A Shadow Intelligence

by Oliver Harris

  Several news sites carried high-definition photos of the victim’s face, bruised and tear-stained. Her name was Yulia Vectisishina, and she lived in Schuchinsk. A lot of people with Russian surnames were sharing the story across various platforms, connecting it to an attack a few miles away in Petropavl, a majority-Russian village, where a cultural centre had been burned down.

  The woman was Russian, the rapists were alleged to be ethnic Kazakh. People were posting photos of angry crowds. They held signs that said: Kazakhstan is Russia.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘How directly does the Kremlin direct this unit?’ Walker asked.

  ‘Arm’s length. But Vishinsky is close to Putin. Nothing’s going to happen without approval.’

  ‘And it dates back to Ukraine?’

  ‘It pre-dates Ukraine. It’s drawn from psychological work the Main Intelligence Directorate was doing in the Sixties. But we started getting a concrete picture of how it functions in 2014. I think Joanna was working on it before leaving Six. I need you to back me and redirect resources. I think she’s alive. She found out something about Russia and Kazakhstan.’

  We were in the private room of a canteen inside the White and Chase building, away from other suits, a platter of sushi going to waste between us. Walker had collected me from reception, dropped some unspecified paperwork off in his temporary office, which gave me another view of the keypad and the electronics set-up. He’d been hungry so we went up to the canteen, which he’d assured me was secure. I’d decided not to mention my own arrest, or run-in with Sergei Cherenkov, partly to see if Walker knew. So far there was no suggestion he did.

  ‘Vishinsky represents an expansionist, hawkish, ultra-cynical circle at the heart of the Kremlin,’ I said. ‘They push a narrative that NATO is seeking to encircle Russia. When they wanted Crimea annexed, Vishinsky had to assure Putin it could work. He masterminded the combining of cyber warfare, kinetic attacks, propaganda and what the Russians call Maskirovka: masking, military deception. He was on the ground, coordinating it. Now he’s here.’

  ‘Why now?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think Joanna knows. She tried to get out. Look.’

  I showed him the file Shomko had sent through. Walker studied the plane tickets to Caracas, the fake names. I wanted to see how he’d react. If this didn’t get his support he either knew where she was or he didn’t care.

  ‘How did you get this?’ he asked.

  ‘I bought it. The investigation concerning Joanna has been moved away from the units you’d expect to be handling a murder. This is from anti-terrorism. Chief of Kazakh anti-terrorism is Rakim Zhaparov.’

  Walker nodded as if this made sense. He pincered some sashimi.

  ‘It fits the picture we’re building. There’s Kremlin ties.’

  ‘What do you know about him?’

  Walker chewed, considering. ‘Relatively young, ambitious. Supposedly waging a war against militant Islam. Close to Moscow. Not a pleasant creature if certain reports are anything to go by. And he’s caused us problems before. He wants Saracen out of Kazakhstan. Wants all US and European companies out.’

  ‘Has he got the muscle to do that?’

  ‘The only muscle in this country is the President. The President thinks that kicking out Western oil companies will jeopardise other business. He’s keen for Kazakhstan to seem international, competitive, independent. Zhaparov’s a Moscow puppet. Whenever the President gets too cosy with the West, Zhaparov suddenly has resources from Russia, usually in the name of counterterrorism, keeping Kazakhstan a buffer between Russia and Islamists. It was Zhaparov who banned praying in public, and installed pro-government imams. But it’s obvious he’s also a buffer against the West. Moscow’s nervous about Galina, the President’s daughter. She’s pro-West. When Putin annexed Crimea, she encouraged her father to start diversifying military purchases away from Russia. When Moscow tried to get Kazakhstan to join in with counter-sanctions against the West, she pushed her father to decline. And she hates Zhaparov. A few years back, when he was Chief Prosecutor, he went after one of her boyfriends for money laundering.’

  ‘And we’re tight with Galina?’

  ‘We shower her with gold.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Millions. A lot of it is property, mostly for family members. It’s a big family. But she’s our best chance. Lucy Piper always says that the way to a president’s heart is through his daughter.’

  ‘Cute, but she’s not in charge yet,’ I said. ‘What’s the President’s own relationship with Moscow like?’

  Walker considered before responding, dipping a maki roll in soy sauce.

  ‘Kazakhstan’s always been a staunch Russian ally, but Ukraine made them uneasy. Nazarbayev walks a tightrope. A few years ago, they started limiting Russian broadcasting over here. Russian officials complained and now it’s an offence to even think along those lines. A lot of Russians came here in Soviet times. Most of those remaining are in the north of the country, close to the Motherland, and the main government policy seems to be not to antagonise them.’ He ate, then looked at the police file again. ‘What did Joanna stumble into?’

  ‘I’m not sure she stumbled. I think she walked purposefully towards the obsession she’s been nursing for years. That’s what I’m worried about.’

  ‘Wait until Robert Carter hears about this. Moscow’s scuppered big deals of his before. He had plans for a pipeline in Turkmenistan; closed down at the last minute as a result of political pressure from China and Russia. Billions written off.’ Walker shook his head. But even as he expressed his concern for Carter’s traumatic experiences with Russia, I could see his eyes glinting. He saw opportunity in crisis, in traumatised billionaires.

  ‘Has anyone in the UK discovered that you’re here?’ he asked.

  ‘Not as far as I’m aware.’

  ‘How long do you think you need to find out what’s happened to her?’

  ‘Five days.’

  ‘Wait there.’

  I watched the main restaurant through the doorway: white-shirted men with chopsticks and Breitlings and thick windows between them and the world. Lives lived thirty floors up. Downstairs I’d got another look at the entry procedure for the building, the cameras and stairways; Evotec had managed to access an original planning application for the block including architectural drawings that gave us the server room in the basement. All this was habit, but so was distrust.

  I checked my phone. Online a story had started trending: two young Kazakh men who’d fought in Ukraine on the pro-Russian side had been sentenced to five years each. Heroes jailed. They’d actually been sentenced last year, but the story had gone viral again. Meanwhile someone had painted ‘This is Kazakhstan’ on a hillside in the north of the country in white letters ten feet high. I was wondering how much effort and paint that would take when Walker returned with a laptop case branded ‘Astana 2018’.

  ‘This is what you asked for,’ he said. Inside was thirty grand’s worth of paper money divided equally into plastic wallets of dollars, tenge and rubles.

  Like most cases of money, it felt dirty, dangerous and very useful.

  When I was in my car I called Stefan.

  ‘Are we playing?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got the money in cash.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I want you in the Astana’s Hilton Garden Inn. I’ve booked a room. Target will be directly below. His name is Callum Walker. He may be running counter-surveillance, so move gently. I’ll give you more when you get here.’

  I called Geoff Purvis and we established procedures for a quick escape.

  On my way back to the hotel I stopped at a hunting shop and bought bullets and cold-weather gun lubricant. I drove out to the desert to test-fire the gun but struggled to find anything to aim at, eventually firing once towards the horizon before my fingers went numb.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I checked out of the Lion Hotel and into the Ramada Plaza. It was more in keeping with the Bell
cover, and I had a superstition about sleeping where I’d been arrested. The Ramada put a lot more grey-carpeted corridor between me and the world, even if I knew it was a false sense of security. An eager bellboy, no older than nineteen, helped me with my cases.

  ‘Where’d you learn English?’ I asked.

  ‘Here. I like to talk to people.’

  ‘Follow the football?’

  ‘Of course. My team is Chelsea.’

  ‘Abramovich.’

  ‘Yes.’ He grinned.

  ‘Know Astana well?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Where did you grow up?’

  ‘Shymkent.’

  ‘Deep south. Isn’t that what they say? I heard it’s like the Wild West down there.’

  ‘It is different. The jobs are here.’

  ‘Well, you’ve earned this.’ I folded a couple of notes into his hand. Loyal bellboys were a godsend.

  I set up a wireless camera, smaller than my fingertip, positioned so it faced the door: motion-sensitive, high-definition, straight to my phone. I locked the Makarov in the safe.

  The hotel’s bar was a cavernous, Hollywood-themed place with a lot of young staff and few customers. It served food through the night: Happy Hour was 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. For a city with no evident desire to party the night away, Kazakhstan had a lot of places that never closed. I drank a beer and thought of the lines by Thomas Mann: In an empty, unarticulated space our mind loses its sense of time as well. He was describing a sea crossing but it fitted Astana. Our mind loses its sense of time and we enter the twilight of the immeasurable. Dämmerung des unermesslichen.

  I planned my next move.

  Joanna had acquired information and possibly contacts through Testimony. That had evidently got her in trouble. It coincided with the appearance of Vishinsky. A psychological war had begun. Did it involve fake videos of myself? She saw what Vishinsky had planned, tried to warn me. Here I was.

  Stumped.

  Cherenkov wanted Perfect Vision. I tried to imagine a piece of forecasting software effective enough to inspire the envy of hostile governments. A crystal ball. Or it was something else entirely, some means of defeating Russia’s psyops. A truth machine. Perhaps the attention on me was a bluff and they already had penetration at Shefford that meant the project had been compromised, the whole thing falling apart in time for them to make a play for Central Asia.

  I needed cyber capabilities, and was keen for Stefan to arrive. I had a strong lead in terms of the Chevy Equinox, but no easy means of pursuing that beyond what the police had already attempted. If Russia was preparing for action, there would be big changes inside Kazakhstan’s state apparatus. Shomko could map structure and sympathies. I could inform Six by some back channel. But why hadn’t Joanna done that? Stevenson’s words haunted me: changes in priorities … Russia’s got the wind in their sails … Syria’s a test bed.

  The men who had attacked the Russian woman had been named on social media. I typed their names into Google to see if they really existed. It was hard to say without a photo. Meanwhile, two other Kazakh men had been hospitalised in what sounded like revenge attacks in Schuchinsk, a house set alight.

  I called the hospital mentioned in reports and eventually got through to a doctor who sounded young, stressed and tired.

  ‘Can I speak to the men who were admitted?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But they are there?’

  ‘We can’t give you any information.’

  ‘I’m family.’

  ‘Makes no difference.’

  ‘Can I just check – were there any men admitted at all?’

  He confirmed that two men had been brought in but wouldn’t give any more details.

  I found the number for a bar in the town owned by a woman called Olga Sergeeva, which was a Russian surname. Sergeeva herself answered.

  ‘This is Dmitry Zubkov from the Moscow Times,’ I said.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘How are things there? We in Russia are worried. How are people feeling?’

  ‘People feel there is a lot of bullshit around.’ The woman hung up.

  He is beyond cynical, Elliot. That is what we haven’t understood.

  I know.

  You say you met him.

  I thought I had. 2001, Baku, Azerbaijan.

  I hadn’t realised until later that Vishinsky was the individual concerned. At the time he’d been just one strange encounter in a series of them. Baku had been an Agentsumpf for sure, a baptism of oil and fire. By the time I got to the place there’d been five years of dark-side operations. MI6 had scrambled to help British business mop up what they could of the former Soviet oil industry. When the wrong man got into power, backed by Russia, MI6 was tasked with sorting out a counter-coup. My predecessors set up ratlines: backdoor arms channels from dumps in Turkey via Armenia. They got a more amenable dictator in place. Three months later, £5 billion worth of energy deals were signed.

  The whole project had been set up by men and women with experience of Bosnia, of drugs for arms networks. Intelligence doesn’t have a rule book, which means people fall back on what they know, which isn’t always sophisticated. I arrived to help deal with the fallout. It was one of my first operations for Six, running an agent close to the deposed dictator and trying to anticipate blowback. I was twenty-four, out of my depth, and excited to be there. The experience should have left me feeling disillusioned, but I didn’t want illusions anyway; I felt only delight at getting the chance to see geopolitics up close. I think Vishinsky sensed that: the vulnerability of appetite.

  The old Soviet Intourist Hotel was the only place foreign oil execs were allowed to stay, a five-storey brute on Neftchiler Prospekt, oilmen’s avenue. The lack of facilities didn’t keep anyone away – middlemen, warlords, oil execs. Reps for BP, Amoco, Pennzoil, Unocal. Then mercenaries from the US and Afghanistan fighting in Azerbaijan’s war with Armenia who added to the squeeze and the ratio of guns to guests. The US, Turkish and Russian embassies were all in the hotel itself. The UK embassy was in the offices of BP down the road, which told you all you needed to know. Azeri security services had the hotel wired from top to bottom. If you needed to talk to a politician you could say their name in an empty room and they’d turn up an hour or so later. People chained cases to their wrists to move down corridors. No one left the place. Deliveries of paper and whisky came in each morning. If you were curious about what the world looked like you could open your curtains and gaze across the derelict rigs crumbling into the sea.

  I may have been the only one to get out and about. Daily, mid-afternoon, I’d walk past boomtown Baku, dutifully checking reflections in the windows of Bulgari and Armani to see if I’d been followed, but also spying on the shops themselves – capitalism as impossible dreams. I’d walk through Bibi-Heybat, a suburb where the first-ever oil well had been drilled, to an industrial zone called Black City where refinery chimneys coloured the sky grey with smoke. Offshore rig platforms looked like churches floating on air, the spires of the drilling towers hazy in mist. Someone told me they’d sunk seven ships to form the foundation for the offshore platform, one of which was the first oil tanker, Zoroaster. I admired the scale of the gesture, like a sacrifice, and the historical link it created. Once upon a time the burning gas just leaked from the ground and Azerbaijan was known as the shrine of fire, a place of Zoroastrian pilgrimage.

  When the weather was good, I’d walk to a spot on the coast from which you got a glimpse of Neft Daslari – Oil Rocks – a town on stilts in the sea with two thousand rust-bitten drilling platforms joined by a network of bridges. That particularly day was clearer than most, and I was trying to make out what remained. I didn’t notice the tall, elegant Russian approaching, cigar in hand.

  I was sure I hadn’t been followed, yet I could see no reason for someone else to be there. And he seemed content to appear as if he had sought me out. It was Vishinsky, although I didn’t know that then.

  We fell into polite, mut
ually curious conversation. He told me that when the Tsarist regime began to crumble in the early twentieth century, the oil workers of Baku went on strike. One of their leaders was a young Joseph Stalin. Vishinsky gestured to the city behind us and described the whole place in flames, even the waves of the sea, covered in oil from the burning wells.

  ‘And what did Stalin seize first? The printing presses.’ Vishinsky’s eyes gleamed. I remember thinking he was intelligent, that he liked the sound of his own voice, that he appeared to have crafted his speech for me personally.

  ‘Stalin gave us a destiny,’ Vishinsky said. ‘And then it went. You have not felt that. In the West you are children, easily scared and with few memories. You do not know despair. But perhaps you will learn.’

  I wondered why he was interested in me.

  The following week, back in Vauxhall, I put together a case for engaging with him, playing along. I was willing to play double. The operation was turned down as too risky. In the chaos of the next few years I almost forgot about that meeting. Then I saw him in Kiev. Or, at least, Joanna saw him.

  ‘He nodded at me,’ she said. ‘As if he knew who I was.’ She showed me the picture she’d got later that night. It was the man who had approached me in Baku.

  ‘What do you know about him?’ she asked.

  I told her: he seemed hyper-nationalistic, believed in regaining lost Soviet territory.

  I thought of him as we witnessed the Orange Revolution ignite, feeling the euphoria spread through Ukraine, a demand for fairness and freedom being heard for once, opening the future through the will of the people. And I thought of him nine years later when the first Novorussiya accounts appeared – ‘New Russia’ – with dedicated websites and domain names. Novorussiya was what Russians called the Crimea in the eighteenth century, when it was annexed by Catherine the Great. Someone was conjuring a political entity back into existence. Two weeks later, Russian troops took control of the main route to Sevastopol. Men in anonymous uniforms occupied the Crimean parliament building. In Six there was a sense of disbelief. But they got away with it because the psychological groundwork had been laid.