Chapters (58)
- Cover
- Also by Oliver Harris
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
‘If anyone asks about me again, don’t try to protect me, okay? You are in more danger than I am.’
‘I don’t know if that’s true.’
I called Walker when I was back in my car, asked him to compile a list of Russian visitors to Kazakhstan in the week Joanna Lake went missing.
‘There’ll be thousands.’
I gave specific names to check. After less than ten minutes he came back with a result. It was one I had hoped not to get. From air traffic control: a Russian-registered Gulfstream G280 jet had landed at an airfield a few miles north of Astana two days before Joanna went missing. It had an armed security licence for four passengers, including the jet’s owner: Vladislav Vishinsky.
TWENTY-SEVEN
A hotel room in Turkey: Joanna pacing, cracking pistachios and flicking the shells towards the bin.
‘You think I gas kids? For a psyop? You think that’s what we do?’
‘No.’
‘This is what they want: we turn on each other, we destroy ourselves from the inside.’
‘I know.’
‘Doubt everything. Everyone’s as bad as each other. Everything’s fucked.’
I could see Joanna, later that night, sitting on the narrow bed, her back against the roughly plastered wall, eyes closed, TV muted on Russian TV: Irrefutable evidence attack was staged. German reporter says incident was false-flag.
‘Is that why you were really sent here?’ she asked. ‘You’re over because they don’t trust me?’
‘They don’t trust anyone.’
That was the start of her fixation. Fixations were dangerous in intelligence work. Five months later we were in Shefford. It was the first time I’d seen her after Turkey. We were in her Shefford home, before she got paranoid and reluctant to have me over. And I still wasn’t sure if that was about security or what was going on inside, which was her own little research project: notes and clippings in carefully locked drawers, which she checked upon entering, refusing to tell me what they concerned.
I picked the locks when she was asleep, knowing that she would do the same to me. Kept the anglepoise low, moving the sheets silently so as not to wake her.
Russian news: female faces – birth and death dates for each face. None were older than twenty-three. Then pages of interactions on social media, screenshots, photos of wounds. All were young women who had jumped off buildings in Russia in the past three months, all of whom had self-harm scars.
The main light came on. Joanna stood in the doorway.
‘Jesus Christ, Elliot.’
‘What is this?’ I said.
‘A game.’