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Back A Shadow Intelligence Save as PDF
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

I turned on the PC and logged into my TutaNota account. The coded email wasn’t there. I checked the deleted folder, then the junk, then sent mail. All traces of it, including my own response, had been wiped.

A car passed, stopped at the end of the road. It was a van with a ladder on the roof. Parked for two minutes, disappeared again.

I called a contact in Visas and Immigration, read them my passport number.

‘What’s the status on this individual?’

‘Red-flagged.’

‘Any details?’

‘Instructions are to detain and notify Special Branch.’

I felt a hand grip my arm suddenly. Step this way, please. I didn’t have the authority to do anything about it over a phone call. I thanked the contact, went to the shed, took a trowel, left through the back gate.

Five minutes walking took me past a postal depot and the first grey-brown fields to a municipal cemetery. I stopped at a clean, new headstone, bowed my head then looked around. No one. I continued to the far end of the cemetery, over the fence, into the woods.

I remembered the forms of specific trees. Ash and beech trees planted twenty years ago. After ten minutes I stopped and began to dig. Just as I was thinking I’d chosen the wrong spot I hit thick black plastic. A couple of moments later I was able to retrieve the canister. The top was stiff but opened eventually. Inside: two passports, papers, hair dye, cash in five currencies totalling ten grand, plus a few basic items of kit: bump keys, skeleton keys, tracking devices. Most field agents organise their own emergency stash: contraband and leftovers. Few entirely trust their wellbeing to anyone else. I checked the dates on the passports, then returned to the house. I sat on the sofa and brought up a map of Kazakhstan on my phone. Vast and blank. The empty centre of the world. I wasn’t the first to feel it calling.

NINE

I flew into Kazakhstan on Friday 2 December, a Ukraine Air flight from Kiev. The plane was half full, mostly business people, some families, one or two backpackers. I boarded last so I could walk the length of it and see the faces of my fellow passengers.

I’d asked for a window seat. The desert began a few miles east of the Volga river, Caucasus mountains flattening, a flash of the Caspian. By the time we were beneath cloud again the world looked like Mars: rippled rock, pink then grey, running lifeless to the horizon. I got that ominous feeling I always got flying over deserts. You think you have diminished me, they seem to say, but it is you who are diminished.