A Covenant of Spies

by Daniel Kemp

  “Are we likely to be under some kind of terrorist inspired chemical attack, Patrick?” he asked, flustered, on the car telephone as we were pulling through the gates at the Royal Marines, Hamworthy Base at Poole.

  I managed to moderate his concerns by bending the truth somewhat, saying they were mere names of samples Porton Down wanted on a watch list issued to Special Branch to be aware of in the forthcoming months as a consignment of each had apparently been stolen from premises in Amsterdam, used by GlaxoSmithKline. Interpol was working the case and, so far, had a highly likely destination marked in as Kashmir with the recipients being a rebel group that were on the Indian government's Defence Intelligence radar. He accepted my false explanation, but knowing him to be an assiduous pursuer of unfavourable political news relating to the government, I wondered how deep Sir Nigel Hicks would look. Just as I thought I had gotten rid of him, he asked if I'd seen the psychologist he'd recommended. Just at that moment, Frank held aloft a faxed message from Fraser and my mind jumped from the back of the car where I sat moderately comfortably, to inside Fraser's office. I might be in need of Sir Nigel's suggestion before too long.

  * * *

  The professionalism shown by Major Swan and his men thoroughly deserved the accolade they received in the Mess Room on their return and the one I laid on for them later that night. I had other places to go but wished I could have stayed with them, away from the consequences of my visit to India and Kudashov's granddaughter's coming evacuation from Moscow tomorrow.

  I also had a briefing of the Defence chief of staff to attend in the morning, at which I was sure I would be questioned on the operation I authorised, undertaken by a contingent of an elitist naval marine company that could have flagged up on any of their desks. To have kept the arrangements for the Zaragoza raid secreted away for so long was a fantastic logistical achievement, but once the major's team entered Norway and from there into Russia, protocol would have been breached, with several branches of the Defence Ministries possibly warned. I wondered if I would be walking into an ambush on Monday's intelligence meeting, but from what I learned so far, I hoped I was in the clear.

  The major was adamant that his squad had left no evidence of British involvement at the site. Weaponry used was the same as the Russian military, AK-74 rifles firing 5.45mm bullets and if, as planned, small parts of the mission's conversation was overheard and taped from the concealed microphones; it was in a Chechen dialect they had spoken. Everything was good about Zaragoza, but I couldn't say the same about Kudashov, Fraser, or me with Tuesday's funeral fast approaching. I had worries over Kudashov as well as Fraser, and I was far from certain how to deal with either of them.

  Chapter Thirty-Four: What's not Remembered Cannot be Forgotten

  The East Berlin Stasi desk heard of the proposed demolition of the Wall through an intercepted NSA signal four days before it started to be pulled down. Trubnikov had been given a heads-up about the demolition two days before them. A spokesman I contacted at the BBC from India said it was his telephone call to Die Welt newspaper that alerted the western press to its forthcoming demise. Trubnikov told me he was ordered by the high command at the KGB to leak that information, but no reason was given.

  Dickie Blythe-Smith was retired when the Wall came down. Or rather a more precise way of describing Dickie's condition of unemployment would be to say: his remuneration, derived from his pension when his salary ceased to be the main source of income on the eighteenth of August 1984. However, Dickie being Dickie, he kept a hand on the wheel of matters that concerned his main adversaries throughout his service life—the KGB, in all its many manifestations. One of those selections he made related to the conduct of Vyacheslav Trubnikov, to whom he had given something special for those days that Jack Price called those days when it rains and nobody is giving away umbrellas.

  Dickie had seen the same NSA signal that Trubnikov had seen because Trubnikov sent it on to him, using the once private Odessa coding that now four people knew. The fourth person was Hugo Glenister through whom the signal was sent. But Hugo never knew how to decode it. He just knew the signal had to end up as a telegram addressed to Dickie's private post box at The Travellers Club in Pall Mall, a place the then widowed Sir Richard Blythe-Smith used every day.

  By using the Trubnikov route, Hugo Glenister sent the Odessa coded signal to Kudashov, telling him of the open NSA terminal point at Mannheim and to go and find what he could. Unfortunately for everyone, Kudashov was too far away to get there before the leaking terminal was shut down; however, he was also too far away from his own terminals to read the cancelation signal.

  The following day, Kudashov received another message from Trubnikov, this time initiated by agent Ryan. Into the body of this message Trubnikov was instructed by Ryan to include the encrypted NSA telecommunications Kudashov was later able to pass on to his granddaughter. The files containing the signals that Cilicia Kudashov decoded were authenticated when presented to the cryptanalysts at GCHQ.

  The luckless visit Kudashov undertook to Mannheim was further complicated by the innumerable cameras the CIA had around the site. They snapped away merrily at Nikita Sergeyovitch Kudashov, adding his previously unlogged face to their classified files.

  * * *

  Glenister's longevity as Director General on the Soviet Satellite desk was not entirely due to Dickie's patronage and influence, but it did Hugo no harm to have such a heavy-hitter on his side. He had left Hugo to carefully tidy away any loose ends that had been left exposed to any CIA or KGB interference. But there was one that had been missed, though not by Hugo, because not only is it true that a secret one is unaware of cannot be disclosed, equally true is that which one does not know, will always be forgotten.

  Dickie, now knighted, hid himself away from direct contact with Glenister through normal channels, preferring to meet in far-flung rendezvous places away from Westminster eyes. For a further six years following Hugo's retirement, Dickie ferreted away at old friends for insights into Russian politics, carefully making sure his name was not coupled to any Ryan inspired message.

  * * *

  As a direct result of Nikita Kudashov's ill luck in having his face photographed at the NSA's Mannheim relay station, another signal was sent. This was the one Hugo knew nothing of. It originated at a console address in Kent County, Delaware. It first went to the same Correos address as used in 1982 by Ryan's Cologne address, where after it was encrypted into a different code, it was sent on to Trubnikov who, having accepted a great deal of money from an American he refused to reveal, changed the coding once more before forwarding it on to the Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Science and Technology in Washington D.C. That signal was sent in 2001, and the person who it was sent to was a CIA agent named Marcus Stoneman.

  * * *

  As this investigation of mine encapsulated more and more of what I held dear, the more I had to rely on random assumptions rather than rational ones. For some reason that I could not fathom, the Stoneman family and Nikita Kudashov had bad blood running between them. I knew that to be true because Trubnikov had kept copies of open text signals that went one way and then the next between Kent County and Marcus Stoneman's CIA desk.

  Paulette Simona had confirmed the name of Nikita Kudashov to Marcus Stoneman when she recognised him from the photograph she'd been given when he approached her at Torp Sandefjord airport. But the face in the exact copy of the photograph was not known by that name at the Kent County end of these transmissions. In the home in Delaware, he was known as Klaus Mecklenburg. It did not take the Stonemans an eternity to discover the family name had been changed from Mecklenburg to Kudashov. Apparently, for reasons known only to himself, Nikita was Kudashov to some people and Klaus Mecklenburg to others.

  That was, I thought, the logical way of interpreting what Trubnikov told me of the Kent County signals. But where was the logic in sending an agent from a CIA department, who was working at a clandestine laboratory, to meet with a man known to be a Briti
sh intelligence officer? Ignoring logic, as it seemed obvious I had to, where would random thoughts take me if it meant Kudashov was being drawn into the open for a purpose only the corrupted part of the CIA knew? If that was so, then my random thinking opened another labyrinth of conflicting solutions to the Cilicia problem. One of which was exacerbated by the arrangement Dickie had made with Trubnikov. And that was the one giving me the most trouble!

  * * *

  I had asked that Kudashov be transferred from the residential area of Beaulieu to the far more secure detention area whilst I was in the British Embassy at Delhi, waiting for my flight back to the UK. There he would remain until I had the time to visit. I was conscious of his demand for prior knowledge of his granddaughter's extraction, but I could not securely do that by telephone or fax. That needed to be told one-to-one. Although I thought I knew the true reason for him bringing his case to the SIS and not presenting it to the Americans, it mattered not to me, as in my opinion Cilicia Kudashov still remained in need of rescuing. However, there were many considerations of the Moscow operation to be reviewed by those on the ground before it could take place, leaving me helpless other than to hope my belief in Liam Catlin and Christopher Irons was not misplaced. Other than that, my foremost concern lay to the north of Poole, in Buckinghamshire with Fraser Ughert. It was in that direction Jimmy pointed the car and our flying motorcyclists escorted our three-vehicle convoy. I wished beyond the boundaries of hallucinations for the comforting words and supporting smile of Hannah to be sitting once again at my side, stroking my hand with her soft slender fingers and my eyes closing in sleep, but sleep was impossible … as were the words and smiles of my dead wife, Hannah.

  * * *

  The knowledge of having suspected some of what I learned from Trubnikov gave me no feeling of pride or vanity; if anything, the opposite was nearer the truth than that. There was no sense of superiority when realising the earth that supported my feet had opened up and swallowed all the reason there was for the world I existed in.

  When I finally retire from the intelligence service I would like to leave a less intricate legacy than the one left by Dickie Blythe-Smith that I was trying to unravel. Whatever it was that Dickie was hiding, not only was it well hidden, but I was beginning to ask myself whether I really wanted to discover it.

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Correos

  Fraser was reticent in his greetings and I had expected no different from him given the circumstances.

  “Were you aware I had a visit from St. James's Palace yesterday at more or less the same time as you took off for India? Rather convenient you'd left, don't you think? But let's forget that for a while and look at all this rubbish you sent me from India. Are you serious in any of it, Patrick? Because if you are, I think you're having a breakdown with all that occurred with Hannah's murder and the complications you experienced on being shot once again. How is the leg by the way?”

  I just about managed an okay, before he was off again.

  “There was a woman involved in two of your shootings, wasn't there? I bet any psychologist would love to pick at what's going on inside that head of yours because of that. Never mind! Some people can live with being mad. But I doubt it's a qualification needed for the joint intelligence committee.”

  I thought that last remark about being mad to be a bit on the low side, but he had a right to defend all that he held in the highest esteem. I said nothing, leaving him directing the discussion. He hadn't finished with the prospect of me being insane.

  “I spoke to the Cabinet Secretary this morning. His wife tried to fend me off, being Sunday and all that, but, as I suspected, he took my call when I mentioned the name of the visitor I had from the Palace. He agreed with me that a breakdown could well be what's making you act oddly. He said he'd recommended a psychologist already, but you'd refused to see her. In the light of your message from Delhi, I think you should change your mind on that subject and make an appointment with her as early as you can.”

  Fraser finished as abruptly as he had started, leaving me uncertain of where to begin my defence. I didn't start with my knowledge of his caller from the Court of St James's visit, nor did I tell him of the similar message he'd heard from his visitor, being delivered to me immediately when I arrived at the British Embassy by an embarrassed ambassador. What I did do was try to extract something I very much doubted Fraser wanted to confess, by beginning the account of the Trubnikov story nearer what in a straight portrayal of time would be called the end of the puzzle surrounding Cilicia Kudashov, but equally it could be said to be the place where it all began. I kept my depiction of what happened in India as concise and correct as I could, without cutting too many corners or including facile facts that were superfluous to the puzzle.

  When Trubnikov mentioned the surname of Stoneman in connection to the Zaragoza site at Nikel, along with the site's owner, the Russian oligarch Bohdan Dimitriyevich Valescov, the adrenaline in my veins started to pump my heart rate higher and, at the same time, lower my rate of breathing as it always does when I'm faced with excitement and danger. Four years ago, without this disclosure Fraser and I failed to equate Valescov's importance to the Rosicrucian fraternity that we knew he and Tucker Stoneman belonged to. I thought perhaps my trip to India had presented us with another chance.

  * * *

  After the embarrassment of the faxed message from St James's Palace that he'd been required to read to me, the British Ambassador in Delhi assisted in my enquiries of the United States Foreign Service, and it was through him I found the name of the US Ambassador to Poland in 1982. My message to Michael Simmons was a request for an in-depth research into the Stoneman family. There were three sons. The youngest was called Marcus, the middle one Spencer, and the oldest brother was called Tucker. This was the exact same Tucker Stoneman of Gladio B, 2002 vintage. The head of the family's name was George Thomas Stoneman, of Kent County, Delaware. George was the American ambassador who met Jana Kava in the park in Prague when she inadvertently left her reel of microfilm.

  George died aged seventy-seven years on the same Sunday Paulette Simona's plane came down in northern Norway. And his, not her death, was directly linked to Nikita Kudashov showing up at Fraser's reunion dinner at the Savoy two weeks ago this coming Tuesday, the day of Hannah's funeral.

  * * *

  To begin with, Marcus Stoneman's interest lay solely with the laboratories his father and his fellow Rosicrucian, the Russian, Bohdan Dimitriyevich Valescov had funded and how they had evolved at the old nickel mines in order to process the Ebola virus they had conspired to release in Sierra Leone. That was to be their testing ground from where they wished to witness and log the escalation of its effects both in the continent of Africa and alongside its intercontinental growth. And then someone, presumably within this depraved section of corrupted CIA officers, sent Nikita Kudashov's photograph to the Kent County home of George Thomas Stoneman and the bells rang inside George Stoneman's memory.

  The introduction of Stoneman's name to Fraser had lightened his expression from one of belligerence to one of slight exhilaration. The fact that Tucker Stoneman had lost the presidential nomination because of his involvement with the objectives contained in the Gladio B documentation was satisfying to a degree for us, but all we had really was just circumstantial, without any hard evidence. The official reason for his withdrawal from the presidential race was due to a medical condition he suffered from flaring up again, or so his wife wanted the public to believe, but it was our belief that it was simply because of not wanting to face awkward questions over his alliance to that corrupted file. If his relationship to the laboratories at Nikel could be proved, it again did not help, as the destruction had obliterated all traces of Ebola virus being manufactured there, or any other virus, along with the verification of eugenic engineering.

  We needed concrete corroboration of the Stonemans' involvement in cataclysmic activities and maybe Kudashov could supply it. However, Kudashov's involvement was hardly without compl
ications and it was some of those complications that now required explaining.

  “There was no message sent to London from Warsaw by Jana Kava or Nikita Kudashov, Fraser. The Polish army colonel did not know the name of an insider at GCHQ. That's the obvious reason why nothing showed on anyone's screen at Century House. There was no Odessa coding.

  “You said yourself that Dickie had the name of the insider before the operation went live in Warsaw. Part of the truth behind Jana Kava seeing the Polish officer on the thirty-first of August 1982 was to save Trubnikov's life. He and London needed the colonel dead to obliterate the knowledge of the love affair the two had been engaged in. By fingering the colonel, it allowed Kudashov to gain a certain degree of aegis with Polish authorities and we got future favours from Trubnikov. The other reason why Jana had to die was that she knew a secret that just could not be allowed to become known beyond the few that knew it. I will tell more of that secret later.”

  “If you wanted to shock me, Patrick, then, yes, I'm shocked but, after all, death is part and parcel of the world we live in. Dickie obviously took a long-term view of the relationship we had with the Soviets and other Eastern-Bloc countries at the time, as someone in his position must. Incidentally, did we give that colonel the cyanide pill?”

  “No, it came from Kudashov, but Kudashov was given it by the Americans.”

  The expression on Fraser's face showed how surprised he was. “Why them?” he asked in a raised voice.

  “Because Dickie got them to supply it, Fraser. In that way, he distanced the secret intelligence service of this country and removed us from a show of involvement. I firmly believe the reputation of this country was Dickie's primary concern in everything he dealt with. Some people may say that went too far.”