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Back A Shadow Intelligence
Chapters (58)
  1. Cover
  2. Also by Oliver Harris
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. THIRTEEN
  16. FOURTEEN
  17. FIFTEEN
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. TWENTY-FOUR
  27. TWENTY-FIVE
  28. TWENTY-SIX
  29. TWENTY-SEVEN
  30. TWENTY-EIGHT
  31. TWENTY-NINE
  32. THIRTY
  33. THIRTY-ONE
  34. THIRTY-TWO
  35. THIRTY-THREE
  36. THIRTY-FOUR
  37. THIRTY-FIVE
  38. THIRTY-SIX
  39. THIRTY-SEVEN
  40. THIRTY-EIGHT
  41. THIRTY-NINE
  42. FORTY
  43. FORTY-ONE
  44. FORTY-TWO
  45. FORTY-THREE
  46. FORTY-FOUR
  47. FORTY-FIVE
  48. FORTY-SIX
  49. FORTY-SEVEN
  50. FORTY-EIGHT
  51. FORTY-NINE
  52. FIFTY
  53. FIFTY-ONE
  54. FIFTY-TWO
  55. FIFTY-THREE
  56. FIFTY-FOUR
  57. FIFTY-FIVE
  58. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The handover was awkward and dangerous as ever. Idrisov was evidently traumatised, chainsmoked, avoided looking at me. We were all sweating. Joanna had her headscarf down around her shoulders. He had survived a drone strike twelve months earlier and his badly treated wounds smelled acrid and gangrenous in the heat. We agreed the communication protocol was unchanged. He kept asking when he could move to the UK.

Joanna had been drinking. My bosses said she was being rotated. She said she was being fired, and if she wasn’t fired she’d had enough anyway, which is what you say at the end of missions. After the meeting, Idrisov had returned to risking his life – or betraying us – the two of us got shashlik at a place Joanna liked: no glass in the windows, good-natured men with Kalashnikovs guarding the door. She said she was burned out. The way she saw it, all our work had been undone. We’d been outplayed.

When she passed out in the hotel room I sat up watching news until I wasn’t watching any more: images of the chemical attack, unblemished corpses, men and women fallen alongside pets and birds as if all nature had succumbed to some overarching fatigue. Online, Russians were suggesting that the whole thing was arranged by anti-Assad forces to gain US sympathy and airstrikes. As evidence they pointed towards the UK’s own footage of rebel groups with missile launchers and what looked like canisters of sarin in the vicinity of the attack around the same time. The imagery was a result of intelligence supplied by Joanna. The Russians were having a field day.

I don’t know what was true. No one ever sees the whole picture, but in a situation like that momentum is truth, and we lost momentum. Plans for intervention stalled. The UN froze. Russia walked in.

Twice a week Idrisov crossed over to deliver handwritten messages from IS command, which he shared with me. I moved us out of the Lighthouse to a safe house in the suburbs of Iskenderun. He gave me nothing valuable. Two months later he missed a meeting. An execution video turned up the following week. His confession to camera was that he was a spy for MI6. According to GCHQ, it looked likely the Russians had used him enough and decided to blow him. I wanted to talk to Joanna about it, about this vindication of our theory, but at that time she’d gone off-radar as well, busy with her new role.

Now no longer at Six?

My new anxiety confused the jet lag. It was 10 p.m. here, 1 a.m. in Saudi Arabia, 4 a.m. in Astana, Kazakhstan. Where was I?