Stalin's Final Sting

by Andrew Turpin

  “Hassani’s a clever man,” Severinov went on. “He was wasted, stuck in those tiny villages farming and tending goats, and he realized that eventually. He got into telecoms and works now for the mobile phone companies as an engineering manager. He’s still well connected. Maybe he can help me out again, after all these years.”

  Severinov downed his second vodka. “And I’ve got a new mole too. Very new.”

  Vasily looked surprised. “Really?”

  “I can’t talk about that one,” Severinov said. “Other than to say she is very much higher up the tree than Hassani.”

  “She?”

  “Yes, she.”

  Severinov wasn’t going to give any more details. His mole, in the Afghanistan energy ministry, was an important source of critical information for the bid for the Afghan oil and gas assets, and he wasn’t going to put his relationship with her at risk.

  “Interesting. Well, I’m keen,” Vasily said. “I haven’t had a lot of action recently, so tell me when I can get started. We’ll need to decide whether we take the low-key approach, where I just handle this myself alongside you, or bring in the others.”

  Vasily often worked as part of a team of six, all ex-Spetsnaz, who had carried out a lot of freelance operations together over the years.

  “I think we’ll start with just you. We can think about bringing some or all the others in if needed. And we need to start immediately. I’ve got Putin threatening me with an SVR vacation if I fail.”

  Wednesday, May 29, 2013

  Kabul

  Haroon Rashid, known to Islamabad-based CIA officers of 1988 vintage only by the code name MILLPOND, was one of the best operators Johnson had ever worked with. He had provided the CIA with a stream of important ISI inside information about Russian military activities inside Afghanistan.

  To have survived more than four decades in the boiling political cook pot of the ISI, through nights of mass backstabbings and betrayals, and to have served two masters through a good chunk of that time, spoke volumes for both his slickness on the street and his professionalism, not to mention his ability to deal with stress.

  The Pakistani, who had retired from the ISI three years earlier at the age of sixty-four, had refused to meet Johnson in any café, restaurant, or hotel in Kabul, believing them all likely to be under surveillance. Instead he came to the villa Johnson and Jayne were using, arriving after taking a two-hour surveillance detection route.

  “Joe, I’m black, as you used to say in the Agency,” Haroon said as his opening gambit, indicating with a wave of a hand behind him that he had no tail. “But two hours. I can’t do that at my age. It’s killed me. I’ve been through every shop and down every alleyway this side of the airport.”

  Johnson laughed. “Old habits, eh?” He briefly embraced his old working partner.

  The thin grin hadn’t changed in two and a half decades, although the hair was now pale gray, bordering on white, as was the thin mustache, and the lines on his face had deepened into brown ravines. His twig-like physique was also the same. Johnson felt he was constantly in danger of snapping in half.

  As Johnson poured some chai, Haroon scrutinized him, then Jayne in turn with his shotgun-barrel black eyes. “So, what are you here in Kabul for, then?” he asked. “Not a holiday, I assume.”

  “No, not exactly.” Johnson told him briefly about the ICC consultancy contract and then outlined the proposal that Frank Rice had put on the table.

  Haroon raised his eyebrows. “Who’s the oligarch?”

  “You might remember him. Yuri Severinov. Now one of Putin’s puppets.”

  Haroon fell back in his chair, eyeballing Johnson as he did so. “Severinov? That bastard. Well, at least I can tell you about him properly now.” He grinned at Jayne. “Sorry, I’m using your English swear words.”

  “What do you mean, you can tell me properly?” Johnson said, ignoring the attempt at a joke. “I know Severinov organized the raids on Hani and Jalalabad that nearly killed me. Is there more to it?”

  “Yes, there’s more.”

  “Go on,” Johnson said.

  Haroon wrinkled his face as he recalled the details. “Severinov was working against the mujahideen I put you in touch with, Javed, and against others in the K-G Pass. It was Severinov who was organizing all the Hind gunship attacks on the Afghan villages, the huge massacres. I would have told you at the time but couldn’t.”

  This is getting interesting, Johnson thought. “He was coordinating all that shit?” he asked.

  “Yes. The Soviet bombings. Genocide, you could call it, in those poor villages.”

  During the Soviet occupation, the Hinds ran amok among villages all over Afghanistan, terrorizing the inhabitants with their cannons and machine guns, forcing those inhabitants still alive to flee into Pakistan and beyond.

  “Why couldn’t you tell me?” Johnson asked.

  “We were trying to recruit him.”

  Johnson raised his eyebrows. “Now you tell me. I should have known.”

  “It was actually one of my bosses who was trying. I knew it wouldn’t work; I had a gut feeling he was too much the patriotic Russian, and I was right.”

  Johnson gave a wry smile. “If you couldn’t recruit him, you should have buried him.”

  “If I’d had my way, we would have,” Haroon said.

  There was a short silence. “And Javed. Did you ever find out what happened to him?” Johnson asked.

  “He got out of Pul-e-Charkhi. I discovered that many months later, long after you had left Islamabad.”

  “He escaped?”

  “The muj rocketed the prison and got quite a few prisoners out, including Javed. I heard there was a big cover-up and that the prison authorities told the Russians the missing prisoners had been killed.”

  “Interesting. And then what?”

  Haroon sipped his chai. “I heard Javed went back to his village, Wazrar, but after that, I don’t know. He cut off contact with me. He likely thought I was behind the leak to the Russians that trapped him in Jalalabad—and nearly trapped you. Which I wasn’t.”

  “I know,” Johnson said. “I’m convinced it was Robert Watson who leaked it to the KGB. But we had no proof.”

  After fleeing the Jalalabad meeting, Johnson, Vic, and an Afghan guide were pursued by a gunman. Johnson caught a bullet on the top of his right ear, leaving him with a lifelong scar. After that, they had ended up in a gun battle in an abandoned warehouse. Johnson shot the gunman dead—he turned out to be Leonid Rostov, one of the KGB’s top intelligence officers in Afghanistan.

  The trio had fled back through a mountain gorge over the border to Pakistan, using a combination of mules and pickup trucks. But there was an ensuing diplomatic row over Rostov’s death—not least because Pakistan’s president, General Zia, had expressly forbidden CIA officers from operating in Afghanistan or having links with mujahideen, insisting it all be carried out through the ISI. This, coupled with Johnson’s affair with Jayne, gave Watson the excuse he needed to orchestrate his dismissal from the CIA later that year.

  “We at the ISI all thought Watson was corrupt,” Haroon said.

  “Yes. What happened to him last year confirmed it.”

  “I heard,” Haroon said.

  Watson had proved to be one of the most crooked long-term CIA operators in living memory. It had emerged during Johnson’s investigation the previous year into a Yugoslav war criminal that Watson had for years been skimming off large sums of money by coordinating under-the-counter arms sales from Croatia to Syrian rebels. He had also profited immensely from the import of Iranian arms into Bosnia during the early 1990s. After the revelations, Watson had fled DC, abandoning his CIA job and his house in Virginia, and had not been heard of since. The Agency managed to keep news coverage of the incident to a minimum as they launched a massive manhunt, but the trail had gone cold quite quickly. Watson—known to most of his colleagues as Watto—might have been corrupt, but his tradecraft was impeccable.

&nbs
p; “Seeing Watson in prison is still at the top of my wish list,” Johnson said. “But for now, we’ve got more immediate work to do.”

  Jayne leaned forward. “Speaking of which, Haroon, are you still in touch with your network, your sources who were plugged into Russia and the KGB?” she asked.

  “I try to be. We meet up fairly often, so yes. Why?”

  “Maybe you could help us out here,” Jayne said. “You could perhaps try to get your contacts to check out Severinov.”

  The Pakistani nodded. “It is possible. I will make inquiries. Some people in my network are still well connected in Moscow.”

  They talked for another hour or so. Haroon told them how for the latter five years of his working life he had given up his covert duties for the CIA after his wife had pointed out that she would like to enjoy having him at home during his retirement rather than see him in the visiting room of a prison in Rawalpindi.

  He also declined the usual offer to highly valuable CIA agents of a retirement property in a secure location of his choosing. Instead, he preferred to stay in his modest villa in a suburb of Islamabad, only a short distance from his beloved Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium.

  But he did have a bank account in the Cayman Islands that was now stuffed full of US dollars to reflect the work he had done.

  Haroon then had to leave for a meeting with another old agent of his. He was planning to stay in Kabul for several days and to catch up with a few other contacts before returning to Islamabad, but he and Johnson agreed to stay in touch and meet again.

  The ISI veteran had taken one step out the door of the villa when he suddenly turned around. “I was just thinking.”

  “What?” Johnson asked.

  “About you never having properly nailed Watson. It was a pity you weren’t able to keep that photo of Javed’s from Jalalabad,” Haroon said. “That would have buried him properly. Remember it?”

  Johnson exhaled. “Don’t remind me. Dynamite.” Retirement definitely hadn’t dulled the Pakistani’s memory.

  In Jalalabad, Johnson had learned from Javed that Watson appeared to have been privately selling Stinger missiles to some other mujahideen leaders. Indeed, Javed and his colleague Baz had shown Johnson a photograph of Watson and another man handing Stingers over to some rebel fighters. The picture had even pinpointed the location: next to a bridge identifiable by carved wooden eagles mounted at each end, several kilometers into Afghanistan on a mountain route from Pakistan. Johnson recognized the bridge because it was on the same route that he and Vic had taken en route to Jalalabad.

  Unfortunately Javed had not allowed Johnson to keep the photo. He thus had no proof of Watson’s illegal dealings—it would have been his word against Watson’s, and in that conflict there would have been only one winner.

  The more recent revelations about Watson’s illegal activities in the former Yugoslavia had solidified Johnson’s conviction about his arms trading in Afghanistan.

  “Maybe you should try to track down Javed?” Haroon said. He put his hands on his hips and looked Johnson squarely in the eye.

  Is he challenging me? “I’ve thought about it occasionally over the years,” Johnson said. “I just never had the time.”

  “But now you do have the time. Don’t you?” With that, Haroon turned and left.

  Chapter Five

  Wednesday, May 29, 2013

  Kabul

  The tall red propane gas cylinder rolled off the back of the truck and smashed onto the dusty sidewalk, breaking a paving slab and sending fragments of cement flying into the air. Javed Hasrat and his friend Baz, both standing no more than a meter away, jumped back just in time to avoid it.

  Javed’s first thought was that the thing might explode. He skirted around the device, which now lay on its side next to a rusting wheelbarrow full of bananas and oranges that a street seller was peddling to passersby.

  The bearded truck driver, standing on the back of his vehicle, waved an apologetic hand at Javed.

  “Stupid son of a donkey,” Javed said, turning to point an accusing finger at the driver.

  Seconds later he was forced to sidestep again between two stalls offering fake watches and jewelry as a moped headed straight toward him, seemingly out of control.

  Just as they returned to the sidewalk with its jagged, uneven concrete slab surface, Javed shook his head at two young beggar boys who ran up to him holding out their hands, as they did almost every day. It was all fairly typical of his routine stroll down the road to fetch his favorite bread, yogurt, and eggs.

  Javed and Baz continued for another twenty meters along Qala-e-Fatullah Road, past a row of dilapidated small shops selling cigarettes, crockery, and cooking utensils. Then they turned right down a side street, Street Nine.

  There were two properties that Javed was using in Kabul. One was a villa on Street Ten in the Taimani area that he had rented since his return to the city in 2005. This was the address he gave to his employers at the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum and for any other official purpose. It was listed under his alternative name, Kushan Mangal, which he used for work purposes as a security measure, given the level of hostility among the Taliban, Russians, and others toward mujahideen, past and present.

  The second property was a house on neighboring Street Nine that had belonged to his brother Mohinder until his death two years earlier and where Javed was spending most of his time. He wanted to keep the two separate for several reasons, including that he didn’t want any unexpected visits from government officials to Street Nine. Anyway, his intention was to sell his brother’s property once his work in Kabul came to an end.

  As had become his habit on the way back to either property, particularly the one on Street Nine, Javed checked carefully that he wasn’t being followed. He paused and lit a cigarette as he stood under a tree, offering one to Baz, who also lit up. While doing so, Javed had a good look up and down the street in both directions. He had retained the paranoia from growing up in a country dominated by fear of intelligence service surveillance and had learned countersurveillance techniques during his time in the mujahideen.

  Street Nine was far quieter than the hustle and chaos of Qala-e-Fatullah Road. The road had been remade recently, transforming it from its previous potholed condition. A few new trees had been planted along the curbs, and several of the high walls that separated the villas and apartments from the street had been painted white. Most properties were residential, with a few small businesses alongside them, including a medical clinic, a restaurant, and a dentist. It was quiet and anonymous, which was the way Javed liked it.

  Eventually, satisfied that nobody was following, he led the way to a flat-roofed house painted in a terra-cotta color and set back from the sidewalk. It had a curved ornate wooden balcony that ran around the outside of the property at the upper-floor level and a matching barrier on the flat roof to create an outdoor roof patio.

  There was a wall, three meters high, that ran across the full width of the property, with a metal pedestrian gate built into it, also three meters high, next to the house, and a matching vehicle gate to the right.

  “Let’s get the coffee on and talk business,” Javed said. “We need to decide quickly what we’re going to do after what happened yesterday.”

  It was the first time he had voiced anything approaching criticism of Baz, who had been cursing himself since the double miss with his shoulder-fired RPG launcher on the Kabul-Nangarhar highway the previous day.

  Javed led the way through the pedestrian gate and the heavy front door, which he closed behind them as they entered. He turned the key and fastened two large brass bolts.

  In the driveway was parked a black Toyota Hilux pickup that had formerly belonged to his brother, who had run a carpentry business prior to his death. At the back of the pickup, his brother had installed a false bed made from marine plywood, creating a cavity that was designed to conceal his tools from thieves. However, Javed had recently put the cavity to another use: it was perfect for ferryi
ng RPGs around Kabul without detection. Once covered with tarpaulins, the base, which was covered with old cement dust, spilled oil, sand, and other detritus, was almost undetectable, barring the closest of inspections.

  The two men continued into the kitchen, where Javed placed his purchases on the counter and turned to face Baz.

  “I said twenty-five years ago that I would get him eventually and have my revenge. And I will. What happened was unfortunate. Normally there would have been a lot more traffic, we know that, and he would have been going more slowly. It wouldn’t have been a problem. It was bad luck. Don’t blame yourself.”

  “We’ll try again,” Baz said. “But what do we use next time? If we want to guarantee catching him in traffic, that means doing it in the city, where there’s more security forces. It’s risky.”

  “I agree,” Javed said. “But what’s the alternative? I’ve thought it through carefully—I would love, really love, to get up close and make the bastard suffer so I could see it in his eyes. But that would be even more risky. And anyway, we know we’re not going to get near to him, given his security. I don’t have a sniper rifle, and I wouldn’t be good with it anyway. Neither would you. So the only other option is—”

  “Stingers,” Baz interrupted.

  “Stingers? No,” Javed said. “I was going to suggest some kind of car bomb.”

  “Why not Stingers? He’s got his own private aircraft. We know that now. We could just take it down. It’s not going to be a case of killing hundreds of people; it would just be his private jet. You could easily get Mahmood to tell you when Severinov’s plane is coming in.”

  Mahmood Marwat, who had a senior role in Afghanistan’s air traffic control, was a former mujahideen colleague of both Javed and Baz from the 1980s.