The Oktober Projekt (28 page)

‘It won’t take long,’ Nick assured her. ‘RUS/OPS is usually
sitting on top of everything pretty tight, I just wondered why your briefing on
Lubov was so sparse?’

Laughing as though Nick had told a filthy joke, she shook her
head.

‘You know I can’t discuss that for a number of reasons,’ she
said, grabbing for a box of tissues.

‘I’m not asking for you to pin the blame on any one officer.’

‘That’s below the belt, Nick,’ she warned him, dabbing her
nose. ‘Jo’s death has been difficult.’

‘It must be. If the method of
 
making the collection from Lubov hadn’t been so rushed, well
who knows….’

‘Look, I’m sorry about your loss… about your wife, about what
happened to you in Moscow, but there’s nothing that I can do to make a
difference.’

‘It’s too late to make a difference, I want answers.’

‘You’ll have to get official clearance.’

‘Lubov was sold out, that didn’t require official clearance did
it?’ Nick reminded her.

Scratching her neck Parfrey was suddenly on her feet; finding
more things to tidy, making a regular run between the galley and saloon as she
collected cups and glasses. ‘Without a letter of authority I can’t help you,’
she said, the tidying exhausted; this her last word her fixed stare declared,
after she’d continually rebutted Nick’s questions during her chores.

‘Why was the method for the Moscow collection changed?’

‘Please go or I’ll call the police,’ she yelled, close to
tears.

‘Okay, that’s fine,’ said Nick, turning to leave, Parfrey quick
to walk him out.

On the stairs to the wheelhouse Nick slowed right down. ‘Nice
perfume,’ he said over his shoulder.

‘Yes…it’s new,’ she told him, strangely flustered.

Out on the deck Nick nodded. ‘Jane hasn’t called to see you by
any chance?’ he asked and Parfrey tensed, standing in the doorway she simply
shook her head, refusing to move until she was sure Nick was on his way before
slamming the wheelhouse door with feeling.

• • •

The next morning, Nick suitably wired
for sound wove in and out of the stalls in St. James’s churchyard, Piccadilly.
A market set up three times a week, this morning’s pitches were selling
handcrafted jewellery, paintings, organic soap, perfumes and what a couple of
traders classed ‘Modern Antiques’. Browsing through Russian dolls and Soviet
military memorabilia in the form of caps, badges and flags, Terence Galgate
appeared unimpressed at the authenticity or quality.
 

‘Brigita can’t make it today.’ Nick announced tucking himself
in by Galgate.

Holding up a Soviet issue army officer’s cap, Galgate stared at
Nick then noted Danny behind him. Turning the cap round as though searching for
flaws, he said, ‘The strange thing is, many people seem to feel that Moscow is
well…’ He threw the cap back onto a pile. ‘….no longer a threat,’ he added.
Taking Galgate by the arm Nick manoeuvred him away from the stall.

Entering the church of St. James, Galgate crossed himself and
Nick wondered if this was an act of outright faith or merely for show? With a
few curious tourists milling around Nick chose a pew at the rear, Galgate
wedged in between Nick and Danny; Terence Galgate a professor of computing science,
media star and pundit.

‘I am not contemplating doing anything rash,’ he snapped,
staring at Nick.

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Nick as the heavy church doors were
banged firmly shut and bolted. To Nick sitting on Galgate’s right, the
academic’s face seemed considerably older than his byline photograph that
illustrated his weekly broadsheet column. Thin, wizened with black glasses and
hair cut severely close to his scalp, Galgate satisfied the perceived
stereotype of a gnomish academic and respected setter of opinion.

‘And which branch of our noble intelligence services do I owe
the honour of my arrest to?’

Showing Galgate his ID, Nick sat back. ‘Brigita gave you up
straight away,’ Nick told him. ‘Moscow’s loyalty doesn’t stretch down the chain
to you.’

‘I knew it would come to this, almost been expecting it.’
Galgate had that aloof, acerbic and cold manner of someone who expected to be
listened to, of having his word taken as gospel.
     

‘Cooperate now and the court may take your assistance into
account,’ Nick suggested.

‘What are we to be known
as? The “SVZkom Ring” or something more romantic?’ Galgate stated
authoritatively and
Nick shook his head. ‘That’s the trouble with being
blackmailed you can never rationally deal with it, you lose all control,’
Galgate ruefully admitted.

‘Did Brigita do the recruiting?’

‘No, God, no. It was at some Foreign & Commonwealth Office
sponsored event when someone I’d known for years, a chap called Giles Motram
introduced me to an MEP, Rowan Kawton-Lees who started twittering on about how
he was an ardent admirer of my work, how he dutifully read my pieces.’

‘You didn’t suspect anything?’

‘Motram was a senior strategic cyber-terrorism analyst at the
FCO and Kawton-Lees was somehow tied to cyber-intelligence and defence in Brussels.
So no, I didn’t believe that I was having an approach made on behalf of
Moscow.’

‘How did they sell it?’

‘Kawton-Lees was rattling on with the charm of a double glazing
salesman, pitching up all this guff on SVZkom, how they really had their finger
on the pulse regarding context awareness.’ With an irritable sigh he reserved
for the uninitiated, Galgate explained: ‘In layman’s terms it’s a concept that
computers, based on their environment, can sense and react to situations.’

‘That’s a threat?’

‘In the context of cyber-terrorism, it’s a very big threat,’
Galgate said with an expressive wave of his hand. ‘Whitehall and government
departments have been constantly under attack by Chinese hackers forcing
systems to crash, systems to be refigured, new firewalls introduced. That, in
comparison to what I believe the Russians have developed is, frankly, quite
amateurish. This government’s idiotic belief in central databases makes the
country vulnerable to meltdown. Think of the records they are electronically amassing.’

‘Like stuffing everything into a safe and giving away the
combination.’

‘More or less,’ Galgate said, warming to his subject.
‘Military, medical, national insurance, criminal records, the details of every
child under the age of eighteen, the national identity register, passports,
biometric contact with the police. We are governed by donkeys unwilling to
acknowledge that they are placing the country at risk. The Russian virus has
the capability of feeding all this information to Moscow. Not only that, but it
can destroy systems that are tightly woven into the effective operation of the
country. Think of gas supply, electricity, traffic management, CCTV, air
traffic control, these are electronic hostages to international blackmail. This
virus is your intelligence agent, your sleeper because it defends itself,
integrates so effectively that it becomes part of the system. It creates and
opens two-way links. You only require one server to be initially infected, one
that is believed to be above suspicion, a clean interface. It is the bad apple
concept that I and I presume others like me, were recruited to safeguard. I was
encouraged to report on the electronic counter-measures against what they
termed the Oktober virus, so it can be immunised, allowing it to regenerate.’

‘And introduced by someone above suspicion,’ suggested Nick,
considering the implications.

‘Naturally.’ Not inclined to enlarge on the subject further,
Galgate returned to his recruitment by Moscow.
 
‘At the FCO event that inflated
politician wouldn’t give up. He said SVZkom was organising a conference in
Hamburg and I’d have a chance to meet some up and coming stars working on
context awareness.’

‘And you accepted?’

‘Conference was above average. A lot of IT specialists and
officials were in attendance. Latvians, Estonians and Poles mostly, all of them
apparently on the rise as EU high flyers. Some of them even tipped to be future
commissioners. Should have seen it coming, shouldn’t I?’ Galgate said
thoughtfully, his fists clenched at his own downfall.

‘You weren’t the first.’

‘I’ve soldiered abroad many times on the conference circuit but
in Hamburg I dropped my guard.’ Galgate gave a sardonic laugh, and nodded.

‘Male or female?’ Nick wanted to know.

‘Woman,’ he retorted, deeply offended. ‘Will you tell my wife?’
Galgate demanded in desperation, but Nick stared at him, waiting. ‘Pretty, too
pretty for me,’ Galgate confessed with a sad smile. ‘Franziska she called
herself.’

‘How long before they stung you?’ wondered Nick casually.

‘Got a call from someone claiming to be SVZkom’s representative
in London. They told me they were providing a support pack following the
Hamburg conference and it also contained a decent ticket to a West End musical.
I went to the show and sitting next to me was Brigita. She’d brought along
photographs of me with Franziska and after making it clear they had moving
image and sound, she gave me a list of the things I needed to look out for,
possible names that I should try and cultivate. Brigita ran the stall on the
market and that’s where I’d meet her. That pretty girl today,’ said Galgate,
nodding his head to the stall outside, ‘one of yours?’

‘I’m afraid she is,’ said Nick. ‘Where did you meet Franziska?’

‘We’d been to some casino or other in Hamburg then went on to a
party miles out in the countryside, big old farmhouse,’ Galgate lamented, ‘she
called it fantasy land and I indulged, much to my shame.’

Nick got to his feet.

‘You have to understand that my actions were in keeping with my
beliefs. Paradoxical as it may seem, I love this country, but we haven’t had
politicians or a government since the war who haven’t put their own ambitions
above those of the country. Oh the Russians are no different in that respect,
but underneath their posturing and vanity, there is a belief in Russia as a
country, as a nation, as a concept. I bought into that ethos, became a seasoned
fellow traveller. Here we have only vacuous politics,’ declared Galgate. Taking
a deep breath, glancing around him he asked: ‘What’s going to happen to me
now?’

‘These officers will take care of you,’ Nick told him, as
Special Branch and Security Service teams closed in, their cover as tourists
abandoned, their curiosity now focused on one man.

From a telephone stand on the Albert Embankment the cold
numbing his back, Nick made a series of calls. The first to Paul Rossan lasted
a little over two minutes, and for several reasons of his own Nick had no
concern as to who might be listening. The second and third calls ran a good
deal longer as Nick rang a number in Helsinki and then one in Hamburg. Heading
towards Westminster Bridge he tried to loosen the harness and recorder digging
into his side; only for a woman wheeling a supermarket trolley between bins,
call him a pervert and demand a gin. Farther on he rested against the wall,
pulling the tape off the skin on his breast where the microphone had been. The
river was falling fast leaving the lights of Westminster embedded in the mud, a
siren started somewhere behind him and lasted in his ears until Hungerford
Bridge.

Thirteen

Cut Adrift

Suffolk, November

Nick
arrived in Suffolk that same evening just as it began to snow.
Stretching away to his left the town lay folded open in front of him, a
panoramic map of a classic English seaside resort; civilised order on ordnance
grid squares, symmetrical living by the sea. Parked on a quiet stretch of coast
road Nick thought through what information he had to work with, covertly
supplied by Rossan; the life and times of Giles Motram, recently retired from
the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and started up the BMW.
 

The house on Longreach Road had salt smeared windows facing
straight out to sea, its smooth render showed its age and a tiled roof was
rubbed raw by winter gales and strong summer suns. When Nick pressed the
doorbell he heard discordant chimes play
Wandering Star
. I know all about your sense of humour Giles, Nick
said to himself; you’ve never made a secret of it and I know all there is on
you. You’re single and in the market for romance after the divorce of Penny who
thought your bedroom behaviour was crude. You’ve a daughter who lives in New
York and you’ve accumulated quite a decent nest egg in savings through shrewd
investments, you’ve also been a traitor and in the pay of Moscow for a
considerable time. All additional background to your file Giles, all given
freely by people you thought you could trust.
 

So where are you Giles? No lights on, two cars on the drive;
this just isn’t your style because you’re meticulous and a man of strict
habits. Nick rang longer his thumb holding the plunger in.
I was born under
a wanderin’ star, I was born under a wanderin’ star
played on and on. He opened the letter box and snapped it closed.
Jesus Christ, he almost retched. Swinging off the step he upset an empty milk
holder, ‘None Today’, arrowed with a sad little plastic arm.

‘Is there a problem?’ A parade ground voice boomed out of the
darkness, as a light came on over a side door at a large detached villa a
hundred yards away.

‘There could be,’ Nick shouted back.

‘Stay there.’

Doing as he was ordered Nick watched a man in his sixties
briskly approach, carrying a walking stick he didn’t need and a torch that
picked out his route.

‘What d’ya mean by could be?’ barked the man, looking Nick over
with his torch. ‘Brigadier Halwood-Hey, retired,’ he said. ‘You are?’

‘Concerned for Giles.’

‘Family, friend, official or rogue is what I meant.’

‘Official,’ said Nick showing his ID.

‘Can’t be too careful,’ declared the Brigadier firmly. ‘Haven’t
seen Motram since last week but that’s not strange or unusual, Motram’s always
away on his trips. Just come back from a Campari safari myself, or I’d be more
use.’

‘He has two cars?’ Nick asked pointing to a Mazda and Land
Rover on the drive, dusted in fine snow.

‘Foreign one’s his new lady friend’s, bit of stunner. T’other’s
Motram’s,’ the Brigadier said, using his torch to illuminate his point as its
beam glanced off the car and four-by-four. ‘Should I call the police?’ the
Brigadier demanded.

‘I can manage,’ said Nick, crunching off down a gravel path
heading round the back, his military companion striding along behind him.

At the kitchen window the Brigadier swept the room with his
torch, cups and saucers left to dry on the sink’s draining board were waiting
to be put away and nothing else seemed out of place. Using his walking stick
the Brigadier lashed out, smashing a pane on the kitchen door.

‘Something’s not right,’ he mumbled in justification.

‘Wait here,’ Nick told him, his arm and hand inside searching
for the key in the lock.

‘What d’ya mean?’

‘Remain outside,’ Nick ordered him, letting himself in. ‘I need
the torch,’ he said from inside the door, and after a second’s hesitation the
Brigadier reluctantly handed it over.

Time moved in abstract pieces all around Nick as he swung the
beam along a wide murky oak floored hallway, throwing open each door as he
went. Relaxing the muscles in his throat, regulating his breathing Nick went
into the drawing room, fetid air escaping when he cracked open the door.
Staggering back he sucked for breath that wasn’t foul, capping his nose and
mouth with his handkerchief before re-entering. Heavy jacquard curtains kept
out the light turning it into a room of intense dark corners, Regency stripe
wallpaper in red and black added to the oppressive atmosphere.

The muscles in his neck protested as Nick concentrated on the
body of a woman her brown hair matted and stuck to her face, naked in an
upright chair. Nick put her in her early forties, but it was difficult to tell.
One of her hands was reduced to a black stump by the flame from what Nick
guessed must have been a blowtorch that had also charred the chair’s foam. The
other hand hung lazily over the side, its nails missing. Nick’s eyes came back
to her slender face scored with the tip of a sharp knife, across her neck a
savage gash that had almost completely severed her head. Tied in another chair
opposite, her lover Giles Motram also naked and brutally abused sat equally
dead.

Nick found his way back through the hall the terror on the
woman’s face printed in his mind, more of the same suffered by Lubov’s family
in Moscow. Jamming open the kitchen door with his foot, he lit a
cigarette.
 

‘How is it?’ The Brigadier wanted to know.

‘Bad.’

‘What d’ya mean?’

‘Bad, both dead.’

Deciding to investigate himself, the Brigadier made for the
door only for Nick to block his way. ‘It’s a crime scene,’ he said.

‘Yes… yes, of course.’ The snow had increased and coated the
Brigadier’s shoulders.

‘You’d better wait at home
for the police, there’ll be questions.’

On this jigsaw piece of isthmus, murder seemed too surreal to
contemplate and the Brigadier nodded solemnly as he strode off for home. Who
would expect this carnage here reasoned Nick, where flat, rich cropping fields
had a sprinkling of retirement villas mixed liberally with farms growing
nothing but debt. Uncertainty beat away inside Nick, his temples throbbed and
his face burnt. Ringing Rossan, Nick explained in Service code that they had a
major project to deal with, nothing less than a full structural redesign and
they’d require a full team. Rossan could begin by informing the architects,
which in Service terms meant the local police.

As the night slowly wound on losing its grip, the house became
a scene of ceaseless activity. Detached, his role nothing more than a
flâneur
, Nick took everything in as he moved from room to
room as different teams went about their work.

As more Service experts arrived, a female CID officer who’d
identified herself to Nick as DI Jameson ‘his liaison’, reported what she had
so far, which amounted to nothing that Nick didn’t already know.

‘The scene is secure and I have carried out a risk assessment,’
she droned officiously.

‘I’m sure Motram and his friend would approve,’ said Nick.

‘From an initial assessment I think we can classify this as a
double murder,’ she announced. ‘Though it may be some time until we can
ascertain the exact relationship that existed between victim one and two, and
the perpetrators.’

‘It’s probably safe to rule out them being good friends.’

‘Is it?’ She refused to respond more than was absolutely
necessary in case she made a politically incorrect appraisal or summation
thought Nick, or she fears breaching the absurd regulations on equality and
diversity that she resolutely adhered to, even in cases of death. The way she
stood stiffly her eyes cold and small, she made it perfectly clear she didn’t
like Nick, didn’t care for what he did, though she hadn’t been told what he
did, only that he asks and he is given full access and answers. ‘I think it’s
time I checked on progress again,’ she said, walking off.

 
But she fared
little better wherever she strode on her progress review. Rossan’s hurriedly
assembled teams, men and women roused from their beds, treated Jameson as an
unsavoury gatecrasher with insolent stares and stinging asides that eventually
forced her to set up a command post on the drive.

Nick mooched between rooms waiting for Rossan to arrive. A
stocky Service doctor came and went, smoking and sharing his flask of tea with
Nick like a human St. Bernard. Gradually Rossan’s serious men and women eased
the bungalow apart; all these scenes fixed like deep splinters under a membrane
in Nick’s memory as Service specialists taped, collected and photographed each
room, all the details logged and annotated meticulously, their white hooded
suits giving them a spectral presence.

‘Work of a sadist, I’d say,’ the doctor said, returning with
more tea. Nick had shared other dead bodies with men like him. Cheerful and
reflective, he mumbled to an invisible associate at his side; traces of Motram
or his lover’s flesh on his clear gloves, a few smears of ash on his rolled
white cuffs.
 

When Rossan turned up most of the search had been completed.
‘Nothing of real significance,’ he told Nick in the hallway. ‘What I can’t understand
is why they’d do that to them?’

‘Because they got to him before we raided the maisonette and
Lauvas’s house.’

‘It just doesn’t make sense,’ said Rossan, handing Nick a
membership card in a clear evidence bag.

The card declared Giles Motram to be a privileged member of the
Brazillia Casino, Hamburg. ‘They tortured him to find out if he’d talked to
us,’ said Nick, handing the bag back.

‘If he did, then I assume we would have a contact record of
it.’

‘Would we?’ wondered Nick, sensing that Motram may have seen
something or someone that he could never be allowed to reveal. ‘He was
terminated to protect the main asset.’
Tell the senior ex-officer I have
discovered three of them, tell him three
,
remembered Nick. Galgate and Motram made two, leaving me one more; another of
Moscow’s loyal servants, the main asset who has to be safeguarded at all costs.

‘If you need me, I’ll be persuading Jameson that we really
don’t hate her.’

So Nick lingered. Cross-legged in an adjoining room a female
officer diligently wrote up her report, her knees pulled in to let the steady
procession past, Nick storing the details; this was genuine Pinter, real
theatre of the absurd. Away from the grey house the snow rolled down into a
waiting greedy sea.

A bustle in the hall, a dark hurrying shape scooting past the
dusky wallpaper and Aubrey-Spencer moved towards Nick with an angry roll of his
shoulders. His eyes, dark and intense read the scene with a fieldman’s quick
understanding. Attending him a senior uniformed officer who took a full
assessment with one glance, said something in a respectful growl and abruptly
left. Someone switched on a lamp and a sleepy bulb lit the hall as the doctor
nodded to Aubrey-Spencer and went off to rinse away the victims’ skin.

‘A walk if you will,’ declared Aubrey-Spencer, clutching Nick’s
arm to guide him out into the snow. ‘You and I, right now.’

Below Nick in the semi-darkness a wild sea hammered pebbles up
the shore, a pale light fluttered on the horizon like dirty washing on a line;
and dawn had forced the sky and sea apart as weak light flooded into the crack.
They walked without feeling the cold, nipping brandy from Aubrey-Spencer’s
silver hip flask every couple of yards. Out to sea Nick saw the lights of a
passing ship wink at nothingness and fade out of sight; along the road gulls
curled round the tops of street lamps for warmth. In the town a church clock
hit a quarter as a milk float jingled somewhere out of sight. Ahead on an
obelisk carved to the dead of two wars, a police officer stamped his boots on
the bottom step to keep warm; the sporadic chatter from his radio drifted
towards them adding to the unreality. Completely absorbed by his own troubled
thoughts, Aubrey-Spencer stared into the distance, unconcerned that the snowy
grass was soaking his trousers and shoes.

‘What do we make of this?’ Aubrey-Spencer demanded at last.

‘Think Moscow discussed it with me?’

‘I did not mean that, Nicholas. Bailrigg appears to think that
I am someway responsible for a part of this and I have to make amends. The PM
and Foreign Secretary are climbing the walls, the PM requires this to be tidied
up fast so we limit any damage to our reputation. I’ve had my quota of
bollockings thank you very much.’

‘Motram was on the GRU’s books, the same network as Galgate,
run by Brigita or her husband.’

‘Which leaves us one more, the principal,’ he said.

‘Three is a magic number,’ said Nick, a TV jingle for a phone
company playing in his head.

‘Lubov implied as much to that fool Bensham,’ Aubrey-Spencer
admitted. ‘I had always appreciated Lubov’s true value when I was Chief, so too
did Hayles. If anyone was going to get close to the Oktober Projekt then it
would be from the flank, a position the GRU stubbornly believe to be
impenetrable. Lubov may have been an accountant, but he was a GRU accountant,
one who had been so grievously overlooked for promotion that he simmered with
resentment. Hayles and Rafford simply intensified his bitterness, bought his
heart and soul. I decided to let him run on a long leash, see where his
auditing took him. He produced nothing of great value, but I preferred it that
way.’

‘You ran him as deep cover, letting his handlers believe he was
being serviced as collateral if we ever needed to make a deal?’

‘Humour me, Nicholas if you please,’ Aubrey-Spencer suggested,
upping the pace.

The sky was filling with colour; an unseen hand had slashed the
black canvas and a glorious deep orange seeped into the wounds. Nick took more
brandy and the alcohol cleansed his head, seeing for the first time the shabbiness
of the resort. Guesthouses in lurid pinks and blues; arcades for rainy days,
rock stalls in flaking white and a theme bar, this one a Western Saloon with
ranch doors painted by unconvinced English hands. A foul-weather shelter with
an overturned bench and sand streaked glass sat hunched in front of them. It
came at a point where the promenade broadened out; next to it a telescope had
been ripped off its pedestal and the mounting held up a torn rusted knuckle.