The data she could supply, because of her privileged access at Yasenevo, should be enough to ensure her acceptance by the SIS. The rules governing the use of the database at Yasenevo were broadly similar to those applied to any other databases containing classified information. All users had to be authorized by a superior officer, and were then allowed access to only certain areas of the database, and to such files as their duties required. Every time they logged on, each user had to enter a username and password, and then the access record attached to each file they consulted would record their name and rank, the date and time the file was opened and closed, and any additions, amendments or deletions they made to that file. Besides, copying and deletion of any files classified Secret and above required separate and specific authorization.
What all systems of this type required was a network manager; somebody with overall global authority to carry out what are normally termed housekeeping duties. These included such diverse tasks as maintaining lists of authorized users, checking users’ passwords to ensure they complied with the system rules, altering the security classification of files, creating directories, moving files from one directory to another, and archiving files that were no longer considered to be current. But the essential point was that the network manager saw everything, knew everything, and could do everything. For if he or she didn’t, the system wouldn’t work.
That, in one way, was the strength of the system, but it was also, of course, its weakness. As long as the network manager was competent, motivated, and loyal to the organization, everything would be fine. But when a network manager was competent but disloyal, the whole system stood in jeopardy. Raya Kosov herself was extremely competent and highly motivated, but also completely and utterly disloyal.
Most traitors — and Raya Kosov had no illusions about how she would be viewed once her permanent absence was discovered by the SVR — would betray their country for one of three reasons.
The most dangerous were the ideological traitors. These were people motivated by a belief that the system of government in their own country was immoral, corrupt or otherwise flawed and who, rather than trying to change the system openly and legally, instead transmitted intelligence data to another nation that they did approve of. The Apostles were, for many, the classic example.
It was one of the ironies of history that most ideological traitors, like The Apostles themselves, had obtained their perception of the idyllic nature of that chosen country by looking at it through the rose-tinted spectacles of youth. In most cases, they had never even visited the place, to confirm that their perception bore the slightest relation to reality. It was interesting that when Blake, Philby and others finally escaped to the ‘Workers’ Paradise’, as they saw it, of Russia, all the evidence suggested that they loathed it. Anthony Blunt, of course, didn’t even have the courage to move to Russia, but remained in the deeply flawed country of his birth which he had tried so hard to destroy, despite the intellectual pain this must have caused him. Cairncross fled to France.
Such ideological traitors are dangerous mainly because they are so difficult to detect, and conventional counter-espionage techniques are frequently useless against them. There was no point, for example, in checking an individual’s past history to determine if he has ever been to Russia or any another Communist state, where he could have been tainted or turned, because many such traitors never experienced any direct contact with the regime they had decided to serve. Recruitment frequently occurred at an early age, usually at university, and the individual might then refrain from engaging in any treacherous activity for years, doing nothing until well established in government service.
In the second category belong the mercenary traitors, who would sell out their country for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver, although with appropriate allowances for inflation. Aldrich Ames, who had worked for the CIA and the SVR simultaneously, received almost five million dollars in return for the secrets he betrayed to the Russians. Ames should have been detected long before he eventually was, because for so many years he and his wife had lived a blatantly opulent lifestyle that his CIA salary was incapable of supporting.
The third category was perhaps the saddest of alclass="underline" the compromised traitors. These were weak and sad individuals harbouring a secret, very often a secret vice, which they will do anything to keep secret — including betraying their own country. Before it lost some of its stigma, many of these were homosexuals who had suffered entrapment by KGB ‘quiet ones’ or ‘Ravens’. Just like heterosexual Ravens, these men were highly trained in the art of seduction, and lured their victims into specially prepared bedrooms, where KGB officers wielding cameras were waiting behind one-way mirrors to record the encounter. Of these targets, perhaps the best-known example was John Vassal, the Admiralty traitor.
But there was a fourth possible motive for a person’s treachery, and it was almost as dangerous as ideology. Raya Kosov was driven by one of the oldest of human emotions, revenge. She had a score to settle with one particular man, and for her the entire organization known as the SVR provided a convenient tool that she was now preparing to use in exacting her long-delayed vengeance.
Ninety minutes after picking up the parcel, Richter was sitting behind the wheel of a left-hand-drive Ford Focus with Austrian number plates which he’d hired from an Avis office, rather than Hertz, in central Vienna. He was currently doing a steady one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour along the A2 autoroute leading south out of the city, and heading in the general direction of Graz. In the glovebox was an insurance certificate valid for the whole of Europe, and a one-way hire agreement covering a period of two weeks. The car could be left at any branch of Avis throughout Europe, and in the boot was his overnight bag, which he had driven back to the airport to pick up.
Richter was almost disappointed by the ease with which he had collected the parcel and made his way out of the city. He was still consciously watching his back, but so far had spotted absolutely nothing untoward, and nobody appeared to be taking the slightest interest in him or what he was doing. That didn’t, he reflected, mean that he was wrong in his wariness. It probably just meant that he hadn’t yet got far enough along the route specified by Simpson for his activities to become of interest to anyone.
After putting a reasonable distance behind him, he pulled into a service area just north of Wiener Neustadt. There, he found a quiet corner of the car park, slotted the Ford into a vacant space and switched off the engine. There were two things he wanted to check before driving any further: the first was the route that Simpson had been most insistent he follow, and which Richter was equally determined to avoid, as far as he possibly could; and the second was the sealed package itself.
He snapped open the briefcase and pulled out the typed briefing sheets which, to his slight surprise, Simpson hadn’t ordered him to memorize and then destroy. In fact they only contained details of the route and a couple of telephone numbers, so, as far as Richter could see, there was nothing contained in them that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as classified information.
The route was simple enough. Richter was instructed to follow the A21 autoroute westwards out of Vienna, then to pick up the A1 near Maria Anzbach and stay on that, crossing into Germany beyond Salzburg. Then he was to proceed via Munich, entering France at Strasbourg, and turn south-west to Lyon and on to Toulouse. But he had followed this route for the shortest distance possible, by deliberately ignoring the A21 turning and continuing along the A2.
He opened the glovebox and hauled out the route map that Avis had supplied him with, then worked out a new route that would take him down to Toulouse via Italy and Switzerland. Unfortunately, the only part of Europe to be shown in any detail was Austria, while the remainder of the continent was shown merely as a planning aid. Richter made a mental note to buy himself a detailed whole-of-Europe route map from the service station before he drove on.