The Moscow Sleepers

by Stella Rimington

  For a month he had lived in a refugee camp on the island, then he’d been moved to another larger camp on the mainland. Aziz was consumed by grief and confusion over what now awaited him. No one suggested he or any of his fellow immigrants were welcome in Greece; instead, local members of Golden Dawn harassed the inmates of the camp continuously, and one afternoon Aziz saw a fellow Syrian beaten to death by the Greek fascists. It was then that he decided to escape from the camp and take his chances.

  After that, his account grew hazy – Harry Fitzpatrick gathered that the boy had worked his way north, then crossed the German border illegally. He had been passed around various German agencies until he landed up at an orphanage on the edge of Hamburg, a world away from the small Syrian village where his life had begun.

  Here Aziz had a stroke of luck. A staff member at the orphanage who spoke Arabic and English had befriended him and lent him a computer and they had talked about his interests and ambitions. This man had found him a place at a school that specialised in teaching refugee children who had a special talent for IT. In response to a question from Harry, Aziz said it was called the Freitang school.

  Aziz told Fitzpatrick with obvious pride how he had come top of his year in coding HTML. He was hoping to go to university, and after graduating from the school had spent the previous year studying to get his German to a sufficient standard, while working as an assistant at the school.

  By now Harry Fitzpatrick’s investigative antennae were alive and alert. ‘Why were you included in the group of students who came here last summer?’

  Aziz replied, ‘I have always wanted to see America.’

  ‘Yes, but it couldn’t have been your decision. You weren’t paying, after all. So why send someone older, someone who’d already graduated?’

  Aziz shrugged. ‘The headmistress asked me if I’d like to go. I said, “You bet.”’

  Harry tried not to smile. It was hard not to like the boy, especially when you considered what he’d been through. ‘So did you enjoy the course here?’

  ‘Well,’ he said hesitantly, and Harry Fitzpatrick saw that his nervousness, which had subsided while he told the story of his flight from Syria, had now returned. ‘I already knew much of the curriculum.’

  ‘Really? So you came all this way only to find you knew what they were teaching already? Bit of a waste of time then, for you and the university.’

  ‘No,’ Aziz said sharply, stung by this. ‘I was given special tuition.’

  ‘I see. Who with?’

  ‘Professor Petersen.’

  Bingo, thought Fitzpatrick, now persuaded he’d been right to come in person. He would not have found this out over the phone. ‘I’ve heard of him,’ he said neutrally.

  ‘He died last month,’ said Aziz.

  ‘Yes, I know that. But tell me what you expected when the headmistress at Freitang asked if you wanted to come here.’

  ‘I didn’t know what to expect,’ said Aziz, his eyes widening. There was a dark spot of sweat on his shirt collar now. ‘But when Mr Petersen saw that I already knew what the others were learning, he gave me a test for software developers to see if I had a special skill. He said it showed I had a natural gift for cyber surveillance – or counter-surveillance.’

  He’s talking about hacking, thought Harry. That’s what this is about. Cyber attacks. Perhaps this young man really did have a special talent – he was obviously very clever – or perhaps Petersen just wanted to make him think he was special, so he could control him. That was half the battle in suborning someone like this innocent kid; if he was told he had a special gift for something, he would be much more inclined to go along with any instructions to use that talent…

  Aziz explained, ‘You would know it as hacking.’

  ‘Is that what he was teaching you to do?’ Fitzpatrick asked with feigned surprise. ‘That’s illegal.’

  ‘No, no,’ the boy protested. ‘It was to detect hacking, and expose it.’ He continued anxiously, ‘It was anti-hacking work.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Harry, hiding his scepticism. There was no point in making the boy feel too nervous or he would clam up. ‘So tell me exactly what he taught you.’

  Harry Fitzpatrick could not in a month of Sundays have begun to recount with any accuracy what followed as Aziz launched into what Harry thought of as techno-babble. He seemed entirely unable to explain to a layman what he was talking about. But Harry was pretty sure he was getting the gist and it was very worrying.

  It appeared that under the guise of teaching Aziz to detect unauthorised computer intrusions, Petersen had actually been teaching him to penetrate networks without leaving any trace. They had even set up a dummy corporation, Aziz told him proudly, for Aziz to practise on. If indeed the dead Petersen was a Russian Illegal, as seemed to be the opinion of FBI HQ and the Brits, then something very sinister seemed to have been taking place, involving not only the university but also the school in Germany. What and why and whether it was still going on, given Petersen’s death, Harry wasn’t in a position to say. But as he listened to the young man in front of him it seemed to him improbable that he was a knowing accomplice.

  Finally, Aziz finished his account. Fitzpatrick said, ‘Thank you. That’s all very clear. But let me ask you, who were you doing this for? I mean, was it just to give you some skills so you could get a job back in Germany?’

  Aziz looked offended by the suggestion that his training was nothing but a certification process. ‘The professor said he was doing confidential work and wanted me to assist him. He was the one who first said it might be possible for me to stay on.’

  ‘What, here in Vermont?’

  Aziz nodded. ‘Yes, he said I could become an American.’

  ‘He would get you a green card?’

  ‘In time,’ said Aziz. ‘If my work was satisfactory.’

  Fitzpatrick could imagine the situation; how Petersen would have played the boy along, offering the carrot of a green card with the stick of deportation should he fail to comply with his instructions. Fitzpatrick sensed that any mention of his employment status now would be unnerving. Aziz would probably be here on a one-year student permit, and Petersen’s death made his future status uncertain. Presumably he could always go back to Germany, but the situation there was becoming more difficult for immigrants by the day.

  ‘You mean, the work you were doing here on hacking?’

  ‘Yes, though I would need to have a position in the department. He arranged that – helping teachers and students with their computers is my job. And printers – printers seem to be very difficult for everybody,’ he added, with a shaky smile.

  Fitzpatrick didn’t smile. ‘So your job here would be a cover for the work he wanted you to do.’

  Aziz stared sadly at him. ‘I had not thought of it that way. It is real work. I do help people with their computers.’

  ‘Did Professor Petersen say who he was working for? And who you would be helping?’

  Aziz shook his head. ‘I did not think it was for me to ask. But…’ He paused while Fitzpatrick waited, barely concealing his impatience.

  At last Aziz said with obvious reluctance, ‘Since I am in America, I thought it must be the FBI.’

  17

  It was a beautiful September day in Moscow: mild, windless and with bright sunshine – no hint yet of the chills of winter to come. Bruno Mackay was sitting in the coffee shop on the ground floor of the smart new block where he had taken an apartment. He was unrecognisable with his floppy blond hair now brown and fashionably short, horn-rimmed spectacles hiding his eyes – once blue, now green – and trendy stubble and smartly casual clothes instead of his usual suits. As he sipped his coffee and consulted his latest-model iPhone, he looked the perfect hedge fund executive, which was what he was pretending to be. He felt as comfortable as an MI6 officer undercover in Moscow can.

  He was confident that his back story would stand scrutiny. There was an Ireland-based office of Quoin Capital Management, staffed by
a competent young woman with a degree in Modern Languages from Warwick University. She spoke fluent French and Russian and was well briefed to answer any questions about the company or about ‘Alan Urquhart’, currently in Moscow researching investment opportunities. The office in Dublin was Bruno’s communication link with Vauxhall Cross, and with the MI6 Station in the Moscow Embassy, with whom he had no overt contact at all.

  Bruno’s job was to try to get alongside Mischa’s brother. He was under strict orders to do no more at present; he was to do his best to get acquainted with the brother, but he was to make no move at this stage towards a recruitment pitch. The CIA Station and the MI6 Station, working together, had managed to identify Mischa and his brother as Mischa and Boris Bebchuk. Mischa was in the army, Boris an FSB officer working at FSB HQ in Moscow. Further work had also produced an address for Boris and the location of the school attended by his six-year-old son.

  In his first couple of weeks in Moscow, Bruno had lived in a hotel and under the pretext of flat-hunting had got to know the district where Boris and his family lived. Once or twice he just happened to find himself outside the school at going-home time, and he observed those waiting to pick up the children – young women mostly, nannies and mothers and the occasional grandma. A few children were picked up by a uniformed driver or an obvious security guard, for this was a pretty opulent area of town. He didn’t know which one was the Bebchuk boy but he noticed that several of the children lived in a small group of new, expensive-looking apartment blocks a short walk away from the school. So it was in one of those that he had taken a flat, and he had chosen the one with the coffee shop on the ground floor.

  It was quite in keeping with his cover story that he should spend a couple of hours most mornings in the coffee shop, having breakfast and working on his laptop and his phone. Quoin Capital Management had no office in Moscow; Alan Urquhart was there to decide if there were sufficient business prospects to justify setting one up. For the moment, the smart coffee shop could credibly serve as his office. But it also served as his observation post. He had noticed that some of the mothers regularly stopped in the coffee shop after they had deposited the children at school. Most sat in a group chattering loudly in Russian, but in the second week of his vigil his eye had fallen on a woman who always sat by herself. After a couple of days, he’d greeted her with a friendly ‘Good morning’ in Russian. She’d smiled and replied in heavily accented Russian, so he’d asked where she was from, only to discover that she was Parisian. This was a stroke of luck for Bruno, who spoke fluent French, having served in the MI6 Station in Paris for several years.

  Bruno, at his most charming, soon had her talking freely about herself. As luck had it, she was lonely and unhappy. Her name was Michelle. Separated from her husband, she was forced to carry on living in Moscow, which she hated, because he was blocking all her efforts to get a divorce and take her one child to live in Paris. He was a wealthy oil man with enough money and know-how to work the legal system to his advantage. He didn’t care what she did and was quite happy to pay for her very comfortable lifestyle, she said, but he wanted the child, even though he only saw them at the weekends.

  From then on Bruno and she met regularly in the mornings and sometimes for a leisurely lunch in one of the nearby restaurants. Bruno was beginning to feel that he must capitalise on this relationship before it turned into a full-blown affair. She was clearly very willing, but he needed to avoid any chance of getting involved in a divorce suit or even getting a bullet in the back from one of her husband’s henchmen. So one day after lunch Bruno suggested he should walk with her to pick up her child since he had a later appointment in that direction.

  Michelle smiled at him, a little surprised. She touched a strand of her blonde hair, which she had trimmed – and coloured, Bruno cynically concluded – every week at the chic local salon frequented by oligarchs’ wives. She said, ‘That would be very nice. I have told my son all about you. Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  It was the scene Bruno had observed when he was recceing the area before he moved there. Mothers and nannies, some on foot already waiting, others sitting in massive four-wheel-drive vehicles and large saloons, several with chauffeurs wearing peaked caps, and a smattering of dark-suited security guards with dark glasses and earpieces.

  A car pulled up next to them. It was far less grand than the others – a modest Lada that stood out for its normality. But when the driver got out – a tall man with dark slicked-back hair, wearing a knee-length leather coat – Michelle poked Bruno in the ribs. ‘Mind your manners,’ she said, and gave a small laugh.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The man who just got out of the car…’

  ‘What about him?’ asked Bruno, looking at the man more carefully. He seemed self-assured, confident, as he lit a cigarette and leaned casually against the bonnet of his car, smoking and watching the entrance to the school. ‘Isn’t he one of the parents?’

  ‘That’s not all he is. The mother of one of my boy’s friends told me he’s a spy.’

  ‘Really?’ Bruno didn’t have to feign surprise.

  Michelle nodded knowingly. ‘She told me he is an officer in the FSB.’

  ‘FSB?’ asked Bruno, as if he had never heard the acronym before.

  ‘You know, the secret service. What the KGB used to be.’

  ‘How does she know that?’

  ‘She’s friends with his wife. The wife told her that she wasn’t very happy with her husband. Apparently, he drinks.’

  ‘That’s awful!’ said Bruno, with a grin. They had just shared a bottle of wine over lunch.

  ‘No, I mean really drinks. Shouts at her until he passes out.’

  ‘He must be pretty senior if he’s got children at school here. It has to cost the earth.’

  ‘There’s only one child,’ said Michelle. ‘The apple of his eye, apparently. They live very simply, so they can pay the fees.’

  ‘Maybe Mrs Godunov has money of her own.’

  ‘Godunov?’ She looked at Bruno, then smiled when she realised he had just made the name up. ‘That’s not their name,’ she said. ‘Though the real one sounds just as silly.’

  ‘What is it?’

  She laughed. ‘He’s called Boris Bebchuk.’

  He laughed too, trying to disguise the adrenalin he felt coursing through his veins. He knew his orders: get as close as you can without raising any suspicion, while Liz Carlyle gets what she can out of the brother. Bruno had to play his next cards very carefully. If he got it wrong and this guy Boris got suspicious, MI5 would lose their source. Mischa would panic and disappear. But a piece of good fortune like this didn’t land in your lap very often and when it did you had to pick it up.

  So he said, ‘I’ve been thinking of having a drinks party to meet some people – I don’t know anybody here yet really. Perhaps you’d like to invite your friends from the school and maybe ask them to bring a friend or two.’

  He waited slightly nervously while Michelle thought about this. Had he pushed for this too quickly? But then she said, ‘I think that is a marvellous idea. And I know just the caterer for you.’

  18

  It was Saturday afternoon and Dieter was at home by himself. Even though he knew that Irma would be gone for at least another hour he was keeping an anxious ear out for the sound of her key in the front door. She was leading a day retreat for the teachers of the Freitang at the school itself – no off-site away days for Irma, he reflected with a thin smile. Her familiar parsimony would ensure a meagre lunch of sandwiches prepared by the kitchen staff, pressed, reluctantly, into weekend service.

  He felt extremely uneasy snooping around his wife’s study, though he knew it was the only way he would discover whether his growing suspicions were justified. His colleague and now confidante Matilda in Brussels had been very reassuring when he’d explained his worries; he had felt immense relief that she hadn’t dismissed his concern or thought him a fantasist. On the contrar
y, she had listened with interest, and the next day had raised the subject again herself.

  ‘You know, Dieter,’ she’d said during their coffee break in the canteen, ‘I’m sure Irma isn’t doing anything wrong. But there can’t be any harm in finding out for sure; it would put your mind at rest. And who knows? Perhaps she’s got involved in something without realising it. Perhaps she’s being taken advantage of.’

  Knowing Irma as he did, the chances of her being victimised were remote, but he took Matilda’s point that knowing what was going on would reduce his anxiety. The difficulty was there was only one way he could think of to find out more about Irma and the Freitang school – search the filing cabinet in her study upstairs at home.

  The cabinet was always locked but that was not actually a problem. The year before both Irma and their housekeeper had come down with flu, and the cleaning had fallen to him. One weekend he had set about vacuuming and dusting. He had found it not only a boring chore but also rather more complicated than he had thought. In his efforts to hoover the cluttered floor of Irma’s study to her high standards, he had managed to wedge the vacuum’s nozzle between the back of the filing cabinet and the wall. Hard as he pulled, it wouldn’t budge. At last he had turned off the vacuum, then edged the filing cabinet away from the wall by a couple of inches, freeing the nozzle. It was then he saw the small key taped to its steel back. Trying the key in the lock of the cabinet, he found it turned easily, and it was with a mixture of apprehension and private delight at discovering the hidden key that he re-taped it to the filing cabinet, before shoving the cabinet back in place.

  So the problem wasn’t access to the cabinet, though previously he would never have dreamed of using the key to look at the contents. He couldn’t imagine what Irma would say or do to him if she ever found out he had looked inside.

  Now as he turned the key and gingerly pulled open the top drawer, he found his hands were shaking. He stared nervously at the neat line of file pockets hanging on the rails, each individually tagged with tabs inscribed in the dark Gothic hand Irma favoured.