Land of Ghosts Read online

  Fazan sipped his drink, fixed Asim with a cool look and dropped his voice a semitone. ‘You’re probably aware of the Russian situation here in London.’

  ‘The fact that half Russia’s diplomatic staff are involved in espionage, most specifically stalking Russian dissidents, actively hunting for military and political secrets and checking out any commercial endeavours likely to profit the motherland, or is there something else I should know?’

  Fazan nodded another smile. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, a return to the days of the Cold War.’

  That bad? Asim thought. He considered it more of a brief, steep drop in temperature. Asim reached for his glass, tasting the champagne, pleased that it was chilled to exactly the right degree. He hated champagne that was frozen.

  Fazan continued to talk. ‘I’ve lived in Russia for the best part of a decade. Believe me, there’s a new authoritarianism abroad. Russia feels snubbed by the West and, as a result, wishes to prove that it can get along without us quite well. We have opponents of the regime slung into prison, ballot fixing, and the divide between rich and poor widening by the day. Need I say more?’

  Asim shrugged. Old news, he thought. Russia was good at talking the talk. In spite of its upwardly mobile stance, the redevelopment of many landmarks in Moscow, the new elite, new money and the ‘Europisation’, the infrastructure outside the two central cities was crumbling. When states suffered domestic crises it was common policy to sabre-rattle, if not go the whole hog and march to war. It wasn’t unique to Russia. The world had worked like that since time immemorial.

  ‘They’re heading for meltdown,’ Fazan said glumly.

  Asim wasn’t at all sure he agreed but chose to keep his own counsel. In any case, the entire globe seemed to be heading for meltdown.

  ‘When the Russians feel under threat,’ Fazan said, ‘they have a nasty habit of striking out and extending their rule.’

  And the newly elected British government won’t like that one bit, Asim reflected. Notwithstanding Europe’s dependency on Russian energy, the government was determined to take a firmer line with the men in the Kremlin than its predecessors. New brooms and all that.

  ‘Which brings me to the reason I asked you here,’ Fazan said, a shrewd expression in his eyes. ‘Chechnya.’

  Asim’s expression betrayed none of the surprise he felt. After ten years of bloodshed, the Russians had formally ended their war against the rebels in the region. Why on earth would they wish to reignite an age-old problem?

  ‘It’s feared that the warlords are making a play again,’ Fazan said, a meaningful expression in his eyes.

  ‘Did they ever stop?’ To Asim’s mind, Chechnya was a little like the troubled state of Northern Ireland: same heady mix of religion and politics, and same clamour for independence. Just when you thought things were sorted, a minority paramilitary group would flex its muscles.

  ‘We’re faced with a rapidly deteriorating situation,’ Fazan said. ‘Many hard-line rebels have set up camp in the mountains. Come April, it’s feared they’ll start a major offensive. Although Russian forces maintain overall control, the separatists are getting stronger and more assertive every day. Disappearances of civilians are on the up as is the daily killing of police officers and troops. You’re aware of the recent spate of high-profile assassinations in Moscow?’

  ‘Sensational murders take place in Moscow every day,’ Asim countered.

  ‘They do, indeed, but these victims share one thing in common.’

  Asim arched an eyebrow.

  ‘They were former military men and had less than savoury dealings in Chechnya’s most recent conflict.’

  ‘You’re suggesting that Chechen terrorists are responsible?’

  ‘They’re certainly being blamed. It’s why the Russians are going back in.’

  ‘What’s this got to do with me?’ Asim said.

  Fazan twitched a smile, clearly amused by the man from MI5’s direct approach. ‘As early as 1993, it was suspected that a key warlord had some rather surprising contacts. By the end of 2002, the Secret Intelligence Service was convinced of links to al-Qaeda. So convinced, we decided to try something rather innovative.’

  Asim threw Fazan an expectant look.

  ‘We put one of our intelligence officers into the field.’

  Asim felt genuinely taken aback, although he was at pains not to show it. Sure, MI5 had successfully penetrated the IRA—Gerry Adams’s driver was, in fact, a British spy—but this was in a different league. He considered how it had been achieved. Then another more pressing and ugly thought permeated his mind. The infamous attack on a school in Beslan took place in 2004. With a man in the field, had the Secret Intelligence Service received prior warning? Worse, there was a rumour abroad at the time, fuelled by the Kremlin, that foreign secret-service forces were at work in the Beslan siege. It was deemed that certain countries were trying to manipulate Russia.

  ‘Heard of Akhmet Elimkhanova?’ Fazan said.

  Asim had. Elimkhanova had stepped into the power vacuum that had opened up after the warlord believed responsible for the school massacre had been killed. ‘He’s an amir,’ he said, ‘a leader of a seventy-strong group of warriors.’

  ‘This is the group our man, Graham Darke, was sent to penetrate, which he did with a brilliance that is, quite frankly, beyond compare.’

  ‘So what’s your problem?’ Asim said.

  ‘He’s gone missing.’

  ‘Could have gone to ground.’

  Fazan shook his head. ‘Darke has been off the air for more than twelve months.’

  Why had it taken the SIS so long to get onto it? Asim thought suspiciously. ‘Why not use existing assets in the area?’

  ‘Do you know anything about the topography of Chechnya? It’s like looking for Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains.’ Fazan glanced around again. The bar was now filling up with tourists and City traders. ‘We think Darke’s gone native.’

  Fuck, Asim thought. Given the volatile situation, it wouldn’t look good for the British to be seen to be meddling in Russia’s internal affairs. Far more politically serious, what if Elimkhanova was linked to the assassinations in Moscow, thereby implicating Darke?

  ‘Highly unusual, surely? Any clues in his background?’

  Fazan raised a dark eyebrow. ‘Apart from his Chechen blood ties?’

  And, presumably, Asim thought wits sharpening, the reason Darke was able to successfully infiltrate in the first place. But the security services had also taken a risk. Inevitably, blood proved thicker than water. He decided to be straight with Fazan.

  ‘Are you suggesting that Darke is orchestrating the assassinations in Moscow?’

  ‘Something, as you’ll appreciate, he is ably equipped to carry out,’ Fazan said, his expression grave. ‘Which is why it’s imperative Darke is tracked down. I’ve heard on the grapevine you head a special unit.’

  More like the Foreign Legion, Asim thought. In truth, he ran a number of agents, off-the-books spooks, to carry out black operations. The advantage to the security service: if things went wrong, plausible denial could be claimed.

  ‘We want someone from your unit to find him,’ Fazan said.

  Here we go, Asim thought, reaching for his glass, weighing up the possibilities. ‘You want me to give one of my operatives a transfer, that right?’

  ‘A secondment, on a temporary basis,’ Fazan said, an astute look in his eye. That was what Asim had been afraid of. He feared that it might be very temporary indeed. ‘You would, of course, remain in control,’ Fazan added, lightly dusting a speck off the lapel of his jacket.

  ‘You want me to head the operation?’

  ‘Yes and no. You will act as liaison. I hear you’ve enjoyed spectacular results from a particular employee.’

  Asim arranged his face into a picture of inscrutability. He knew the exact man Fazan was referring to, but wanted to find out how good his intel was.

  ‘Paul Tallis is a decorated former soldi
er,’ Fazan continued, ‘an ex-firearms officer with an elite undercover unit, and has been working off the books with your good self for a couple of years. He also has a talent for languages.’

  ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘Don’t be. Intelligence gathering is my stock-in-trade.’ It was said without a trace of arrogance. ‘His Russian is flaky but that doesn’t matter. We want him to speak Chechen, a language with which we believe he is already familiar.’

  How the hell did Fazan know that? Asim wondered. As for the mission, it was madness.

  ‘And when your man is found, then what?’ Asim said. ‘Tallis would have a problem with assassination.’

  Fazan gave a shudder of distaste and reached for his glass. Asim thought it a curious gesture. Fazan was no stranger to elimination. ‘We simply want him to bring Darke back home.’

  Asim’s smile was thin. ‘Are you serious?’ Judging by the lack of expression on Fazan’s face, he believed he was.

  ‘It’s not as difficult as it appears,’ Fazan said smoothly. ‘Paul Tallis and Graham Darke were schoolfriends.’

  Asim still didn’t buy it. It was one thing to put Tallis into what was effectively a deteriorating situation that might well escalate, quite another to expect him to bring an operative back, chum or no chum, who, by all accounts, had turned rogue agent. More thinking time required, he reached for his drink again. ‘Is the Foreign Secretary aware of the details of the operation?’

  ‘Certainly not. He’s still catching up on his in-tray.’

  Asim didn’t like this one bit. If there was a serious risk of political blowback, the Secretary was usually informed. This was extremely irregular even by his standards. ‘What about C.?’

  He was referring to the head of the Secret Intelligence Service. Fazan answered in the affirmative. That was something, Asim supposed. In the normal scheme of things, he would have followed it up, but the network he ran was no ordinary outfit. It was supposed to be secret. Few people knew of its existence. It meant that checking things out took a little longer. Again, Fazan’s sharp intelligence seemed to spot his general reluctance.

  ‘Look at it this way,’ Fazan said, ‘we’re both running highly classified operations. Hence, not many are in the loop.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘The difference between Darke and Tallis and his like is negligible.’

  Asim blinked. His like? Perhaps it was an unfortunate turn of phrase, but he didn’t care for it. Asim had a burning loyalty to the men and women in his charge. ‘I hate to labour the point but this business about your man going native.’

  ‘Yes?’ Fazan said, topping up their glasses.

  ‘What evidence do you have, or is your supposition based on a dubious source?’

  Fazan smiled, proof that he had taken no offence. ‘Never turn down a tip from a dubious source, Asim,’ he said lightly. ‘I can see I’ll have to work a little harder to persuade you.’

  Damn right, Asim thought.

  ‘Our source is trustworthy,’ Fazan said.

  So he did have one, Asim realised. ‘Another Russian oligarch who’d prefer not to be serving time on charges of fraud and tax evasion?’ Asim’s tone was less than complimentary.

  Fazan deflected the implied criticism with a smile. ‘Our last intelligence from Graham was that Akhmet Elimkhanova was planning to hold serious talks with fellow sympathisers outside Russia, possibly from the Middle East, identity as yet unclear. Our source, however, maintains that Akhmet is planning a spate of murders on selected targets in Moscow.’

  ‘Something that Graham neglected to tell you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Very worrying, Asim had to agree. The evidence, such as it was, was starting to stack up against Darke. ‘And you suspect your military victims are just the start?’ he chipped in, listening closely.

  ‘We do.’

  So this time the Chechens weren’t being framed by the State. They really were responsible for the bloodshed. ‘This source…’ Asim flashed him another expectant look.

  Fazan let out a sigh, clearly uncomfortable with having to disclose further information. ‘We have an asset in the Moscow Police Department. Forensic evidence found at the scene of the first assassination implicates Darke.’

  Unaccountably careless of him, Asim thought.

  ‘Furthermore, our high-ranking source has somewhat more pressing information. Akhmet has someone on his hit list rather higher up the food chain. The man, in his eyes, who started the whole thing rolling.’

  Asim frowned. Boris Yeltsin, the president who had originally ordered the army and air force into Chechnya, was long dead. He told this to Fazan.

  ‘But not the man who orchestrated the campaign, who took over as president and is now prime minister.’

  ‘Andrei Ivanov?’ Asim said with alarm.

  ‘Imagine the fallout if the British Secret Intelligence Service were seen to be responsible for the assassination of the most powerful man in Russia.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  NO QUEUES, no waiting with the great unwashed, no sour-faced security, and no touting of airline scratch cards. Marvellous, Tallis thought as the Jet Ranger flew a final circuit before dropping down and coming in at a perfect seventy miles an hour to land.

  Single-handedly, he’d flown a friend’s helicopter from a helipad in Belbroughton, a posh West Midlands suburb, to a privately owned airfield at Reinsdorf. En route he’d refuelled with Av-Gas at L’Aeroport de Charleroi in Brussels, principally because the authorities weren’t too anal about checking passports. From there, he’d flown directly to Berlin and was in the process of hovering over a grass airstrip that had formerly belonged to the Russians and now was owned by a laid-back German called Helmut. It was Tallis’s idea to see if he could make the trip without first seeking normal permissions or going through official channels, including filing the all-important flight plan. Christ knew what he’d have done had he been caught but, by flying low and outside the zones, things had worked like Teutonic clockwork. Nobody had ordered him to land, and no jets had come up alongside, strafing and treating him like a terrorist. The entire rogue operation had been a blinding success.

  Tallis removed his headset, and carrying out the post-landing checks, turned off some of the electrics, allowing the engine to cool down, then stepped out, feet crunching against the hardened ground. He flexed his tall frame in relief. For the past few hours, he had cruised at just under 140 m.p.h., initially in fairly lousy weather conditions, his surroundings leather-lined and luxurious. But he’d still been confined to what was essentially an oversized goldfish bowl.

  He took in a brisk gulp of air and continued to survey the cold German crystalline scenery. In spite of sunlight filtering through a band of distant trees, the ordinariness of the cabins dotted around the airfield and the sight of Helmut striding purposefully towards him, he imagined an image of grey Russian MiGs, barbed wire and watchtowers.

  ‘Willkommen, Paul,’ Helmut said, slapping him clumsily on the back, his red, weather-beaten features stretched into a broad grin. In his battered leather jacket and open-necked check-shirt, Helmut exuded farmercum-Luftwaffe chic.

  Tallis shook his hand warmly. ‘Wie geht’s?’

  ‘Gut. Viel Arbeit, viel Essen, viel Sex, und beidir?’ Fine. Plenty of work, plenty of food, plenty of sex, and yourself?’

  ‘Fantastisch,’ Tallis laughed.

  ‘And how did you find the Jet Ranger?’ Helmut cast an appreciative glance over the helicopter. The dark blue paintwork looked spectacular against the rather grey and muted surroundings.

  ‘Virtually flew itself.’

  ‘You were impressed?’

  ‘Sehr.’ How could he not be? The Jet Ranger was the helicopter of choice for many of the Bond films. ‘Where do you want me?’ Tallis asked.

  ‘Here’s good.’ Helmut waved a stout arm, indicating a hangar a few metres away from where they’d landed. It was his for the next two nights. ‘Come back to the office when you’ve finished. I
want to hear all about it,’ he added over his shoulder, striding off again. Tallis envisaged the next two hours spent drinking tea or something a good deal stronger while trading tales of aerobatics and brushes with the Civil Aviation Authority. Afterwards, he planned to order a cab and head off to his hotel, shower and change, and sample some genuine Berlin hospitality. Tallis had every intention of making the most of his forty-eight-hour stay. He’d never visited the city before and wanted to trawl the former Eastern Bloc, do the whole tourist thing, Brandenburg Gate, old bits of the Berlin Wall, Jewish memorials, the Reichstag, Checkpoint Charlie…

  His phone rang, rudely interrupting his train of thought.

  ‘Paul, it’s Asim.’

  Tallis had a sudden premonition that his history tour was about to be cancelled.

  ‘Can you talk?’

  ‘Give me a moment,’ Tallis said, walking a short distance away, automatically checking his surroundings for potential eavesdroppers of which there were none. He glanced up as a Cessna flattened out, coming into land.

  ‘Where are you?’ Asim said.

  ‘Berlin.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘A couple of days.’

  ‘Whereabouts are you staying?’ Asim said.

  ‘A hotel in Alexanderplatz.’

  ‘Is it possible for you to sneak away for a couple of hours?’

  ‘Yes, I sup—’

  ‘Meet me outside the Nikolaikirche, off Rathausstrasse tomorrow morning, ten your time.’

  Tallis didn’t have the chance to respond—Asim had already cut the call. He stood there for a moment, thinking. A consummate professional, Asim didn’t usually go in for pleasantries, especially on a telephone. In person, he was good company, amusing, mischievous even. None of this had transmitted down the line. Not so surprising, yet for his handler to travel all the way to see him at such short notice was out of the ordinary. As an off-the-books spook for MI5, Tallis was inured to the unconventional, the quick change of plan, the downright unexpected. Even so, it could only mean one thing: this was serious.