Breaking Cover

18

‘You must be Mischa,’ said Miles Brookhaven, standing still in the doorway with his hands held loosely at his sides. It seemed the safest thing to do and he had nothing to defend himself with anyway. If he were wrong about the identity of this man, Miles was probably going to get shot. ‘I’m Sean Flynn. My colleagues in Kiev said you had requested a meeting. It sounded urgent, so here I am.’

The man stared at him, then lowered the gun. He was dressed in black-and-olive combat fatigues, and was tall and powerfully built, with a rough beard and dark eyes that seemed too small for his face. He jammed his sidearm into the holster at his waist, leaving the butt sticking out. Miles stepped forward and held his hand out. The man shook it with a hard grasp. Miles noticed that the Russian had been eating the rolls and drinking the tea from the tray the woman had brought. ‘I bet that’s cold by now,’ he said. ‘Would you like some more?’

Again the man stared. Then his face broke into a grin. ‘I have a better idea,’ he said. He went to a knapsack he’d put down on a chair. Retrieving a bottle of vodka from it, he said, ‘You got glasses?’

Brookhaven laughed. ‘Sure to be some in the kitchen. Wait a second.’

Thank goodness Mischa spoke decent English – with about twelve words of Russian to his credit, Miles had been worried about how he would communicate with the informant. His request for a translator had been turned down – sending one man close to the war zone was dangerous enough without doubling the risk, and in any case, they’d said, it was not necessary.

In the kitchen as he searched for glasses he wondered what Mischa had to tell him that could be so important. He had been told that the Russian had been an accidental find, a ‘walk in’, who’d approached the Agency via an American journalist who was one of the first to get to the site of the Malaysian aeroplane crash. Mischa had been there ‘advising’, or more accurately directing the Ukrainian rebels who were guarding the site and disguising what had happened. Miles’s colleagues in Kiev had picked him up and had been meeting him since then in conditions of the utmost secrecy, and at high risk to Mischa himself. He was an officer in a special unit who’d been sent undercover with some of his men to train the rebels. His information about the extent of Russian involvement and the type of advanced weaponry they had supplied to the rebels was proving unerringly accurate, and crucial to the West’s understanding of the situation. His motivation hadn’t been explained to Miles, though money obviously played a large part in it, but the Kiev Station was apparently satisfied that he was genuine and clearly knew a lot more about him than they had thought necessary to tell Miles.

He returned to the living room with a couple of glasses, to find Mischa staring gloomily out of the window. He nodded as Miles lifted the vodka bottle, then watched as the American poured out two hefty shots of the liquor. ‘Skål,’ said Miles, lifting his glass and trying to lighten the mood.

Mischa smiled wryly. ‘Cheers,’ he said. He drained his glass in one go.

Miles followed suit, and almost choked as the fiery liquid went down his throat. He managed to say, ‘You speak excellent English.’

‘I was a postgraduate at Birmingham University – in computer sciences.’

‘And then the army?’ It seemed an improbable switch, but had to be voluntary. Mischa was a good ten years past draft age.

The Russian looked at him with amusement. ‘You are wondering how an educated man can end up like this?’ He pointed to his fatigues. ‘I am a technical specialist in advanced weapons,’ he said. ‘Not one of the ranks.’

Miles nodded as he refilled their glasses, and they both sat down in the armchairs by the fireplace. The Russian said shortly, ‘I asked them to send me a British expert and they have sent me another American. I have not much time. I need to get back before dark or questions will be asked. So are you a British expert? Can you get information to them quickly and secretly?’

‘Yes,’ Miles replied. ‘I live in London and I am the Agency’s chief liaison with the British agencies. I can get your information directly to them as soon as I get back.’

‘Good,’ said Mischa. He put his glass down on the side table next to his chair. ‘I hope you are aware of the conditions I set.’

‘I am.’ Miles stood up and took the roll of bills from his pocket. He handed it over to the Russian, who had remained sitting. ‘It’s dollars, as you requested. I think you’ll find it’s all there.’

The Russian riffled the bills with his hands, and seemed satisfied. Then he said warily, ‘You do understand this is a down payment. I will expect the rest in due course.’

‘Provided your information proves correct,’ Miles felt obliged to add. The sum agreed was $10,000 – and he had just handed over half of it. The amount was less important than the principle of part-payment – it was believed that paid sources should always be left hanging slightly, to incentivise the further flow of information.

‘It will,’ Mischa said sharply. ‘If you listen carefully, there will be no chance of any disagreement.’

I’ll be the judge of that, Miles thought. Yet soon he found himself gripped by the story the Russian told him.

Very briefly Mischa sketched the origins of his overtures to Western intelligence, seeming to assume that Miles would be familiar with this part of the story. He’d been sickened by the atrocities he’d witnessed in Ukraine, committed by the fighters he was supposed to help. After they’d shot down the Malaysian airliner, firing a missile system they were not trained to use, he was made responsible for helping disguise what had happened in an attempt to shift the blame on to the Ukrainian government forces, and now his conscience could bear it no longer. When he came across the American journalist on the site, he decided to try to use him to get in touch with American intelligence. It was an enormous risk; the journalist could have publicised his story, or he might not have made the contact on Mischa’s behalf, or Mischa himself might have been ordered back home to Russia. But the contact was made and since then he had been crossing the lines at great risk to himself to pass information.

But it was not simply the downing of the passenger plane, or the fact that his own Russian colleagues had urged the Ukrainian rebels on to ever-more brutal tactics, that had persuaded Mischa to consort with the enemy; it was also a growing conviction that Russia was reverting to the despotic totalitarianism his generation thought had been overthrown forever. Democracy had not come to his country, despite the promise of those first post-Cold War days, and Mischa was becoming more and more convinced that it never would.

Miles had heard this sort of talk before from informers from Russia and it was credible as far as it went, but the fact that it was almost always accompanied by requests for large sums of money rather took the shine off the idealism.

Having got his justification off his chest, Mischa turned to the story Miles had travelled all this way to hear. It had come through his elder brother Sasha, who was a middle-ranking officer in the FSB in Moscow. Sasha, unlike his younger brother, was not an idealist. Rather, he, like many of his colleagues in the FSB, was a cynic – cynical about the way the country was governed, cynical about the way the FSB behaved and the things he was required to do. And, like many cynics, Sasha – when suitably fuelled by late-night vodka during Mischa’s visits from the front – liked to talk.

On Mischa’s last visit home Sasha had started describing how the FSB had worked to prepare the ground for the Russian takeover of the Crimea. How they had covertly influenced the Russian-speaking population, stirring up and spreading dissension and separatism until the annexation became the desired outcome for the majority of people. Now they were doing the same in East Ukraine. Sasha had said that he was working in the department responsible for that type of covert action, but not in Ukraine – in Western Europe. There were two types of target in the West. The first, said Mischa, was Russians themselves, émigrés who were thought to pose a threat to the homeland.

Miles was growing slightly impatient. ‘That’s nothing new. We’ve seen it already, with Litvinenko.’

Mischa shook his head. ‘Litvinenko was ex-KGB. He was betraying his former colleagues. His murder was vengeance rather than the removal of a threat. I’m talking about something different. Since all the activity here,’ and he waved an arm towards the window, ‘Putin’s position is increasingly unstable. Sanctions are having an effect, and the people most affected by them are those who have got rich by corruption. Those who have been his supporters. They can’t move their money around as they could, and their stakes in oil and gas are worth half what they were. Until now, they needed Putin, but not any more. Putin is terrified they will fund a coup against him, and he may be right.’

The result, according to Mischa, was that the FSB were initiating a new campaign to undermine and destabilise the leading opponents of Putin living abroad. Action of various kinds would be mounted to destroy their position; it might be by damaging them financially or by destroying their reputation by scandal of some sort or even assassination. It would take place wherever they were living – in Switzerland, Hong Kong, the United States, but particularly Britain. The methods would vary, but all these plots would be organised and initiated by FSB agents working undercover.

‘Do you have any details of these plots?’ asked Miles. The news was concerning, but in the absence of specifics there wasn’t much the Western authorities could do: increase security, issue warnings, threaten further sanctions if Russian state involvement could be proved.

‘Not yet,’ said Mischa. ‘I will need to speak to my brother again but that’s not possible until I go home.’

Miles nodded, but he was disappointed. Was it just for this nebulous warning that he’d come all the way to the eastern edge of Ukraine? His colleagues in Kiev had been taken in by this man, who now seemed to have nothing worthwhile to impart.

Mischa said, ‘I will of course do my best to find out more, but I hope this is of value.’ When Miles said nothing the Russian seemed to sense his disappointment, for he added quickly, ‘There is something else I also learned from my brother.’

‘Yes?’ Miles’s voice was flat. This was when agents liked to lie. Seeing their handlers unimpressed, they began to invent.

‘You know the term “Illegals”?’

‘I do.’

‘Then you will know the Russian security service’s interest in using them.’

He did, very well. All intelligence services put agents into target countries with false identities – using third-country nationalities. The KGB had had particular success with this technique during the Cold War – famously with the Portland spy ring, run by a KGB officer under cover as a Canadian businessman.

Mischa continued, ‘My brother is involved in this area.’

‘Oh.’ Miles was careful to sound neutral.

‘Yes. But the programme has changed.’

‘In what way?’

‘In the past they were used for collecting intelligence. Now they are part of the destabilisation programme. The programme is in two parts. As I said, the first is to destabilise the opponents of Putin; the second is to destabilise the target countries themselves by undermining leading politicians, encouraging separatist parties, reinforcing minor parties to create unstable coalitions, giving covert support to religious extremism or whatever will be effective in the different countries. It is an ambitious and long-term programme.’

‘Do you know if any of these Illegals are in place? And where?’ asked Miles, desperately trying to get something concrete to make this trip worthwhile.

‘Very few are in place yet. It takes time to build up the cover and to train them. Sasha told me that one is in America, but he is no use to them as he is ill – lymphoma is the term, yes?’ When Miles nodded, he said, ‘There are two in France, living as a married couple, and there is another at work in England. Sasha is proud because that is the country he works on and that case is turning out to be the most satisfactory.’

‘Why?’ asked Miles, suddenly leaning forward in his chair, then as suddenly relaxing as he told himself not to show such obvious interest. ‘Has this Illegal managed to achieve something?’

‘Not yet, I think. But Sasha said that he is well on the way to a major destabilisation. Sasha’s bosses are very pleased with him.’

‘Do you know what nationality he has or what his target area is?’

‘No. All I know is that he is a man and at the time when I was talking to Sasha his success was quite recent.’

‘And you say this is different from the oligarch programme.’

‘Yes – but both are part of the larger destabilisation programme.’ Suddenly Mischa looked at his watch. ‘I must go. It will be dark in an hour or so. I hope I have been able to help.’

And with a quick handshake he was gone. Watching him from the window, cycling off down the track to the road, Miles didn’t know whether he had been told something of great importance or a fairy story. If it was true, it was alarming. The Russians would not be mounting Illegal operations, with all the preparation, back-up and risk they involved, unless they had some very serious intent, and whatever that was it was not benign.