A Shadow Intelligence

by Oliver Harris

  The woman heated a samovar. I felt that code of hospitality, lost in the developed world, with no knowledge of what it might mean to be dependent on strangers. I would never forget the men and women who had invited me into their homes and offered tea: in Aleppo, Afrin, Shatoi. It was the code of the sea, an obligation to help vessels in distress, and an Islamic tradition, a religion of the desert; the knowledge that the absence of hospitality was death.

  ‘The weather is changing,’ she warned as the tea heated. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Pavlodar,’ I said.

  ‘Not tonight,’ she said.

  She asked where I was from, what on earth I was doing here, and I gave my story. The girls poured the tea, watching me openly.

  ‘Hello,’ one said in English. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m very well. How are you?’

  They laughed. ‘What is your name?’ the other said.

  ‘Toby. What is yours?’

  I didn’t get an answer.

  ‘They are learning English,’ the mother explained. She brought out what I thought might be an exercise book but was a pamphlet from Saracen Oil and Gas Exploration in English, Russian and Kazakh. Investing in Communities. There were pictures of Kazakh engineers in protective eyewear, fields spewing fire, the management school in Astana.

  The girls read some words out loud, then looked up at me smiling.

  ‘Who gave you this?’ I asked.

  She passed a hand through one of her daughters’ hair, mimed cutting it. ‘The men who came.’

  ‘People who cut her hair?’

  ‘Just a little.’

  ‘A sample?’

  ‘Yes.’

  What were Saracen doing passing through here, running tests? Light was fading. I finished my tea, checked the map again. I tried to give them some money as I left. The woman refused, then shyly took it.

  ‘You are crazy. You should not go further.’

  The girls cleared the cups away without taking their eyes off me. I said goodbye, they waved and I saw that both had an extra finger on each hand. It jutted out, slender and perfectly formed, like a second stalk beside the little finger.

  They giggled again. I smiled. I walked past the rusting scrap and the old sodium chlorate barrels.

  Half a mile outside the village, signs appeared on either side: Agriculture banned.

  Desert secrets. Sodium chlorate was used in the mining of uranium. North-eastern Kazakhstan was used for an atomic-bomb programme for forty years. They were still testing bombs as the Berlin Wall came down. Moscow men would make a trip to watch the mushroom clouds. Locals had been exposed deliberately as guinea pigs. The steppe was a laboratory, riddled with unfissioned plutonium.

  Trees appeared ahead: a dark canopy of Scots pine on emaciated-looking trunks. But just inside the woodland, the road had been blocked. Square slabs of wood lay across it, painted white with signs nailed into them: Danger. No entry.

  The signs looked new. I got out of the car, listened, checked for footprints, empty bottles, cigarettes. Then I checked for sensors, cameras, landmines.

  The blocks were heavy, but I managed to work a solid branch beneath them and use it as a lever to roll each one a couple of times. That was enough to squeeze the car through. I stopped on the other side, got out and rolled them back, flattened the snow where they’d been moved.

  Trees closed in, the spectral white trunks of aspen and birch among the pine. Then they opened out and I glimpsed a small dead lake. A decrepit jetty reached into mud. I checked the map: nothing for 120 miles. Then I cleared the trees and saw the outskirts of a small town.

  FORTY-THREE

  There was only one road in and it went past the concrete ruins of a guards’ post: a booth with broken windows, struts in the ground beside it where a barrier would have rested. Every piece of metal that could be lifted had been stripped from the place. There had been a fence once. The roof of the booth itself had been prised off.

  Two slender, red and white striped factory chimneys rose up a mile out. Closer than them were three apartment blocks, hinged into shallow V shapes, pocked with hundreds of dark windows.

  It had been a closed town, one of those the Soviets considered too sensitive to have people moving in and out of freely. Abandoned for a couple of decades by the looks of it. Which made the fresh tracks of a vehicle with deep tread and 10-inch-thick wheels seem curious.

  The blocks came into focus as I drove in, windows smashed, faded murals flaked from the end walls: a woman with arms aloft before a globe; two miners, one with Slavic features, one Kazakh. Silver water pipes snaked above the ground. The ice that ran down from them formed a low, opalescent curtain, waist high. It was minus 3, but the wind straight off the steppe took another 10 degrees off. I was worried about the car. I’d seen them stop functioning at higher temperatures than this and had no idea what coolant or anti-freeze was in use, if any. Without transport I had a lot of snow and ghosts for company.

  I drove further in, slowly. Two red-brick buildings the size of churches had collapsed into themselves, filled with piles of their own bricks. Trees grew above and through the buildings. The water pipes wound between them, scattering lagging across the ground.

  In the centre was a town square. I got out of the car, pulling my scarf tight, sealing myself into my jacket. Walked past a town hall, a school with cracked plasterwork the same colour as the snow, into a park with a playground and a sculpture: a sphere of blue and white oxidised copper beside a bearded man in a suit. I cleaned the plaque at his feet. Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov. Nuclear physicist.

  I laid a gloved hand on a roundabout and it turned, smoother than I’d expected. Every blank window seemed to watch me. I wondered how far I was from another living human.

  You reached the factories before the mine: two roofless chemical plants, stripped like carcasses. One brown-bricked factory more intact. Squares of late sun decorated the floor inside like glowing fire pits. Fixings remained where the machines had been. Nests filled the corners, black pellet-like droppings across the floor from bats. Turbines and gangways had been left to rot. There was an office in the corner with a jacket hanging on a peg, rusted circuit boards from a computer on the floor.

  Beyond the factories, indentations preserved the direction of a narrow-gauge track running towards the mine. I returned to my car. It started. I had no idea where I’d get to beyond the factory, but I wanted to find out. I followed the traces of the old track until the town disappeared behind me. Then a warning sign appeared, this one bright and startling, placed on a gate in the road in the past few weeks: Danger. Private Property. KazMunaiGaz.

  It was getting dark, the white disc of sun sinking. Clouds moved fast, as if getting out of the way of the approaching night. I entered woods again, my petrol light came on. I refilled from the canister. The trees blocked the rising wind at least. I needed headlights now but was reluctant to use them. Then my phone lit up: radio frequencies ahead. Military radios.

  I stopped, unwound the window and listened, then reversed slowly into the trees, positioning the car so that passing headlights wouldn’t illuminate its reflectors. It was bitterly cold once out of the car. I could make out faint light ahead: pervasive, artificial, paling the sky above the trees. I set my phone to pick up radio activity, pocketed the knife and tucked the gun into the back of my waistband. Whatever lay ahead, it connected to Joanna’s visit here, and her subsequent disappearance.

  The road felt conspicuous. I continued deeper into the woods until I was out of sight, but close enough to the road that I didn’t lose it entirely. I could hear vehicles half a mile ahead. Forty miles from the Russian border, I estimated. The signals pattern on my phone showed layers of radios. Then the trees were interrupted by a chain-link fence and I heard Russian voices.

  I crouched, then reluctantly flattened myself on the ground. Torch beams came closer, snow crunching between boots. There were five of them, bulky with black combat gear – the pouched tactical vests of special
forces, assault rifles with mounted night sights. No insignia that I could make out. Vehicles had Kazakh plates. Kit was carefully generic. But these weren’t local farmers.

  The steps stopped. My fingers were already throbbing agonisingly with the cold, my body starting to shake. I needed to move but the noise would reach them. I needed the cover of some other sounds. None came. Two of them spoke a language that wasn’t Russian. It took me a second to place it as Serbian. That was unexpected. I was considering a run for it when there was a crackle from their radios; they adjusted their kit and walked on.

  I waited a moment, then eased into a low crouch, trying to still my shivering and stop my hands from going numb. They’d wandered away from the site. I moved towards it, following the fence to a gate with another KMG warning sign but no guards.

  It was another fifteen minutes stumbling through trees before the gradient afforded a view. Floodlights lit a flattened square of compacted mud half a mile across, cleared for a drill pad. Bright yellow diggers looked small beside it. Security guards patrolled with sniffer dogs. To the east was a pit large enough to bury a five-storey building. Pipes and cables waited to be laid, stacked beside two holding tanks bearing the Saracen logo. Around the edges, unlit, you could see the ruins of the old mine: a mountain of grey waste, the rusting towers of the extraction plant. A new road ran from the site to a complex of temporary buildings, port-acabins with gleaming black GL5 patrol vehicles beside them.

  The level of development suggested there was something special about this site. I didn’t have time or warmth to search for it now. I headed back towards my car, hit a problem.

  Five men stood around it, the Russians and Serbs, quiet now, scanning the surroundings with their weapons up as one of them radioed details. The boot was open, more men approaching through the trees. I stepped back.

  Their own patrol vehicle was parked a few metres away, closer to me than it was to them: a light cargo truck, mud-coloured canvas over its flat bed. No one had stayed with it. I took a few steps closer to the truck, saw keys in the ignition. One of the men looked up. I climbed into the vehicle as he raised his gun. They all turned in my direction. I prayed that it accelerated fast.

  ‘Hey!’

  I turned the key, slid low. Bullets pinged off the front engine. I began to drive, straight at them at first, which caused some temporary disruption and blinded them with the headlights, then I dragged down the oversized steering wheel and circled away. Shifting gears was a fight, but the horsepower felt good.

  Once on the road I floored the accelerator. I took turnings when I could, lost but glad to put several miles between myself and the Russians. Twenty minutes later I was still so focused on threats behind that I didn’t see the Toyota Cruiser speeding towards me, less than a second from a head-on collision.

  FORTY-FOUR

  They reacted slower, which meant I was the one who steered off-road. I crashed into trees, wrenching the wheel, managing to avoid one trunk, slamming into the next. I almost broke my ribs on the steering wheel, came to a stop. The wheels were stuck.

  Three balaclava’d men appeared in the headlights, Kalashnikovs pointed at my windscreen. I raised my hands. One of the men tore the door open and I was dragged out, forced to the ground, pockets emptied. My face pressed down into the snow as I tried to imagine various ways this could unfold and kept arriving at the likelihood of death. It felt too soon, rushed, and with this came rising panic, and then a faint, accompanying awareness that I needed to keep control of myself if I was going to have any chance of surviving.

  I was lifted to my feet. Four men now, two in camo fatigues, two in a mixture of nondescript khaki and civilian clothes. I could see narrower Kazakh eyes behind the balaclavas of the khaki men. The lead camo fatigues wore grey gloves and sounded Syrian. He was the jumpiest, the one I was most cautious about, scarf pulled up to his eyes, shoulders hunched, combat jittery.

  He turned and called: Hna. Another man appeared from the trees, unmasked. Hna. Here.

  Arabic.

  The new arrival had broad, blunt Slavic features, blue-eyed, a fair beard beneath his chin encrusted with ice, but moustache shaved. All of which said Chechnya. The sharp, unmistakable scent of unwashed fighters cut through the cold. No alcohol on their breath. Weapons held professionally, kept angled down when they spoke to one another, movements controlled, pupils undilated. No visible radios: an underground crew, guerrilla-smart. I took a proper look at the weaponry. Kalashnikovs and AR-15 assault rifles. I couldn’t tell if they were the Chinese copies or the real thing.

  The Chechen barked orders in Arabic without taking his eyes off me: ‘Check the vehicle, check the boot, check the road.’ The choppy, guttural language sounded startling among the snow. When he spoke to me he used Russian, which was understandable as I’d just been hauled out of a Russian military vehicle.

  ‘Get down.’

  I was forced back to my knees, the barrel of the AK ground against my temple, told to put my hands on my head. The flash eliminator at the end of the barrel dug into my forehead. Was this the Islamic Movement of Kazakhstan? It wasn’t unusual to come across men who didn’t know who they were fighting for that week. Deals were made several ranks higher, sometimes countries away. My phone was torn out of my pocket then thrust at me. I entered the password, watched out of the corner of my eye as he tried to scroll through with gloves on. I tried to decide which cover story was least likely to get me shot immediately. One of the Kazakhs was going through the truck. He spoke in faltering Arabic to the Syrian. There was a debate along the lines of: should we kill him or take him? It was my lucky day: my hands were bound behind my back with duct tape, and I was marched to their vehicle, a blue Toyota Cruiser with roof rack, where I was offered the boot.

  The only other time I’d ridden in a boot it had been voluntary, and got me across the border with Kashmir. That boot had been larger and more recently hoovered. I rested my head on a coil of old rope and believed I was going to freeze to death before we got anywhere. When the car started I jammed my feet against the metalwork to stop myself being bounced too hard. Kept thinking through cover, feeling out any remote possibility of surviving the night.

  After thirty minutes we pulled over ruts. I was hauled out and a bag came down over my head. We entered somewhere heated, which felt like a reprieve in itself. The bag came off.

  We were in a brick-walled farmhouse. I was put in a side room with a concrete floor and a small barred window. Twenty minutes later another vehicle stopped outside and my cell door opened. I looked up to see a man in his fifties or sixties, hard-looking, Syrian or possibly Iraqi. He had a nickel-plated Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. His hands were gnarled.

  While the rest of the men explained finding me, I pondered this multinational get-together. Chechens got around; in Syria, at least one vicious rebel crew – Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar – was Chechen-led. You found Chechen Islamists wherever there was the opportunity to fight Russians – especially since Russia had gained the upper hand at home. And Russia had pushed plenty of its own Chechens into Syria to fight for Assad. Same war, different country. Many of the Islamists joined IS.

  It made some sense that they’d head north again.

  This territory was home to several criminal gangs, some with jihadist connections. I wondered if they were involved. I could see how Russians encroaching on Kazakhstan would be a provocation to them. I could see how jihadists encroaching on Kazakhstan would be a provocation to the Russians. Could see, with sickening clarity, why they’d cut my throat with nonchalance.

  A rifle butt slammed into my face. I thought it might have broken a cheekbone and experimentally moved my jaw and checked my sight. I was intact for now. I was made to squat with my back against the wall, thighs parallel with the ground, while the boss questioned me: Name, commanders. Which unit, which battalion? Why no uniform?

  ‘You are Russian.’

  ‘English.’

  ‘The jeep—’

  ‘I stole i
t.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  In training you’re told to ride out the first few hours, when the situation’s new and everything’s terrifying. But then things become known and it’s not always uplifting.

  ‘Where is the man you took?’

  They seemed to think I was involved in the abduction of one of their men. I wondered who was. I had nothing for them. I’d stumbled into a war zone, it seemed, but was playing catch-up. We kept going around in circles. Why are you here? What are your plans?

  After a while the questions stopped. A new length of rope was looped around my hands and tied to a bolt in the wall. A guard was left to watch over me, one of the youngest of the men. I hadn’t been fed or watered, which meant they were probably intending to kill me. They wouldn’t spend a second night here, and I was a travel liability.

  An hour passed. I stretched and relaxed as far as my restrictions allowed, recited poems in my head to keep alert and conscious. I listened to the voices of my captors and let them carry me to various points of the globe. I was back in the Caucasus Mountains, two years into my career; a dream job, among the tribes, up in the clouds and jagged white peaks, told to establish a picture of gang operations. I was shown how to chew certain flowers against altitude sickness. I watched my shadow cast up into the morning mist half a mile in height. My official brief involved establishing hierarchies, but these people didn’t do hierarchy, they did blood feuds. That was their life. And the only way to step beyond the endless, innumerable tangle of feuds was to establish yourself as abrek. Russians translated the word as ‘bandit’, which missed the sense utterly. The abrek were outcasts, gathered high in the hills, forbidden to work the fields or engage in business. They survived alone, feared but respected. These were the men I was trying to reach. I outlined the anthropological phenomenon of the abrek in a detailed report sent to the Central Asia desk in London, for which I was informed that I was not at Cambridge any more. It elicited a smile, even now.