Special Deception

by Special Deception (retail) (epub)

  He’d already achieved good passes in English-language studies and had set himself to learning Arabic — because there’d been a tutor handy, and being attracted by something so completely different, and the willing tutor having suggested to him that fluency in such a tongue might be a useful adjunct to his swarthy complexion. Then General Gudyenko’s recruiters from the GRU Training Centre for ‘illegals’, talent-spotters for whom the Mil-Dip Academy was a natural poaching ground, got hold of him, and from his first short interview with the general himself Leonid‘s fate was sealed. He didn’t know, on this evening in London at the flat in Sloane Street, quite how hermetically it had been sealed, but this of course was a very much later development, all of twelve years later. In those fledgeling days under Gudyenko’s wing he was returned to a Spetsnaz unit for a further year’s specialist training — he was commissioned mladshi leitnant before the end of the year — and then set to advanced ‘saturation’ training in English language, politics and current affairs, with Arabic as a sideline.

  The Training Centre’s courses were invariably tailor-made, individual programmes to suit the candidate‘s talents and expectations, and the same flexibility extended to location, as the Centre had no premises except Gudyenko’s own office and staff accommodation. Leo Serebryakov thus spent two years in a private dacha forty miles outside Moscow, sharing the little villa in its insulating birchwoods with two male instructors — one of them an Englishman — and an Iranian girl who taught him much more than Arabic. That — the Arabic instruction — was his relaxation. For two years, seven days a week, he lived in English. No word was ever spoken, in daylight hours, in any other tongue. English newspapers, magazines and books were his only reading matter. BBC programmes and English-language tapes the constant background. Walls were covered with maps and with frequently varied photographs, maps of counties, road and rail and underground systems, street plans of London and other cities. His menus were English: bacon-and-eggs for breakfast, frequent cups of tea with milk and sugar instead of glasses of real tea, flat beer in pint tankards, fish-and-chips… Every aspect of current British life was dinned into him: he knew the footballers and cricketers, pop stars and gossip columnists, actors and actresses, TV shows, films and plays, politicians, trade unionists, civil servants, and the political and economic machinery which these people tended, manipulated or obstructed. He supported Chelsea…

  ‘Tell me—’ Eric watched the bubbling liquid rise to fill his glass — ‘how you explain here in England your otherwise rather conveniently — at least, I imagine it’s convenient — Middle Eastern appearance?’

  Leo was watching the big woman top up her own glass. She seemed to lick her thin lips as she did it, and he thought that in the circumstances they both drank too much. He asked Eric, ‘Don’t you know my background?’

  ‘Why should I? I don’t have to explain you. My function is only to — well, smooth your path, if it needs smoothing. You know this, surely?’

  ‘I thought they might have briefed you on background.’

  ‘Why should I be given information I don’t need?’

  ‘Since you put it like that—’ Leo smiled at him — ‘the best answer I can give you is “good question”.’ He winked at the woman. ‘Huh?’

  She laughed. ‘You walked into that one, Eric.’

  ‘I’ll tell you the basic answer, anyway.’ He didn’t have to, but there’d be no point in antagonising this character unnecessarily. It was well on the cards that he might have to work with him again, one of these days. Boris Smotrenko was the GRU Resident here in London and might remain so for years — MI5 permitting. Leo confided, ‘The guy whose skin I’m in had an Egyptian mother. French-Egyptian actually. My Dad met her out there — Cairo — when he was in the RAF in Cyprus in 1955.’

  ‘So to all intents and purposes you’re a very true Brit.’

  When his parents had separated — Sergeant Campbell posted back to the UK, his Egyptian wife having no wish to go with him and the sergeant only too glad to leave his mongrel offspring with her and get the hell out — the deserted wife took her son home to Cairo, to a family which had disapproved of the marriage in the first place. Their reception of her and the child lacked any warmth: she’d defied them, and now she’d come back to sponge on them, with her half-caste brat.

  There was a Sergeant Campbell — a technician, communications — and he did leave an infant son with his Egyptian wife, did later obtain a British divorce. The boy had been christened ‘Donald’ by the RAF chaplain on the base, and having been born on British sovereign territory to a British father he was entitled to a British citizenship. This made it easy for his mother to obtain a passport for him, when he was sixteen, through the embassy in Cairo. She’d remarried, to a man who offered escape from drudgery in her parents’ home, and her new husband objected to having the kid around, so it was a stroke of luck that at this time an aunt, widowed sister of the sergeant — who was actually an ex-sergeant by then — had renewed an invitation to young Donald to come over and live with her in a civilised country and decent environment. She was a regular church-goer and supporter of moral causes; she’d strongly disapproved of her brother, of his marriage and then of his running out on it, especially his having left the child to be brought up in heathen surroundings and no doubt moral turpitude. She’d long felt that to some degree she shared in her brother’s guilt, should have accepted responsibility at a much earlier stage for the bairn’s welfare and salvation, and she’d entered into a stilted correspondence with her former sister-in-law. It culminated now in an enthusiastic acceptance of her offer, and she immediately bought a one-way air ticket — ensuring first that it couldn’t be redeemed for cash in Egypt — and mailed it to Cairo.

  Donald Cambell spent seven months in the ice-cold, granite house outside the Scottish capital. The aunt hadn’t expected him to be as dark-skinned as he was: and in the extreme cold his swarthiness turned to an unhealthy grey. Not, she insisted to her pastor and neighbours, that such physical characteristics bothered her; what she found unbearable was the boy’s attitude — a slyness and an underlying hostility. Dislike was mutual, and the boy was returned to Cairo, where his stepfather said — holding up the British passport — ‘Such an article has a value. And he won’t have further need of it, unfortunately…’

  He’d had certain undercover groups in mind as likely purchasers, but the intermediary to whom he entrusted the sale of the passport, a man he knew to have contacts, tried his luck at the Soviet Embassy first. Which in the long run saved the GRU’s forgers a job, and into the bargain was real, flawless, needing only a substitution of photographs. It went into stock for a couple of years, and when the Training Centre began to process young Leo Serebryakov the Centre’s computer matched the passport to the new recruit.

  When it expired, ten years after its date of issue, Leo was working in Beirut, on his first foreign posting but still in training and with years more of it ahead of him. The document was renewed without any awkward questions being asked, with his own up-to—date photograph in it now. From there on he was home and dry, he was Donald Campbell. With a father who’d emigrated to Canada and wouldn’t want to be reminded of his existence, an aunt whose attitude was now much the same as her brother’s and who in any case wasn’t likely to be around much longer, and a mother who was effectively incommunicado, Leo was on as good a wicket as an illegal could have hoped for.

  He’d been unable to discover what might have happened to the original Don Campbell. He’d asked, in the Centre, and had been told, ‘You are Donald Campbell. There’s no other.’ He thought it was possible they’d had the boy killed.

  According to the records in the language college in Beirut where he lectured in English to Arab students and in Arabic to other nationalities including Brits and Americans, he’d got the job through his mother’s relations in Cairo. In fact, it had been set up by a dapper, multi-lingual Russian who lived in Paris and directed language courses for students throughout Europe. His
primary value to both the GRU and the KGB was as a talent-spotter; a lot of potentially suitable raw material passed under his scrutiny every week.

  Leo worked in Beirut for four years, taking local leaves and one longer break each year in Moscow. When embarking on these trips he claimed to be visiting his mother in Egypt, but in fact reported to a safe house in Cairo where he changed identity. Donald Campbell had thus never visited Moscow in his life, although Leo Serebryakov spent a couple of months there annually — taking written and oral examinations and undergoing political indoctrination as well as technical training. In his third year of this he began to see quite a lot of a girl called Nadia Zhenskinova who was an interpreter and translator on General Gudyenko’s staff and with whom he found he had much in common. He’d learned early in his apprenticeship that in this line of work no one had any private life or secrets, and it was no great surprise therefore to be told by a senior GRU instructor that the friendship between himself and Nadia had General Gudyenko’s approval. He took note of it, knowing that it would be in his own best interests — as well as being his natural inclination, up to a point; but this was in the last week of his fourth Moscow visit, and on his return to Beirut via Cairo he found a surprise awaiting him: De Gavres, the Parisian educational coordinator, had made arrangements for Don Campbell to spend two years at Stirling University in Scotland, on an exchange posting as a lecturer in Arabic.

  So there’d be no early wedding. Although he felt sure the Centre would have begun work on a cover for Nadia’s background so that when she did join him she’d be something other than a citizen of the USSR. They’d prefer him to be married, he knew, by the time he finished his training and went into the field. Husbands in this kind of work were routinely checked on and reported on by their wives — and vice versa — and when she had children they’d be left in Moscow with foster-parents, effectively hostages against any possibility of defection.

  During his two years in Britain he travelled extensively, adding first-hand observation to knowledge acquired at the dacha and later in Beirut and Moscow. He visited the house in which Don Campbell had spent seven miserable months: it was occupied by strangers, and he found the aunt’s grave in a nearby churchyard. He tried — as anyone in his position surely would have done — to trace his father, but the trail went cold at the point where he’d emigrated to Canada. Ministry of Defence records dug out from some satellite establishment outside of London showed nothing later than the date of the sergeant’s discharge and the fact he’d taken a lump-sum gratuity, not a pension. But Donald Campbell was now on record as having tried to find his lost father, there’d be correspondence in some file and it was proof — if proof were ever needed — of his identity. He visited major towns and cities, and allowed an element of Scots accent to infect his speech. He possessed a driving licence, had his name and circumstances in the Inland Revenue and DHSS computer records; Don Campbell existed, and could prove it.

  He’d still had six weeks’ lecturing to do at Stirling when a cable arrived from Cairo telling him that his mother was seriously ill, asking him to come immediately. It was sign by a Dr Ibrahim, which meant that he was wanted urgently in Moscow. The university authorities were sympathetic; they suggested that as his time was so nearly up he might as well call it a day and return to his post in Beirut — after seeing his mother on the road to recovery. They’d recall their own man, and it would save one return fare London/Cairo. Leo had an open return ticket, and he left on a flight from Heathrow in less than twelve hours from receipt of the cable. Standard procedure then: the safe house, switch of identity, papers and appearance, Aeroflot flight from Cairo International, to Sheremetyevo, where he was met by Nadia. She’d come in a large Chaika with a uniformed GRU driver; she whispered as they embraced, ‘They have a mission for you, a very important one. It will mean the end of your probationary status, Leo, the general himself has decided this. Aren’t you proud?’

  His cold eyes penetrated the bubbling exterior, probed the source of all this warmth, her angle on whatever the hell this was all about. He smiled: ‘Then maybe you and I—’

  ‘No “maybe” about it, darling! The general told me this morning, when you come back he’ll not only attend the ceremony himself, he’ll provide the champanskoye as his wedding gift!’

  Gudyenko conducted the initial briefing. The only other person present was a Colonel Dmitry Arkeyevich Vetrov, head of the British section, whom Leo over the years had come to know well. He was a small man, fair-haired and pink-faced, very meticulous and thorough once the broader sweep of Gudyenko’s mind had put him on the right track.

  Gudyenko growled, ‘You got here fast, Leonid Ivan’ich. Just as well, I might add… You won’t be here long — as no doubt Nadia Zhenskinova will have told you, we’ve a job for you, an important one. I’ve decided to let you run it, and you’ll do so under my personal control.’

  Only the top GRU ‘illegals’ were controlled by the general himself, a handful of men and women with brilliant track-records and in key locations. Leo began to murmur his appreciation of the honour, but Gudyenko cut him short.

  ‘In your studies of the British scene, in particular of their armed forces, have you learnt what the letters “SBS” stand for?’

  ‘Special Boat Squadron. Royal Marines — equivalent of our naval infantry but all commando-trained — and their SB Squadron is a small cadre of underwater swimmers, canoeists, parachutists, etc. They’re similar to the Army’s Special Air Service except that they possess those additional skills.’

  Gudyenlto nodded. ‘You’re about to join them. You’ll return to London shortly, travelling as Donald Campbell as usual — from Cairo onwards — but with another identity up your sleeve, that of Captain Knox of the SBS. You’ll be instructed here by specialists and you’ll have a lot of reading to do, background stuff about Marines and their SBS, and so on. In London your first and crucially important task will be to recruit a former SAS officer, an individual whom SAS dismissed because of — oh, drunken behaviour mostly. But you’ll read his file in a minute.’

  He’d glanced at Vetrov, who nodded, patting a folder. The general continued, ‘As Captain Knox of the Royal Marines you’ll present yourself as team leader in an operation that’s being mounted to extract a British civilian whom Intelligence sources have indicated has been moved into Syria from the Lebanon. This person was kidnapped in Beirut several weeks ago, by the Hezbollah. His name’s Stillgoe, he’s a journalist but we believe was also involved with British and/or US Intelligence and had information which he’d been on the point of taking out of the country when the Hezbollah snatched him. So the British will want him out — or the Yanks will, or both — and when they hear he’s being held somewhere in reach of the Syrian coast they’ll be tempted, won’t they?’

  ‘I suppose they would be.’ Leo asked, ‘Have they heard it?’

  ‘Arrangements are in hand. They haven’t yet, but they will — quite soon. It has to be quite soon — for reasons which I’ll explain; also in the context of a further dimension in our planning, on which I may brief you later, but not now… What matters as far as you’re concerned, you as Captain Knox of the SBS, is that not only has the information reached London, you’ve been ordered to take an SBS team into Syria, find Stillgoe and bring him out. You need this SAS man — former SAS man — in your team because you’re short of Arabic speakers in the SB Squadron, and this person — whose name is —’

  Vetrov supplied it: ‘Swale.’

  ‘Swale is fluent in Arabic. He’s also likely to want to be recruited by you, our analysts tell us. You’ll see their comments in his file.’

  Leo nodded, waited. Vetrov’s nose was running and he kept wiping it with his knucles.

  ‘The strategic background is that President Assad has seemed in recent months to have some softening of the brain. Since the American bombing of Libya, to be precise. To some people in Syria — and elsewhere, but it’s Syria we’re concerned with — our own closest friends in the area, h
e’s appeared to be back-sliding. Consequently these people have deemed it necessary for some actions to have been taken without Assad’s own knowledge or approval. So far as these aspects are concerned we’re not directly or very closely involved, of course; I simply record the fact that it’s been worrying many of his own people as well as some Lebanon-based groups such as the Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, et al. You have the so-called “Popular Fronts” — those of George Habash and Ahmed Jibril — and Naif Hawatme’s Democratic Front, to name only the more prominent. None of these are soft in the head — as you’ll be aware, of course, you’d know it maybe better than I do… Our concern matches theirs primarily in the indications that Assad is flirting or contemplating flirtation with the West. Who naturally would be pleased to do business with him, political or otherwise, as typified now by his intention to buy French weaponry; and as he’s been our most reliable ally in the Middle East for years now — well, Syria’s our anchor and in nautical terms we can’t afford to let it drag… Consequently, plans were being formulated, contingency plans aimed at short-circuiting such tendencies, and now rather suddenly we find the necessity is upon us. Which is where you step in, my lad.’

  The general looked at Vetrov. ‘Anything important I’ve left out?’

  ‘Well.’ The colonel suggested, ‘Perhaps the fact that those concerned people in Syria are with as partners in the project. Also that the draft plan envisioned the provision of some form of bait, and this hostage — Stillgoe — happens to be as suitable as any we could have wished for?’

  Gudyenko nodded, turning back to face Leo.

  ‘At a certain stage, control of the operation will shift to Damascus. But this is detail, you’ll get it all later… One reason though, that the British may believe Stillgoe has been moved into Syria, without Assad knowing it, is that Assad has been trying to impose peace in Beirut by filling the place with Syrian troops. They’re policing even Shi’ite areas, and sooner or later might find this hostage and release him. Assad’s actually been calling for the release of all hostages, you know that? Another move towards ingratiating himself with the countries concerned… But now we come to the reason for our deciding here and now to implement the plan…’ He’d checked, frowning. ‘You’ve a question?’