The Blind Run (23 page)

The west door, on the third Thursday of any month: those were the instructions. So where the hell was the west door: there appeared to be dozens of doors, all around the place. Utilising the sense of direction again Charlie used St Basil’s Cathedral, to the south of Red Square, as a marker. Charlie worked out the geography easily enough but still wasn’t sure that it would help. He actually entered the huge store from one of the doors to the west, immediately conscious of the activity inside, a huge, human beehive. And inside this beehive on the third Thursday of succeeding months there was going to be a queen bee who was going to pick him out as a very special worker bee. He hoped. A guide book wrapped around a rolled up copy of
Pravda
, Charlie recalled, continuing the instructions. Professionally he decided that the choice of meeting place was good and the book and the newspaper innocuous enough and the final part of the process – ‘If I lived in Moscow, I don’t think I’d care what the weather was like’ – the sort of simple exchange not likely to arouse suspicion. So what would? Charlie had survived for so long – been good for so long – because before embarking upon any operation – any problem – he always approached it from every possible direction because the danger always was that the bad guys would know a route he hadn’t thought of and use it to come charging down and scoop him up. Charlie eased his way through the crowded store, letting the movement of the crowd carry him, taking only seconds to isolate the flaw. Today’s visit was OK and maybe a subsequent one – on the third Thursday of any month, between eleven and noon that time – but anything beyond that would be dangerous. And the guidebook and the newspaper weren’t as good as he’d first thought: there would unquestionably have been watchers, today. Who would have seen him find his way without maps or directions. So the guidebook would look out of place, if his observers were as good as they should be. Just as it would look out of place if, on succeeding third Thursdays of succeeding months, he kept returning to a regular spot at regular times. Shit, thought Charlie. There was no despair; Charlie was too experienced for that. Having identified the flaws, Charlie immediately began seeking a way around them. It was simply – he hoped to Christ it was simple – a matter of clearing his trail. But doing it better than those watching had ever known before, so that the evasion of pursuit wouldn’t be a conscious attempt upon his part but an irritating mistake upon theirs: and be shown to be, at any subsequent enquiry. Having found the resolve, Charlie improved upon it. He wouldn’t try to dodge on the first identification visit: nothing was going to happen then – apart, he hoped, from his being identified by whoever it was who would later make contact – so better to let that trip be seen. Better still, he’d make lots of other apparently pointless visits, carrying the guidebook and the newspaper, to lots of other apparently innocent tourist spots. That way there’d be a logical reason for the book – which, the longer and more obviously he carried it, would cease to occupy the attention of those watching, because they would become accustomed to his always having it – and GUM would not register with any more significance than anywhere else he went.

It was going to involve a hell of a lot of walking, thought Charlie, remembering his recurrent personal problem. He actually stopped, looking down at his already throbbing feet too tightly enclosed in the shoes that had been provided for him on the night of the escape. And then he realised he was in the country’s biggest store and started to look around with greater attention, seeking the shoe department. There were, in fact, more than one and Charlie went to them all, looking for anything resembling the familiar Hush Puppies and becoming increasingly disappointed. Bloody amazing, he thought. Maybe it was something to do with all the snow they had in the winter but Charlie decided in boots like these, snowshoes wouldn’t have been necessary to cross the drifts. Some looked big enough actually to walk on water! It was going to be an uncomfortable time.

Charlie made an unhurried exit from the store but didn’t immediately leave the area, which again might have marked GUM out as the significant destination. He visited St Basil’s Cathedral and stopped and pretended to admire the monument to Minin and Pozharsky beside it and then went on, ambling down the Razina highway and decided, when he saw it there, to go into the Rossiya Hotel. Charlie’s unthinking intention was to have a drink but then he realised he didn’t have any money and recognised again just how much of a prisoner he remained. He sat instead in the downstairs foyer, preparing his feet for the return walk, getting up after half an hour with the awareness that his feet would never be prepared for any sort of walking.

It took him an increasingly uncomfortable hour to get back to the apartment. He boiled some water, diluted it to the right temperature and gratefully soaked the ache from his feet, savouring the relief and not wanting it to end, so it was almost an hour from his actual return when he went properly into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and saw that in his absence the flat had been entered and restocked. So the surveillance was as active as it had ever been! He supposed the listening devices would have been replaced, too. He grinned and said, loudly ‘Thanks.’ In a cupboard in the main room he found a bottle of vodka, which was an addition to the previous supplies, which Charlie supposed to be an indication of acceptance. ‘Thanks again,’ he said, to the unseen and unknown listeners.

Charlie crossed and traversed again practically every tourist location in the Russian capital. He read the
Pravda
denunciation of Wainwright and wondered if it were all over anyway but he still kept the appointment at the GUM department store on the appointed Thursday, hoping that he wasn’t presenting himself for arrest and that Berenkov would emerge from the crowd.

He didn’t but he telephoned, actually on the evening that Charlie returned from the store.

‘Wondered if you might like to work?’ said Berenkov.

Charlie felt the jump of excitement. ‘You’re joking!’ he said. ‘I’m practically going out of my mind with boredom.’

‘How would you feel about instructing at a spy school?’

Charlie hesitated, although not from the reservation that Berenkov imagined. Bloody marvellous, thought Charlie, realising the advantages at once. To the Russian he said, ‘That sounds very interesting.’

‘You’ll do it?’

‘Yes,’ accepted Charlie. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘It was a great shame, about Wainwright,’ said Wilson.

‘More mentally affected than we suspected,’ agreed Harkness.

‘We’ve made all the arrangements?’

His deputy nodded. ‘He intended to retire to Bognor, apparently. That’s where the funeral has been arranged. The wife died, two years ago. But there’s a mother, in an old people’s home in Brighton: suppose that’s one of the reasons he chose to live nearby. I’ve arranged for his pension to be carried on, so that the fees for the home are paid. Pension people aren’t happy about it: they say it’s establishing a precedent.’

‘Damn the pension people,’ said Wilson. ‘Let me know if there’s a difficulty.’

Harkness nodded and said, ‘I don’t think there will be. What about the funeral?’

The director considered the question. ‘The Soviets will swamp it, of course,’ he predicted.

‘Inevitably, I would think,’ said Harkness.

‘Better for no one important to go then …’ Wilson hesitated. ‘Richardson!’ he suddenly decided. They’ll know about Richardson now.’

‘Might even make them think there was something that Wainwright didn’t tell them, after all,’ said Harkness.

‘Good point,’ nodded Wilson. He paused for several moments and said, ‘Don’t suppose there’s any doubt that he didn’t tell them everything?’

‘None at all, I wouldn’t imagine,’ said Harkness. ‘They’ll expect us to change the code now. Not only because of Wainwright but because they’ll know we’ve detected their alterations, from our listening facilities.’

‘Let’s not designate a sender any more,’ ruled Wilson. ‘I don’t want to lose anyone else, in the Russian panic to find out what’s happening.’

Chapter Twenty-One

General Kalenin was extremely careful preparing his entrapment information because the suspected twelve men who received it were consummate professional intelligence officers who would have recognised at once not only if it did not appear absolutely genuine but if it were something going beyond the knowledge they were entitled to receive. Which meant, the KGB chairman accepted with great reluctance, that the material had to be genuine. He attempted to console himself with the thought that the accepted cure for oil-well fires were explosions within the well head itself, extinguishing a destructive blaze with a bigger – but briefer – conflagration. He tried to limit the potential damage as much as possible, sifting through what had already been leaked and where applicable adding titbits that would not seriously worsen an already bad situation but with twelve possible sources to cover that was not completely possible. He had to include intelligence concerning Soviet preparations in the event of an open, armed conflict with the Chinese along the border area at Alma Ata and some indication of troop strength and disposition plans if a Chinese conflict did develop necessary from the need to switch from the Warsaw Pact front.

The British changed their transmission code within a fortnight of Wainwright’s body being returned to the country. Kalenin was surprised they didn’t do it earlier. He imposed fresh pressure upon the code-breaking cryptologists and underwent two frustrating weeks of uncertainty before the mathematicians found the key. It was another mathematical code, this time based upon a factor of five, and Sampson was again utilised, in an effort to transcribe ripple designation and the prefacing identity line that once more was created from a different code structure. As should have been expected from their expertise – and their computers – it was the mathematicians who isolated the ripple figure which made the code work, but it only happened after the suggestion from Sampson that the second formula might be linked to the first. There was no longer the disparaging attitude towards Sampson that there had been before and so the cryptologists listened to the suggestion and acted upon it, taking the activating numeral of the initial code – two – and dividing it into the activating numeral of the second. Which produced a figure of 2.50. Using that as the multiplier, they experimented with their computers for a further week, running random subtractions and multiples and finally found their entry into the messages by quadrupling the activating 2.50 and then multiplying it by the base figure, with the final multiplication by a further 2.50 for the actual message.

The deciphering experts were hampered by only having three messages upon which to work. The first, when they transcribed it, concerned a difficulty in raising foreign currency from gold sales because of failures in the ore producing mines of Muruntau. The second recorded the troop dispositions necessary to maintain the Soviet control of Afghanistan. Neither had been included in the entrapment messages that Kalenin devised. The third, which was electrifying, said the Russian source intended to make contact and use the identifying phrase.

Sampson remained involved through the transcriptions and succeeded in deciphering the identity line ahead of the mathematicians’ success with the first message. Rose was again the key, which in later discussions with Berenkov when the Russian tried to argue carelessness, the increasingly confident Sampson argued the alternative, the actual cleverness of adapting an existing device because of the logical explanation that they would attempt something completely new. On the second occasion the rose-loving British Director had confined his key to a single species – the centifolia – and when he transcribed it Sampson asked for an immediate meeting with Berenkov, because of the difference he found. Berenkov, conscious of the importance, saw Sampson the same day.

The two men met in Berenkov’s office, a conference table cleared and unnecessarily large for the limited file that Sampson brought with him. It was a simple exposition for the Englishman, only a few moments comparison being necessary.

‘No sender?’ Berenkov realised at once.

Pedantically Sampson went through the line, wanting to prove his worth. ‘The first block identifies Wilson, MD again,’ he said. ‘The second block is simply a dating and timing configuration. The sender is identified only by the word “Residency”.’

‘So now we don’t even have a transmission name at this end.’

‘We do know that the contact has been maintained. Despite Richardson’s withdrawal. And despite Wainwright’s death. And something else.’

‘What?’

‘The third message. Reference to an identification phrase,’ pointed out Sampson. ‘There’s no indication in anything that we’ve intercepted of what it will be.’

Berenkov nodded. ‘How do you interpret that?’

‘Richardson hand-carried it,’ guessed Sampson. ‘That’s why he was withdrawn.’ He paused and said, ‘There’s something else about the messages – all of them – don’t you think?’

‘What?’ demanded Berenkov.

Before answering Sampson laid everything out upon the conference table, the new messages and then all those that had preceded them, in the other code. ‘Ignore the contact message,’ said Sampson. ‘Look at all the others very closely and analyse them beyond the decoding. Almost without exception – just four, to be precise – everything emanates from an operational or planning level. And even the four that don’t conform – four devoted entirely to trade decisions – have an operational application so there is probably some cross-referencing somewhere.’

Berenkov didn’t hurry. He went painstakingly through every message, frequently appearing to refer back to a message he had already examined because the inference was obvious and at the end he said, ‘Thank you. That was an extremely astute observation.’

It was the judgment that Berenkov repeated, during the later meeting with Kalenin. Like Berenkov before, the KGB chairman examined all the messages and finally looked up stern-faced and said, ‘Absolutely right. The trade messages threw me off track, but Sampson’s absolutely right. It’s entirely operational or planning.’