Program for a Puppet (25 page)

The Australian wondered for a second if she had perhaps slipped up. Maybe she had forgotten tomorrow was the day for the impersonation? Then he dismissed the thought as quickly as it had come. This woman was supposed to be MI-6's best agent in the Soviet Union. An error like that would be out of the question.

He shook hands with her and accepted the invitation.

“I shall phone you,” she called, climbing into a taxi.

Graham returned to the National with Kerana and Sheppard, and politely refused his invitation to continue drinking at the bar. Once back in the hotel room, slowly, agonizingly, he turned his mind to the fact that the onus for the impersonation rested squarely on his shoulders.

He began to separate from the rest of his luggage the clothes and make-up he would require.

Commander Gould's warnings about abandoning the assignment if there were any doubts at all kept ringing in his ears. But the Australian could not sort out real from imagined fear. Everything in the end seemed to revert to one question. Did he have the nerve to go through with it?

He took out his camera, a replica of Radford's, and unconsciously
played with the film shutter mechanism.

The spring had gone.

Graham tried it several times and then put it down as if it were contaminated. To him it was.

He had always been meticulously careful with any recording and film equipment and only six hours earlier the camera had worked perfectly when he had taken pictures in Red Square. Someone must have broken into his room…. He rummaged through his luggage. There was no indication that any of the Radford impersonation “kit” had been uncovered or isolated. Without foreknowledge, that would have been impossible. Yet the damaged camera was another excuse for aborting the impersonation.

He got into bed weak from the sense of relief that enveloped him. But it was to be a night of fitful sleep. His conscience was not going to let him forget that the coward in him had just won a round.

Resigned to seeing out the next two days as quietly as possible, Graham the next morning joined his tour group on a visit to the Lenin Museum.

As he walked the short distance across from the National he tried to satisfy himself that the trip to the Soviet Union would be successful enough without his actually getting into the computer operations center by impersonating Radford. He had gained valuable information from Boronovsky and the Ukrainian-American. There was a chance Irena would find a way to pass on the military and other details that MI-6 wanted. Apart from the personal dangers, he could foul up everything if he was caught now. On the other hand, Graham knew the only way to get a whole rather than piecemeal perspective of what the KGB was doing and planning was to go in, speak to scientists and see for himself….

From London it had all looked easier. At close range events were
too
close. And conditions since his near slip-up in Leningrad had changed. The risks were now extremely high.

The Australian stopped in front of the museum as other members of his tour group moved inside to the warmth and away from the biting cold that howled across Red Square and swirled the light snow that was falling.

He stood staring at the long line of Soviet citizens waiting
patiently across the square for a glimpse at Lenin in his mausoleum. A myth? A cult? A religion? Lenin and Leninism. Everything the KGB was attempting would be done in his name. Propaganda would tell the Soviet administration that the most advanced computers invented were the answer to all Marxist-Leninist dreams of central economic control and state planning. The fact that machines were being fed into the master network primarily to boost Soviet missile forces, and secondly for complete political control, would be kept secret.

Graham wondered what the Great Revolutionary Leader would make of events today. Would he have approved of police state tactics? He had himself introduced them even more efficiently than the czars. But would he consider them necessary in today's less turbulent political climate …?

The Australian drew his overcoat collar high over his neck and walked into the Lenin Museum. For the next ninety minutes he wandered around the museum with some of his tour party, trying to concentrate on what the guides were reverently saying about Lenin the god, and his achievements; trying to forget that time was slipping away, if he was going to do anything about Radford…. Many times his thoughts drifted to Radford three, who would right at that moment be halfway to Moscow….

The end of the museum excursion was an hour-long show of old documentary films about Lenin and the Revolution. Somewhere in the course of those sixty minutes something in Graham's subconscious snapped. He got up just before the end and groped his way past the guides in the cinema and out into the cold, heading for the National.

Instead of going into the hotel he walked for about twenty minutes until he reached Gorkova Street. Finding a telephone booth he went in and lifted the receiver. Running through his mind was the role he had rehearsed awake and asleep, ad nauseam.

Grasping the phone firmly Graham dialed the number of Herr Fritz Muller, the Moscow director of Znorel Electronics….

“Muller,” a voice answered bluntly.

“Ah, Herr Muller, it's Harold Radford here,” Graham said, affecting an upper-class English accent. “I am the managing director of Computer Increments, U.K. We have an appointment for this afternoon at three.”

“Yes,” the voice said with a trace more animation, “that is correct. Have you just arrived?”

The Australian was about to answer in the affirmative but stopped himself. “I'm about to check into my hotel.”

“The Berlin?”

“Yes.”

There was a few seconds' silence before Muller asked, “Do you know how to get here?”

“Oh, yes, I've been to the Lenin several times before on other visits here. Second floor, isn't it?”

“
Ja
. I see you at three then, Mr. Radford.” Muller hung up and Graham shut his eyes and breathed deeply as he replaced the receiver. It was done now. He had to keep that appointment. Otherwise Moscow would be turned upside down looking for a Mr. Radford….

The Australian hurried back to his hotel to disguise himself. He had just enough time to carefully prepare, take a taxi as Radford near to the Hotel Berlin and take another taxi to the appointment at the Lenin.

He began by washing his hair and brushing it forward with a distinct parting to the top of his skull on the left. Then he applied a skin cream to lighten the complexion. Next Graham tinged the edges of his hairline with gray paint, applying more above the ears and above the temples, and a little on the top of the scalp. To complete the transformation he changed into a three-piece Savile Row suit, white shirt and dark blue tie, and put on special thick-framed prescription spectacles.

Standing back from the mirror in the bathroom he compared himself with the head and shoulders portrait of Radford's forged passport. He had more hair than Radford and was not as heavy in the face. But to be exactly the same as the passport could invite suspicion.

Graham sauntered around the room attempting to ape Radford's bouncing gait. The movement relaxed him marginally. He was getting inside somebody else. He stepped up to the bathroom mirror and pulled a few faces, affecting Radford's pompous habit of looking down his nose. He laughed nervously and then said aloud to his reflection, “Time for a stiff drink, you bloody twit.”

He unpacked some duty-free vodka, poured himself a liberal helping, and sat back on the bed. Half whispering to avoid
being picked up by the bugging devices that were almost certain to be in the room, he ran through the key phrases in Radford's vernacular—”jolly good … frightfully kind of you … absolutely smashing …”

He looked at his watch. It was 2:30
P.M
. Time to go. Making sure there was no one in the hallway, he walked quickly past the elevator and took the stairs to the second floor. He found the back fire escape. A back gate led to an alleyway which took him out to a side entrance of the National. Graham hailed a passing taxi and seven minutes later arrived a few hundred yards from the Hotel Berlin. He walked the short distance to the Berlin, waited near the front entrance and then caught a taxi to the Lenin, timing his arrival with a few minutes to spare.

Muller, short, stout and balding, greeted Graham at the entrance to his office, a converted hotel suite. Eying the Australian carefully through a pair of aluminum-framed spectacles perched on his beaklike nose, he ushered him in.

The office was comfortable and appeared underequipped. Only one ticking Teletype was in a corner of the room.

Graham took a seat opposite Muller, who sat down at a leather-topped desk.

“Now, Mr. Radford,” he said, looking over the glasses, schoolmaster fashion, “first, I must ask you to show me your visa, passport and letter of introduction from Herr Znorel. A precaution we must take, you will understand.”

The Australian nodded. “Typical German efficiency,” he said, pulling the documents from an inside coat pocket.

Muller remained unsmiling at the remark and skimmed through Graham's forged note of introduction. He then picked up the visa and passport and eyed the photographs, then the Australian, and then the photographs again. Handing them back he said, “All right, Mr. Radford. Let us start at the beginning. How much do you know about what happens to the computers you send here?”

“Very little. That's why your managing director wanted me to visit you here.”

Muller nodded, and coughed diffidently. “Of course. Herman told me you would soon be our second biggest supplier. He believes it is important that you are better informed.”

“Naturally. It is to our mutual benefit.”

Making a little play of fumbling for the right phrase, Muller said, “We, that is to say, our client, the Soviet government, is happy to inform you to a certain point. You must realize you are privileged to be here. Only one other of our suppliers has been here and actually visited the main computer center in Moscow.

“Herman tells me your company may be able to help a great deal in supplying communications systems,” the little man said, eying his visitor carefully.

Graham's brain raced. He knew the real Radford had been studying communications systems in recent months. But he did not know if Radford had claimed he could supply them.

“Mr. Muller,” he said arrogantly, “I know a great deal about communications. But I am not restricting my possible assistance to just this area.”

“I see you are a businessman as well as a scientist,” Muller said, with a sly look.

“I hope you will be able to show me the design for the whole network, so I may judge where I may be of greatest value.”

“The master plan itself?”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely out of the question. It is highly classified. However, you will be given general information.” He looked at his watch, stood up and moved over to a coat rack. “If you are ready, Mr. Radford, I think we should visit the chief Soviet scientist on the project, Dr. Yuri Nolotov, at the network center. It's about one mile from here. Let us take the underground.”

Five minutes later they entered the underground at V.I. Lenin Central station and caught a train for three stops—each one a glittering ballroom. Outside the underground they were soon on Kirov Street and heading for a modern twelve-story building surrounded by a high concrete wall. Graham noted the construction of an almost identical building going on behind it.

The entrance gate was well manned. Six guards could be seen in and around a guardhouse. Identification was checked and they were screened electronically.

Once inside, it quickly became obvious that the building was impenetrable. Every imaginable alarm and surveillance device, including closed-circuit cameras that could see into every corner, were operating.

Muller escorted Graham down one of five parallel glass
corridors which ran from a front administration section to the main body of the building behind. They took an elevator to five stories below ground level. There was more checking until they finally reached a guarded double doorway.

On the other side was the biggest single computer operations room the Australian had seen. A bank of perhaps twenty unmarked big computers surrounded the room against the four walls. In the center were about thirty smaller machines. Hundreds of television terminals were suspended from the ceiling. About a hundred people manned the equipment.

Muller stopped to speak briefly with two scientists in English and was directed to an office in a far corner of the floor. There Graham was introduced to Nolotov, a stout, middle-aged man with bushy, unruly black hair. Dressed in a drab sports coat and casual trousers, he remained seated at an aluminum desk almost completely covered with flow charts and computer printout sheets. The walls of the small office were covered with shelf upon shelf of manuals, and thick looseleaf folders. Many carried the Lasercomp Cheetah logo.

All through Muller's quick pen-sketch of “Mr. Radford” from London, Nolotov kept his sad blue eyes on the Australian. The scientist welcomed Graham in halting English and asked him what he would like to know.

“I'd like to take notes,” he said, turning to Muller.

The German shook his head. “I shall record any request you have. If it is possible we shall send you information.” He took a notebook from his coat pocket and opened it. The Australian deliberately looked surprised. Turning to Nolotov again, he said, “The best start is for you to outline the master system. Then you can tell me your main requirements and problems, if any … and then we can take it from there …”

The scientist looked at Muller for approval. A lengthy discussion in Russian ensued. Muller did most of the talking. He was laying down firm guidelines about what could be said.

The scientist began haltingly. Occasionally he stopped to ask the German for the correct English word. It soon became clear that the discussion was heading away from the military use of computers and more toward the “master network to control the whole economy,” which the Australian understood as the KGB's network for political control.