Zharkov sneered at him from across the desk. ‘And have you succeeded yet, Major?’ he asked.
Abramov shook his head. ‘She hasn’t used any of the standard codes we’re authorized to use. It must be one she’s developed herself.’
‘So you say, Major. So you say. Or maybe there’s a much simpler explanation? Perhaps you don’t want to decipher the message because you already know what it will say. It will tell you that your treacherous colleague has evaded capture in Italy, and that the way is now clear for you to join her.’
‘Look, Colonel,’ Abramov said, his voice cracking under the fear and stress, ‘I have no idea why Raya Kosov fled from Russia but, whatever her reasons, it was nothing to do with me. I have no idea, either, why she sent me this email, and I’m as keen to see the contents of it as you are. But she hasn’t used a code that I recognize, so she must have left something on her desk, or in her office — some clue that would allow me to decrypt it.’
‘Like what?’ Zharkov demanded.
‘I don’t know. Maybe a memory stick, a CD or DVD disk, or even a handwritten note — something like that.’
‘Wait here.’ Zharkov crossed to the door and walked out into the corridor, locking Abramov’s office door behind him. He was back in less than ten minutes, holding a plastic bag in his hand.
‘This was everything I could find,’ he explained, dropping the bag on the desk in front of the major.
Abramov upended it and picked through the contents. There were several notepads, half a dozen CDs, and one memory stick labelled ‘utilities’. All but two of the CDs could be ignored, because they were genuine program-installation disks, meaning no additional data could be burnt onto them. Abramov inserted the first of the other two CDs into his desktop computer and checked the contents, but could spot nothing that looked unusual. The second CD contained a handful of utility programs. However, as soon as he inserted the memory stick, he saw that there was only a single file on it, entitled ‘decrypt’.
Abramov gestured to Zharkov and pointed out the file.
‘I’m guessing that could be it,’ he said, some of his normal confidence returning now that he felt there might be some explanation, some reason for what had happened, contained in the encrypted email. ‘Could you witness what I’m about to do?’
Zharkov pulled his chair around to the other side of the desk, and sat down beside him.
Abramov next opened the file and inspected the contents. It was a plaintext file, headed by a couple of lines of writing which Abramov read out loud.
‘“Yuri. I’m really sorry for what’s happened, but I had my reasons for doing it. When you decrypt that email, I promise you’ll understand. Raya.”’
Abramov paused and gazed at Zharkov. ‘I don’t think that makes me sound like her accomplice, does it?’ he asked.
Zharkov shrugged. ‘Just camouflage, perhaps. Now sort out that email.’
Abramov studied the remaining text of the message. The second part consisted merely of the name of one of the standard encryption/decryption programs that the section used, plus a random string of characters.
‘That must be the code she used,’ Abramov said, copying it and opening the correct program. He pasted the character string into the ‘decode string’ field, and then ran the email through the opened program.
This time the result was very different because, instead of the routine generating a stream of random characters, some clear text appeared on the screen, and both men leant forward eagerly to read it.
‘Is all that clear?’ Richard Simpson asked.
Richter nodded. ‘Yuri wants the pick-up to take place somewhere in or near Genoa tonight, so I need to get on the road soonest,’ he said. ‘He’s given us his mobile number, and I’m to text him on that once I’ve crossed the Italian border. He’ll then text me the location for the meet itself.’
‘Right,’ Simpson nodded agreement. ‘The techies at Vauxhall Cross have checked the number, and discovered it’s a cheap pay-as-you-go mobile, bought in Rome yesterday. It’s also switched off at the moment, and has been ever since Yuri’s email arrived at Legoland.’
‘Legoland? What are you talking about?’
‘Vauxhall Cross, SIS headquarters. If you’d ever been inside the building, you’d know exactly why some wit bestowed that nickname on the place. It’s got a lot of other names as well.’
‘I’ll bet it has. And you’re sure that this guy is for real, are you? I mean, it’s not just the Russians yanking your chain for some reason, maybe running some kind of deception operation against the SIS? Or maybe even the Italian secret service, whatever it’s called, having a go at you?’
‘Absolutely not.’ Simpson shook his head. ‘The Italians don’t have either the balls or the ability to mount something like this. The data that Yuri sent us had to have been culled direct from the SIS personnel files, and that means there’s been a deep and serious penetration of the Service. I’ve already checked with Vauxhall Cross, and Stanway was in an ideal position to supply that kind of data, so — at least at this stage of investigating his treachery — we’re quite satisfied that he was the source of the leak. And we also believe Yuri is exactly who he says he is.’
‘Which is what?’
‘He’s one of the network managers at SVR headquarters at Yasenevo, where you were pretending to have worked. That means he’s had unrivalled access to virtually the entire database of the SVR.’
‘And that’s why you want him?’
Simpson nodded again. ‘That’s why we want him.’
‘Anything else?’
Simpson paused a few seconds before he replied. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly, ‘I told you to hang on to that Browning pistol you took off Stanway, because I think you’re going to need it. The moment Vauxhall Cross received Yuri’s first email from a cyber cafe in Rome, the SIS staff in the embassy there were ordered to a higher alert state and instructed to start watching the Russian Embassy and its staff. They weren’t told why, only that a “person of interest” had arrived in Rome, and that the Russians would be trying to find him.’
He paused again for a moment, apparently considering his next words. ‘Let me explain something about the way intelligence services operate. Every service watches its rivals very closely, so in London every person who enters the Russian Embassy is photographed by a team of watchers, low-level surveillance specialists, employed by MI5. That’s just in case some brainless British politician, and that means most of them, or a member of the SIS, or anyone else with access to sensitive information, decides it’s a good time to visit the Russians to offer his or her services to the opposition in exchange for large handfuls of folding money.
‘And we do exactly the same everywhere else. The only difference is that in Rome the Russian Embassy has to be watched by SIS surveillance officers, not people from MI5, because the Security Service has no remit to operate outside the United Kingdom. Besides, in Rome they’re likely to find their cameras being jostled by watchers employed by the Italian government and the Americans and the Germans and the Israelis, and God knows who else.
‘Anyway, the point is that a couple of hours before Yuri sent his email, our people in Rome had already noticed a sudden flurry of activity at the Russian Embassy. Just about every car they have was suddenly sent out of the place, each one with two or three on board. The SIS people were caught slightly on the hop, and only had a couple of mobile units immediately available. Each of these units latched on to one of the Russian cars, and followed it. One went to the airport and the other to Rome’s main railway station, and in both cases the occupants jumped out to start watching the arriving passengers. Each was carrying a sheet of paper with a photograph on it, but none of our watchers could get close enough to take a satisfactory look.’