Gibson was silent for a few moments before he replied. ‘That’s the predetermined return route,’ he said finally, though somewhat lamely.
‘Predetermined by who?’ Richter asked. ‘And why?’
‘You don’t need to—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Richter interrupted. ‘No doubt that’s just something else I don’t need to know.’
Gibson studied Richter for a few seconds, then told him to wait, and walked out of the room. Two minutes later he was back, accompanied by a smallish, pinkish man who exuded an unmistakable air of authority.
‘You’re Richter, right?’ the new arrival asked. Richter nodded, but he remained seated. ‘I’m Simpson, and Gibson tells me you’re unhappy with the return route we’ve planned for this collection.’
Richter nodded again. ‘That, and just about everything else,’ he said.
‘You served in the Royal Navy, didn’t you?’ Simpson continued. ‘You should be used to taking orders, so why can’t you just do what you’re told?’
‘In the Navy,’ Richter replied, ‘it was different. There I knew who I was working for, and I knew what was going on. Here I don’t, and I’m certainly not going tramping around Europe, lugging some unidentified parcel, until I find out.’
Simpson and Gibson both looked at him in silence for a moment. ‘Right,’ Simpson said to the other man, ‘I’ll take care of this.’
After Gibson had left the room, Simpson sat down in a chair facing Richter. ‘You’ve signed the Official Secrets Act,’ he stated.
‘Twice, I think,’ Richter agreed.
‘Right. You are to now consider everything I tell you as being covered by that Act, and never repeat it to anyone. This organization is a part — though a very small part — of the British security establishment.’
‘I guessed that,’ Richter said. ‘It’s presumably why you’re skulking around the backstreets of Hammersmith.’
‘We like to keep a low profile.’ Simpson smiled briefly. ‘Now, this package collection is very important to us, but to be frank the package itself is almost irrelevant. I can’t give you the background, because it’s classified at a much higher level than you’re cleared to. But this much I can tell you: we need to have someone in place in southern Europe for the next week or so. And before you ask,’ he went on, ‘for reasons I can’t explain, that person has to be somebody totally unconnected to any part of the security establishment — an outsider in other words, with no existing MI5 or SIS connections.’
Richter nodded. ‘This is finally beginning to make some kind of sense,’ he said. ‘You’re expecting this person to be contacted, perhaps, by someone who wouldn’t trust a professional intelligence officer? A defector, maybe? And the slow return journey has been deliberately chosen to allow plenty of time for that contact to be made?’
This time Simpson nodded and smiled too. ‘You may have missed your calling, Richter,’ he said. ‘You seem to pick things up very quickly. You’re quite right.’
‘OK,’ Richter said, ‘accepting all that, why wasn’t Gibson prepared to tell me that, or advise me how to respond if and when I’m contacted by this third party?’
‘You would have been properly briefed, but at this stage we know almost nothing about this possible contact. That’s why we’ve chosen a slow route back, so that we could get in touch with you whenever we needed to, and brief you on the fly, as it were.
‘Now,’ Simpson went on, ‘with that cleared up, are you prepared to undertake this collection?’
‘Of course, I am,’ Richter nodded, ‘as long as I know what’s going on.’
Simpson suppressed a smile. What he had just explained was almost true, but the real nature of the contact was likely to be very different from what Richter probably assumed.
‘Right, then,’ Simpson continued. ‘Gibson has already supplied you with briefing sheets, your precise itinerary, an airline ticket and details of the pick-up address in Vienna. You’ll need some other equipment as well, so we must get that sorted immediately.’
‘Equipment?’ Richter asked. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got exploding briefcases or sub-machine guns hidden inside shoes?’
‘Not exactly,’ Simpson grunted. ‘Our technical resources are somewhat more modest than those supposedly available to James Bond. We’ll be providing you with a diplomatic passport, which will help with the border crossings and any dealings you might have with the continental plods, and a mobile phone so we can reach you wherever you are. Oh, and a briefcase… but without extras apart from a handcuff to attach it to your wrist.’
Raya checked the new directory immediately after arriving in her office, and was amazed at the number of files it already contained. Even allowing for Abramov’s explanation that some of the material had now been held for assessment at Yasenevo for as long as six months, it was still obvious that the Zakoulok database was huge, and that the source known as Gospodin enjoyed excellent access — perhaps even better than some of the American mercenary traitors, such as Aldrich Ames and the Walker family.
Later that morning, Raya made a call to Major Abramov’s office number. She let the phone ring a dozen times before replacing the receiver. She had fully expected him to be out of the building, but was just running a final check.
She opened her office door briefly, to check that the corridor outside was empty, then locked it and walked swiftly back to her desk. Sitting down at the computer, she opened a file-transfer and communication program which automatically dialled a telephone number in a fifth-floor office within the Lubyanka. That telephone didn’t actually ring, because a call-diverter, which Raya had installed during a routine security check nine months earlier, intercepted her call as soon as it recognized the prefix.
The prefix was in fact a signal to the diverter to dial another number elsewhere in Moscow, and the only sign of this happening was the small red light on the telephone that illuminated to show that the line was in use. This light stayed on for almost fifteen minutes, but the office itself was deserted, as was always the case in mid-morning.
Once the connection was established, the program transmitted copies of the files contained in both of Raya’s hidden directories to the recipient computer. Before the program shut down, it deleted all the files in the two hidden directories, and finally erased any record of this call from her office to the Lubyanka from the internal-communication record file.
During the afternoon, Raya accessed the internal-communication record file herself. After a careful check of the Senior Officers’ Diary which was held on the computer system, and the network access log, she inserted nine new and entirely fictitious entries. These showed lengthy calls to a Moscow number made from an office elsewhere in the Yasenevo complex.
Then she opened a directory with a Top-Secret classification, and selected fifteen files dealing with Russian military equipment. She opened each one in turn and added a single extra entry to each file’s access record.
As she closed the last file, Raya smiled to herself. It was a smile of satisfaction, but her eyes were hard and bright.
‘Mr Stanway?’ Mary Bellamy began. A formidable and slightly equine woman, she was personal assistant to ‘C’, namely Sir Malcolm Holbeche, which entitled her to the official acronym ‘PA-C’. Perhaps predictably, she was known in the spacious corridors of Vauxhall Cross as ‘The Pack Horse’.
‘Yes, Mary?’ Gerald Stanway had recognized her voice immediately.
‘There’s a heads and deputy heads meeting in Conference Room 2 in fifteen minutes.’