General Morozov stared back at him, his expression sombre and almost sad. ‘Of all the officers in my department, you are the last I would ever have suspected of treacherous activities. I always believed that I could rely upon you absolutely and unreservedly, but I suppose that just proves that nobody can ever be considered beyond suspicion.’
Zharkov shook his head wearily. ‘As I keep trying to explain to you, General, I have done nothing wrong. My loyalty to you and to the SVR has never wavered, and I’m wholly innocent of the ridiculous charge that I’m now facing.’
‘Don’t try and play the innocent with me, Zharkov!’ Morozov roared, his voice filling the interrogation room. ‘The evidence against you is overwhelming and unarguable. The two keys for the building and the apartment where you’d hidden that computer were found in your office, hidden in your own desk. Both keys had your fingerprints on them, and alongside the computer were found pens and pencils from which our technical staff have also recovered your fingerprints.’
‘But I tell you I’ve never been inside that apartment, and I have never seen that computer before. Or those keys, or anything else. Somebody is clearly attempting to frame me.’ Zharkov’s voice remained strong, but was now tinged with desperation. ‘Just look at that telephone number which Abramov found on a call diverter in the Lubyanka.’
‘It was the number of your own apartment,’ Morozov reminded him.
‘I know, and that’s the point. Why on earth would I reprogram a call diverter to dial my own number? It would be like waving a flag to admit my guilt straight away. But if somebody else wished to cast suspicion on me, it would be an obvious clue to plant. And why would I leave evidence as incriminating as those two keys in my own office, when I could just as easily hide them in my apartment or in my car — or anywhere else?’
Morozov glared at his subordinate. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘let us assume for the moment that you are an innocent victim of some complicated conspiracy. If that is the case, who is orchestrating it? And why? What could be their motive? And why have they picked on you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Zharkov replied desperately. ‘I have no idea who would want to do this to me. All I do know is that I’m innocent, entirely innocent, of these charges.’
General Morozov continued to stare at him, then dropped his eyes and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Zharkov, but this matter is now out of my hands. I have received my orders, and you are to be taken for interrogation to the Lubyanka. You will know, as well as I do, exactly what that means. If there was anything I could do to prevent that I would, but my orders are unequivocal.’
On the other side of the table, Colonel Zharkov turned white and began quivering with fear. ‘No, General. No, please… Please, anything but that.’
Morozov’s eyes hardened as he studied the terrified man in front of him. ‘Earlier today, Major Abramov said something interesting to me. He told me that when you began investigating the defection of Raya Kosov, you seemed very reluctant to even consider the allegations she had made about there being a traitor here at Yasenevo. He also claimed that you would only begin such an investigation if Kosov told the same story after you had her strapped to a table in the Lubyanka basement, with electrodes hitched to her genitals. It sounds to me as if you’re happy enough to inflict pain on a helpless subject, but have no stomach for enduring the same yourself. That is not an attractive trait in any man.’
Morozov pushed back his chair to stand up, then he walked over to the door and opened it.
‘He’s all yours,’ the general said to the two men waiting outside.
‘Now, before you wet yourself with excitement, Walters,’ Richard Simpson said, ‘there’s an urgent matter we need to discuss with Ms Kosov first.’ He switched his gaze to the Russian girl. ‘Richter has already told me that you knew of two people in the SIS who were regularly passing information to Moscow. We now know that Gerald Stanway was one of them, of course.’
‘Yes,’ Raya agreed. ‘The most prolific source we had in your SIS was code-named Gospodin. I checked his file, and found that one of the earliest entries was the initial contact report, which mentioned the name “Stanway”. He originally walked into our Paris embassy wearing a basic disguise, requested a meeting with one of the SVR officers there, then explained who he was and what he wanted. At first, they didn’t take him too seriously, but Moscow Centre assigned a case officer — an illegal — to handle him in London, and then assessed the value of the material he supplied them. They probably expected it to be low-grade rubbish or even disinformation, but then discovered that it was actually the real thing.’
‘When was that?’ Masterson asked. ‘When did Stanway make that approach?’
‘I was appointed Deputy Computer Network Manager at Yasenevo eight years ago,’ Raya replied, ‘and one of my first jobs in that position was to handle the material that source Gospodin had just started sending us. I remember that he was very prolific.’
‘Jesus wept,’ Walters muttered. ‘So that bastard has been working for the Russians for eight years. God knows how much information he’s betrayed in all that time.’
Raya smiled at him. ‘Luckily,’ she said, ‘I know exactly what he sent to Moscow.’
There was a short silence as the men sitting around the conference table absorbed this information. Then Simpson uttered a single word. ‘How?’
‘I was effectively running the Yasenevo network. I was creating directories, deciding on the encryption routines and protocols, and implementing the access level to be applied to every file. And, as I said before, I already knew, long before I arrived at Yasenevo, that one day I would be defecting to the West. So right from the start I made sure that I assembled a dowry which would interest either the British or the Americans. I put a very simple routine in place.
‘The files Gospodin supplied were in English, of course, and each was stored in encrypted form on our database, in the same language, together with a translation into Russian that we had prepared in-house, as well as a short summary of the file contents. Because they were your own files, I knew there would be no point in making a copy of any of those files to show you, so I simply recorded the name and reference number of every file that source Gospodin forwarded to Moscow. I have that list safely on my hard drive as well.’
Simpson shook his head. ‘Stanway, it seems, was the most damaging penetration we’ve ever faced,’ he said. ‘But thanks to you, Raya, at least we’ll soon know exactly what secrets he betrayed. And that’s one of the most important things you have done for us.’
Raya nodded and smiled. ‘It wasn’t only files from your SIS,’ she added. ‘A short time ago, I was instructed to create a new directory to handle some additional material from source Gospodin. These new files needed a brand-new directory because they came from a different organization, and the name I was told to give to that directory was Zakoulok.’ She paused and looked around expectantly.
Simpson looked blank. ‘I don’t speak the language,’ he said.
‘Zakoulok means “back alley” in Russian,’ Richter informed him, ‘but I don’t know if that’s significant, or even relevant.’
‘Oh, it’s relevant all right,’ Masterson said. ‘Zakoulok is a slang term used by the Russians, in some of their signals and cryptograms, to refer to the Foreign Office in Whitehall. The name refers to that arched courtyard entrance leading to the FCO off Downing Street. It seems Stanway must have decided to start ransacking the FCO files as well.’