Manhunt (6 page)

‘Major,’ she greeted him deferentially, dropping her arms and moving behind her desk. ‘How can I help you?’

Abramov coughed, then walked over to the desk and sat down in the chair facing her, motioning for her to sit also. ‘As you know, Raya, I will be constantly in and out of the office during
all of next week, so I would like you to do two small jobs for me, because I won’t have the time. In fact, you will need to start on one of them almost immediately.’

This was nothing new to Raya. Major Abramov had come to rely on her more and more since she had been appointed to the section some years earlier. As a result, these ‘little jobs’ had
arrived on her desk with increasing frequency as his confidence in her had increased.

At the age of eighteen, Raya had moved to Moscow in order to attend the university. There she had been picked out by her tutors as suitable SVR material, even before the end of her first year.
All students at Russian universities were assessed by their tutors for academic progress, but also for their aptitude for employment by either the SVR or GRU – Russian military
intelligence.

In Raya’s case, her tutors had been favourably impressed by her considerable skills in two areas that were crucial to SVR operations: languages and computer science. Even before she
arrived in Moscow to begin her studies, she was virtually fluent in English, French and German.

A background check had revealed no apparent security problems. Her father had died in a road accident when she was still a child, while her mother lived in a small apartment near Minsk, and she
had no other close living relatives. Joining the Communist Party as soon as she was old enough, Raya had been a regular attendant at its meetings and an enthusiastic member as a student.

She had been approached by the SVR midway through her second year at university, and had joined them immediately after graduation. After initial general training at one of the
organization’s numerous establishments on the outskirts of Moscow, Raya had then been selected for a series of advanced computer-systems courses.

Her first posting had been to the Lubyanka, as a junior systems-security officer, and on the strength of her performance, and following a lengthy and exhaustive security check, she had then been
transferred to Yasenevo as Abramov’s deputy. There she had been cleared for access to documents with classification up to
Sov Sekretno
, Top Secret, and given formal responsibility for
computer-system maintenance and document security.

‘Of course, Major,’ Raya replied, sitting forward.

Abramov leaned across and placed two folders on Raya’s desk. She picked them up, glanced briefly at their titles, then put them down again, her full attention focusing on her superior.

‘Before we discuss these files, could I ask what progress you’ve made with the workstation upgrades?’

Like any network manager, Raya was also required to carry out periodic updating of the hardware of all computers on the network. Her current upgrade programme was fairly basic – just
adding extra RAM chips to the networked machines. Although the SVR had a substantial budget, computers were still relatively expensive, and the IT section had a policy of upgrading older machines
until they became technologically obsolete or simply stopped working.

‘I’ve finished most of them, Major. There’s another dozen or so still to do, but I should complete the installation by the end of this week.’

Because of the sensitivity of the data held at Yasenevo, ordinary computer technicians were not permitted to work on machines attached to the network. That meant only she or Major Abramov were
allowed to handle the upgrades, which in practice meant Raya always did it.

‘Good, and now these files. As you can see, the first one orders a full security check on all files held on the system. You’ve done one before, I know, but I would like to remind you
of the most important checks you should run.’

Abramov began ticking points off on his fingers. ‘You must inspect the access history of every file that’s classified Top Secret or above since the last full review. You must make a
random check of one hundred files carrying a classification of Secret or lower, and check the access history of at least ten per cent of these files. You should check every officer’s password
to ensure that it has been changed within the last three months, in accordance with standing orders. And,’ Abramov finished, ‘you should obviously thoroughly investigate and report on
every potential security breach that you detect.’

The Russian officer smiled at Raya. ‘I know it’s boring and irritating stuff,’ he said, ‘but that’s one of the crosses we must bear. Security never sleeps, and it
must be seen to be effective at all times.’

Raya smiled back at him, nodding at the adage that was quoted straight off the front cover of the security section’s handbook. In fact, Abramov was both right and wrong. She hadn’t
carried out just one full security check before; since she had joined Yasenevo she had actually performed
every
scheduled check. Once Abramov had decided she was competent, he had delegated
these, and other vital but tedious tasks, to her and then contented himself with simply reading and approving her reports. In fact, Raya was, in all but name, acting as the true Yasenevo network
manager.

However, she didn’t mind that. In fact, the working relationship she enjoyed with Abramov suited her very well.

‘And the second task, Major?’ Raya asked gently.

‘Purely routine,’ Abramov replied. ‘You may perhaps remember that, shortly after you arrived here, we began receiving information from a new agent in Britain. We named this
source “
Gospodin
” – “Mister” – and one of your first jobs here was to create a restricted-access directory in which all the source
Gospodin
data
was stored.’

Abramov paused and looked at Raya questioningly and, as he did so, she felt a sudden chill. She remembered the incident very well, and for more than one reason. Surely not, she thought; not
after all this time. Not when she was so close. She cleared her throat and gazed steadily at the officer.

‘Yes, Major, I remember it well. Is there some problem there?’

Abramov shook his head vigorously. ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘no problem at all. I just want you to repeat the process.’

‘We have a new source, then?’

‘No,’ Abramov said, ‘the new material has also been sent by source
Gospodin
, but it has been obtained from a new location.
Gospodin
is very prolific and has
managed to access an entirely new database. In fact, a lot of this material has been received only over the last two months, but the operational staff here have been assessing it to ensure that it
is genuine and not disinformation, or some kind of deception operation that’s been mounted against us. Yesterday I was told that the assessment is favourable, and now all the material needs
to be stored on the database.’

He paused, to let her absorb this, then he continued. ‘This information
Gospodin
has sent has the same Top-Secret security classification as his previous material and, like that,
will need to be stored in encrypted form in a restricted-access directory. Please create that directory, prepare the encryption routine, and put security protocols in place to allow access by
Directorate heads only. This must be done immediately, as those files are already being prepared for uploading.’

Raya didn’t comment, other than to ask the obvious question. ‘And the name of this directory, sir?’

‘
Zakoulok
,’ Abramov replied, and, with a final smile, stood up and left her office.

Raya watched the door close behind him, then reached down to open the bottom drawer of her desk. She pulled out a large loose-leaf book and opened it. Abramov’s smile, and the way he had
said the word
Zakoulok
, had told her that this name was something special or unusual.

If she had served for longer in the SVR, she would probably have recognized the word but, as she was a comparative newcomer, she had never operated out in the field, or even outside Yasenevo and
the Lubyanka.

The book she had opened was a directory of old KGB and current SVR slang and code words. The majority of its pages were copied from official SVR publications but, at the back of the book, Raya
had begun making entries of her own, as she discovered new words or new implications of code words that she already knew. She didn’t even bother with the back pages this time, because she
knew she had never encountered
Zakoulok
as a code word. Although she knew its literal meaning: ‘the back alley’.

She scanned the printed pages rapidly, then stopped and smiled as she read one particular entry. ‘How interesting,’ she murmured. ‘I wonder . . .’ Her voice faded into
silence as the implications dawned on her. She closed the book with a snap, and pushed it back into the desk drawer.

For a few moments she sat staring into space, then swung her chair round to face the computer screen. After entering her supervisor username and password, she began creating the new directory,
using the encryption routines and access protocols exactly as ordered.

After she’d finished, she got up and locked her office door. Then she sat down again and created another directory that was both hidden from other users and also password-protected. Then
she wrote a single line of code, which she inserted as an additional instruction at the beginning of the
Zakoulok
directory encryption routine.

The unauthorized code contained a single, very simple instruction: the original name and number of every file placed in the
Zakoulok
directory would then be copied into the hidden
directory as plaintext. She had done exactly the same thing five years earlier, when Abramov had instructed her to create the
Gospodin
directory.

Raya surveyed what she had done, and nodded in satisfaction. After exiting the program, she unlocked her office door again, and sat back in her chair. She had effectively created a specialized
‘back door’ into the ‘back alley’ directory. All she had to do now was wait for the files to be copied onto the system, and the new data would form an important part of her
dowry.

Paxton Hall, Felsham, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

The silence that followed Willets’s last statement was finally broken by William Moore.

‘Before we convened this meeting, we had already established that the printout had to have come from somewhere other than the LDC,’ he said. ‘If the leak had been from inside
the Centre, Willets could have handled it without any external assistance.’

‘And that’s why you’re all here,’ Holbeche added.

‘Hang on a minute,’ Arkin said. Having caught sight of the rabbit, he was unwilling to let it go without a chase. ‘If we accept Willets’s word that the printout
wasn’t actually made in the London Data Centre’ – and the way he enunciated this phrase made it perfectly clear that he, personally, didn’t – ‘then there’s
still another possibility.’

‘What?’ Moore asked.

‘We live in an age of mobile communications,’ Arkin said. ‘I may be just a simple country policeman’ – he looked round the room, as if inviting disagreement, but
nobody seemed inclined to dispute what he had just said – ‘but even I have a mobile telephone. Suppose one of your precious second-floor staff brought in a mobile phone and modem.
Surely he could pull the directory listing off the system, and then send it to his own computer using the mobile phone?’

Willets nodded. ‘An excellent suggestion, Mr Arkin,’ he replied, sarcasm dripping from every word. ‘Unfortunately it ignores just a few facts. I’ve already told you that
every keystroke on every terminal is recorded. I’ve also already told you that each employee is subject to a search while going in and going out. Do you really think we’d miss something
the size of a telephone, not to mention a modem and the cables to link the two together?’

Arkin wasn’t going to let it go. ‘It could be a wireless modem,’ he persisted. ‘They’re very small these days.’

Willets shook his head. ‘No, they’re not. The scanners will detect anything even half the size of a card modem, while a mobile telephone would set all of the alarm bells ringing.
Besides, there’s another excellent reason why your exciting little scenario is rubbish.’

Arkin said nothing, and just stared at him. ‘The LDC,’ Willets explained, ‘is a secure computer centre where extremely sensitive data is processed. That means we take elaborate
precautions to ensure that none of the data leaks out, either through the front door or through the ether.’ Willets leaned forward. ‘The whole section is completely screened against
electromagnetic emissions,’ he continued, ‘and that means no signals can get in or out, from a mobile phone or from anything else.’

He sat back, satisfied, but Arkin was grinning at him. ‘You haven’t been that successful, though, have you?’ he said. ‘Despite your Faraday Cage, somebody did manage to
walk out with that directory listing.’

‘Not,’ Willets repeated, his voice rising in irritation, ‘out of the London Data Centre.’

Holbeche intervened. ‘We’re achieving nothing by this bickering,’ he said sharply. ‘The listing was produced. What we have to work out is how – and from
where.’ He turned to Willets. ‘We’ll have to accept your assurances about the physical security at the LDC, so where do we go from there?’

‘Right,’ Willets replied, ‘the principal user of the LDC computer system is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, so obviously we’ll have to investigate the FCO staff
thoroughly.’ He paused for a moment, and glanced around at the other men sitting there. ‘You should also know that the LDC computers are linked by armoured landlines to the secure
local-area networks – the intranets – operated by the SIS at Vauxhall Cross and GCHQ at Cheltenham. I can guarantee that these lines haven’t been tampered with, because
they’re gas-filled and any breach releases the gas and sets off alarms at both ends.’

He paused, and again Arkin seized the moment. ‘That’s a great help,’ he said. ‘Oh, yes, that’s really narrowed it down. At least we don’t have to tramp around
the streets of London, looking for a man sitting by a manhole cover with a bunch of wires in his hands and a portable computer. Oh, no, we’re only looking for a mole at the FCO, or maybe SIS,
or perhaps GCHQ. Jesus Christ, that’s thousands of people. Even the initial surveillance and elimination could take weeks or months, maybe even years.’