Resurrection, p.3
Resurrection, page 3
Maguire hesitated. Raglan was irritated. ‘You come out here personally. You tell me my father was in Africa and that he saved the life of a KGB agent. What is this? Are you telling me he was working for the Russians?’
Maguire raised a hand to calm Raglan’s impatience. ‘Absolutely not. Let’s take a step back in time. Central Africa, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and the rest – well, a lot of it is still in a mess. Militia and warlords wreak havoc as we speak, but when your father was with the British embassy in Nairobi, it was the old Soviet empire clawing its way into Africa. Angolan forces with Russian weapons. The Chinese were too weak back then, not like now, though they also made their attempts. But you know the key race was between the West and the Soviets.’
‘And my father had a connection? With the KGB?’
‘Yes. Before Africa, when your father served – as you said – in the Balkans and Vienna, so too did a certain KGB officer. Over the years they’d met officially and socially. The KGB man tried to turn your father when he was in Vienna. Imagine having a defence attaché ready to expose British government policy from the heart of the embassy. Almost as good as having the Foreign Secretary in your pocket.’
‘And my father reported back to whom? The embassy’s MI6 station chief?’
‘Which was long before my time,’ said Maguire.’
‘Then the KGB officer and my father’s careers shadowed each other and he was told by your lot to do what?’
‘Turn the Russian instead.’
‘That wouldn’t be my father’s role. He would have handed it over to MI6.’ Maguire’s half-explanation teased Raglan’s imagination. Two professionals on opposing sides spending years in close proximity. ‘So?’
‘So,’ Maguire said, ‘our Russian refused.’
‘End of story,’ said Raglan. ‘Then how does that bring us back to Africa?’
‘You’ve missed a vital step, Raglan. The Russian and your father apparently shared many interests—’
‘My father had no interests but his work,’ Raglan interrupted, a note of unbidden regret creeping into his voice. For a moment Raglan was surprised at the sense of loss that still overcame him.
‘—but I don’t know what those interests were,’ said Maguire.
An image presented itself to Raglan. Himself as a boy, his father showing him how to cast a fly in a trout stream. Perhaps that was what had been between his father and the Russian. But it was a small treasure he didn’t want to share with Maguire.
‘Well, whatever it was, it was their way of learning to understand each other. What we had thought was an attempt to turn your father was in fact the Russian reaching out to come to us. He refused to speak to MI6 and would only speak to your father. But the time wasn’t right. He couldn’t take the big jump. And being based in Europe was too dangerous for him. KGB officers were watched all the time. A year later he was posted to Africa, where the Soviets were training militia and supplying weapons. The war in neighbouring Rwanda spilled over the border into the Congo. There were massacres on both sides, so when the shit hit the fan, your father was sent to try and reel him in. He went out on a limb and saved his life. At enormous risk to himself. The time, the place and your father’s courage brought him to us.’
‘Then where is this double agent now? Still in Africa?’
‘No, step by step over time he went up the ranks from the defunct KGB into the Russian intelligence service. He now holds high rank and has the ear of the Kremlin. He’s been feeding us information for thirty years.’
6
Maguire had related one of the most stunning secrets of British intelligence. He let its importance sink in.
Raglan shook his head. ‘My God, that’s gold dust.’
‘And all thanks to your father’s courage.’
‘OK, so you’ve resurrected my past, filled in a blank about my father and shared a state secret. Where and how do I fit into this? What’s so damned important in Africa that connects these three things?’
Maguire walked over and locked the classroom door. Raglan watched as he fiddled with the class teacher’s computer. ‘Drop that blind, will you?’ he asked, nodding towards the window and the shaft of winter sun streaming into the room. Like a good pupil, Raglan complied. Maguire had swivelled around the laptop and focused the projector for a PowerPoint presentation on to the whiteboard. He slotted in a USB stick. An image appeared of a man in his thirties standing on a London Underground platform speaking to what appeared to be an older man whose back was to the lens. Maguire left it on screen.
‘Five days ago a retired MI6 officer was murdered. The man whose back to us is that officer – his name was Barton. A very brave man. The man facing him is a Russian GRU intelligence agent named Major Yuri Gelyov. Using the underground security cameras we identified two more GRU agents. They and Gelyov are members of a black ops section of the GRU’s Unit 29155. The same unit that attempted to murder Skripal in Salisbury in 2018. The Russians are clumsy but brutal, and finding any of theirs who defected drives them as mad as a cat with fleas. And the night before Barton died they killed such a man. We now know it was he who had passed some vital information to Barton. Barton positioned himself so we could make that first identification.’ Maguire ran the next images. A video clip showed the man, who looked to be in his sixties, barging past the Russian and on to a train moments before the doors closed. ‘He was leading them astray. Heading for my office with that information. A fourth unidentified Russian administered a quick-acting drug that mimics a heart attack. Our former colleague died within two minutes of getting on the train. We haven’t been able to identify who killed him, but whoever it was took the information from his coat pocket. Barton suspected he was going to be killed.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He spent the night before he died at a lover’s apartment. The following morning the concierge from that building hand-delivered an envelope to me at my home address. In it Barton told me what he planned to do in order to protect the information and that all the evidence suggested he would not survive long enough to reach my office.’
Maguire waited as Raglan took it all in.
‘Then if he knew he was being followed he will have swapped or altered the intelligence he carried. Kept the altered documents on him and had the original given to you by an unsuspecting third party he trusted and who the Russians did not suspect.’
‘Correct,’ said Maguire.
‘And how did he get hold of this information?’
Maguire sighed. ‘By the grace of God, I would say. Barton was an old Africa hand. In the envelope he sent to my house Barton told me he had kept in touch with a long-time Russian exile—’
‘Is this the man who was also killed?’
‘Yes. He in turn was friends with a German geologist, a neighbour, a man who spent time in Africa. The Russians have exploration teams out there checking the feasibility for a natural gas pipeline – the German was a field consultant for them. A month ago he came back to London and showed the Russian photos of the tail fin of a plane he had found in the desert. He thought it very exciting. His friend asked who else had seen the photos and was told only the exploration team. The exiled Russian broke cover and gave Barton what he had. Barton knew that if he remembered the story of what happened with your father and the KGB agent, then so might anyone serving in Russian intelligence from those days. We know there was a strong rumour at the time of one of theirs being turned. And, more than that, how that information was sent out of a war zone to reach western intelligence. One lone aircraft making a dangerous run. And when your father returned, that rumour became fact. It would be a real coup if any of their lot found evidence that there really was a mole in Russian intelligence. If anyone connected were to see these photos they would know their importance.’
‘And the geologist?’ said Raglan.
‘Found gassed in his car in his lock-up garage. They obviously got to him as well. We know that the man whose company is doing the exploration is one of the Russian President’s siloviki, so-called strong men – former intelligence officers, businessmen and politicians who compete for his approval. And the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary army, are spread far and wide in Africa, shoring up Africa’s strong men and getting mineral and exploration rights in return. There’s a connection between the gas pipeline and them. Killers at large, well equipped with armoured vehicles, fighter planes and ground troops, and all under his protection – but whose actions don’t reflect back on him.’ Maguire shook his head. ‘And after the Afghanistan debacle they bought up swathes of American arms and equipment from the Taliban. They’ve got more weaponry than our own troops.’
‘When are you going to get to the point, Maguire?’
Maguire raised a hand. ‘Hang on, Raglan, you have to know as much as I can tell you.’ Maguire moved to the next image: a Second World War P51 Mustang fighter. It had a red star of China on its tail fin. ‘Ever see one of these when you were in Africa?’
Raglan’s look was as much as if to say are you crazy? ‘No.’
‘Don’t look so incredulous, Raglan. There were a few there in the late fifties and sixties when all that crazy stuff was going on in Angola and anywhere else where unsavoury characters were scrambling for power and influence. South African mercenaries and the CIA were in the mix. The Chinese bought a bunch of P51s from the Americans after the Second World War. Then they tried to get a foothold in Africa but the Soviets beat them to the draw. All those old planes ended up as scrap or sold or left until they fell apart. One, though, remained in private hands. And...’ Maguire brought up an image of a near-buried aircraft, nose-down by the look of it, the tail fin just visible above a sand drift showing the same emblem of a Chinese star. ‘... here it is.’
Raglan looked from the photo to Maguire who appeared to be as perplexed as he felt. ‘Dammit, Maguire, I don’t have a clue what all this is about.’
‘Neither did I until we scoured archives and retrieved your father’s reports from the nineties. When he was in Africa, when he saved that KGB agent’s neck.’ He took an envelope from his satchel and handed it to Raglan. ‘This is the report your father wrote when he returned – see his signature on the bottom. You can read it – it’s succinct – but I have to take it back with me. The name of the former KGB officer has been redacted for national security. Not even the PM knows who the source is. Only the Service. We can’t let this information be known even to those who hold high office of state.’
Raglan pulled out a thin buff-coloured folder with a single sheet of paper stapled inside headed Codename Malaika, and the admonishment that the document was Top Secret and For UK Eyes Only. A strange sense of uncertainty touched Raglan, holding a report from his father.
A report that immediately gave Raglan a picture in his mind’s eye of his father racing towards danger while others retreated. Had his father sat at an old manual typewriter and pecked out the report? Hunched over with that same fierce concentration Raglan remembered so well? The precise way to tie a fly. His father’s hand on his own showing him how to cast. Pictures of a distant man who barely showed any emotion towards his son. He never saw his father cry, not even when Raglan’s mother died. Stoic. Dispassionate. Just like the precise no-nonsense report he now held in his hand. All of which was an obvious necessity for the work he did. As Maguire had said, the report was simple and concise. And there in the final paragraph was the explanation about the old fighter plane. Raglan raised his eyes.
‘My father got the agent out. But he had no means of telling the embassy or MI6 in case he himself was killed. So he used the Americans. He gave the message to a young hot-shot CIA pilot to get it out.’
Maguire reached out for the document. Raglan’s reluctance to surrender it was understandable but he allowed Maguire to ease it from his fingertips. ‘Yes. What you’ve just read is the official report your father made when he reached safety. The pilot flew a fixed-wing aircraft for the CIA, but it developed engine problems so somehow he found the Mustang. Your father asked him to get out a hastily handwritten letter that confirmed the KGB officer was willing to work for us. Desperate times require desperate measures. Your father had no access to a radio set. Towns were burning. People were being massacred. The pilot took off, but was never heard of again. In the end he was reported missing in action, believed killed. The CIA gave him a star of remembrance on their memorial wall at Langley for giving his life for his country. And ours, I might add.’
Raglan thought of his father alone in a hot zone. Impossible to imagine what his thoughts would have been other than to keep the vital secret intact. Maguire was right. If he’d thought he was facing imminent death, he’d have done anything to get the information out. ‘And “missing in action, believed killed” meant everyone in British Intelligence thought the plane had gone down and this information with it.’
‘Yes. Until the German geologist found it. We cannot risk this plane being found again by anyone but us. That’s why I’m asking you to accompany the French mission. If three men are already dead because of its discovery then we believe there must be a link to someone who knows the rumour of your father turning our man. That person has to be someone in Russian intelligence who was stationed in Africa at that time. Why else mount an operation to retrieve the information?’ Maguire tucked the document back into his satchel case. ‘Obviously once your father reached safety and we began getting intelligence from the Russian, we all thought we were in the clear. And the Service has been thinking that for nigh on thirty years.’
‘That document will be buried. Is the KGB officer named on it?’
‘His identity is concealed in the letter. Your father told us there are enough clues for anyone from the other side to put the pieces together. There was barely a handful of KGB men posted out there. A process of elimination means just that. Thankfully, the message from your father was encoded. But if the other side unscramble that, then our Russian might soon find himself with a bullet in the back of his neck and we’ll be fed false information from their counter-intelligence.’
Raglan gazed at the picture of the downed aircraft. ‘If there’s anything left of that document the dry desert air would make it so brittle it would crumble at the slightest touch – like the Dead Sea Scrolls.’
‘I agree.’
‘Then why the panic?’
Maguire pointed to shelves holding children’s books. He tugged free a plastic storage box holding lesson sheets.
‘We think of plastic as the curse of the modern age. They didn’t back then. Your father folded the message inside a plastic medical syringe box no bigger than the palm of my hand.’ He clicked on to the next picture. It showed a satellite image of desert fringed on one side with scrub. ‘Given what information Barton received from his contact and the geologist, we think we know where the crash site is. The sands come and go. Right now the plane’s buried.’
‘But if it isn’t?’ said Raglan.
‘Whether it resurfaces or not, the Russians are already hot on the trail of this missing aircraft. They had a head start trying to figure out where it’s located once the German innocently showed his Russian colleagues those photographs. Barton doctored the map and that will throw them for a while.’ Maguire shut down the computer lid and retrieved the memory stick. ‘Whoever finds that aircraft will find information that could reveal the most valuable spy our country has ever known. Then, as Custer said at Little Big Horn: I think we’re fucked.’
7
Raglan had remained silent. Maguire knew anyone tasked with a mission as dangerous as the one he proposed would already be calculating the odds on exfiltrating from a hostile environment.
‘They’re bound to have a team already out there. Even with the false trail that Barton left them,’ said Raglan.
‘No doubt. But Barton bought us time. Trouble is, our ambassador in Moscow is reporting heightened activity around the embassy. Surveillance has been increased, and if this goes to the wire, I don’t see how we can even get our man out and into the West. Russia is playing hard and fast. It wasn’t just Ukraine where they’d set their sights. Russia is clawing its way back into Africa. Their warships are docked in Port Sudan where they’ve bought a twenty-five-year lease. Red flag, big time, but after thirty African countries turned to Russia for the Covid vaccine, the West was already way behind the curve. Simple truth is that we can’t fail with this. Over the past couple of years we’ve shut down Russian-linked interference in several countries’ elections, including America. We knew about their President’s intentions in Ukraine even before the politicians did their fan dance in front of him. They thought they could bring Putin around with diplomacy. We even knew they were planting Ukrainian nationals who were Russian sympathizers in key positions. Two were politicians in their government. And we found out because our man with his ear to the door at the Kremlin told us. That and a hell of a lot more. So… now you have the facts and the people in play,’ he finished, ‘what do you say?’
‘Let’s eat,’ said Raglan.
Maguire’s look of incredulity was enough to make Raglan smile. ‘You’re in France, Maguire. We eat by the clock here.’
They left the relative warmth of the classroom and walked back up towards the village. Maguire turned his face into the stiffening breeze from the north-east. All the way from Russia. And it could get a damned sight colder if the operation fell apart. ‘I need you on this, Raglan. I don’t trust the French not to pull a fast one over the operation.’
‘Do they know what the information is?’ said Raglan.
‘Only that it’s vital to the security of western intelligence. I’ve whetted their appetite and that’s as much as they’ll know until I tell them differently.’
Raglan grunted. ‘They already know too much. Why not send in an SAS team?’
Maguire shook his head. ‘I’d like nothing better, but this location is borderline Central African Republic, which since day one has been under French influence. The language, the military, the civil and government systems. Our government had no choice but to go to them to set up the mission with the promise that we would share future intelligence – well, more than we do now, shall we say. So you’ll do it?’
