A Shadow Intelligence

by Oliver Harris

  No answer from Stefan when I called him. Marius in the Evotec office answered, told me Stefan had messaged to say he was booked on a flight a few hours ago. I hoped he was well on his way, enjoying the complimentary G&Ts.

  ‘One other thing,’ Marius said. ‘You asked for alerts on “Catalyst”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He sent us an email tonight: said he’d intercepted someone or something about an issue regarding Catalyst attending a party tonight. Does that mean anything?’

  ‘He said Catalyst was going to be at a party?’

  ‘Someone said that. Stefan picked it up.’

  ‘Galina’s birthday party?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Stefan couldn’t get hold of you, but wanted us to pass the message on.’

  ‘I need the exact message.’

  Marius read it out: ‘If you speak to EK, tell him that Catalyst will be at party tomorrow. People are concerned re issues arising. More details to follow. He’ll understand.’

  I wished that was more than half-true. Marius believed the information had come from a phone or computer Stefan had gained access to, but he’d refused to give details over an open line.

  ‘Any idea when he lands?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any suggestion what the “issues” are?’

  ‘That’s all we’ve got.’

  ‘Okay. Would you tell him to contact me as soon as he’s on his phone?’

  ‘Will do.’

  The party had gained a new edge of significance. I watched the clip of myself and the Central Asian man again, to ensure I had his features memorised, as if I hadn’t been dreaming them each night for a week.

  I shaved. I went to the Kerulen mall and bought a new shirt and tie. On my way back I told the taxi to stop early and walked to the river. It was getting dark but there were lights on the ice, music playing. People sledged down the sides, others skated in the centre. I wondered how they knew when the ice began getting too thin; who told them it was time to stop.

  The front drive was full of cars when I got to the Marriott, the hotel lobby thick with bodyguards. I went through three security checks to get to the lifts, then had to share them with half of Gazprom’s board.

  The 38th floor was packed. Suits and gowns, pyramids of champagne coupes, everything – everyone’s consciousness – inconspicuously centred on the President, who stood at the back of the room talking to the Chinese Foreign Secretary. Banners declared that Saracen Oil and Gas Exploration wished Galina Nazarbayev a happy birthday. There was a Kazakh flag and, beneath it, the Saracen logo. I squeezed among diplomats and spies, looking for my Triumph companion, equally alert for Cherenkov, and for representatives of the British embassy. I found Lucy Piper looking wired. She needed help with Carter’s speech.

  ‘Something Kazakh, a quote or something.’

  ‘Abai’s their national poet. He’s quotable.’ I pointed her towards some lines. She scribbled the name and walked off, already Googling. I took a drink as it floated past.

  The optimism on display was impressive, as if a deal could be willed into existence through sheer decadence. The banners, the waterfall of champagne down the stacked coupe glasses, the moelleux au chocolat birthday cake. How much love can go unrequited? Saracen were putting a determined face on things. Every situation changes.

  All the intelligence services had gathered, checking the President for IV drip scars, tremoring, slurs in his speech; noting who he spoke to, who he avoided, checking the demeanour of CEOs, engineers, financiers and go-betweens, men and women whose lives had become devoted to the carbon molecules of buried plankton, the energy from three-hundred-million-year-old sunlight.

  It was all going smoothly, I thought. Galina sang two songs by Céline Dion with a world-class pianist who had apparently insisted on ten grand for every hour spent on Kazakh soil; Piper introduced me to journalists and I told them Kazakhstan was a peaceful country at heart – ‘We have homegrown terrorists in the UK, you know, and nowhere’s going to become a liberal democracy overnight.’ I met rich people and heard myself saying: ‘It’s a family-run Swiss school but it follows the British National Curriculum so it’s probably your most British international school.’ Guests swayed with bonhomie. A lot of the newcomers had been drinking hard since the flight over. Fireworks exploded outside, unannounced. A Tajik warlord flinched. So did the Deputy Defence Minister and a security officer from the British embassy. Then everyone loosened their ties and began to do shots.

  I met Anastasia two drinks into the evening. She came by way of Bryant, who lunged out of the crowd, tie loose.

  ‘Toby!’

  He had two women with him this time.

  ‘Toby, can I introduce you to Olga and … ’ He looked to the other woman for help. She wore a dress of gold sequins.

  ‘Anastasia.’

  I noticed her Moscow accent, and her eyes. There you are, they seemed to say, which was how you seduced someone. Her blonde hair was cut into a bob that framed clear features. She had the assured good looks of escorts and honeytraps. I don’t know where Bryant went. Anastasia and I ended up on a sofa.

  ‘So, an Englishman in Astana. You are either rich or here to get rich.’

  ‘I am here to see history being made,’ I said. ‘To broaden my mind.’

  My companion looked sceptical. She touched a hand to her necklace as if it might protect her. Her cocktail was down to slush. She smelled of Miss Dior and was being watched by a man at the bar wearing a concealed handgun.

  ‘People from England come here for business.’

  ‘This is a young place,’ I said. ‘There are not many of those. Once or twice in a lifetime, if you’re lucky, you get to see somewhere being born rather than dying.’ I gestured at the room. ‘This is the future.’

  ‘The future’s drunk,’ she said.

  As if on cue, the UK’s Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy roared with laughter, followed a few seconds later by some unsteady Chinese pipeline engineers and a man with a greasy smile who did PR for the Kazakh government.

  ‘And you?’ I said to my companion. ‘What brings you here?’

  ‘I am a translator.’

  ‘A noble career.’ If there were Russians trying to seduce me, I wanted to know. If she was innocently attached to Russians, with potential access, I was equally curious. I leaned closer. ‘I’m glad I met you,’ I said. ‘I was slightly dreading this whole thing. I have a suspicion that you’re one of the more interesting people in the room.’

  She studied my face, then leaned back into the sofa. I considered my next move. The party was going to seed. Sushi congealed on platters, and condensation from the ice buckets had made a soggy carpet out of brochures about renewables. A raucous foursome from KazMunaiGaz, the state energy company, were raising toasts by the bar. They knocked into the gunman, oblivious, but he didn’t react. The holster was strapped crossways under the man’s jacket; he was overweight and kept his jacket buttoned, which meant it was tight on his back when he turned. He wore the gun on his right hip, making him sit twisted on his stool. The holster suggested a licence, someone official or well connected, as did getting past the scanners downstairs. He used the mirror behind the bar to watch the crowd. The local offices of Chevron and Merrill Lynch had turned out in force, as had representatives from the French and German embassies.

  Robert Carter made his speech, sweating hard, coloured lights reflecting off his face.

  ‘In the words of Abai, your excellent national poet, Kazakhstan should be a convivial meeting place of Russia, the West and Islam. Ambitious, perhaps but, as I believe he also said, “A clever man can set fire to the snow.”’

  Polite laughter rippled. The President said something to the UK Minister. Galina beamed and would have clapped if she hadn’t been holding a glass of champagne. Carter smiled gratefully.

  There was more applause as he finished, then a toast to Galina, the birthday girl. I watched the Russians to see if they toasted and th
ey did so unreservedly, downing the Veuve Clicquot. The President himself moved away from the stage and everyone went back to their previous conversations.

  Bryant was talking to the Chinese. The Head of Extraction for the Italian oil firm Agip was nearby, sharing something on his phone with the man who ran the central bank. But no one was conspicuously hustling. The mood was carefree. Outside, snow thickened in the air, to the extent that I wondered if we were all going to become trapped, and how that would pan out. But for now all were drunk and we could stop pretending that power was anything other than ridiculous good fortune. Almost 11 p.m. and there was the lightheaded hilarity of getting away with it.

  Anastasia checked a silver iPhone then dropped it in her bag. She transferred her gaze to the room. Bryant caught my eye and winked. The man at the bar saw this, checked Bryant, turned back to the mirror. He had tan lines from wraparound sunglasses.

  None of this was how I’d manage an assassination.

  ‘I bet, when you were studying, you did not want to interpret for these people,’ I said. ‘You wanted to translate literature.’

  Anastasia glanced across the crowd. ‘Yes.’ She conceded this in a tone of inevitability. ‘But there is no security in that. Here, that is what people care about. My family need me to earn money.’

  ‘A country only truly develops when people stop caring about their family,’ I said. ‘That is what developed means.’

  She raised an eyebrow, considering this.

  ‘Come with me,’ I said. I took her hand and helped her up, leading her to the windows. ‘I also like languages,’ I said. ‘Did you know, the Germans call this Lichtarchitektur: the architecture of light.’

  Glass towers shimmered. A block away, on the side of the KazInvest offices, a pale-skinned woman twenty floors high repeatedly lifted a Samsung 7 to her ear and smiled. Her face lit the canvas roofs of three troop carriers parked beside the building. I lifted my phone and took a photo of the skyline.

  ‘And one of us,’ I said.

  She stiffened. ‘I hate photos.’

  ‘Come on, something to make my friends in London jealous.’ Anastasia rolled her eyes, but flicked her hair away from her face compliantly and leaned in. ‘So many photographs,’ she muttered.

  In the bathroom, I locked a stall and put the image through facial recognition. Four separate names came up, three nationalities. I thought of the message Stefan had picked up: Catalyst will be at the party. It was time to get out of here.

  I passed Galina in the corridor on my way back, Lucy Piper adjusting the zip on the back of her blue Versace cocktail dress.

  ‘Toby, have you met Galina?’ Piper said. ‘Galina, this is one of my stars: Toby Bell. A true English gentleman.’

  ‘I’ve heard about you,’ Galina said. She reached towards me. I moved forward so we could shake hands without the dress being torn from Piper’s hands.

  ‘This is an honour,’ I said. ‘I thought your singing was amazing.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s been a wonderful event. Am I right that you were involved in arranging it?’

  ‘Hardly. But I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Your father is looking well.’

  She smiled, as confident in her father’s immortality as the rest of the nation. ‘He is well. He is well, thank God.’

  ‘And next year, perhaps, we will have the honour of seeing you on television again.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You must do it. You’re such a natural. It would bring a lot of joy to the people of this country.’

  She beamed. Bryant appeared from the main room. Galina sashayed past him. Piper gave a cursory nod at the American and leaned towards me, speaking low.

  ‘Some of us are going back to the Palace. Moving now. Come with us, she’d like that.’

  It was an electrifying invitation. Piper disappeared back towards her entourage and Bryant was left grinning at me.

  ‘Hear about the jet?’ he said. ‘What are they going to get her for Christmas, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘I’m not sure they celebrate Christmas.’ I began moving past Bryant towards the main room, trying to calculate how to get my coat from the cloakroom while avoiding my honeytrap.

  ‘I’m getting us some shots. You’ll have one. Or are you busy?’

  ‘I’m busy.’

  Bryant kept grinning. On the far side of the main bar I could see Anastasia waiting, toe tapping the air; a woman conscious of sitting alone in a room of drunken men. A woman with a job to do. She exchanged a glance with the gunman, who got to his feet, adjusting his jacket. Bryant headed to the bar. I cut back through the crowd, saw Anastasia moving in my direction.

  ‘Toby.’

  ‘Anastasia, I’m so sorry. I’ve got to run.’ I slipped her a business card. ‘Dinner? Can you forgive me? Have you been to La Primavera?’

  I could see Galina’s entourage moving. They were going down to the convoy. It looked like the President was already downstairs. Piper came up to me. ‘Ride with us. Galina says it’s all good.’

  Anastasia had a hand on my arm. ‘You are going with them?’

  ‘I’ve made a promise. I really am sorry.’ I kept moving. At some point, presidential security would kick in, I thought. Or she could come to the palace, kill me there. That would be chic. The entourage had gone by the time I made it to the corridor. The lifts were blocked by a crowd of oil execs. I went for the stairs.

  Someone followed. I heard the door slam, footsteps behind me. Then a man’s voice, English.

  ‘You forgot this.’ It was the gunman. He held up a wallet. It wasn’t mine. He sounded well spoken, which wasn’t the comfort you’d expect. I thought through the various options for incapacitating him: eyes, throat, knees. Then it became irrelevant.

  The explosion shook the building. I found myself on the floor beside the wall, in the dark, thinking: that sound, the one that gets you in the stomach. A car bomb. Thinking: I’m alive. The President …

  I got to my feet. There was plaster over my skin. I continued down the stairs, checking myself for injury. I was okay. I’d been lucky.

  I’d been saved.

  Screaming began on the seventh floor. Windows had blown in from the fifth floor down. Then I was stepping over debris, over a car door. A woman’s bare arm lay on the third-floor carpet, severed at the shoulder, bracelet still on.

  Dust filled the reception. The heat of the explosion lingered. There was no front wall. The central spine of the revolving doors had become implanted in the wall. A car lay on its roof beside a stump of the lobby’s fountain. One security guard sat on the floor, back against the reception desk, gun out, no right leg beneath the knee.

  A few dazed, dust-caked figures wandered in the snow outside. Thick smoke plumed from two burning cars, turning the snow black. I made out a 20-foot crater in the driveway’s tarmac, halfway between the hotel’s entrance and the gates to the street.

  The security staff who had survived were coming to their senses, trying to clear the area. More often than not there was a second bomb. Sometimes the second bomber waited for the emergency services to arrive. I couldn’t see any unattended vehicles. The first sirens were approaching.

  Saved. I turned back, thinking I might see my guardian angels emerging from the dust. There was a woman in shredded evening wear, blood down her chin, mouth working silently. I gave her my coat before continuing into the storm.

  FORTY-NINE

  I stumbled away from the scene through a cloud of black flakes, gripped by a sense that I should have known. I heard the screams of two women. The first emergency vehicles tore into the hotel grounds, almost hitting me.

  A minute later I was still walking, starting to shiver with early-stage hypothermia. I flagged a car beside Lovers’ Park. The driver was agitated, seeking information rather than a fare. The sirens were endless now; a troop carrier tore past us. I could still smell synthetic materials burning, and see the smoke plume in the light of adverts.

  ‘What happened?’

&
nbsp; ‘A bomb.’

  ‘I must go home. I can’t drive you.’

  ‘I just need to get to somewhere where I can be indoors.’

  He took me to a Ramstor all-night supermarket. I found a coat on the rails and put it on and crouched in a corner, warming my hands. My phone rang. I couldn’t move my fingers. Eventually I managed to answer the phone by putting it on the ground and using my knuckles. It was Piper in a state of high anxiety.

  ‘You’re alive. Jesus Christ. Where are you?’

  ‘A supermarket. What do you know?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m in a car somewhere around the Northern Lights complex. We’ve been stopped at a roadblock. We’re trying to get to the Saracen offices. It’s just … It’s going to be a holding situation. Until we know how this is going to play out.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to hold.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’ll try to pin this on us,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Who’s alive?’

  ‘The President’s critical. He’s at City Hospital Number One. Galina’s also at the hospital. She might be okay.’

  ‘This is fucked. How did they drive up to the hotel?’

  The line went. I checked social media for IMK, Twitter feeds for Al-Nusra, ISIS in Central Asia, Hizb ut-Tahrir: no one claiming credit for the attack.

  The art of an assassination is controlling what happens next. That’s not the sole prerogative of those responsible; they’ve just got a head start. On Russian media they were cutting between footage from Astana and a story about a GL5 maritime patrol vessel caught illegally patrolling in the Caspian: In the last five or six hours a Russian coast guard patrol rammed and water-cannoned a boat belonging to a UK-registered private security company – a 183-foot vessel with a crew of 14 and a helicopter pad. The contractors had been arrested; they showed men in GL5 uniform sitting on the ground, hands on their heads like drug runners.

  All domestic flights were grounded. The first ‘convenient for Saracen’ posts had appeared less than twenty minutes after the attack. Oil was up five points, FTSE closing just as Saracen started to lift.