Abramov was out of the office until Monday, and the report, stamped Sekretno at the top and bottom of every page, was securely inside his locked safe. He’d given Raya the combination weeks earlier, which broke SVR rules, but Abramov had decided it was worth taking this risk because he was depending more and more on his subordinate, and was out of the office so frequently.
When she’d put the report inside Abramov’s safe, Raya had also removed a key. As network manager, the major was required to hold a master key that would open every office door in the building, even those of the most senior staff officers, just in case some kind of a computer problem required one particular workstation to be switched on — or off — when the occupant of that office was away from the building.
She’d also taken another voucher for an airline ticket, applied Abramov’s official stamp to it and scrawled a reasonable facsimile of the major’s signature across the bottom. But the destination she had inserted on this voucher wasn’t Minsk, or indeed anywhere else in the Confederation of Independent States.
Back in her own office, she’d locked the door, opened a small program on her computer — a program she’d written herself — and then used it to dial a Moscow number. The moment the call connected, her program gave her access to the call diverter she’d been using to transfer files to her own computer, a small but quite powerful laptop tucked away in a corner of the bedroom in her own apartment. First, she permanently deleted all the call records held in the diverter, then she looked up a number on the Yasenevo database and copied that to the call diverter. Then she deleted that number as well, but ensured it remained in the diverter’s log, and inserted a different Moscow number. She wouldn’t be calling the device again, and doubted if anyone else would, but when the call diverter was discovered, as she knew it would be, it wouldn’t take an SVR technician long to identify both the number it was set to dial and the previous number as well. In fact that was an essential part of her plan.
When she’d originally worked out how she was going to accumulate her ‘dowry’ for the defection, she’d decided to keep things as simple as possible. It seemed to her almost poetic to be able to use the same hardware mechanism to both copy the files she wanted, and also to fatally implicate her target.
That had been the easy bit. The next thing would be much more difficult, but she knew she had to do it, and as soon as possible, because the clock was already ticking. She first looked at her watch, then accessed the master workstation record on her computer. That listed the time when every user on the network logged on and off each day. She scrolled through a number of pages, but paused for a few extra moments on one in particular, just long enough to check a single entry, then she returned to her home page.
Raya stood up and opened the top drawer of an unlocked filing cabinet standing against one wall. From there she took a zipped pouch containing an electronic technician’s toolkit that included screwdrivers, pliers, chip extractors, earthing wristband, assorted screws and other bits and pieces. She also removed a small cardboard box that held a dozen or so anti-static envelopes containing RAM chips of various types, since there were several different computer models, with different motherboards and memory slots, attached to the SVR network. She put both into a briefcase and moved back to her desk.
Raya opened one of the drawers and took out an unopened box of pencils, another of ballpoint pens, a pair of scissors, and a new reel of clear sticky tape, and slid them all into the pockets inside her briefcase. Then she took out a box of medical plasters, selected two short ones, and stuck one on the end of her right forefinger and the other on her right thumb. The last item she selected was a small rubber bulb with a fine brush attached: it looked almost as if it could be an item of make-up, but it wasn’t.
Finally, she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out two different Yale-type keys, each wrapped in tissue paper. She had prepared these the previous evening by scrubbing them in a strong solution of the most powerful cleaning fluid she could find, and then boiling them in a pan on her stove. She’d repeated the process three times and, at the end of it, she was as sure as she could be that no trace of her fingerprints remained. She checked that the tissue paper still covered them completely, then replaced the keys in her pocket.
She made a final check that she now had everything she needed, opened her office door and stepped out into the corridor, locked the door behind her and strode off, towards the SVR senior officers’ floor.
The mobile rang just after Richter had ordered a second coffee.
‘Yes?’
‘Right,’ Simpson said, ‘grab a pencil and write this down.’
‘Hang on.’ Richter opened the briefcase and pulled out a notebook and ballpoint pen. ‘OK, fire away.’
‘We need you to get to Ax-les-Thermes as soon as possible, and certainly no later than this afternoon.’
‘And where is this place, exactly? I presume it’s somewhere in France?’
‘It’s about an hour south of Toulouse, on the N20.’
Richter did some swift mental calculations. It would be a six- or seven-hour drive, he guessed, and offered no problem unless he hit unusually heavy traffic or experienced some kind of mechanical difficulty with the car.
‘And when I get there?’ he asked.
‘The same routine, Richter. Go to the Hostellerie de la Poste and book in there for two nights. This time that is where you’re going to be staying because if this is going to work at all, I need to know exactly where you are. Use the name Markov for the booking and, if anyone asks, you’re a Russian on holiday in France. So talk to the people at the hotel in schoolboy French, or in Russian. If you have to speak English, make sure you put on a heavy accent. You really do speak Russian, don’t you?’
‘Yes, and I suppose that’s also why the papers I collected in Vienna have Sekretno stamped all over them?’
‘You opened the packet,’ Simpson said flatly.
‘Of course I opened the packet. And if it had been full of drugs, or something I didn’t like the look of, I’d have dumped it in Austria, orders or no orders. I like to know what I’m carrying, Simpson.’
‘Your reporting officers were right, Richter. You are an insubordinate bastard. But I presume you’ve no scruples about carrying Russian documents classified Secret?’
‘No, because I’ve already read them. Technically, they may be classified at that level, but there’s almost nothing we don’t already know about the Victor III, and there’s certainly nothing contained there that was news to me. Don’t forget I was an ASW Sea King pilot until I saw the light and switched to Harriers, and in the Navy we were required to know exactly what the opposition’s capabilities were.’
‘Right,’ Simpson sounded almost resigned, ‘apart from the extract from the Victor manual, there should also have been a smaller envelope in that packet. I presume you opened that as well?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why am I not surprised? Inside it you should have found a briefing paper about the SVR — which is the Russian foreign intelligence service.’
‘I do know what the initials stand for,’ Richter replied. ‘And there was also a small plastic card with my photograph on it. What’s that for?’