“On what, General Borshin?”
“On you. I have a job that needs a man. Reports to me direct. Very little if any Embassy or local network support at first. I requires two things. Loyalty to me and loyalty to the Rodina.”
“If I say no?”
“A posting will be made available from the waiting list.”
Kirov knew he could wait months for a new job abroad, and even then it could be to a hellhole like Guatemala City or Lusaka.
“What’s the job?” he asked with a sigh and Borshin smiled widely.
CHAPTER THREE
Milburn
Henry Arnold had now spent almost three months sniffing for Yuri Simonov’s mole. The job was made doubly difficult because no-one knew what real information had been passed over. The only lead was the cryptic reference to Long Knives, and that had turned up cold. Each time he tried to move his thinking onto a new tangent, his instincts pulled him back to the corrupted data bank – but every request for information from the data processing people simply left him more confused. Finally, one of them admitted that a bug was a bug and, sometimes, one just had to learn from the experience, what with the interface and the access and format omega in this configuration. He had had enough. He raised an eyebrow and left the room, resolved to find someone that could speak English about computers. All his requests for the man who had designed the system were meeting the usual problems. The team involved were now scattered over various defence projects, high priority you understand. Eventually he made the request of Sir Martin Callows himself who hurumphed, barked a laugh and picked up the phone, promising to help.
Arnold returned to his labours in the vast registry at Century and, three days later, a gangly individual in corduroy trousers and a T-shirt arrived at the registry asking for him.
“I’m Jeff,” he said. “You have a hassle with the system?”
Arnold pushed his glasses up his nose. He had seen people like this before. His daughter nearly married one.
“Sort of. You designed it?”
“Yeah. One of a happy bunch. What’s the problem? I’m due back at Holy Loch tonight.”
“You will be going back when we are finished,” Arnold said firmly, “not before.”
“Whoa, relax granddad! For you, the defence of the Realm and the free world can wait.”
Arnold stood. He had had enough of this. “Listen, young man. I was defending the realm before you were born. That is precisely what we are doing here, so curb your tongue! Now then, I have spent months listening to a bunch of computer freaks make excuses for their own incompetence. I have a simple question and I keep getting technical replies that are not answers but gibberish. Listen carefully.”
He outlined the problem clearly and succinctly and, to his credit, the engineer listened silently before saying, “Let’s have a look then,” rather like a doctor.
Three minutes later, he leant back in the chair.
“Are you security” he asked Arnold.
“Yes, in a manner of speaking.”
“Good. Then we don’t have to call them.”
“What are you saying” Arnold asked.
“We have been got at... no doubt about it.”
“I thought you might say that.”
“OK. Let’s get your problem sorted out, then we can look at the system security.”
Arnold was surprised at the casual tone. “I thought these things were supposedly impregnable?”
“Not to a whizz kid. I was at university with a dozen people who could hack into this system in a couple of days, but that isn’t the problem here. Someone has gotten to it all right, but from the inside. Someone who is cleared for entry has purged your file. To do that, they had to present a series of passwords in sequence. It’s not the system at fault so much as the operator. You have a bogey in here somewhere.”
“Can you determine if any other files have been purged in the same manner?”
“No I can’t, but one of the software writers on the team might. We all have our areas of expertise. Let me make a couple of calls and I’ll see who’s available...” He raised a hand. “Don’t tell me! The defence of the realm! You will make them available.”
“Correct,” Arnold replied dryly.
“Right, well, the girl you want is Wendy Khan. She’s down at Cheltenham at the moment. She is only a kid, but the brightest in the business. Don’t shout at her or she’ll go to IBM or someone for a million a year. OK?”
“Give her a call,” Arnold said, “and I will be all sweetness and light.”
She arrived the next evening, an exotic mix of coffee coloured skin, bright blue eyes, sari and a Chester accent.
Arnold took her in one long, admiring glance.
“My mother was Scottish and my father Kashmiri,” she explained with an open smile.
“Ah yes, I see.”
“Jeff said you were a crusty old bugger,” she offered frankly, “and I wasn’t to take any nonsense from you.”
“I see…” he repeated, uncomfortably.
“But I can see you’re really a sweetie. So what’s the problem with the system?”
He began to explain and she listened.
“I think best over a glass of wine. Let me do that and, tomorrow, we shall try and rescue your input…”
It was nearly six and he nodded his agreement. Outside, the evening was damp with drizzle – and, as he walked along towards Euston Station through the sodden bustle of commuters, he tried to place his task in perspective. His son was in advertising and he had watched, fascinated, one night as he had gone through what he had called the proposition. It simply meant writing down exactly what you understood the offer to mean, then removing any nuances that were superfluous to get an exact definition. From there you could shape what you wanted to say, and to whom, without confusing the issue. It seemed a simple enough task, but watching he had learnt a new respect for the discipline. It
