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.
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.’
There was a long silence, broken at last by Richard Simpson. ‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘There might be another way.’
Chapter Four
‘Is all that clear?’
‘Yes.’ Richter nodded. ‘What you’ve said is very clear. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense, but it’s very clear.’
The briefing officer — a short and stout man who had been introduced to Richter simply as ‘Gibson’ — coloured slightly and leaned forward on the lectern. ‘What, exactly, doesn’t make sense?’
‘Almost everything,’ Richter said. ‘You’re basically tasking me with flying to Vienna tomorrow to collect a package and then deliver it here.’ Richter gestured around the briefing room. ‘I’ll ignore the fact that I don’t actually know anything about the organization you represent, like what it’s called or what it does or why I should be playing postman for it, but—’
Gibson interrupted. ‘You don’t need to know anything more than I’ve told you,’ he said.
Richter looked up at him. ‘So you keep saying. Pardon me if I disagree with you. I could just about understand it if, having collected this package in Vienna, I simply climbed back onto the same British Airways aircraft that I arrived on, and then flew back to Heathrow. Why, exactly, can’t I do that? Why do you want me to take a week making my way halfway across Europe by road to Toulouse, of all places, and then fly back to Britain from there?’