A Friend in Deed

by G D Harper

  ‘What about Professor Mikin being photographed with every Act Now! leader years before they came to prominence? A Russian academic actively involved in the grooming and promotion of Western leaders? That shows how deeply the Russian government is behind Act Now!.’

  ‘Could be a coincidence. Or a bunch of would-be politicians picking the brains of someone who shared a similar philosophy. No, the most this story is ever going to be is the suggestion of some Russian mischief-making in Western elections. Whether it’s the Russian government or someone with the time and money to do it off their own bat, we can’t say. It’s a story, I suppose. Just about.’

  I gave a fake smile. ‘The same story that’s been running for years. Okay, I’ll ask Dmitry if he wants to go on the record, but don’t be surprised if he says no. It’s one thing sitting here in a cosy office discussing all this; it’s another sticking your head above the parapet in a country that doesn’t have a particularly forgiving attitude to its dissidents. But I’m only going to ask Dmitry, not the person I interviewed – even if I could get word to him before he and his partner quit Moscow. Dmitry’s a grown-up; he knows what he’s doing. I might have ruined the life of that young person who gave me the troll factory interview; I don’t want to make things any worse.’

  ‘I’m disappointed in your scruples, Duncan. You owe it to us to at least try, if you won’t let us contact your source directly.’

  I remained tight-lipped.

  ‘Okay, then, if that’s how you want to play it. We’ll doorstep some of these UK trolls that we can identify from their email address and see what we get from that. You get in touch with Dmitry and write up your blog story, which is of course embargoed until our programme airs. You can coordinate your efforts with Nathan here. He’ll be producing the story at this end.’ A hipster in a checked shirt nodded. ‘And one last thing, Duncan. Don’t ever ignore my phone calls and text messages again.’

  She looked around the room. ‘Okay, you’ve heard everything, folks.’ The news team got up and left.

  I went into Alex’s office to talk money. I told her that I’d had to pay for the Sergey interview; she wasn’t impressed. She offered me a small fee for what I had come up with, only just covering my expenses, and said I had to pay the money I gave Sergey out of my own pocket as it wasn’t authorised. She softened the blow by saying there would be something a little more decent if I could interview Dmitry on the record, but if not, there would probably be no story.

  Once we’d sorted out the money side of things, I decided to tell her my suspicions that someone at the TV station had tipped off the Russians that I was in Moscow.

  ‘That’s absurd,’ she said. ‘And a bit of an insult. Do you know how difficult it was for me to convince the station bosses to let someone who’s never been in front of a news camera go out to Moscow in our name to investigate a story?’ She gave a disgusted snort. ‘Especially after Damien Zane ripped you to pieces live on air. And the way you repay my faith in you is to come in here with next to nothing from the trip and accuse me of shopping you to the Russians? If that’s the level of your paranoia, Duncan, I’m beginning to have doubts if any of this is true.’

  ‘I’m not accusing you of anything, Alex,’ I replied. ‘But I told no one else that I was going to Moscow. I’m not saying the leak came from you or the news team, but surely there were lots of ways someone here could have found out what I was up to? Whoever made the travel arrangements, for example.’

  ‘That was Emma. She’s a twenty-one-year-old intern who spends most of her time checking regional press for human interest stories. If she was a Russian informer, then she’d be feeding them stories of speaking dogs and long-lost brothers being reunited.’

  ‘Well, someone else. I don’t know. But you’ve got to admit it’s a possibility.’

  ‘This channel and News Today has done more to cover this story than any other news outlet in the country. If you have such qualms working with us, maybe it’s best we part ways after this story.’ She folded her arms and glared at me. ‘After you talk to your Russian contact to see if he wants to talk to us on the record. That’s even more important after this conversation. I need to know he’s for real before I run the story. He promised you the moon to get you out to Moscow and all he delivered was somebody who told you they worked in a troll factory and who you paid for their story.’

  She gave a heavy sigh. ‘I should have insisted on Simon Green going with you; then I’d have more faith in the story. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to explain to my bosses why my decision to send an untried reporter out to Moscow has resulted in a story that’s weak at best. Let me know about Dmitry by the end of the day.’

  I’d deserved my bollocking. Suitably chastened, I scuttled out of her office.

  * * *

  I was astonished when Dmitry agreed to be interviewed.

  ‘If someone at the TV station is secretly part of Russian plan, let’s play them at their own game,’ he told me. ‘I think you’re smart to give the website file to someone else. But we need the TV station to run the story. If I do an interview, so what? I am linked to troll factory and stories I have been talking about for years. When the story comes out about website folder, you can say it was from another source, not me. I am in no more deep shit than I have been up to now. Maybe even safer, if I am famous on UK news programme.’

  With Dmitry’s decision, Alex agreed to run with the story. I wouldn’t be allowed to front it – that would be Simon Green, who would do a down-the-line interview with me in my home office, interspersed with the Dmitry and Sergey clips. I worked with Nathan to coordinate my blog going live with the ten-minute report they were planning to run. The News Today team got some incriminating stuff from the dozen or so UK trolls they managed to track down, but most of them came across as fantasists or mercenaries, rather than idealistic revolutionaries trying to place Britain under Russian rule.

  The story got a categorical denial from Act Now!, with Damien Zane saying I was a fantasist whose claims were becoming more absurd by the day, and it was beneath his dignity to come into the studio and debate with me. I guess that meant I wouldn’t be on his Christmas-card list this year.

  It felt strange going back into the Chronicle offices after my foray into TV land, but Sam welcomed me like a long-lost friend.

  ‘You’re like a dog with a bone with this Act Now! story,’ he said as he closed the door of his office. ‘I thought you’d deserted us when I saw you pop up on that News Today report. Where did you find that Dmitry source?’

  ‘He emailed me, after the first couple of stories broke,’ I replied. ‘Good to know that my reputation stands me in good stead, even in Moscow.’

  ‘And you say there’s more? What have you got?’

  I produced the website folder and described the session with Nigel hacking in through the back-door portal, making copies and taking screenshots of everything he found.

  ‘It’s all in Russian, but what it proves is that the scale and sophistication of what is going on now could only have come from the Kremlin. Nobody else would benefit from the political upheaval this operation has caused as much as the Russian government. Tie that in with the mysterious Professor Mikin being photographed with all the Act Now! leaders before they formed parties in their own countries, and our own PM’s peculiarly close relationship with him over the years – which he’s tried to cover up – and you’ve got a pretty strong case to suggest collusion between Act Now! and the Russians to help them win the last election.’

  ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We need this translated. We’ve got translators on file who could do this. I trust them implicitly. But it’s a massive amount to get through. Can you leave the folder with me to get started?’

  ‘If you promise me it stays my story, then yes,’ I replied. ‘This is a copy. I’ve got the original safely stashed away somewhere no one can find it. Are you sure you can trus
t your translators? This is pretty sensitive stuff.’

  ‘We rotate them all the time and make it clear that if there’s any breach of security, they’re permanently blacklisted.’ Sam stared hard at me. ‘But why are you giving me this, Duncan? Aren’t you working with News Today now? If I was Alex Richards, I’d be bloody furious that you took the next part of the story to a rival.’

  I feigned nonchalance. ‘I gave them the troll factory story as a way of apologising for the Damian Zane interview. The Chronicle’s where my heart is, no matter how shittily you’ve treated me. How’s Bryony working out, by the way?’

  The question distracted Sam.

  ‘Oh, fine, I guess,’ he said, tilting his chin down and frowning. ‘Gets on with job, safe pair of hands, but nothing spectacular. Don’t worry, I’ll keep her well away from your exclusive.’

  Damned with faint praise, I thought. Worth remembering.

  We agreed to meet when the translations were completed, and I finally turned my thoughts to my now complicated private life.

  I agonised over whether to tell Bobbie about what had happened with Tanya. We had chatted a couple of times to reflect on the maelstrom of activity around the story and she was good at keeping me grounded, both in terms of not becoming too pretentious as a result of all the attention, and also in focusing on the way forward. As we had been doing for each other ever since primary school, I reflected ruefully. We’d never kept secrets from each other. Feeling a little like a naughty schoolboy, I called her up.

  ‘I think you should know I accidentally slept with Tanya when I stayed over at her place – after she helped Nigel translate the Russian websites,’ I said. I felt ridiculously embarrassed for some reason.

  ‘Accidentally slept with her? What happened, did you stumble coming out of the shower or something?’

  ‘Very funny. It was after a pretty intense evening, coming on top of being scared out of my wits and not being able to get out of Moscow fast enough. It just sort of happened. She laughed it off the next day, but I’m not sure I can do that so easily.’

  ‘It’s called being old, Duncan. When we were younger, we never gave one night stands a second thought. Everything’s more complicated now.’

  ‘You’re right. Especially for men. If I do venture out on a date these days, I find myself wondering what I’ll do if the evening promises to end up in bed. When I was younger, saying no would never have been an option.’

  ‘The only person analysing this and trying to work out what it all means is you,’ she replied. ‘Stop taking yourself so seriously.’

  She was right. I had enough to worry about with what I was going to say in the Chronicle follow-up. We left it at that.

  Once the coding was translated, I was able to come up with some extra spins on the original story. But over the next few weeks, it started to wind down. According to the opinion polls, people regarded it as a juicy piece of gossip but it did nothing to change their opinion of Act Now! and how they were going to vote in future. My fifteen minutes of fame were over and I was starting to think that all my new-found status could do for me was to help edge Bryony out of the picture and get my old job back at the Chronicle. Nigel had managed to find evidence of one major political scandal, but it would be sheer good fortune if he did the same again. Investigative reporting was proving too unpredictable and traumatic. I’d tasted stress and I’d tasted danger, and they were a bit too rich for my blood. A return to humdrum column writing sounded very appealing.

  That was, until Professor Pavel Mikin got in touch with me.

  chapter twelve

  I thought it was a hoax.

  Hello Richard Foxe, my name is Professor Pavel Mikin. I think you know of me. Can we talk?

  It was sent through the contact email on my website. I almost missed it. The email address was from one of Russia’s big internet providers. Easily set up and impossible to trace. I emailed back that I did, indeed, know who Pavel Mikin was and if this was him I needed to confirm his identity.

  Please tell me how?

  Good question.

  I decided on a Skype call, to see if the emailer resembled the photos I had of Mikin. Then, to ask about things that would trip up an imposter, no matter how well prepared. We arranged to talk early the next evening – that would give me time to get ready. It could all be a trap, a ploy by Act Now! to discredit me. But if Mikin wanted to tell me the inside story about Act Now!, the results would be sensational.

  I couldn’t shake off the feeling that it all sounded too good to be true. The key person behind the Act Now! project suddenly wanted to betray everything that he’d worked for, and had chosen me to help him? It was incredible beyond belief. I was desperate to talk to someone about it, someone I trusted, who was smarter and more experienced than me in these things, who could listen to what I knew and tell me what to do.

  But that someone didn’t exist. News Today, Alex Richards and her team – they were all tainted by my suspicions about the leak, and in any case relations had been strained since the Chronicle’s involvement. The only people who knew about politics at the Chronicle after the recent cutbacks were Sam and Bryony; enough said. Bobbie or Tanya could give me common sense, but I needed more than that. Nigel, not even common sense. I was on my own.

  I needed to find out as much about Mikin as possible, so I called Nigel to say I had a test for him. I was going to quiz a Mikin expert and wanted the twenty most obscure facts about Mikin he could find, to see if the expert was any good. His challenge was to come up with questions about things that were so well hidden that only a superhero expert would be able to get them right.

  One of the good things about the way Nigel’s mind worked was that he never thought about anything other than the task in hand. It never occurred to him to ask why I was making such a strange request. Maybe if I had told him about Mikin’s approach and made him make a solemn promise not to talk about it, that would ensure that he didn’t inadvertently let something slip in one of his chat room sessions, but given the stakes involved, it didn’t seem like a risk worth taking. For the first time since we started working together, I was deliberately keeping him in the dark. I felt a bit of a heel about it.

  There was also the Tanya situation to feel uncomfortable about. I was seeing her that night for the first time in weeks, and I was nervous about what our new dynamic would be like. An evening cooking dinner at her flat had been arranged. I thought about cancelling, so I could ponder more, but in the end, decided there was only so much pondering you could do.

  Mikin weighed heavily on my thoughts as we bantered and chatted as if nothing had ever happened between us.

  ‘Have you known any spies in your time, Tanya?’ I asked. ‘Real spies, I mean, not some playboy with a 007 fetish.’

  ‘Probably.’ She laughed. ‘But they wouldn’t be much of a spy if they told me about it.’

  ‘Do you think spies stay loyal, though? Wouldn’t being involved in all that deception and duplicity make you more likely to become that way yourself? Like police officers corrupted by the crime around them? History’s full of double agents.’

  ‘I really don’t know, Duncan, I’ve not been to spy school. Why are you asking me all this? Is there something new about Act Now!?’

  So I told her. Tanya was sceptical.

  ‘Russia’s number one apparatchik decides to contact you out of blue?’ She shook her head. ‘He is fraud or trap. Something’s not right about this.’

  I told her I agreed. ‘But think if it were true. And it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility. History is loaded with examples of people betraying causes they once believed in. All I’m risking is a half-hour chat with him. What’s to lose?’

  ‘What’s to lose? Being sucked into con trick that damages you and story you’ve tried to uncover. Being finished as credible investigator. That’s all.’

  ‘So, you’re saying I should i
gnore him?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘No. I’m telling you to be careful, that’s all. Don’t do anything too stupid. And whatever you do, don’t give him any money. It still sounds like scam to me.’

  As the time of the Skype call approached, I became more and more nervous. I had Nigel’s list of twenty questions in front of me and I felt another pang of guilt about keeping him in the dark. My computer beeped, signalling a call request. I pressed a shortcut to a macro that Nigel had written for me that would bring up a caller’s IP address. The request was coming through a Tor node, impossible to trace. I clicked Accept.

  ‘Ah, Richard Foxe,’ the caller said. ‘We meet at last. You have made me quite famous. A little more famous than some here would like.’

  I decided to keep things curt and businesslike until I was sure who I was talking to.

  ‘Good to talk to you, Professor Mikin. I must admit I was surprised to hear from you. I’m sure you realise I get a lot of unusual messages in my business. Would you mind if I ask you a few questions, so I can be comfortable I know who I’m talking to?’

  ‘Not at all. Call me Pavel, if you don’t mind.’ He smiled like he was granting me a great honour. ‘Ask your questions of verification. I would be disappointed if you did not. Please go ahead.’

  I glanced at the most recent photograph of Mikin that Nigel had found, then peered at my computer screen. He had shaved off his moustache since it was taken; Nigel would have liked that. I looked again at my photo. He definitely seemed to be the same person.

  I started to go through my questions. The names of his brothers, the title of his doctorate, the name of the river in the town he grew up in. As each question was answered promptly and correctly, I got more and more excited. This really was Mikin. After the final answer, I got to the real question I wanted to ask.