Man on Ice

by Humphrey Hawksley

  ‘What’s Moscow saying?’ asked Faulks.

  ‘Karl’s in Washington,’ said Carrol, mentioning the British Embassy dinner. ‘I dropped him at the embassy last night. He didn’t seem to have a clue what Lagutov’s up to.’

  ‘Based on Ukraine 2014, if it’s not resolved in twenty-four hours, we can anticipate five hundred billion dollars in capital flight,’ said Ash.

  Carrol sat down, thinking about how any military operation with this level of international impact would need parallel financial planning, which pointed to an outside financial guarantor. ‘Lagutov would have factored in capital flight and debt servicing,’ he said. ‘So who’s underwriting this?’

  A momentary silence fell among them. Lucy Faulks immediately tapped a message into her phone while she took a chair next to Carrol. Most of the huge table was left empty. Carrol’s personal assistant came in to take notes. She sat on one of the upright chairs at the far end of the room. The meeting was being recorded.

  ‘This may end up being nothing,’ began Carrol. ‘When Russia went into Georgia back in 2008, the economic reaction was muted. That was pretty much repeated in Ukraine in 2014. On the other hand, this time, because America is directly involved, today may turn out to be the longest day of our careers.’

  ‘God forbid,’ said Ash a veteran of thirty-six-hour days during the 2007 financial crisis.

  ‘We have two known unknowns,’ continued Carrol. ‘What is Russia doing and what does it want to achieve? There is nothing new about securing power at home by testing limits abroad. What is new is the decision to pick a fight directly with us.’ He stopped on a signal from Faulks.

  ‘Sorry, Roy,’ she said. ‘There have been large movements of money through Shanghai, Hong Kong, Istanbul, and London, all with a connection to Russia.’

  Carrol looked pensive. If true, it meant Moscow was shoring up its capital. And if Karl Opokin was really being kept out of the loop, it pointed to a sophisticated plan. ‘We must be certain we can withstand anything that this day throws at us,’ he said. ‘The second unknown is the inauguration. The President has very few hours left in office. He will try to defuse the situation, but as soon as President-elect Holland steps in it will become more fluid and possibly more confrontational. In the White House last night, Holland wanted us to storm the island of Little Diomede, even if it involved direct combat with Russian troops. That would put pressure on the dollar and the markets. The President has asked Holland to come up with—’

  Those were Carrol’s last words. A bomb exploded under the table. It splintered the thick wood as if it were paper. It blew out all three of the huge windows, tearing down and setting fire to the draped curtains. It shattered the mantelpiece, ripping a hole in the wall, hurling out plaster and propelling marble fragments around the room like shrapnel. The two chandeliers were torn from the ceiling and with dust and debris fell ablaze into the rising inferno.

  No one in the room survived.

  SIXTEEN

  The White House, Washington, DC

  Eyes welling, President Christopher Swain held Stephanie in an embrace. She allowed it for a second – she needed human warmth too – but couldn’t stop her concentration returning to the news screens. The cameras focused on the charred rims of three boardroom windows, gaping holes, burnt shreds of curtain, and blackened patches along the white walls.

  Inside the building two friends had been murdered, just like that. ‘Vaporized’ was the word the newscasters were using. She had known Roy Carrol and Lucy Faulks for a long, long time. Lucy had been funny and supportive during Stephanie’s divorce. She and Carrol were separated by then, but Stephanie could tell she respected him, probably still loved him.

  ‘What’s going on, Steph?’ Swain whispered.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Russia walks into our territory, and half the board of the Federal Reserve is wiped out in a terrorist attack.’ Swain stared stone-faced out of the Oval Office window. ‘I’m heading down to the Situation Room. Are you going to your embassy?’

  ‘I’ll be wherever you want me, Mr President.’ Stephanie hoped formality would prevail over emotion.

  ‘Go to your embassy. Counsel your Prime Minister. I need a strong and unified Europe in the coming hours, its support, its will, its military.’

  Prusak stepped into the room. ‘They’re ready for you downstairs, sir. The President-elect says he needs to be with you. Karl Opokin called from the Russian Embassy with condolences and outright condemnation.’

  ‘The Russian Ambassador?’

  ‘Not yet, sir.’

  ‘Then tell Opokin and all of them to go fuck themselves.’

  Prusak flinched. Swain rarely used bad language or a raised voice. ‘I have the contacts here of the families, sir,’ he said.

  ‘I need the families of the helicopter crew, too,’ said Swain.

  ‘They are included.’

  ‘Put Holland off for half an hour, but we must keep him onside. I’m announcing Tom as the temporary chair of the Fed,’ said Swain referring to the Treasury Secretary, Thomas Grant. ‘What are the markets doing?’

  ‘FTSE and DAX down more than four percent,’ said Prusak. ‘We’re ninety minutes from opening.’

  ‘I suspect there’ll be a brief violent dip, then recovery,’ said Stephanie.

  ‘Exactly. So how does killing the board of the Fed achieve anything?’

  ‘The best way to undermine capitalist democracy is to strike at the heart of its financial system,’ said Stephanie.

  ‘But, a brief dip. Tom moves seamlessly in. No institution crumbles. People keep going to work. Six dead—’

  ‘Eight, sir,’ said Prusak. ‘Roy’s PA was in the room and a staff member was outside the door.’

  ‘Eight is not three thousand and the Twin Towers. I can’t believe Lagutov would have authorized this.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Prusak.

  ‘Me, too,’ said Stephanie. ‘I get the Diomede operation. Lagutov calculates we’re not going to go to war over a place that no one’s heard of. It is so peripheral, so remote, so unimportant, that it’s barely a scratch on the complicated relationship between two nuclear powers.’

  ‘Which reflects in those preliminary opinion polls,’ said Swain.

  ‘So, what happens?’ continued Stephanie. ‘A few hours of macho insults, and an announcement to discuss the border dispute. That, Mr President, you could have wrapped up before leaving office. You set up a committee that sits for twenty years and decides nothing. Lagutov’s victory is that Russian military muscle achieved what diplomacy didn’t and that opens the door for negotiations on a swathe of other things. That would have been possible even with helicopters shot down on both sides. But now, with this attack on the Fed, you can’t give them anything. Whoever did this wants a big, big fight.’

  Prusak looked up from his tablet. ‘The New York Fed says Lucy Faulks was in touch seconds before she died. She wanted to know specifically any movements of money between Russia and China.’

  ‘Were there?’ asked Swain.

  ‘Yes. Large renminbi-denominated transfers through Hong Kong and Shanghai. And the FBI’s confirmed that Roy Carrol gave Opokin a tour of the Eccles Building before coming to the White House. Opokin brought six bodyguards from the Russian Federal Security Service with him. They spent ten minutes in the boardroom. Four are clean. Two may not have been fully vetted.’

  ‘In any international incident of the caliber of the Diomede occupation, the Fed chair will call a crisis meeting,’ said Swain. ‘The Diomede incursion was just after seven last night. Roy called the meeting for seven this morning in time for the nine-thirty opening of the markets here.’

  ‘More in from the FBI,’ said Prusak, reading from his tablet. ‘Initial forensic investigation points to a Russian military issue plastic explosive known as PVV-5A.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean Russia’s responsible,’ said Stephanie.

  ‘Correct. It’s like the AK-47, everyone uses it.’
r />   ‘Was it on a timer?’ said Stephanie.

  ‘They don’t think so. They’re investigating triggers by cellphone within a mile radius.’

  ‘We work on the presumption that the Diomedes and the Fed are linked.’ Swain lifted his jacket off the back of his chair.

  ‘We’ll get you a car,’ Prusak said to Stephanie.

  ‘No,’ said Stephanie. ‘I think it’s better if I can get the Prime Minister back here to the White House.’

  Swain began leading them towards the door, but stopped mid-stride. ‘Are we all thinking the same thing?’

  The three close friends looked at each other, working out why Russia was carrying out a coordinated assault against America. Or were their imaginations running away with them?

  SEVENTEEN

  Little Diomede, Alaska, USA

  Carrie judged the gaunt, skeletal man vomiting bile on the floor of the gymnasium to be about forty. He had the sunken eyes of an addict. His name was Tommy Tulamuk, and she suspected a mix of alcohol and a synthetic marijuana drug, maybe even heroin. He was just back from Teller, a settlement on the Alaskan mainland. He shivered as palpitations passed through him. He had a fever and stared at Carrie confused. Cold turkey was a horrible state for any human being. She would ask the Russians for methadone, or if not that, morphine.

  She turned him over, bending his legs, and laid a plastic sheet under his mouth. ‘Stay here. You’re with friends,’ she said, looking around for the English-speaking Colonel Yumatov. ‘Call me Ruslan,’ he had said after Rake left, oozing charm, but with one of those expressions that could switch between kindness and anger in moments.

  Soon, the medical checks would be finished and then this would be exposed as the hostage situation that it really was. The cover of health care would become thinner and thinner minute by minute. The gymnasium was a cocoon. The only windows were too high to see out of. Twice she had heard jet fighters. There hadn’t been a helicopter for almost an hour. Restlessness was creeping through. But, more than that, over the past few minutes a fresh tension had taken hold among the soldiers and medics.

  In the sand wars, as her colleagues called the Middle East conflicts, she had learned how to read soldiers’ faces. Something bad had happened. A soldier opened the double doors at the end of the gymnasium. Yumatov walked in, talking on the phone. He ended the call and beckoned Carrie to come over.

  ‘We need morphine over there,’ she said, pointing to the man curled up on the floor. ‘He’s on narcotic withdrawal.’

  Yumatov told a paramedic to handle it and looked at Carrie, his expression angry at first, then it became quizzical and confused. ‘What is it, Colonel?’ she asked amicably, smoothing down her smock, pushing hard on the material as she realized it must be something to do with Rake. Had he tried to escape as she had asked? Was he captured or dead?

  ‘Is it Rake?’ she stammered as the thoughts crowded in on her, realizing, too late, that she was using his nickname.

  She could tell because of the softening of Yumatov’s expression. ‘How well do you know him?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s a colleague.’

  ‘Are you lovers?’

  ‘Just tell me if he’s OK.’

  A coldness entered his gaze. ‘Yes and no.’ He turned curtly and walked down the two flights of steps towards the main entrance. Two soldiers took her arms and steered her to follow. She began shaking them off, but their hold was locked. At the school entrance, a dozen troops checked weapons and spoke on radios, tough men about to go out. Off the entrance was the small dining room with three gray steel trestle tables and benches where they had waited with Akna. Sitting on a bench at the middle table was a seven- or eight-year-old boy in a green jacket smeared with dirt from the ice. His eyes were fixed on a school poster about walruses and marine life. He kept still, arms folded, as if in a trance. He had a bruise on his right cheek and a fresh cut on the knuckles of his left hand.

  ‘Do you know him?’ asked Yumatov.

  ‘I don’t. No.’ Carrie started to move forward to treat him. Soldiers pulled her back. The boy’s eyes were like misted glass, hiding God knows what behind.

  ‘He’s traumatized because of what he saw,’ said Yumatov. ‘His name is Timothy. Everyone calls him Timo. We think he’s the brother of the pregnant girl, Akna.’

  Carrie impatiently ripped her arms out of the soldiers’ grip. On a signal from Yumatov, they allowed her. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s happened, Colonel?’ she demanded.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about Captain Ozenna?’

  Carrie bristled. ‘When foreign soldiers mix with civilians you get trouble. You’re smart enough to know that.’

  ‘There’s something you need to see.’ Yumatov turned away towards a stainless-steel counter that separated the dining room from the kitchen, where there was a gas stove and in a corridor beyond that freezers and cupboards. A green canvas tarpaulin was spread over the large workbench. Yumatov peeled it back to show the face of a dead soldier. He looked so young. There was blood in his white blond hair and bruising around his eyes. The nose had been badly fractured and the head, although adjusted, was slightly skewed to one side. It looked like a broken neck.

  ‘His name was Private Boris Syanko, aged eighteen, from a small place called Kiya up on the White Sea. We’ll make him look better before we send the body back to the family.’ A soldier handed Yumatov a small red leather pouch. He pulled out photographs of children, snow, dogs, and finally a portrait of the whole big family, Syanko in the middle. He looked like the youngest. ‘He was a kid,’ Yumatov went on. ‘A conscript. Never wanted to be a soldier. But he turned into one of our most promising. That’s how it often works. I blame myself. I should never have put him with a monster like Ozenna.’

  Carrie took the photograph, looked at it quickly. How could Rake have been responsible for such a brutal murder? A wave of emptiness washed through her. She knew his background as a soldier, knew he could kill. But it was hard to accept that he was behind the death of this boy. She handed the picture back.

  Yumatov’s voice became steel. ‘Your fiancé murdered this young man in cold blood. See the nose. He used a technique of pushing the heel of the hand up against the nose so that splinters from the cartilage embed in the brain. It is cruel and unnecessary. He did that, broke his neck, and threw him down the trash chute.’

  ‘There was another soldier. There were two of them.’ Carrie knew she sounded desperate, the innocent clinging on to a belief that the bad cannot be true.

  ‘Yes. Ozenna stabbed him to death. He shot dead another of my men on guard duty outside.’ He put his hand on Timo’s shoulder. ‘We think he did that in front of this little boy, which is why he is so quiet.’

  Timo didn’t move. He didn’t utter a word. He kept his gaze fixed, a feral look, like a waiting wolf.

  ‘The boy’s distressed,’ said Yumatov. ‘No child should witness what he did. Come. I’ll show you myself.’ He led her through the entrance hall to a small office room at the foot of a flight of stairs. A soldier stepped next to her, carrying her cold-weather gear.

  ‘And take a look at this, Dr Walker,’ said Yumatov. On a wall television, an American news channel showed a blackened building, its windows blown out, police and flashing ambulance lights outside. ‘The chairman of your Central Bank has been assassinated in a terrorist bombing in Washington, DC. Seven others are dead. They’re blaming Russia, saying the chairman of our own Central Bank was visiting the building just hours before.’

  Carrie had seen many bomb-blasted buildings and it took a moment to grasp that she was looking at the center of Washington, DC. She took it in, but managed to show no reaction of horror to Yumatov. ‘Looks like this is getting bigger than both of us, Colonel,’ she said, pulling out the office chair. She sat down to lace up her boots.

  Yumatov took a stool next to her. ‘I don’t know what this killer Rake told you about who he is. But now you’ve seen his work.’

  Carrie finished lacing her bo
ots and put on her jacket. Yumatov muted the television sound, zipped up his jacket, and fastened its belt. He tried again to break Carrie’s resolve. ‘You are right. You and I are very small in all this. Something big is happening and we are part of it and we can’t run away. We must help each other.’

  Carrie didn’t waver. First, she’d faced horror, now his smarmy manner was beginning to piss her off. ‘If you want us to help, Colonel, why don’t you and your soldiers leave this island?’

  ‘You’re smarter than that. Another colonel would take my place and I would be put out to beg on the streets, or shot.’ He pulled his hood over his head and the protective mask over his face. She did the same. ‘Be careful out there. The weather has turned for the worse.’ He glanced back at his men. ‘Bring the boy.’

  The pressure and energy of the wind hit as soon as she stepped outside. Each gust threatened her balance. Yumatov moved to take her arm to steady her. She shook him off. He led them up the walkway. The mist was erratic. One moment the village was moonlit. The next, she could barely see in front of her.

  A soldier’s flashlight lit up a green hut with a sign on the wall that read Alaska Army National Guard. They went inside. Immediately, there was quiet from the weather. Timo came in with a short wiry man in a different type of uniform. The Russian soldiers were in military green. This man was in white and when he took off his mask she saw he was an Eskimo. He spoke gently to Timo. Yumatov snapped on a flashlight which showed two bodies lying uncovered, as if they had just been dragged in.

  ‘The one on the left is Sergeant Matvey Golov,’ he said. ‘Your fiancé murdered him by stabbing him in the neck. Then he stabbed him again through the eye.’ He turned the corpse’s head to show congealed blood around the right eye. ‘The other one is Corporal Adam Razin, shot in the neck.’