'You're telling me the truth,' Romella declared. 'That is so crackers that you couldn't make it up. Okay. First, the Venona files.' Findhorn opened his mouth, and Romella said, 'These are transcripts of Soviet secret messages covering 1940 to 1948. They tell me about three thousand of them were partially decrypted. I got copies of about a hundred relating to Los Alamos.'
'Do they mention Petrosian?'
'Maybe. We'll have to dig. Second, transcripts of FBI interrogations of scientists during the McCarthy era, especially those involved in the hydrogen bomb project. Petrosian included; they had a go at him more than once. And third, we have the FBI surveillance reports on Petrosian.'
Findhorn paused from his cooking. 'The Times' obituary claimed that Petrosian spied for the Russians.'
Romella patted the heap of papers in front of her. 'The trail to Petrosian's secret is somewhere in here, Fred, if it's anywhere. Some clue that will lead us there.'
The RV was now warm, and the air was light with Diorissimo and pesto. Findhorn popped a cork. The evening promised a heady mixture of spaghetti al pesto, Valpolicella and espionage, and who knew what else.
TOP SECRET UMBRA VENONA
NEW YORK/MOSCOW
YOUNG is currently in charge of a group at CAMP-2, and has handed Beck a report about present activities at the CAMP along with a list of the key personnel in ENORMOZ. There is still no indication of when FUNICULAR will be operational. Beck considers that it is almost impossible 88746 62354 76234 cultivate QUANTUM. CHARLES, QUANTUM and BILL OF EXCHANGE are travelling to PRESERVE and will meet with VOGEL and TINA.
ALEKSANDR
'Is that before or after decryption?' Findhorn wanted to know. He lifted a strand of spaghetti from the saucepan with a fork.
'Say you have a message. You look up the words in a codebook, a sort of dictionary which replaces each word by a four-figure number. Then you group all these numbers into sets of five. Then to each set of five you add another five-figure number which you take from a one-time pad. It can only be read by the guy at the other end holding the same one-time pad. The Russians kept each and every one-time pad under permanent armed guard. And because you use each page from the pad only once, the code is unbreakable.'
Findhorn gave a satisfied grunt. 'Al dente. But it was broken nevertheless.'
Romella was sipping red wine. Tartly. After a few thousand hours, a few million dollars and one or two nervous breakdowns.'
'How come?' Findhorn was using a fork and spoon to heap pasta onto plates.
'In late 1942, when the Russians were under pressure from the German invasion, somebody blundered. They duplicated the one-time pads. As soon as you do that you create patterns. It was just enough for some very clever people to get into parts of the messages. Another thing was that the Finns, who were fighting the Russians, overran a Soviet consulate in December 1941: The NKVD had to quit in a hurry and they left behind four codebooks which were only partially burned. One codebook was for diplomatic messages, one was for the NKVD — that's the old KGB — one for the GRU, that's Soviet Military Intelligence, and one for the Naval GRU. They sent the stuff to Sweden to avoid the risk of recapture. The Swedes were of course neutral but they knew damn well that if the Russians took Finland they'd be next in line. So the codebooks ended up in America.'
He spooned pesto sauce onto the plates and sprinkled parmigiano over it. 'So what's the significance of Venona?'
'To the Americans and the Brits? It was a dream come true. It gave a picture of the depth of penetration of the Soviet spy apparatus in every sort of place. It caught big spies like Klaus Fuchs, it uncovered the Cambridge Apostles like Philby, Burgess and McLean, and it electrocuted the Rosenbergs. And it caught hundreds of small fry worldwide.'
'Presumably the numbers here are bits of code that nobody has been able to break.'
Romella nodded with her mouth full. Then she said, 'You may be a human relations disaster, Fred, but you can cook. The names are cryptonyms, jargon used by the GRU and NKVD. Take "Charles". That refers to Klaus Fuchs. "Bill of Exchange" is Oppenheimer, "Camp-2" is Los Alamos and so on. The FBI gave me a list. So, the message translates to:
"Theodore Hall is currently in charge of a group at Los Alamos, and has handed Beck a report about present activities there along with a list of the key personnel in the Manhattan Project. There is still no indication of when the Bomb will be operational. Beck considers that it is almost impossible blah blah cultivate Quantum.
"Fuchs, Quantum and Oppenheimer are travelling to the Argonne Radiation Laboratory" — that's in Chicago — "and will meet with Vogel and Tina."'
'Who are "Quantum", "Vogel" and "Tina"?' Findhorn asked.
'Nobody knows. "Vogel" and "Tina" were a husband-and-wife spy team. "Vogel" was also known as "Pers".'
'That must narrow things down.'
'You can play detectives. It's like Jack the Ripper, about two dozen suspects and every one made to sound plausible. Some people named a physicist called Rudolf Peierls, apparently on the grounds that his wife Eugenia was Russian and they were friendly with Fuchs. MI5 took Peierls's security clearance away after the war. Unfortunately for the amateur detectives, the US gave Peierls the medal of freedom in 1947 and the UK gave him a knighthood in 1968, and the accusation was eventually shown to be ridiculous.'
Findhorn said, 'Okay, so we'll never know if Petrosian was a spy.'
Romella looked doubtful. 'I disagree. We have one big advantage over the FBI.'
'Haven't we just?' Findhorn said. He waited while Romella sucked up a long strand of spaghetti. Then she continued, 'Yes. If we can collate something in the diaries with something in the Venona files…'
'Let's go through them, match the dates with diary entries, and see if we can make a connection.'
Romella flicked through the FBI files with her free hand. 'It'll take for ever.'
Findhorn topped up her half-empty glass. 'We can get drunk while we're at it.'
The first connection came two hours later, in a short, cryptic message from Aleksandr, the New York rezident. By now, enveloped in the warm air of the RV, and with the gas still burning, drowsiness was beginning to overtake them. While Findhorn, propped up against a wall, read the FBI files, Romella was sprawled out on a couch, translating the Armenian text at the corresponding dates.
TOP SECRET UMBRA VENONA
NEW YORK/MOSCOW
On 14 January CHARLES, ANT, QUANTUM and spell Feynman endspell 28312 81241 49775 visited spell Kitty Cronin endspell 65324 76385 76349
automobile.
'Hey.' Findhorn was suddenly alert. 'Kitty Cronin.'
Romella sat up. She picked up the little blue 1943 diary and flicked to 14 January. She scanned the entry rapidly and her face lit up. 'Fred, listen to this:
Another of those rare days off.
Klaus, Dick and I had an early start. Met up at the East Gate and took off in Dick's car. He had some girl lined up in Santa Fe, who turned out to be a brassy blonde called Halina, terrific looker but utterly brainless. Klaus's sister Kristel was down from Cambridge. A thin, nervous sort of girl. Picked them both up near the Post Office, then up into the hills to collect Kitty.
Spent an exhausting day on Sawyer Hill, learning to ski. The brassy blonde surprised us all by being very good at it, although with a skirt that hardly covered her knees she must have been frozen to the bone.
In the evening, back to Kitty's, starving and frozen. She had a table made up for us. Cold roast chicken, plenty of wine, milk, bread and apples. Nectar! Later, Dick went off with the blonde, Klaus and his sister. The round trip must have used up his gas allowance for the month.