The downfall of Angleton’s own career came as a result of a close personal friendship with Kim Philby, who was one of the top men in England’s MI6. Philby was so trusted by the Brits he was rumored to be in line to take over the top job at the organizational counterpart to the CIA. They assigned him to Washington as liaison to the Agency.
Philby and Angleton had many interests in common, and worked closely together on counter intelligence problems. During his assignment, the British finally became suspicious of Philby after providing him with information they knew eventually reached the KGB. When they were on the verge of recalling him to London for questioning he learned of their intent and fled to Moscow. Safely in Russia, they gave him a medal and a pension for his long-term service to their country. Old Philby lived there comfortably and peacefully until he eventually died of alcoholism and old age.
James Jesus was the smartest and most dedicated man Emmett had ever known. If he was unable to uncover a spy under his very nose, what chance was there of finding someone in Washington, let alone Kazakhstan, who was killing his agents?
Scherezade had finished some time ago. Now, Emmett decided, what he needed was thinking music. He replaced Korsakov with Debussy, and the mellow tones of Claire de Lune filled the small office. Always liked Debussy he thought, reaching into his desk for his old meerschaum pipe. Soon foul smelling smoke engulfed his head.
Emmett finally decided there was only one way he could be successful in his search. There was not enough time to study the records of all the possible agents; or rely on random lie detector tests. From what he had learned from reviewing the records the most effective way would be to set a trap. It would have to be in Kazakhstan. The Washington office was far too vast. He would gamble that the leak was in Kazakhstan. But, if you want to set a trap you need something to use for bait. What kind of trap could he set, and what to use as bait?
A polite tapping at his door interrupted his contemplation. “Ah Roger, how are you? I was just thinking about you. Come in. Come in young man. Sit down.” Smiling benignly, Emmett welcomed Roger to his office. “We need to talk about the next step in your career.”
7
The Silk Road
The two 4x4s formed a strange caravan, slowly wending their way along the northern branch of the ancient Silk Road, heading toward the Tekili mining community. The rust colored dust somehow managed to seep through the tightly closed windows, and every other crevice of the relatively new cars. In the back seat of the lead Rover, Charlie gingerly rubbed the back of his neck. He thought he might be getting a headache; not helped at all by the frequent deep ruts in the road’s neglected surface. The rolling steppes of eastern Kazakhstan’s arid moonscape went on endlessly. Charlie had given up cigarettes years ago, but occasionally had a desire to begin again. This was one of them, as time seemed to pass on leaden shoes.
It was still too early for any sense of companionship to develop among them. They were virtual strangers to each other, with different professional and cultural backgrounds. As a result, there was very little banter that might have otherwise served to pass the time more pleasantly.
Charlie shared the back seat with Henry Butts. The accountant stared out the window oddly mesmerized by the endless expanse of nothingness, apparently fixated by the passing landscape. His concentration seemed curious since the passing scene was completely devoid of vegetation, with the occasional exception of a scrubby tree or anemic shrub. He wondered what Henry found so engrossing, staring out the window seemingly lost in thought.
Andre Malott dozed fitfully in the front seat he shared with the driver Sammie Wang; the self-described GBC’s man Thursday. The trip from Santiago to Almaty had worn him out, and the grey haired engineer needed all the rest he could get.
The other Land Rover trailed behind, driven by the red-haired Nadia. Dave Dieter sat beside her, helping to navigate from a dog-eared road map printed years ago by the Russian Government.
Elaina dozed in the back seat, worn out from spending the night with her boyfriend, and welcoming the opportunity to catch up on her sleep. She didn’t care that she was shoe-horned among the suitcases and boxes of groceries for the mine. The hotel, where the group was staying, had been empty for some time. There was no longer any reason for visitors to meet with the mine’s management. The Kazakhstan Government representatives had given-up on their visits that were proving to be an exercise in futility.
The cleaners and cooks operating the hotel had been inactive, and now needed food staples and cleaning materials to accommodate the immediate needs of their new guests. The Bank took responsibility for the per diem covering their representatives lodging and meals, and it wanted to make sure the hotel had enough supplies to tide them over until the local staff could better accommodate their guest’s requirements from nearby markets.
The two Land Rovers had begun the trip together, but Nadia had decided to make a quick detour to make sure the two Persian cats, that condescendingly shared her apartment, were adequately cared for during her absence. Rushing inside, she was relieved to find that the young woman hired to care for her pets had dropped by on her way to school as she promised.
Nadia attempted to catch-up with the others, by driving faster than she should. They passed Panfilov Park, oblivious to the crowd forming outside of Zenkov cathedral. The century old wooden church was one of the few remaining tsarist-era structures in Kazakhstan, and was built entirely without the use of nails. Stalin had been hard on the onion-dome churches of the Soviet Union, converting many of them into warehouses, barns and grain silos.
This church had been more fortunate, and was used as a concert hall during the Soviet period and reasonably well maintained. The Kazakh Government returned it to the Russian Orthodox Church soon after independence, and it became a daily place of gathering by the more devout among the local Russian community.
Nadia concentrated on her driving paying little attention to the long line waiting to gain entrance for the daily services.
East of the Cathedral, increased traffic forced her to crawl past the fierce looking WWII memorial dedicated to the Almaty infantry unit whose men died, outside of Moscow, fighting-off advancing Nazi tanks. Russia had conscripted thousands of Kazakhs and forced them to fight in some of the deadliest battles of the war. Afterwards, they erected the memorial hoping to salve the feelings of the Kazakh descendents.
Once past the Park, Nadia was able to pick-up speed again and soon left the city traffic behind. Eventually, she was able to regain her former position behind the lead Rover. Nadia honked briefly to let them know that she was there.
Sammie Wang tried to pass the time by providing his passengers with information regarding some of the more interesting locations along their route. “Over there,” he waved broadly “is Semipalatinsk. During WW II, old Joe Stalin moved a lot of his Russian factories to Kazakhstan to keep them out of reach of the German army. He set up a series of Gulag labor camps and rounded up thousands of ethnics from all over the USSR. They piled them into hundreds of freight cars, and shipped them out here. Most of the deportees had never done anything subversive, but Stalin was afraid they might, and needed the workers. This way he solved both problems with one massive sweep.
“One of the unlucky bastards was the author Dostoyevsky. You’ve heard of Dostoyevsky haven’t you?” Not waiting for an answer he continued, “The poor old guy spent five years there, and later placed his fictional characters in his book, Crime and Punishment, in one of those damn Gulags.
“It is also the same area where the Russians built a secret town they used as a test-site for their early atomic bombs. Stalin was desperate to catch-up with the West. He gave orders for tests to be carried-out at a rate of 12-15 a year up until they were ended in 1990.” Shaking his head he added, “The poor people still bear the scars. Cancer rates are the highest in the world, and there are a terribly large number of mutations among the people attributed to the tests.”
It didn’t seem as if Sammie cared if an
yone was listening or not. In fact, he appeared to relish his role as local expert.
“Before independence,” he continued, “the Russian economy was so hard-up they tried to turn the area into a tourist location. Maybe a nuclear theme park,” Sammie laughed, turning to his passengers to see if they appreciated his humor. Apparently, they missed the point.
Waking-up, Andre pointed to a group of ramshackle buildings alongside the road. “What’s that up there?” he asked.
“Rest stop,” Sammie announced, suddenly turning the wheel to pull off the road. It was a mistake a driver unfamiliar with the top-heavy configuration of a Land Rover might make, and the vehicle careened dangerously into the small roadside park.
Unexpectedly thrown against the door, Andre exploded with a French curse.
A family of Kazakhs in their native garb already occupied the area. The weather had turned cold and their toddler, bundled in padded trousers and brightly colored jacket, reminded Charlie of the Pillsbury doughboy. Gaining permission from the parents, Andre gave the child a piece of candy as the family began to climb into their dilapidated truck to continue their trip to Almaty.
It was immediately apparent to the travelers why the Kazakh family had been eager to leave. This was not the type of modern facility’s presently dotting America’s US 80. It was more reminiscent of those sparsely scattered stops along Route 66 during the early 1930s. The stench enveloping the two out-houses was overwhelming. They were the Turkish type where you either stand or squat, and even fouler than expected.
While the travelers waited their turn, a dilapidated pick-up truck pulled into the stop, and disgorged a half dozen fierce looking, heavily bearded, Asian men who waved to Sammie. The smell of the facilities, combined with the threatening look of the new arrivals, encouraged the travelers to return to their cars as quickly as possible, eager to put distance between themselves and the rest stop.
Back on the road, Sammie resumed his responsibility as the self-appointed tour director. “Over there,” he nodded in the direction of a new set of rolling brown hills that looked exactly like the others, “is the Baikoner Cosmodrone, which is the headquarters of the Soviet space program. All Russian astronauts landed there, and that’s where much of their research took place. They wanted to put it in an out of the way place where they could keep their activities secure. They figured this was as far out of the way as they could get,” he chuckled. “Now they lease it from the Kazakh Government.”
Rounding a curve, Sammie suddenly slammed on the brakes, simultaneously shooting his arm across Andre’s chest like a caring mother with a small child. Andre exploded with another curse. The other passengers tried to brace themselves to keep from sliding off their seats. The trailing car was able to stop just short of ramming into the Land Rover’s rear bumper.
Inside the car, they all stared in disbelief as a herd of double-hump Bactrian camels casually crossed in front of them, indolently gazing at the foreign interlopers in their modern conveyance. A single camel-herder, on horseback, vainly attempted to hurry the gawking beasts out of the path of the waiting autos.
Sammie and Andre fumed in the front seat, eager to get on their way, while Charlie and Henry watched with curiosity as a circus-type parade, from out of the past, unfolded before them.
It is doubtful if any of the travelers considered how absurd their situation was. Britain’s best iron had just been brought to an abrupt halt to accommodate the passage of an abbreviated caravan that was very much like those traveling the trail centuries before them.
After the last camel finished crossing the road, Sammie irritably jammed his Rover into gear and sped away. The grinning herdsman jauntily waved his fur cap in farewell, happy for any diversion to his routine life.
The sun that seemed to be following them began its daily descent, bringing the temperature along for the ride. The fading light suddenly dissolved in a cloud of red dust, kicked up by the old pickup truck that shared their rest stop earlier in the day. As it sped past, the men bouncing around in the truck’s bed glared at the travelers as if they were unwanted interlopers on their land. In a matter of minutes, the vehicle disappeared up the road.
“There they are again. See that pass through the mountains?” Sammie suddenly pointed to a tiny cloud of dust in the direction of Tien Shans. None of the riders could. Andre, seated beside him, felt obligated to nod in acknowledgment.
“Through that pass is Uremkie the capital Xinjiang Province in China,” Sammie told them. “The name Urumqi means beautiful pasture in English,” he added as further explanation.
“That’s the home of the Uighurs. At one time, during the Soviet period, that road was wide enough for a landing strip. Now the Russians have gone, and the Kazakhs are afraid that the Chinese will swamp this country, so they destroyed it.”
In the backseat, Henry nudged Charlie, not too gently, and whispered, “What, what the hell did he say? Home of whom? Home of the Uggers?”
“No-no not Uggers--Uighurs. It sounds like We-gers, but is spelled U-i-g-h-u-r,” Charlie replied in sotto voice.
Unaware of the conversation behind him, Sammie continued, “It is a province the world ignores. It’s a Muslim area, made up of Turkic people who hate the Chinese, and want their independence. Beijing has recently reinforced its military there to put down the uprisings, and throw the instigators in prison. Everyone knows about Tibet, but no one ever hears about the poor Uighurs.
“Not too long ago there were only a few thousand Chinese in that province. Now they outnumber the Uighurs. Thousands of new Chinese immigrants are shipped in each week, and they are destroying the local culture. The Uighurs hate and fear their Chinese oppressors, and the Kazakhs who see what’s happening are afraid it could happen to them. They have tried to establish a buffer zone between the two countries, but it is a failure,” he added unsympathetically.
“How the hell did a bloke from the land of the Golden Arches know about the Uighurs?” Henry whispered to Charlie, unmindful of Sammie’s portrayal of the plight of the neighboring people.
Charlie laughed at the reference. He was glad to see his companion less depressed than before. “During the early days of the Afghan war, our CIA captured a group of them who were training with al Qaida. They were Muslims who had traveled there to learn how to be terrorists so they could go back and cause problems with the Chinese military controlling their province. We brought them back and put them in Guantanamo.
“The Uighurs never had it so well, but when President Obama was first trying to close down the facility, he thought the easiest prisoners to start with would be them. He miscalculated. No other country would take them, and he was afraid to send them back to China for fear they would be killed.”
“Why did he care?” Henry asked, now more curious than before.
“Well I guess he didn’t want to offend the international community. We have become very sensitive to that lately.”
“So what happened to them? Are they still in Guantanamo?”
“No, not quite. We took four of them and sent them to Bermuda. Bought them a house, and found them a job.”
“You’re pulling my leg,” Henry exclaimed incredulously.
“Honest to God. We sent a couple more to some small island in the Pacific. I wrote my congressman and volunteered for the program, but never got an answer. My wife and I love Bermuda.”
The Brit snickered. “Sounds like the kind of dumb thing we would do back home in Londonstan,”
Unaware of the conversation in the back seat, Sammie continued telling Andre how the Kazakhs had given up trying to guard the pass, and the Uighurs continued to come and go pretty much at will.
Further up the road, the steppes suddenly fell away, revealing a valley surrounding a small town. Trees with a few remaining leafs clinging to their stubby branches partially masked a scattering of small buildings. The bleak structures seemed huddled together for protection with their backs turned toward the surrounding mountains hoping to be shielded from th
e elements. A meager road snaked from the village to a gaping wound in the mountainside that apparently served as the mouth of the mine.
8
Tekeli
By the time the travelers reached Tekeli, the sun was disappearing behind the mountains. Riding through town, Charlie could occasionally catch a glimpse of a face, unknowingly exposed by the lights within, furtively peeking through shabby curtains. Their car passed the barbershop, then the tavern, a village hall, an icehouse, and a lot filled with dilapidated heavy trucks that appeared to be rusting out from lack of use; finally drawing to a stop at the foot of a small hill. “We are here,” Sammie announced unceremoniously.
The tired travelers piled out of the two Land Rovers, and began brushing the dust off each other. It was cold. A bitter wind whipped through the branches of the surrounding trees, stealing their last leaves and scattering them across the ground, partially hiding the path that led to the box-like hotel at the crest of the hill.
The structure reminded Charlie of some of the barracks he had lived in when he was in the military. A light shone dimly in only two of the windows on the second floor. The rest of the building conveyed an unwelcoming darkness.
Death on the Silk Road Page 7
