"They've killed the disk with the plans on it."
"Killed it?"
"The contents have been wiped. Somebody must have tried to get into it without using the password."
I stopped walking and turned to stare at Mal, who was barely visible in the dark.
"Is it possible the person could have read the contents and then deliberately destroyed them?"
"Not a chance." He sounded fairly confident.
"They tried a wrong password, and that did it."
Jesus, I was thinking. Are we compromised, or what?
"If they'd got into the disk they wouldn't have wiped it," Mal added.
"They'd have left it intact to cover their traces."
"True. But who the hell was messing about in the office?"
My first instinct was to blame Toad, whose duty it was to maintain security. But of course he'd been with us in the city. In his absence, the two scalies, Steve and Terry, should have been in occupation.
"When did this happen?"
"It must have been some time this evening, while everyone was out working."
"So who was in the block?"
"Only the scalies."
"What do they say about it?"
"I haven't asked them yet. I only just discovered it. I tried to boot up the lap-top and found the floppy was still in the slot."
"Grip them, then."
I was enraged. Trust those arse holes of signallers to foul up our entire enterprise.
I rushed into the building and dragged Terry off his pit.
"Dozy wanker!" I yelled.
"Get into the ops room, NOW!"
No. 2 lap-top, a Toshiba, stood open on the ops room table with its screen raised and the floppy disk still in the port on the right-hand side.
"There's been a major breach of security," I started.
"Who used that computer last?"
I glared round, but one by one the lads shook their heads.
None of them had been on the lap-top that day, they declared.
They'd been out of doors, on the ranges, then on a night movement exercise.
"Well then, how the fuck did that programme disk come to be in the port? It should be locked inside the filing cabinet.
Everyone here knows that."
Still there was silence.
Suddenly Rick said, "Wait a minute. There was the Colonel."
"The Colonel?"
"Anna!"
"Jesus!" I said.
"You mean she came in here? What did she want?"
"She said something about her phone having gone down. She asked if she could use ours."
"And you let her in here?"
"Well, yeah she being a colonel and everything. I didn't think I could tell her to fuck off."
"So what happened?"
"She dialled a number and started talking in Russian.~ "What was she saying?"
"I couldn't understand a lot of it. Something about transport cars.
"And you stayed in the room with her?"
Rick shook his head.
"No I let her carry on. I was working in the kitchen and I went back in there."
"Ah, Jesus! How long for?"
"Five minutes?"
"Cunt!" I was almost on the point of whacking him, so angry did I feel.
Obviously he realised it, because he blurted out, "I mean, with her being our OC, more or less, I thought everything was above board."
"Rick," I said, 'that's the second time you've dropped a bollock. And this one's serious. This is your last chance. Any more cock-ups and you're going home."
I took a deep breath. It was too late. The damage had been done. But how the hell had Anna got her hands on the disk so fast? She must have had a duplicate set of keys for the filing cabinet. But how far had she managed to get? Had she been dictating stuff straight off the computer screen to some FSB colleague? Or was the conversation Rick had heard just cover for her attempt to get into the program?
"What happened at the end, when she left?" I demanded.
"I came back in here. I was going to offer her a cup of tea."
"Bloody hell! What was she doing?"
"She was sitting there at the table."
"With the lap-top in front of her?"
Rick frowned.
"I never noticed. She was still talking on the phone."
"And then?"
"She rang off, put the phone back on the hook. Then she said thanks and went out.
Now what? It was the same dilemma as when we'd found the bug. Should we reveal our suspicions, or should we keep quiet?
Even if I didn't accuse Anna of trying to break into our computer programs, should I drop some casual remark about her having used our phone, just to show that her visit hadn't gone unreported? Should I confide in Sasha and see what he thought?
"Wait," was Whinger's advice.
"Let it develop. Say nothing.
See what happens. If she has managed to bust into the program, the next thing we can expect is a massive search. If they suspect we've got a couple of suitcase bombs about the place, they're going to go mad trying to find them. On some pretext or other, they'll turn everything upside-down tomorrow."
"What about Hereford?" asked Pavarotti.
"Are we going to report this to base?"
"Wait out on that one too," I said.
"They'd shit themselves if they heard about it, and they've no means of assessing the position from that end. No point in stirring things up unnecessarily."
Mal our best computer buff but always a worrier said, "Yeah, and I for one wouldn't blame them."
"Who?"
"The Russkies. If they made a search. It pisses me off that we're doing what we are, anyway.
"Me too," I agreed.
Most of the guys, Mal in particular, were confident that it was technically impossible for Anna to have accessed the program.
They reckoned that her visit was nothing more sinister than a repercussion from her past a return to her old KGB habits of snooping and that she couldn't have discovered anything damaging. So, after a bit of a Chinese parliament, we decided to keep quiet.
Until that moment I'd had no cause to suspect the woman of duplicity. Quite the opposite: she'd seemed fully on side, and had been a terrific asset. She'd thrown herself into the training with real zip, and had never shown the slightest irritation when people kept calling on her for translations. Her physical presence had been enough to give everyone a lift: she was very fit and energetic, and went up ropes or over the assault course as fast as any man, often joining in for the fun of it when there was no real need. And the students liked her as much as we did. They were slightly in awe of her, and referred to her as Polkovnik the Colonel in a way that was partly sarcastic but had an edge of respect as well. Several times she'd reinforced my impression that she was right behind us visitors by telling indiscreet stories about her days in the old-style KGB. She'd joke about how clumsy and stupid and suspicious all her Communist comrades had been with the implication that nowadays everything was sweetness and light.
Her private life, though, had remained mysterious. Like Sasha, she had a room in the officers' mess at the other side of the camp, and she'd dropped hints about a flat somewhere in town. Beyond that I knew nothing about her. On a personal level I was still fancying her in a cool sort of way, and I was planning to ask her out to dinner one evening when the time seemed ripe, suggest a meal at a place of her choice and see what developed.
So far, though, I'd been so busy and had so much on my mind that I hadn't got round to issuing an invitation.
For a long time that night I couldn't go to sleep. My mind kept returning to the tunnel, to the hollow we'd made in the brickwork, right under the wall of the Kremlin, and to the chaos that would follow if we'd been rumbled. Arrest? Gaol?
Deportation? International incident? Should the whole team do a runner while the going was good?
No matter which way my thoughts turned, they were anything but soothing.
EIGHT.
Through my sleep I heard a hammering on our door, and in burst Johnny, shouting, "Geordie, get up! There's a panic on.
For a moment I thought, Christ, the search has started already.
They're turning us out of bed. But at least they can't search the Embassy so sod them.
Across the room Whinger protested from under his pillow, and I groaned, "For fuck's sake what time is it?"
"Six-fifteen," said Johnny.
"It's Sasha. He's desperate to see you.
"Where is he?"
"Here. In the passage.
"Bring him in. Sasha!" I shouted, rolling out of bed.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Sasha appeared in his DPMs, writhing with embarrassment at having crashed into our preserve and finding me naked.
"Zheordie, I am sorry..
"Forget it. What's the problem?"
"We need your help."
"Now?"