And Is There Honey Still For Tea? (32 page)

53

Ben found himself utterly speechless. Neither Baxter nor Stepanov broke the silence. Baxter seemed to be finding the scene slightly amusing.

‘We understood that you were dead,' Ben said helplessly, after some time. As soon as he had said it, he realised how ridiculous it sounded.

Stepanov smiled. ‘Yes,' he replied. ‘In the Soviet Union, it is often advisable to be dead. In some cases it is the only way of staying alive.'

‘The face,' Ginny said quietly. ‘I recognise you from the photograph in your obituary.'

‘Then you are a most perceptive woman,' Stepanov said, smiling again. ‘That picture was taken when I was somewhat younger, and before I adopted this disguise.' He fingered his beard.

Ben was leaning forward on the table, both hands over his mouth, trying to recover his composure. Baxter had picked up the bottle and was holding it up invitingly. Ben picked up one of the empty glasses and nodded. Ginny also nodded, and Baxter filled both glasses. He poured water for everyone from the jug.

‘I will return to Kurt Weber later,' Stepanov said. ‘I should start at the beginning. I was born in Leningrad in 1914. My father loved chess, but we were a poor family, and he grew up before the Revolution, so he had no opportunity to play seriously. But when it became clear that I had some talent he encouraged me to play in local tournaments, and at the age of sixteen I was sent to Moscow to a special school where chess was part of the curriculum. I developed quickly, and started to play in tournaments both at home and abroad. The authorities gave me permission to travel, because of my abilities, and eventually I attained the rank of grandmaster.'

He paused for a drink, jenever first, then water.

‘After I had played in a number of tournaments abroad, it became clear that I was not in the first rank of grandmasters. I was good, but in the Soviet Union, good is commonplace. I was not to be one of those who would take the world by storm, and that was what they were looking for: players who would take the world by storm, players like Mikhail Botvinnik and Vasily Smyslov, who would show the world how superior Soviet society was, compared to the degenerate capitalist West with its degenerate, bourgeois approach to chess. Others were coming up through the ranks who were stronger players; who would be, therefore, more useful than I would.'

Baxter was listening carefully, refilling glasses as needed. Ben was now feeling a little more composed. Ginny seemed totally absorbed. She had hardly taken her eyes off Stepanov.

‘But fortunately for me,' he continued, ‘I had another talent which was developed in the school in Moscow. I was a good linguist. I was asked to specialise in German and English, which were considered to be the most important languages from the point of view of the Soviet State. Later, Chinese became important also, but at that time, German and English. It was not long before I came to the notice of the Government. When Hitler invaded our country I was seconded to a department in Moscow to translate captured German documents and to try to decipher German military codes. After the War, I accompanied the Soviet legal team to Nuremberg as a translator and interpreter. It was there that I first met James Digby. He was working in a similar capacity for the British team. We spoke a few times. His name was vaguely familiar. In those days we did not receive very much information about what was going on in British chess, but the name registered with me. We got on well but, as I say, we had little opportunity to talk. The Soviet team kept itself to itself at that time. We attended receptions, but too much fraternisation was discouraged.'

* * *

‘After Nuremberg I was not sure whether the authorities would permit me to travel very much. But once again, my command of languages proved useful. The Soviet Chess Federation had endless arguments with FIDE – the International Chess Federation. In particular, a serious dispute developed about arrangements for the tournament to decide the world chess championship in 1948. The world champion, Alexander Alekhin, died in 1946, and the title was vacant just after the war. It had been proposed to hold a tournament in which a number of the strongest players in the world would compete for the title as soon as arrangements could be made. Unfortunately, the Soviet Chess Federation took a very strong position, assuming that it could dictate the terms. They tried to dictate to the world who should be invited to compete, and where the tournament should be held. Although FIDE represented the entire chess community worldwide, the Soviets refused to agree to their proposals. They justified this by drawing attention to the Soviet dominance in world chess, which had to be conceded. All the same,' he shrugged and smiled, ‘the way in which the negotiations were being conducted on our side did us little credit.'

Baxter had walked to the sideboard and carried over the bread and caviar, which he placed on the table, with four small plates. Stepanov paused to help himself to some of each, and washed it down with a mouthful of jenever. For the first time, he took a cigarette from the packet in front of him and lit it. Belatedly, he thought to pick the packet up and offer it around, but he was the only smoker in the room.

‘Our Government, of course, wanted the tournament to go ahead, so they asked me to step in and take over the negotiations before the Soviet Federation torpedoed the proposal for the tournament altogether. The situation cried out for some basic diplomacy, and as I spoke languages other than Russian, this helped a great deal to smooth things over. Everyone became a little more relaxed and, in due course, we reached an agreement. I need not go through the whole thing. Suffice it to say that it was agreed to start the tournament off here in The Hague, and move to Moscow for the second half. The Government seemed pleased with my work, and invited me to attend the tournament in The Hague. I was to be based in the Soviet Embassy, for reasons which were not at all clear – until just before I was due to leave Moscow.'

He paused for a drink of water.

‘Two days before my departure I was summoned to attend the office of the head of one the Directorates of Moscow Centre,' he said.

‘The Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service,' Baxter interjected.

‘Yes. The Comrade Director said that my work as an interpreter and negotiator had come to his attention, and that there was a role I could play which would be of the greatest service to the Soviet people in the struggle against the West and the capitalist system. He asked whether I was prepared to accept this role.' He smiled. ‘In the Soviet Union, when the head of a Directorate of Moscow Centre makes such an invitation, the correct answer is “yes”.'

Ben and Ginny instinctively smiled with him.

‘The Comrade Director explained to me that agents working under his command had cultivated a number of high-ranking western diplomats and intelligence officials both in London and Washington, who had been Soviet agents for some years, and had finally attained positions of some power. These persons now had access to information of the highest quality, information vital to the Soviet High Command, and also to those State agencies responsible for protecting the Soviet people against sabotage and infiltration by counter-revolutionary elements at home. It was necessary to find a means of conveying this information to the Directorate, and also of conveying information from the Directorate to the contacts in London and Washington. Moscow Centre regarded it as essential that its contacts should not be compromised, and they wanted a method of communication which would not involve sending documents, film and the like, which are too easily discovered and are too easy to trace back to the source. A British agent known to the contacts had been identified, and I was to work with this agent in devising an appropriate system and putting it in place. I was instructed to approach him during the tournament and, if he was agreeable, to propose that we should work together once the tournament had moved to Moscow, where it was easier for the Directorate to arrange a secure meeting place.'

Stepanov paused again to drink jenever and water.

‘The Comrade Director did not tell me the identity of the British agent before my departure, but after I had arrived in the Netherlands, a top secret coded message was sent to the Embassy for my attention. The agent was named as Sir James Masefield Digby.'

54

Stepanov lit another cigarette.

‘Of course, the Directorate was aware that Digby and I had known each other in Nuremberg. On returning to the Soviet Union from Nuremberg, we were all required to submit a complete list of all foreigners we had spoken with during our time there. It was, of course, a long list. But nothing escapes the attention of the authorities, and for them it was a fortunate coincidence. I was asked to re-introduce myself to Digby, gain his trust, and then reveal myself as his contact, making sure first that he was indeed ready to work with us, looking for any signs that he might be a double agent. They are always suspicious of everyone. I was told that I would be free to take him to whatever location – bars, cafés, and so on – might be best suited to our conversations. I was told that the minders would leave us alone, and as far as I know they did, though you can never be sure of that. Digby was staying at the Hotel des Indes. I found him in the bar there one evening and we renewed our acquaintance.'

He paused.

‘I wish to make it clear to you that I liked Digby,' he said. ‘I never thought of myself as exploiting him. Everything he did, he did willingly. Whether this was for purely ideological reasons, or whether he also hoped for some benefit from the Soviet Union at some later time, I do not really know. Perhaps it was both in some measure. But I will say this: Digby never asked for money and, as far as I know, never accepted money from us – certainly not from me. And whatever he did, it was not out of any hatred for his country. It may sound strange, but I had the impression that he loved his country very deeply, and that he believed that what he was doing was in his country's best interests.'

He took a sip of jenever.

‘I must admit that I was nervous – after all, I was a linguist and a chess player, not a professional intelligence agent. But I should not have been concerned at all. Recruiting James was easy; there was no resistance at all. On the second occasion that we spoke, he asked if we might leave the hotel and walk. We walked for three or four hours – and it was a cold Netherlands night in March, believe me.'

He smiled.

‘But this did not deter him. We seemed to walk endlessly, randomly, around the city centre, in no particular direction, sometimes into areas where we were in danger of getting lost. He did not stop talking during the entire walk. I do not recall having any opportunity to ask a question. He talked very fast, obsessively, moving from one subject to another without warning, stopping in the middle of a story and returning to it ten minutes later, almost like – how you would say, the wave of …'

‘A stream of consciousness?' Baxter suggested.

‘Yes, exactly, a stream of consciousness. He did not always make sense, but something seemed to possess him and made him say all these things to me.'

‘What kinds of things did he talk about?' Ben asked. He glanced at Baxter. ‘If I may?'

Baxter nodded.

Stepanov took the last drag of his cigarette and stubbed it out firmly in the ash tray. He shook his head.

‘Everything,' he replied simply. ‘It was as if he were trying to tell me his whole life story, not just in a historical sense, but his intellectual life story, his emotional life story. But it was somehow all mixed up together, almost as if he could no longer separate historical incidents in his life from the ideas in his head, and as if he could no longer make sense of his motivations. In some ways it felt as though he was justifying himself to me. He talked about his early life at home; the values he was taught; his school; how he discovered chess and how it became a passion for him; his resentment at not being able to play chess as a profession; his time as a student at Cambridge University; the sympathy he had always had for the poorer classes; his wife, and her inability to conceive a child to inherit his title; his introduction to socialism, and how socialism seemed at first to provide the answer to everything; how he doubted socialism many times; his disillusionment with the British Labour Party, and even with the Soviet Union at times because of Stalin; how his faith would somehow be renewed; and …'

He drained his glass and lit another cigarette.

‘And about his brother Roger, who was killed in the war in Spain. He spoke of Roger constantly, almost as a form of punctuation between stories or parts of stories: Roger at home when they were young; Roger at university; as Lord of the Manor in waiting; at his Club in London; involved in every aspect of James's life, even when they were apart. It was pure hero-worship. His recollections of Roger's death were very painful to listen to.' He smiled. ‘They had a strange way of writing letters to each other. He tried to explain it to me, but I did not take it all in.'

‘And at the end of it all,' Stepanov said, as Baxter refilled his glass, ‘he agreed to work with me. When the world championship moved to Moscow in April, we worked together in a safe house provided by the Directorate. We came up with the system that was required. It was simplicity itself.'

He suddenly laughed out loud.

‘Shall I show you?'

He looked at Baxter, who nodded.

‘Yes, I think I must show it to you.'

55

Stepanov sprang to his feet and retrieved his shoulder bag from where it had been lying by the sideboard. He reached inside and took out a folding chess board and a yellow cloth bag fastened at the top by a string pull. This contained a set of plastic chess pieces. He unfolded the board and laid it out on the table in front of him. He opened the bag and turned it upside down, allowing the pieces to fall on to the board. In a matter of seconds he had the pieces set up as if for a game, so that he was playing white.

‘The problem set for us by the Comrade Director,' he began, ‘was to devise a system for passing information in both directions without the need to carry copies of documents, film, and the like. So we needed a method of encrypting that information at source, and decrypting it on arrival in a way which would allow the information to be conveyed accurately.'

He allowed his hand to run along the top of the white pieces.

‘The chess board has sixty-four squares, alternately black and white. The squares are identified by a letter and a number. The files run up and down and are designated by the lower case letters “a” to “h”, with “a” being the file on the left hand side of the board, as White sees it. The ranks, going across the board, are designated by the numbers 1 to 8, again seen from White's point of view. So the black square in the corner by my left hand is a1, the square above that a2, and so on until we come to a8. Then the second file begins with the square next to a1, which is b1, and then we go to b2 and so on until we reach b8. Is everyone with me?

Ben and Ginny nodded.

‘In addition, each player has eight pieces: a king, a queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights; and he has eight pawns. The pawns are technically not referred to as pieces, though this does not matter for our purposes. You see here the positions in which the pieces start the game, lined up on the first rank for White, the eighth rank for Black; the pawns in front of them on the second and seventh ranks. The order of the pieces is more or less symmetrical, the rooks in the corners, then the knights, then the bishops, and finally the king and queen occupying the two remaining squares, with the queen on the square of her own colour.'

Stepanov moved the pawn in front of the white king two squares forward on the board.

‘Obviously, a game consists of movements of the pieces from one square to another. Each piece may move only in the manner prescribed by the rules. The moves played in any competitive game are recorded by the players. There is a notation for this. White has the first move. You see that I have begun the game by advancing this pawn by two squares. I record this simply as e4, indicating the square to which the pawn has been moved. We could say e2-e4, but the simpler the better as long as the notation is not ambiguous. Let us assume that Black responds by advancing the pawn in front of his king by two squares.'

He made the move.

‘We would record this as e5. Next, White moves the knight on his king's side from g1 to f3, attacking the black pawn. When the pieces move, they are represented by a letter: in this case, in English notation, the letter N is used for the knight because K is reserved for the king. So the move is recorded as Nf3. In other languages, of course, the appropriate letters are used. So, in German we would say Sf3, because the knight is
der Springer
; in French we would say Cf3, because the knight is
le chevalier
. Then, if Black responds by moving his queen's knight from b8 to c6, defending his king's pawn, we would record it as Nc6.' He made the move. ‘Then White moves his king's bishop from f1 to b5, threatening to capture the black knight, and so indirectly renewing the threat to the black pawn by attacking its defender.' He made the move. ‘We would record this as Bb5. Yes?'

Ben and Ginny nodded again, enthralled.

‘For any system of encryption designed to convey complex information,' Stepanov continued, ‘there must be a sufficient number of permutations of the symbols. Chess moves consist of symbols. Please take my word for it, that with sixty-four squares, sixteen pieces, and sixteen pawns, the number of possible permutations is very large, far greater than would be required to express the kind of information that needed to be conveyed.'

‘But the number of permutations is limited by the way in which the pieces and pawns are permitted to move under the rules,' Ben pointed out.

‘Yes,' Stepanov agreed. ‘But the number still remains large. Actually what is far more significant is that there are very many moves that are simply bad moves, moves which no serious player would even consider making. That is a far greater limitation. But still there are enough permutations; and we can increase them, because we can use not only the moves players actually make in a game, but as commentators, we can suggest alternatives, and analyse what might have happened if those alternatives had been played. This gives us many more potential moves.'

‘So, the information is encrypted in the form of the moves of a game played in a tournament, or moves which would have been reasonable but were not in fact played?' Ben asked. Baxter remained silent, and indicated no objection.

‘Excellent,' Stepanov replied. ‘You see it exactly. So, all that was required was for James to travel to an important chess tournament, in which a sufficiently large number of games would be played. The Directorate ensured that he received an invitation each year to the Soviet championship, and that he was granted the appropriate visa. The Soviet championship was, naturally, more secure than any event abroad. It is held in different cities, but James and I always met at the Hotel Peking in Moscow at the end of the tournament, wherever it was held. It was particularly convenient at this hotel, for various reasons.'

He lit another cigarette.

‘Let me give you one example of how it worked,' he said. ‘Let us suppose that a contact in London or Washington has information of a diplomatic nature to pass on to Moscow Centre.' He smiled. ‘This brings us back to the fact that notation in different languages can be used. For diplomatic information we would choose French, because French is the language of diplomacy; for military information, German; for technical information of other kinds, English; or if the information was specific to a particular country, we would sometimes simply use the language of that country.'

Baxter had walked to the sideboard to open a new bottle of jenever. ‘Only the
oud
left, I'm afraid,' he observed. ‘I hope that's all right.'

‘Let us assume that London wishes to advise Moscow that western agents are being infiltrated into city A from city B,' Stepanov continued. ‘James has a contact at the Embassy in London, who meets with him and describes generally the information to be conveyed. James would first designate two squares on the board to represent cities A and B.'

He suddenly laughed aloud again.

‘This was very funny. James insisted that the western cities should be represented by white squares, and cities behind the Iron Curtain by black squares, as if the Eastern Bloc were the bad guys. This was perhaps rather ironic in view of what we were doing, but nothing I could say induced him to change his mind. The Comrade Director was put out, and he was insisting it should be the other way around. So I had to intervene to try to reach a solution. After much difficulty, I was able to persuade the Comrade Director that this was a small concession to make in return for such great service to the Soviet people, and so James had his way; it was ordained that the white squares were reserved for western cities.'

Involuntarily, Ben and Ginny joined in his laughter, and even Baxter was unable to suppress a broad smile.

‘Then, of course, there had to be a code for the agents. We could have used a crude method, a combination of letters to spell out names, but the Comrade Director considered that this would be insecure, and also unnecessary. In most cases, Moscow would be able to identify the persons referred to, given sufficient information about their movements and their importance. This is where the pieces came in. In some cases you could identify the agent quite well by assigning a piece. For example, an exceptionally important agent would be represented by the king or the queen; but the queen could also mean a female agent; everything was a matter of context; sometimes a person acting out of religious conviction would be represented by a bishop; a military attaché or the like by a knight; a low-level agent by a pawn, and so on. Moscow was always represented by the square d8, the square of the black queen. Washington was d1, the square of the white queen, and London was e2. So the easiest way to represent the movement of a high-ranking diplomat suspected of involvement in espionage from Washington to Moscow would be the move Dd1 to Dd8, using the French notation, provided that the Queen could legally move to d8 in the circumstances of the game – her path was not blocked, and so on. In other cases, where the move would not be legal, more than one move might be required. But the move can always be suggested.'

‘So,' Ginny asked, ‘once Digby had encrypted the information by assigning squares and pieces, he would use moves made in the Soviet championship to convey the information to you?'

‘Yes; or moves which might plausibly have been made during a game. That gives a very wide selection of moves.'

Ginny glanced at Baxter, but Baxter seemed to have no inclination to rein in their questions.

‘And this was all in reports Digby made of the tournament – I take it he was officially there as a journalist?'

‘Yes, he was an accredited journalist. But he might send me a version of his report which differed to some extent from those he sent to the newspapers and magazines, simply to draw my attention to some particular moves, perhaps by underlining or some such device.'

‘And as long as he gave you the details of the encryption, you had access to the information immediately.'

‘I myself did not,' Stepanov said, ‘but I had an encryption from which the Comrade Director could draw the necessary conclusions, once I explained the encryption to him.'

‘All right,' Ben said. ‘I understand that. But the Soviet championship takes place once a year. What if information had to be conveyed at other times?'

‘Yes, of course,' Stepanov replied. ‘There is an important chess tournament going on somewhere in the world at any given time of year, so we could have arranged other meetings. But it would have been insecure, suspicious, for us to be meeting regularly, and there might be no way to arrange secure accommodation for our meetings abroad. So we had another way of using the system. Postal chess is very popular throughout the world for people who cannot go to tournaments.'

‘The moves are sent by post?' Ben asked. ‘That must mean that games go on for a long time?'

Stepanov smiled. ‘Sometimes for years,' he agreed. ‘But we did not need to conduct an actual game. We could simply exchange postcards, appearing to be part of a game, or notes for an analysis. This is how beautiful this is. You don't even need to use an envelope. Postal games are played using postcards. So James might send me a card using German notation, saying for example: “Sd6; White threatens to follow up with Tg7, with a considerable advantage.”'

‘Which could mean?'

‘Which could mean: “an agent with military ties has arrived in Prague, and will link with a more senior colleague in Riga in the near future; the situation is dangerous; we need to watch it carefully”. Perhaps this refers to a suspected western operation with some military aspect in which these agents are implicated.'

‘But we had other symbols which could be used also. The notation for castling, a protective move, is 0-0 or 0-0-0, depending on whether you castle king's side or queen's side. We used this to suggest that evasive action was being taken, or should be taken. To indicate danger, we often used the + symbol, which is used to indicate that the king is in check. In case of the gravest danger, a life and death matter, we would use ++, the symbol for the king being checkmated – which brings the game to its end. We would sometimes indicate the wisdom of certain action by the use of ! – which in chess notation indicates a good move, or ? which indicates a bad move. There were so many variations.'

Ben nodded thoughtfully. ‘Extraordinary,' he said.

‘This system was useful also to clarify information which was not completely clear to the Comrade Director as it was originally provided,' Stepanov added. ‘For example, the reference to the agent might be ambiguous. In this case, I would send James a card saying, perhaps: “Your last card got wet while in transit. Please clarify whether your move was Qf8 or Rf8.” He would clarify, and this would solve the problem.'

Ginny suddenly sat up in her chair, and turned to Baxter.

‘This explains the evidence you provided to us before, doesn't it? It explains how you were able to relate what happened to the agents to Digby's annual visits to the Soviet championship?'

Baxter nodded. ‘We were puzzled at first by the timings in some cases, but once Viktor explained about the postal chess system, all became clear. There was an obvious correlation.'

‘It worked for information passing in the other direction also,' Stepanov added. ‘If the Comrade Director had intelligence that a particular Soviet agent or network in Paris might be threatened, I would encrypt this intelligence, using French notation and referring to f1 as the square for Paris; give the encryption to James if he was in Moscow, or send him a postcard if he was in London; and he would pass it on to his contact at the Embassy.'

He sat back and surveyed the room with satisfaction, a craftsman proudly demonstrating his work.

‘The most beautiful thing of all,' he concluded, ‘is how secure the system was. There was nothing anybody could suspect, no suspicious documents or photographs; and even if they suspected, there was nothing that could be proved, unless James was caught meeting with his contact in London. Even then, neither he nor I knew the information in any real detail.'