Multiple state agencies patrolled the city. Police wore fur hats and long, grey jackets that hid their weaponry. Closer to the Presidential Palace you got military in camo fatigues and sky-blue berets. The elite and more shadowy National Security Committee officers wore black tactical vests and carried Russian-made AN-94 rifles. Alertness was high. I saw two cars being stopped and checked.
The British embassy lay within a block of offices on the edge of the business district. No conspicuous security or aerials. The current ambassador, according to Stevenson, was Suzanna Ford, a career diplomat with previous postings in Stockholm, Nairobi and Brussels. No indication that this was MI6 cover, although one never knew. I memorised the vehicles parked in front of it. The place didn’t feel like the sanctuary it would have once represented.
Now I knew the look I stopped at a department store and bought a balaclava, trapper hat, beanie, ski goggles and a reversible down jacket with a hood – which was useful for quick changes of appearance. For the car, I picked up water, food, first-aid kit, two spare phones, a shovel and two litres of vodka.
I drove while I could. Conditions were getting worse. It was time to put a plan into action.
I headed to the address of my missed calls.
The area was all half-constructed new-builds. They looked desolate, the towers haggard. The block I was interested in had a roof, but if it wasn’t for lights in some of the upper windows I wouldn’t have been sure it had been completed. Up close you saw ill-fitting window frames and protection tape. A courtyard remained half-constructed. This was what happened when oil booms came to a crashing halt: grand projects lurched into ruins before they were fully born.
I pushed the entrance door and it opened into a bare concrete entrance hall, walls covered with protective sheeting. The post box for 603 was empty. I took the stairs to establish their viability as an escape route. They smelled of fresh paint, and I wondered if I was the first person to use them. Then, at the fifth floor, I passed an encampment: a man, woman and two children beneath layers of tarpaulin. They were darker than most Kazakhs; refugees, with a propane gas heater. The man watched me pass, stiff with fear. I nodded, kept moving.
The sixth-floor hallway was freezing. No lights anywhere except for the light under the door of 603. I dialled the landline and heard it ring inside. So I was at the right place, at least. No one answered. I knocked on the door, listened for movement on the other side. No sound.
I didn’t know who or what the apartment represented. I wasn’t quite ready to draw the attention of a break-in. Not unarmed.
On my way back down I spoke to the homeless family.
‘Have you seen anything strange recently? A woman?’ I tried various languages, got stares. ‘Know who lives in 603?’
‘One night,’ the father eventually said, in faltering Russian. ‘We stay here just tonight. Tomorrow we go.’
I needed to find a cathedral.
Black Mass was Joanna’s system, and she’d chosen the name. Her idea was that, even in an unfamiliar city, you could still communicate a location by code. So you had to think what landmarks a city might have: one code for general post office, one for town hall, one for cathedral.
The Assumption Cathedral in Astana was only five years old, though you wouldn’t have guessed it. White towers with narrow, prison-like windows supported blue and gold onion domes. A brass plaque announced that it had been funded by Gazprom. The towers looked a bit like distillation towers on a refinery.
The car park was empty, as was the security booth at its entrance. There were few surrounding windows, roofs or ledges with a sight onto the cathedral square. I couldn’t see much, but then nor would anyone watching. The cathedral was open. I went in, impressed at the sense of age they’d installed – the incense-darkened icons. I sat in a back pew, thawed out, breathed in.
It would do.
I sent the cathedral code to the TutaNota address, along with a number for my new mobile, then drove on. I should have settled in properly first, I thought, assessed security, familiarised myself with the terrain before trying to set up a meeting, but I didn’t know how long I had.
ELEVEN
I filled the tank, got some food at a café with plastic furniture and unshielded neon bulbs, waited for midnight. I checked the exit routes I’d marked on my map: exits from the city, then from the country. The scenario I was hoping for was one in which we had to get out fast. Kazakhstan had China to the east, across mountains. Russia to the north, a long, porous border, the only downside being that on the other side was Russia. Uzbekistan to the south was a strong contender for exit of choice. I had connections there; it led deeper into the ’Stans, into a complexity where you could hide. To the west was the Caspian Sea, boats crossing to Azerbaijan. Shipping routes were always useful: chaotic, bribable, potentially off-radar. Spies like boats. But it was all difficult terrain. All a lot of steppe away.
The café served only one dish: lagman, noodle soup, with a few pieces of mutton floating in oily broth, but it tasted better than the Hotel Ukrainya’s steak and potatoes, which was almost all I’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours. As customers came in, I studied how people looked at each other – eye contact among strangers, use of mobile phones, hands-free mics. I hadn’t seen anyone using a phone indoors yet. People were reserved. Men and women interacted coolly, glances were quick. You could tell someone was unfamiliar to them but only just. I couldn’t hear any other foreigners about.
What none of it told me was how much of a mistake I was making by being here. I sensed I was doing precisely what someone intended me to do. I had made mistakes before. A bad day at the office for a field operative can be a very bad day indeed.
At quarter to midnight, I returned to the cathedral. Floodlights around its base caught the snow dancing furiously, seeming to race back up into the sky. I parked beyond the edge of the light, with a view in all directions. This was as clear an observation point as I was going to get. I turned off the interior lights and watched the snow.
No one showed.
I waited, feeling conspicuous, checking my messages every few minutes. At 1 a.m. I drove back to the block on Malakhov Street.
I parked well away from it, covered my face, took a set of bump keys, which worked on 90 per cent of locks. I used the lift this time, wary of witnesses. The sixth floor was unchanged. I knocked again, then went to work on the lock. It gave after a minute.
The flat contained no personal effects: no books or ornaments on the hallway shelves, no shoes or coats. Windows had been left open, dropping the temperature to below freezing. Snow had blown in. At the end of the corridor I could see a living room with snow over a sofa. I walked through. A black rucksack had been emptied across the floor: men’s clothes, some money, painkillers, contact lenses. A bottle of vodka and two glasses stood on the coffee table. One glass had dark red lipstick smears.
I turned towards the kitchen, saw blood up the wall.
A man lay on his back on the tiled floor. He’d been shot three times, twice in the face, once in the shoulder. The shots to the face had been done close up, leaving a bloody gap where his right eye and the bridge of his nose should have been. They’d removed the lower jaw entirely. The back of his throat glistened icily, white knobs of spine among the flesh. Pieces of brain, tooth and hair had frozen to surfaces in all directions.
A few distinguishing attributes remained. He was white; the condition of his skin and hair suggested someone under forty. He wore jeans, civilian walking boots, grey jumper and dark blue puffa-style jacket. The clothes were mostly global brands, neither cheap nor expensive. I felt a draught and saw a doorway in the corner of the kitchen leading into a bin area with chutes for rubbish disposal and a steel emergency door that had been left open a fraction. Beyond the steel door was an external fire escape.
I returned to the living room and checked the glasses on the table. In one, the liquid had frozen, but not the other. The man had been drinking vodka, but the lipstick-wearer had been d
rinking water. She had been controlling this situation, I thought. It was her safe house.
My mobile swept the place for devices, surveillance or otherwise. Nothing was currently transmitting. I checked the visible realm: the cupboards, the open window and fire escape. No clues. No shell casings that I could see; no prints. A crowd could have come and gone via the fire escape but their footprints would have been obliterated by the snow of the last forty-eight hours.
He’d been moving towards the fire escape, I felt sure. Trying to escape.
No ID on him: no phone, no wallet. I used my own phone to take pictures of what remained of his face, his fingers, then put it in his mouth and tried to take photos of the remaining teeth. Rinsing the phone, I allowed myself a sigh. Thanks, Joanna. I wondered what I was meant to do now. I wasn’t in a position to seal the place. I wasn’t in a position to stick around.
The lift was in use when I returned to the corridor. By the time it had stopped at the floor below I was already moving down the stairs. The sheltering family were all awake, eating out of tins.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Apologies.’
The four of them stared at me, new fear in their eyes. I kept my head down and kept walking.
When I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror, I saw why they’d looked scared. I had someone else’s blood smeared down the side of my face. I got out, used mineral water to wash, swore again. I sat in the car and briefly shut my eyes. I’d left prints all over the place. I’d be on cameras somewhere. The car certainly would. I had witnesses to my face and voice. The lock of the apartment was now broken and it was only a matter of time before someone walked in.
I parked a couple of blocks away from the Lion Hotel, watched the street for two minutes before going up. The same girl sat behind reception, reading a magazine.
‘How was your night?’ she asked.
‘Excellent.’
‘You saw the city? Bayterek?’
‘Yes, Bayterek. Has there been anyone here looking for me?’ I asked.
‘No.’ She shook her head. Then, as I moved away: ‘Mr Bell?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve put an extra blanket in your room. Let me know if you need more bedding.’
‘Thank you. I will.’
The state of the dead man’s face made facial recognition impossible. The frozen temperature made gauging time of death difficult. Nothing on local news about a man missing. I watched the Catalyst clip again and it definitely wasn’t the same man. No help there.
I tried the owner of the apartment and got a recorded message about bookings. Online, a calendar showed it was booked for another four days.
I made up an emergency go-bag in case I had to move quickly – spare phone, cash, some first aid – placed it under a pillow. I felt uneasy thinking of the body lying untended in the sixth-floor flat, as if it had become my responsibility, and I was failing obligations to care for the dead. I could call it in anonymously, find a phone box, use my Russian. An ID would surface once media reported it. But did I want to trigger an investigation?
Three days, I thought: in, out. How was that going? I stood at my window and watched the snow, the business district flashing, the river beyond it. The art of espionage involved remembering where you were. This wasn’t London, Washington or even Moscow. Mankind, as a whole, had never sunk any flag very deep in Kazakh soil. Frederick Burnaby, passing through one hundred and fifty years ago, heard talk of a Russian expedition against the Khans that set out in midwinter. A thousand men, nine thousand camels, three thousand horses, never seen again. Not even the bones.
You could build a hundred skyscrapers, but you were still in the desert. You had maps and plans but they meant little here.
TWELVE
The storm had subsided when I woke. 5.45 a.m. Astana lay entombed in moonlit snow.
The silence was jarring. My mind spooled through countries I might be in, arriving at Kazakhstan and flicking immediately to the image of a man’s destroyed face. I turned the TV on, checked online. No word of a body being found. By the time I was dressed, the sky had lightened a shade. I dressed as I had seen locals do – ski mask first, scarf, beanie, hood up over it, then trapper hat over the hood. Armoured, I went out.
MI6 drummed into you the importance of surveillance-detection runs. They were best performed at times and in places when any possible tail was made conspicuous. Six a.m. in most places was ideal. It felt like starting the day clean. And confirming you were alone converted the loneliness into relief.
The first blast of sub-zero dawn took my breath. I walked as fast as I could over deep, pristine snow, through the last of the silence. I looked for vehicles without snow on the roof, individuals appearing from side streets. There was no one. It felt like the desert beneath the city had begun reclaiming it overnight. In other locations where I’d practised this routine I had felt the imminent life of the city around me, but not here. There was a thin tension to the dawn, an uncertainty as to whether Astana would summon the will to exist again.
Still, it was nice to be able to see it.
Ice had moulded itself around the few branches in sight, around satellite dishes and street furniture as if it was concerned about preserving these things. On east-facing streets, cars had been buried entirely. I saw a man with a shovel carving out a Peugeot 308. Workers in luminescent orange marched behind snowploughs, moulding banks of snow on either side. At the entrance to Nazarbayev Square, soldiers struggled with steel crowd barriers they pulled from an open-backed truck; the barriers had frozen together, and the voices of the men made an angry dawn chorus.
I cut through the park alongside the river and the central mosque appeared, its call to prayer opening up and startling me. Our song, Joanna used to joke. Plaintive as ever, at odds with the glossy, frozen city it appealed to. I slowed, made a rough head-count of those removing their shoes to file in. It didn’t seem more than a handful. Unbearded for the most part. Across the road, two stiff-backed men in an unmarked Toyota Land Cruiser also watched.
Terrorism, the cab driver had said. I thought of the evident security tension and wondered what it indicated beneath the surface. Kazakhstan wasn’t a hotbed of radicalism. Even if the Soviets hadn’t spent fifty years trying to stifle religion, Islam was a relatively late addition, a sheet laid over older creeds involving tribe and land. The Islam that did take root was Sufi-inflected, mystical, superstitious. Still, Kazakhstan bordered the northwest of China, Xinjiang province, where you found 12 million oppressed Muslims occasionally losing patience. Uzbekistan, to the south, had been having its little resurgence. In the other direction was Chechnya. Quite a neighbourhood.
I stopped at the edge of the river, a spot where I could see the embankment and anyone on it in both directions. A few defiant fishermen had carved holes in the ice, huddling under plastic windbreaks that encased them like body bags. No sledgers or skaters yet. No visible surveillance.
I returned to the hotel, collected my hire car and drove to the block of flats on Malakhov Street. I parked across the road and looked up at the windows. They were still open, light still on. No police vehicles around.
I bought a local paper for the sake of blending in, then looked for cafés near police stations.
The one I eventually chose didn’t have a name, as far as I could tell. It had a view of the central police station. It was also a block from the grandiose construction housing the Deputy President’s office and the Ministry of Oil and Gas. Cheap cafés near important buildings were a potential gold mine: you found cleaners, maintenance staff, security guards, employees having affairs – all sorts of lures to a spy. It had just gone 8 a.m. Inside: ten men and women. Two tables of uniformed police, heads dipping to noodles and soups. A boy of nineteen or twenty continually mopped greying slush from the floor. A gruff man behind the counter took my order of coffee and one of the hard-looking pastries that sheltered beneath clingfilm. I sat for a moment watching the vast Ministry building. It takes three or four minutes to beco
me inconspicuous. I sipped my coffee, waited. Listened.
Eavesdropping brings language alive. You have a few hours on a new posting when your ears are still sensitised. There was that Turkic flavour, the harmonising vowels that preserved the passage of nomads westwards. I listened to the police, then two workers with the faintly Persian edges of Uzbek in their speech, then a woman with splashes of a dialect that sounded like Uyghur, from near the border with China. She had arrived just after me. From her various complaints about work it sounded like she cleaned on most floors of the Ministry building. She lived with an elderly mother. Her daughter’s upcoming wedding was a source of grievance. She sat close to a man who did maintenance in the same government offices – he had an identical pass to her, on a key chain. At his feet lay a tool bag containing wire strippers, electrical tape, a socket set.
The newspaper gave some carefully filtered insight into the country I was in. There was a lot about officials launching schemes in rural villages. A wind farm symbolised a possible future; Touch-KZ, a new dating site for Kazakhstan’s youth, was taking off. Protests against Chinese companies renting agricultural land simmered in rural areas, but overall there was a lot less hate and a lot less sleaze than in a free press. Nothing about a missing or murdered English woman. I checked what neighbouring devices came up on my phone then logged in to the café’s wi-fi.
New dating app popular among Kazakh singles. I found Touch-KZ on my phone, downloaded it and joined with a fake profile.
A minute later I had a match. One girl, two miles away. Tia Zhang, twenty-eight years old, pretty. Catfish pretty. She looked like stock photos, sounded like a robot.
Hey. You look nice. What are you doing?
A Shadow Intelligence Page 9
