Stanley Johnson: Kompromat

The other plane was close enough for him to see the pilot. ‘Jesus Christ!’ Varese exclaimed. ‘I think it’s Popov. What’s he playing at?’

‘When you’re president of Russia, you can break all the rules you like, I guess,’ Terry replied. ‘You make ’em, you break ’em!’

Varese pressed the zoom switch. The huge grinning face of President Popov suddenly appeared on the screen in front of them.

‘You guys oughta get yourselves a faster plane,’ the president’s voice came over the intercom.

Even though the two planes were still 200 yards apart, they could feel the shockwave of the Ilyushin’s afterburners.

Varese grasped the joy-stick, disconnecting the autopilot. He eased back the throttle.

This was a race he clearly wasn’t going to win.

Speaking into the intercom, he said, ‘I think President Popov is having some fun with his latest toy, ladies and gentlemen. You had better make sure your seat belts are fastened. If our friend decides to take it up to Mach One, we’re likely to experience some buffeting.’

And that exactly was what President Igor Popov did. The Ilyushin’s precise performance data were not described, not least in any publication that Jack Varese knew of. But it was perfectly obvious that breaking the sound barrier was well within its capabilities.

Over the tannoy, they heard the president’s cheerful comment, ‘See you when you arrive. I’ll make sure the drinks are waiting!’

Varese could imagine the president giving them a mock salute as he roared ahead and away from them.

It took a while for buffeting to subside.

Terry Caruthers, who had served ten years with the USAF before taking up a career as a civilian pilot, broke the silence. ‘There are people in Washington who will be quite intrigued to hear about what we saw today.’

There was a knock on the door. Ron Craig poked his head into the cockpit.

‘You guys all right?’ he said cheerily. ‘That was quite something, wasn’t it?’

It was dark when they landed in Khabarovsk after the long flight from St Petersburg. A helicopter waited on the runway to transport them to the camp at the junction of the Amur and Ussuri Rivers.

The accommodation was not luxurious, but the huts that had been built in a clearing in the forest were sturdy and clean.

‘This is a research facility, not a tourist site,’ the bearded official who greeted them had explained gruffly. ‘We are monitoring tiger movements. We also safeguard the tigers. We will leave tomorrow morning at 8:00a.m. Please have your breakfast first.’

Someone banged on Barnard’s door as dawn was breaking.

He dressed quickly. Thick trousers and a tough jacket. Strong boots. They might start off in vehicles, but if they were following tiger spore he reckoned they would probably spend most of the day on foot. At least the Russian taiga – those vast birch forests which covered so much the country out here in the Russian Far East – weren’t as thick and impenetrable as, say, some of the rainforests in the Congo or Southeast Asia.

How lucky he was, he thought, to have a job which took him to some of the most far-flung corners of the world. And you couldn’t be much more remote than the Ussuri-Amur triangle, that corner of land where China and Russia met.

What a pity, he thought, that his wife Melissa wasn’t with him. They had been married for over twenty years but he still missed her whenever she wasn’t there. Oddly enough, one of the last trips they had made together had actually been in Russia’s Far East. They had gone on a trekking holiday in Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.

They had been lucky then. The rivers were in spate and the great brown bears could be seen feasting on the salmon. The guides carried guns, of course. As any fool knew, you didn’t want to get between a bear and its lunch. You didn’t want to get in the way of the men with the guns either. Accidents could – and did – happen.

Edward Barnard had slept well. The effect of whatever it was he had consumed that last night in the hotel in St Petersburg had finally worn off. What on earth could it have been?

He must have gone out like a light, as the last thing he remembered was pushing the button in the lift and the heady scent of the two Russian women standing next to him. Maybe he had just had too much to drink, what with all the toasts at the dinner in the Winter Palace, followed by whatever it was he had drunk at the bar in the Kempinski. If Melissa had been there, she might have seen the warning signs.

They breakfasted sitting around the campfire. Steaming mugs of coffee, pickled eggs, slices of thick brown bread.

Halfway through the meal, they heard the thud-thud-thud of the helicopter. It landed in a clearing fifty years from the campsite. Moments later, President Popov jumped down and strode over.

Clad in battle fatigues, with a hunting cap pushed far back on his head, he held out his hand for the rifle. The gruff ranger had already explained that weapons were always carried with tigers around.

‘Good morning, friends. I hope you are not too tired after your journey.’ Popov smiled at them as he ostentatiously hefted the weapon. He turned to Jack Varese with a smirk on his face. ‘I got into Khabarovsk in time for a good night’s sleep before coming over here this morning.’

Three UAZ-469 Patriot Jeeps were waiting for them, engines throbbing quietly. The UAZ-469 had long been the staple off-the-road vehicle for Russian police and military units. Connoisseurs rated it as sturdier and more reliable than the Land Rover or Land Cruiser.

The vehicles were painted dark green and bore the logo of the Russian Federation’s National Park Service.

Popov, still carrying his rifle, got into the lead vehicle. He beckoned to Barnard. ‘Come and join me.’

Barnard hadn’t realized until then just how good Popov’s English was. He knew that Popov was meant to be fluent in German, having served as the head of the KGB’s Dresden office in former East Germany, but Barnard – in common with most other observers – was quite unaware of the extent of Popov’s proficiency in other languages.

‘What we are planning to do this morning,’ Popov explained, ‘is to collar a tiger. The Park Service here has set up a tiger-monitoring programme. We want to know how many tigers there are, where they live, what they eat, as well as the pattern of their day-to-day movements. This latter point is particularly important. We believe we are losing significant numbers of tigers, as many as twenty a year, because they cross the river into China. And God knows what happens to them there.’

Popov corrected himself. ‘Actually we do know. As I mentioned to the Chinese president back in St Petersburg, the Chinese kill them and eat them. Or else they grind up their bones into powder and sprinkle it on their soup as an aphrodisiac. Pah! Real men don’t need aphrodisiacs.’

As they drove off along the track into the forest, Popov continued, ‘Sergei here’ – he gestured to the driver – ‘found a recent kill yesterday, about twenty kilometres from where we are now. He was tracking a tiger on foot when he came across the carcass of a deer. Quite a large animal actually, probably a Siberian musk deer. The tiger had obviously had a go at the deer, because most of the haunch had been eaten. Sergei reckons there’s a good chance the tiger will be coming back for a second helping.’

The driver said something in Russian which Barnard didn’t understand. Popov turned to Barnard. ‘Looking at the spoor, he thinks it may be a large male.’

After about an hour, they pulled into a clearing in the forest. The four rangers who had been riding in a support vehicle clustered round the president. Then one of them stepped forward and addressed the party.