Overkill pr-1

by James Barrington

  Jayne Taylor was undeniably easy on the eye, Muldoon thought, and not for the first time. Dark hair cut fashionably short, wide-spaced brown eyes and perfect lips – an almost elfin face behind which, Muldoon knew, resided an excellent brain. Unlike most of the secretaries and assistants employed by the CIA, who were usually trawled from the high schools of Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, Jayne Taylor was a B.A. graduate of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. It was popularly believed that she was only using the CIA as a stepping-stone – just one item on her own hidden agenda.

  ‘Good morning, Richard,’ she said with a smile. ‘What’s this – a mutiny?’

  Despite himself, Muldoon grinned. ‘Not yet, Jayne,’ he said, ‘but we have to see Walter, and we have to see him now.’

  ‘That,’ she replied, frowning, ‘could be difficult. He’s involved in a conference call with the National Security Agency right now that should wind up in another ten minutes or so, but he’s got appointments booked solidly all morning. How long do you want with him?’

  Muldoon shook his head. ‘I don’t know. At least an hour.’

  Jayne Taylor looked at him, and then at the men behind him. She knew them both. Ronald Hughes was Deputy Director of the Intelligence Division, a nondescript figure with a lined face and prematurely grey hair, who looked much older than his fifty-eight years. He had always maintained that the perfect spy was the man nobody noticed, and he seemed proof of his own maxim. Jayne assumed, correctly, that he was with Muldoon because his Director, Cliff Masters, was in Vienna until the following week.

  The third man was John Westwood, head of the Foreign Intelligence (Espionage) Staff. Short, red-faced and softly spoken, he looked more like a shopkeeper than an Agency professional. All three men were unusually quiet, not even talking amongst themselves, which Jayne found disturbing. ‘You really need this, don’t you?’ she asked, and Muldoon nodded.

  ‘OK,’ she said, and opened the desk diary again. She scanned the page, then nodded. ‘He won’t like it,’ she murmured, ‘but William Rush will have to wait.’ She picked up the telephone and made two brief calls, then looked up at Muldoon. ‘I’ll probably catch a lot of flak for that later today – this had better be worth it.’

  ‘It is, Jayne, and thanks. I owe you.’

  The three men sat down, waiting in apprehensive silence. None of them was looking forward to the forthcoming meeting. Eight minutes later the light extinguished on the switchboard display and the status light above the mahogany door changed from red to green. Jayne called the Director on the intercom, then looked at Muldoon and nodded. The men got up and entered the inner office.

  ‘Walter,’ Muldoon began, as he approached the man at the desk, ‘we have a problem, and it’s something you need to know about.’

  Walter Hicks, Director of Operations (Clandestine Services) of the Central Intelligence Agency, gazed across his desk at the delegation in front of him. He was a big and bulky man, pushing six feet three, and broad across the shoulders. His craggy face, under a thatch of thinning fair hair, carried a tan all year round, due to his passion for sailing, and most weekends he spent at least one day on his forty-five-foot catamaran, occasionally inviting colleagues to join him. It was, he claimed, one of the few places outside the Langley classified briefing rooms where he could say what he wanted.

  ‘I have a feeling,’ he said, after a few moments, ‘that I’m not going to like this. The CIS went ballistic with signal traffic yesterday. Some major shit’s been hitting the fan over there, and the NSA is kinda hoping we can help find out what it is. So I need whatever problem you’ve got like Custer needed more Indians.’

  The office was large and airy, with a conference table positioned in front of the triple-glazed, bullet-proof picture window. Hicks pressed a button on his intercom, asked Jayne to order coffee for four, then walked over to the table and eased his body into the chair at its head, motioning the others to join him. ‘OK, Richard,’ he said, ‘let’s hear it.’

  Muldoon sat down, glanced over the papers he had taken from his briefcase, and started talking. ‘This involves all of us,’ he said, gesturing at his companions, ‘but it’s probably quicker if I act as spokesman. Ronald and John will no doubt correct me if I stray.’ Muldoon took a deep breath and began. ‘About five months ago the Moscow Station Chief advised Langley that he had developed a high-level source in Moscow.’

  ‘He did what?’ Hicks demanded, his brow darkening. ‘Nobody told me.’

  Muldoon shook his head. ‘Nobody told me either. The Station Chief – John Rigby – was adamant that knowledge of the source should be as limited as possible. Apart from him, and until two weeks ago, the only officers who knew about it were the head and deputy head of the Intelligence Division and John here from Espionage. Even the DCI was told only that a new high-level source had been developed, but nothing more.’

  ‘Why?’ Hicks asked flatly, reaching for a pack of cigars. ‘Bearing in mind,’ he added, ‘that John is my direct subordinate. How come he knew and I didn’t?’

  ‘It was a value judgement,’ Muldoon replied. ‘Rigby was convinced that the source was very highly placed in the GRU or the SVR. The quality of the data he received was superb, and could only have come from the top, or very near it. Cliff Masters personally approved the list of officers who were to be told about the source. John needed to know because his duties required it.’ Muldoon offered a faint smile. ‘If you’ve a beef with that, Walter, you’d better take it up with Cliff, not John.’

  ‘Who’s the source?’ Hicks grunted.

  ‘We don’t know. At least, we don’t know exactly who he is, but we know he has to be one of a very small number of SVR or GRU officers.’

  ‘Why?’ Hicks asked again. He cut the end off a cigar and dropped it in the ashtray at the end of the long table. ‘And how was contact established? Through a cutout?’

  ‘No. He was a walk-in. Rigby was passed an undeveloped film from a miniature camera while he was browsing round in GUM – that’s the State department store in—’

  ‘I think we all know what GUM is, Richard,’ Hicks interrupted. He inspected the cut end of the cigar and then stuck it in his mouth. He patted his pockets, then stood up, walked over to his desk and picked up a Zippo lighter. He sat down again, thumbed the lighter and blew a large cloud of blue smoke down the table.

  ‘Go on,’ he instructed.

  Muldoon flapped ineffectively at the smoke. He was a reformed smoker, and found the smell of tobacco smoke – particularly from cigars – very offensive. He coughed and continued. ‘Rigby was off-duty and never even saw the person who gave the film to him. He found it in his jacket pocket when he was leaving the store – it had to have been passed by a brush contact. The point is, the source not only knew who Rigby was, which immediately eliminated most low-level SVR or GRU operatives, but he was able to pass the film completely undetected, which means he’s a professional, an agent with field experience.’

  Hicks considered this for a few moments. ‘And when the film was developed?’

  ‘Christmas,’ Muldoon smiled. ‘Twenty-four frames, needle-sharp pictures. Twenty-two were of highly classified documents, fourteen originating in the Kremlin itself, two from the GRU and the rest from the SVR. The intelligence we gained has been disseminated within the Agency, but heavily sanitized and on a very restricted distribution list. None has been released outside the Agency except with the Director’s personal approval.’

  Hicks held up a finger. ‘Got it,’ he said. ‘This is source AE/RAVEN, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Muldoon replied. All CIA agents and operations are identified by a two-letter prefix indicating the country involved – AE for Russia, DI for Czechoslovakia and so on – followed by a randomly generated code-name.

  ‘And the other two pictures on the film?’ Hicks asked. ‘What did they show?’

  ‘Mainly that our source had a sense of humour, and that he is very near the top. He took one picture of the Meeting Room in
the Kremlin, and one of the Walnut Room – that’s the room that adjoins it. The documents were impressive enough, but those pictures had Rigby dancing in the street.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Hicks, ‘I can see why. There are what, a dozen or so SVR and GRU officers who have access to those two rooms, and they’re all right at the top of the tree. OK, all I hear so far is good news. What’s the catch?’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better first—’ Muldoon broke off as a rap sounded on the door. It opened and Jayne ushered in a middle-aged woman carrying a tray of coffee. Nobody spoke until the two women had gone and the door closed. When everyone had poured their coffee, Muldoon continued. ‘Let me first outline the way the relationship developed. Rigby has never seen the contact, and has never made any obvious effort to do so, for fear of alarming him. What he did was to continue visiting shops, cafés and restaurants and generally making himself visible. He would routinely leave his coat or jacket on his chair, or hanging on a hook while he went to the john or to make a phone call or whatever. And, about once a month, an undeveloped film would appear in one of his pockets—’

  ‘Did he attempt to establish any kind of dialogue?’ Hicks interrupted.

  ‘Yes. He began putting messages into his pockets, concealed in suitable containers, of course, but the source has never taken one, so it’s been a pure one-way traffic flow so far. This continued until about three weeks ago. Then Rigby found another film canister in a pocket – but this time it was the glove pocket of his car. Rigby thought he had left the vehicle locked while he did some shopping, but he can’t be sure. Whatever, when he returned to it the driver’s door was unlocked, which was why he checked the car.’

  Hicks tapped ash from the end of his cigar into the ashtray. ‘Why the change in his routine, I wonder?’ he murmured. ‘OK, what was on that film?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Muldoon replied. ‘It wasn’t a film. When the embassy technician opened the film canister, it contained a small piece of paper bearing a short message.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You’d better read it,’ Muldoon said. ‘Ron?’

  Ronald Hughes opened the folder in front of him, selected two sheets of paper and passed them over to Hicks. ‘That’s a photostat of the original, Director,’ Hughes said, ‘enlarged by a factor of four, and the second sheet is a typed translation of the Russian.’

  Hicks took the first sheet of paper and glanced at it, then read the translation of the message. When he’d finished he looked up at Muldoon. Then he read the translation again. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said.

  Chapter Six

  Friday

  Hammersmith, London

  Richter walked into his office on the second floor and pushed the door shut behind him. The room was, like Richter, compact and slightly scruffy. It was small, measuring about twelve feet by ten with an off-white ceiling and a light green emulsion on the walls; the colour was described by Simpson as ‘vulture-vomit green’, and Richter had to agree he had a point. The single window, triple-glazed and barred, looked southwest, but only provided a view of the wall of an adjacent building and the top branches of an elderly sycamore tree that just about managed to eke out an existence in the side street.

  The desk and office chair were next to the window, facing the door, and against the opposite wall was a grey filing cabinet with a non-functioning lock. Richter kept nothing in it but a small kettle, a jar of instant coffee, a container of powdered milk, a spoon and two cups. Next to the filing cabinet, and bolted to a steel plate cemented into the wall, was a large ministry-issue safe fitted with a combination lock. On the desk were ‘In’ and ‘Out’ trays, a desk calendar, and two telephones. One had level-nine access which meant that Richter could ring up anyone entirely at the British tax-payers’ expense. That was the grey phone. The other one was black, and was a direct line that communicated only with Simpson.

  As usual, all the document trays on the desk were empty. Like the Secret Intelligence Service, the Foreign Operations Executive operated a ‘clear-desks’ policy, which meant that nothing was ever left on a desk in an unattended office. Even if the occupant was only going to the loo, all the files, document trays and even diaries had to be locked in the safe first. It was an irritating, but fundamentally secure, system.

  Richter span the safe’s combination lock. He reached in and pulled out three documents that had been delivered just before he had left for Moscow. As he did so, the black phone rang.

  ‘Come up, please,’ Simpson instructed. He sounded preoccupied.

  Office of the Director of Operations (Clandestine Services), Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

  Walter Hicks stood up, walked over to his desk and pressed the button on the intercom. ‘Jayne,’ he said, ‘this is going to take some time. Cancel all my appointments for the rest of the morning, and only put calls through if you can’t sort them out yourself.’ This meant they wouldn’t be disturbed – Jayne was very good at handling callers. ‘OK,’ he said, as he sat down again at the conference table, ‘you people are the experts. I can read what it says, but I need you to tell me what it means.’

  Muldoon glanced across the table towards Ronald Hughes. ‘This is probably more your field than mine, Ron.’

  ‘The message was apparently written in a hurry, Director,’ Hughes said, ‘as it’s brief and cryptic. But it contains three very specific pieces of information.’ He held up his left hand, fingers extended, and counted them off. ‘First, RAVEN states that there is a bilateral covert offensive in progress, one part directed against Europe and the other against the States. I emphasize that he says “in progress”, not “planned” or “future” or anything like that.’

  ‘My Russian isn’t that good,’ Hicks interrupted, ‘but we must be very clear on this. I presume you’ve checked the translation with our in-house specialists?’

  ‘Yes. Four separate analyst/translators have studied the wording of this section of the document, and they all agree. There is no doubt about the translation.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Second, he provides a date – the second of this month. Third, a map reference.’ Hicks looked at him expectantly. Hughes rubbed a hand over his forehead and looked down at his papers. ‘Let me take the three items in order. First, the offensive. As soon as the Espionage Division had this translation to hand, Cliff Masters directed me to run a high-priority check on all military activity within the CIS, looking for any signs of increased readiness. I also checked our current DEFCON status with NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain, and ran a check through all allied intelligence services, concentrating on Europe.’

  ‘That should have covered all the bases,’ Hicks said. ‘The results were negative, obviously, or I would have known about it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hughes replied. ‘We were aware that the RAVEN message specified a covert offensive, but for any type of offensive it would be reasonable to assume that there would be some evidence of heightened military activity. We found nothing. Now, the date and the map reference. The second of the month came and went, and nothing seemed to happen. The position is nowhere. It’s just a spot way up in the Bolshezemel’skaya Tundra, pretty much in the foothills of the Urals, and a long way from any sites of strategic interest or importance.’

  ‘Get to the point,’ Hicks growled.

  ‘As I said, nothing seemed to happen on the second, but actually something did. Seismic recordings that we obtained showed an explosion of some kind on that date, in more or less the same position as the map reference given by source RAVEN.’ Hughes looked over at Muldoon. ‘That was when we brought Science and Technology into the loop, because we needed satellite pictures to find out what had happened up on the tundra.’

  ‘We already had some pictures of the location specified by source RAVEN from a Keyhole satellite, taken in the weeks leading up to the second,’ Muldoon said. ‘The only thing of interest any of these showed was a handful of vehicles close to the map reference. After the event we tinkered with the polar orbit of
a Keyhole satellite to optimize coverage. We had some trouble with cloud on the first few passes, but eventually we did get clear shots of the area. All we found was a hole in the ground, and not even a very big hole. Then we ran comparisons with earlier shots of the same area, but that didn’t help much either.

  ‘We hadn’t got detailed satellite shots of the area – as I said, it’s nowhere near anything of any strategic importance – but the wide-angle pictures we had showed nothing but a small hill in the tundra at the grid reference. And that’s when two other factors entered the equation.’

  ‘And they were?’ Hicks asked.

  ‘The fourth piece of information in the RAVEN message,’ Hughes replied, ‘and the seismographic analysis of the explosion.’

  ‘I thought you said the RAVEN text contained only three bits of data.’

  ‘No, Director,’ Hughes said, shaking his head decisively. ‘The message contained three specific pieces of information, which we’ve already discussed. It also contained three other phrases that were assessed as non-specific, as each was apparently intended to be a question or, possibly, an incomplete piece of data. One translated as “neutron radiation”, the second was the proper name “Gibraltar” and the last was the word “demonstration”.’

  ‘OK,’ Hicks said. ‘Give me the rest of it – briefly, please.’

  ‘Analysis of the seismographic records of the explosion suggested that the weapon was slightly unusual,’ Muldoon said. ‘I won’t attempt to go into the technicalities of it because it’s not my field, and our in-house experts can provide you with chapter and verse if you need it. However, what bothered our people was the fact that it didn’t have the usual characteristics of any known current Russian nuclear weapon, fission or fusion. What it resembled more than anything was a big – a really big – neutron bomb.’

  Muldoon fell silent and Hughes spoke again. ‘We discussed the satellite pictures with Science and Technology, and ran some probability checks through Intelligence. John tried to do some checking with his sources in the CIS, but didn’t get anywhere. The thing that bothered us was the “neutron radiation” statement, which tied up with the seismographic analysis. We tried the usual procedures, using sampling systems in bordering countries and on civil aircraft flying anywhere near the site of the explosion, but got nil results. We didn’t understand that, because according to Science and Technology a weapon of the power suggested by the seismograph analysis should certainly have produced significant radiation. As we couldn’t detect any, we wondered if the Russians had managed to develop a high-yield but low-radiation warhead – a kind of super neutron bomb, if you like.’