Time of the Octopus: Based on the True Story of Whistleblower Edward Snowden

SHEREMETYEVO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, 07:10 P.M._

Among the transit tribe at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo was the young American Joshua Kold – international celebrity, headline newsmaker and also, according to Washington officials, wanted criminal. In the more benevolent English-language media he was referred to as a ‘whistleblower’. This means literally ‘one who blows a whistle,’ of course, but in the USA and other countries the term applies to people who make confidential information public to reveal what they see as violations of laws and ethical standards in their place of work.

To cut a long story short, the concatenation of circumstances conspired in such a way that the transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport became the only place where Joshua Kold could feel relatively safe.

Just what Kold had done to bring him here was little understood by many – even the President of Russia publicly called him ‘a strange guy.’ But there was no doubt that his revelations had caused a sensation and, in some media outlets, the Kold affair was already described as ‘the juiciest spy scandal of all time.’

There is one obvious problem with this nonsense – Joshua Kold’s offence was not actually spying…

A spy is someone who works to obtain secrets on behalf of a political system, a state, a group of citizens, or even a religious sect. There are deadly risks of being found out, of course, but this fascinating activity always brings a reward – a remuneration in some form from those the spy serves.

The infamous Aldrich Ames (Aldrich Ames was the CIA analyst turned KGB mole who compromised more American agents than almost any other CIA mole. He was convicted in 1994 and is now serving a life sentence), for instance, was said to have sold the identity of his colleagues and numerous CIA agents to the Soviet intelligence services in exchange for a new house and fancy Jaguar. But there are exceptions.

Dmitry Polyakov, a general in GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate), was slipping confidential information to the American side for ‘ideological reasons’ for 25 years – or at least that’s what he said during interrogations in ‘the cellars of Lubyanka’. Whatever the truth, there was a hostile Soviet system against him, and it was no accident that the brilliant winner in the Cold War Ronald Reagan asked Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to pardon him – but the request came a little late (General Dmitry Polyakov passed on Soviet secrets for 25 years to the USA where he was known as ‘Top Hat’ by the FBI and ‘Bourbon’ by the CIA. His cover was blown in 1987 by Aldrich Ames and others, and he was executed in 1988. CIA officer Jeanne Vertefeuille said of him, “He didn’t do this for money. He insisted on staying in place to help us. It was a bad day for us when we lost him.”).

What Kold did, in his own way, was to show the world a unique example of the loner hero.

At least, that’s how it looked on the surface. The young man with densely compressed lips and a steely gaze had thrown out a challenge to the mightiest power in the world. A plot like this would be a complete no-no in Hollywood, where the screwed up loner would always be defeated by the anti-hero. In American blockbusters, there is almost never a speech about a fight against the system. Kold threatened the system – and so became a target.

Somehow, he had managed to slip away right under the nose of the countersurveillance department of the National Security Agency and get out of the USA. Beyond that, everything was obscured by a fog of uncertainty. All the same, enough information had filtered through the haze to propel hundreds of journalists to the transit area of Sheremetyevo International Airport in hope of finding the star fugitive.

The fact that Kold had become a star didn’t seem to raise doubts for anyone. It was a simple narrative. He had not just tapped on the beak of the American eagle; he had given it thorough, and very humiliating, kick – as if it was not an awesome feathered predator but a feeble country chicken chaotically trying to evade a bike rider.

Feathers flew, and the eagle, making a long chicken neck, shamefully crowed for the whole world. He threatened, he pecked with his beak, he scratched the ground with his claws, but the reputation of the predator had been dented. Why, even the president of a tiny Latin American country was not afraid to declare that he was ready to provide to ‘the brave guy Joshua Kold’ with political asylum.

So journalists of all colours, after settling in the transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport, first of all started looking for Kold as for a lost puppy, or maybe even a truffle in the autumn Provencal wood.

The younger ones ransacked every corner and peered at every passenger’s face – what if the guy was wearing heavy make-up and/or a false beard? They checked utility rooms, too, because, apparently, several incidents involving employees and airport security service had already occurred.

Their senior colleagues bided their time to give Kold a chance to find them, and spent the hours in what is said to be called, in the vernacular of the second most ancient profession, ‘collecting the invoice’. These writing journalists talked to passengers, composed descriptions of airport interiors, surfed the internet, collected information on the notorious capsule hotel where, according to hearsay, Kold had been hidden away together with an assistant sent to him by the professional unmaskers ‘Mikiliks’. That assistant was of course a very cute and brisk young maiden, and gave the story an additional frisson.

Meanwhile, the cameramen were shooting general views of the transit area to use in cutaways, and also of the crowds of journalists near the smoking room – to dramatize the importance of the moment.

This crowd generally consisted of the ‘golden plumes’, the VIP cabinet of the journalistic tribe, the people deemed acceptable to the noblest offices, and entrants to most forbidden doors. Accustomed to gaining information in comfort, they had decided long ago that the saying ‘going the distance feeds the wolf’ is not about them. Indeed, these golden plumes could not understand why nobody had yet delivered Kold to them on a silver platter.

Time was passing. Tension was increasing. Nothing was happening.