‘In which case,’ Holbeche finished it for him, ‘we’re not looking at a new security breach. This bastard could have been sending stuff to Moscow for months, or perhaps years.’
There was a silence on the line as both men absorbed the implications of this suggestion.
Simpson roused himself first. ‘It’s circumstantial, of course,’ he said, ‘but it does seem to hold together. And, until something breaks, there’s not a great deal we can do. I would suggest tasking GCHQ with tackling that cipher, though if they’ve had no success so far, that’s probably a waste of time. But it might be instructive to find out when this particular cipher was first used because, if our guess is correct, that could give us an indication of the scale of the breach.’
‘I’ll ask Cheltenham to check the logs and provide us with a breakdown,’ Holbeche concurred.
‘Good. Perhaps the reason the System-Three directory structure was being sent as hard copy to Yasenevo by courier was because it might have been too difficult to convert it into a format that could be sent in signal form.’
‘You could be right and, in that case, we’ve been incredibly lucky. If that Russian hadn’t collapsed, we might never even have known about the mole.’
‘Exactly,’ Simpson added. ‘I would love to find out for sure if that single message this morning was a request to Moscow Centre for confirmation that some SVR clerk actually has skipped.’
‘So would I, Simpson. So would I,’ Holbeche replied, before ending the call.
Andrew Lomas wasn’t worried, but he was definitely concerned, for Stanway was getting decidedly jittery. That was proved by the emergency summons to the meet in the Indian restaurant, one of five emergency rendezvous places and times indicated by different types of chalk mark scribbled on the church wall.
When he had first started working with Stanway, the Englishman had appeared surprised at Lomas suggesting they indicate their meeting places by means of chalk marks or similarly archaic devices. What was wrong, he had asked, with using pagers, mobile phones or even call boxes?
Lomas had been firm, however, since his training in Moscow had been thorough and specific. The problem with using any telephone, whether fixed or mobile, was that with the right equipment the call could be monitored and both the calling and contacted numbers identified. Besides, as a matter of routine, the Security Service monitored all the public telephones located close to Vauxhall Cross and to most of the other buildings occupied by sections of the British intelligence establishment, as well as the phones adjacent to all the foreign embassies.
That was a ‘just in case’ precaution based on the somewhat tenuous assumption that any British intelligence officer wishing to pass classified information to a foreign power would simply nip out of Vauxhall Cross during his lunch break and call the appropriate embassy from a phone box on the street nearby. And although this blanket surveillance had so far never led to the detection of any serious breach of security, there was some logic to it; for anyone wishing to make a call without being overheard would tend to opt for a public phone, and a phone box that was conveniently located.
But Lomas had firmly refused to let Stanway make any routine contact by telephone, and had insisted that he learn and use the simple codes that Lomas had devised. And, as a result, for years their contact had remained almost entirely impersonal. Stanway would deposit the USB drive, containing the files he had copied, in a dead letter box; Lomas would collect it and replace it with a blank drive. And about once every three or four months the two men would meet, but always briefly and always a long way from home.
Of course, Lomas could understand why his contact was now concerned. If some clerk genuinely had run from Yasenevo carrying documents that could identify Stanway, it was a potential disaster. But Lomas was reasonably sure that if such an event had occurred, Moscow Centre would have already told him about it. That left the possibility — or perhaps even the probability — that it was some sort of operation being run by MI5 to flush out a suspected traitor.
He had contacted the Russian Embassy in London as soon as possible after leaving the Indian restaurant, requesting a thorough check. And the response he’d received by encrypted email in the early hours of the morning had puzzled him. The decoded message read:
No defection reported. Assume ‘missing clerk’ story bogus. Immediate action: Advise source Gospodin no news. Follow-up action: none. Await decision on further response from Moscow Centre.
It was the final sentence that had puzzled Lomas. If there was no defecting clerk and the whole story was just a device, then Stanway was perfectly safe. Of course, he would have to curb his activities for a while, at least until the witch-hunt had died down. So what other possible ‘further response’ were the wheels at Yasenevo considering?
By mid-afternoon, Richter had reached Geneva. In fact, he’d driven through the city and out the other side on to the A40 autoroute, entering France in the process, but he’d only driven as far as the first junction. There he’d turned north off the autoroute, and had stopped at a small town called Bons-en-Chablais. It was only about fifteen miles outside Geneva, so he knew he could easily reach the city centre within about an hour. That should be close enough for whatever Simpson had in mind.
He’d already filled the Ford’s tank at a garage, in preparation for whatever the morrow might bring, and had tried three hotels before settling on a small Logis de France establishment more or less in the centre of the town. It had lockable garages, an attractive dining room and only eight bedrooms.
Once he’d unpacked his meagre possessions, Richter reserved a table for one in the dining room at eight that evening, purchased a café alongé — straightforward black coffee — in the bar, and took it outside to one of the tables overlooking the small square where the hotel was located. Only then did he call Simpson on his mobile.
‘I’m in Geneva, or near enough,’ he said. ‘Any news for me?’
‘What do you mean by “near enough”?’
‘I’m about fifteen miles from the centre of the city, but I’m actually in a small town just over the Swiss border, in France.’
‘What’s its name?’
‘Does that matter?’
‘No, I suppose not,’ Simpson said, recognizing Richter’s reluctance to divulge his exact location. However, as long as his mobile phone was switched on, Simpson knew he’d be able to pinpoint Richter’s position to within a few yards by triangulation, using the cells the phone was in contact with. Always assuming, of course, that he could persuade the Frogs to play ball, and that was never a foregone conclusion. ‘We’ve still no news, so leave your mobile switched on, and be prepared to move at very short notice.’
‘Right.’ Richter ended the call and settled back in his seat to enjoy the coffee and to watch whatever activity there was in the square.
‘That’s it,’ David Adamson said, looking up from the map, and pointed to the right just as Colin Redmond Dekker steered the French-plated Renault Laguna over the narrow stone bridge at the southern end of the town of Cahors. The bridge spanned the River Lot, and perhaps a quarter of a mile along it, on the south bank, was a small hotel.