Their own spy in the embassy! Charlie felt a jump of irritation that the possibility of a connection hadn’t occurred to him before now. There most definitely was a hostile source whose activities had reduced the British legation to a laughingstock by remaining undiscovered despite every single person within it being interrogated by the best and most experienced mole hunters in the British service. And Oskin’s information was of another undetected spy. Could that be beyond a coincidence-the phenomena he distrusted-and be in some way part of the same enigma? But how? And why? The spy within the KGB had remained undiscovered for eighteen years. The hunt for the British embassy mole hadn’t yet been running for eighteen weeks. The connection could only be coincidence, nothing else. Or could it?
Circles within circles, blocking his mind until he was incapable of thinking or rationalizing anything, Charlie decided. As an incalculable number of KGB and FSB minds had seemingly been blocked for eighteen years and the minds of Paul Robertson and his mole-hunters remained blocked.
Which could be an answer to so much! One, Charlie remembered, that he’d actually suspected days ago! Creating for himself yet another circle, Charlie confronted his earlier speculation that while not knowing what it was an answer to, the constantly unremitting avalanche of apparently unrelated facts and events was creating an impenetrable mental fog through which it was impossible for him and a lot of other people to focus upon what they were trying so desperately to see! And then he remembered the cliche that had escaped him when the idea had first come to him. No one was being able-or allowed-to see the wood from the trees because of the ever and constantly growing forest in front of them.
“The code-breakers and analysts have managed to get some way further than you, while at the same time completely agreeing and confirming every one of your interpretations. But by any assessment not far enough,” declared Aubrey Smith, when Charlie finished enumerating his overnight impressions from the Russian intelligence archives.
“How much further have they got?” asked Charlie.
“Station code names, which we had on record in our own archives,” enlarged the Director-General. “The first mentioned, 68, is-or rather was-Beirut. It was changed to MARS, during the civil war there, so we’ve got a double confirmation. The KGB field station in Cairo is 72, Teheran is 58. Athens is TROJAN.”
“All Middle East, where Oskin worked,” identified Charlie.
“The connection’s been made here, too. And the fact that Oskin was fluent in the languages in the region.”
“Could it have any connection with the Islamic terrorism we’re facing?” questioned Charlie. “A sleeper operation conceived a very long time ago, coming to fruition now.”
“Not from non-Islamists,” rejected Smith.
“He and Irena were actually based in Cairo,” Charlie pointed out.
“Also flagged up here,” assured Smith. “We’ve managed, as well, to identify three of the six operations itemized in Oskin’s stuff. OPERATION MIDAS was a KGB effort to penetrate the banking links between America and Saudi Arabia. OPERATION OSCAR was to get, through KGB nominees, control of two Greek tanker companies which would have given Moscow a limited window into world oil movements. They tried to extend that oil monitor with OPERATION BORE, which was targeted from Beirut after its code change to MARS, by infiltrating tanker companies worldwide.”
“You’re talking past tense?” questioned Charlie.
“That’s how they got into our archives, the tanker operations particularly: Lloyds of London was an obvious priority infiltrating objective because of its insurance records. All three operations were discovered and blown once we got involved.”
“Discovered?” queried Charlie.
“The lead, against all three, came from the CIA.”
“Who got it from their KGB asset,” completed Charlie.
“Where else?” agreed the Director-General. “By giving it to us they protected him. Incidentally, we also agree with you here that AMBER is the Russian code name for the mole they cannot catch but that they changed it to ICON. And we know that ONE, as the secrecy determination ratcheted up, is the chairman of the KGB himself and continued on into the FSB.”
“Making ICON-and the need to uncover him-also number one of the Russian’s Most Wanted list.”
“Which it would be, wouldn’t it, for someone they’ve known about for eighteen years, done incalculable damage and who they still haven’t managed to catch?” suggested Smith. “ICON is up there with the all-time greats in the spy ratings. My guess is they’ll have a full-time section permanently hunting him.”
“If they still haven’t caught him?” qualified Charlie.
“The analysts here don’t think they have,” said Smith. “You didn’t mention the gaps in the intercepted CIA radio traffic?”
“Because I didn’t isolate them,” admitted Charlie.
“I didn’t, either,” said Smith, equally honest. “Because the gaps were filled with KGB and FSB traffic, giving an impression of unbroken continuity. You did isolate sleeper, though. And that’s what our provisional assessment is. That the CIA has put ICON to sleep, until they choose to activate him. And while the Russians go on looking for him.”
“They-or he-are expecting something big: maybe a transfer back here to Moscow headquarters?”
“It could be,” agreed Smith. “The FSB will be going even more frantic at the possibility. Anyone being brought in from outside will be put through more loyalty tests than you can imagine.”
“None-or any-of which gets us any closer to understanding why Ivan Nikolaevich Oskin came to be found dead in our embassy grounds,” reminded Charlie. “Do the analysts think they’ve got it all? Or could there be more?”
“No one is going to admit we’ve got it all in less than twenty-four hours: what I’ve told you is basic, surface stuff. Of course they’re going to go on.”
“Any thought of a link up with MI6: maybe Oskin was negotiating with them, even though we know he wasn’t actually killed in the embassy grounds. His being dumped there could have been a message to them, although I don’t believe the resident MI6 officer here knows anything about it. But it would explain MI6’s efforts to get involved, wouldn’t it?”