The Oktober Projekt (23 page)

‘I was finished after that and then when the old man….’

And Nick could see Gav in five or ten years time, the hair a
little greyer pulled farther back off his brow, sitting at the headmaster’s
desk much as he did now, a far away glint in his eye, the glass pressed to his
lips and the same coils of mildewed rope and fell boots drying in the corners.

‘Sometimes I miss the Service, sometimes I hate it with a
vengeance.’

‘But you did the right thing for Aubrey-Spencer,’ Nick assured
him, watching the old fervour rise in Gav’s eyes.

‘Sure.’ And perhaps reflecting on his days with Nick, Gav went
silent.

‘You haven’t mentioned the laptop to anyone else?’

‘No, I bloody haven’t,’ snapped Gav, his mood darkening.

‘I had to ask.’

Gavin had receded into another world; laughing though not as a
result of humour but from something couched in pain. ‘Sure, I would have been
disappointed if you hadn’t.’ Gavin closed his eyes, leant back and sighed.

They sat in silence for a while, each of them contemplating
what they both knew to be an unspoken truth about Gav’s sudden arrest in
Latvia. Examining his glass, Gav the first to find his voice also found an
excuse for Nick leaving.

‘Let’s go and find Tessa, she’ll want to say bye before you set
off, she’s sorting out colour schemes for when we refurbish the dorms.’

With Gavin setting a brisk pace they made a silent ascent up
through the hall into a dormer garret pushed into the eaves, its partitioned
cubicles stopping short of the ceiling. Under a glaring row of lights Gav
called for Tessa, swinging his bad leg after good, a mechanical hobble
controlled from his waist. On through a common room into a storeroom stacked
with wire-framed beds and cabinets, Gavin marched forlornly searching for his
wife. But they never found her. Only the lingering fear from generations of
boys worked into the corridors; and over it, a distant trail of perfume like
the foretaste of another failed marriage. Back in the utility kitchen Gav made
the coffee with ponderous care, fighting against the whisky in his
fingers.
 

‘We must keep in touch,’ Gav proposed, breaking the silence.

‘That would be good,’ said Nick, knowing they never would.

Then Gavin walked Nick to his car, talking the same dreams that
Tessa knew off by heart. Standing under the porch he waved Nick off, just as
his father must have done for pupils at the end of each term; the same tired
smile the awkward clumsy stance and the same inevitable tragedy in his eyes.

Ten

Some Friendly Advice

London, November

Nick
made it back to London just before seven that evening, recklessly
accelerating through curtains of spray as he overtook one articulated lorry
after another on the M6. Exhausted more than he wanted to admit, Nick coaxed
himself up the flights of stairs to his seventh floor room in an economy hotel
a couple of minutes walk from Baker Street. It was a double room complete with
plastic flowers, a panoramic rooftop view and a series of framed prints of
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson covering the stains on the flowery sateen
wallpaper. There was a wardrobe in knotted pine straight from Taiwan and an
electroplated brass effect bed, though the cobwebs strung in festoons around
the corners were thankfully real.

Uncapping his bottle of Laphroaig, Nick picked out a dark hair
inside the tooth mug and settled himself on the bed. Sometime before nine his
phone rang. Not Hawick, Jane or Roly calling to make amends or pledge a fresh
start, but Paul Rossan cutting off a yawn, asking for his location, no he
couldn’t tell him why, just that Nick should be outside in ten minutes.

 
The driver was
young, fierce, a natural blond; his lips making a scar in his pale face as he
nodded to Nick in the passenger seat. Confidently, assured, relaxed, the blond
drove without a word; briskly, business like, as though born for a life behind
the wheel, an air of showmanship in every move, perfected to demonstrate his
ability, his skill.

The rain had lessened as they reached Greenwich, to a few weak
drops that hit the car with no real effort as they turned onto Shooters Hill
Road.

‘This is as far as we go,’ the blond informed him, stopping
with a jolt. ‘The shelter on the mound. Would seem that you’re expected there,
sir,’ he said with anything but respect. ‘In the park, Mr. Torr, it’s been
cleared,’ he added rudely, Nick wondering if Rossan had them specially bred.

Left on the pavement under a clear sky with too many stars to
count, Nick began to walk. A brisk wind had dried the road and it might never
have rained he thought, entering the park, except for the grass still wet,
sodden and slippy as though from a heavy dew. Behind him he heard the
occasional car as he climbed into the night, through chestnut trees coiled
against the sky like barbed wire. His eyes adjusted gradually to the light, to
the dim outlines, brittle silhouettes and fuzzy shapes formed by the street
lamps below. He pressed on, a bonfire haze in the air, stopping twice to look
back and once thought he saw movement, standing his ground, his eyes straining
until they hurt. He saw nothing more.

The shelter covered the centre of a well-trodden mound; the
grass worn into mud by the many feet of a varied army who for one reason or
another made it the target of their assaults. Not tonight though, for Nick
glimpsed the vague outlines of three teams he guessed Rossan had dispatched
from internal security discreetly ringing the shelter. Inside he smelt urine,
stale bread and alcohol leaking from an assortment of beer cans scattered like
spent shells. He lit a cigarette and held his lighter up to the walls. He read
that ‘Micki loves Debbi’ a thousand times and was thankful they weren’t there
to prove it. He listened to a drunken song in the distance; a distorted
youthful chant, guttural notes resonant and menacing. Out of an avenue of
chestnuts he picked up a figure working steadily up the hill, stopping at
intervals as if taking bearings. Nick stepped away from the edge; the
tranquillity of the night disturbing, almost too satisfying, hypnotic in its
splendour. He listened to the footfall on the boards then a torch beam clicked
full in his face.

‘You got my invitation,’ growled Sir Charles Aubrey-Spencer,
who until six months previously had run the Service, and on retiring, some
speculated on political grounds, grudgingly became Chair of the Joint
Intelligence Committee.

‘Cut it out,’ Nick protested, shielding his eyes; swimming and
stinging his night sight gone, mischievously ruined.

‘I am honoured to witness the return of the prodigal son, one
Nicholas Torr, no less.’ Aubrey-Spencer lowered his torch, drew a line across
the stained boards and crossed over it; his own bright Rubicon that instantly
disappeared. ‘I feel rather neglected and offended that you haven’t bothered to
include me on your list of people you needed to see.’

‘Don’t worry, you were there, close to the top,’ retorted Nick,
blinded still.

‘Was I indeed?’ Aubrey-Spencer had a habit of speaking in a low
tremor. Crisp, resilient, pitched low so the other person had to make the
effort of paying attention. ‘Damn tragedy about Angela, damn tragedy. You’ll be
wanting to know about the laptop I suppose?’

‘If it saves another life, yes, I’d like to know about the
laptop,’ Nick said, his voice rising.

‘Then calm down and hear me out,’ Aubrey-Spencer persisted, his
voice placatory yet grave, as if addressing a committee of his own choosing.

Unbridled, fearing the moment lost Nick would have none of it.
‘You damn well listen,’ he said lurching forward. ‘Angela was raped, murdered
because Moscow reckoned I had Lubov’s material when it was safe and sound all
the time,’ Nick seethed.

‘I suppose you have good reason to be righteous.’

‘I hope it was worth it?’

‘I’ve always known it’s been worth it.’

Nick remained against the far wall, silent, watching
Aubrey-Spencer fidget with the torch.

‘Moscow have always been a threat, always had us on the back
foot. It’s our own fault. We’ve always stoked the boiler, primed a few
dissidents, waited for the bang.’

‘What did Lubov have on the Oktober Projekt?’

‘Everything and nothing,’ Aubrey-Spencer declared, rocking
sadly to and fro his bulk one massive boulder against a velvet sky. ‘A lead of
sorts, his speciality was forensic auditing, making damn well sure that the
Defence Ministry wasn’t having it’s pocket picked by the GRU, SVR or FSB, which
indirectly put him on the tail of the north Ossetia facility.’

On the prowl again, Aubrey-Spencer flung the beam of light in
front of him, trekking after it to a distant corner of the shelter.

‘So what is on the laptop?’

‘Lubov uncovered where the principal funding for the Oktober
Projekt was coming from, where it got laundered, split and used for Moscow’s
dirty work. A GRU financial web and who knows where it ends. Once Lubov had
that, he and all those that sailed alongside him were a liability,’ admitted
Aubrey-Spencer. The torch wavered in a glaring circle leaving a solid trail
before dipping once more. The reflected light hardly flattering Aubrey-Spencer,
deepening the fat on his several chins, adding another five years to his natural
fifty-three that had earned him the nickname ‘The Walrus’ from a bitter rival
in the Admiralty.

‘Do I get to know the details?’ Nick wondered.

‘Russian Defence Ministry money transfers from a front company
in Panama to an IT company in Switzerland,’ Aubrey-Spencer declared. ‘The files
were encrypted and are now corrupted and I’ve a specialist working on sorting
out the mess.’

‘What about Wynn?’

‘The Swiss company goes under the banner of SVZkom, run by a
Lat, name of Vilhelms Bliska, been a naturalised Swiss citizen for donkey’s
years. Its speciality is major IT projects for European governments, including
those federalist cretins at the EU. It hosts conferences in Hamburg from its
sales office based there, topped off by evenings at a casino with free entertainment
thrown in.’

‘So you sent Wynn?’

‘Rather than go banging on SVZkom’s front door, I thought I’d
start at the back and work around. Wynn went off to Hamburg for me, to check
out the casino,’ he added. With a grudging sigh Aubrey-Spencer dragged his feet
over the boards, appraising them through the waxy path of torchlight.

‘And the facility in north Ossetia?’

‘The Americans claimed for years the KGB and GRU’s First
Directorates were in cahoots, courting and nurturing promising prospects
throughout Europe, Britain and North America who had shown consideration or
interest in Soviet affairs. They reckoned the facility was there to turn out
these superstars. That was all smoke and mirrors. In fact the Oktober Projekt
has been up and running since 1947. It does turn out graduates, but the
facility’s graduates are the best agent-handling specialists ever trained,
briefed to protect, feed and water those highly valuable traitors who had shown
a willingness to defect, who chose to be suckled on Moscow’s ideological
claptrap. Agent-handlers, technicians, call them what you will, these graduates
and their agents are cyber revolutionaries, terrorists, pure and simple.’

They plant secrets, that is the symmetry of the Oktober
Projekt
, Nick recalled. ‘The agents, assisted
by their specialist handlers are infecting government systems, that it?’

‘Teodors, the Latvian computer wizard did meet Rafford again
before they were both betrayed,’ confessed Aubrey-Spencer, his mood dark.
‘After Rafford’s arrest, Hayles and I suppressed any evidence of the meeting,
erased it entirely, because what Teodors divulged is off the scale in terms of
secrecy. Only I, and a small select working group were aware of the havoc
inflicted.’

‘These moles are introducing viruses into their own systems,
aren’t they?’

‘But these, Nicholas, are no ordinary viruses, they are
specifically engineered for each agent, they sit dormant until activated, they
rewrite programmes as a means to protect and defend themselves as they go about
their work. These ghosts in the machine produce technical glitches,
malfunctions, loss of data, and incompatibility between departments. All manner
of operating faults that cannot be detected, because the virus matures,
nurtures itself from its host system. Why are so many Whitehall IT projects
over budget? Why is the MoD a disaster on procurement?’

‘Because the virus screws them up,’ put in Nick.

‘But ever so subtly, Nicholas, that you’d hardly realise. The
Oktober Projekt virus is ever so cunning, it manipulates on such a small scale
that the results are blamed on human error. As we flounder, stagnate, our
reputation as an international power is undermined. We become ever more mired
in pedantic political squabbles and bureaucratic red tape, leaving Moscow free
to strengthen its hand, increase its strategic position. It can pick and choose
its allies to suit its cause. The German’s flexing their muscles, hiding behind
France’s skirts, the Poles singled out as Europe’s weak spot. Divide and rule
from Moscow, every move to make Washington nervous on who to trust.’

‘Lubov had no chance.’

‘How could he when we’ve been breached physically and
technically. Did RUS/OPS do cartwheels, let off a few rockets in celebration
when they thought they had Lubov in the bag? Did they hell and it makes my arse
nip.’ He felt in his pocket, took out a packet of mints and fumbled to get one
in his mouth. ‘Imagine all the system doors that could be unlocked if Moscow
had access to our cyber-terrorism counter-measures. Think about it Nicholas,
think about viruses lying dormant, think about our dependence on IT, our
reliance on it for the mundane, for transport, power and gas. Targets one and
all, Nicholas, targets. Hamburg and Switzerland are where we need to mount a
counter-attack.’

‘Thanks for the background, a little late, but thanks.’

‘You take the fight to them, Nicholas, play hard and play
dirty. Everyone’s so obsessed with the war on terror that they’ve taken their
eyes off Moscow. If I was at the helm I wouldn’t have blinked, but I’m not and
that’s that. Seek and you shall always find, is my motto. If you require
further assistance, contact me through Rossan,’ Aubrey-Spencer declared,
prowling along a side wall. ‘You
can
rely on him.’
                             

‘Will do,’ promised Nick.

‘Watch your back, young Nicholas. This is friendly advice to
stay wise understand,’ advised Aubrey-Spencer, clambering out of the shelter.
‘Fare you well.’

Nick went after him; all the way to the top of the mound,
watching the beam from Aubrey-Spencer’s torch weave a jaunty path into the tree
line before being snuffed out. Around him the park started to settle once more
for the night and Nick lit a cigarette as the darkness reclaimed the mound.

• • •

The church of the Immaculate Heart had
gone sometime in the Blitz, only the hall remained; a dull long wooden
structure with a tin galvanized roof that rattled badly in the rain. Now a
pewter sky threading low over Deptford threatened to soak it once more as Nick
climbed from a cab a street early. For even innocuous secret outposts on what had
become a run-down industrial estate, have to be approached with a healthy
measure of caution.

A picket fence staked out the territory of the hall; a small
overgrown patch next to it used as a fly-tip with the remnants of bed-ends,
freezers and old sofas growing through the weeds. The rumours of how the
Service had acquired the hall were legion and mostly false. As is usual with
history, the answer is more prosaic. Casting round for accommodation during the
war for housing its officers during the German raids, the hall had been
requisitioned and never returned. Beneath it, a large area was excavated that
included the original church crypt and a deep blast-proof shelter constructed
to enable the Service to function despite what the Luftwaffe may have preferred.
During the Cold War the shelter was modified, reinforced and enlarged, becoming
the Service’s secure command bunker. With a modern sophisticated replacement
designed under its Vauxhall Cross headquarters, the church hall known as
Outstation Zulu, had become a depository for files, reports and contact logs,
that once entered onto the Service’s digital database, Chronos were deemed
redundant on a day-to-day basis.