The captain nodded. ‘While we’re waiting, I’ll have my men collect everything here that might have retained fingerprints,’ he said.
‘Good idea,’ Abramov replied. ‘And you can start with these.’ He pointed to a few pencils and a ballpoint pen which lay on the table beside half a dozen sheets of blank paper. ‘Whoever was using this computer would almost certainly have left his thumb and forefinger prints on some of those.’
‘As I said before, Raya,’ David Walters reminded her, ‘today is really more or less just an introduction. This discussion enables us to get to know you a little better, and hopefully will allow you to feel more comfortable talking to us.’
Raya nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘Right,’ Walters went on, ‘we’d now like to take an initial look at the material you brought out with you. I gather from Richard Simpson that you made copies of certain SVR files before you left Moscow, and that those files are held on some form of electronic data storage. Is that correct?’
‘Exactly right. I couldn’t risk leaving Russia carrying a laptop computer. Not even my SVR credentials would have enabled me to board an aircraft out of Russia carrying a laptop, so I brought out my personal CD player instead.’
Raya opened her handbag and pulled out an old and fairly battered battery-powered CD player, along with three or four CD discs.
Walters looked confused. ‘You mean you copied the data on to those CDs?’ he asked.
‘No, the CDs are simply camouflage.’ She opened one of the CD cases and slipped the disc into the drive slot on the player. A light illuminated on the front of the unit, but no sound emerged from the speaker. ‘I removed almost all the internal workings of the unit to make enough space to install a hard disk,’ she said. ‘It’s that hard disk which contains the data.’
‘That’s clever,’ Masterson acknowledged. ‘So how can we access it? And how big is this hard drive?’
‘I just need a screwdriver, and a USB lead with a small terminator at one end, plus a computer to connect to the other end of the lead. The drive itself is half a terabyte, which was the biggest I could find that would fit into the available space inside that CD player.’
‘That’s really ingenious,’ Walters acknowledged. ‘I’ll go and organize what you need.’
He stood up and left the conference room, returning a couple of minutes later with a laptop under one arm and a small toolkit in his other hand. He passed the toolkit to Raya, then plugged in the laptop and switched it on.
Raya opened the toolkit, selected a screwdriver, and removed a small plastic panel on the side of the CD player. Walters then passed her a USB lead. She inspected the terminator at one end, nodded on finding that it was the correct size, and plugged it into the female socket that was revealed after removal of the panel. Then she leant back in her seat and waited for the laptop to power up.
‘If you pass me that lead,’ Walters said, ‘I’ll just plug it in.’
But Raya shook her head. ‘Not quite so fast, Mr Walters. These negotiations have been a little one-sided so far. You’ve asked me questions and I’ve done my best to answer them, but I’m about to provide you with access to half a terabyte of SVR files classified at top-secret level and above. What nobody has confirmed so far is whether or not I’m being granted asylum here. Before you even take a look at the directory listing contained on this hard disk, I want a positive assurance that I’ll be able to stay in this country.’
Walters shook his head. ‘The problem is, Raya, that until we see what you’ve brought us, we can’t assess its value. And because of that—’
‘Before you go any further down that route,’ Raya interrupted, ‘you should know that I’ve already had a firm offer of asylum from the CIA. So if you try and fuck me about, I’ll be on the next flight out of Heathrow across the pond. And if that happens, my data goes with me.’
Masterson glanced from Raya to the modified CD player, and smiled. ‘Managing that,’ he said, ‘might not be as easy as you think. Right now, we’ve got custody of both you and the hard drive.’
As a threat, it was somewhat less than subtle.
Richter looked at Raya, wondering if he should now intervene, but then he eased himself back in his chair and relaxed, because she seemed in complete command of the situation.
‘Yes, you’ve got the disk, but you won’t get the data,’ she said simply, ‘because the whole drive is protected, as is each individual file. Essentially, the data has been scrambled and, without the master password, that’s the way it will stay. I wrote the program myself, and I’ve also incorporated an auto-destruct sequence which is triggered if an incorrect password is entered more than three times. So if you’ve got some idea about hooking my disk up to one of the Cray supercomputers in the basement of the Doughnut out at GCHQ, you’re going to be disappointed when you try to crack it.’
Both Walters and Masterson stared at Raya with a mixture of irritation and respect, then Walters glanced down the table at Simpson, who gave him a nod.
‘You’ve kind of painted us into a corner,’ Simpson declared, ‘but we’ve no wish for you to go and talk to the Americans. So let me suggest a compromise. Pick any file you like from the data you’ve accumulated, decrypt it — or whatever it is you have to do to make it readable — and let Walters and Masterson take a look at it. If they’re satisfied that it’s both genuine and valuable, then you’ll get your offer of asylum. You have my personal guarantee on that.’
Raya looked at Simpson, then glanced behind her towards Richter. ‘Is this man trustworthy, Paul?’ she asked him.
‘Buggered if I know,’ Richter replied. ‘Personally I don’t trust him, but I do think he’s straight. By which I mean that if he guarantees you asylum, he’ll do everything in his power to make sure that happens. But ultimately, Raya, this is your life and your decision.’
‘That was a somewhat backhanded compliment, Richter,’ Simpson snapped irritably.
‘It’s all you’re going to get.’
There was silence for a few seconds, then Raya nodded. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘I’ll let you see just one file.’
‘Make it a good one,’ Walters suggested, as he turned the laptop so that Raya could view the screen.
Raya plugged in the hard drive, opened up a program, checked to make sure nobody in the room could see exactly which keys she pressed, and swiftly entered a password. When the directory listing appeared, she worked her way down until she found the file she was looking for. She double-clicked on the icon to open it, decrypted it, and made a copy which she pasted onto the laptop’s hard drive, before encrypting her own directory again. Before sliding the laptop back across the table to Walters, she disconnected the USB cable.
‘That’s one file that might be of interest,’ she suggested.
Walters read the first few lines of the Cyrillic text, then looked up at Simpson and nodded. ‘This is classified Sov Sekretno, Top Secret,’ he said. ‘It’s an analysis of the state of battle-readiness of the Russian Northern Fleet, so if this file is representative of the rest of the data on that hard disk, it’s dynamite. Grade-one intelligence, straight from the horse’s — or rather the Bear’s — mouth.’
‘Right, Miss Kosov,’ Simpson announced, ‘you’ve got yourself a deal.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Colonel Yevgeni Zharkov was seated on an upright wooden chair. His hands rested on his lap, his wrists bound together with steel handcuffs, as he stared across the table at his accuser.