A Shadow Intelligence

by Oliver Harris

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I let him leave first, then went down to my GL5 escort.

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Peacefully.’

  ‘That’s what we like.’

  I was driven back to their office, where I put a deposit down for any further work. Purvis liked the cash. He didn’t ask for the gun back.

  ‘If someone wanted assurance that they could get out of here in a worst-case scenario,’ I said, ‘one, maybe two people tops, quick and quiet as possible out of Kazakhstan – how feasible does that sound?’

  ‘Informal arrangement?’

  ‘Cash in hand.’

  ‘It’s feasible. I’d have to get some names together. I’m guessing it would be a last-minute kind of business.’

  ‘Very. Would you go across the Caspian?’

  ‘The Caspian gets icy, so probably not. We can get to a drill site; there are helis there, a Lynx that will get you to Baku, easy. Five-seater Airbus if the weather allows. We control two helipads in Baku. I’d rather steer wide of Russian airspace.’

  ‘Jets?’

  ‘An Embraer Tucano. But I’d rather not use it for commutes.’

  ‘Where do you park that?’

  ‘Away from prying eyes.’ He winked. Embraer was a Brazilian company. The Tucano was marketed as a light combat aircraft.

  ‘Registered to GL5?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What sort of price are we talking about?’

  ‘For a civilian?’ He considered. ‘The heli’s thirty k. Personnel another ten per day, or two grand each. They’d want a retainer, maybe ten up front. For a mate of Jimmy’s, call it seven.’

  ‘And how much warning would you need?’

  ‘It depends on the situation. But there’s two thousand of us in Kazakhstan. I’m sure I could find some spare hands.’

  ‘Two thousand?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Working for Saracen?’

  ‘Not just Saracen. We’ve got contracts with the government; border tech. That’s the big new market, and we proved ourselves in Israel and Mexico.’

  We agreed payments and contacts, swapped some final anecdotes, then began back across the concrete.

  ‘What kind of lads have you got over here?’ I asked.

  ‘Everything. Thai, Columbian, Ukrainian. Mostly Brits though.’

  ‘Good kit?’

  ‘Take a look at this.’

  He led me to a hangar. Inside, crouching in the darkness, were forms I didn’t recognise: thin struts, metal plates, electronic devices that could have been cameras or lasers.

  ‘It’s for a virtual fence. Buried sensors and camera towers all linked to central control centres. UAVs, motion sensors. The lot.’

  ‘For protecting drill sites?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  There was something strange at the back: a rusted COSCO container with Chinese markings. I tried to see it as we headed out; it had been half-obscured by tarpaulin, but I got a glimpse inside and it contained what looked like a military radio system. Light entered through three bullet-sized holes in the metal. It seemed all sorts of stories sheltered in the hangar.

  ‘Come on.’ Purvis moved back towards the daylight.

  ‘You’re well equipped,’ I said.

  ‘We’re doing our job,’ he said. ‘We own this market. No one’s competing right now.’

  The day outside seemed brighter. Men had stopped on the tarmac. They stood stiffly as gates rolled back and a black convoy with outriders swept in. Purvis put a hand up to stop me.

  An armoured Bentley swept towards the helipad. It stopped beside the Sikorsky and a guard got out, opening a back door as steps lowered from the helicopter and its rotors began to turn.

  ‘Carter,’ Purvis said. ‘The boss.’

  A lone figure moved between the car and the helicopter, head bowed against the wash. Then he was gone, the stairs folded in and the heli took off, sending up gritty snow, everyone ducking. Life in the compound continued.

  ‘Ever used the heli for a search-and-rescue mission?’ I asked.

  ‘There was one the other day, actually. A woman. I was never told what she had to do with Saracen. Hunt her down, we were told. Whereabouts? Somewhere in Kazakhstan.’ He slapped his forehead and laughed.

  ‘Those were the words used?’

  ‘Something like that. Why? Planning on getting lost? I wouldn’t. It’s one big fuck-off country.’

  ‘You never found her, I take it.’

  ‘Not as far as I’m aware.’

  ‘And they said “hunt”?’

  ‘Hunt, find her, whatever. Something urgent.’

  I was sitting in my hotel room with the gun in my hand when my phone rang. It was Elena Yussopova.

  ‘Elena.’

  ‘John, where are you?’

  ‘I’m at my hotel,’ I said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I need to speak to you.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Can you come round? Now?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Be careful. Extra careful.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  Yussopova’s flat was crowded. It felt like a small, tense cocktail party: cigarette smoke in the air, a pile of coats, dirty coffee cups, and even a bottle of vodka on the table. The computer was missing, books and files over the floor. Her wrists were still red from handcuffs. Dried white cream covered injuries further up her arms.

  The crowd shot me hostile glances. I recognised a couple of men and women from the protest photos. One grey-haired man had a case on his lap and was using it as a writing desk, as the group around him talked heatedly about legal options.

  Yussopova studied me with a searching intensity.

  ‘You are okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Just. Tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘I was questioned. About Vanessa. They showed me a photograph of you, from the airport. I was asked if I knew you. If I’d met you.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said no.’

  I tried not to think of the price she paid for that. I looked across the people and the paperwork in front of them, their plans for a protest; the coffee table with its bug.

  ‘Can we talk in private?’ I asked.

  ‘We are safe,’ Yussopova said. ‘These are good people.’

  ‘I don’t know them.’

  We went to the kitchen. I closed the door, turned the taps on.

  ‘Do you know who they were?’

  ‘Police, security service. I don’t know. It was in the central police station.’

  ‘What did they ask about?’

  ‘They thought I might have documents or information – something from Vanessa. I couldn’t understand what they wanted. It wasn’t just about our work.’

  ‘It’s to do with whatever Vanessa found out.’

  ‘Yes. You should leave.’

  ‘I was also questioned by police this morning.’

  A man entered the kitchen before she could react. He was small, middle-aged, with a pullover under a mismatched brown suit. He looked unhappy to see a stranger. There was an argument in Kazakh. Who is he? How do you know? How do you know who Vanessa was? She brings a lot of trouble. I gathered this was Andrei Nichuskin, the communications director, back from Armenia. The last one she had contact with.

  ‘John was arrested too,’ Yussopova said.

  This quietened him. I could see the room through the doorway, responding to the news. I mentioned the treatment I received and a woman in the living room said she was a doctor and offered to check my injuries. I could feel the crowd thinking through the danger and opportunity I represented: a Westerner, an Englishman, someone who couldn’t be ignored. I could draw international attention to their cause. That attention could get them killed.

  ‘She spoke to you, before she disappeared,’ I said.

  Andrei stared at me with small, fiery eyes. Eventually he said, ‘She was asking for all those who had helped with previous campaign
s. Not just protesters but hackers who have helped us. To capture activism in the twenty-first century, she said. She wanted to know who was local, wanted their contact details. We gave her access to the connections we have.’ He said that through gritted teeth.

  ‘Do you have any idea who she spoke to?’

  ‘No. We showed her a list. Now it has gone. Someone wiped it from our system.’

  ‘After you showed her?’

  ‘After she disappeared. Who is she? Who does she share information with?’

  I was beginning to understand his mistrust, and why it had turned on me.

  ‘She is one of our best campaigners,’ I said.

  ‘When did you last work with Reporters for Human Rights?’

  ‘I’m working with them now.’

  ‘With Anthony Lewis?’

  ‘Yes. But I’m not here to be interrogated again.’

  Andrei’s phone rang. He stepped back towards the living room, still staring at me, then turned, taking the call.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Yussopova said. ‘Obviously the situation is very tense.’

  ‘Of course. I’d be the same. Do you know anything about this list she saw?’

  ‘Just that Andrei believes she approached someone and it created problems.’

  ‘You’ve no idea who?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did they ask about Vanessa today, when you were questioned?’

  ‘They asked what languages she spoke, how long she’d been working for Reporters for Human Rights, what countries I knew she’d been in. They were also suspicious of her. So, you see … ’

  Yussopova trailed off. She was still in shock. She ran a glass of water and in the light from the kitchen window I saw her injured arm more clearly. They were burns; cigar burns. I lifted her coat off the back of the chair and smelled it.

  ‘Who questioned you?’

  ‘A Russian. I don’t know who.’

  ‘Could you describe him for me?’

  ‘Smart, clean-shaven. He had grey hair, parted.’

  ‘Glasses?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tall?’

  ‘Certainly not small.’

  ‘What else do you remember about him?’

  ‘His nails were neat, like a doctor’s, a surgeon’s.’

  ‘Did he do this?’ I gestured at her burns.

  ‘What do you think?’

  The intercom buzzed. Everyone fell quiet.

  ‘It’s Irina,’ someone said. A woman entered a moment later, indistinct beneath layers of clothing but visibly pale, with bright, scared eyes.

  ‘Timur and Natalya have been arrested. We should not be here. This place may be bugged. They know about our plans.’

  ‘Bugged or penetrated,’ Andrei said.

  ‘You should go,’ Yussopova said. She meant: before the crowd turned against me. ‘This is not your problem. It is not safe for you here, John. Leave Kazakhstan as quickly as possible. In England, tell people what is going on. We will try to find out what happened to Vanessa.’

  ‘If anyone asks about me again, don’t try to protect me, okay? You are in more danger than I am.’

  ‘I don’t know if that’s true.’

  I called Walker when I was back in my car, asked him to compile a list of Russian visitors to Kazakhstan in the week Joanna Lake went missing.

  ‘There’ll be thousands.’

  I gave specific names to check. After less than ten minutes he came back with a result. It was one I had hoped not to get. From air traffic control: a Russian-registered Gulfstream G280 jet had landed at an airfield a few miles north of Astana two days before Joanna went missing. It had an armed security licence for four passengers, including the jet’s owner: Vladislav Vishinsky.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  A hotel room in Turkey: Joanna pacing, cracking pistachios and flicking the shells towards the bin.

  ‘You think I gas kids? For a psyop? You think that’s what we do?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This is what they want: we turn on each other, we destroy ourselves from the inside.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Doubt everything. Everyone’s as bad as each other. Everything’s fucked.’

  I could see Joanna, later that night, sitting on the narrow bed, her back against the roughly plastered wall, eyes closed, TV muted on Russian TV: Irrefutable evidence attack was staged. German reporter says incident was false-flag.

  ‘Is that why you were really sent here?’ she asked. ‘You’re over because they don’t trust me?’

  ‘They don’t trust anyone.’

  That was the start of her fixation. Fixations were dangerous in intelligence work. Five months later we were in Shefford. It was the first time I’d seen her after Turkey. We were in her Shefford home, before she got paranoid and reluctant to have me over. And I still wasn’t sure if that was about security or what was going on inside, which was her own little research project: notes and clippings in carefully locked drawers, which she checked upon entering, refusing to tell me what they concerned.

  I picked the locks when she was asleep, knowing that she would do the same to me. Kept the anglepoise low, moving the sheets silently so as not to wake her.

  Russian news: female faces – birth and death dates for each face. None were older than twenty-three. Then pages of interactions on social media, screenshots, photos of wounds. All were young women who had jumped off buildings in Russia in the past three months, all of whom had self-harm scars.

  The main light came on. Joanna stood in the doorway.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Elliot.’

  ‘What is this?’ I said.

  ‘A game.’

  She put on coffee. We talked for the rest of the night. Joanna had connected the suicides to participation in an online game linked to the Russian-based VKontakte social network, Russia’s answer to Facebook. The game consisted of a series of tasks assigned to players by an administrator over a fifty-day period; one task per day, innocuous to begin with, ending with them killing themselves.

  ‘The idea is to desensitise them, to test the limits of what can be achieved remotely, through online control. It originates with a unit set up by this man, Vladislav Vishinsky.’ She brought up a photo, a mugshot, early Nineties. ‘It was him, the one we saw in Ukraine. He was behind the whole thing in Turkey as well.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I said you were paranoid about Russia. I was wrong. We’re getting the structure and operations of their Cyber-Cognitive Warfare unit. Vishinsky set it up. We think he was a qualified psychologist before spending time in prison, though it’s not clear what his offences were, as the record’s been wiped. His name appears in a document from 1993 called “How to Win Wars with Children’s Tears”. It’s a strategy proposal paper, possibly written while he was locked up, drawing heavily on America’s experience in Vietnam. He argues that Russia can’t compete on defence expenditure and they should fall back on psychology, use targeted psy campaigns to bring Russia together and to defeat their enemies abroad, move away from war in the physical environment towards a war in our minds. Or, as he puts it: from direct annihilation of the opponent to their inner decay.’

  Joanna spoke calmly enough, stopping to sip coffee. She had the file in her brain, and relayed information as if it was as native to her as childhood memories.

  ‘Vishinsky draws on what the Soviet General Staff call reflexive control theory. It means feeding an opponent specially prepared information so that they make a decision of your choosing; owning their thought process. Vishinsky says the digital era is a gift, in this respect. Using these tactics, they can reclaim Greater Russia. The paper must have reached some influential people. He’s released early, sent to Moscow, given resources within the National Defence Control Centre. In documents, his unit is referred to as Unit 19.

  ‘By the early Noughties, Vishinsky’s being referred to as Volshebnik, the magician. We had a Russian defector walk into the British embassy in Istanbul, back in 1998. T
hey were able to describe, in very vague terms, something originating in Unit 19 called ALKHIMIYA – Project Alchemy – which involved the control of populations. That was 1998, for Christ’s sake. Nothing was done.

  ‘On 22 February 1999, the eve of Russia’s annual Defenders of the Fatherland holiday, the Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the creation of a new information operations force combining cyber troops and propagandists. They had sophisticated means of tracking the morale of rival military forces. The internet allowed them to extend this to entire nations. Their sensitivity to national psyches allowed them to craft tailor-made psychological campaigns. Vishinsky’s GRU textbook even advised different approaches to waging psy warfare on different NATO members: “abstract-logical” propaganda for the Germans, visuals for the French and Americans, etc. Around the turn of the millennium it stopped being simply a tool of Kremlin policy and began to affect the policy itself. Vishinsky was advising Putin directly.

  ‘It was around this time Putin changed his tone. No longer a pragmatic realist when it came to world affairs, now he became Mr Nationalist. He got an ideology: reclaiming the former Soviet Union. Vishinsky produced speeches and propaganda along these lines and it played well. It was a narrative, a national goal: make Russia great again. It secured access to a lot of oil and gas. And he had persuaded Putin that they could compete, thanks to this new unit.’

  Joanna talked through the dawn, but never told me what she intended to do about all this, or who she was working with at Shefford and what they had to do with Vishinsky. So I had no idea how a man shot in Astana might or might not connect to it all.

  Budget hidden in Requirements and Production, but huge. Staff size one hundred and twenty. Some definitely came from GCHQ. Others were academics … The security set-up suggests it was operational. It wasn’t just producing papers.

  Closed down. Someone inside Six saw to that. I was curious about where their sympathies lay.

  The report from air traffic control gave us Vishinsky landing at a military airfield in Koyandy, north of Astana, at 10 a.m. on 22 November. I opened my laptop, checked what had been trending on Kazakh social media in the last twenty-four hours. The President’s daughter had been chalked up as judge on SuperstarKZ; the regional governor of Mangystau had proposed bird watching as a potential tourist attraction; a Russian woman had been raped in northern Kazakhstan, close to the Russian border.