Manhunt (49 page)

‘It was the number of your own apartment,’ Morozov reminded him.

‘I know, and that’s the point. Why on earth would I reprogram a call diverter to dial my own number? It would be like waving a flag to admit my guilt straight away. But if somebody
else wished to cast suspicion on me, it would be an obvious clue to plant. And why would I leave evidence as incriminating as those two keys in my own office, when I could just as easily hide them
in my apartment or in my car – or anywhere else?’

Morozov glared at his subordinate. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘let us assume for the moment that you are an innocent victim of some complicated conspiracy. If that is the case, who
is orchestrating it? And why? What could be their motive? And why have they picked on you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Zharkov replied desperately. ‘I have no idea who would want to do this to me. All I do know is that I’m innocent, entirely innocent, of these
charges.’

General Morozov continued to stare at him, then dropped his eyes and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Zharkov, but this matter is now out of my hands. I have received my orders, and you
are to be taken for interrogation to the Lubyanka. You will know, as well as I do, exactly what that means. If there was anything I could do to prevent that I would, but my orders are
unequivocal.’

On the other side of the table, Colonel Zharkov turned white and began quivering with fear. ‘No, General. No, please . . . Please, anything but that.’

Morozov’s eyes hardened as he studied the terrified man in front of him. ‘Earlier today, Major Abramov said something interesting to me. He told me that when you began investigating
the defection of Raya Kosov, you seemed very reluctant to even consider the allegations she had made about there being a traitor here at Yasenevo. He also claimed that you would only begin such an
investigation if Kosov told the same story after you had her strapped to a table in the Lubyanka basement, with electrodes hitched to her genitals. It sounds to me as if you’re happy enough
to inflict pain on a helpless subject, but have no stomach for enduring the same yourself. That is not an attractive trait in any man.’

Morozov pushed back his chair to stand up, then he walked over to the door and opened it.

‘He’s all yours,’ the general said to the two men waiting outside.

Hammersmith, West London

‘Now, before you wet yourself with excitement, Walters,’ Richard Simpson said, ‘there’s an urgent matter we need to discuss with Ms Kosov
first.’ He switched his gaze to the Russian girl. ‘Richter has already told me that you knew of
two
people in the SIS who were regularly passing information to Moscow. We now
know that Gerald Stanway was one of them, of course.’

‘Yes,’ Raya agreed. ‘The most prolific source we had in your SIS was code-named
Gospodin
. I checked his file, and found that one of the earliest entries was the initial
contact report, which mentioned the name “Stanway”. He originally walked into our Paris embassy wearing a basic disguise, requested a meeting with one of the SVR officers there, then
explained who he was and what he wanted. At first, they didn’t take him too seriously, but Moscow Centre assigned a case officer – an illegal – to handle him in London, and then
assessed the value of the material he supplied them. They probably expected it to be low-grade rubbish or even disinformation, but then discovered that it was actually the real thing.’

‘When was that?’ Masterson asked. ‘When did Stanway make that approach?’

‘I was appointed Deputy Computer Network Manager at Yasenevo eight years ago,’ Raya replied, ‘and one of my first jobs in that position was to handle the material that source
Gospodin
had just started sending us. I remember that he was very prolific.’

‘Jesus wept,’ Walters muttered. ‘So that bastard has been working for the Russians for eight years. God knows how much information he’s betrayed in all that
time.’

Raya smiled at him. ‘Luckily,’ she said, ‘I know exactly what he sent to Moscow.’

There was a short silence as the men sitting around the conference table absorbed this information. Then Simpson uttered a single word. ‘How?’

‘I was effectively running the Yasenevo network. I was creating directories, deciding on the encryption routines and protocols, and implementing the access level to be applied to every
file. And, as I said before, I already knew, long before I arrived at Yasenevo, that one day I would be defecting to the West. So right from the start I made sure that I assembled a dowry which
would interest either the British or the Americans. I put a very simple routine in place.

‘The files
Gospodin
supplied were in English, of course, and each was stored in encrypted form on our database, in the same language, together with a translation into Russian that
we had prepared in-house, as well as a short summary of the file contents. Because they were your own files, I knew there would be no point in making a copy of any of those files to show you, so I
simply recorded the name and reference number of every file that source
Gospodin
forwarded to Moscow. I have that list safely on my hard drive as well.’

Simpson shook his head. ‘Stanway, it seems, was the most damaging penetration we’ve ever faced,’ he said. ‘But thanks to you, Raya, at least we’ll soon know exactly
what secrets he betrayed. And that’s one of the most important things you have done for us.’

Raya nodded and smiled. ‘It wasn’t only files from your SIS,’ she added. ‘A short time ago, I was instructed to create a new directory to handle some additional material
from source
Gospodin
. These new files needed a brand-new directory because they came from a different organization, and the name I was told to give to that directory was
Zakoulok
.’ She paused and looked around expectantly.

Simpson looked blank. ‘I don’t speak the language,’ he said.

‘
Zakoulok
means “back alley” in Russian,’ Richter informed him, ‘but I don’t know if that’s significant, or even relevant.’

‘Oh, it’s relevant all right,’ Masterson said. ‘
Zakoulok
is a slang term used by the Russians, in some of their signals and cryptograms, to refer to the Foreign
Office in Whitehall. The name refers to that arched courtyard entrance leading to the FCO off Downing Street. It seems Stanway must have decided to start ransacking the FCO files as
well.’

‘That makes sense.’ Simpson nodded. ‘And you did the same with these new files, Raya, as you did before? So we will be able to identify exactly what information Stanway
transmitted?’

Raya nodded again. ‘Of course. If you’ll allow me access to the laptop again, I’ll give you all the directory listings right now.’

Walters spun the laptop round and slid it across the table. Raya again connected her concealed hard disk and a few minutes later pushed the computer back towards Walters.

He scanned the listing and shook his head. ‘There are hundreds of file names here,’ he said, ‘so Vauxhall Cross is going to have to run a major damage-limitation exercise.
I’m not familiar with most of these subjects, but it looks to me as if Stanway probably betrayed almost every ongoing SIS operation there is.’

‘And that isn’t your only problem,’ Raya said. ‘Source
Gospodin
sent us a lot of information, but essentially all he did was copy files. There was a second, much
older, penetration at SIS. And that one was at a much higher level.’

She gestured for Walters to slide the computer back towards her. For a few seconds, Raya’s fingers flew nimbly over the keyboard, then she passed the machine back to him again.

‘That,’ she said, ‘is a recent copy of a file called “Appreciation”, which is held in a top-secret directory at Yasenevo, named
Zagadka
or
“enigma”. I was puzzled by the directory, because no new material had been added to it for over five years. But, despite that, the “Appreciation” file was being accessed on
a regular basis by SVR Directorate heads. When I studied the file myself, I realized why. There was a second source, here in London, who in the past had supplied Moscow with copies of classified
files, much as
Gospodin
was doing. But for some time he’s been doing something almost as damaging, and maybe even more damaging.

‘This source – and I don’t even have a code name for him, let alone his actual name, because his identity was kept that secret – has been providing the SVR with a regular
summary of SIS policy and general strategy. And also, when he felt it necessary, with precise details of particular operations. My assessment is that he must be a very senior officer within the
organization. I reckon Stanway was certainly damaging, but this other person is more dangerous by far.’

The Lubyanka, Moscow

Yevgeni Zharkov was powerfully built, and was now literally fighting for his life, so it took three burly SVR guards to manhandle him into the basement interrogation room
at the Lubyanka, strip the clothes from him and get him strapped onto the table. Only then did the interrogators finally approach.

‘You know why you’re here,’ one of them said, gazing down at the man who was still vainly struggling against the leather straps that held his naked body in position.

Zharkov shouted something unintelligible, and the interrogator stepped back and looked at his companion.

‘I gather he’s a senior officer in the SVR,’ he said, glancing down at the information sheet he’d been given half an hour before.

‘He’s also a traitor,’ the other man declared, ‘and we need to get every scrap of information out of him before he dies.’

The first interrogator nodded, and inspected the foot of the information sheet, where the Cyrillic word
was was ticked, accompanied by the
signatures of two senior SVR officers. The Russian word translated as ‘full’ or ‘complete’, and meant that the interrogation was to be terminal. Their instructions were that
the subject would die on the table.

The two interrogators stepped to one side of the room and donned waterproof aprons over their white coats. Then they sat down in a couple of chairs to await the arrival of one other man.

Five minutes later, the door opened and a doctor stepped inside. He was carrying a small bag of specialized drugs and other equipment, and glanced quickly at the table where Zharkov was still
struggling against his bonds. He, too, then pulled on a waterproof apron, before he nodded to the two interrogators.

One switched on the overhead camera and microphones, announced his own name and rank, followed by that of his companion and the doctor, and finally the name of the man who lay on the
interrogation table. The other attendant wheeled over a cart on which were laid out the tools. These included the generator and leads, and the pliers and knives and saws and steel bars and acid
they would use to do the job.

And then it began.

Hammersmith, West London

Simpson left the debriefing session just after eleven that morning, leaving Walters and Masterson to continue their questioning of Raya. They stopped for lunch just after
midday, then returned to the conference room.

Simpson reappeared just after the four of them had sat down again. ‘Right,’ he began. ‘Walters, I want you and Masterson to go through that Appreciation document and see if
there’s anything in it that would help us to identify our man. I’m thinking about stuff like assessments, obviously. If there’s some piece of information in the file that only
Malcolm Holbeche or William Moore could possibly have known, for example, that would obviously tie one of them down. I don’t think you’ll find anything like that, because whoever it is
that’s been betraying us for twenty years is obviously no amateur. But maybe you’ll turn up some dates: for instance a date when information was sent to the Russians at a time when one
of the people at the top of the SIS either couldn’t possibly have known the information, or couldn’t have sent it because he was in hospital or something.’

‘So who do you suspect, sir?’ Walters asked.

‘Right now, I don’t know,’ Simpson replied, ‘I frankly can’t believe it’s Holbeche, because he’s the man who’s been coordinating and directing
this entire operation. But what worries me is that he was the only person at SIS who knew exactly where Richter supposedly planned to stay overnight in Italy. Or, to be absolutely accurate, he was
the only person at SIS to whom I mentioned Lodi. But, on balance, I suspect that he either briefed somebody else, or inadvertently let that information slip out. The problem is that if Holbeche is
the traitor, I can’t tackle him directly about it without revealing my suspicions. I’m still working on a way to either confirm that it is indeed him or else somehow prove that it
isn’t.’

‘I don’t think I can help you identify him,’ Raya said, ‘because he’s not been sending actual files to us, only general information about SIS policy and direction.
And I suppose almost any of the senior officers you have there would have sufficient access and clearance to do that.’

‘Can you follow the money?’ Richter asked. ‘If this guy is being paid by Moscow, is there any way you can trace the funds?’