now!, Russians do lot of dirty tricks to help Act Now! win election. Russia is to be Britain’s special partner, do lots of deals together. Back in Moscow, all oligarchs are rubbing hands and buying new Ferraris.’ She peered into the frying pan. ‘Dinner’s ready. Let’s eat.’
I needed to sit down anyway. Back in 2016, there had been rumours about the Russians being involved in the Brexit vote. Then they said the same thing about the US presidential election. Things had gone quiet since, but if what Tanya was saying was true, the Russians were now even more heavily involved than anyone thought, colluding with Act Now! to get them into power and being rewarded with a big nuclear power station contract. And who knows what else.
I decided to change the subject. Taking advantage of Tanya once for a story might be understandable; exploiting her friendship a second time would be unforgivable. I moved the conversation on to safer topics and enjoyed the rest of the evening.