Stalin's Final Sting

by Andrew Turpin

  I bet you are; years of practice makes perfect, Johnson thought to himself. He again caught Vic’s eye, and the two men held each other’s gaze for a few seconds. Vic eventually shrugged and gave a slight nod.

  “Okay,” Johnson said. “We’re not having this conversation. We both give our word that we will not push for any action with regard to your US citizenship, as you are asking. Neither will we highlight publicly the source of our information or where the documents came from.” It seemed that Akbari had mentally summed up both of his visitors and somehow knew that neither were the type to go back on their word.

  Akbari indicated with his thumb toward his darkroom. “Follow me. I’ve a print that I ran off just earlier.”

  Akbari walked to his darkroom, with Johnson and Vic following. He flicked on a light switch and went straight to a length of washing line, strung across the far wall, to which were clipped six photographic prints, hung up to dry.

  He removed the print at the far right of the string and handed it to Johnson, who began to read the text, written in Russian.

  381/RW/85 ROBERT WATSON

  February 20, 1988 r.

  CROSS REFERENCE 377/RW/85 19.2.88 (ADDITIONAL INFORMATION)

  Islamabad

  Result of overnight identity check on representative of US company Kay Associates, seen in meeting with TENOR at Marriott Hotel.

  Identity confirmed as Kurt Donnerstein, US citizen. Further check confirmed Donnerstein involved in missiles and weapons sales, non-approved by US government.

  POSSIBILITIES FOR BLACKMAIL AND RECRUITMENT? OPTIONS SHOULD BE URGENTLY INVESTIGATED.

  “Bingo,” Johnson said. “This is the torpedo that’s going to finally sink Donnerstein.” A smile inexorably crossed his face as he took out his phone, photographed the document, and immediately sent it to Dover with a quick translation.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Tuesday, June 11, 2013

  Moscow

  News of the arrest of Kurt Donnerstein in New York and his supposed links to Rex Zilleman and ZenForce Group had come in to Severinov from one of his SVR contacts at the agency’s Yasenevo headquarters in a call during the morning. Soon afterward, he had received confirmation in a second call from the same SVR source that his onetime CIA mole Robert Watson had been arrested after falling in front of a subway train, also in New York, while apparently being pursued by FBI agents.

  Both pieces of news almost put a smile on Severinov’s face. Anything that was going to terminate or even damage ZenForce’s bid for the Afghanistan oil assets was hugely helpful. His strong suspicion was that the arrest of Watson on the same day in the same city had to be linked to Donnerstein. It was otherwise too coincidental.

  The temptation to smile didn’t last long, though. His SVR contact also said that the Donnerstein arrest was thought to have stemmed from inquiries that Johnson had made into events in Afghanistan dating to the late 1980s.

  Maybe the Watson arrest had similarly been somehow linked to Johnson’s inquiries as well, Severinov wondered.

  It was worrying in the sense that Johnson might also turn his investigative spotlight on Severinov. There were too many risks, too many skeletons hidden away, of all kinds—personal, KGB, and business-related. Given his incarceration in the Kabul safe house, Johnson was hardly going to hold back if he found some usable ammunition. And what if the story about his family came out, the true details of the Stalin lineage? The leadership would set the SVR’s pack dogs on him.

  Yet there was no option to pull out of the Kabul trip. That would be akin to signing his own death warrant, given President Putin’s orders.

  Severinov went back to finalizing his preparations for his planned flight the following morning to Kabul, ahead of Thursday’s presentation to the Afghan minister of mines and petroleum. Rather than use his luxury villa in the Sherpur district, he was planning to sleep at Kabul Airport in his own plane, which was equipped with a bedroom and bathroom at the rear as well as office space for him to work.

  He told Zinaida his choice of suit, shirt, and tie, then instructed her to have the packing completed by that evening and to ensure Vasily was at the airport when he arrived in Kabul. They needed to discuss a new plan to eliminate Javed.

  He returned to his desk, flipped open his laptop, and opened the PowerPoint presentation that he was going to deliver to the ministry on Thursday. A couple of the slides required tweaking to reflect changes received from international energy analysts just the previous day in forecasted oil prices over the following decade, all in a downward direction.

  Many executives in his position got others to make such changes in their slide decks, but Severinov liked to fully understand the numbers if he was going to be in a position where he could face serious questioning on assumptions he was presenting. So, in close cooperation with his finance director, he generally chose to go through everything personally, especially for such a high-level ministerial presentation and briefing as the one scheduled in Kabul.

  Once he had finalized his slides and was happy with them, he copied the file to a small flash drive as a backup and placed it in an envelope, which he tucked inside the copy of the asset sale prospectus he had obtained from the ministry in Kabul. There was a lot of vital information in the prospectus, and he needed to take it with him in case he had to refer to some of the production forecasts or other data.

  Severinov placed the prospectus and his briefcase next to his suitcase in his dressing room. Zinaida could pack it all up for him.

  His phone rang. It was Mikhail Sobchak, Medvedev’s energetic assistant.

  “Yuri, the president called just a short while ago for a conference call with Dmitry,” Sobchak said. “He’s changed his plans. He’s now going to Kabul tomorrow for a private one-to-one dinner meeting with Karzai.”

  Severinov’s spirits dropped just as surely as if they had been weighted with lead and dropped into the sea. The last thing he wanted was Putin breathing down his neck while he has trying to focus on the oil and gas presentation.

  “Why’s he doing that?”

  “It’s a meeting about future investment in Afghanistan. And the president also wants to speak with you further to discuss again what you might say at a press conference following the petroleum ministry presentation. He would like to use you to deliver some important messages about our intentions in Afghanistan while keeping himself distant from it all at this stage.”

  Severinov swore to himself. “When does he want to do that?”

  “You need to be at the VIP terminal at Vnukovo at eight in the morning. We’ll send a car for you at seven.”

  “Yes, that sounds fine,” Severinov said. “My plane’s due to leave from there at nine o’clock. No problem.”

  “Yes, well, regarding your flight, there’s one other thing the president wants you to do,” Sobchak said.

  Severinov hesitated. “What is that?”

  He listened carefully as Sobchak ran through the set of instructions Putin had given him, then ended the call.

  Severinov put his phone down on the table and looked up at the ceiling. “Dermo,” he said to himself. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Wednesday, June 12, 2013

  Kabul

  It was the third time Javed had seen the same silver Toyota Hilux drive slowly down Street Nine outside his brother’s house and disappear. It never stopped, never pulled up outside anyone’s house. Nobody ever got out. He wondered if it had been past other times too while he was in the office. It was one too many visits, and there seemed no obvious reason for it.

  His antenna for surveillance had been on hyperalert since his return from Wazrar with the Stingers, which remained in a concealed cupboard in his basement. The Hilux had been the only anomaly he had spotted near his office or his home.

  If the vehicle was surveillance, then although there had been an Afghan or Pakistani at the wheel, Javed’s guess was that it belonged to either Severinov or to Joe Johnson, given the lat
ter’s interest in meeting him again.

  Since Javed had emailed Johnson a week earlier, expressing a willingness to meet after the oil and gas asset sale was complete, he had heard nothing more from Johnson. But the man had worked for the CIA and was an investigator.

  It didn’t matter much, anyway. Javed was certain that in Kabul, he could easily throw off any tail, whether CIA, SVR, or whatever. He had a few stair-step, zigzag anti-surveillance routes from the old days that still worked very well, using side streets, alleys, and tracks across disused land and through industrial units. He had absolutely no doubt that the Taliban used similar routes, enabling them to get around the city and avoid security checks by Afghan police or army or by international forces.

  Javed went to a desk, which was placed on the second floor near to a window so he could keep an eye on the street, flipped open his laptop, and for the umpteenth time toggled over to the window showing the location of the GPS tracker he had installed in Severinov’s prospectus pack.

  Since the previous Thursday, when the tracker in Severinov’s phone had vanished entirely from his monitor screen, the one in his prospectus had not moved at all. It had remained at the same extensive dacha near the banks of the Moscow River. Javed had been able to zoom in with his maps app in satellite mode and see its exact position in the Gorki-8 area.

  The thing that worried him was that Severinov certainly would not have remained in the house all that time without moving. So would he actually take the prospectus with him when he flew to Kabul for the presentation to the energy minister? Javed had been assuming he would have to, but there remained a nagging uncertainty at the back of his mind. Or had he discovered the tracker and removed it from the pack?

  Javed refreshed the screen and waited for it to load. It always took some time.

  When the screen did load, Javed sat straight up. The blue dot marking the position of the tracker was now eleven miles to the south, in a building very near to the main terminal at Vnukovo International Airport. Given Severinov’s status in Russia, Javed was certain that the building where the tracker was located would be a special VIP terminal. He found an airport map online that told him he was correct.

  If Severinov was on the move, he was going to need to act more quickly than he thought.

  Javed grabbed his phone and sent a text message to Mahmood Marwat, his old friend in air traffic control. Can we speak now? Urgent.

  Mahmood would know exactly what it was about. The two men had discussed the Severinov case in some detail, and he was expecting to hear from Javed at any time.

  A couple of minutes later, Javed’s phone rang. It was Mahmood.

  “Is he moving?” Mahmood asked, without any preamble.

  “Yes, he’s at Vnukovo right now,” Javed said. “Can you check flight plans from there?”

  “One minute.”

  There was the sound of fingers tapping on a computer keyboard and then a long pause, followed by more tapping.

  “Strange,” Mahmood said. “Can I just check the aircraft registrations you gave me again?”

  He read out the two numbers that Javed had supplied for Severinov’s Bombardier Global Express and Cessna Citation.

  “Yes, that’s them,” Javed said.

  “The Bombardier is listed to come in at three in the afternoon from Vnukovo. But there are two other aircraft also with flight plans filed coming from Moscow at that same time. And listen to this—I’m certain the other two are Putin’s planes. Consecutive registration numbers, both flying from Vnukovo to Kabul.”

  “Putin’s?”

  “Yes. Both of them.”

  “Putin can’t be going to the presentation,” Javed said. “That’s way below him. He must have some other business in Kabul. Maybe with Karzai.”

  “I agree. Don’t assume he’s even coming,” Mahmood said. “The Russians always do this. Multiple flight plans, different aircraft, try to keep people guessing. It’s the normal routine. Fools nobody in the business. Although of course you don’t actually know which of the planes Putin will be on.”

  “No, but two planes makes it look more likely that he actually is coming,” Javed said. “These are the Ilyushin 96-300s, right? Do those jets have any anti-missile protection?”

  “I’m certain they do. I heard lasers or something. But how well tested they are, how effective, I don’t know. Could just be bullshit, for all I know. Why? You’re surely not going to—”

  Javed was silent for a second. “Just make sure you tell me if there’s any late changes to those flight plans,” he said.

  Wednesday, June 12, 2013

  Kabul

  A long delay at JFK prior to takeoff and then another holdup with the connecting flight in Dubai meant that, frustratingly for Johnson, his plane into Kabul arrived only at twelve thirty in the afternoon.

  His aggravation at the delays and his sense of urgency both deepened dramatically while he was in Dubai, when he managed a short phone conversation with Jayne, who had made some good progress in Kabul.

  Jayne had received from her friend Alice Hocking at GCHQ in Cheltenham some flight plan data for that afternoon, picked up by an electronic trawl of air traffic control communications in Kabul. When had Jayne made the request to Alice, it had seemed a slightly circuitous way of trying to obtain the information she needed, but as was often the case, GCHQ’s tentacles ran deep and swiftly into areas that were generally otherwise inaccessible.

  She reported to Johnson that there were three flights involving nonscheduled airlines due into Kabul from Moscow that afternoon, all at three o’clock, according to plans filed. One was Severinov’s private Bombardier jet; the other two belonged to none other than the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

  There had been a slight pause while Johnson had digested the implications of what he had been told. Severinov, it was obvious, was flying in for the presentation the following day to the minister of mines and petroleum. That was expected, and it nailed down the time at which any attempt on his life by Javed and his Stinger missiles was likely to take place.

  The flights involving Putin’s aircraft, though, were completely from left field. What the hell was that about? Common sense told Johnson that Putin wouldn’t be involved in a petroleum ministry presentation, so he must be heading to Kabul for some other higher-level meeting, presumably with Hamid Karzai.

  The odd thing was that the flights were all scheduled for the same time of day.

  “Jayne, you need to get on the phone to Seb Storey and tip him off,” Johnson said. “I’m sure the army will know about Putin coming in; they’re probably working with the Afghans on it. But maybe they won’t have put two and two together and realized that Severinov’s plane is due in at the same time and that the risk from Javed could apply to all the aircraft.”

  There was a short silence. “I’ve already called him and I’ve been trying the local police chief,” Jayne said tersely.

  Idiot, Johnson said to himself. Of course she has. She’s always one step ahead of the game.

  “Good, sorry, I thought you probably had already. What did they say?” Johnson asked.

  “I haven’t managed to speak to either so far. They’ve got another big operation underway out of Wilderness—there was a huge Taliban attack last night. Storey’s calling me back as soon as possible. The police chief here is also tied up with the Taliban and is also manically busy organizing security for the Putin visit. His assistant just brushed me off. What a joke.”

  Johnson heard nothing more from Jayne before boarding his connecting flight from Dubai to Kabul. The circumstances combined to make it among the most nerve-racking journeys he had ever undertaken. For the first time, he felt a sense of relief when he breathed in the familiar Kabul smell of hot sticky tarmac, diesel fumes, cooking oil, grilling meat, burning charcoal, and sweat the second he walked off the plane and onto the aircraft steps.

  Thankfully there were no delays going through the terminal building. Forty minutes later, Johnson had greeted Jayne w
ith a hug and was walking with her and Haroon through the crowded pickup zone with its array of stern-looking armed security officers to the silver Hilux, where Omar was behind the wheel. Nearby, business executives were being rapidly ushered by their bodyguards toward waiting armored cars.

  “Great that you got the flight details, but what about Javed?” Johnson asked.

  “Haroon saw him go into his office early this morning, about seven o’clock, and then he headed back to his brother’s old house at eleven,” Jayne said.

  “And now?”

  “Presume he’s still there.”

  “But you’re not sure?” Johnson asked.

  “No. We still haven’t found a way of tracking him effectively from the house,” Jayne said. “His part of the street is bloody difficult. There’s no cover to speak of, other houses are all hidden behind tall walls and gates, and there’s rarely cars left parked outside. So any surveillance vehicle or person on foot stands out like a policeman in a pub. I can’t operate there alone because of the kidnap factor, and Haroon can’t spend his whole time there.”

  “I know. It’s difficult. It would be nice to put people at either end of his street,” Johnson said.

  “Yes. And before you ask about a tracker, he never parks it unattended anywhere in public. Not had a chance, so far.”

  “We’re out of time now, anyway,” Johnson said as he loaded his bag into the back of the Hilux. “He’s going to make a move today, with Severinov’s plane coming in. We know he’s got Stingers. It must be now.”

  “It could be when Severinov leaves,” Jayne said.

  Johnson shrugged. “Doubt it. I think he’ll look to do it on the way in. Then the return flight will be the backup option if that fails.”

  He climbed into the front passenger seat while Jayne got into the rear seat.

  Johnson looked across at Omar. “Take us to Javed’s street. Quick as you can. But this time we’ll wait on the street near the bend, just along from the medical center.” Johnson had spotted the center on previous visits, and although there was very little traffic in and out—it was a small private clinic, not a large hospital—it was the only possible source of cover. At least if needed they could drive the Hilux into the clinic entrance, which had a U-shaped driveway, and pretend to be dropping off or collecting a patient.