A Covenant Of Spies

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Book excerpt

Chapter One

August 2007, London, England

“I knew I’d seen him before, but I didn’t know where and when until I got back here and ran his name through our computers. Then it all came flooding back. I’m surprised Fraser hadn’t known there was a chance I’d come across this chap before, but perhaps his memory is getting as bad as mine.”

I was forced to stop speaking by the strange scrutinising stare Hannah gave me, as if it were she and not me asking if I was a fool. “No, Hannah, you’re right. If I believed that to be true, then I shouldn’t be in the position I am. Fraser Ughert knew exactly what he was doing. The trouble now would be knowing why he wants to play this game?”

* * *

My name is Patrick West. I’m chairman of the United Kingdom’s Joint Intelligence Committee, or JIC for short. Everyone with any connection to the security of British interests at home or abroad is answerable to me. Or at least they were, until Fraser Ughert, my predecessor as chairman of JIC—and now in receipt of a gold-lined, index-linked pension that should have paid for something to keep his nose out of the intelligence game—drove down from Chearsley, in Buckinghamshire, and disturbed the peaceful existence I had with Hannah, my wife of three years. I feared that having met with him and his mysterious guest, a Russian named Nikita Sergeyovitch Kudashov at Brook’s, my club in St James’s Street, London, their names would resonate around those ancient walls for some time to come.

Now I was in the throes of explaining the unexplainable to a woman as perceptive as I and someone more dear to me than anything had ever been. She had converted me from a committed bachelor of almost fifty-five years into a married man and, as such, had accompanied me here to the palatial offices and private rooms in the Foreign and Commonwealth building on my appointment at Christmas time in 2002. Now she was known as not only Mrs West, but as my steward. That was not my choice of description. It was the official civil service name given to the role of the personal assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

As she listened, she poured two large measures of Isle of Jura single malt into the heavy crystal glasses as we sat beside each other facing out onto St James’s Park from the sitting room in our apartment, and I began trying to unravel what had occurred, and was likely to. When hearing updates of my work in the comforts of our home, she sat with her shapely legs tucked under herself and one of her slender arms stretched along the back of the sofa. Her hazel-coloured eyes were fixed on me as she swept a strand of long black hair away from her beautiful, shapely face, then laid that face on my shoulder. The time was a little after 1 p.m.

* * *

Not all of what I’d discovered in the time I’d had since the lunch at my club could I disclose to my wife for reasons I will explain as we go through this story of lies and forgotten consequences, but allow me to dissuade you from forming an opinion of me based on that honest disclosure. If you have already done so, then I hope I’m correct in saying you have judged me wrongly. Perhaps you think that withholding information is indicative of having no trust in my wife or not loving her sufficiently. That is not entirely true. However, if you believe me to be sceptical and hesitant in giving my trust, then you are smack on the button as they must say somewhere. I have never trusted a single living soul and as regards the dead, they too are not completely trustworthy.

* * *

“It was 1982 when I first came across him and neither of our names were as they are today. Back then his name was Petr Tomsa, and for the duration of the operation for which I was responsible, Control had named me Frank Douglas. The story he’s peddling to Fraser Ughert and me about a NSA surveillance policy code named Data Mining is an extension of their old Echelon programme, managed under what was called the UKUSA Security Agreement, or Five Eyes Pact. That alliance of intelligence sharing was supposed to be between America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and ourselves. I was made aware of the programme in 1973 when I was offered a job in the Secret Intelligence Service by the late and great Sir Dickie Blythe-Smith, who was then the Chairman of the JIC. However, it was not until I replaced him that I became fully aware of some other aspects to the American Echelon programme.

“It was a tiny part of an umbrella initiative code named Frosting, which was established by the NSA as early as 1966 to collect and process data from communications satellites and stations around the world. Frosting had two sub-programs: Transient, for intercepting Soviet satellite transmissions and Echelon, for intercepting Intelsat satellite transmissions. In other words, an early American probe into what can be described as friends’ telecommunications between each other’s sovereign states. Nosey buggers, the Americans back then, and their impinging on the integrity of friends has yet to change.

“Anyway, that’s not the important matter here, Kudashov, aka Petr Tomsa, wants us to extract his granddaughter from the arms of, his words, a powerful Russian politician, in exchange for what he says is her decryption of the modifications the NSA have made to Frosting and the obvious extension of its capabilities. Fraser needs me to sanction the intrusion into Moscow Central’s realm of ultimate charge and play his game through. Looked at on the surface, it’s a good offer from Kudashov, but I fear there’s more to it than the simple exchange it appears to be.”

As she shuffled along the sofa, straightening her legs and pointing her feet in stretching movements that captured my attention for a good while, Hannah asked, “Could Fraser’s friend, this Kudashov chap, have recognised you from 1982 do you think, Patrick?”

“It was twenty-five years ago and I very much doubt he would recognise me as I saw him from a distance and I can’t recall him looking in my direction. We never met face to face. He was mentioned as the expensive ‘go-to’ man if you were to get stuck in Prague and wanted to get out of Czechoslovakia by the back door. I contemplated using his services when the operation in that country went a bit tricky, but an opportunity arose where there was no need of him. London set me up with a perfectly good route out of the country. Let me expand on that and on my train of thought at the time.” I was lying about the escape, which was far from straightforward, but I doubted the lie would be discovered. I had never totally disclosed to Hannah all that brought me to where we were and I thought now would be as good a time as ever.

          “My passage to the highest position within the secret world of intelligence has been extraordinarily swift, especially considering how it started from a position far from ideal. At the time of this operation, I was very much the outsider in this intelligence community. I was not fully trusted by my peers, even though what had transpired between the more conventional branch of national security and myself had passed into antiquity some eleven years before. Memories are, of course, a requisite factor in the gathering of, and keeping of secrets; however, I had found a traitor within the Metropolitan Police who was once on the spy like me and that makes people like me suspicious, and in some cases, outwardly hostile. My working name for whatever operation to which I was assigned was always altered, but the legend never strayed from my correct age; by then I was thirty-three, and on each trip abroad my passport kept me in the same role, that of a chemical analyst.

“When I was recruited by the then plain Dickie Blythe-Smith, as he was before his knighthood, he said the service wanted me for my degree in chemical analysis; he said that would be of use, but he never said when. Immediately after signing the Official Secrets Act, yet again, I was posted to a company in London where I was employed working on bio-fuels. It was interesting work but sadly not in the same exciting sense as Jack Price and I had got up to in New York prior to my meeting with Dickie in the Traveller’s Club, London. Dickie told me I would have to wait for the true excitement; first, I had to do the ground work. I did well in my industry, so much so that within three years I had progressed to working under the head of ICI’s research and development team, headed up by a Professor Alan Mitchell. At the beginning, the team I was working with concentrated on specialised polymers and man-made fibres, spin-offs of the oil industry. We focused our analysis into what was out there, concentrating on the bio fuels that could be enabled through chemical engineering, or, to simplify that, changing mineral structures into something more profitable and usable as a propellant. The primary constituents for these experiments were mainly inert substances classed as macro-minerals, as our aim was to engineer those elements into refined fuel sources capable of being installed in places unreachable by conventional power supplies.

“After a few more years, they moved me away from that research and into a high value, rapidly growing market where the products produced had diverse applications in the industrial world. The biggest growth of all was in synthetic organic polymers. With some outside influence, that became my personal speciality and my sole responsibility. This was of course the so-called groundwork that Dickie had mentioned. The intensity of my work kept me fully occupied, leaving little time for contact with any branches of the intelligence services other than a few brief excursions abroad in which I played little part. I was there, I was told, to watch and learn, but it wasn’t only watching. I was thrown into a couple of things. All of those precautions, along with the weekend studying and three fake annual holidays I spent at Beaulieu, down in Hampshire, became a huge benefit in the full operation I would undertake in Prague.”

Hannah still looked interested, although perhaps that was her congenital kindness or my self-importance misleading me, but either way I soldiered on. There was a part of me that wanted to just get involved with the investigations into this Russian’s claims and not share the preliminary disclosures and back story with her, but that wasn’t possible because of our closeness at work as well as in private.

          “It didn’t take much imagination to see that the whole chemical process could lead to the creation of fuel from polymers. All these polymers are manufactured from waste products, which makes the augmentation of this technique imperative for the developing world where there is no oil, or very little. That was what I was endeavouring to achieve: fuel from waste products, or existing bio-diverse products farmed for fuel. Seaweed would be a perfect example of the sustainable life that is being spoken about today, another would be certain crystals. That’s how I got my ticket to be invited to Prague with Professor Mitchell. There is a part of the Czech Republic that is so rich in a particular strain of phosphates and arsenates, that with the price of crude oil climbing all the time, it made commercial sense to mine the crystallised deposits and start the engineering process in what in 1982 was then called Czechoslovakia. Apparently, the location and viability had been common knowledge in the West for some time, all that was lacking from its extraction was the ability to render it profitable. It was to be my role to set it in motion in more ways than one.”

Chapter Two

May 1982, Prague

“If every description I read in service files matched the complexity of the ones ascribed to Jana Kava and her brother, Dalek, then I would have had far more free days spent enjoying the pleasures of life than I have been able to. Despite the obvious lack of complications written on the two sheets of paper inside the thin yellowish-brown coloured file, more were hidden from view than I first appreciated.”

File coded FlyHi One: First Write 01/05/1981. Updated 01/03/1982.

Starts: Jana Kava, thirty years of age, (DOB 09/08/1951) plain appearance with greying-black hair and hazel eyes. She is old for her age. The subject has high cheekbones, with a sallow complexion to a chubby, heart-shaped face. She has no distinguishing facial features. Comely build, efficient, and reliable in both categories of work.

Her mother was born in Czechoslovakia of German parents and executed 16/07/1963. Tereza (the mother, aged 43) was killed for what was labelled subversive activities almost twelve years after the subject’s birth and her father, General Anotoly Vladislav Kava, one-time head of the StB, State Security in Czechoslovakia, disappeared the same day in 1964 as the Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev visited the site of the updated Warsaw Pact fighter aircraft and trainer, the Aero L-29 Delfín. NATO calls it The Maya. Although retired from the StB, the general was de facto in charge of security at various military sites, including this one. He was also a highly decorated war veteran.

The aircraft is manufactured in a factory on the periphery of the city of Prague, where the retired general also held a post as the Communist Party advisor before his disappearance. That was the ninth of January 1964.

Mysteriously, Khrushchev was not seen in public again in Czechoslovakia until boarding a plane for the flight back to Moscow on the eleventh of January. He was on crutches with his left ankle heavily plastered. According to the official Communist agenda, there were three other appearances scheduled during the week after showing his face at the Aero Vodochody factory. The First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had approximately nine months left in power before being replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. All probably just a coincidence, but worth noting.

Personal Life: Jana serves on the central policy committee of the chairman of the Communist Party and at one time the Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia, Jozef Lenárt. She speaks several languages fluently which she possibly practices when in bed with Lenárt. They are discreet in their relationship, but not enough to avoid our notice. He is married and has two children who are both at university in Moscow.

Home bird. She resides in the same house as that of her parents before they died. She is aware of her brother’s (Dalek) growing affiliations to the banned anti-Communist movement, Solidarity, started in Poland in 1980. But, and this is vital—neither Jozef Lenárt, nor any other member of the central policy committee know of Dalek’s affiliation, or her deception. …That’s how things stand at present. It could be a lever.

Jana Kava is our primary target. However, her brother, Dalek, DOB 19/06/49, is also of interest to us. He holds dual nationality, Russian and Czechoslovakian, and speaks both languages fluently, as well as English and German. His political leanings are the same as his sister’s, towards the centre-left; however, according to our placement, he shows significant disillusionment with his Communist Party teachings and we are of the opinion he is now accessible.

File coded FlyHiTwo: First Write 01/05/1981. Updated 01/03/1982.

Starts: Personal Life: Heavily built, but surprisingly deft and agile for his size and slight disability: six foot three inches and sixteen stone, plus a bit. Studied judo, achieving a blue belt before other things took his interest. Black hair, black eyes with a permanent sad expression, which is probably caused by his addiction to alcohol. His face carries no distinguishing marks, is unremarkable and of a dull pale colour. He walks with a limp for no medical reason that we could find, nor do we know of any other cause.

We have no information of his formative years, other than like his sister, he was raised in the family home at number 34 Sámova, Praha 10. It’s a beautifully appointed three-storey home on the banks of the River Vitava befitting the offices his father once held. Subject no longer resides at that address. There is no criminal activity recorded against his name. Although he was only fifteen years old when Khrushchev visited, we do know he made quite a noise at the Aero Vodochody factory the next day following his father’s, the general’s, non-appearance at home. He was called to appear before the local commissar committee of junior party officials to explain his behaviour. He offered no defence and was severely reprimanded, having his junior party membership suspended for three months; however, after an intervention on his behalf by his senior chemical tutor at the Prague pre-University school he attended, that punishment was rescinded and nothing was recorded against his name. We have reason to believe it was Dalek who discovered his father’s body. That was on the morning of the twelfth of January, the day after Khrushchev left the country and the committee was convened that evening. The official reason given for the lapse of time between the general’s disappearance and discovery, was that he’d died from a heart attack in a part of the complex seldom used by anyone.

Dalek was educated to a higher level than normal. He left the Czechoslovakian university at the age of twenty-one with the equivalent of five first-class honours degrees. One was in chemical analysis. He has occupied the same employment position since leaving the country’s education system—Premier Analyst at Bok’s Chemicals, Prague. A very prestigious position. He is overall second in charge at the chemical plant and considered to be one of the rising stars in the fledgling Czech scientific industry. We would like that ascendency to be accelerated and we want to know the progression boundaries in the development of your core subject: fuel from waste products.

Sexual orientation: What intelligence we do have on this aspect comes from a source no longer available to us. It suggests both subjects are of a heterosexual persuasion. However, caution must be used with this information as we have no evidence on the ground available to substantiate or repudiate what is in the file.

To Sum Up: We want Jana’s signature on our books by close of play. Time is not of essence. Extend your stay at your discretion. What we do want is her alliance detached from her brother. Security is our utmost concern. If, in achieving the compliance of FlyHi One, FlyHi Two signature can also be scribbled in our ledger, then that’s an acceptable bonus, but on no account can he be offered the same signing-on fee as his sister. You must make him earn whatever bonus you see fit—within reason. Jana gets premier-class remuneration and five-star handling all the way. One other thing: discretion is of the utmost importance, Douglas. No going off script.

* * *

“That roughly covered the extent of my briefing two days before I departed for Prague, from a Miles Faversham who told me he was the file’s compiler and deputy head of the Soviet Satellite desk at Century House. For reasons I’ll get to, I couldn’t see him on the ground in Prague, so I assumed he’d come by the file information by way of an undisclosed third party. When I left Faversham, my thoughts were centred on the difficulty of the operation. To get one of them to turn against their country was going to be hard enough, but to get two, well, I’ll be honest, I doubted I’d be able to do it.

“I hadn’t been trained in the persuasive arts. My limited experience at that time was more theoretical than practice. I had no knowledge of operational stuff before I was with Jack Price in New York. That operation was successful as far as Jack was concerned, but it did involve Dickie and Fraser flying out to New York where I’d killed someone and had been previously shot. They got Jack, me and another guy named Job home. Later, after Jack had passed away, I was in on a snatch assignment in Hamburg, which involved the death of an opposing agent in a messy firefight. Then came the other ‘look and listen one’ in Moscow where I had nothing to do. So I wasn’t James Bond by a long way!

“For the job, London gave me a substantial budget to use, but as I say, I wasn’t trained to talk people into swapping sides in the Cold War. I wasn’t nervous in the sense of not being able to do it, but I was nervous about doing it wrong. I told myself that everyone started somewhere and this was to be my somewhere. Beaulieu was a great institution for teaching trade-craft and being able to look after yourself well enough, so I wasn’t frightened by the thought of going, but I can’t say I had no reservations.

“The only reason I could think of why they’d picked me for the job was my chemical industrial experience. If Dalek Kava had made such a loud commotion within the higher echelons of the Communist Party when only fifteen, then without question his name was high up on the StB’s list and the Russians would have as much interest in him as them. From what I’d read of Czechoslovakia, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the StB had Dalek under permanent observation; however, this was my assignment and before I left for Prague I decided to play it as it developed and if need be: ignore Faversham’s instructions of getting them both.

“That wasn’t my only concern. The briefing I’d been given on the exposé of Jana’s affair with a leading politician was too abridged for my liking. For example, why wasn’t Jozef Lenárt already ‘on our books’ and thereby making Jana Kava superfluous to our needs? Also, who was it who found this information and how was it all verified? I asked those question, but got the standard answer to do with pay grades and mine being below what was required. I’m not telling you any of this with the benefit of hindsight, but other things bothered me. Like the fact that Jana, although listed first and made to appear the main target to turn, would in fact be compromised irreparably by her brother’s defection. If I turned him then, his sister stood no chance of escaping anyone’s radar and would need no inducement to jump ship.

“Dalek held opposing views to his superiors in both the idealistic claims of Sovietism and, as I discovered more as time went on when I was out there, the functionality of Czechoslovakian industrial practices. He was an outspoken individual, owing his freedom more to his father’s reputation and his sister’s influence than to his own circumspection. On the paper records at the MI6 archives held on five floors of 140 Gower Street, and mysteriously not included in Faversham’s briefing notes, Dalek Kava was named as a possible American StB plant. Which could explain why he was still at large. But in other files I looked in, the CIA was said to have no presence in Czechoslovakia. The Director General heading up the seventh floor at Century House Soviet Satellite counter-intelligence would surely not have withheld this information from Faversham’s desk, so why would Faversham not show Dalek’s status to me? The only answer I came up with was that he and his boss wanted someone flushed out and I would be ham-fisted enough to do it without making it look deliberate. Without asking, I decided to send a gun to the British Embassy in Prague by the diplomatic bag.

“Despite my misgivings with the overall evaluation, I was not going to turn down the opportunity this assignment presented and as you are well aware by now, I’ve never been shy in putting forward my own spin on things. Especially when it comes to following my heart rather than connecting it to whatever should be inside my brain when it mattered. That particular trait of mine was in some ways my undeniable moral undoing, but also it created a distinct success for the service, or so I thought.”