Manhunt (8 page)

‘As the clerk has completely vanished, I don’t see how that can help,’ Stanway said.

‘It helps,’ Moore replied, ‘because the clerk has now reappeared, in Vienna, along with the rest of the papers.’

Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi Headquarters, Yasenevo, Tëplyystan, Moscow

Raya had always been conscientious in performing her duties, and invariably carried out to the letter all the procedures Abramov had specified for the security checks. One
of her tasks was to inspect the access record, since the last full security check, of any files bearing a classification of Top Secret or above.

She looked forward to this task because, as well as inspecting a file’s access history, it also gave her – as the network manager in all but name – the absolute right to look
at the contents of any file contained in the database. On every security check she’d carried out since she’d arrived at Yasenevo, what she’d done was not merely to inspect the
contents of these files, but also to make copies of them within another hidden directory she’d created. She also selected a handful of highly classified files every day, and stored copies of
these, too, in the same hidden directory. Most of these files were encrypted but that didn’t matter because, as network manager, she also had access to the encryption and decryption
routines.

But, despite this unrivalled access, the number of highly classified files was so great that she had never managed to find a real ‘gem’, though she believed that the
Gospodin
material, and now the new and rapidly filling
Zakoulok
directory, would prove of crucial importance later. This was not because of what the files themselves contained, but because of what
they could prove about the person who had sourced them.

During this latest check, she’d decided to carry out a database-wide search for any files containing English words. This produced a huge listing, and included even material dating back to
the glorious days of what were known as ‘The Apostles’ – those ideological traitors whose names were still revered in the corridors of the SVR: George Blake, Anthony Blunt,
Anthony Burgess, John Cairncross, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby.

The damage they had done to the British intelligence services had been quite literally incalculable, and the lack of trust engendered by their activities between Britain and America was almost
as damaging. While The Apostles were operational, almost no penetration operation mounted by either the British or the Americans against the Soviet Union had been successful, and on several
occasions they had even helped the KGB to prevent defections to the West. Possibly the classic example of that had been Constantin Volkhov, and that name was burned permanently into Raya’s
brain.

Raya studied the listing on the screen and decided to add another filter. Using the listing she’d already generated as a dataset, she eliminated all files that hadn’t been accessed
over the last six months. That more than halved the number originally displayed. Then she decided to approach the problem from the opposite direction, and she specified only those files, classified
Top Secret and above, which had since been accessed by Directorate heads. That reduced the listing to a mere eighteen files, and Raya decided to take a careful look at all of them.

All the file-directory specifications included the directory’s size, the number of files it contained, the overall classification and the original creation dates. Studying these, Raya
immediately noticed how one of the directories stood out, simply because it was so old.

Having been created over twenty years earlier, it had been classified Secret almost immediately. The security classification had been increased to Top Secret about six months after the directory
had been created, but this was not unusual; quite often later material obtained by an agent was more sensitive and important than the earlier information, so the file or directory classification
had to be increased accordingly.

But, apart from its age, there were two other unusual features of the
Zagadka
– meaning ‘Enigma’ – directory. First, its classification had remained Top Secret;
and normally, as the information contained became older, it became inevitably less critical, so the security level would be downgraded by at least one or two classifications, sometimes even
more.

The second peculiarity was that, although new files had been added to the directory at frequent intervals during the fifteen years after
Zagadka
had been created, no new files had been
added for the last five years. This suggested that the source was dead, or had been burned, or for some other reason had ceased acting as an asset for the SVR. But that made a nonsense of the
directory’s access record, for most of the Directorate heads at Yasenevo looked through the directory at least once every month – but why would a busy SVR desk officer waste time
looking at information that must be at least five years out of date?

But then Raya noticed something else. Although no
new
files had been added to the
Zagadka
directory for some years, one file, named ‘Appreciation’, was still being
updated on a regular basis – sometimes as often as once a week. She double-clicked on the file to open it, read through the first page, then closed the file again and sat back in her
seat.

Suddenly she knew something that she’d previously only suspected. And she also realized in that instant, that she was going to have to be extremely careful, because what was contained in
the ‘Appreciation’ file changed everything.

Hammersmith, London

Richter emerged from the building in Hammersmith just after two-thirty, grasping a locked and almost empty briefcase in his left hand and with his stomach rumbling.
Neither Simpson nor anyone else had offered him lunch, or anything else to eat, and the one cup of coffee provided had been so lukewarm and tasteless that he had had no difficulty at all in
refusing a second cup.

He glanced briefly at his watch and immediately rejected any idea of returning to Whitehall and the Old Admiralty Building where there was in any case nothing waiting for him but an empty
office. He set off in the general direction of central London, until he found a pub offering all-day food, walked in and ordered a plate of chilli. That was now ‘off’, according to the
blonde barmaid, who was anorexic almost to the point of starvation but still possessed a pair of the largest breasts Richter had ever seen, so he settled for an alleged Cornish pasty – but
which had obviously begun its life somewhere well to the east of Slough – and some slightly soggy chips. But the coffee was good enough for him to order a second cup, and his hunger had
subsided by the time he finally stepped out onto the pavement and looked hopefully up and down the street.

There were no taxis in sight, but the day was fine, so he decided to walk to the closest tube station. Ninety minutes later found him stepping off the train at Uxbridge station, for a short walk
to the local RAF station, which was one of the many non-flying Royal Air Force establishments dotted around Britain. Not for nothing, he reflected, were RAF personnel sometimes known dismissively
as ‘penguins’, because only about one in a million of them actually flew.

Back in his room, Richter put the briefcase on the desk and used the key Simpson had given him to unlock it. Inside was a Nokia GSM mobile phone and charger, plus a two-pin continental adapter,
two typewritten pages of briefing notes, and a sealed A4-size manila envelope containing the diplomatic passport Simpson had promised him. Also a single economy-class ticket from Heathrow to
Vienna, one thousand euros in cash, split into fifty- and one-hundred euro notes, and a gold Visa card which he’d already signed.

There was also a carbon copy of a sheet of paper signed by Richter and countersigned by Simpson, which listed every item contained in the briefcase, including the Visa card number and the
numbers of each of the euro notes, and even details of the briefcase itself. Simpson had also made it clear that Richter was expected to return all of those items except the cash, and he had been
instructed to produce receipts for everything he purchased and for every euro and cent he spent. That, in fact, was precisely what Richter would expect, because all government departments and
employees worked in more or less the same way, and such an excessive concentration on completely unimportant minutiae was typical of the breed.

He’d already read through the briefing sheets at Hammersmith but before he went downstairs to have an early meal in the dining room he decided to look through them again. He’d given
no hint of it while he’d been at Hammersmith, but he was reasonably certain that there must be a lot that both Simpson and Gibson – or whatever his real name was – had so far
neglected to tell him.

As he’d informed Gibson, the briefing had been clear enough; but it just didn’t make any sense. What Simpson had explained to him subsequently had clarified matters considerably, but
Richter hadn’t really bought that ‘defector running across Europe’ story. What was clear was that Simpson’s organization needed somebody on the ground in Austria,
Switzerland or France, for a week or so, but whether he would actually be contacted by somebody, or whether there was some other reason for his presence there, he had no idea.

What he did know was that he was going to be watching his back carefully, from the moment he climbed out of that British Airways flight in Vienna.

Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London

Sir Malcolm Holbeche rang Simpson a little before six-thirty that afternoon.

‘How did it go?’ Simpson asked him. ‘I presume there was no problem getting Moscow to play ball?’

‘None at all,’ Holbeche replied. ‘The origin of any enquiry made to the Holy of Holies there’ – he was using the term applied to the section of a British embassy
which is occupied by SIS personnel – ‘will be logged and the defecting clerk story will be confirmed.’

‘And at this end?’ Simpson enquired.

‘As expected, nobody showed anything other than purely professional interest.’

‘What about the other places?’ By ‘other places’, Simpson meant GCHQ and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where very similar briefings had been given that
afternoon.

‘No unusual response received from Cheltenham, and I’m still waiting for the FCO. They’re late, as usual.’

‘I’m not surprised at that reaction,’ Simpson said. ‘We’re dealing with a professional here, and he’s not going to jump up and down in hysterics just because
some Russian clerk might be able to finger him.’

‘Quite,’ Holbeche replied. ‘But at least the hare is running.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Simpson agreed, ‘the hare is definitely running.’

Wednesday

Vienna, Austria

His instructions had been perfectly clear and unambiguous, and the moment he cleared passport control, which was a mere formality thanks to the diplomatic passport he was
carrying, Richter began ignoring them.

He had been told to collect a pre-booked hire car from Hertz at the airport, proceed to a street in Vienna, and collect the package from an address there. Instead, Richter checked in his
overnight bag at the airport left-luggage section, and walked out of the terminal building carrying just the briefcase. He stood beside the taxi rank for a few minutes, studying a map of Vienna
while waiting for the first half dozen cabs to leave, and then took the next available taxi to a location about two streets away from the address he’d been provided with, in the Josefstadt
district in west-central Vienna.

Once there, he paid off the driver, made his way on foot to the street where the house was located, and walked a short way along to a cafe. He chose the seat offering the best view of the
property, ordered a coffee and a pastry, spread a German-language newspaper out on the table in front of him, then settled down to watch.

Forty-five minutes later, he had learned precisely nothing. Nobody had entered or left the premises, and he’d seen no sign whatsoever of any activity inside. Not for the first time,
Richter wondered if he was maybe just being stupid or paranoid, or both. As far as he could see, about all he could do at this stage was exactly what it said in his briefing instructions, which was
to walk up to the front door of the house, show his passport, and collect the package.

Richter paid the bill, leaving the newspaper where it was, then stood up and walked away from the cafe. He strode past the house on the opposite side of the road, checking it out as closely as
he could without making it too obvious, then crossed the street and headed back towards it. Two minutes later, he was ringing the bell beside the front door.

Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi Headquarters, Yasenevo, Tëplyystan, Moscow

Raya Kosov stood up, pushing her swivel chair back from the desk, and walked over to the window. The view to the north, over the treetops and towards the centre of Moscow,
no longer held her interest the way it once had. Her mind was racing as she thought again about what she’d read on the computer screen, and about the implications of the contents of that
single file.

But she was committed now. The measures she’d taken already meant that her future course of action was predetermined. She had no choice in that, no choice at all apart from the actual
timing. And really, she acknowledged silently, she had few options in that either. She had always known she would have to be careful, but what she’d seen in the file named
‘Appreciation’ meant she’d now have to take extreme care. And when she moved, she was going to have to move fast.

The other thing Raya realized was that she would have to forget part of her original plan – the bit she had been thinking of as phase two – and work out a completely different
approach to that part of the problem. She should have no trouble achieving this, not least because she had the best of all possible motives. For if she failed, she would be killed, and probably
killed very slowly and painfully. What she’d read in the Philby file, almost ten years earlier, still haunted her, and ever since then her private, silent mantra had been a simple two-word
chant: ‘Remember Volkhov’.