I lifted an image of one of Zhaparov’s elite anti-terrorist troops and identified them as the men firing at protesters, emailed it to Lucy Piper and suggested Raiymbek might circulate the idea that the shooting was on Zhaparov’s direct orders.
‘Use the phrase “Putin’s puppet”.’
Piper approved. I called a freelance journalist contact, one who was always keen for tips, less keen on fact-checking, and got pieces fast onto a reputable site that frequently fed into the national press.
‘Want an angle on this shooting in Kazakhstan?’
‘What shooting?’
‘I’m sending you something over. Take a look.’
She stayed on the line.
‘Okay, I’m interested.’
‘Can you get it up asap? I think there’s rivals of yours here trying to break the story.’
‘I can try. I appreciate this.’
A man walked in, stared at me, lifted a phone. I paid for the whisky, walked out.
I walked fast. Up the escalators. The artificial beach was open for another three-quarters of an hour, according to the boy taking my money. I said that was fine, and he gave me a towel. It was quiet inside – a long stretch of sand and sunloungers alongside the water. Snow tickled the glass roof above the artificial waves. Most of those remaining were drinking and eating at tables set up in the sand beneath palm trees. No one followed me in.
I got a smoothie, checked the gun, calculated escape through the staff exit, watched the entrance. A message came through ten minutes later: the story was up.
They’d run it as I’d written it. Added the images, a clip of the shooting that I’d saved off YouTube. I used a couple of my social media accounts to broadcast the link. Tagged in a selection of anti-Russian figures: Polish, Ukrainian; some Washington-backed organisations, some human rights, some teenagers in bedrooms.
I waited.
Eighty views. Then up to 100 as I watched.
Sites in the US and Poland were linking to it. Then the first pickup from mainstream media in Turkey and India.
My phone buzzed. I thought at first it was response to the story, but it was the alert I’d set up on anyone attempting to break into my hotel room.
Footage from the hidden camera showed me a team of three methodically sifting my possessions – two men and a woman, gloved, using what looked like a portable X-ray scanner. They were searching for something specific. They had a SEEK device – a Secure Electronic Enrollment Kit – used by CIA and US special forces to collect biometric data. Useful if you want to ID someone after you’ve killed them, check you’ve popped the right insurgent.
I looked around. If it was an intelligence operation they’d have someone keeping an eye on my movements.
Sure enough, two men were coming in. I saw a third I hadn’t noticed before, beside the water. All were conspicuous. The two arrivals looked thuggish, with clothing that would conceal arms – one in a brown leather jacket, one, taller, in a black anorak. The one beside the water wore a baggy grey suit. I finished the smoothie, wrapped the glass in the towel and smashed it beneath my heel. Then I got up and moved towards the exit, retrieving a good-sized shard as the men began to follow.
The larger of the two gripped me by the arm. ‘We’d like to speak to you.’
It wasn’t clear what happened next. I removed the shard, then it seemed that the man beside the water fired at my assailants. There was the fizz of a pistol with silencer. Glass smashed. They turned, releasing me. A girl screamed. I threw myself through the doors and kept running.
A BMW pulled out behind me when I got to the road. I headed to the riverbank, then down the bank to the ice, heard the car stop and saw its lights above me as I crossed the river. The left bank had police driving past. I kept to the darkness, clambering up snow to dry land, wondering where to lie low. I needed somewhere badly placed for murders, with the cover of other people. I looked around and saw the neon sign for The Rocks.
The doorman nodded me in. The young barman came out from behind the bar to shake my hand. I took my drink, moved into the darkness at the back, leaned against the bricks and watched the door. It was filling up, the first tentative forays onto the dancefloor. Green lasers cut through the artificial smoke like targeting systems.
‘Rahmat says you’re from England.’ A girl’s voice startled me.
‘Rahmat?’
‘The barman.’ She was twenty, maybe twenty-one, made-up like an advert. Training told me not to trust her, but instinct suggested she was genuine. She spoke English. She was drunk, eyes narrowed.
‘That’s right.’
‘You look serious. Do you think my English is good?’
‘Very.’ I saw her friends giggling in the background.
‘I am a television presenter.’
‘I bet you’re a good one. Where are you from?’ I asked.
‘Astana.’
‘Really? I didn’t think anyone was born here.’
‘Yes. I wish I could go to London.’
She bumped a hip drunkenly against me. I watched the room reflected in the mirrored walls.
‘Let me ask you a question,’ I said. ‘Who would you choose as President?’
‘Nazarbayev.’
‘I mean after Nazarbayev.’
‘Someone modern.’
‘Is it important to you to vote?’
This was funny to her. ‘Loosen up. It’s, like, a party here.’ She disappeared into the smoke. I looked around. The man with the leather jacket sat at one of the barrels, staring at me.
There were enough bottles and glasses around, if I needed weapons. The club had only one exit and he’d positioned himself between me and the door. I was outnumbered but we were in a crowded bar and people would pile in sooner rather than later if a fight broke out. Then I saw Sergei Cherenkov, Assistant to the Cultural Attaché, Russian Embassy, walking out of the dry ice towards me.
He wore a waistcoat over a white T-shirt, hair gelled back. He held two bottles of lager, gave me one.
‘Was that one of your people? With the gun?’
‘No.’
‘Well, someone’s protecting you.’
‘Maybe.’ I had no idea, but if Russian intelligence thought I had an armed guard I wasn’t going to disabuse them of that notion.
‘We’re not the threat, Elliot. For fuck’s sake.’
‘What are you looking for in my room?’
‘The question is what the CIA is looking for in your room, and why they have contingency plans to assassinate you.’
This struck me as over-dramatic but not implausible.
‘Have you found Joanna?’ I asked. ‘Really, Elliot. I’m serious. One of my best men just got attacked, when we’re trying to help you. I suggested that you keep in touch with me or get out of Kazakhstan. Can you see the problems you’re causing?’
‘I’m not sure I introduced the problems here.’
‘Can we sit down?’
We took a booth. It was dark, and Cherenkov sprawled on the leather seat opposite me. ‘I haven’t found her,’ he said. ‘No one’s found her. People found the body of Ruslan Batur, of course. Tomorrow the story’s going to come out. He was working for a gang: organised crime. That’s what they’ll say. Shot by a Makarov pistol, like the one you’re carrying.’
It was possible, and would raise some interesting questions regarding GL5. More possible was the idea that Cherenkov was trying to disorientate me, force me into a position of desperation.
‘Your prints are there, Elliot. Either you killed him or Joanna Lake killed him.’
‘Or someone else with a Makarov.’
‘I haven’t found Joanna, but I found this.’ Cherenkov took his phone out, swiped down videos and played one. It was a couple having sex. They were in what looked like a hotel room, bed sheets tangled. None of the flamboyance of porn, just two bodies, naked and entwined. The shot was static, low-quality, from a camera that must have been high on the wall. It looked like surveillance. Cherenkov
gave me the phone. It could have been my back. The hair was right. I had to wait another minute before my face was visible. Joanna’s was clear enough.
‘Is it real?’ he said. ‘No.’
‘I don’t want to see this,’ Cherenkov said. ‘Why do I have this?’
‘You tell me.’ I gave the phone back, disguising my mounting desire for violence.
‘I have it because some guy in the GRU got it from a friend in the CIA who got it from Six. One way or another they wanted it to land in Moscow. Why is that? You and Joanna Lake, apparently at a hotel in Pakistan last month. But I know where you were last month, and it wasn’t there.’ He sipped his beer, put his phone away. ‘Can I ask: how does it feel, seeing that?’
‘It looks like a rushed job. Are you working with Vladislav Vishinsky?’
‘No. I work with the consular section of the Russian embassy. I’ve told you this. I wish you’d really talk to me. This is a question we’ve asked ourselves: can you blackmail someone over something they didn’t actually do? Perhaps the question is, can someone feel shame over something they didn’t do? What do you think?’
‘I don’t feel ashamed because someone is trying to play games with me.’
‘Are you ashamed of the things you do while you are someone else?’
‘Shall we cut the philosophy? I thought you wanted to know what’s going on. Perfect Vision.’
That got him attentive. ‘Indeed.’
‘First tell me: is Joanna Lake working for you?’
‘Not for me personally. Whether she’s working for anyone else, I’d like to know.’
‘If she’s in Russia, just tell me and I’ll clear off.’
‘Not as far as we’re aware. What she was working on?’
‘Next time, Sergei.’
‘You’ve got a day, by my reckoning. You know where the Russian embassy is: Aleksandr Barayev Street. You’ll be safe there. We can get you out of here, start making sense of things.’
‘This isn’t the cold war.’
‘You don’t need an ideology to defect, just a life. I was sorry to hear about Hugh Stevenson.’
I grabbed his arm as he got up to leave. A bottle fell from the table and smashed. People turned.
‘What’s happened?’ I said. ‘The question I’d be asking is: what hasn’t happened? Why are you still alive?’
I pulled him back into the booth, got my fingers around his larynx. His protection detail moved in.
‘What’s happened to Hugh Stevenson?’
‘I’m trying to save you,’ he gasped. I released him. He gathered himself together, then walked out, followed by his team.
FORTY
I searched online for news of Stevenson once I was out of the club. A BBC report had been published two hours ago: Body found on heath identified as senior government official.
The body of senior Foreign Office official Hugh Stevenson was spotted by a jogger on Hampstead Heath in the early hours of Tuesday morning. It is believed his wallet and phone were missing. The area, a notorious cruising spot, has seen two violent robberies in the past week. A police spokesperson has said that there are no immediate suggestions of any connection, but individuals are being warned to stay away from the area after dark. A government spokesperson has said that a full investigation is under way and it would be inappropriate to comment at this time.
Cold-blooded bastards. I felt the wind knocked out of me. Ruthlessness like that spelled desperation. I looked around, and the absence of any visible company seemed threatening in itself. The question I’d be asking is: why are you still alive? Then the absence filled with guilt. I saw Stevenson in the library, where I’d first met him, flapping the pages of a newspaper as if in endless irritation. Over a long career, there were only two other individuals for whose death I felt directly responsible, but they happened in the course of authorised operations; I could offload some of the guilt. Not here.
Tom Marsh had tried calling twice in the last hour. I went to a public phone box, exhaling with relief when he answered.
‘You’re okay?’
‘Just.’
‘When did you last speak to him?’
‘I spoke to him the afternoon before he was killed.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He asked if I’d had any email contact with Joanna – he was interested in an IP address.’
‘Which IP address?’
Marsh gave it. It was the IP address for KS internet café, Kiber Sports: Joanna’s last known location.
‘That’s an internet café over here.’
‘Well, Hugh seemed to think there was more information we could get out of it. Asked about hacking in, whether I thought you had.’
‘Whether I had?’
‘Yes.’
‘You think he didn’t trust me?’
‘He was trying to establish what was going on. Listen, Hugh was killed less than a couple of hours after speaking to me, not at night like the papers are saying. I spoke to his partner, Sunil. He said Hugh had a taxi booked to go somewhere.’
‘Where?’
‘Cording House, St James’s Street.’
I could picture St James’s Street: grey-stoned Georgian blocks between Piccadilly and Pall Mall. According to Marsh, Cording House was currently the headquarters of a company called Talon.
‘It does defence technology – research and development. Used to be part of the government’s Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. Still comes up as List X.’
I’d heard of Talon. It was one of several companies created in the early 2000s, when the government privatised its defence research. List X contractors were those approved to handle classified governmental material, with sufficient in-house security of their own. Which made sense if they used to be a governmental department and were still supplying tech to the UK military.
‘Any idea who he was going to visit?’
‘No. Apparently he knew someone with information. Someone he trusted.’
By the time I got back to the hotel, they’d finished searching the place and departed. I found two listening devices and dismantled them. I went up to the top floor of the hotel and brought up a number listed for Talon Inc. But I had no idea what I’d say to whoever answered. A company like that would be stuffed with individuals close to government and intelligence. Hugh could know any number of them.
I called Stefan. He had checked into the St Regis Hotel, next to Astana airport. The political situation had rendered flights scarce but he was well positioned to grab one at any sign of trouble.
‘We need more on the internet café she used,’ I said. ‘It’s her last known location. She was in there a while. I want to know what she did on that computer aside from contacting me. The search history was wiped but I reckon they might be monitored by the owners, in which case there will be records on the central system. Their security cameras don’t work, if that’s any help.’
‘I can take a look.’
I searched for more information on Stevenson’s death. There was nothing online. A few stories speculating on his intelligence service connections had vanished.
Meanwhile, overnight, a lot of accounts had appeared making anti-Chinese comments. About two hundred of them, mostly in Russia, some in Kazakhstan. Aliya was on a Sinophobic jag of her own: Chinese companies buying up Kazakh land, Chinese men stealing Kazakh women, Chinese dams diverting water from Kazakh lakes. Who was steering her? Vishinsky? Russia using residual Kazakh prejudice against the Chinese to ensure their own grip on the region wasn’t supplanted?
She linked to aerial shots of prison camps in Xinjiang, supposedly housing thousands of ethnic Kazakhs. There was an interview with a man in Almaty.
My wife went to China in 2016 and hasn’t returned. A year and eight months have passed since then and we have had no word from her. We’ve just recently found out that she’s in a re-education camp. I’m begging our government, our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to return the mother of my children. We’re living in a
kind of hell at the moment.
I switched the laptop off, lay back on the bed and saw Stevenson walking towards the lamplight and the pond. I felt the darkness returning. The only way of staying sane in this job was to remain detached. Other people’s tragedies defeated that or rendered it psychopathic. The stupid game, Joanna called intelligence work. You involve people, telling yourself it’s under control, draw them in.
I could still feel Aliya’s kiss. I sat up again, opened the laptop and went back into her phone, planning to wipe all traces of myself. I would take a look first, though, after the effort of gaining access. Lord, let me be pure, but not yet. I began with text messages and WhatsApp. Friends, social occasions, advice to one girlfriend about a break-up, plans for a holiday. Eighty-one entries in the address book, fifteen landlines, sixteen addresses outside Astana, none overseas. In images: a crowd around a table in a restaurant, a young Kazakh woman with a baby. Aliya’s parents and grandmother. I activated the camera. It was dark, the phone face down on a surface. I reversed directions, selfie-mode, got a blade of ceiling fan. I kept the visuals open in the corner of the screen, put headphones on and activated the microphone. Listened to what sounded like crockery being set down, then her parents’ voices.
Seventeen anodyne videos. I watched through them all: someone’s baby, a friend’s birthday party, a 360-degree view of mountains. No sex. It was all so generic I started to wonder again if she was real.
I checked the sent file. A lot of people didn’t realise it stored sent images even when the original had been deleted. I looked through until I got to a view that made me stop.
The Houses of Parliament.
Aliya stood in Parliament Square, Big Ben behind her, smiling and saluting.
23rd April last year.
Similar photos beside the Thames, in a London park, Chinatown. A view from a hotel window across the London skyline. Then one inside the hotel.
A Shadow Intelligence Page 27