BooksBarbecue
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

You could build a hundred skyscrapers, but you were still in the desert. You had maps and plans but they meant little here.

TWELVE

The storm had subsided when I woke. 5.45 a.m. Astana lay entombed in moonlit snow.

The silence was jarring. My mind spooled through countries I might be in, arriving at Kazakhstan and flicking immediately to the image of a man’s destroyed face. I turned the TV on, checked online. No word of a body being found. By the time I was dressed, the sky had lightened a shade. I dressed as I had seen locals do – ski mask first, scarf, beanie, hood up over it, then trapper hat over the hood. Armoured, I went out.

MI6 drummed into you the importance of surveillance-detection runs. They were best performed at times and in places when any possible tail was made conspicuous. Six a.m. in most places was ideal. It felt like starting the day clean. And confirming you were alone converted the loneliness into relief.

The first blast of sub-zero dawn took my breath. I walked as fast as I could over deep, pristine snow, through the last of the silence. I looked for vehicles without snow on the roof, individuals appearing from side streets. There was no one. It felt like the desert beneath the city had begun reclaiming it overnight. In other locations where I’d practised this routine I had felt the imminent life of the city around me, but not here. There was a thin tension to the dawn, an uncertainty as to whether Astana would summon the will to exist again.

Still, it was nice to be able to see it.

Ice had moulded itself around the few branches in sight, around satellite dishes and street furniture as if it was concerned about preserving these things. On east-facing streets, cars had been buried entirely. I saw a man with a shovel carving out a Peugeot 308. Workers in luminescent orange marched behind snowploughs, moulding banks of snow on either side. At the entrance to Nazarbayev Square, soldiers struggled with steel crowd barriers they pulled from an open-backed truck; the barriers had frozen together, and the voices of the men made an angry dawn chorus.

I cut through the park alongside the river and the central mosque appeared, its call to prayer opening up and startling me. Our song, Joanna used to joke. Plaintive as ever, at odds with the glossy, frozen city it appealed to. I slowed, made a rough head-count of those removing their shoes to file in. It didn’t seem more than a handful. Unbearded for the most part. Across the road, two stiff-backed men in an unmarked Toyota Land Cruiser also watched.