The Dark Time

On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging.

- BEN TAUB

The point of contact between NATO and Russia's nuclear stronghold is the small town of Kirkenes. For years, Russia has treated the area as a laboratory, testing intelligence and influence operations before replicating them across Europe.

It was polar winter, one long night.

The lakes had frozen in the Far North, and the foxes and the grouse had shed their brown fur and feathers in favor of Arctic white. To survive the months of snow and ice, predators resort to camouflage and deception. But so do their prey.

In the small town of Kirkenes-in the northeastern corner of Norway, six miles from the Russian border-the-regional counterintelligence chief, Johan Roaldsnes, peered out his office window at the fjord below. There were eight Russian fishing trawlers docked outside, housing at least six hundred Russian sailors.

The phone rang. The caller was a government employee who worked at the local port. It was not uncommon for Russian trawlers to stop in Kirkenes, but some of these were not among the usual ships. One of them, a fish-processing vessel named Arka-33, had docked weeks earlier and hadn't left.

"Seems a bit much," the caller said.

"Might be," Roaldsnes replied. Uncertainty was his profession.

He walked out of his office, into the cold, and past the church from which the town had taken its name: Kirkenes, "church on the promontory."There were two clocks on the spire. They showed different times, neither of which was correct.

It was late December, 2022, almost a year since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Roaldsnes had not seen the sun in a month; it wouldn't rise again for another. Locals call these months the marketid-the dark time. Most of the time, you can't see what's around you, even if you know that it's there.