Dark Justice

IN THE BEGINNING JOSEF BELOV
6

Once, during the early days of the Chechen War, perhaps 1991, although he could never remember exactly, Josef Belov, a colonel in the KGB and more used to intelligence work, killed five Russian soldiers personally. It happened in this way:

Belov was head of the KGB’s Department 3, concerned with intelligence gathering about the Western world, but Chechnya was something else again, a case of all hands to the pumps, which was why he found himself being driven through the charnel house that was once the Chechen capital.

He sat in the front seat of an American jeep, of all things, being protected by Special Forces paratroopers, who had procured a large number of the American vehicles because of their proven worth in combat.

Belov had a corporal driving, and a sergeant standing in the back behind a heavy machine gun mounted on a swivel. He himself had an unusual weapon to hand, an Israeli Uzi machine pistol with one magazine taped to another to allow instant reloading.

There were refugees everywhere, lots of women and children, some pushing prams loaded with a few pitiful possessions, all screaming in terror at the sounds of battle: artillery shells landing with a crash, buildings collapsing in clouds of dust, helicopters passing overhead firing rockets into Chechen defensive positions.

None of this bothered Belov, the old Afghan hand. What did was the sight of a number of soldiers crowded around an army truck at the side of the road, who were obviously waiting their turn as a young girl lying back on the driver’s seat was in the process of being raped.

Belov waved a hand, and the jeep stopped. He saw an older woman nearby, her face stained with blood. She struggled free of the man who held her, saw Belov and lurched toward him.

“Sir, I beg you. My daughter is only thirteen.”

Two soldiers grabbed her again and pulled her back. Belov said, “Let her go.”

They looked crazed, faces filthy and sweat stained. One of them cried, “Who in the hell do you think you are?” and took a pistol from his holster. Belov produced his Uzi, shot him through the head, swung as the other one pulled the woman in front of him and sprayed a short burst, which unfortunately killed the woman as well as the soldier. The others turned in alarm and Belov fired again and again.

Some of the soldiers started to fire back, and the sergeant returned their fire with the heavy machine gun, scattering men across the sidewalk. The girl was still there, Belov saw her clearly, and then the fuel tank on the truck exploded and the whole thing fireballed. Belov’s driver immediately reversed away.

The sergeant said, “You were right to do that, Colonel. I’ve got two daughters back there in Moscow.”

“But I haven’t. I did it because it was right in the eyes of God. A great man named Oliver Cromwell said that once. A general who turned England into the first republic in Europe.” He took out his cigarette tin and extracted one, passing the tin to the others. “Let’s get moving. They usually say things get better. In this case… I rather doubt that.”

Born in the Ukraine in 1943, Josef Belov had never known his father, a peasant farmer who, like several million other Soviets, had gone away to fight the war against the Nazi invader. He never came back.

His strong extended family was held together by his mother, and they farmed the family properties until a number of fellow countrymen who had elected to join the Germans turned up, and put the torch to their crops and the buildings, killed the old men and had their way with the women.

Belov’s mother survived and made her way to Moscow, where she had relatives. What saved Belov in the years after he finished state schooling was conscription. Whatever else one could say about communism in the Soviet days, it did not waste people and their potential. It was the Red Army that discovered that Belov had a brain, nurtured him, tested him in various ways and sent him to officer cadet school, then a special department at Moscow University, where he particularly found his niche in social psychology, the science of people interacting in groups. Combined with moral philosophy, it made for an interesting mixture that, together with a flair for languages, inevitably led him into the KGB.

After 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, he found himself heavily involved in that theater of war, and for many years he encountered an enemy, spurred on by the Taliban, who were experts in skinning alive the young conscripts who fell into their hands. Emasculation was simply a side product. At least it gave him the chance to add Arabic to his languages, but the brutality, the cruelty, the sheer barbarism, had an effect on his very soul that would not go away.

There was no time for marriage, the decencies. He was always busy – working on behalf of Department 3 in Northern Ireland, for example, feeding the Irish conflict with arms for the IRA. There were useful contacts there, especially in the Drumore area of County Louth, where the local IRA commander, a particularly hard article named Dermot Kelly, became more than useful to him over the years.

And then, in 1988, at the age of forty-five, and a major, he met Ruth.

She was twenty years younger than he and the very opposite in nature: deeply religious, as befit her biblical name, a schoolteacher and social worker concerned only with the good of others. Belov, the hard man, the soldier who had killed when necessary, adored her for her sweetness, her simplicity, her kindness.

When she had found she was pregnant, he had been over the moon, and then it had happened. She had attended a school meeting for parents one night. He’d arranged to pick her up, but then something serious had come up, KGB business, and that came first.

She’d started for home on foot in the driving rain and sleet, and somewhere on the way had been abducted, her half-naked body found in an alley close to Red Square the following morning. Standing in the mortuary looking down at her bruised and beaten face, Belov knew a horror and an anger that would never go away. It froze the soul in him, took away all humanity.

He used no police, no militia. He pulled in all the terrible power of the KGB, found the two men responsible and had them brought before him, looked on their drunken, drug-ravaged faces and knew what he must do.

They could have been charged with several offences including her murder, could have been sent to the Lubianka, but that would have meant trials, paperwork, courts. Instead, he sent for a young lieutenant who had been allocated to him after severe wounds in Afghanistan.

Yuri Ashimov had been born in Siberia. Like Belov, conscription had been the making of him and he’d followed a similar route, which had, in the same way, taken him to Afghanistan, a terrible war, but one in which a man like Ashimov could make his mark. He couldn’t believe his luck when he was allocated to Belov at Department 3, for Belov’s exploits in Kabul had made him a legend.

Standing before Belov’s desk, he could feel the pain, felt it as personally as if this man were a brother.

“Major, what would you like me to do?”

“I will sign an order, releasing these two animals from the Lubianka. There will be no guards, just handcuffs. Then I will wait for them at an appropriate place by the river. I will kill them personally, Yuri. What happens afterward doesn’t matter to me. If I have to meet the consequences, I will.”

“Well, it bothers me, Major. With due respect, I’ve no intention of seeing anything bad happen to one of our greatest heroes. Leave it to me, I’ll get them released and your name won’t be on it.”

“How will you do that?”

“I have contacts, Major. And then, you said by the river? I’ll bring them to the Gorsky Bridge, take the cuffs off and you can finish them.”

“You would do that for me?”

“Of course, Major. It would be an honor.”

And so it became a relationship that grew and flourished over the years, and when the government forces collapsed in Afghanistan in 1992, Belov, by then a colonel, and Ashimov, a captain, were among the last to leave, accompanied by another KGB colonel named Putin.

It all seemed to blur around that time, the Chechen Republic declaring independence, the carnage of the civil war, Gorbachev, the USSR ceasing to exist, the wall down in Berlin and then the mad boom years of the Russian Federation and Yeltsin, years that for the strangest of reasons were the making of Josef Belov into one of the greatest oil barons in the world and the creator of Belov International.

As the man responsible for subversive activities in the Western world, for the creation of chaos and uncertainty and fear, the events of 1991 and the first Gulf War had provided Belov with a whole new field of enterprise.

Belov had been active in Northern Ireland for some years, supplying the Provisional IRA with weaponry, linking various dissident elements with Muslim terrorist groups in the Middle East, and so on. An interesting thing about the IRA was that as the momentum of its own struggle had died down, it had left seething discontent among many of its members who, as had been the habit of the Irish over the centuries, then sought service as mercenaries overseas where their skills could be put to good use, money on the counter – and where better than the Middle East, particularly Iraq after the war. So Belov’s contacts on both sides grew and flourished.

Then, after the roller-coaster years of Boris Yeltsin, everything changed. Privatization of a great deal of the Russian economy became the order of the day, and Belov didn’t like it. He preferred order, discipline, a strong hand. Perhaps all the books he’d read about Oliver Cromwell had affected him more than he’d realized. So he pulled strings and moved to Baghdad, taking Ashimov with him.

It was a turbulent time, Saddam gassing the Kurds and putting down the Shiite rebellion with an iron hand. The country, of course, was suffering economically and not only from the oil embargo, and Belov could see the results. In fact, it got him interested in oil in a way he had never been before.

Sitting on the terrace at the Russian Embassy by the River Tigris having a vodka one evening, he said to Ashimov, now a major, “Yuri, have you any concept of the wealth of the oil business in western Siberia? Of the natural gas and coal and some of the richest mineral deposits in the world? Yet little of it is being developed right. Too much government interference. It’s a waste, just like what’s happening here in Iraq.”

“I don’t know about Siberia, but there’s little you can do about it here, I’m afraid. If Saddam lives up to form, he’s going to end up goading the Yanks and the Brits into another invasion.”

“You really think he could be that insane?”

“Absolutely.”

Ashimov stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date. Dinner and possibly dancing at Al Bustan.”

“Ah, the new GRU girl, the lieutenant?”

“Greta Novikova. Quite special. Why not join us?”

The telephone on the desk rang and Belov answered, then switched into Arabic. He paused, listening, then put the phone down, frowning.

“Now, what in the hell does that mean?”

“Well, I can’t comment unless you tell me.”

“That was the man himself, Saddam. He wants to see me at the presidential palace.”

“Which one?” Ashimov asked dryly.

Belov ignored him. “You can forget dinner. Better phone this Greta and cancel. I’ll need you with me.”

Ashimov was all attention now. “Of course, Colonel, at your orders,” and he reached for the phone.

They drove through the city in a Range Rover, found a small crowd of people at the presidential palace and a few cars. They paused at the gates, where Belov presented his identity card and they were passed through with an efficiency that indicated they were expected. They stopped at the bottom of the huge steps leading up to the palace.

Belov said to Ashimov, “You’re carrying?”

He took a Walther from the shoulder holster under his left arm and Ashimov produced a Beretta. “Of course.”

Belov opened the glove compartment and put the Walther in. “And you. If we take the hardware inside, we’ll set every alarm bell in the palace ringing.”

They went up the steps to the entrance and found an army colonel waiting impatiently. “Colonel Belov, he keeps asking for you. This way. I’m Colonel Farouk.”

The lighting was subdued, the statues in the marbled corridors only half visible in the dusk. They halted at a beaten copper doorway, a sentry on each side. The colonel went in. A moment later, he came out.

“He’ll see you now, gentlemen,” he said, and leaned forward and murmured in Belov’s ear, “For the sake of all of us, take care, Colonel. He’s in one of his manic phases. Anything is possible.”

He opened the door and ushered them in. Saddam sat behind a huge desk with a shaded light as he looked up from some papers. He wasn’t in uniform, and he stood up and came around the desk and spoke in Arabic, extending his hand.

“Colonel Belov, good to see you, and who is this?”

“My aide, Major Yuri Ashimov.”

“Also of the KGB or the Federal Service of Counterespionage or whatever you’re calling it now. Does Department Three no longer exist? I rely on Moscow.”

“Excellency, you may be sure it still exists for the specific purpose for which it was created, however much our masters juggle around with changes.”

Saddam’s eyes glittered. It was as if he was on something, and he paced around the desk restlessly. “Sit down.” He gestured to two chairs.

“It’s good to know you are still operating, Belov. I have always looked on you as a friend, but these days, times are uncertain, the Americans waiting for any excuse to pounce. I’ve done everything they’ve asked for in the treaty, and what happens? The oil stays in the ground, no way of getting it out.” Which was not strictly true, but he carried on. “And the exclusion zone, I’m constantly harried by their air force.”

At that moment, a siren sounded in the distance and the palace was plunged into darkness. He hurried to the great windows and watched as lights turned out in patches.

“Curse them. I’ve never felt so impotent. And what can I do?” He turned, hands wide. “Tell me, what can I do?”

He was smiling madly, sweat on his face, turned, picked up a vacant chair and hurled it across the room in a rage and then seemed to pull himself together.

“But no, I’m a poor host. Now what about that? Women or wine? Boring. Action, passion, that’s the thing. Tell me, Colonel, did you come in an embassy limousine?”

“No, Excellency, Major Ashimov drove us here in a Range Rover.”

“A Range Rover?” The lights came on again, extending across the city. “It’s been a long time since I drove one of those. I’m sure you’ll lend it to me.”

“Of course, Excellency.”

“Then let’s go,” and Saddam led the way out.

It was a fact known only to intimates that he frequently roamed the city late at night, driving himself, often with no guards of any kind, even though Belov had heard that guards did usually attempt to follow him. Farouk was half running to keep up with him as Saddam plowed ahead.

Belov tugged on Ashimov’s sleeve and they held back. “He’s in one of his mad moods, so we just go with the flow. Anything can happen. We’ll arm ourselves the moment we get in the Range Rover.”

“As you say, Colonel.”

They passed outside the main door at the top of the steps while Farouk pleaded. “Allow me to bring an escort, Excellency, that at least.”

“It’s a shameful thing if I can’t drive through my own city without an armed guard. You will wait here.”

He started down the steps to the Range Rover, and Belov paused by Farouk. “Give me your pistol.” Farouk took a Browning from his holster and handed it over. “Good. Now, my advice is to follow us at a discreet distance.”

In later years, he often wondered whether Saddam had seen himself as the great Caliph Haroun al Rashid in the Baghdad of old, mingling with the common people in disguise by night, but that couldn’t be true, for he drove the Range Rover like a madman, scattering the crowd outside the palace, and bouncing three cars out of the way.

He laughed harshly. “I am an excellent driver, is it not so, Colonel?”

“Of course, Excellency.”

Belov had the Browning in his pocket and now opened the glove compartment, passed Ashimov his Beretta and slipped the Walther into his shoulder holster.

They carved their way down into the city, swerving from one street to another, colliding with a number of vehicles, people jumping for their lives, and Saddam, in high good humor, drove even faster.

Ashimov murmured to Belov, “We’re being followed.”

“I know. I suggested it to Farouk.”

“They’re not military vehicles.”

Saddam, oblivious to all this, crossed an intersection that led him onto a four-lane highway.

“Now for some real speed,” Saddam cried, but at the same moment a red Ferrari accelerated beside them, a man leaning out of the rear window with a machine pistol. As he started to fire, Ashimov shot him in the head.

Another man in the front passenger seat beside the driver sprayed the Range Rover again, bursting one of the front tires. Saddam cursed, working the wheel furiously, and the Range Rover rammed into the metal road barrier and came to a halt.

A number of passing vehicles accelerated out of the way, but the Ferrari swerved, braking ahead of the Range Rover, and three men got out, all armed. At the same moment, an old white van pulled in, the rear doors opened and three more men joined the others.

Belov got out of the Range Rover and pulled Saddam with him. “Stay down, Excellency.”

Ashimov joined him, his face sliced open from one eye to the corner of his mouth. “Are you all right?” Belov asked.

“Not really.” Ashimov fired twice at the ones who crouched behind the van and the Ferrari. “Traffic seems to have ground to a halt back there.”

“Who can blame them.”

Saddam also had blood on his face and seemed dazed. “In my own city,” he said. “In Baghdad.”

Belov weighed the Browning in one hand, the Walther in the other. He smiled slightly at Ashimov. “Shall we get it done?”

“Why not?”

“You take the left, I’ll see to the right.”

A burst of machine-pistol fire thudded into the Range Rover and he called in Arabic, “No more, Saddam is dead. I’ll come out with my friend.”

There was a pause, excited conversation. A voice called, “Throw out your weapons.”

“We only have one gun,” Belov shouted, stood up with the Walther in his left hand, and threw it toward the other vehicles, Ashimov rising beside him.

“Now,” Belov said, as the six men moved into the open, and he fired very rapidly, knocking down the three on the right while Ashimov took out the three on the left. There was a movement in the van, its driver peered out and Ashimov shot him.

It was then they heard vehicles approaching fast. “Farouk and his boys,” Belov said. “The cavalry arriving rather late.” He took out a pocket handkerchief and gave it to Ashimov. “Best I can do.”

“I’ll treasure it, Colonel,” and Ashimov held it to his face.

In the Ambassador’s office the following morning at the Russian Embassy by the Tigris, Belov and Ashimov faced an angry man.

“You had no right to become involved,” the Ambassador said. “This has gone all the way to the President in Moscow. It may not have occurred to you, Colonel, but our government’s position in the Iraq situation is a very delicate one.”

“I see,” Belov said. “You’ve been informed of the circumstances. Should I have refused Saddam’s invitation to the palace? I think that would have been difficult. Should I have refused to accompany him on his drive? I think not.”

“Good God, man, no one appointed you to be his guardian angels. Eight men – you killed eight.”

“I believe so. I would like to bring to your attention Major Ashimov’s gallant conduct in this affair. As you can see, his face will never be the same again. He’s lucky not to have lost an eye. I suggest he be recommended for a decoration.”

“Denied,” the Ambassador said. “And for the excellent reason that it never happened. That will suit Saddam, and it certainly suits our government.” He paused and then carried on. “A sense of self-importance can be considered a sin in some quarters. You go too far, Colonel, and this could seriously affect your career.”

The threat was implicit, but at that moment, the phone on his desk rang. He answered, listened, and the change on his face was plain.

“Of course, Excellency,” he said in Arabic and put down the phone. “That was Saddam. He wishes to see you both at once.”

“And do we go?” Belov asked, curiously gentle.

“I don’t seem to have any choice.”

“I’m sure Moscow will agree when you inform them. You will excuse us, then?” He nodded to Ashimov and led the way out.

At the presidential palace, they were met by Farouk, who was ecstatic. “What you did was heroic, incredible, Colonel.”

“You know who they were?”

“Oh, yes. Two of them were still alive and soon talked. Shiite rebels, naturally. They never stop trying. He’s waiting for you eagerly.”

When Farouk ushered them in, Saddam was behind his desk in full uniform. He got to his feet, came around and embraced Belov, then turned to Ashimov, examined the scar covered by gauze that ran from his eye to his mouth.

“How bad?”

“Sixteen stitches. An interesting memento, Excellency.”

“I like that.” Saddam laughed. “Every morning you look in the mirror to have a shave, you’ll be reminded of me. Now sit down, the both of you. I have things to say.

“I felt anger last night, but mainly impotence. I’m hedged in by the Americans and the British, even the United Nations are hardly my friends. The Shiites rebel, also the Kurds. I deal with them and people compare me to Hitler.”

“Excellency, what can I say?”

“I have only one great weapon. Money. Many billions deposited in safe havens around the world, and money on that level is power.”

There was a heavy pause. Belov, for want of anything better, said, “I wouldn’t argue with that.”

“Which brings me to the point. I owe you two my life. In my religion, this leaves me with a debt that must be repaid in some way. A sacred duty.” He turned to Ashimov. “You were obeying the Colonel’s instructions last night, am I right?”

“Absolutely, Excellency.”

“A fine soldier doing his duty. You have my eternal gratitude. As to your future, I leave that to your colonel here – in safe hands, I think, when you hear what I have to say.”

He went back behind his desk and sat, speaking directly to Belov.

“These are strange times in Russia, so many State-owned enterprises going on offer to the open market, and at such reasonable prices.”

“True, Excellency.”

“All my billions languish all over the world, from Geneva to Singapore, and I can’t invest because of the attitude of the Americans and the United Nations. It would amuse me to outfox them.”

“In what way?” Belov said carefully.

“By discharging my debt to you, Colonel, for saving my life. I understand that at the moment there are a number of oil fields up for grabs in Siberia, for sale by a government very short of the almighty dollar.”

“That’s true, Excellency.”

“How far would one billion dollars take you?”

Belov glanced at Ashimov, who looked awestruck, took a deep breath and turned back to Saddam. “A very long way, Excellency. There could be difficulties, but difficulties are meant to be overcome. If I can serve you in any way, it would be an honor.”

Saddam shook his head impatiently. “Not for me, my friend, for yourself. Don’t you think my life is worth a billion dollars?”

For a moment, Belov was speechless as the enormity of it sank in, but finally managed to say, “I’m overwhelmed.”

Saddam roared with laughter. “One billion? A drop in the ocean, but think what you could do. Give the damned Americans a run for their money. Now, that I would like to see. That would please me.”

“But, Excellency, what can I do for you?”

“Who knows? Be my friend in bad times? A man in the shadows when needed?” There was a briefcase on the desk, and he pushed it across. “I’ve had my people prepare these documents in here carefully. There are code words and passwords in here that will give you access to one billion dollars.”

He stood up, and Belov and Ashimov got up hurriedly. Saddam gestured at the briefcase. “Take it, Colonel.” And he laughed harshly. “My debt is paid.”

In the month that followed that extraordinary meeting, Belov found an excuse to visit Geneva, a certain caution in him, a refusal to believe it could be true. He took Ashimov with him, and it certainly was true, for the bankers jumped to attention.

So he returned to Moscow and resigned from the service, together with Ashimov, whom he took on as his personal aide. With all the expertise gained from so many years in intelligence, he compiled a list of the sort of people he needed to know, not only businessmen but also crooked politicians on the take, and if any such people wouldn’t play ball or tried to cause trouble, there was always Yuri Ashimov of the scarred face to take care of them.

In Siberia, government contracts were readily available, especially for someone with an apparently unlimited supply of dollars. After those early deals, he never really looked back, and in the Russia of those days, no one queried them.

Within five years, the original billion had become six, and when his old KGB friend Putin became President, it was just the icing on the cake. People didn’t want democracy; they wanted strength and power and got exactly that from Putin, which suited Belov perfectly, and on his end his economic miracle suited the government perfectly, so everyone was happy.

The emergence of Al Qa’eda and the growth of the terror movement were unfortunate, for one way or another, it led to the second Gulf War and the demise of Saddam, but the prospect of the Iraqi oil fields becoming available danced enticingly in front of him, and so he was content.

The postwar turmoil in Iraq was understandable. Although the capture of Saddam by American troops seemed to herald the prospect of a more stable future, at least for Iraq, Belov had never bought the idea that the fall of Saddam would have much effect on the Arab world anyway. Muslim militants such as Al Qa’eda would still pursue what they saw as a holy war with America and the Western world, pursue that war by what they saw as the only means available to them – terror.

So Belov was pro-Arab, but only because it suited him. There was no doubt he was anti-American, but for obvious business reasons. The Brits were all right, because the Brits were the Brits and he had a weakness for London, but his old philosophy held true and was like a devil in him. To create chaos, fear and uncertainty in the Western world and in pursuit of those aims, it made sense to aid the cause of Muslim militants. But that side of things he left to Yuri Ashimov. It was not that he didn’t want to know – it was just that he didn’t want to know too much.

The money, of course, made all the difference. There were charitable trusts, educational trusts for young people, in reality fronts for those like Wrath of Allah, the Party of God and others, who were particularly dedicated to such enterprises as, for example, recruiting young British-born Muslims to take them to training camps in the Middle East. He had been informed of the Morgan affair in Manhattan, the intended attempt on the American President’s life, an enterprise so simple it might well have succeeded if it hadn’t been for the activities of Charles Ferguson and his people.

But he was separate from all that. When the Berger empire crashed, he had taken over its oil interests in southern Arabia. There was nothing America could do about that. It made him one of the most powerful businessmen in the world, highly approved of by the Russian Federation.

He had the old Rashid house in South Audley Street in London; he’d bought Drumore Place, his castle on the cliffs of Drumore in the Irish Republic, and put Dermot Kelly in charge, ostensibly as estate manager, and the money continued to roll in.

He was Josef Belov, man of mystery, unbelievably wealthy, and always at his side was Yuri Ashimov.