Stalin's Final Sting – sample chapters - Andrew Turpin Thriller Author

Prologue

Tuesday, March 15, 1988

Kabul

A jolt of pain from his broken ribs and bruised kidneys shot through Javed Hasrat as he jerked awake. He felt the concrete floor beneath his body shake as an explosion blasted through the cellblock in which he was lying, causing a spike of agony in both eardrums.

Javed momentarily closed his eyes, his confusion born of the three previous sleepless nights during which he had been tortured naked by Soviet intelligence officers and their Afghan thugs with electric shocks, wooden batons, and a whip.

Now he hauled himself to his feet, white flashes appearing in front of his eyes from the pain that gripped his rib cage.

Another explosion hammered through the building. The bang, together with a sliver of white light that pierced the cell through the rectangular barred window, was followed by a series of piercing screams outside and shouting from other neighboring cells.

Through his semiconscious state, Javed’s first thought was that this was the start of another KGB torture routine. Then he realized that the explosions were from rocket-propelled grenades.

Javed glanced around. The three other men who were sharing his cell remained lying on their burlap mats, too broken to move, despite the din.

He tried to stand tall enough to see through the eight-inch-square barred opening three-quarters of the way up the door of his cell in block one of Pul-e-Charkhi prison. There was a piece of sheet plastic partly covering the gap, in a vain attempt to keep out the cold. But every time he pushed up on tiptoes, the agony was too great and he sank back down again, breathless and feeling broken. Smoke wafted in through the unglazed window, causing Javed to cough and masking the stench of urine and excrement from the bucket that stood in the corner of his cell. More pain around his ribs caused him to lose his breath for a few seconds.

The sound of gunfire echoed from outside the cell window, interspersed with two more RPG explosions and more deep guttural screams. They were followed by raucous shouts in an excitable deep voice.

“Allahu akbar!” Again they came. “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”

Somewhere inside Javed, the mujahideen’s traditional battle cry triggered a surge of hope. A minute later, there was more gunfire, this time from inside the prison. Javed could hear it as it echoed down the corridor outside his cell.

What is this?

From outside the cell came the sound of running footsteps, heavy boots clattering on the concrete floor. There was a jangle of keys and a metallic scratching sound as one of them was inserted into the lock of his cell.

Finally, a click, and the door swung open. There were two men standing there in the gloom. The one in front, holding the keys, was wearing a prison guard’s blue-gray uniform with a flat peaked cap and a frozen stare, clearly terrified. The one behind, an Afghan holding a pistol that was pointed at the guard, wore a dark gray shalwar kameez—a traditional long linen shirt and baggy trousers—a black sleeveless jacket, and a black chitrali cap.

The Afghan pulled the guard back out into the corridor and shoved him hard in the back with the butt of his gun, sending him sprawling onto the floor. Then he pointed the gun at the guard and pulled the trigger twice in quick succession, shooting him through the back of the head with both rounds.

“Which of you is Javed Hasrat?” the man in the chitrali cap asked in Pashto.

“Me.”

“Good. We are taking you and a few other men out of here,” the man said.

From outside, there was another huge explosion that rocked the building in which they stood, followed by more gunfire.

“Who are you?” Javed asked.

“I will tell you later. A friend of your friends.”

“What about these other men?” Javed asked, pointing at the others, who were now sitting, silently staring at the dead guard and the Afghan.

“No time. Just you. Let’s move.” The Afghan walked out, beckoning Javed to follow.

Javed, his injuries tearing at the inside of his rib cage and stomach, forced himself to walk down the corridor, its white paint peeling, and past other cells with metal barred doors to the right and the left. Their footsteps echoed from the bare concrete walls, ceilings, and floors. Then they passed through a heavy steel barred gate, which was half open, and turned left down two flights of stairs.

“We walk as fast as we can and straight, across the yard and through a black metal bar gate directly ahead,” the Afghan said when they reached the ground floor.

As Javed exited the cellblock into the dusty light of early morning Kabul, he saw a scene of total carnage. The bodies of at least a dozen guards were strewn in a line across the yard to his left. They all had bullet wounds to the head. It appeared as though they had been lined up and shot.

Three other dead guards lay to the right, together with four prisoners, all of whom had blast injuries; one had lost both his legs below the knees. Pools of dark red blood were spreading across the ground next to them. The smoking remains of a gray prison van, its bodywork ripped apart by a rocket or grenade, stood next to the high stone wall with its coiled razor-wire topping that formed the perimeter of Pul-e-Charkhi’s interior exercise yard.

In the background, Javed heard sirens wailing outside the prison wall, and an alarm was squawking incessantly.

He did as instructed and walked across the uneven crushed stone exercise yard toward the black pedestrian gate, feeling all the while as though he might pass out from the pain in his ribs. He looked to his right, where the mushroom-shaped concrete security observation tower loomed high over the prison below, then over his shoulder at the gray monolithic mass of the cellblocks behind him with their bicycle-spoke structure, each block running out from a hub in the center.

There came a gunshot, followed by the unmistakable whine of a bullet above his head, followed by another. The Afghan pushed him in the back. “Run,” he shouted.

Javed broke into a jog, expecting at any moment to feel the impact from the next round. But he reached the heavy steel barred gate, which the Afghan pushed open. It led through the internal perimeter wall, which was more than a meter thick, to an external security buffer zone, also surrounded by a thick wall that was similarly topped with coils of razor wire.

Forty meters ahead of him were the twin square three-story stone turrets of the main prison entrance and the tall black gates, one of which was leaning open at a drunken angle, its steel bars and panels bent into a tangle. Far behind them, the snowcapped Hindu Kush mountains towered into the pale blue skies.

Six mujahideen men dressed in Pashtun clothing, two of them carrying Kalashnikovs and two with RPG launchers, ran past them and out of the gate.

Near the gate on the inside of the entrance were three gray prison vans, a mujahideen holding open the rear door of one of them. Three other mujahideen stood nearby, watching.

“Get in the back of the van,” the Afghan behind Javed snapped. “Quick. We need to get out of here.”

That was when Javed noticed the devastation just outside the main gate. Nine guards lay dead next to an old green Afghan police pickup truck that lay on its side, a huge hole in its windshield, the bent hood half open, most of the cab now nothing more than a tangle of metal and all four tires shredded. It appeared to have been blown apart. Another police car stood a few meters farther away, its door panels riddled with large bullet holes, all its windows smashed and two officers visible in the front seats, slumped motionless. Incongruously, the red light on its roof was still rotating, its siren shrieking.

Next to the cars was a crater from which stones and earth had been scattered over a distance.

Javed gritted his teeth, his broken ribs digging into something inside his chest as he bent to climb into the van and sat on a padded bench seat that ran down the right side wall. Four other men, all dressed like Javed in shalwar kameezes, were on the bench seats on either side of the van. They looked at each other, not needing to speak. That could come later; it was too early to be confident. They were not safe yet.

Within seconds, the rear door was slammed shut, followed by the two front doors. The engine revved hard, and with a squeal of tires, it shot forward with such force that Javed had to hang on to the exposed roof struts to prevent himself from being thrown backward.

Javed glanced through the back window with its crisscross steel bars as the van turned right out of the prison gates and then sped along Pul-e-Charkhi Road north across the dusty gray plain, past the flat-roofed houses of Dekhuda Dad, over the Kabul River and onto the main highway running east out of the capital toward Nangarhar Province.

But the van only traveled half a kilometer along the highway before swinging sharply left into another housing area. There it braked to a halt. The back doors were flung open, and Javed and the others were bundled out and into the backs of two battered white Toyotas that were standing waiting, their engines running.

As the car in which Javed was now sitting accelerated up the road, he glanced behind him; a man was pouring gasoline from a can into and over the prison van.

It was three days since he had been seized by the KGB bastards in Jalalabad, following a covert meeting with the American CIA agents Joe Johnson and Vic Walter. Now, only a couple of hours after he had thrown himself on Allah’s mercy after another interminable night of torture, Javed glanced upward and prayed through the fog of his pain and his all-encompassing exhaustion that this escape was going to work.

Chapter 1

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Kabul

Joe Johnson peered out of the window and gripped his armrest as the Ariana Afghan Boeing 737 banked to the right and hit an air pocket, causing it to bump sharply as it descended. Below, Johnson could see the toy town cars and trucks buzzing along the Kabul-Nangarhar highway leading east out of the capital; a tarmac strip etched in gray against the pale terra-cotta landscape.

He glanced at Jayne Robinson, who sat next to him in the aisle seat, reading an article in The Economist about how investment bank Silverson Renwick was running a program to encourage more Afghan women into business. She had one slim jeans-clad leg up at a right angle, her bare foot resting on the seat. It was always either The Economist or Vogue. Johnson smiled inwardly at her divergent choices in reading material.

The one-hour flight from Mazar-i-Sharif had been delayed by ninety minutes, much to Johnson’s annoyance. They were now going to be late to the evening reception at the US embassy, which was due to start at six o’clock. He had been looking forward to the presentation organized by the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum about the opening up of gas and oil resources to foreign investment, not because of the subject matter but because he expected to see at least a few familiar faces.

He had also received two intriguing but vague calls the previous week from a British investment banker, Frank Rice, about some potential investigative work in Afghanistan and had arranged to meet him at the reception to chat more. Rice wouldn’t go into detail on the phone and insisted on speaking face-to-face. He hoped that Rice would still be around when they arrived.

Johnson finished the Newsweek magazine profile of Kurt Donnerstein, the US secretary of energy, that he had been reading. Donnerstein was giving the keynote speech at this evening’s reception—yet another reason why he was irritated to arrive late. His star had risen steadily under Barack Obama’s presidency, and he was now seen as a dead certainty for secretary of defense if Hillary Clinton ended up president of the United States in 2016.

Donnerstein had a reputation as one of the toughest nuts inside the Democratic Party. He was throwing his weight behind Afghanistan’s initiative to bring foreign investment into their oil and gas sector. Doubtless he was hoping that a few US companies might benefit from such a move, Johnson mused.

As the aircraft descended further, Johnson looked out the window over the city that had battled so hard, and in vain, to retain security and normality in the face of constant waves of Taliban attacks in recent years.

They were now quite low in their approach to Kabul International Airport. His attention was caught by a black car racing westward toward Kabul along the two-lane divided highway, swerving to overtake other vehicles.

From somewhere ahead of the car there was a large puff of black smoke, and a truck appeared to jackknife and roll over. The car swerved to avoid the truck. Then Johnson noticed another puff of smoke, this time from a minibus ahead of the fast-moving car, and a second later the minibus erupted in a ball of orange flame.

The aircraft passed directly over the highway as it came in to land, causing Johnson to lose sight of what happened next.

He turned to Jayne. “I’ve just seen a couple of serious smashes on the highway down there,” he said, jerking his thumb downward. “Looked like there were explosions on the road or something. Clouds of black smoke coming up and a minibus caught fire.”

Jayne looked up. “Probably normal for Kabul,” she said in her whiskey-low voice.

“Didn’t look normal.”

She shrugged. “Maybe a car bomb or RPG attack—they happen all the time.”

Nothing much fazed Jayne. And it was true—there had been a continual string of attacks by the Taliban and other insurgent groups on American military and civilian vehicles. These tended to involve vehicles packed with explosives or rocket-propelled grenades fired from ambush points along the road.

For both of them, it was their first visit back to the region since 1988. At that time, Johnson had been a CIA case officer in the Directorate of Operations’ Near East Division, working out of the Pakistani capital Islamabad with occasional covert sorties across the border into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. He had applied for the role inspired partly by disgust at the way the Russians had carried out a virtual genocide across the country. The posting, which began in June 1986, was his first overseas role with the CIA, which he had joined in 1984. Jayne, also based in Islamabad, was an officer for the British Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6—she had also been Johnson’s girlfriend for a short while.

Now their roles were somewhat different. Johnson was a freelance investigator, specializing in war crimes, and Jayne had worked with him on several projects. Both had come to Afghanistan for an exhausting series of interviews, presentations, and meetings over the previous two days in Mazar-i-Sharif about a potential consultancy contract with the International Criminal Court. The ICC was considering a full-scale investigation into war crimes committed in Afghanistan by all sides during the current ongoing conflict—not just the Taliban and other factions but also US, British, and other NATO military forces—since 2003, when Afghanistan joined the ICC. The contract, if secured, would involve running a significant portion of the research work required.

Although confident, they both now had to wait a couple of weeks to find out whether they would win the contract. Privately, Johnson agreed with the many human rights campaigners who argued that the scope of the proposed inquiry was too narrow. He and the campaigners thought that the Afghan government should extend investigations into human rights abuses back to 1978, when the Soviet army invaded the country. But that was never going to happen.

Johnson popped a mint into his mouth as the aircraft touched down on the Kabul runway. While the plane was taxiing toward the terminal building, the pilot made an announcement over the intercom in the same respectable albeit heavily accented English he had been proudly deploying at intervals during the flight.

“I have some unfortunate news for passengers who are traveling onward by road into Kabul city center. We have just been informed there has been a security incident on the highway outside the airport. There may be delays while the authorities deal with the situation. I would like to apologize to all of you for this. There will be updates available when you get into the terminal building. Thank you for flying with Ariana Afghan Airlines.”

Chapter 2

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Kabul

The windshield of Yuri Severinov’s black Porsche Cayenne 4×4 had a spiderweb of cracks where it had been hit by flying debris, and the driver’s side wing panel was heavily dented where it had clipped the bumper of another car.

Severinov accompanied his Afghan chauffeur and his head of security in Afghanistan, Ivan Lvov, who had been in the car along with his close protection bodyguard, on a quick inspection of the damage. The vehicle was now parked behind a maintenance hangar at Kabul International Airport.

He knew he was lucky to still be alive. Thankfully, the chauffeur, a highly skilled driver, had managed to avoid a minibus slightly ahead of him that had been hit by some explosive device on the highway heading toward the airport. Severinov guessed it had most likely been a rocket-propelled grenade. That had come just after his driver had miraculously avoided a jackknifing truck that also appeared to have been hit by an RPG.

Severinov was certain that the two missiles were not intended for the minibus or the truck. They were aimed at his Porsche. The distance between the two strikes was at least three hundred meters, and his was the only vehicle close to both of them. It was no coincidence.

It was likely that he had been saved by the speed at which his chauffeur had been driving, making it difficult for whoever had launched the missiles to aim accurately. So he had survived, and several other innocents had undoubtedly died.

Severinov shook his chauffeur’s hand and nodded his head in acknowledgment. “Thank you. You did a good job,” he said in Pashto, because the Afghan spoke virtually no Russian.

He surveyed the damage once more. “Take the car and get it repaired,” Severinov said. “Then get it back to Sherpur as quickly as you can. I will need it on my next visit.”

“Of course, sir,” the chauffeur said. “You have been watched over by Allah today, that is certain.”

Severinov stifled a grin and ran his fingers through his wiry dark hair, now heavily mottled with gray and receding down both sides. “Yes, of course. He watched over us both very well. Off you go.”

Two months earlier, Severinov had bought a new nine-bedroom, four-story, luxury villa on a hillside in the Sherpur Cantonment area—known among US expatriates as the Beverly Hills of Kabul—a kilometer or two west of the embassy district. It would be perfect if he needed to live in the city in the future, which he anticipated would be the case. There was enough space there for him and his staff, although unlike many other Russian oligarchs, Severinov tended to travel with a minimal number of assistants. Lvov, who had his own suite of rooms at the villa, had installed an array of high-tech security devices, including infra-red intruder detection alarms and eye-retina and fingerprint entry systems.

At around the same time he had bought a safe house—actually a small concrete and brick business unit on a site protected by a high brick wall and razor wire—from a fellow Russian entrepreneur. It was just off the Kabul-Nangarhar highway in northeastern Kabul, only about four kilometers from the airport. It was ugly, and the previous owner had been only partway through converting it into a residential property, so it still had piles of building materials scattered around the site and was unfinished. But it was secure and it was all Severinov needed. He wouldn’t be living there, so its condition didn’t matter much.

Despite its poor state, the property blended well into its surroundings, and Severinov considered it unlikely to attract attention, which was a principal reason he had chosen it, along with its proximity to the airport. It was only a kilometer to the east of the sprawling Camp Phoenix US military base, which in Severinov’s view reduced the chances of it being a target for the Taliban.

Severinov headed around the side of the hangar and onto the apron, where his leased $50 million Bombardier Global Express private jet was being prepared for the trip back home to Moscow. Lvov, who was busy on a phone call, followed. The Global Express was Severinov’s main aircraft, particularly for longer trips. He also had a smaller Cessna Citation. Both were normally kept at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport, only eleven miles south as the crow flies from his expansive home near the banks of the Moscow River in the Gorki-8 district.

Nodding at a security guard who stood at the bottom of the aircraft steps, Severinov climbed into the cabin, slowly removed his jacket, and asked the steward to pour him a vodka.

Lvov, who had now finished his phone call, caught up with him. “Sir, I’ve just been speaking to a contact in the Afghan police. I thought I’d better report what happened on the highway to him—off the record, of course. But I did not anticipate this: he now wants to come and speak to you. But I’ve put him off. I said we were leaving soon.”

Severinov turned to face him and paused for a moment before answering. “Why the hell did you want to report it to them? You know I want to keep a low profile in this country. I don’t want to get involved in this. I’m not talking to their police people if I can help it. Definitely not.”

Lvov nodded, running a hand through his short blond hair. “Sorry, sir, I shouldn’t have called him. I’m glad I at least put them off, sir.”

The steward returned holding Severinov’s chilled vodka, his usual Beluga. It hadn’t quite been the outcome he had expected when he had headed out of Kabul earlier that day for a couple of meetings. The first was with a top-level source he had cultivated inside the Afghan government machine who was now helping him prepare for a giant and audacious bid for a stake in the oil and gas production projects that the Afghanistan government was opening up to international investment. The second was a quick chat over chai with an old informant of his dating back to his KGB days in Afghanistan.

Assuming that he had actually been the target of the attack on the highway—and all his instincts told him that was a correct assumption—the puzzling question that remained was, why?

True, at home in Russia, his huge wealth as an energy oligarch, his status as a close ally of the Russian president Vladimir Putin, his political ambitions, and his ruthless business methods meant that he did have a number of opponents, some of whom might be pleased to see the back of him.

But it had been a long time since he had engaged in any meaningful activity in Afghanistan—twenty-five years, in fact, dating back to his time as a KGB officer. So what had just happened didn’t seem to make any sense.

***

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Kabul

The sun had just set as Johnson and Jayne strode across the small plaza toward the US embassy’s modernistic sandstone chancery building, past the manicured flower beds, decorative lawn, and trees. They headed through the entrance, inset into an enormous glass frontage beneath a concrete canopy.

Johnson’s first reaction on seeing the expanse of glass was that it must be an irresistible target for Taliban bombers, despite the extensive security checks required to get anywhere near it. Indeed, there had been a couple of attacks in the previous couple of years, resulting in casualties, although none to embassy staff. He was surprised there hadn’t been more since the new building’s opening in 2006.

A familiar figure stepped forward to greet them as soon as they passed through the door.

“Better late than never,” said Sally O’Hara, assistant chief of mission at the embassy, who had invited him and Jayne. “Come through. You’ve missed Donnerstein, unfortunately. He’s made his speech and gone to the airport already. But there’s a lot of other people I’d like you to meet.”

“Yes, I’m sorry. Nothing we could do,” Johnson said. “We got held up in Mazar for ninety minutes, then there was the Taliban attack out on the highway, which meant we couldn’t get out of the airport for half an hour. Crazy. Were the speeches and presentations recorded?”

O’Hara, a serious-looking slim woman with a gray bob cut, nodded. “Yes, they were. I can arrange for you to see the video if you like.”

“Yes, that would be good. Thank you. You’re getting a stream of VIP visitors through here at the moment, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” O’Hara said. “It’s crazy busy. We’ve got a lot of investment bankers here. There’s Richard Lorenzo, the Silverson Renwick chief executive, over there.” She pointed to a bespectacled figure talking to three other men near the stairwell. “He’s meeting local businessmen and is also speaking here tomorrow as part of Silverson’s women-in-business initiative. And next week Paul Farrar is in town. He’s got meetings with Karzai and then both he and Lorenzo are speaking at a big security conference in Delhi immediately afterward.”

Farrar was the US secretary of state and had been pushing the Afghanistan president, Hamid Karzai to keep American troops in the country beyond the scheduled end of the NATO combat mission in 2014.

“It sounds hectic. Do you know if Frank Rice is still here?” Johnson asked. “I was supposed to meet with him.”

“Yes, I saw him not long ago,” O’Hara said. “He was enjoying a scotch. Come on. You’ll both need a drink after that long delay.”

She led Johnson and Jayne through the reception area toward the central atrium. Johnson could hear the clinking of ice cubes in glasses and the murmur of conversation before they entered the room.

There was a crowd of at least two hundred people gathered in the ground floor area at the foot of the central stairwell, overlooked by the internal office windows and landings of the floors above. At the front, there was a heavy wooden lectern, placed on a red carpet, from where Donnerstein had presumably made his speech earlier.

But now the group of diplomats, energy industry executives, Afghan government representatives, and other expatriate hangers-on were getting down to the real business of the evening—schmoozing.

O’Hara caught the arm of a tall, slim man with a gray crew cut and a tanned face who was passing them in the other direction.

“Joe, I’d like to introduce you to Seb Storey before he leaves us,” O’Hara said. “Actually, Lieutenant Colonel Seb Storey. He’s in charge of the US Army operation down in the Khost-Gardez Pass—it’s his job to keep it open. You might have a few things to talk about. Seb, this is Joe Johnson. He worked in Afghanistan years ago, and now he’s talking to the ICC about a war crimes investigation here.”

Storey looked Johnson up and down. “Just as long as you don’t investigate us,” he said with a serious face. “We play it straight.”

“I’m sure you do,” Johnson said. “Good to meet you. You’ve got quite a task on your hands, keeping the Taliban at bay down there. I’d like to have a chat at some point. I think you’d have valuable insight into the issues we’re dealing with.”

Storey nodded. “Sure. Not now, though. I need to run. One of my staff officers can set something up. Sally here has my contact details—Sally, can you give them to Joe?”

O’Hara nodded. “I’ll get them to you tomorrow,” she said to Johnson.

“Give me a call anytime,” Storey said. “Although you might need to be patient. The Taliban keep blowing up the cell phone towers. Enjoy the evening.” He turned and left.

As they edged across the cream stone floor, inset with a yellow, blue, and black pattern, Johnson spotted Rice heading in their direction, wearing the same striped shirt and tie as in the photograph he had emailed a couple of days earlier.

Rice, a London-based investment banker for Brownhill & Co., a small operator that specialized in the global oil and gas sector, was holding a scotch. He shook Johnson’s hand and then Jayne’s as she introduced herself.

“I’m sorry we were late,” Johnson said. “There was a security alert outside the airport on the way in.”

“There always is,” Rice said, scratching his fleshy cheek. The three of them spent a few minutes chatting about the security situation and the difficulties it caused expats in going about their day-to-day business. It was the usual embassy cocktail party routine.

Johnson glanced around to ensure nobody was paying them too much attention or eavesdropping. “So,” he said to Rice, “what did you want to talk about?”

“It’s all focused around the huge potential of Afghanistan’s oil and gas reserves,” Rice said, sipping his scotch and looking alternately at Johnson and Jayne. “The most recent assessment is showing massive, and I mean massive, potential. There’s 1.6 billion barrels of oil potential and 16 trillion cubic feet of gas, plus another half a billion barrels of natural gas liquids. Look at that lot and it’s a big asset. Development of it has hardly scratched the surface. There’s billions and billions of dollars at stake here. We can discuss the precise details of what I might like you to do if we sit down privately.”

During their previous phone conversations Johnson had already run through his background. He had detailed his history working for the CIA in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the late 1980s, followed by a long stretch through to 2006 at the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), the US Nazi-hunting unit that was part of the Department of Justice. He had also explained how he had subsequently set up his own business as a private investigator with a focus on war crimes and had worked closely with Jayne, giving some of her background as well.

“I’ve been doing some more research of my own since we last spoke,” Rice said, “including reading press coverage about some of your cases. I was impressed.”

Johnson nodded. Rice seemed well informed, which Johnson expected but still felt was a good sign before he went into business with someone. “Jayne’s played a big part in those investigations. She’s former MI6, from your patch in London.”

Jayne took the cue to give Rice a little more background about herself, briefly mentioning her early MI6 days and her decision to leave the service and go freelance in 2012, when she started working regularly with Johnson.

Rice looked thoughtful. “Interesting. Well, here’s the deal. I’m looking at this Afghan gas and oil investment project on behalf of a US client, and given your background, I’d like you to do some in-depth research on some of the potential rival bidders. Deep background stuff, political as well as financial checks. You’d have to sign nondisclosure agreements and so on before I can tell you anything further. It needs to be confidential. Is that something you might consider?”

Rice hadn’t mentioned the investment project or the need to sign NDAs when they had last spoken. Working for an investment banker wouldn’t be his number one choice, although he had a good knowledge of their requirements. Furthermore, he couldn’t see how working for such an organization would have any relation to his core war crimes work. He glanced at Jayne, who gave a small shrug.

“I’m not sure,” Johnson said, turning back to Rice. “It doesn’t sound like my normal type of work. We can have a conversation about it, though, if you’d like.”

“Right,” said Rice. He checked his watch and looked around the room. “Listen, why don’t we see if we can get a meeting room here for twenty minutes now. I’ve got a couple of NDA forms in my briefcase. You can sign those and we can get things moving straightaway. If the project or terms don’t suit your needs, no harm done and I’ll look elsewhere. Is that okay?”

Johnson nodded. “Yes, I understand. Jayne, what do you think?”

“Yes, that’s fine with me,” Jayne said.

Johnson pointed at O’Hara, who was nearby. “Ask Sally. She’ll find a room for us.”

Rice headed over and spoke to O’Hara for a few minutes, then returned to say that she could provide a room. “I’m just going to have to get confirmation from my London office that it’s okay to enter into preliminary discussions with the two of you,” he said. “It’s just a final check of both your credentials. Why don’t you mingle and socialize while I do that. I’m guessing it will take about an hour.”

Johnson glanced at Jayne. This would be a final sign-off on the due diligence that Rice had done earlier, he assumed. Johnson nodded. “Yes, that’s fine with us.”

As soon as he had gone, Johnson murmured to Jayne, “I think he’s checked me out already. There’s no way he’d be talking about signing NDAs so quickly otherwise. He probably just needs to verify your story.”

Jayne nodded. “I know. But let’s go with it. Could be interesting.”

“It’s interesting that the Afghans are opening up the gas market to foreign investment with all this Taliban activity still going on,” Johnson said. “It’s going to be quite risky. I mean, a well-placed RPG into a gas production or distribution facility or pipeline is going to reshape the goddamn Hindu Kush if they’re not careful. Some investors might not be too eager to get involved.”

An hour and a quarter later, after Rice said he had received clearance from his London office, the three of them were sitting around a table in a small room on the first floor of the embassy. The internal window looked out over the party in the atrium that they had just left. Only a few people had left, and those remaining were getting steadily louder and more drunk.

Johnson and Jayne signed the nondisclosure agreements that Rice produced from his bag, and he slid them back into a plastic folder with a satisfied sigh.

“Right,” Rice said, propping his elbows on the table, hands clasped together. “Here’s the score. My client, a US private equity company called Haze Investments, is hot on Afghanistan. They’ve got several medium-sized oil exploration companies in their portfolio and now want to move up a league. They’ve come to me for advice because I know Afghanistan, up to a point. What they need is some intelligence on their potential rival bidders; they want to know what they’re up against so they can tailor their offer accordingly. But we’re struggling a little to get the information we need on two of the other parties who are interested in getting into bed with the Afghans.”

“Who’s handling the process for the Afghanistan government?” Jayne asked.

“The Ministry of Mines and Petroleum is leading it,” Rice said. “So the minister there and his officials are responsible, but one of their people, the head of financial transactions, is running the process for them.”

“So who are the bidders you’re interested in?” Johnson asked.

“First, the Chinese,” Rice said. “There’s a couple of state-owned companies, could be either of them who lead it, but it’s basically the Chinese government plus whatever partners they can bring in. They’ll be into it because they won’t like the idea of the Russians getting back into Afghanistan. But I’ve got a guy in Shanghai who’s doing the due diligence on them. You don’t need to worry about the Chinese.”

“So who else, then?” Johnson asked.

“There’s a Swiss-based investment company—you might have heard of them. ZenForce Group,” Rice said.

“No, I’ve not heard of them,” Johnson said.

“They’re extremely private. Into oil and gas trading, and they are increasingly buying up production companies and exploration businesses. They’ve got a front man, the managing director Rex Zilleman, who’s American, now based in Zürich, where the company’s home is. There are others involved, we believe, but we don’t really know all the details.”

It all sounded far too corporate, complex, and not remotely interesting to Johnson. “Is there anyone else?” he asked.

“The other one is a Russian, a crony of Putin’s,” Rice said. “He’s an oligarch—a billionaire, maybe a multibillionaire. But he’s very secretive. He’s got strong interests in energy and has the funding to basically buy whatever he wants. A group of oil fields fell into his lap somehow—as they seem to in Russia—during the 1990s, and Putin has supported him. Since then he’s used the resulting cash flows to snap up all kinds of assets, ranging from gas fields to pipelines and power stations in various parts of the world, and now a few exploration companies. Apart from that, we don’t know a huge amount.”

The idea of doing some research on an oligarch seemed slightly more appealing, but the oil and gas sector? Johnson knew little about it, and it was just too removed from his normal field.

“So you want to know more about this guy,” Johnson said. “Makes sense, but I’m not sure if poking my nose into Putin’s toilet is my thing, really. Frankly, it’s not my scene.”

Rice leaned back in his seat and adjusted his open-neck shirt. “I’ll do it on your usual terms,” he said, “plus a special circumstances fee that will reflect the security situation here in Afghanistan and the people you may be dealing with on the Russian side in particular. I can negotiate. My client is paying so there is flexibility.”

“What you’re trying to say,” Jayne interrupted, “is that it’s bloody dangerous.”

“Let’s be honest, there are security risks. I want to ensure that’s reflected in the payment,” Rice said, scrutinizing Johnson. He wasn’t smiling. “What do you think?”

“Like I said. It’s not my scene,” Johnson said. “I’m a war crimes investigator.”

“Well, actually, I have reason to believe one of the parties involved might be of particular interest to you, then.” Rice raised an eyebrow.

“Who?”

“The Russian.”

“What’s his name?” Johnson asked.

“Yuri Severinov. Runs a business called Besoi Energy. Haze is thinking that if a Russian rival is trying to get involved in Afghanistan, they might be able to leverage the history between the two countries. I mean, Russia occupied Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. If this guy has any skeletons in his cupboard dating from that time, then, well, you know . . . ” Rice’s voice trailed off and he raised his hands expressively.

They were obviously thinking of playing slightly dirty if the opportunity arose. “You think he might have skeletons?” Johnson asked.

“Possibly. In the ’80s, he worked for the KGB here in Afghanistan.”

The KGB? Severinov? Johnson had to stop himself jerking upright in surprise as he made the connection. Instantly, his mind flashed back to 1988, to running for his life from a remote Afghan village as two Russian Hind helicopter gunships closed in.

“You’ve heard of him?” Rice asked, his gimlet eyes scanning Johnson’s face.

“Indeed,” Johnson said, grimacing a little. “I’ve heard of him. Oh, yes.”

Chapter 3

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Moscow

Severinov tried to relax as his driver negotiated the smooth stretch of black tarmac driveway through the trees and up toward the imposing facade of the Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev’s private residence in the luxurious Gorki-9 district.

But after less than four hours’ sleep following his flight back from Kabul, and then an early morning call from Medvedev’s urbane personal assistant Mikhail Sobchak summoning him to Gorki-9 before he could even eat breakfast, relaxation was proving elusive. He had made do with eating a couple of bananas in the car en route.

He scanned the array of eight Roman-style pillars that decorated the front of the symmetrical white three-story building, then looked up at the slate gray dome that topped the roof.

This dacha, on the south side of the Moscow River, was one of many occupied by the rich and famous in the so-called Rublevka area, just off the Rublevo-Uspenskoye highway, around eleven miles west of the capital. The property had previously been occupied by former president Boris Yeltsin until he had resigned in 2000.

It was Severinov’s first visit to Medvedev’s home, although the two had met several times at the Kremlin and at the Russian White House—the main government building and Medvedev’s official workplace.

Severinov’s black Mercedes Maybach came to a halt outside the front of the house, and a doorman moved smartly forward to open the rear door for him, nodding deferentially as Severinov stepped out. His close protection bodyguard got out of the other side of the car and walked briskly around to join him.

He screwed up his eyes in the glare of the late spring sunshine. The heat, combined with a slight nervousness about the meeting, caused beads of sweat to form on his forehead.

Severinov was now worth many billions of dollars, thanks in part to the patronage of Vladimir Putin and Medvedev, former head of the Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom. In contrast to their battles against other oligarchs, the pair supported the acquisition by Severinov’s business, Besoi Energy, of three underperforming state oil and gas fields for peanuts, debt-free.

Severinov gave them a shake-up, installed new management, and turned them around. The resulting tidal wave of cash that flowed into his bank accounts enabled him to pay off the modest acquisition cost within two years and then purchase a whole raft of other energy assets, both in Russia and abroad.

A key factor behind Putin’s support was Severinov’s background. His father, Sergo, had been a fiercely loyal Russian, a hero of the Second World War—the Patriotic War as the Russians called it. He had then spent seven years working for Josef Stalin as a close bodyguard and an enforcer who became known for his brutal methods of extracting information from reluctant interviewees. Once, after a night of drinking vodka, his father confided that his favored technique was to use a rubber truncheon and a spring-loaded steel rod to systematically break leg and arm bones.

Severinov also had links to Putin through the KGB. After studying economics at Moscow State University, Severinov joined Russia’s main security agency in 1980. He was based in Berlin, where he became fluent in German and English. Putin, a KGB officer from 1975 to 1991, had worked in the Leningrad and Dresden bureaus. The two men occasionally cooperated on Cold War operations.

So far, Severinov’s parentage, his links to Stalin, his shared KGB background with Putin, and his care in operating his business had carried some weight. Nevertheless, things weren’t quite the same as they had been. Putin remained mindful of old connections and friends but had forged strong links with new people and brought in new methods and attitudes, and Medvedev likewise. Severinov knew his currency with both men had been somewhat debased over the years and was aware that whatever he had could be taken away at the president’s whim.

Sobchak had told him that Medvedev wanted to further discuss bidding plans for the exploration and production assets owned by the Afghanistan government. It was the type of large, heavily politicized strategic deal that Putin and Medvedev took a very close interest in.

The truth was that Severinov held Medvedev in some awe, partly because of his vast knowledge of the oil and gas sector but also because of his power.

Sobchak, dressed in a smart black suit, held open the imposing front door of the house for Severinov and his bodyguard as they entered the entrance hall. He shook Severinov’s hand and apologetically indicated toward the airport-style X-ray scanning machine to his left.

Once Severinov and his bodyguard had passed through the device, he immediately saw Medvedev, a slightly stocky man with dark, receding hair and a straight, even slightly downturned mouth, step forward to greet him.

“Yuri, greetings,” Medvedev said. “How are you? I heard about your narrow escape in Kabul. Damned Taliban.”

“Greetings, Prime Minister,” Severinov said. “Yes, the Taliban are everywhere still. It’s irritating, but I try to stay positive. If we’re going to do business in that country, we have to work around them.”

Medvedev, wearing a white cotton shirt with gold cuff links but no tie, led him through a set of black double doors and along a red-carpeted corridor to the door of his private office, and Sobchak brought up the rear. Severinov indicated to his bodyguard to wait outside.

Once in the reception suite outside his office, Medvedev turned around and faced Severinov. “I have a special guest who will also be joining us for the meeting,” he said.

Before Severinov could ask who that might be, Medvedev opened the door and walked into the dark oak-paneled office. There, sitting in a chair next to the desk, was Putin. Severinov did his best to remain cool and collected. A doubleheader involving both the president and the prime minister was not what he had been expecting. Dermo. Shit.Were they taking Afghanistan this seriously? Clearly they were.

Severinov walked across the light oak floor, interleaved with strips of dark wood to form a diamond pattern, and shook the president’s hand. As on the previous occasions when he had met Putin, his hand felt as though it had been through a crusher.

The president, unsmiling and unblinking, made no attempt at niceties. It wasn’t like the old days. “Sit down,” he said.

Severinov, not daring to take his eyes off Putin, lowered himself into one of the ornate dark wood chairs decorated with gold leaf, its padding lined with heavy blue material. Medvedev sat in the other chair, a large Russian flag drooping from a pole behind him.

“We both want to speak to you because we are concerned about what happened in Kabul,” Putin began. “It was careless of you. I’m not going to ask for an explanation, but that story was all over the damn television news in Kabul, and of course, international media followed up, including some of the useless asshole journalists around here.”

My God, that idiot Lvov and his police briefings, Severinov thought, fresh beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead.

Putin stroked his chin. “What was my core, most important instruction to you when I set you this task in Afghanistan?”

“Mr. President, sir, you said you wanted to keep everything very low-key,” Severinov said.

“Yes. I did. And being so careless as to leave yourself open to an RPG attack on the main highway is hardly low-key, is it?” Putin spat.

“No, I have to agree, but—”

“What kind of surveillance detection did you follow before and during that journey, can I ask?”

Severinov should have expected this. Putin took the concept of shouldering personal responsibility for security measures extremely seriously, no matter the capabilities of his support staff.

“It wasn’t thorough enough,” Severinov said. “I would like to apologize for that. It was an error that won’t be repeated.”

“No, it won’t,” Putin went on. “This oil and gas investment in Afghanistan is one of the most important strategic moves we currently have on our books. If we don’t secure it, the Chinese will. And we simply cannot allow that. Russia failed using outright military muscle in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Now we are taking a different approach. If we control Afghanistan’s natural resources, we control the country. What’s more, it will enable us to strengthen our ties with Kabul at a time when they are absolutely sick of having the Americans and the British stomping all over the country. They can’t stand Obama. And I’ve put you in personal charge of this project because I trust you.”

“Thank you,” Severinov said.

Medvedev tapped his fingers on the desk. He was going to have his say too. “We’ve canceled twelve billion dollars of debt the Afghans owe us, we’ve sold them a massive amount of weapons and ammunition, and Hamid Karzai is keen to build bridges with us as an alternative to Washington. We can help them—we’re experts in oil and gas. They want us in, and it’s your job to make sure it becomes a done deal.”

Putin nodded in agreement, then leaned forward over the desk’s mirror-like, polished surface and thrust his face toward Severinov’s so that the two were no more than half a meter apart, eyeballing him. “I am personally looking forward to traveling to Kabul to sign this deal. I want it to be seen as part of Russia’s attempts to build much better relations with Afghanistan.”

Not the reality that you want to use it as a strategic move against the Chinese and the Americans, Severinov thought.

“Yes, I understand,” he said. He knew that Putin and Medvedev had both seen the briefing paper he had written on the Afghanistan opportunity, including a short assessment of the likely rival bidders. It had been a difficult paper to write, partly because information on the rivals had been hard to obtain—particularly the Swiss group ZenForce. Apart from their managing director, Rex Zilleman, his knowledge of the key people behind ZenForce was sketchy at best.

Putin sipped from a glass of water that stood on the desk in front of him. “Do not misunderstand me: I want you to not only be extremely careful but also extremely ruthless. I don’t want to hear about things going wrong or people getting in your way. Tell me—you worked in Afghanistan in the 1980s, so I’m assuming you did things we wouldn’t want to be made public now. Is that risk being managed so this deal isn’t threatened?”

“The Afghan government knows nothing,” Severinov said. “My role in the 1980s was impactful but below the radar. And there are no records anyway.”

The KGB files relating to his time in that country—some of which he himself had written—had all been destroyed when the Soviets withdrew in 1989.

“Good,” Putin said. “If anyone does get in your way, you take whatever measures you need to take. We’ve got the tools. But I don’t want any more publicity like we’ve just had. Do you understand? If necessary, you can call on the SVR or our special forces to ensure things stay quiet. Got it?”

Severinov felt his stomach flip over inside him. “Yes, sir.” He could see where this was heading.

“If needed, we can start with a social media blitz to discredit rival bidders,” Putin went on. “That can be done at arm’s length—a disinformation campaign. But I don’t need to tell you any of that.”

Putin glanced at Medvedev and leaned forward, eyeballing Severinov again. “While you’re here, there’s another job I also want you to think about, and that’s Andrei Fedorov, seeing as he is an old friend of yours.”

“Yes, that’s a bad business, sir,” Severinov said.

Putin had done his homework. Andrei Fedorov was indeed one of Severinov’s oldest friends. Fedorov was an illegal, deep-cover spy who had been operating in the United States for the previous twenty years under the guise of his day job as a translator and technical writer for an electronics company. But he had been imprisoned six months earlier in New York City after being convicted of being a handler for a number of highly placed agents in the US government and intelligence services machine. He had consistently fed back priceless information to Moscow over those two decades without detection but had ultimately fallen into a trap laid for him by the CIA after one of his agents at Langley informed on him.

“Bad indeed,” Putin said. “And we need a solution. Fedorov is a good man and I want him back. I’m thinking in terms of a prisoner exchange. But at present, we have no bargaining chip to offer. I need ideas from somewhere, and the worthless idiots at the SVR have so far come up with nothing. You can keep that in mind.”

“I will, sir,” Severinov said.

“However, Fedorov would be a bonus. The main task on your plate is the oil and gas deal. And let me tell you this,” Putin said, lowering his voice a fraction. “I respect your pedigree—I always have, you know that. But if you fail, don’t take your wealth and status for granted. The SVR might take an interest too if things reflect badly on Russia—and on me.”

Severinov grimaced. Threats from Putin were not to be taken lightly. And he knew exactly what was meant by an interest. The SVR, Russia’s intelligence agency that was successor to the KGB, might have moved on in many of its working practices but not in terms of some of the subhuman techniques used to interview and extract information from those out of favor.

***

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Kabul

Johnson stumbled down the narrow mahogany staircase of the three-bedroom villa he and Jayne had rented, walked into the kitchen, and flicked on the kettle. Thoughts of Rice and Severinov had been spinning around in his head since he had woken, and he needed to think everything through.

Severinov. He had never met the Russian, but the name sent a shiver through him.

In 1988, Johnson had come under fire from a pair of Soviet Mi-24 helicopters—dubbed Hinds by the US military and intelligence services—in an Afghan village, Hani. The raid prematurely terminated a secret meeting with a mujahideen contact whom Johnson was cultivating, Javed Hasrat.

A few weeks later, he had again sneaked over the border, this time with his CIA colleague Vic Walter, for another covert meeting with Javed at a safe house in Jalalabad. But the meeting was similarly aborted after they were alerted to an imminent raid by the KGB.

Both forays had been arranged by Johnson’s chief informant at that time in Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency, Haroon Rashid. Fortunately, Johnson and Vic managed to escape safely back to Pakistan, but Haroon later discovered that Javed had been captured by the KGB in Jalalabad and thrown into the snake pit that was Pul-e-Charkhi prison.

And both times, it had apparently been Severinov who had coordinated the raids on the Soviet side.

So to have heard from Rice that Severinov was now an oligarch running a major Russian energy company had come as a surprise, to say the least.

Johnson had already arranged a long overdue and much anticipated reunion for later that day with Haroon, who was flying in from Islamabad. The pair hadn’t seen each other since 1988. The plan had originally been for a casual catchup to talk about old times. Now, however, the news that Severinov was again involved in Afghanistan would add a new twist to the meeting. It would be fascinating to hear what Haroon made of it all.

Johnson finished making his tea and walked through to the living room of the villa, a slightly run-down property with peeling green paint on the doors and the window shutters, just off Wazir Akbar Khan Road. It was less than a kilometer from the US embassy in a secure area protected by security guards and barriers at both ends of the street. It was definitely a safer and more anonymous option than staying in a hotel such as the Intercontinental or the Serena, which were both under constant threat of attack by suicide bombers or rockets launched from nearby. It was also better than the temporary accommodation pods, made from converted shipping containers, inside the embassy compound that many of the staff lived in.

Johnson found it easy to see why long-term expatriates suffered from cabin fever during their postings to Kabul; it was compulsory to get around by armored car, even for the shortest of journeys. His favorite pastime in foreign cities—wandering around by himself on foot—was extremely risky here.

Only the previous month, one of the US embassy staff, a woman in her mid-twenties, had been killed by a Taliban car bomb.

Johnson turned on the television to find a national news bulletin underway on the ATN channel. He could understand most of what the newscaster was saying—his Pashto, learned while working for the CIA in Islamabad, had become rapidly less rusty, even in the brief time he’d been back in Afghanistan. He sat at the table, nursing the hot mug of tea in both hands, and listened. The segment concluded with an interview with the Silverson Renwick chief executive Lorenzo, carried out through an interpreter, about women in business.

Just as the bulletin ended, Johnson’s phone rang. It was Sally O’Hara with the contact details for Storey that she had promised to him during the embassy party. After scribbling down the email address and phone number, Johnson asked her if the embassy had picked up any updates about the previous day’s rocket attack near the airport that he had witnessed from the airplane window.

“We’ve had a few updates from police,” O’Hara said. “Apparently fifteen schoolchildren and a truck driver died. All Afghans.”

“Fifteen?” Johnson said incredulously.

“Yes. The minibus and the truck were both definitely hit by rocket-propelled grenades. That’s been confirmed. But we’re hearing that police believe they were hit accidentally and that the real target was a black Porsche owned by a Russian oligarch on his way to the airport, which got away untouched.”

“Do you know who the Russian is?” Johnson asked.

“I’ve not heard a name, but I was told that he was in Afghanistan in connection with the oil and gas reserves sale. I’ll let you know if we hear any more later on.”

“Thanks, Sally, I’d appreciate that.” He ended the call.

A Russian oligarch. There weren’t exactly going to be too many Russian oligarchs in Kabul linked to the oil reserves sale, that was for sure. It had to be Severinov.

Johnson picked up his laptop and did a Google search for Severinov, which threw up a number of references to him in the context of energy deals, links to Putin, and photographs showing a muscular-looking figure with short, graying black hair that was receding. There was nothing about his KGB background, of course.

“You’re up early,” a voice said from the doorway. He looked up. Jayne was standing there, her white robe falling open at the bottom, showing almost all of her right thigh.

Jayne had changed very little physically from when they had first met in Islamabad. They had both been heavily involved with their respective intelligence agencies in plotting to supply weaponry to the mujahideen rebels in their fight against the Soviet military. Their affair back then, short-lived as it was, had seemed almost inevitable. Equally inevitable, looking back on it, was the negative reaction of Johnson’s boss, the subsequently disgraced Islamabad station chief Robert Watson, who deemed it a security risk.

Even now, Johnson had some feelings for Jayne, who occasionally accused him of not knowing what he wanted from her. Maybe she was right. But since they had started working together again, their relationship had remained professional.

“Too much on my mind,” Johnson said. “So I got up to make some tea. Listen, I just had a chat with Sally at the embassy.”

He told her about the Russian connection to the RPG attack and the obvious conclusion that the target was Severinov.

Jayne walked across the room toward him. “Yes, it must be him. I still find it hard to believe how a KGB officer becomes an oligarch. That’s modern Russia, I guess. He must have made a ton of enemies on his way to the top.”

“Yes, but likely in Russia, not Afghanistan.”

Jayne shrugged. “Don’t know. Does the Severinov angle make you interested in Rice’s proposal?”

“I’m interested in Severinov, not Rice’s money.”

“But you’re looking doubtful.”

“My old OSI boss always said never to trust a money man, because their heart’s always in the wrong place.”

“Get Rice checked out, then.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Could be an interesting job, though,” Jayne said. “We’ve got some free time while we wait for the ICC decision. We could do it. Why don’t we chat with Haroon about it later. He might have a view.” The reunion with Haroon was due to take place over lunch.

“Sure, we’ll chat with Haroon,” Johnson said. “But I don’t know. I also need to decide whether to stay here or head home while we’re waiting for the ICC decision.”

As a single father with two teenagers at home in Portland, Maine, Johnson was always weighing up his responsibilities and the amount of time he spent away working. His investigation trips tended to be spaced several months apart, but they usually lasted for a few weeks. It was difficult. Jayne, almost three years younger than Johnson, had never married or had children, but she always saw his point of view. She nodded, silently communicating her understanding.

“I do keep asking myself whether I should be here at all,” Johnson said, “let alone chasing after someone who’s been on the wrong end of an RPG attack.”

***