The Oktober Projekt

by R. J. Dillon

  ‘And the camp was…’

  ‘Hard bloody labour, Nick, but boy, was I glad to get away from that place and those screams.’

  ‘And they questioned you after the move from the prison?’

  ‘Once a week, snow, rain or shine. Who did I report to, did I know this name, that name, who ran this, are you sure this was the postman, the cut-out, the handler? Then they’d always come back to north Ossetia, how much did London actually know, did any material go there direct?’

  ‘They knew their stuff,’ said Nick, speculating, though it is never a guaranteed formula, just why Moscow were so concerned that anything relating to the Oktober Projekt might have gone direct to London?

  ‘Too bloody much of it,’ retorted Gavin, looking at Nick as though he’d just made his own connection, a long lost discovery. A shotgun retorted in the woods and Gavin flinched. Through the window Nick saw starlings dotted on a telephone wire like beads on a rosary lift off together in a swirl as the shotgun blasted away again.

  ‘I was finished after that and then when the old man….’

  And Nick could see Gav in five or ten years time, the hair a little greyer pulled farther back off his brow, sitting at the headmaster’s desk much as he did now, a far away glint in his eye, the glass pressed to his lips and the same coils of mildewed rope and fell boots drying in the corners.

  ‘Sometimes I miss the Service, sometimes I hate it with a vengeance.’

  ‘But you did the right thing for Aubrey-Spencer,’ Nick assured him, watching the old fervour rise in Gav’s eyes.

  ‘Sure.’ And perhaps reflecting on his days with Nick, Gav went silent.

  ‘You haven’t mentioned the laptop to anyone else?’

  ‘No, I bloody haven’t,’ snapped Gav, his mood darkening.

  ‘I had to ask.’

  Gavin had receded into another world; laughing though not as a result of humour but from something couched in pain. ‘Sure, I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t.’ Gavin closed his eyes, leant back and sighed.

  They sat in silence for a while, each of them contemplating what they both knew to be an unspoken truth about Gav’s sudden arrest in Latvia. Examining his glass, Gav the first to find his voice also found an excuse for Nick leaving.

  ‘Let’s go and find Tessa, she’ll want to say bye before you set off, she’s sorting out colour schemes for when we refurbish the dorms.’

  With Gavin setting a brisk pace they made a silent ascent up through the hall into a dormer garret pushed into the eaves, its partitioned cubicles stopping short of the ceiling. Under a glaring row of lights Gav called for Tessa, swinging his bad leg after good, a mechanical hobble controlled from his waist. On through a common room into a storeroom stacked with wire-framed beds and cabinets, Gavin marched forlornly searching for his wife. But they never found her. Only the lingering fear from generations of boys worked into the corridors; and over it, a distant trail of perfume like the foretaste of another failed marriage. Back in the utility kitchen Gav made the coffee with ponderous care, fighting against the whisky in his fingers.

  ‘We must keep in touch,’ Gav proposed, breaking the silence.

  ‘That would be good,’ said Nick, knowing they never would.

  Then Gavin walked Nick to his car, talking the same dreams that Tessa knew off by heart. Standing under the porch he waved Nick off, just as his father must have done for pupils at the end of each term; the same tired smile the awkward clumsy stance and the same inevitable tragedy in his eyes.

  Ten

  Some Friendly Advice

  London, November

  Nick made it back to London just before seven that evening, recklessly accelerating through curtains of spray as he overtook one articulated lorry after another on the M6. Exhausted more than he wanted to admit, Nick coaxed himself up the flights of stairs to his seventh floor room in an economy hotel a couple of minutes walk from Baker Street. It was a double room complete with plastic flowers, a panoramic rooftop view and a series of framed prints of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson covering the stains on the flowery sateen wallpaper. There was a wardrobe in knotted pine straight from Taiwan and an electroplated brass effect bed, though the cobwebs strung in festoons around the corners were thankfully real.

  Uncapping his bottle of Laphroaig, Nick picked out a dark hair inside the tooth mug and settled himself on the bed. Sometime before nine his phone rang. Not Hawick, Jane or Roly calling to make amends or pledge a fresh start, but Paul Rossan cutting off a yawn, asking for his location, no he couldn’t tell him why, just that Nick should be outside in ten minutes.

  The driver was young, fierce, a natural blond; his lips making a scar in his pale face as he nodded to Nick in the passenger seat. Confidently, assured, relaxed, the blond drove without a word; briskly, business like, as though born for a life behind the wheel, an air of showmanship in every move, perfected to demonstrate his ability, his skill.

  The rain had lessened as they reached Greenwich, to a few weak drops that hit the car with no real effort as they turned onto Shooters Hill Road.

  ‘This is as far as we go,’ the blond informed him, stopping with a jolt. ‘The shelter on the mound. Would seem that you’re expected there, sir,’ he said with anything but respect. ‘In the park, Mr. Torr, it’s been cleared,’ he added rudely, Nick wondering if Rossan had them specially bred.

  Left on the pavement under a clear sky with too many stars to count, Nick began to walk. A brisk wind had dried the road and it might never have rained he thought, entering the park, except for the grass still wet, sodden and slippy as though from a heavy dew. Behind him he heard the occasional car as he climbed into the night, through chestnut trees coiled against the sky like barbed wire. His eyes adjusted gradually to the light, to the dim outlines, brittle silhouettes and fuzzy shapes formed by the street lamps below. He pressed on, a bonfire haze in the air, stopping twice to look back and once thought he saw movement, standing his ground, his eyes straining until they hurt. He saw nothing more.

  The shelter covered the centre of a well-trodden mound; the grass worn into mud by the many feet of a varied army who for one reason or another made it the target of their assaults. Not tonight though, for Nick glimpsed the vague outlines of three teams he guessed Rossan had dispatched from internal security discreetly ringing the shelter. Inside he smelt urine, stale bread and alcohol leaking from an assortment of beer cans scattered like spent shells. He lit a cigarette and held his lighter up to the walls. He read that ‘Micki loves Debbi’ a thousand times and was thankful they weren’t there to prove it. He listened to a drunken song in the distance; a distorted youthful chant, guttural notes resonant and menacing. Out of an avenue of chestnuts he picked up a figure working steadily up the hill, stopping at intervals as if taking bearings. Nick stepped away from the edge; the tranquillity of the night disturbing, almost too satisfying, hypnotic in its splendour. He listened to the footfall on the boards then a torch beam clicked full in his face.

  ‘You got my invitation,’ growled Sir Charles Aubrey-Spencer, who until six months previously had run the Service, and on retiring, some speculated on political grounds, grudgingly became Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

  ‘Cut it out,’ Nick protested, shielding his eyes; swimming and stinging his night sight gone, mischievously ruined.

  ‘I am honoured to witness the return of the prodigal son, one Nicholas Torr, no less.’ Aubrey-Spencer lowered his torch, drew a line across the stained boards and crossed over it; his own bright Rubicon that instantly disappeared. ‘I feel rather neglected and offended that you haven’t bothered to include me on your list of people you needed to see.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you were there, close to the top,’ retorted Nick, blinded still.

  ‘Was I indeed?’ Aubrey-Spencer had a habit of speaking in a low tremor. Crisp, resilient, pitched low so the other person had to make the effort of paying attention. ‘Damn tragedy about Angela, damn tragedy. You’ll be wanting to know about th
e laptop I suppose?’

  ‘If it saves another life, yes, I’d like to know about the laptop,’ Nick said, his voice rising.

  ‘Then calm down and hear me out,’ Aubrey-Spencer persisted, his voice placatory yet grave, as if addressing a committee of his own choosing.

  Unbridled, fearing the moment lost Nick would have none of it. ‘You damn well listen,’ he said lurching forward. ‘Angela was raped, murdered because Moscow reckoned I had Lubov’s material when it was safe and sound all the time,’ Nick seethed.

  ‘I suppose you have good reason to be righteous.’

  ‘I hope it was worth it?’

  ‘I’ve always known it’s been worth it.’

  Nick remained against the far wall, silent, watching Aubrey-Spencer fidget with the torch.

  ‘Moscow have always been a threat, always had us on the back foot. It’s our own fault. We’ve always stoked the boiler, primed a few dissidents, waited for the bang.’

  ‘What did Lubov have on the Oktober Projekt?’

  ‘Everything and nothing,’ Aubrey-Spencer declared, rocking sadly to and fro his bulk one massive boulder against a velvet sky. ‘A lead of sorts, his speciality was forensic auditing, making damn well sure that the Defence Ministry wasn’t having it’s pocket picked by the GRU, SVR or FSB, which indirectly put him on the tail of the north Ossetia facility.’

  On the prowl again, Aubrey-Spencer flung the beam of light in front of him, trekking after it to a distant corner of the shelter.

  ‘So what is on the laptop?’

  ‘Lubov uncovered where the principal funding for the Oktober Projekt was coming from, where it got laundered, split and used for Moscow’s dirty work. A GRU financial web and who knows where it ends. Once Lubov had that, he and all those that sailed alongside him were a liability,’ admitted Aubrey-Spencer. The torch wavered in a glaring circle leaving a solid trail before dipping once more. The reflected light hardly flattering Aubrey-Spencer, deepening the fat on his several chins, adding another five years to his natural fifty-three that had earned him the nickname ‘The Walrus’ from a bitter rival in the Admiralty.

  ‘Do I get to know the details?’ Nick wondered.

  ‘Russian Defence Ministry money transfers from a front company in Panama to an IT company in Switzerland,’ Aubrey-Spencer declared. ‘The files were encrypted and are now corrupted and I’ve a specialist working on sorting out the mess.’

  ‘What about Wynn?’

  ‘The Swiss company goes under the banner of SVZkom, run by a Lat, name of Vilhelms Bliska, been a naturalised Swiss citizen for donkey’s years. Its speciality is major IT projects for European governments, including those federalist cretins at the EU. It hosts conferences in Hamburg from its sales office based there, topped off by evenings at a casino with free entertainment thrown in.’

  ‘So you sent Wynn?’

  ‘Rather than go banging on SVZkom’s front door, I thought I’d start at the back and work around. Wynn went off to Hamburg for me, to check out the casino,’ he added. With a grudging sigh Aubrey-Spencer dragged his feet over the boards, appraising them through the waxy path of torchlight.

  ‘And the facility in north Ossetia?’

  ‘The Americans claimed for years the KGB and GRU’s First Directorates were in cahoots, courting and nurturing promising prospects throughout Europe, Britain and North America who had shown consideration or interest in Soviet affairs. They reckoned the facility was there to turn out these superstars. That was all smoke and mirrors. In fact the Oktober Projekt has been up and running since 1947. It does turn out graduates, but the facility’s graduates are the best agent-handling specialists ever trained, briefed to protect, feed and water those highly valuable traitors who had shown a willingness to defect, who chose to be suckled on Moscow’s ideological claptrap. Agent-handlers, technicians, call them what you will, these graduates and their agents are cyber revolutionaries, terrorists, pure and simple.’

  They plant secrets, that is the symmetry of the Oktober Projekt, Nick recalled. ‘The agents, assisted by their specialist handlers are infecting government systems, that it?’

  ‘Teodors, the Latvian computer wizard did meet Rafford again before they were both betrayed,’ confessed Aubrey-Spencer, his mood dark. ‘After Rafford’s arrest, Hayles and I suppressed any evidence of the meeting, erased it entirely, because what Teodors divulged is off the scale in terms of secrecy. Only I, and a small select working group were aware of the havoc inflicted.’

  ‘These moles are introducing viruses into their own systems, aren’t they?’

  ‘But these, Nicholas, are no ordinary viruses, they are specifically engineered for each agent, they sit dormant until activated, they rewrite programmes as a means to protect and defend themselves as they go about their work. These ghosts in the machine produce technical glitches, malfunctions, loss of data, and incompatibility between departments. All manner of operating faults that cannot be detected, because the virus matures, nurtures itself from its host system. Why are so many Whitehall IT projects over budget? Why is the MoD a disaster on procurement?’

  ‘Because the virus screws them up,’ put in Nick.

  ‘But ever so subtly, Nicholas, that you’d hardly realise. The Oktober Projekt virus is ever so cunning, it manipulates on such a small scale that the results are blamed on human error. As we flounder, stagnate, our reputation as an international power is undermined. We become ever more mired in pedantic political squabbles and bureaucratic red tape, leaving Moscow free to strengthen its hand, increase its strategic position. It can pick and choose its allies to suit its cause. The German’s flexing their muscles, hiding behind France’s skirts, the Poles singled out as Europe’s weak spot. Divide and rule from Moscow, every move to make Washington nervous on who to trust.’

  ‘Lubov had no chance.’

  ‘How could he when we’ve been breached physically and technically. Did RUS/OPS do cartwheels, let off a few rockets in celebration when they thought they had Lubov in the bag? Did they hell and it makes my arse nip.’ He felt in his pocket, took out a packet of mints and fumbled to get one in his mouth. ‘Imagine all the system doors that could be unlocked if Moscow had access to our cyber-terrorism counter-measures. Think about it Nicholas, think about viruses lying dormant, think about our dependence on IT, our reliance on it for the mundane, for transport, power and gas. Targets one and all, Nicholas, targets. Hamburg and Switzerland are where we need to mount a counter-attack.’

  ‘Thanks for the background, a little late, but thanks.’

  ‘You take the fight to them, Nicholas, play hard and play dirty. Everyone’s so obsessed with the war on terror that they’ve taken their eyes off Moscow. If I was at the helm I wouldn’t have blinked, but I’m not and that’s that. Seek and you shall always find, is my motto. If you require further assistance, contact me through Rossan,’ Aubrey-Spencer declared, prowling along a side wall. ‘You can rely on him.’

  ‘Will do,’ promised Nick.

  ‘Watch your back, young Nicholas. This is friendly advice to stay wise understand,’ advised Aubrey-Spencer, clambering out of the shelter. ‘Fare you well.’

  Nick went after him; all the way to the top of the mound, watching the beam from Aubrey-Spencer’s torch weave a jaunty path into the tree line before being snuffed out. Around him the park started to settle once more for the night and Nick lit a cigarette as the darkness reclaimed the mound.

  • • •

  The church of the Immaculate Heart had gone sometime in the Blitz, only the hall remained; a dull long wooden structure with a tin galvanized roof that rattled badly in the rain. Now a pewter sky threading low over Deptford threatened to soak it once more as Nick climbed from a cab a street early. For even innocuous secret outposts on what had become a run-down industrial estate, have to be approached with a healthy measure of caution.

  A picket fence staked out the territory of the hall; a small overgrown patch next to it used as a fly-tip with the remnants of bed-ends,
freezers and old sofas growing through the weeds. The rumours of how the Service had acquired the hall were legion and mostly false. As is usual with history, the answer is more prosaic. Casting round for accommodation during the war for housing its officers during the German raids, the hall had been requisitioned and never returned. Beneath it, a large area was excavated that included the original church crypt and a deep blast-proof shelter constructed to enable the Service to function despite what the Luftwaffe may have preferred. During the Cold War the shelter was modified, reinforced and enlarged, becoming the Service’s secure command bunker. With a modern sophisticated replacement designed under its Vauxhall Cross headquarters, the church hall known as Outstation Zulu, had become a depository for files, reports and contact logs, that once entered onto the Service’s digital database, Chronos were deemed redundant on a day-to-day basis.

  Nick crossed the road still unsure of what he would find, wondering how Rossan had arranged his clearance. From around the corner an old Ford truck weighed down by scrap clung lopsided to the bend; a mongrel dog barking and snapping at its back wheels as the mud flaps dug into the road. Pushing along the path, Nick counted five cameras tracking his arrival under a neat sign instructing visitors that this was the base of a registered charity for African orphans. On the steel door a rebellious hand proposed that charity should begin at home, along with the usual graffiti in many styles declaiming less serious hates, and at the centre of it all, a rusty shadow where a heavy padlock and chain had hung. There was a bell too, with years of Ministry of Works paint covering the original brass that Nick did not ring; instead he provided his details into an intercom, watched over by a stern camera lens.

  As a strong set of locks clicked open Nick went straight into a musty porch where a pair of Ministry of Defence police officers, both carrying Heckler & Koch’s MP5A3s waited to receive him.