“Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” Stone said. “Particularly on such short notice. Shall we start?” Stone continued without waiting for an answer. “How much do you know about the Sukhoi-58?”
“The aircraft?” Cousins said. “Don’t you mean the Su-57? The one the Russians are building with the Indians?”
“Were building,” Stone corrected. “The Indians pulled out and the Russians mothballed it—officially, at least.”
“But the 58?”
“Sukhoi has been working on two fighters. The Su-57 is the one that has been publicly acknowledged. Knowledge of the Su-58 has been restricted. We’ve only heard rumours up until now.” Stone turned to the others. “I’m assuming no one else knows anything about it?”
“Nothing at all,” the foreign secretary said. Control thought that ignorance was always a safe assumption where Younger was concerned.
“I can give you a short summary, Foreign Secretary,” Stone said diplomatically. “The aircraft has been given the NATO designation ‘Factor.’ The Russians have known for years that they’ve got nothing in the skies that can get close to the Americans’ fifth-generation fighters. It appears that Putin has decided that that state of affairs must be reversed, and has authorised a multi-billion-rouble design program that is much, much farther along than we thought it was. Our understanding from previous intelligence is that the Factor is a single-seat, twin-engine multirole fighter designed exclusively for air superiority and attack operations. The aircraft is stealth equipped with best-in-class front, side and rear radar. Thrust vectoring control, a top speed exceeding Mach 2.5 and advanced supermanoeuvrability. It will carry an extensive payload including air-to-air, air-to-surface and anti-ship missiles.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, sir, that it will immediately be the most advanced fighter in the world. It will be more than a match for the F-22 and F-35. The assessment has always been that if the rumours were correct, the jump from the F-35 to the Su-58 would be about the same as the jump from the Tornado to the Lightning. Night and day.”
Cousins shook his head. “Why didn’t we know more about this?”
“No one knew,” Stone said. “They’ve played it very cleverly. The focus was on the Su-57. They let us gloat when they pulled the plug on it, but it was just misdirection. The real work was in Komsomolsk. We knew they’d built two new factories in the Russian Far East. We thought they were to handle the mass production of the Su-57. We were wrong.”
The foreign secretary knocked his knuckles against the table in a show of annoyance. “Might have been helpful to have had a little more intelligence before we paid the Americans £2.5 billion for fifty Lightnings, together with spending another half a billion at Marham so that we can fly the bloody things.”
“Yes,” Stone said. “That would have been wonderful, but I’m afraid they played us. Credit where credit is due. It’s been an impressive counter-intelligence operation.”
The atmosphere in the room had chilled. Control knew why: this kind of revelation would cause problems in lots of different departments and agencies, and the attendees were already working out how to deflect the blame and whom to scapegoat.
“What does this have to do with us?” Control said.
Stone steepled his fingers. “The Russians have been flawless so far, but we may have enjoyed a stroke of good fortune. We came into possession of this document on Sunday evening.”
Control, Younger, Cousins and Bloom leaned forward as the chief took a manila envelope from a sealed plastic document pouch. Stone slid his fingers inside and drew out two pieces of paper, which he placed on the table. The others stood up and leaned in so that they could see them. Control looked down at the documents: the first was an email and the second was a photograph of a schematic. It looked like part of a military jet.
“What is this?” Younger said.
“We retrieved it from the email account of Leonard Geggel. The schematic is the aft deck heating contour map of the Su-58. We believe that Pyotr Aleksandrov gave it to Geggel in Southwold before he was murdered. Geggel photographed it and sent it to himself—it’s standard redundancy, in case anything happened to the original. Turns out he was very sensible. The original wasn’t found on his body or in his car.”
“Why did Aleksandrov give it to him?” Younger asked.
“We had no idea until this morning, when we received this.”
Stone took out a third piece of paper. It was a copy of a handwritten note. He tapped his finger against it. “This was delivered to the front desk of the British Consulate in Vladivostok. A courier brought it in and left it. Nothing else. Control,” Stone said, “would you do the honours?”
The document contained a paragraph of handwritten Russian text. Control’s Russian was decent from the time he had worked at Moscow Station during the Cold War. He read it out loud.
‘My name is Anastasiya Romanova. I am the daughter of Pyotr Ilyich Aleksandrov, who was murdered by the Russian state in England two days ago. I am an aerospace engineer responsible for the development of the Sukhoi-58 aircraft. My father was attempting to arrange the terms of my defection to the United Kingdom when he was killed. I still wish to defect. I have extensive data relating to the Su-58 and I am prepared to give it to British intelligence in return for safe passage, protection for me once I arrive there and ten million pounds sterling. These terms are non-negotiable. If you are interested, I will be at the railway station at Komsomolsk-on-Amur at midday on Friday. Your agent should carry a copy of the Komsomolskaia Pravda. I will introduce myself to them if I am satisfied that it is safe to do so. If I am not satisfied, I will return the next day. In the meantime, please find enclosed a further schematic from the Su-58 to demonstrate my good faith.’
Stone held up a fourth piece of paper with another cutaway diagram. “This is the hard-point for a new air-to-air missile. We don’t have a NATO designation for it. We didn’t even know it existed.”
“Is this all legitimate?” Younger asked.
“It’s been checked,” Stone said. “It’s the real deal. You recall that we have a source within the Center?”
BLUEBIRD. They wouldn’t reveal the cryptonym to civilians who couldn’t be trusted to keep their mouths shut.
“Yes,” Younger said. “I remember.”
“We spoke with them,” Stone went on. “Goes without saying that this is eyes-only classified.” Stone took a sip from his cup and eyed them all for confirmation that they understood. They each nodded that they did, and he continued. “Pyotr Aleksandrov contacted Leonard Geggel and arranged the meeting in Southwold, after which they were both killed. What we didn’t know was why Aleksandrov wanted to meet, and why they were murdered. Our source indicated that Nikolai Primakov, the deputy director of Directorate S, led the Kremlin to believe that Aleksandrov was trying to sell a list of active SVR agents to us, and had to be killed because of it. But that looks to have been a lie. It was the Su-58 on the table, not their agents.”
Control knew of Primakov. They were of similar age and had been on opposing sides for years. “Why would Primakov lie about something like that? If Putin found out he’d been misled…”
“Quite,” Stone said. “We don’t know, but we are looking into it. For now, though, it would appear”—he tapped his finger against the letter—“that Aleksandrov was trying to sell the secrets his daughter has stolen.”
“What do we know about her?” Younger asked.
“A good question, Foreign Secretary,” Bloom said, taking over. “We’ve been busy investigating her, as you might imagine. We’re still building the picture, but it appears that she works for Sukhoi, and has done ever since she graduated from AFA State Technical University in Moscow. She’s thirty-nine and brilliant—she was given the Russian Federation Presidential Certificate of Honour for contributions to science. Our understanding was that there was a rift between father and daughter when he defected. Aleksandrov’s file was full of it—he said that both Anastasiya and his wife were patriots, and that they disowned him after he was convicted of spying for us. It would appear that she has had a change of heart.”