ne of it was good.
A team of Dutch scientists, after years of study, had concluded that there was no viable doubt that the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 shot down over Ukraine in July 2014 with the loss of 283 passengers and 15 crew had been downed quite deliberately by a Russian missile crew operating a Buk missile out of Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.
Intercepted radio chit-chat had confirmed those responsible were not Ukrainian rebels and knew perfectly well that their target was a civilian airliner. Most of the passengers were Dutch.
‘There must be retribution,’ said the Chief of the Defence Staff. ‘Or at least deterrence. The provocations are mounting and mounting, to intolerable levels.’
There were grunts and nods from around the table. The next speaker was from the Foreign Office, and he was followed by the man from the NCSC.
There had been a devastating cyber-attack on Ukraine, on her banks, her government and her power grid. It was now being called the NotPetya attack. It had masqueraded as a criminal attack aimed at extracting a ransom as a condition of its cessation, but no Western cyber-crime agency was in any doubt that the Russian government was behind it.
More to the point, said the head of the NCSC, the cyber-attacks on Britain coming out of Russia were becoming weekly more and more vicious and more and more frequent. Each one caused damage and each cost money to defend against. It was the Foreign Secretary, at the invitation of the Prime Minister, who summed up.
‘We are living in an age more dangerous than any in our lifetimes,’ he said. ‘The headlines are dominated by globe-wide terrorism mounted by a weird, pseudo-religious death cult stemming from a perverted Islam. But that is not the main threat, despite the suicide bombers. ISIS is not a nation-state.
‘A dozen countries now have nuclear bombs and the missiles to launch them. Four are thoroughly unstable. Three others are not only ruthlessly dictatorial internally but relentlessly aggressive externally. North Korea and Iran are two of these, but the league-leader by her own choice is now Russia. Things have not been this bad since Stalin’s time.’
‘And the national defence position?’ asked Mrs Graham.
‘I have to agree with the Foreign Secretary,’ said the Defence Secretary. ‘Attempts by Russian submarines and surface warships to penetrate our inshore waters and by their nuclear bombers to penetrate our airspace are constant – at least weekly. Our interceptor fighters and submarine defences are rarely not on alert. The UK is not the only target in Western Europe, just the main one. As the Foreign Secretary said, the Cold War is back, and not by our choice, but by Moscow’s. The West is under covert attack, masquerading as provocations, at every level.’
‘And inside Russia?’ asked the Prime Minister.
‘Just as bad, if not worse,’ said the Foreign Office specialist in Eastern Europe. ‘The grip of the Kremlin on Russian life becomes ever harsher. The Russian media are now mostly slavish towards the Kremlin. Critical journalists are routinely assassinated by underworld hitmen. The lesson has been learned: do not even attempt to criticize the Kremlin. The price will not be your career but your life. Other targeted murders of critics outside Russia have taken place – as we know. We seem to have no recourse but to keep on accepting the aggressions – short of open war, and that is unthinkable.’
The gloomy conference broke up thirty minutes later. The ministers and principal civil servants filed out for lunch. Those at the back awaited their turn. At the door, Mrs Graham caught Sir Adrian’s eye and nodded towards the library. She joined him there a few minutes later.
‘I cannot stop for long,’ she said. ‘You have heard the assessment. Your first thoughts?’
‘They are quite right, of course. The prospects are very gloomy.’
‘And the last speaker? Is she right? There is nothing we can do?’
‘Nothing above the surface, Prime Minister. Though, if Russia sustained a truly catastrophic accident and the Kremlin was then quietly warned that, if the provocations stopped, so would the accidents, it might listen. But nothing can be out in the open. All governments have to save face.’
‘Please let me have your thoughts, Sir Adrian. On paper. Special delivery. Eyes only. Within a week. Do forgive me. I must go.’
And she was gone. Sir Adrian slipped away and drove home. He had an idea.
Sir Adrian was a man who preferred to research thoroughly before he opened his mouth or put pen to paper. He came from a calling in which, if the seniors got it wrong, the juniors could die. He had prowled the sources of information about gas pipelines, how they were created and how they operated. He concentrated on the International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS, and the Royal United Services Institute. He settled, out of the former, on Dr Bob Langley.
‘Russia is spending a savage amount of money and effort on TurkStream, and is going for broke. No one seems to be paying a blind bit of attention,’ said Dr Langley. ‘Which is odd, because it will affect the whole of Western Europe for decades.’
‘And TurkStream is …’
‘The biggest natural-gas pipeline the world has ever seen. They are at work now and the plan is to be finished in late 2020. Then our world will change, and not for the better.’
‘Tell me all you know about TurkStream, Doctor.’
‘Natural gas, also known as petroleum gas, is increasingly powering our industries, and this will increase yet more. Some comes from the Middle East by tanker as liquid petroleum gas, or LPG, but much now comes from Russia, flowing west through a series of pipelines. Germany has already become virtually dependent on Russian LPG, which explains why Berlin is now servile to Moscow. The pipelines run across Ukraine, Poland, Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria. All are paid transit fees, and these fees play a significant part in their economies. TurkStream will replace them all. When the Russian LPG is really on stream, Europe will become gas-dependent on Russia and, effectively, her servant.’
‘And if we don’t buy it?’
‘Europe’s industrial product becomes uncompetitive in world markets. Which do you think will win? High principle or profits? TurkStream basically consists of two pipelines. Both come out of the heart of Russia and dive into the earth at Krasnodar, near the Black Sea coast, in western Russia. Blue Stream goes under the Black Sea to emerge in Turkey and heads for Ankara. That, plus reduced prices, is the buy-off for Turkey, which is why she and Russia are now firmly in bed together.
‘The second, much longer pipeline, South Stream, also runs under the Black Sea but emerges in western Turkey, near the Greek border. That is where the sea island will be built to accommodate the fleets of gas tankers serving Western Europe. Then the dependency will be complete.’
‘So the man in the Kremlin knows what he is doing?’