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
I bought a fresh MacBook from an electronics store in the Keruen mall, unboxed it two floors down in Big Ben Coffee, beneath a painting of the London skyline and the dictum Love Coffee, Love People. I got on the wi-fi, downloaded a Virtual Private Network to mask my identity and ran a search for Vanessa McDonald.
Plenty on open source, but it was the sixth hit that caught my eye: a Telegraph piece eight months ago on blacklisted journalists trying to report from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
The dangers journalists face in Russia have been well known since the early 1990s but concern over a number of unsolved killings has soared in recent months. Now Western writers are reporting threats and obstruction. Those refused entry to CSC countries this year include Martin Yates, Rachel Hodgkinson and Vanessa McDonald.
I searched ‘Vanessa McDonald journalist’. Top hit, curiously, was a right-wing Russian discussion board devoted to media figures deemed unpatriotic. One member had uploaded a crowd photo from the Remembrance Day of Journalists Killed in the Line of Duty, observed in Moscow every December, if not unanimously. Joanna’s face had been circled.
Anyone know this bitch? She caused trouble in Warsaw. Looking for address, phone number.
The individual who posted it gave a name that translated as Russian Truth. A ‘patriot’. It was only their second post. Russian Truth suggested Vanessa McDonald worked for an organisation called Reporters for Human Rights.
This all struck me as the kind of information you put out there if you’re trying to build a cover identity: name and photo ID and backstory. Enough to make Vanessa McDonald real if someone was trying to establish her credentials.
The Telegraph journalist who’d included her name in the article wasn’t one I knew as being a ‘friend of the department’, in Six’s terminology, but the Telegraph was cosy with the intelligence services. It could have been slipped in at any level, including source.
So someone had put work into establishing her cover. If she was playing a campaigning journalist that was good reason not to be too visible. But people would run searches. Hits like this would be convincing. The organisation she supposedly worked for, Reporters for Human Rights, had a website on which it described itself as a ground-breaking organisation using documents and video footage obtained both openly and covertly to tell the stories of people suffering at the hands of oppressive regimes. Our writers and film-makers tap into a network of human rights organisations and workers in the countries concerned, some of them at enormous personal risk, to expose corporate abuse, modern slavery and political violence. No names came up on the site, for obvious reasons, just an email address and a guide to PGP encryption for those who wanted to get in touch with a sensitive story. It got good dirt, some military documents, governmental papers: Standing Rock, Occupied Territories, water disputes on the border of Uzbekistan.