by Stephen Moss
The second had been more direct, and from an even more surprising source. The British Army Liaison had dropped by, a man commonly suspected to be a member of MI6 by pretty much everyone at the embassy. The fact that this was such a widespread assumption may have seemed incongruous, considering Colonel Huxley’s supposedly clandestine position, but despite Hollywood and Pinewood’s efforts to convince us otherwise, it turned out that in reality most spies were well known by both sides. Well, if not known, then suspected at the very least. But as long as they were never caught in the act, it remained a play of wits, a carefully constructed game played where the players were careful to stay within the boundaries of international diplomacy.
If they stepped into touch or were caught offside it was another matter, but as long as they remained subtle, their very prominence made them untouchable without tangible proof, and the same applied to their counterparts on the other side of whatever net they were tasked with peering over.
And so, over a seemingly innocent cup of tea in the officer’s mess, a seemingly innocuous Colonel Huxley had reinforced the ambassador’s warning, and elaborated a little further on Britain’s involvement in the smuggling of Quavoce Mantil, Major Toranssen, Captain Falster, and a young girl named Banu.
Knowing that the bomber downed over Iran only a few days beforehand had been identified as American, it was suspected, correctly as it turned out, that all US assets in neighboring nations were being watched closely by agents of Iran’s intelligence service.
And so, as a way of aiding the foursome without alerting the Iranians, the British had been involved. In fact, the colonel would have gone himself if he hadn’t known that he was also under surveillance by Iranian agents, though for a thoroughly different reason.
With the incident behind them, and Malcolm having been proven reliable by force of circumstance, Malcolm had since become one of the few people on the base that the colonel could somewhat trust. And so, in the intervening few months, Malcolm and Colonel Huxley had spent many an evening at the bar in the officer’s mess.
Thus, Malcolm was not as surprised as he should have been when the colonel interrupted his review of cheap English pornography with a phone call.
“Malcolm, it’s Nick, where are you?” the tone was curt, and Malcolm sat up, glancing around his small room, even though he knew he was alone.
“Err, in the barracks. Why, what’s …” Malcolm began, but he was cut off by a hurried response from Colonel Huxley.
“Meet me at my office in civvies, five minutes.” And without further ado, the line went dead.
Malcolm stood. Something in the colonel’s tone screamed alarm bells in his head. He was already in his evening clothes: jeans and a grey T-shirt. Now he quickly shouldered his holster and grabbed his standard issue P226, removing its trigger lock and checking its magazine before clipping the gun into the holster and pulling on a thick jacket. He grabbed his Consular ID and ran from the room.
He was at Nick’s door within two minutes of being called. He knocked and then went to open it, but it was locked. A moment and a click later, and it opened. Nick wordlessly waved Malcolm into his office. The room was a small windowless affair, in the middle of the building. Malcolm’s attention was taken by the host of equipment that had materialized on Nick’s desk: guns, radios, IDs.
Nick locked the door behind them, and then switched on his stereo. Malcolm then noticed his friend was holding a small, silenced Walther P99 Compact, certainly not standard issue, and he became even more concerned.
Nick stepped up to Malcolm, the music masking his words as he spoke into Malcolm’s ear, “Keep your voice low.” said Nick, rather redundantly, “Something is happening, and I am afraid we are going to need to get out of here, right now.”
Malcolm tensed, but Nick went on, “I’ve just gotten word that Kazakhstan has signed an accord with Moscow and joined what is apparently being called the New People’s Federation.”
Malcolm’s stomach knotted. Kazakhstan was by far the largest of the former soviet satellite states in the region. That it had voluntarily joined the burgeoning totalitarian republic that had once been Russia was next to impossible. As impossible as the former Russian president inexplicably committing suicide during the military coup three months ago.
“Jesus, Nick, what do you think will happen here?” said Malcolm.
“It gets worse.” said Nick, “We have unconfirmed reports that Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have done the same thing.”
Malcolm’s heart started racing, “How unconfirmed?”
“Well, we haven’t confirmed that nessy is a load of bollocks, either, but we are pretty confident. Listen, I have been ordered to fetch a specific person, see to it that they are secure, and get them off base. Normally I would probably have tapped you for sec detail anyway, but it turns out you are the person I am supposed to be fetching. So it’s just going to be you and me.”
“Me?” said Malcolm. He would have been more than a little surprised if Nick had tapped him to help with getting some sensitive personage to safety. Honored, but surprised. That he should be the one that needed saving was not surprising so much as disturbing.
“Apparently your involvement with the incident at the border a few months ago may make you ‘of interest’ to the Russians, and I have been informed that, if possible, I am to get you out. I was going to disguise you and smuggle you out with the ambassador’s immediate family, but they have already been refused access to the airport. The Turkmen government says they want to ‘escort’ them to safety, so I think we are going to have to go off reservation.”
Malcolm looked into the eyes of the other man, seeking an answer to a question that was nagging at him, “And if you can’t get me out?”
“Let’s not get into what my orders are then, but it won’t come to that.” Nick’s frankness was unsettling, and yet somehow it also negated the threat as well. Malcolm knew that a bullet in the back of the head was the likely option if he was indeed ‘of interest’ and could not be kept out of enemy hands. And if the Russians wanted him, and Malcolm could think of no reason why Nick would make that up, then a bullet in the head would probably be preferable to what they would do to him if they got hold of him.
That still left the obvious question of why the fuck he was so important, and that Malcolm couldn’t begin to guess. Nick sensed his colleague’s growing confusion as fertile soil for panic and spoke firmly.
“Look, Malcolm, I am going to do everything I can to get you out of here. And I can do quite a few things, trust me. I make you this promise: if we get out of this, I will tell you everything I know about why you might be of interest, which isn’t much but it may answer some questions. Unfortunately, knowing that now would only make you even more valuable to them, so I am afraid, for now, you are just going to have to trust me.”
He looked at the man, “Malcolm, you can trust me. I’m with you all the way on this. OK?”
He looked a question at Malcolm, ‘are we good?’
But it was not as if he was offering the man many options, and without much of a choice Malcolm shrugged and nodded slightly, prompting Nick to go on.
In truth, Malcolm’s only crime was having seen the face of the Agent formerly known as Shahim Al Khazar, and two of his accomplices. Ayala couldn’t be sure, but it was possible Mikhail Kovalenko and Pei Leong-Lam still didn’t know for certain that Shahim Al Khazar was alive, let alone fighting for the other side. If, or rather when the Russians arrived in Ashgabat to complete the job they had started earlier that evening in Kazakhstan, they would rifle the embassy, its computers, and any supporting documentation from the Turkmen governmental agencies, and would eventually find records of how the three Americans sighted briefly in Iran had escaped its grasp.
Knowing discovery of Malcolm’s role might be imminent, Ayala had initiated efforts to extract the soldier who had been Shahim’s unwitting liaison back into the Western world, or, if necessary, have the leak stemmed in other ways.
�
��OK, first off, let’s get your jacket off.” said Nick.
Malcolm resisted mostly out of surprise, as Nick began manhandling him out of his clothing.
“They’re going to want you alive,” said Nick, “so our only advantage is that if they find out who you are then they probably won’t shoot to kill.”
Nick thrust a suit of body armor at Nick, not of the quality now being employed by Ayala’s private army, but its Kevlar plates would absorb much of the punch from a body shot, and the woven ballistic fabric that linked them would resist even the most ardent blade. This was followed by a specialized holster, into which a second silenced Walther P99 Compact fitted smoothly.
“If we have to kill anyone, it will be subtly.” said Nick, as Malcolm arranged himself in his new armor.
Five minutes later the two men were walking off the base, past the guard, a code word slipped to the sergeant at the gate making him enter two erroneous names in the logbook as they passed.
And so it went.
As swiftly as the former USSR had faltered and collapsed, the New People’s Federation spread its wings once again and enveloped the southern block nations that had freed themselves from its grasp only thirty years beforehand. Many had questioned how Russia could maintain its hotly contested occupation of Pakistan from so far away, even with the tacit approval and permission of the intervening states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. But now that approval was tacit no more.
In a flash, the governments of those three massive nations had signed accords binding them to the new Russian Union. The announcements came almost as one, late in the evening. After their respective governing bodies had supposedly convened for the evening, they were taken into ‘protective custody’ and their congressed voices were co-opted to give blessing to the sham. The halfhearted military interventions that the local armed forces were able to muster were quickly squashed, with blistering speed and efficiency.
Meanwhile, Nick and Malcolm walked to a nearby parking lot and retrieved a car Nick kept there for covert purposes, its plates registered to an unsuspecting farmer outside the city. As they drove out into the night, a force was already descending onto the city, a dark force. They came without warning, and took up carefully coordinated positions.
By morning it was over, and Russia once again owned every patch of land from the Caspian Sea in the west to the border with China in the east, and from border with Iran in the south all the way north to the Arctic. Only a brief strip of mountainous Afghanistan kept them from opening up a clean route all the way to the Indian Ocean. For now.
Chapter 27: Private Investigation
“How, in the name of all that is holy, could this happen again?” Neal’s voice was quiet and harsh, smoldering like his mood. The table in his office was surrounded by a hasty gathering of his inner circle. General Milton sat to his left, briskly dressed in fatigues, his hair slicked down against his head with the sweat of an interrupted dawn run. Admiral Terence Cochrane sat to the general’s left, a stern expression sitting like a mask on his face. Quavoce also sat at the table, his exterior calm, as he listened to the conversation and simultaneously communed about the news’ implications with John Hunt, via subspace, far away at the Research Group’s operations hub.
The last member of the impromptu committee was Admiral Hamilton, clearly uncomfortable with this new turn, and shifting slightly in his seat as though sitting on the hot leather of a car left too long in the sun. Neal’s eyes lifted from the table and came to rest on the American admiral. After scrutinizing him a moment, his stare flicked to Admiral Cochrane.
“Admiral Cochrane,” he said, “what is the news from London? Have there been any further communications?”
The admiral shook his head, straightening his back before meeting Neal’s intense gaze. “Just the system-wide communication to intensify our standing guard at all international facilities. Informally, I believe our forces in Afghanistan have been moved to battle ready status, and we are in talks with our allies in Eastern Europe about what actions we will and will not support if the expansion continues.”
“That is something, I suppose,” said Neal. “Have there been any official announcements from Kiev or Minsk?”
The question was directed at the table in general, and after a moment Quavoce responded. He and John Hunt were monitoring the internet via their private relays, each deployed on the base.
“Not yet, Neal,” Quavoce said. “The Indians have joined the EU and the United States in openly condemning the news and calling for the release of the ‘democratically elected leaders’ of the affected states. Meanwhile, reports from Eastern Europe confirm significant troop mobilizations in Estonia and Lithuania to join those already reported in Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, and Belarus. As yet, none of those nations are saying anything openly, probably to avoid aggravating the Russians. But they are clearly bracing for worse to come.”
Admiral Cochrane added, “I can confirm that our ambassadors in most of those nations have been summoned to meet with each nation’s leaders, which would be a step in the right direction if we weren’t seeing signs the Russian ambassadors were as well. They are apparently mimicking the party line about ‘voluntary federation,’ so no surprises there.”
Neal nodded, and returned his gaze to the table in front of him, “… no surprises …” he said in a tone lathered with sarcasm.
He waited. They were still missing one person. The person who had called him to let him know the news in the first place, and as he paused she eventually arrived, slipping furtively into the room, and closing the door gently behind her.
Neal was facing her, but those that had their backs to Ayala were surprised when Neal suddenly greeted her.
“Welcome. I trust you have been plumbing your channels for further information?”
The room turned to Ayala while she pulled a seat up to the table between Quavoce and Admiral Cochrane. She placed a laptop on the table, and then surveyed the group, her eyes pausing momentarily to meet Barrett’s. They said simply: hello, darling, sorry for ignoring you, but this is business. He recognized the expression all too well.
“The information my colleagues had for me is … disquieting,” she said, deliberately. “Not so much in its content, but in its lack thereof. As with the invasion of Pakistan four months ago, we were taken very much by surprise here. And, as with the coup in Russia that started all this madness, our assets in all of the countries in question have gone silent since the incident began.”
Nods of begrudged acceptance bobbed a couple of times around the table, though not without frustration. They knew things were not right in Russia, but in the last few months they had made slow inroads, begun to open tiny gaps in the Steel Curtain. Progress had been slow, goodness knows. Glacially so, but it had been progress nonetheless, and it had given the illusion of a weakening of whatever fist gripped both Russia’s and China’s political throats.
But it was fast becoming apparent that it had only been an illusion, and Neal could not help but feel they were being played. He was not alone, and for those others in the room that had witnessed the work of the Mobiliei Agents firsthand, it was even more disquieting to imagine just how bad things might actually be in Moscow and Beijing.
“Is there any news, Ayala?” asked Neal, not really expecting a positive reply.
“Not from the new NATO assets in Russia, no, not that sheds any real light on how they pulled this off. But I did manage to reach one asset onsite in Ashgabat and warn him, before the curtain came down. Given his advanced warning, I can only hope that he may have slipped passed their net, and might be seeking evac at some point in the not too distant future. I’ll not know more for a few days, but if he avoids standard routes, as I have ordered him to do, he may be able to survive, at least for a little while.
“And if he was able to avoid the initial blitz, he should have a friend of yours with him, Mr. Mantil. A Mr. Granger, from Turkmenistan.”
The two glanced at each other, and Quavoce no
dded, while a flash of mild surprise flowed between him and John Hunt. John was as aware of the events in Iran and Turkmenistan as Quavoce was, literally. They had gotten in the habit of sharing their memories in their entirety, to allow closer cooperation. As they both recalled those memories, they both thought of the man who had met Quavoce at the border after his bloody flight across the skies and sands of the Middle East.
Oblivious to this discourse, Neal took a moment to absorb Ayala’s comments, and then spoke, “Well, my friends, it seems like we have no choice anymore. This is too much. We have waited long enough to become involved here. Too long. We have waited for our sponsors to negotiate access for Ayala and her team’s to hunt the two remaining Agents, but I simply cannot see that happening anytime soon, and we cannot afford to delay further.
“I think it is time we intervene in efforts to find out what the hell is going on in Russia.”
Admiral Cochrane was the first to speak up, but Admiral Hamilton was just as alarmed by Neal’s statement, and only respect for the British officer held his tongue as the other man started to speak, “Dr. Danielson, goodness knows I appreciate and share your frustration, but to order unilateral action here is, I am afraid, not an option you have. I can tell you that Britain, along with her allies in Europe and America …” he glanced at Admiral Hamilton who nodded once, firmly, “is using every asset at its disposal to move the diplomatic needle with the Russian and Chinese governments.
“To say the issue is delicate would be a gross understatement, and we simply cannot have outside parties taking unsanctioned action.”
Neal looked at the Admiral Cochrane, aware Admiral Hamilton was also staring at him, waiting to see whether the British admiral’s indignation would be enough to dissuade him, or if he would need to add his own authority to it as well.
