Tuesday
Hammersmith, London
‘Is all that clear?’
‘Yes.’ Richter nodded. ‘What you’ve said is very clear. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense, but it’s very clear.’
The briefing officer – a short and stout man who had been introduced to Richter simply as ‘Gibson’ – coloured slightly and leaned forward on the lectern. ‘What, exactly, doesn’t make sense?’
‘Almost everything,’ Richter said. ‘You’re basically tasking me with flying to Vienna tomorrow to collect a package and then deliver it here.’ Richter gestured around the briefing room. ‘I’ll ignore the fact that I don’t actually know anything about the organization you represent, like what it’s called or what it does or why I should be playing postman for it, but—’
Gibson interrupted. ‘You don’t need to know anything more than I’ve told you,’ he said.
Richter looked up at him. ‘So you keep saying. Pardon me if I disagree with you. I could just about understand it if, having collected this package in Vienna, I simply climbed back onto the same British Airways aircraft that I arrived on, and then flew back to Heathrow. Why, exactly, can’t I do that? Why do you want me to take a week making my way halfway across Europe by road to Toulouse, of all places, and then fly back to Britain from there?’
Gibson was silent for a few moments before he replied. ‘That’s the predetermined return route,’ he said finally, though somewhat lamely.
‘Predetermined by who?’ Richter asked. ‘And why?’
‘You don’t need to—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Richter interrupted. ‘No doubt that’s just something else I don’t need to know.’
Gibson studied Richter for a few seconds, then told him to wait, and walked out of the room. Two minutes later he was back, accompanied by a smallish, pinkish man who exuded an unmistakable air of authority.
‘You’re Richter, right?’ the new arrival asked. Richter nodded, but he remained seated. ‘I’m Simpson, and Gibson tells me you’re unhappy with the return route we’ve planned for this collection.’
Richter nodded again. ‘That, and just about everything else,’ he said.
‘You served in the Royal Navy, didn’t you?’ Simpson continued. ‘You should be used to taking orders, so why can’t you just do what you’re told?’
‘In the Navy,’ Richter replied, ‘it was different. There I knew who I was working for, and I knew what was going on. Here I don’t, and I’m certainly not going tramping around Europe, lugging some unidentified parcel, until I find out.’
Simpson and Gibson both looked at him in silence for a moment. ‘Right,’ Simpson said to the other man, ‘I’ll take care of this.’
After Gibson had left the room, Simpson sat down in a chair facing Richter. ‘You’ve signed the Official Secrets Act,’ he stated.
‘Twice, I think,’ Richter agreed.
‘Right. You are to now consider everything I tell you as being covered by that Act, and never repeat it to anyone. This organization is a part – though a very small part – of the British security establishment.’
‘I guessed that,’ Richter said. ‘It’s presumably why you’re skulking around the backstreets of Hammersmith.’
‘We like to keep a low profile.’ Simpson smiled briefly. ‘Now, this package collection is very important to us, but to be frank the package itself is almost irrelevant. I can’t give you the background, because it’s classified at a much higher level than you’re cleared to. But this much I can tell you: we need to have someone in place in southern Europe for the next week or so. And before you ask,’ he went on, ‘for reasons I can’t explain, that person has to be somebody totally unconnected to any part of the security establishment – an outsider in other words, with no existing MI5 or SIS connections.’
Richter nodded. ‘This is finally beginning to make some kind of sense,’ he said. ‘You’re expecting this person to be contacted, perhaps, by someone who wouldn’t trust a professional intelligence officer? A defector, maybe? And the slow return journey has been deliberately chosen to allow plenty of time for that contact to be made?’
This time Simpson nodded and smiled too. ‘You may have missed your calling, Richter,’ he said. ‘You seem to pick things up very quickly. You’re quite right.’
‘OK,’ Richter said, ‘accepting all that, why wasn’t Gibson prepared to tell me that, or advise me how to respond if and when I’m contacted by this third party?’
‘You would have been properly briefed, but at this stage we know almost nothing about this possible contact. That’s why we’ve chosen a slow route back, so that we could get in touch with you whenever we needed to, and brief you on the fly, as it were.
‘Now,’ Simpson went on, ‘with that cleared up, are you prepared to undertake this collection?’
‘Of course, I am,’ Richter nodded, ‘as long as I know what’s going on.’
Simpson suppressed a smile. What he had just explained was almost true, but the real nature of the contact was likely to be very different from what Richter probably assumed.
‘Right, then,’ Simpson continued. ‘Gibson has already supplied you with briefing sheets, your precise itinerary, an airline ticket and details of the pick-up address in Vienna. You’ll need some other equipment as well, so we must get that sorted immediately.’
‘Equipment?’ Richter asked. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got exploding briefcases or sub-machine guns hidden inside shoes?’
‘Not exactly,’ Simpson grunted. ‘Our technical resources are somewhat more modest than those supposedly available to James Bond. We’ll be providing you with a diplomatic passport, which will help with the border crossings and any dealings you might have with the continental plods, and a mobile phone so we can reach you wherever you are. Oh, and a briefcase . . . but without extras apart from a handcuff to attach it to your wrist.’
Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi Headquarters, Yasenevo, Tëplyystan, Moscow
Raya checked the new directory immediately after arriving in her office, and was amazed at the number of files it already contained. Even allowing for Abramov’s explanation that some of the material had now been held for assessment at Yasenevo for as long as six months, it was still obvious that the Zakoulok database was huge, and that the source known as Gospodin enjoyed excellent access – perhaps even better than some of the American mercenary traitors, such as Aldrich Ames and the Walker family.
Later that morning, Raya made a call to Major Abramov’s office number. She let the phone ring a dozen times before replacing the receiver. She had fully expected him to be out of the building, but was just running a final check.
She opened her office door briefly, to check that the corridor outside was empty, then locked it and walked swiftly back to her desk. Sitting down at the computer, she opened a file-transfer and communication program which automatically dialled a telephone number in a fifth-floor office within the Lubyanka. That telephone didn’t actually ring, because a call-diverter, which Raya had installed during a routine security check nine months earlier, intercepted her call as soon as it recognized the prefix.
The prefix was in fact a signal to the diverter to dial another number elsewhere in Moscow, and the only sign of this happening was the small red light on the telephone that illuminated to show that the line was in use. This light stayed on for almost fifteen minutes, but the office itself was deserted, as was always the case in mid-morning.
Once the connection was established, the program transmitted copies of the files contained in both of Raya’s hidden directories to the recipient computer. Before the program shut down, it deleted all the files in the two hidden directories, and finally erased any record of this call from her office to the Lubyanka from the internal-communication record file.
During the afternoon, Raya accessed the internal-communication record file herself. After a careful check of the Senior Officers’ Diary which was held on the computer system, and the network access log, she inserted nine new and entirely fictitious entries. These showed lengthy calls to a Moscow number made from an office elsewhere in the Yasenevo complex.
Then she opened a directory with a Top-Secret classification, and selected fifteen files dealing with Russian military equipment. She opened each one in turn and added a single extra entry to each file’s access record.
As she closed the last file, Raya smiled to herself. It was a smile of satisfaction, but her eyes were hard and bright.
Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London
‘Mr Stanway?’ Mary Bellamy began. A formidable and slightly equine woman, she was personal assistant to ‘C’, namely Sir Malcolm Holbeche, which entitled her to the official acronym ‘PA-C’. Perhaps predictably, she was known in the spacious corridors of Vauxhall Cross as ‘The Pack Horse’.
‘Yes, Mary?’ Gerald Stanway had recognized her voice immediately.
‘There’s a heads and deputy heads meeting in Conference Room 2 in fifteen minutes.’
Stanway glanced at the wall clock opposite his desk. ‘I’ll be there,’ he replied, then replaced the telephone handset and began clearing his desk. In Vauxhall Cross, the avant-garde headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service on the south bank of the Thames, all offices operate a ‘clear desks’ policy. This means that no officer ever leaves his room with papers of any description remaining in view. Everything, including desk diaries, have to be locked away in the officer’s personal safe.
Stanway glanced back at his desk for a final check before spinning the combination lock on the safe door. Then he sat down again, in front of the computer terminal, and systematically closed all the open programs. When the display prompted for a username and password, he switched off the screen and left his office.
As Stanway walked in, he found Sir Malcolm Holbeche sitting at the head of the long table in the conference room. Two other heads of department followed him and, once all were seated, Holbeche began.
‘This briefing,’ he stated, ‘is classified Top Secret, and no notes of any sort will be taken. Is that clear?’ The men seated around the table nodded agreement, and Holbeche continued. ‘This situation is somewhat embarrassing, and has potentially very serious implications for both us and the rest of the security establishment, not to mention our “special relationship” with the American CIA. As Moore here will now explain.’
Holbeche leaned back in his chair, with a gesture to the man sitting on his right. William Moore opened the file in front of him, and glanced quickly round the table.
‘Three days ago,’ he began, ‘a low-level Russian clerk – but one working at Yasenevo – walked into the British Embassy in Moscow and asked for asylum. There was some confusion over who should handle this matter, and the Russian began to get visibly perturbed. It’s possible that he was worried that he would be refused asylum, or might even be arrested and handed over to the Russian authorities. Eventually, after half an hour or so, the clerk ran out of the embassy and vanished into the streets of Moscow.’
Moore looked around, at a collection of puzzled faces. ‘Nothing much to get excited about? You’re quite right. By itself, this episode would be of no real consequence, but what elevates it from the mundane to the significant is what the clerk left behind him at the embassy.’
‘Which was?’ somebody prompted.
‘A small package of papers,’ Moore said. ‘Most of it apparently was the usual sort of stuff you’d expect a defecting clerk to bring with him, in order to bargain with. We haven’t seen this material yet, because our people in Moscow are still going through it, but a copy of it has been sent to us, and should arrive here later today. What alarmed our Head of Station over there involved just one sheet of paper.’
Moore paused significantly. ‘It was simply a list of file names with a number handwritten against each one. Our Head of Station thought he recognized some of the file names, so he signalled us promptly. He was right to do so, because several of the names listed were those of SIS files. More importantly, all are classified as Secret and above, and most relate in some way to Russia or the CIS.’
‘And the numbers?’ Holbeche prompted.
‘Oh, yes,’ Moore replied. ‘On initial analysis, we deduced that the numbers weren’t directly relevant to the files – meaning they weren’t, for example, sizes or creation dates or access history or anything like that. What we think is that they indicate sums of money. The Head of Station’s interpretation of this – and I have to say we concur – is that this sheet of paper lists files that the SVR has received from somebody within SIS, and what they paid for them.’
‘Or perhaps files that the SVR wants from SIS, and what they’d be prepared to pay for them?’ one of the other men suggested.
‘No.’ Moore shook his head. ‘The Russian clerk said these files had already been obtained.’
There was an appalled silence.
‘You can all appreciate what this means,’ Holbeche declared. ‘Someone with access to SIS files – and that probably means somebody here in this building – has been selling our secrets to the SVR. What we have to find out urgently is who.’
‘And how do we do that?’ Stanway asked. ‘Call in The Box?’
‘The Box’ and ‘Box 500’ were slang terms for the Security Service, MI5, and were derived from its original postal address of PO Box 500, London.
‘We hope that won’t be necessary.’ Moore shook his head. ‘We’re hoping that the Russian clerk himself might be able to help us out.’
‘How?’
‘Before he ran off into the Moscow afternoon, he’d talked to the SIS duty officer for about ten minutes. The clerk explained to him that he had a number of other papers, similar to the one bearing the file names, and further information about the individual who had supplied the SVR with those files. Based on what he heard, the duty officer believed the source of the leak could probably be identified from those papers.’
‘As the clerk has completely vanished, I don’t see how that can help,’ Stanway said.
‘It helps,’ Moore replied, ‘because the clerk has now reappeared, in Vienna, along with the rest of the papers.’
Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi Headquarters, Yasenevo, Tëplyystan, Moscow
Raya had always been conscientious in performing her duties, and invariably carried out to the letter all the procedures Abramov had specified for the security checks. One of her tasks was to inspect the access record, since the last full security check, of any files bearing a classification of Top Secret or above.
She looked forward to this task because, as well as inspecting a file’s access history, it also gave her – as the network manager in all but name – the absolute right to look at the contents of any file contained in the database. On every security check she’d carried out since she’d arrived at Yasenevo, what she’d done was not merely to inspect the contents of these files, but also to make copies of them within another hidden directory she’d created. She also selected a handful of highly classified files every day, and stored copies of these, too, in the same hidden directory. Most of these files were encrypted but that didn’t matter because, as network manager, she also had access to the encryption and decryption routines.
But, despite this unrivalled access, the number of highly classified files was so great that she had never managed to find a real ‘gem’, though she believed that the Gospodin material, and now the new and rapidly filling Zakoulok directory, would prove of crucial importance later. This was not because of what the files themselves contained, but because of what they could prove about the person who had sourced them.
During this latest check, she’d decided to carry out a database-wide search for any files containing English words. This produced a huge listing, and included even material dating back to the glorious days of what were known as ‘The Apostles’ – those ideological traitors whose names were still revered in the corridors of the SVR: George Blake, Anthony Blunt, Anthony Burgess, John Cairncross, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby.
The damage they had done to the British intelligence services had been quite literally incalculable, and the lack of trust engendered by their activities between Britain and America was almost as damaging. While The Apostles were operational, almost no penetration operation mounted by either the British or the Americans against the Soviet Union had been successful, and on several occasions they had even helped the KGB to prevent defections to the West. Possibly the classic example of that had been Constantin Volkhov, and that name was burned permanently into Raya’s brain.
Raya studied the listing on the screen and decided to add another filter. Using the listing she’d already generated as a dataset, she eliminated all files that hadn’t been accessed over the last six months. That more than halved the number originally displayed. Then she decided to approach the problem from the opposite direction, and she specified only those files, classified Top Secret and above, which had since been accessed by Directorate heads. That reduced the listing to a mere eighteen files, and Raya decided to take a careful look at all of them.
All the file-directory specifications included the directory’s size, the number of files it contained, the overall classification and the original creation dates. Studying these, Raya immediately noticed how one of the directories stood out, simply because it was so old.
Having been created over twenty years earlier, it had been classified Secret almost immediately. The security classification had been increased to Top Secret about six months after the directory had been created, but this was not unusual; quite often later material obtained by an agent was more sensitive and important than the earlier information, so the file or directory classification had to be increased accordingly.
But, apart from its age, there were two other unusual features of the Zagadka – meaning ‘Enigma’ – directory. First, its classification had remained Top Secret; and normally, as the information contained became older, it became inevitably less critical, so the security level would be downgraded by at least one or two classifications, sometimes even more.
The second peculiarity was that, although new files had been added to the directory at frequent intervals during the fifteen years after Zagadka had been created, no new files had been added for the last five years. This suggested that the source was dead, or had been burned, or for some other reason had ceased acting as an asset for the SVR. But that made a nonsense of the directory’s access record, for most of the Directorate heads at Yasenevo looked through the directory at least once every month – but why would a busy SVR desk officer waste time looking at information that must be at least five years out of date?
But then Raya noticed something else. Although no new files had been added to the Zagadka directory for some years, one file, named ‘Appreciation’, was still being updated on a regular basis – sometimes as often as once a week. She double-clicked on the file to open it, read through the first page, then closed the file again and sat back in her seat.
Suddenly she knew something that she’d previously only suspected. And she also realized in that instant, that she was going to have to be extremely careful, because what was contained in the ‘Appreciation’ file changed everything.
Hammersmith, London
Richter emerged from the building in Hammersmith just after two-thirty, grasping a locked and almost empty briefcase in his left hand and with his stomach rumbling. Neither Simpson nor anyone else had offered him lunch, or anything else to eat, and the one cup of coffee provided had been so lukewarm and tasteless that he had had no difficulty at all in refusing a second cup.
He glanced briefly at his watch and immediately rejected any idea of returning to Whitehall and the Old Admiralty Building where there was in any case nothing waiting for him but an empty office. He set off in the general direction of central London, until he found a pub offering all-day food, walked in and ordered a plate of chilli. That was now ‘off’, according to the blonde barmaid, who was anorexic almost to the point of starvation but still possessed a pair of the largest breasts Richter had ever seen, so he settled for an alleged Cornish pasty – but which had obviously begun its life somewhere well to the east of Slough – and some slightly soggy chips. But the coffee was good enough for him to order a second cup, and his hunger had subsided by the time he finally stepped out onto the pavement and looked hopefully up and down the street.
There were no taxis in sight, but the day was fine, so he decided to walk to the closest tube station. Ninety minutes later found him stepping off the train at Uxbridge station, for a short walk to the local RAF station, which was one of the many non-flying Royal Air Force establishments dotted around Britain. Not for nothing, he reflected, were RAF personnel sometimes known dismissively as ‘penguins’, because only about one in a million of them actually flew.
Back in his room, Richter put the briefcase on the desk and used the key Simpson had given him to unlock it. Inside was a Nokia GSM mobile phone and charger, plus a two-pin continental adapter, two typewritten pages of briefing notes, and a sealed A4-size manila envelope containing the diplomatic passport Simpson had promised him. Also a single economy-class ticket from Heathrow to Vienna, one thousand euros in cash, split into fifty- and one-hundred euro notes, and a gold Visa card which he’d already signed.
There was also a carbon copy of a sheet of paper signed by Richter and countersigned by Simpson, which listed every item contained in the briefcase, including the Visa card number and the numbers of each of the euro notes, and even details of the briefcase itself. Simpson had also made it clear that Richter was expected to return all of those items except the cash, and he had been instructed to produce receipts for everything he purchased and for every euro and cent he spent. That, in fact, was precisely what Richter would expect, because all government departments and employees worked in more or less the same way, and such an excessive concentration on completely unimportant minutiae was typical of the breed.
He’d already read through the briefing sheets at Hammersmith but before he went downstairs to have an early meal in the dining room he decided to look through them again. He’d given no hint of it while he’d been at Hammersmith, but he was reasonably certain that there must be a lot that both Simpson and Gibson – or whatever his real name was – had so far neglected to tell him.
As he’d informed Gibson, the briefing had been clear enough; but it just didn’t make any sense. What Simpson had explained to him subsequently had clarified matters considerably, but Richter hadn’t really bought that ‘defector running across Europe’ story. What was clear was that Simpson’s organization needed somebody on the ground in Austria, Switzerland or France, for a week or so, but whether he would actually be contacted by somebody, or whether there was some other reason for his presence there, he had no idea.
What he did know was that he was going to be watching his back carefully, from the moment he climbed out of that British Airways flight in Vienna.
Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London
Sir Malcolm Holbeche rang Simpson a little before six-thirty that afternoon.
‘How did it go?’ Simpson asked him. ‘I presume there was no problem getting Moscow to play ball?’
‘None at all,’ Holbeche replied. ‘The origin of any enquiry made to the Holy of Holies there’ – he was using the term applied to the section of a British embassy which is occupied by SIS personnel – ‘will be logged and the defecting clerk story will be confirmed.’
‘And at this end?’ Simpson enquired.
‘As expected, nobody showed anything other than purely professional interest.’
‘What about the other places?’ By ‘other places’, Simpson meant GCHQ and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where very similar briefings had been given that afternoon.
‘No unusual response received from Cheltenham, and I’m still waiting for the FCO. They’re late, as usual.’
‘I’m not surprised at that reaction,’ Simpson said. ‘We’re dealing with a professional here, and he’s not going to jump up and down in hysterics just because some Russian clerk might be able to finger him.’
‘Quite,’ Holbeche replied. ‘But at least the hare is running.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Simpson agreed, ‘the hare is definitely running.’