“Yes, it is – that is an interesting coincidence. I think I recognised your Navy uniform in your photograph. I see lots of naval officers here.”
“I am sure you do. Can you send me a photograph, too, Marina? That’s a nice name, and it will be even nicer to see who I am chatting to?”
“Yes, of course.” And Marina quickly opened one of her favourites from her photo file and used the online system to copy it into their exchange of messages. It showed her with a glass of champagne at a recent birthday party, looking her glamorous best.
“That’s very nice,” replied Nikolai. “Where was that taken?”
“It was my best friend’s 30th birthday party last month in London, where I used to live… but I only drink champagne on very special occasions.”
“Well, this is a special occasion. Let’s drink to our meeting up like this. I would like to know more about you, but I have to go now. When can we try to get together again?”
They agreed to connect on-line again on the following Sunday evening at about 6 pm for Marina and 9 pm for Nikolai. She was slightly surprised, but pleased, to find that he was there and waiting when Marina signed on again as arranged, and they began to exchange more information. He told her he was a Lieutenant in the Navy, and she, in turn, described how she had moved from London three years ago to start a new career working for the British navy as a civilian in an office job, based in the Portsmouth Dockyard.
“Well we do have some interests in common,” Nikolai typed. Marina warmed to the topic and told him that there was yet another common interest because her grandfather had come from Russia in the 1930s to start a new life in London. And she admitted that it was partly this Russian ancestry which had drawn her to respond to Nikolai’s on-line listing.
After a few weeks of chatting once or twice a week about their respective lives, he became intrigued as Marina told him more about her grandparents’ memories of Russia. She told him how they had lived in poverty before deciding to try to find a new life in Britain, following in the footsteps of others from their neighbourhood, and how they had eventually started their own business in London. She said she longed to pay a visit someday to Voronezh, the city where they had lived, to explore what she could of their background. He told her that Voronezh was not too far from Sevastopol and he offered to help her to discover her roots, if and when she could find an opportunity to travel to Russia.
Nikolai was also interested to discover more about Portsmouth and Marina’s work in the Dockyard, and she explained that it was with the Royal Navy in the offices of the Commodore of the Portsmouth-based fleet.
“It’s fairly low-level stuff,” she wrote in reply to his question, “But it’s very interesting because we deal with all the communications between the HQ and the ships at sea.”
“Sounds a bit like my present job,” he responded. “But I really preferred being on a ship to having an office job.”
Their correspondence became more and more personal over the weeks, and they exchanged photographs from their younger days, of their homes and families and their travels. He said his wife had died tragically in childbirth five years earlier, and he was now alone instead of being the family man he had hoped for; he had faced the challenge of building a new life around his career in the Navy. His parents were now in retirement, living not far from Sevastopol, and he had a very supportive older sister, Anna, who helped to care for them.
The plan for Marina to visit Russia began to evolve, perhaps during a period in the next year during Nikolai’s annual leave, when he would have time to be her “tour guide”, and she said how much she looked forward to meeting his friends and family. And they each spoke warmly about getting to know each other better.
She started to research flights and fares from London to Russia. And with gathering excitement, she also began to assemble a file on the history of Voronezh and the local region – until one evening when Nikolai came on-line with a surprise.
“I have some big news,” he wrote. “My wish has been granted. I have been appointed to join a ship again – it is a really modern frigate called the Admiral Essen, based here in Sevastopol. It is really exciting because it is one of a group of three ships from the Black Sea fleet which will go on exercises during the next month in the Mediterranean. And can you believe this – we are then scheduled to sail on to the Atlantic Ocean and will be making courtesy visits to several foreign ports – including a few days in Portsmouth!”
This was sudden and unexpected news for Marina.
“This is wonderful!” she said in her reply. “I hope this means we will be able to meet up sooner than we expected and maybe spend some time together. Let me know more details and dates as soon as you can so that I can arrange some time off work.”
Once she had fully absorbed this new situation, she began to focus, instead of travel plans, on ways to welcome him to her own country and their first meeting when it came, presumably in the coming autumn months. There would be no more chat on the dating website, and it was a couple of weeks before Nikolai’s next message, an e-mail, in which he told Marina that he was now on board his ship and settling in as they prepared to sail. He explained that once his ship had sailed and was involved in exercises at sea, their contacts would become less frequent.
Marina waited patiently for more news. And in the course of her job in the Dockyard communications office, she soon learned more information about plans for a forthcoming visit by ships from the Russian navy for refuelling in Portsmouth.
And then, she received a brief message from Nikolai with a firm date for their arrival and confirming his intention to meet up with her “at the earliest opportunity”.
2.
NIKOLAI’S PLAN
In the headquarters of Russia’s GRU Secret Service in Grizodubovoy Street, Moscow, not far from the Kremlin, agent Aldanov asked for a meeting with his supervisor. Nikolai Aldanov was a well-regarded member of the research and analysis team. He was also an officer in the naval reserves after serving for seven years in the Russian Navy, mostly at sea on board warships. He had gained a commission and promotion to the rank of Lieutenant. But after completing his required seven years, during which he was married, he had been persuaded by his young wife to make a change. She was delighted when he applied for a job at the Ministry of Defence in Moscow, her home city. And after several interviews, he took his naval experience with him into a second career with the GRU.
The full name of the Russian ministry is the Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, commonly known by its previous name of the GRU. The labrynthine headquarters buildings house what was previously called the KGB until the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. But the organization, in which Vladimir Putin made his name, is still much the same, but is now called the FSB – the Federal Security Bureau. It includes the GRU, the military intelligence agency of the Russian armed forces which, unlike other agencies, reports directly to the Minister of Defence. It is reputedly Russia’s largest foreign intelligence agency and is the beating heart of Russia’s spying operations.
After his training period, Aldanov was appointed to the research department of the agency, and one of his tasks, in the beehive of activity, was to analyse the myriad of websites and social media sites originating overseas. He and others in his team were searching for useful snippets of information which could be followed up by agents in the field. After a while, one of his own ideas was to insert his own photograph in naval uniform on several international dating websites, just to see what might follow.