Chapter XXV The Fortress of Nafta Ural

 

 

Although I remembered him, his name had actually escaped me and it would have been rude to have scrambled through all the cards in my wallet in order to identify him. He helped me out immediately. “You probably remember me? Roger Clements?”

Yes of course, Roger Clements.

“What can I do for you Mr Clements? I did not know that you were one of my constituents.”

“Actually, if you will excuse me, Councillor Axtell, it is rather the other way round. You are on my patch, even if I am not on yours.”

“How come, Mr Clements?”

“Well, my outfit has a larger area per person. Some 5000 of us cover the whole of the UK.”

“Pray tell me, Mr Clements, tell me. My curiosity needs to be sated. What “outfit” exactly are you talking about.”

“S.B.”

“Pardon?” I stopped him. “SB?”

“S.B., Councillor. That’s Special Branch.”

“Ah!” That was all I could say. Is this guy for real? Or was he the long awaited Ghost of Christmas Past that Melanie had promised me? I bit my lip. Don’t get too frivolous, I told myself.

“Councillor Axtell, I hope I am not imposing on your busy timetable and I did not want to clash with any of your regular visitors. However, I think that there are some important matters that I need to discuss with you.”

I pointed out that firstly I did not want to keep Frances and her husband waiting over closing the school. “You understand. Security.” He nodded with an ironic smile. “Secondly I had promised to visit the council tenant on the Hightrees Estate and he may very well be sitting there waiting for me.”

“I understand, Councillor. Can we have just a few minutes for now?”

“Just a couple of minutes then.”

“Let me just make the bullet points first. Firstly, can I say that we are discussing matters that involve national security? Just how high it goes can be seen by the involvement of Owen Draycott. But it does not end there. The activities of Nafta Ural in this country have been a matter of concern to us for several years now. Their plans, real or declared, are the culmination of a strategy that is of considerable concern to Her Majesty’s Government. Secondly, although we do not concern ourselves with issues such as local government, we are concerned how certain decisions made by Framden Council could affect those issues that cover national security. And, thirdly, we want to stress that any discussion is of a voluntary nature on your part, that you are not under suspicion and that anything you may wish to tell us will be of your own free will. Events today have confirmed my own view that you are a good person (that sounds a little naïve, I know, and you can well smile, Councillor, but we do often categorize people in that way) and that you are a loyal law-abiding citizen of this country.”

“Events today? What happened today then?”

“Your visit this morning, Councillor. We are talking about your visit to Colorbis Travel. Your decision to assume the cost of your mother’s Caribbean cruise.”

I was genuinely astounded. I knew that the UK’s counter intelligence service could occasionally screw things up but mostly their intelligence was quite accurate, almost unhealthily so. But this I had not expected. How did they know about my visit to Colorbis?

“Please do not look so surprised. Let us say that Mr Kolovetsky’s activities are a matter of legitimate interest to us. All right, let me be a little more specific. Mr K is a bit of a rogue and also a former Soviet agent in Australia. Even now his little office is a recognized front for the new Russian FSB and he makes a side-line from the sale of furs and fox pelts. He cooperates with Nafta Ural and we have him under surveillance. Consequently, we knew fairly quickly of your visit there and even the nature of your request. What you did was very sensible and completely confirmed the picture that I had made of you. We had been aware of the status of this Caribbean cruise for a few days now and we were somewhat concerned. Not any more, I hasten to add. I am intrigued, though. How did they choose this kind of holiday for your mother?”

“Well I certainly didn’t solicit it, I can assure you,” I replied. “I think I mentioned in passing conversation with one of the Russian girls that my mother wanted to go on such a cruise.”

“Do you remember who you mentioned it to?”

“One of the Russian girls, as I said. She’s called Valentina.”

“Aah yes, the mathematician, Valentina Naryshkin. She’s smart as paint and she’s cunning. And (said in a lower tone) very attractive. Be careful of her.”

“She is impressive,” I conceded. Suddenly I decided to volunteer some information. “You know she is marrying Lord Smallbridge?”

“Indeed? That is interesting.” He looked genuinely surprised. I was flattered to see that that know-all Roger Clements had been ignorant of this salacious piece of gossip. “Who told you that?”

“Lord Smallbridge. I’ve been invited to their wedding.”

“Oh, better still!” he laughed. “Will you go? When is it?”

“Next Thursday”.

“Excellent. You must go. Anyway, to come back to the Caribbean cruise. At one stage I was even going to suggest to Councillor Sheldrake not to press for contact with you because of my concern over this trip. Luckily your meeting went ahead anyway, and we sense the result was positive. Good old Melanie. I hope you two had a fruitful meeting.”

“Very much so,” I conceded, smiling inwardly.

“You see Nafta Ural’s methods often begin like this with the subtle unsolicited gift after which their victims become sucked in. Yet in your case, Peter, as soon as you became aware of the nature of the gift you cut yourself off. The obvious way to do it would have been not to go on the Caribbean holiday but in your circumstances, where, we assume that you did not want to upset your mother, you chose a more expensive option. Congratulations anyway. We hope your expensive gesture will be rewarded in the future.”

“Well, thanks,” I answered. “But your information is not always a hundred per cent correct.”

“Really?”

“It was actually a Mediterranean cruise; not a Caribbean cruise.”

“Well nobody’s perfect,” he laughed, “not even the SB.”

All the same, I pondered, how did he know? In one sense it was annoying to be under such close observation; in another sense it was intriguing. It must have been the receptionist with the big smile, I surmised. Little Miss Smiley. She certainly seemed to know more than could normally be expected of a receptionist.

I was certainly intrigued, even excited, by this Special Branch officer. What else did he know? Is he the Deep Throat behind Melanie’s ranting accusations? Yet I had a duty to visit the council tenant with the repair complaint. Very boring, I know, but there it is. I arranged with Roger Clements that I would visit the tenant in Hightrees Estate first and then we would meet half an hour later in a pub near South Corindale tube station.

Actually it was not a particularly good arrangement. It was a Friday night and by the time I had visited my council tenant and got to the pub it was crowded with youngsters. Many of them, particularly the girls, seemed intent on bingeing themselves into a stupor. The music was loud and a large screen was showing a Formula One event in France which most people were ignoring. Roger Clements was standing near the bar nursing his pint apologetically. The busty midriff-exposed, loud-mouthed girls standing near him ensured that that there was little prospect of us having a civil conversation here. Apart from the noise, the near naked bulging flesh of eighteen year old girls undressed to the nines, and the huge images of the formula one cars whizzing interminably around that track, were distractions enough. We decided to forgo further drinks and settled for a walk along the wide pavement concourse near the station and eventually for a cup of coffee in a quieter corner of the local Coffee Republic.

Roger asked me for my views on the Pinkerton Plaza project, which I expounded for about 15 minutes. I told him that on balance I tended to favour the scheme but had grown somewhat suspicious of the way it was being pushed both by the developer and by the Council leadership and Chief Planning Officer. I then mentioned Melanie Sheldrake’s comments without obviously describing the lurid circumstances in which she revealed them.

Roger smiled and listened politely to my outpourings. On hearing about Melanie he began nodding and with a somewhat broad grin on his face. “A very exciting young lady that. Very promising, we believe. She too is one of the good people.”

He asked for details of my contacts with Nafta Ural’s employees and with Lord Smallbridge. I chose to discuss some aspects, but not all, of our visit to “Pinks” on election night, what transpired at the site visit and then my meeting in the pub after the public meeting at the Meeting House. However I chose to make no mention of the House of Shame or about my current vulnerability to blackmail.

Then he in turn gave me the broader picture. Nafta Ural was a giant oil conglomerate, which had been part of a Russian state enterprise until 1991 when its assets, like that of similar institutions, had been divided into several large chunks and each one sold for a song to pushy young entrepreneurs who were cronies of the new Russian government leaders. Yakov Sheremovsky, a young engineer from Irkutsk in Eastern Siberia, emerged from nowhere to buy Nafta Ural and through brilliant management, shameless negligence of environmental controls and a ruthless ability in eliminating competition and independent local provincial officials he had built up a huge commercial and financial empire in the space of 10 years. Some of his rivals disappeared mysteriously in unforeseen traffic accidents and through apparent food poisoning. His strong arm men had a reputation for sadistic brutality. According to Forbes Magazine, he was in the list of the top five richest entrepreneurs in Russia.

With time, as Roger Clements explained to me, he became interested in expanding his commercial empire abroad. He had had political ambitions too and was supposed to have had the eastern Siberian governors in his pocket, but when President Putin began centralizing the state authority, he was one of the industrial moguls who chose not to challenge the new President’s power and directed his energy abroad. He had bought up property in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and then in Taiwan and Singapore. He bought a Spanish bank. He was instrumental in the development of the great marine suburb of Rio de Janeiro called Barra. With the blessing of the Brazilian government and the Mayor of Rio he protected the new development with his own paid gangs and conducted a brutal war against the drug lords in the hillside favelas. He owned some property near Cannes as well as a huge yacht and invested in the film industry and in a French perfume company. He also dabbled quite seriously in the arms trade. He was involved in the supply of redundant Russian army small arms, rocket launchers and mortars to anti-Taliban warlords in Afghanistan, the Janjaweed militia in Western Sudan and to the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey. He also had interests in raw materials in the Congo and had been selling arms there.

Wherever he invested, he had ability in attracting local talent to his projects, including, what an FT city analyst had once cynically described as his A-team: accountants, architects, aristocrats and actresses. He kept these people close to him by a mixture of generous bribery and then blackmail when they sought to get out. He had an extraordinary talent in approaching these gifted people at a time when they had suffered commercial or career setbacks and then having flattered them and enticed them into his service, he kept them there by any means possible. Through drugs, if they were amenable to that kind of temptation; through drink; or simply through blackmail, particularly sexual blackmail. In every city he was interested in doing long term business he would buy into lap-dancing clubs and brothels and then set up his own. He made sure he could cater for any kind of perversion that was required. He recruited girls and young men in Russia and after special courses sent them out into the world to act as his eyes and ears. But eyes and ears were not the only parts of their body that would be recruited into the service of Nafta Ural.

I listened to this account with stunned amazement. The antics of Nafta Ural were described by Roger in an unsensational matter of fact manner and that made it all the more believable. It was also believable because it fitted the pattern of what I had seen in Framden. There was the architect – Sir William Tallis, there was the obligatory aristocratic foil, Lord Smallbridge, and there were the Russian sirens. What is more I had a sense of the fear that blackmail could entail when I saw the film reel of Valentina and myself. And then I remembered the “hanging man” being tortured on the gibbet, no longer a mysterious sinister stranger now, but probably the pathetic figure of Owen Draycott, former MP and ambitious politician, now publicly disgraced for taking a bribe but with the added fear that he was probably being blackmailed as well over his sexual failings.

Occasionally I would make expressions of disbelief, but Clements merely acknowledged these with a nod and then plunged on. When he mentioned the amusing line from the FT city analyst I made a flippant remark about the fact that a Financial Times city analyst could have a sense of humour.

“Perhaps,” commented Roger, “but it didn’t do him much good. Three months after he wrote that, Paul Carney died from a heart attack, while horse riding in the McGillycuddy’s Reeks in County Kerry.” I regretted my remark straight away and resolved to listen to this tale without any further attempts at witty backchat.

Then two years ago, according to Roger, Sheremovsky turned his attention to Britain. Three things led him here. First there were the business opportunities in the North Sea Oil platforms where UK, US, Japanese and Taiwanese companies were bidding for replenishing new oil drilling equipment. He was sure that he could make offers of good quality products and subsequent maintenance contracts that not even Halliburton could match. For a start he part subsidized his low prices by buying back old oil equipment which was still in working order and which he then resold to the Caspian and Central Asian oilfields. When his resulting competitiveness became awkward the Energy Ministry sought to sidestep his challenge by requiring the issue of special import licences. Owen Draycott worked from the inside to ease the issue of these import licences and even to make it possible for the government to offer export credit guarantees to assist in the sale of the recycled oil drilling equipment to Kazakhstan.

I suggested that Draycott would not have acted alone for such an operation. He certainly must have had civil servants working with him. Roger did not dispute, this but he obviously felt that he had said as much as he wanted to on that subject.

“Secondly”, continued Roger, “he had made links with the old U.D.A. in Northern Ireland. The Ulster Defence Association. You remember them?”

I nodded. “But I thought they belonged to the past. I thought the war in Northern Ireland is over.”

“We thought so too, but the situation is deteriorating,” answered Roger. He then plunged into a long and boring description of Northern Ireland politics built around uncertainty over how the different terrorist organizations would disarm. Sheremovsky was offering arms to Protestant extremists who believed that the I.R.A. would never disarm. The arms were intended for a radical young group of jobless young militants from Protestant Belfast, some as young as 15. Their commanders were former Protestant killers let out on licence after the Good Friday Agreement. “They called themselves the Whiterock Boys after some recent street riot,” said Roger with a wry smile. They will have sufficient funds from robbery, gambling and prostitution to entice Sheremovsky to make a deal with them. We heard they were particularly interested in rocket launchers which they used to buy from white South Africa in the old days. This above all else has made Sheremovsky’s presence here in England an acute matter of national security.”

“But these groups are not a threat here in England, are they? Where does Framden fit into all this?” I asked as Roger paused and took a sip of coffee.

“I’m coming to that,” said the policeman. “Believe it or not the Protestant loyalist organizations have cells in England too. We know of groups in Liverpool, in Cheltenham, even in Charlton, in South London. But that is not where you fit in, Peter.”

“Me?” I had no stomach for Northern Ireland politics. Surely there must be another connection here.

“I said that three things enticed Sheremovsky here,” said Roger. “The third was the London property market. After an all-time high, property prices were beginning to dip in the last two years. For some short term property speculators there was reason for panic. The Anglo-Taiwanese company which had bought the old Claybury Industrial Estate (the one now known as the Pinkerton Plaza site), began to panic about putting up the liquid capital needed to develop a mixed housing and commercial development to replace the dilapidated old buildings. They were desperate for a buyer. Banks were unhappy to finance it. Sheremovsky had long wanted to get into the property market in London for purely commercial reasons. Apparently, he thought property here was a better long term investment than a Swiss bank account. He liked the legal protection here, the fact that all land is recorded in an independent Land Registry and there is a complicated series of property laws with excellent loopholes for a rich person to take advantage of. With the right accountant and the right lawyer, of course. And Sheremovsky had the best. Last year he pounced onto this property by buying up more than 45% of the shares.”

“At first,” continued Roger, “it looked like a first class commercial investment. Yet he appeared to have other plans too, tied in with his oil business and his arms trading. He needed a new base for Nafta Ural as he was feeling increasingly unsafe in Russia itself. He had too many enemies and Putin’s Government was increasingly concerned by his arms trade activities which were not often in line with Russian foreign policy. He felt that London would be a better base, where he personally could feel safe in his new fortress.”

 ”Fortress? Steady on, Roger. This is only a housing and office development,” I intervened. “I know. I’ve seen all the plans.”

“Have you, Councillor?” he said sarcastically. “All the plans? Are you sure?”

I was silent again.

“We have spoken to one of the people responsible for drawing up those plans. We have been told of plans for extraordinarily large storage space deep underground with secret tunnels leading from the centre around the perimeter of the site. At least one of the tunnels is big enough to fit in articulated lorries. We have been told of designs in those underground bunkers for cranes, packing and weighing facilities which suggest the introduction of large warehouses. Warehouses for storing what? We believe that he intends to store weapons there, both for his own protection and for trade purposes. Our sources tell us that there are duplicate plans for many parts of the development, and that even the numbering of the plans is the same on the duplicates. You have been shown one version but when the building is constructed these duplicate plans will be used and then quoted back to the Council as being approved by them. We believe that your own colleague Mr Finneston has played in important part in helping to draw up these duplicate sets of plans. He has given them all the details that Framden Planning Committee will require to approve the plan wholeheartedly, probably unanimously.”

My brain was no longer functioning. This was now too much to take in. “I am stunned,” I told him, “by what you’re telling me. Even though I have had hints about Chris Finneston’s ambiguous role in this. And Melanie Sheldrake confirmed this. Yet it is still so difficult to believe. How could this go on when so many people would be living there, including some of our Council tenants?”

“What people?” laughed Roger. “His people of course. His employees, his gang masters, his laboratory staff from Russia, brought over wholesale after a specific deal done with some questionable Immigration Officers from the Home Office. You don’t think that any outsider would be allowed in this fortress.”

“But the promised community facilities? The public restaurant in the plaza with views over London? The high towers with the balconies?” I was protesting more in sorrow than in disbelief. I was simply adjusting to the enormity of the confidence trick being contemplated on Framden, in fact on London as a whole.

“Well there will almost certainly be facilities of some sort. Certainly a gym. But not for members of the public, let me assure you. There will be shooting ranges; areas for combat training. Possibly even interrogation rooms with God knows what facilities. The towers are a puzzle to us. Why does he need them so tall? The designs of the penthouse floor on each tower suggested something akin to watchtowers. But we don’t want to sound paranoid, do we? Perhaps he assumed that these can be negotiated down with Framden Councillors to satisfy local objectors? And I’m glad you mentioned the plaza area with the restaurant. One of our M.O.D. experts checked the plaza site measurements and its location, as well as its access to fuel pumps and potential fuel storage facilities below ground. The plaza has all the potential facilities for a heliport. Were you intending to give planning permission for a heliport, Councillor?” Roger laughed.

“Roger, this is earth-shattering,” I exclaimed. “I will go to Ted Grayson and we’ll summon Chris Finneston on Monday. We’ll confront him with the facts and demand his resignation. And we must give notice that we will oppose this development, or at least postpone it until the question of these duplicate plans is exposed.”

“No, Peter,” Roger Clements had now turned deadly serious. “You must do no such thing. At least not for a week. Now, just to make sure that we do not get our timetable tangled up. We understand that the decision by your Planning Committee will be on July 12th?”

“Yes, it is the outline planning permission for the scheme in general, without all the architectural details.

“We understand from our sources that once this outline permission is granted, Sheremovsky will start building his fortress.”

“You seem well informed,” I commented. “We could still refuse permission at the full planning stage in autumn if he has already built it, or even partly built it. Of course,” I then went ahead and answered my own question, “he would appeal against our decision. Normally the Planning Inspectorate is very reluctant to knock down buildings that have already been built.”

”Especially, my dear Peter, if money and other methods are used to persuade inspectors otherwise. Of course, we pride ourselves of the incorruptibility of our civil service, but nowadays the temptation and the blackmail put their way could make them sell their own grandmothers. We don’t want to give them that temptation. We must kill this project, with your help of course, on July 12th.”

“I see,” I mused. “He can appeal after our refusal then but there would not then be so much at stake. The building will not have been constructed yet and there would be less difficulty for the ministry inspector to support our refusal and reject the appeal.”

“Exactly. We must ask you, however, for your most complete confidentiality in this matter. Do not tell anyone about our meeting today. Please do not trust anyone in this matter, except me, or any colleague who speaks to you in my name. Obviously, our mutual friend, Melanie, is an exception and she is aware of much that you are aware of, though not everything. However, lovely lady though she is, she does occasionally fly off the handle a bit. Obviously keep her onside but we must all keep our cards well hidden, as we need the time to pick and neutralize as many people as possible involved in this conspiracy. Frankly, Peter, if you and Melanie are viewed publicly as being sworn enemies then we strongly urge you to continue with that image at least for another week, in fact right up to the meeting itself.”

“Can I ask who I should suspect?” I asked. “For instance are Grayson and Batchelor involved? And Bill Kitson?” I remembered that Melanie had mentioned these names.

“I could mention names, Peter, but in the present circumstances that would be unwise. Please treat any of your colleagues, both Councillors and Council officials, as under suspicion for the moment. All of them.”

“But what about Meena Chakravatty and Noel Graham? I trust them implicitly and if I have to turn things round I will need to build up support with my colleagues.”

“I have nothing against either of those Councillors. In fact I was very impressed by Miss Chakravatty at the public meeting. By all means, give me a list of Planning Committee members. Nearer the day we will tell you which ones could be problematic. But in the meantime I must ask you again to keep it quiet, even from your closest colleagues. A word said by them innocently in the wrong place in front of the wrong person and our whole edifice could come crashing down. Please be aware that a number of people are in very exposed positions at the moment and working for us. If the cat were let out of the bag too early they could be suspected of betraying their colleagues. They are not just in this country. Sheremovsky’s people have a long reach and can be ruthless. You would not want these people on your conscience? Just carry on as you have until now and keep the developers off their guard. Go to Smallbridge’s wedding, for instance, and have a good time. I’m sure you will anyway.”

I nodded glumly. Suddenly I felt the heavy hand of responsibility in a way that I had never felt when acting as the planning spokesperson for the Borough. And that had seemed responsibility enough at the time. Now suddenly it was life and death. I still could not get to grips with the new reality. Had the whole world gone mad? Was every one corrupt? Was this man I was talking to really a policeman? Or just a madman leading me into his weird poisoned world? Was this the fantasy world of the dummy weapons of mass destruction in Iraq all over again?

Yet everything else was suddenly beginning to add up. The role of Smallbridge and his Russian bullies and temptresses. The threats and blandishments I encountered in the House of Shame. The disappearance of the plastic model of the development. The resignation of Draycott. The Mediterranean cruise. The excessive zeal of Chris Finneston in promoting this development. The equally cagey but unmistakable support for this project from Grayson and Batchelor, and Emil Kapacek. Good Lord, poor Emil! I had forgotten him until now.

“Peter, do we have a deal? Will you keep quiet for a week on this issue and not mention it to anyone?”

“On one condition,“ I said.

“Yes??” asked Roger suspiciously.

“You keep Emil Kapacek out of it. Whatever he may have done he is now totally out of the picture.”

Roger stared at me for a second. His mind was obviously chewing over what I had said.

“Emil Kapacek? Kapacek?? The Councillor in the Mayor’s Chair? You think he was involved?” he asked.

“No,” I said, a little surprised by his reaction.

“Well then, neither do I,” Roger concluded. “So we have a deal?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Thank you, Councillor. We will be very grateful. And so,” he added almost as an afterthought, “will the country.”