by Alex Dryden
“Selam,” Anna said and Irek motioned to her to sit on a cushion facing him. With his other hand he irritably waved away the men grouped by the entrance to the tent.
“Selam,” he replied.
Anna watched his expression closely. Irek, the senior man in the community, had fierce dark eyes set deeply in a face that was nut brown and lined in generous gouges of flesh that stretched tightly over high cheekbones. His cropped hair was grizzled and grey and his ears stood out from his head, unnaturally large against the veined and shrunken skull.
It was true, he must be ninety years old, Anna thought. That was what she’d been told in the briefing, although there was no record of his birth.
Nearly every trace of Tatar culture in the Crimea had been erased by the Russians after the Second World War. Ancient texts and even Marxist-Leninist tracts in translation had been burned. Mosques and cemeteries were destroyed, records obliterated, and whole villages razed. All the Tatar place-names in the Crimea had been changed. Irek was one of the oldest of a people who had been brought to the brink of extinction, both literally and culturally, and one of the few still alive from those times. He had been crammed into a cattle truck in 1944 and sent on a ten-day journey without food and barely any water, to be left with the less than half of his people who survived the journey. They were simply thrown out of the cattle trucks onto the winter steppes of Kazakhstan to fend for themselves. He’d had four sons and four daughters, as far as she knew, half of whom died in infancy and the rest in the years of brutal hard labour and starvation.
“You are Russian,” Irek stated.
“I’m an American now,” she replied.
“Russians…Americans…what’s the difference? You say you are a benefactor. Neither is our benefactor. We are a hounded people.” He shrugged. “What brings you here?”
A thin plastic curtain inside the tent was pushed aside and a large woman in a single piece of shapeless brown clothing that reached to her ankles entered carrying a plate of biscuits that she laid on the rug between them as if it was a rare speciality. A tea urn bubbled in the background and when the woman returned she brought two tin cups with a leaf tea the aroma of which Anna didn’t recognise.
“I’ve come with a request,” Anna said when the woman had gone, “and an offer of help.”
He lifted his mug of tea and indicated for her to do the same.
“Giving and taking at the same time, is that it?” Irek said, but without acrimony. “First, what are you offering? What justifies your claim to be a benefactor?”
She watched the shrewd eyes watching her and sipped from the tin mug. That he had seen her at all was a testament to how desperate these people were. But she knew he would examine what she had to say carefully and reject it if he had no trust in her.
“The people I represent believe they have uncovered a conspiracy,” she said quietly. “It concerns an organisation called Qubaq.”
She saw him stiffen. “What about it?” he said sharply.
“There are people who wish to implicate it in terrorist acts,” she replied. “The bomb at the nightclub in Odessa, for example. Back in January. These people wish to hide their own deeds by blaming Qubaq for them.”
He didn’t reply. He reached his arm behind his back without turning and brought out a hookah pipe that had been hidden from her. Without responding to what she’d said at all, he began to flake a sweet-smelling tobacco into the bowl and lit a small piece of charcoal which he then placed over it. He fit a cheap plastic mouthpiece over the pipe and drew the smoke through the water deeply. Then he replaced the mouthpiece with another and offered it to her. As she smoked, he began.
“We are not extremists,” he said. “The Tatars have never been extremists for Islam. We are like the Turks, a Turkic people. We do not share the aims of the extremists. What we want, quite simply, is justice. We are not looking for the restoration of our property, we are not looking for financial compensation for the evils of the past. We want a new start. We want political freedom in the parliament of the Crimea, within Ukraine, not separation. We are too worn down to be used for anything by anybody.”
“You will be made the scapegoats,” Anna replied. “That is the conspiracy. Your weakness is no defence against that. It simply invites it.”
She passed the hookah back to him and he took another draw.
“Why should I believe this?” he said when he had finished.
“I’m not from the American government,” she replied, and he laughed out loud for the first time.
“People don’t usually boast that they are,” he said.
“I’m not from any government. The people behind me are a private group of Americans,” she replied, fixing him with her eyes. “They have the interests of a free Ukraine in mind. It is also in their own interest.”
“What is their interest?”
“Business in Ukraine. Peace in the Crimea is important for the peace in Ukraine. The Crimea is Ukraine’s weak spot. That is why the trouble is beginning here. We believe that Qubaq has been identified by certain forces who don’t have Ukraine’s interests as an independent nation at heart. You will be blamed for acts of terrorism not committed by you. That will provide an excuse for…intervention by these forces.”
“By Russia,” he said.
She leaned in towards him. “You, or someone close to you, has been approached. Or maybe you soon will be approached. The purpose of this approach is to offer you, the Tatars and Qubaq, funding. It will be said that it is to build you proper homes, educate your children, provide work…whatever they say, it will be appealing, perhaps couched in humanitarian terms, or coming from a charity.”
“And?” Irek, too, now leaned in towards her.
“But when the money trail is examined by governments who are fighting terrorism, as it will be, it will be found to lead not to any humanitarian or charity organisation but to known terrorist accounts.”
Irek lit a cigarette.
“We don’t know what exactly these malevolent forces are planning, only that they are intending to use you as cover.”
“That’s what you have to offer,” Irek replied. “What is the favour you wish?”
“I’m looking for a blind man,” Anna said. “He may be the man who approaches you or one of your religious leaders.”
Irek didn’t reply.
“I will come back in three days,” Anna said.
Anna descended the hill from the shantytown, down into the meadow, and sat on a knoll that gave a good view of the bays and Sevastopol’s harbour and dockyard. There were nearly a hundred warships of various kinds, either at anchor in Sevastopol’s bays or on the quays or under repair in dry dock. It was an ageing fleet. In an agreement in the nineties, the Russians had bought most of the Ukrainian half of the split Soviet fleet, but none of the ships she could see was less than twenty years old and most of them were far older and heading for the scrap heap. What she was staring at was, according to Burt, the touch paper to set off a conflagration intended to destabilise the whole country, yet the ships she looked at were a sorry sight and a pale comparison to the once mighty Soviet Black Sea Fleet. She stood up. She wondered if, for once, Burt had gotten a crossed “line to God.” Russia had what it wanted now—a pro-Kremlin leader in Kiev who had extended the lease at Sevastopol to Russia’s fleet for another twenty-five years. There was nothing, so it seemed to her, that could advance Russia’s position further, nothing that the Kremlin could want more than that. With a friend in power in Kiev, surely Moscow would now exert its influence by stealth, not confrontation.
Above her, the lark hovering stationary over the field continued its trilling song.
22
THE BULGARIAN-REGISTERED TRAWLER MIRA was motoring at a steady eight knots eastwards, on a course of 85 degrees. The vessel was around twenty-five miles from the Crimean shore.
Logan stood on the foredeck. He was dressed in a thick sweater and dungarees, over which he wore seaman’s oilskins against the coo
l sea air. Despite the sun in the clear blue sky it was still only April.
Behind him, he saw the other “fishermen,” dressed like himself and going through the motions of preparing nets on the stern deck. They stood against a deep blue background of water that stretched away to the invisible coastline of Bulgaria, two days’ journey behind them and the dim purple outlines of the mountains of the Crimea on the boat’s port side.
Ahead of him he watched the bow of the Mira cut through the water, sending up gouts of spray around his head that were caught by the sun in an endless display of sparkling motion. He turned finally, tearing himself away from the comforting motion and the dancing water, and checked the bridge. Although on the roof of the trawler’s bridge there was displayed a regular radar that was slowly turning in dutiful observation of the empty sea, beneath the decks a whole array of sensors, imaging equipment, infrared monitors, and computers were set up in the holds that would normally have held the day’s catch. The Mira had been converted to a regular spy vessel of the old, Cold War type.
Burt Miller had fallen out with Theo Lish on the significance of the Pride of Corsica and its unknown cargo. Burt’s protégé was making a stand and he, Logan, knew which way he would leap if it came to it. The CIA chief saw in the mysterious movements of the Pride of Corsica an incipient threat to stability in the Crimea. Lish was adamant that the “terror ship” must be positively identified as such and, if necessary, boarded by force. Burt had been defeated, as Logan saw it, at a high-level meeting in Washington between the Intelligence Committee, with Theo on its side, and Cougar.
And so the Mira was to be the first contact with the terror ship, the probe that would bring more conclusive evidence. Though Burt disagreed on the subject of the ship’s importance, he had nevertheless laid on this entire operation. That was mysterious, too, to Logan’s mind. To him, Burt wasn’t a man who wasted Cougar’s resources on operations he disagreed with, and the speed and ease with which he’d done so made it doubly suspicious. In Logan’s opinion, Burt’s agreement to lend the vessel to the CIA therefore couldn’t be taken at face value. But the CIA had no such ship at its disposal anywhere near the Black Sea. Burt was perhaps showing his generosity in defeat, Logan thought. But this didn’t exactly fit with how well he knew Burt Miller. Burt had suddenly come up with a fully equipped spy ship of Cougar’s in the Bulgarian port of Burgas, which he’d offered to provide. The equipment was already installed—and the CIA had brought a few more state-of-the-art accessories of its own. And now, here they were, steaming across the Black Sea.
Burt’s openness about lending the vessel was, as ever, irrepressible. Lish had been concerned about getting too close to the Pride of Corsica, but Burt urged an all-but-actual physical contact with the ship. “Charge it,” he’d advised Logan. This was to be for the purpose of “provocation” only, Burt had argued. A spy ship was now a less relevant piece of equipment to a nation’s intelligence arsenal with the ever-increasing development of satellite technology, and the WorldView satellite could see everything the Pride of Corsica had on show without the need of such a close-up encounter. So the point of the operation was to test the Pride of Corsica’s defences. Provoke a reaction. See what hardware would be brought to bear against the Mira.
“Let’s see what cannons they point at us,” Burt had told Theo Lish in an ops. room in Harper’s Crossing. “That way we’ll have an idea of the worst they can do if you need to make an assault. It will help your boys in that event.” Burt was handing the whole operation over to the CIA, lock, stock, and barrel. And with the Russians added to the manifest at the last minute.
“The worst they can do is blow us out of the water,” Lish replied anxiously. “What do we do then?”
Burt had erupted in laughter. “Then you can send in the marines, Theo,” he replied and added, in order to dampen Lish’s alarm, “Don’t worry, Theo, they won’t attack unless you attempt to board. They’ll just warn you off for now.”
And so, at Burt’s request—and the more Logan thought about it, the more Burt’s sudden helpfulness was odd—Logan was hosting a party of the CIA, as well as British, French, and Russian “observers” on “one of Burt’s Cruises,” as Burt jokingly called it.
Why the Brits and the French had to be invited, Logan didn’t have a clue either. It was to be a joint operation, as Theo described it. But that, too, seemed odd to Logan when he’d thought about it, though he’d dismissed his misgivings quickly when he couldn’t find a reason. It’s a CIA-run trip, Burt told Lish, carefully acknowledging the CIA boss’s position and stroking Lish’s sense of priorities but, as Logan knew, Cougar was paying for the whole operation. We like to help our friends in the CIA, Burt had told him. Another diversion from Burt’s usual line.
Logan looked back and up at the bridge. The Brit, Philip Holyoake, Special Boat Service, was standing next to the wheel and talking to the skipper. He was one of those seemingly quiet, retiring types who said little and Logan found him uninteresting and difficult to take seriously. He was something of a naval historian, it turned out, and had already pointed out to the skipper the formation of the British and French fleets when they’d steamed up the Kerch Straits between Russia and Crimea in 1855 in preparation for war.
Then Logan checked on a couple of the Agency’s operatives who were standing around the nets, one of whom was one of the terriers he’d met at the Kiev embassy in January. Logan looked around the decks for the Frenchman, Laszlo, but he couldn’t find him. He needed to talk to Laszlo later, in private, and that would have to happen once they’d returned to port in Burgas. Finally there were two Russians who were keeping to themselves so far. One of them watched him from the stern of the Mira.
As Logan looked out ahead of the trawler again, he weighed a situation that was unfolding, as he saw it, in favour of anyone but Burt. Despite Burt’s doubts about the significance of the Pride of Corsica to any plans Russia might have, Logan thought that Burt Miller had blown it this time. With Burt’s increasing obsession with Ukraine over the previous months, Logan felt that his boss and Cougar had become blinded by this one-track policy that saw Russia as simply the enemy. Perhaps, after all, he thought, Burt was just another Cold War hero who couldn’t see the way the world had changed in the past twenty years, someone whose life’s work had been pulled from under him and who couldn’t accept it. Laszlo knew the world had moved on—and his French masters, too. Lish was rightly interested in the ship, however. And Logan supposed the CIA needed to cover all the bases. Their fear of leaving any stone unturned was paramount when the word “terrorism” rose above the shit that accumulated from their stations across the world. Either Lish believed the ship was a danger, or he was just covering his ass with Washington. Burt’s dogged refusal to do business with the Kremlin didn’t necessarily fit with Lish’s worldview, Logan knew that.
In fact, now that Logan thought about it, it was people like Burt who were becoming the chief danger to peace in the modern world, not the old enemies from the Cold War. He held on to the guardrail, then leaned his elbows on it and watched the water gush past the trawler’s bow. If he could further win Laszlo’s trust, then it might be that he could parlay a deal over Ukraine among Lish and the CIA and Russia. Then he could do without Burt and become a star with the agency as he’d been before.
His mind turned finally to Anna. Was it Burt’s obsession with her, too, that drove his anti-Russian position? It seemed she wouldn’t rest until she’d taken her dying breath striking against her old country. She had all Burt’s attention. To Logan, it was almost embarrassing. He was like some senile, rich man who’d fallen for a pretty woman half his age. Then Logan thought back, as he had so many times before, to the night he and Anna had spent in New York, before she’d cut him out of her life for good. “Maybe in another life, Logan”—those had been her exact words at the ranch to end a relationship that had only just begun. One night with her, for Christ’s sake! Well, if Burt fucked up over Ukraine, maybe she wouldn’t enjoy Burt’s
protection for much longer, and Logan wouldn’t be sorry to see her star fall. She’d become an irritant under his skin.
He buttoned the oilskin up higher to his neck and walked to the stern of the boat. Then he climbed some steps up onto the bridge.
“We should have her in sight soon,” he said to the skipper, an ex–navy Seal, and then he nodded to the Brit, Holyoake.
“We have her on radar.” The skipper showed him the radar map. The Pride of Corsica was the only other vessel in the area apart from them.
“Has she moved at all?” Logan enquired.
“Been there for two days. Same spot, near enough.”
“Any supplies brought in?”
“Nothing. No physical contact according to the satellites.”
Logan looked across at Philip Holyoake. He’d provided no analysis so far, made no contribution of any kind, in fact. He guessed he was there just to keep Adrian Carew, his MI6 chief, in close touch with Burt. It was a known fact that Adrian was looking for a soft, well-paid job once he stood down from the British intelligence service, and Cougar could provide that if anyone could.
A half hour later, they could see the Pride of Corsica appearing from the horizon through powerful binoculars and, shortly after that, her outlines appeared to the naked eye.
“She’ll have been following us for as long as we’ve seen her,” the skipper said. “How close do you want to go?”
“Head for her,” Logan replied. “We want to see what she points at us.”
At a distance of just more than a mile, the techs below the deck in the fish hold began to pick up a missile guidance system from the Pride of Corsica that was trained directly at the Mira. They relayed it to the bridge, with some guesswork attached as to the type and firepower.
