Manhunt (31 page)

‘So, a while ago, some desk officer at Vauxhall Cross came up with the idea of The Increment. For jobs like these, the SIS would recruit ex-military personnel, usually former SAS soldiers
because they’re used to thinking on their feet. They’d assemble a team, brief them, and send them off. Then, if the shit hit the fan later, and those guys were caught or killed, SIS
could simply deny all knowledge of them, and there’d be no provable link to the men involved. It would be a totally deniable operation.

‘My section is called the Foreign Operations Executive, a nicely meaningless name, and we essentially function in exactly the same way as The Increment. We take care of those jobs that the
SIS thinks might turn round and bite them. If you like, FOE is a secret, and unacknowledged, covert section of the SIS – a covert outfit working for another covert outfit – and there
are no direct, or at least no provable, links between the two of them. In other words, FOE is a kind of formalized and established version of The Increment.’

‘So that’s why you skulk around in the backstreets of Hammersmith instead of enjoying extensive views along the Thames from that bloody-awful-looking building by Vauxhall
Bridge.’

‘Exactly. Now, a short time ago, evidence was found that confirmed there had been a penetration of the British security establishment, most likely in the SIS or possibly GCHQ, and I was
tasked with coming up with a plan to unmask the source. FOE was trusted because we have no access to at least one of the computer databases known to have been compromised, so that proved that we
had to be clean. If we couldn’t ourselves access the information, we obviously couldn’t have leaked it. The result, as you now know, was this deception operation you’ve got
involved in. We needed you because the identities of a lot of the FOE staff are already known to SIS officers, for obvious reasons, so whoever got to impersonate the mythical defecting Russian
clerk had to be a complete outsider, and not somebody the traitor could possibly recognize.

‘That worked out quite well, I think, but we now have the bizarre scenario of life imitating art. There’s a real Russian clerk on the run, and he has access to the SIS personnel
files, so he, too, might be able to recognize any SIS officer we send to bring him in. And the reason he doesn’t trust us over this is that he knows the identity of the traitor who’s
been leaking data to the SVR. If that traitor – obviously that was Stanway – happened to be assigned to the operation, Yuri – which is the name the clerk is using – knows
that he’d never make it to first base. Stanway would simply contact Yasenevo, and a hit team would be waiting at the rendezvous to pick Yuri up.’

‘That sounds bloody far-fetched to me.’

Simpson looked over at Richter. ‘How’s your history?’ he asked.

‘Average to poor, I suppose. Why?’

‘Let me take you back to the years just after the end of the last war, and tell you a story about a man named Constantin Volkhov. He was a low-level Russian diplomat, stationed in Turkey,
who wanted out of the Soviet Union and assembled a dowry he thought we’d be interested in. He talked to the British vice-consul in Istanbul, and requested asylum in the West. In return for
this, he would give us information about a couple of deep-penetration Soviet agents working at the Foreign Office, and another who was a senior officer in MI5.

‘We now know, of course, that the MI5 officer was Kim Philby. What beggars belief is that, despite Volkhov’s claim that there was a traitor in MI5, it was MI5 that was given the file
to investigate. That would have been bad enough, but the officer tasked with handling and interviewing Volkhov was Philby himself. It was agreed that he’d fly out to Istanbul and interrogate
the Russian there. Philby took as long as he possibly could before heading out to Turkey, but of course he informed Moscow Centre immediately.

‘A KGB snatch squad was sent to Istanbul and had grabbed Volkhov before Philby even arrived there. The Russian was never seen alive again. And there’s a rumour, never confirmed,
that, after Volkhov had been questioned in the cellars of the Lubyanka, his body was cremated. In stages. While he was still alive.’

Richter grimaced.

‘These are not nice people we’re dealing with here,’ Simpson said. ‘The KGB was vicious, brutal and very efficient, and nothing we’ve learnt so far about the SVR
suggests that it’s any different.’

‘So you need me,’ Richter said, ‘because this Russian clerk – this
real
Russian clerk – who’s on the run from Moscow will only deal with somebody not
included on that list of SIS personnel?’

‘Exactly,’ Simpson agreed. ‘I’ve no doubt that Yuri will be thoroughly checking out the rendezvous before he shows himself, making absolutely sure he doesn’t
recognize you from the SIS personnel files. We daren’t risk trying to use any of the SIS staff because if Yuri even suspects we’re doing that, he’ll run straight to the
Americans.’

‘And that would be a bad thing?’ Richter suggested.

‘Of course it would be a bad thing. It’d be fucking disastrous. If Yuri checks out – and the mere fact he can supply that personnel listing means he’s had pretty much
unrestricted access to the SVR’s computer system – this could be the biggest intelligence coup of the decade. The last thing we want is to have the Yanks blundering in and buggering
everything up, or Yuri handing them everything he knows about SIS.’

‘No last name, then? He’s just calling himself “Yuri”?’

Simpson nodded. ‘It’s obviously not his real name, but that doesn’t matter. It’s what he knows that we’re interested in, nothing else.’ He paused and stared
at Richter for a few seconds. ‘Look, I know we’ve pulled you in off the streets, as it were, and you probably haven’t much enjoyed the last few days, but this is
really
important. You’re literally the only person I can use to bring this clerk in. I’m devious, yes – as I have to be, in my job – but right here, right now, I’m being
completely honest with you. I’ll answer any questions you ask as fully as I can, and you’ll also have whatever resources you need to complete this tasking. Will you do it? Will you go
and meet this clerk and bring him back to London?’

Richter took another sip of his cooling coffee. ‘Bring him in from the cold, you mean?’

‘Don’t go all le Carré on me, Richter. It’s the wrong style and it doesn’t suit you.’

Richter grinned at him. ‘You’re wrong about one thing, Simpson,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Oddly enough, I
have
enjoyed the last few days – driving round Europe, trying to figure out what the hell was really going on. I just wish you’d been straight with me
from the start.’

‘I couldn’t, and I’ve explained why. So will you do it?’

‘Yes,’ Richter nodded, ‘or I’ll try to, anyway. Where am I supposed to meet him? In Italy?’

‘Probably, but we don’t know yet. The email only stated that Yuri wanted to be escorted to London by somebody with no connection with SIS. He even suggested we send out a policeman
– as if we’d trust some bloody woodentop with something like this. You’re here, you don’t work for SIS and, apart from Adamson here and the two guys from Paris, nobody at
SIS has any idea you even exist. Plus, you speak Russian.’

‘You told me the email was written in English?’

‘It was, but we don’t know for sure how fluent Yuri is in the language, so your linguistic ability might be a big help. Anyway, hopefully we’ll hear sometime today when and
where this Russian wants to meet.’

As if on cue, Simpson’s phone rang.

Piombino, Italy

Raya Kosov walked back to the hotel from the cyber cafe that Mario had driven past the previous evening. She strolled into the bar, ordered a Coke, and took it to a window
seat overlooking the bay. That last email she’d sent would have set the wheels in motion, she was sure, and although she was certain the SVR snatch-teams couldn’t possibly have traced
her to Piombino yet, she knew she had to get as far north as she could, because every kilometre she put between herself and Rome would increase her chances of survival.

As soon as Mario surfaced, they needed to get back on the road. And, she realized, with sudden clarity, that there was one way she could wake him and more or less keep her side of their bargain,
because she doubted that she’d still be with him that night.

She put down the half-drunk Coke and headed for the stairs, with a slight smile on her lips.

Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi Headquarters, Yasenevo, Tëplyystan, Moscow

Major Yuri Abramov stared at the monitor screen for a few seconds, then sat back and rubbed his eyes. He’d attempted unscrambling the text of the encrypted email
using every decryption code that he and Raya had used together, but none of them had worked. Each attempt had simply changed one flavour of gobbledegook into a different type of gobbledegook.

Zharkov sneered at him from across the desk. ‘And have you succeeded yet, Major?’ he asked.

Abramov shook his head. ‘She hasn’t used any of the standard codes we’re authorized to use. It must be one she’s developed herself.’

‘So you say, Major. So you say. Or maybe there’s a much simpler explanation? Perhaps you don’t want to decipher the message because you already know what it will say. It will
tell you that your treacherous colleague has evaded capture in Italy, and that the way is now clear for you to join her.’

‘Look, Colonel,’ Abramov said, his voice cracking under the fear and stress, ‘I have no idea why Raya Kosov fled from Russia but, whatever her reasons, it was nothing to do
with me. I have no idea, either, why she sent me this email, and I’m as keen to see the contents of it as you are. But she hasn’t used a code that I recognize, so she must have left
something on her desk, or in her office – some clue that would allow me to decrypt it.’

‘Like what?’ Zharkov demanded.

‘I don’t know. Maybe a memory stick, a CD or DVD disk, or even a handwritten note – something like that.’

‘Wait here.’ Zharkov crossed to the door and walked out into the corridor, locking Abramov’s office door behind him. He was back in less than ten minutes, holding a plastic bag
in his hand.

‘This was everything I could find,’ he explained, dropping the bag on the desk in front of the major.

Abramov upended it and picked through the contents. There were several notepads, half a dozen CDs, and one memory stick labelled ‘utilities’. All but two of the CDs could be ignored,
because they were genuine program-installation disks, meaning no additional data could be burnt onto them. Abramov inserted the first of the other two CDs into his desktop computer and checked the
contents, but could spot nothing that looked unusual. The second CD contained a handful of utility programs. However, as soon as he inserted the memory stick, he saw that there was only a single
file on it, entitled ‘decrypt’.

Abramov gestured to Zharkov and pointed out the file.

‘I’m guessing that could be it,’ he said, some of his normal confidence returning now that he felt there might be some explanation, some reason for what had happened, contained
in the encrypted email. ‘Could you witness what I’m about to do?’

Zharkov pulled his chair around to the other side of the desk, and sat down beside him.

Abramov next opened the file and inspected the contents. It was a plaintext file, headed by a couple of lines of writing which Abramov read out loud.

‘“Yuri. I’m really sorry for what’s happened, but I had my reasons for doing it. When you decrypt that email, I promise you’ll understand. Raya.”’

Abramov paused and gazed at Zharkov. ‘I don’t think that makes me sound like her accomplice, does it?’ he asked.

Zharkov shrugged. ‘Just camouflage, perhaps. Now sort out that email.’

Abramov studied the remaining text of the message. The second part consisted merely of the name of one of the standard encryption/decryption programs that the section used, plus a random string
of characters.

‘That must be the code she used,’ Abramov said, copying it and opening the correct program. He pasted the character string into the ‘decode string’ field, and then ran
the email through the opened program.

This time the result was very different because, instead of the routine generating a stream of random characters, some clear text appeared on the screen, and both men leant forward eagerly to
read it.

Ax-les-Thermes, France

‘Is all that clear?’ Richard Simpson asked.

Richter nodded. ‘Yuri wants the pick-up to take place somewhere in or near Genoa tonight, so I need to get on the road soonest,’ he said. ‘He’s given us his mobile
number, and I’m to text him on that once I’ve crossed the Italian border. He’ll then text me the location for the meet itself.’

‘Right,’ Simpson nodded agreement. ‘The techies at Vauxhall Cross have checked the number, and discovered it’s a cheap pay-as-you-go mobile, bought in Rome yesterday.
It’s also switched off at the moment, and has been ever since Yuri’s email arrived at Legoland.’

‘Legoland? What are you talking about?’

‘Vauxhall Cross, SIS headquarters. If you’d ever been inside the building, you’d know exactly why some wit bestowed that nickname on the place. It’s got a lot of other
names as well.’

‘I’ll bet it has. And you’re sure that this guy is for real, are you? I mean, it’s not just the Russians yanking your chain for some reason, maybe running some kind of
deception operation against the SIS? Or maybe even the Italian secret service, whatever it’s called, having a go at you?’

‘Absolutely not.’ Simpson shook his head. ‘The Italians don’t have either the balls or the ability to mount something like this. The data that Yuri sent us had to have
been culled direct from the SIS personnel files, and that means there’s been a deep and serious penetration of the Service. I’ve already checked with Vauxhall Cross, and Stanway was in
an ideal position to supply that kind of data, so – at least at this stage of investigating his treachery – we’re quite satisfied that he was the source of the leak. And we also
believe Yuri is exactly who he says he is.’

‘Which is what?’