Manhunt (48 page)

‘But this captain who’s now a colonel,’ Masterson persisted. ‘Surely he might have recognized your name and checked into your background?’

Raya shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘because as I expect you know Russian names are complicated. Let me explain. The tradition is that a girl’s first name is simply
given to her. That’s the easy bit. Her middle name is a feminized version of her father’s first name, and her last name is a feminized version of her father’s last name. My
father’s name was Pavel Ostapenko, so my full name as a child was Raya Pavlovna Ostapenka, and my mother’s name was Marisa Hohlova Ostapenka.

‘The year after my father was killed, my mother married a distant cousin. It was a marriage of convenience, purely to allow me to take a different name. The cousin’s name was
Alexander Kosov, so my mother became Marisa Hohlova Kosova, and I followed tradition and changed my name to Raya Alexandra, but I preferred “Kosov” as a last name, rather than
“Kosova”. Of course, any detailed search would have shown my previous name, but with the arrest warrant missing and my biological father tragically killed in a car crash, there would
have been nothing to find. The only person who might have made the connection was the Georgian and, as far as I know, he never looked.’

‘And does he have a name, this Georgian?’ David Walters asked.

‘Yes,’ Raya replied shortly. ‘His name is Yevgeni Zharkov, and by now, with any luck at all, he’ll be sitting in a cell at Yasenevo or the Lubyanka, staring at the wall
and wondering just what the hell has happened to his life.’

Moscow

The SVR search team arrived in one car, and the armed troops in another. The searchers parked some distance down the street and waited for the building to be checked and
the apartment secured. A few minutes later, two carloads of Moscow police appeared as well, to help control the scene.

Abramov peered through the car window at a small apartment building, which the Moscow police had identified earlier as the location of the other number he had managed to extract from the data
contained on the call diverter. The building itself was undistinguished and anonymous: just another small block of flats in a street that contained little else.

The police officers set up a cordon, diverting all traffic away from the vicinity, then surrounded the building to ensure that nobody could leave it without having their identity confirmed. Then
the armed SVR troops advanced towards the street door and took up positions on both sides of it. One officer stepped forward and inserted a key in the lock. Or rather he tried to, but the key
wouldn’t fit, so he slipped it back into his pocket and tried a second key. This one slid in smoothly, and moments later the door was open, whereupon the SVR team streamed inside the building
and was lost to sight.

Abramov waited patiently in the car, expecting confirmation either that the apartment was empty or that any occupants had been arrested. After three or four minutes, a junior SVR officer emerged
from the building, and walked across to the car.

‘The apartment is empty, sir, and it doesn’t look as if it’s been occupied for months. There’s only some very basic furniture inside, but there’s a computer on a
table in the main room, and it’s switched on.’

Abramov immediately climbed out of the car. ‘Order your men not to touch that machine,’ he instructed. ‘It might hold vital clues regarding this investigation.’

Moments later, the major was himself standing in the tiny living room of the first-floor apartment, and looking round. As the young officer had explained, on a plain wooden table, which was
pushed up against one wall, sat a fairly basic desktop computer. The power light was glowing on the front of the system unit, though the screen itself was blank. Abramov deliberately touched
nothing, but he checked the cables and connectors. As expected, the PC was attached to a modem plugged into a telephone point.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket, carefully covered the ends of his fingers to avoid leaving prints, and then powered up the screen. When he saw a standard screensaver running, he touched
the space bar on the keyboard to clear it. He was surprised to note that the unit wasn’t password-protected, which would certainly make the job of examining the contents of the hard disk a
lot easier.

‘Right, Captain,’ he said, opening up his briefcase which he had placed on the table beside the PC. ‘Witness this, please. I’m about to make a copy of the contents of
this computer’s hard disk, then we can shut the machine down and take it back to Yasenevo for full examination.’

Abramov connected a high-capacity external disk drive to one of the USB ports on the front of the system unit, then carefully – still using his handkerchief to prevent leaving prints on
the keyboard or mouse – he initiated the copy routine. The dialogue box which now appeared suggested that it would take at least half an hour to completely copy the disk’s contents.

‘Why could you not do that at Yasenevo?’ the captain asked.

‘Because even though the screensaver wasn’t password-protected, it’s possible that the operating system itself might be. The last thing I want to do is shut the machine down
and then find it takes us months to bypass the password in order to access the hard drive.’

The captain nodded. ‘While we’re waiting, I’ll have my men collect everything here that might have retained fingerprints,’ he said.

‘Good idea,’ Abramov replied. ‘And you can start with these.’ He pointed to a few pencils and a ballpoint pen which lay on the table beside half a dozen sheets of blank
paper. ‘Whoever was using this computer would almost certainly have left his thumb and forefinger prints on some of those.’

Hammersmith, West London

‘As I said before, Raya,’ David Walters reminded her, ‘today is really more or less just an introduction. This discussion enables us to get to know you a
little better, and hopefully will allow you to feel more comfortable talking to us.’

Raya nodded. ‘I understand.’

‘Right,’ Walters went on, ‘we’d now like to take an initial look at the material you brought out with you. I gather from Richard Simpson that you made copies of certain
SVR files before you left Moscow, and that those files are held on some form of electronic data storage. Is that correct?’

‘Exactly right. I couldn’t risk leaving Russia carrying a laptop computer. Not even my SVR credentials would have enabled me to board an aircraft out of Russia carrying a laptop, so
I brought out my personal CD player instead.’

Raya opened her handbag and pulled out an old and fairly battered battery-powered CD player, along with three or four CD discs.

Walters looked confused. ‘You mean you copied the data on to those CDs?’ he asked.

‘No, the CDs are simply camouflage.’ She opened one of the CD cases and slipped the disc into the drive slot on the player. A light illuminated on the front of the unit, but no sound
emerged from the speaker. ‘I removed almost all the internal workings of the unit to make enough space to install a hard disk,’ she said. ‘It’s that hard disk which contains
the data.’

‘That’s clever,’ Masterson acknowledged. ‘So how can we access it? And how big is this hard drive?’

‘I just need a screwdriver, and a USB lead with a small terminator at one end, plus a computer to connect to the other end of the lead. The drive itself is half a terabyte, which was the
biggest I could find that would fit into the available space inside that CD player.’

‘That’s really ingenious,’ Walters acknowledged. ‘I’ll go and organize what you need.’

He stood up and left the conference room, returning a couple of minutes later with a laptop under one arm and a small toolkit in his other hand. He passed the toolkit to Raya, then plugged in
the laptop and switched it on.

Raya opened the toolkit, selected a screwdriver, and removed a small plastic panel on the side of the CD player. Walters then passed her a USB lead. She inspected the terminator at one end,
nodded on finding that it was the correct size, and plugged it into the female socket that was revealed after removal of the panel. Then she leant back in her seat and waited for the laptop to
power up.

‘If you pass me that lead,’ Walters said, ‘I’ll just plug it in.’

But Raya shook her head. ‘Not quite so fast, Mr Walters. These negotiations have been a little one-sided so far. You’ve asked me questions and I’ve done my best to answer them,
but I’m about to provide you with access to half a terabyte of SVR files classified at top-secret level and above. What nobody has confirmed so far is whether or not I’m being granted
asylum here. Before you even take a look at the directory listing contained on this hard disk, I want a positive assurance that I’ll be able to stay in this country.’

Walters shook his head. ‘The problem is, Raya, that until we see what you’ve brought us, we can’t assess its value. And because of that—’

‘Before you go any further down that route,’ Raya interrupted, ‘you should know that I’ve already had a firm offer of asylum from the CIA. So if you try and fuck me
about, I’ll be on the next flight out of Heathrow across the pond. And if that happens, my data goes with me.’

Masterson glanced from Raya to the modified CD player, and smiled. ‘Managing that,’ he said, ‘might not be as easy as you think. Right now, we’ve got custody of both you
and the hard drive.’

As a threat, it was somewhat less than subtle.

Richter looked at Raya, wondering if he should now intervene, but then he eased himself back in his chair and relaxed, because she seemed in complete command of the situation.

‘Yes, you’ve got the disk, but you won’t get the data,’ she said simply, ‘because the whole drive is protected, as is each individual file. Essentially, the data
has been scrambled and, without the master password, that’s the way it will stay. I wrote the program myself, and I’ve also incorporated an auto-destruct sequence which is triggered if
an incorrect password is entered more than three times. So if you’ve got some idea about hooking my disk up to one of the Cray supercomputers in the basement of the Doughnut out at GCHQ,
you’re going to be disappointed when you try to crack it.’

Both Walters and Masterson stared at Raya with a mixture of irritation and respect, then Walters glanced down the table at Simpson, who gave him a nod.

‘You’ve kind of painted us into a corner,’ Simpson declared, ‘but we’ve no wish for you to go and talk to the Americans. So let me suggest a compromise. Pick any
file you like from the data you’ve accumulated, decrypt it – or whatever it is you have to do to make it readable – and let Walters and Masterson take a look at it. If
they’re satisfied that it’s both genuine and valuable, then you’ll get your offer of asylum. You have my personal guarantee on that.’

Raya looked at Simpson, then glanced behind her towards Richter. ‘Is this man trustworthy, Paul?’ she asked him.

‘Buggered if I know,’ Richter replied. ‘Personally I don’t trust him, but I do think he’s straight. By which I mean that if he guarantees you asylum, he’ll do
everything in his power to make sure that happens. But ultimately, Raya, this is your life and your decision.’

‘That was a somewhat backhanded compliment, Richter,’ Simpson snapped irritably.

‘It’s all you’re going to get.’

There was silence for a few seconds, then Raya nodded. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘I’ll let you see just one file.’

‘Make it a good one,’ Walters suggested, as he turned the laptop so that Raya could view the screen.

Raya plugged in the hard drive, opened up a program, checked to make sure nobody in the room could see exactly which keys she pressed, and swiftly entered a password. When the directory listing
appeared, she worked her way down until she found the file she was looking for. She double-clicked on the icon to open it, decrypted it, and made a copy which she pasted onto the laptop’s
hard drive, before encrypting her own directory again. Before sliding the laptop back across the table to Walters, she disconnected the USB cable.

‘That’s one file that might be of interest,’ she suggested.

Walters read the first few lines of the Cyrillic text, then looked up at Simpson and nodded. ‘This is classified
Sov Sekretno
, Top Secret,’ he said. ‘It’s an
analysis of the state of battle-readiness of the Russian Northern Fleet, so if this file is representative of the rest of the data on that hard disk, it’s dynamite. Grade-one intelligence,
straight from the horse’s – or rather the Bear’s – mouth.’

‘Right, Miss Kosov,’ Simpson announced, ‘you’ve got yourself a deal.’

Tuesday

Moscow

Colonel Yevgeni Zharkov was seated on an upright wooden chair. His hands rested on his lap, his wrists bound together with steel handcuffs, as he stared across the table
at his accuser.

General Morozov stared back at him, his expression sombre and almost sad. ‘Of all the officers in my department, you are the last I would ever have suspected of treacherous activities. I
always believed that I could rely upon you absolutely and unreservedly, but I suppose that just proves that nobody can ever be considered beyond suspicion.’

Zharkov shook his head wearily. ‘As I keep trying to explain to you, General, I have done nothing wrong. My loyalty to you and to the SVR has never wavered, and I’m wholly innocent
of the ridiculous charge that I’m now facing.’

‘Don’t try and play the innocent with me, Zharkov!’ Morozov roared, his voice filling the interrogation room. ‘The evidence against you is overwhelming and unarguable.
The two keys for the building and the apartment where you’d hidden that computer were found in your office, hidden in your own desk. Both keys had your fingerprints on them, and alongside the
computer were found pens and pencils from which our technical staff have also recovered your fingerprints.’

‘But I tell you I’ve never been inside that apartment, and I have never seen that computer before. Or those keys, or anything else. Somebody is clearly attempting to frame me.’
Zharkov’s voice remained strong, but was now tinged with desperation. ‘Just look at that telephone number which Abramov found on a call diverter in the Lubyanka.’