‘So?’ McCoy glanced rapidly through it. ‘How so soon?’
Croxley shrugged, drawing a blank over the whole procedure and McCoy looked at the opening paragraphs:
George Graham. Born Islington, Royal Free Hospital, 14 July 1929…. These were details they knew already.
Recruited by Alexei Flitlianov, KGB Resident in Beirut, in April 1952, while he was teaching there with the British Council.
‘Well, we practically knew that.’ McCoy flicked through the pages. ‘What’s the rough outline of the rest? What’s important? Who are his contacts here? Anyone else on our side?’
‘No. Nothing of that sort, and no deep-cover Soviet illegals either. His contacts, such as they were, were all with Embassy or trade mission staff. And they were practically non-existent. No message drops or anything like that. Nothing. Very thin on the ground —’
‘But what is it all about? — what was he giving them?’ McCoy insisted. ‘It couldn’t just have been COI stuff. There’s hardly anything classified there — just a lot of Commonwealth public-relations jaw.’
‘Well, that’s the point of course. That’s what I had to press him on. He seems to have passed on nothing at all. That wasn’t his job. You see —’
‘That couldn’t have been all. They don’t keep a man on ice for so many years doing nothing. There must have been something else.’
McCoy’s impatience rose again. After all this, he thought, nothing — the man was just a complete sleeper, a back marker, nothing more than a courier perhaps — just a weak queer in love with Marx. Croxley inclined his eyes sympathetically towards the unhappy McCoy. He was the doctor once more.
‘They’ll keep someone quiet for as long as they have to,’ he said. ‘If there’s something else in mind. And there was. There was something else. They kept this man out of the way all these years on purpose, kept him clear —’
‘Because he was a dolt, a back marker, no real use to them.’
‘On the contrary. He was highly skilled; a deep-cover illegal, senior rank. They took a great deal of trouble over him. Initially in Beirut and subsequently when he taught in Cairo. He went back to Moscow during his holidays there — said he was looking round the Middle East, Petra and such like, long hikes. In fact he was doing their advanced training, what they call the “Silent School” — individual tuition, you might say, where he’d meet no other KGB men except one or two at the top. They took a lot of trouble.’
‘For what?’
‘For the job he was going to do. In the future. Always in the future. The job that was to start next week in New York.’
McCoy had taken out a pipe but quite forgot about it now. It stuck out of his puffy white face, clenched in his teeth, giving him the startled immobility of a snowman.
‘He was going to start an alternative KGB circle in America. A new network, a satellite circle. These are completely unknown to the local KGB Resident, and quite separate from any other espionage network in the country. They report only, and direct, to Moscow, almost as a freelance might do. There’s never more than, at most, half a dozen people involved. And sometimes just one person. The point of these circles is to keep tabs on the official espionage groups. They’re set up, very quietly, with that express purpose — to spy on the spies. That’s what they’ve been holding Graham for all these years — to head one of these circles.’
Croxley paused, wondering if McCoy had really followed the implications. But he had.
‘So, Graham would know the identity of the people in the other official groups?’
‘Not before he went there, he wouldn’t. Too risky.’
‘What happens?’
‘Well, he told me,’ Croxley said diffidently, as though the man had given the information over a cucumber sandwich tea, ‘he picks up the gen when he gets there. When he gets into his new cover.’
‘How?’
‘There’s always one crucial contact in the designate circle area. Either someone sent specially from Moscow, or more often what they call a “stayer”, someone already there who has absolutely no other activity other than that of passing on the names that Moscow wants a check on.’
‘Who would that be?’
‘Graham wouldn’t know that either. The contact would be completely one-sided. The “stayer” makes it. And he’d know very little about the new man. All he would know would be his name, real or assumed, what his cover was, where he worked.’
‘Then he’d make the contact?’
‘Yes. In this case all he’d have been told was that a George Graham, from London, was joining the UN as a Reports Officer in their information department round about a certain date. He’d check him over carefully beforehand, then make an approach.’
‘Check him? He’d have a photograph? Exchange a code? How would he be sure of him. That would surely be crucial.’
A plan was straining in the depths of McCoy’s mind, something which might save the day in this disappointing affair.
‘No photographs. There’d be nothing documentary, nothing on paper. If anything, it would be verbal. So — yes, there could be an exchange code.’
‘What they used to call a “password”.’ McCoy sighed for Kim and the Jungle Books.
‘Yes.’ Croxley looked at McCoy, his face full of understanding as usual, but not caring this time whether McCoy took offence or not. ‘It’s a risk you’d have to take.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You could replace this man Graham, couldn’t you? Have someone else go to New York in his place.’
‘It wouldn’t work.’ McCoy refused to admit the possibility, for it had been exactly his own thought.
‘Perhaps. On the other hand you’d really be on to something then, if you could break the “stayer”. You could work your way through an entire deep-cover network, for example, just with the “stayer’s” name, if you handled it properly.’
‘They must take very considerable pains to prevent that happening,’ McCoy said sharply.
‘They have. They have indeed. They’ve done just that. They’ve kept Graham clean as a whistle for years. It was sheer chance we got on to him in the first place. Absolute chance. No one’s been near him, possibly for years, until they told him he was on for this job they’d trained him for. He’s a loner. He had to be, at this juncture especially. Everything depended on Moscow’s keeping completely clear of him, keeping him clean, so that there could be no trail and therefore no chance of any substitution. That’s the way it works. As far as they’re concerned he’ll be on the boat to New York next week.
‘You see, the essence of the matter is that for him to be effective in his future role no one must know about him in the past. He’s completely unknown to any KGB Resident here or anywhere else. That’s the beauty of it: the man had no previous form. Among his own, he had no identity. So you can create that for him — in the shape of another man. You have a chance in a million.’
‘That’s the odds against it, I’d say, Croxley. Not the chances. I’ll read your report. Is he downstairs now?’
‘There is just one other thing — before you go,’ Croxley said. Again the deprecatory tone, as though the matter were of no real importance. ‘Graham spoke of something else — after he’d told me about his real work for the KGB.’
‘“Spoke” — willingly?’
‘Well, not exactly. No, not willingly. Not at first. It was about his communicating with his chiefs, making his reports in America. I asked him how he did it — what the form was. I, er — pressed him on that. He eventually became … incoherent, yes …’