Games Traitors Play

94

Paul Myers had given up trying to make conversation with the Russians. They had sat motionless in his room throughout the night, waking him with a prod at first light. He had stumbled out of bed, forgetting that his hands were still tied, and they had accompanied him to the bathroom, where he managed his ablutions with difficulty.

It was only when they sat him down in front of the computers that he persuaded them to untie his wrists. If it had been a working day, he would have been missed by now, as he liked to work the early shifts at GCHQ in the summer, getting in at 7 a.m., sometimes earlier. It gave him longer in the park afterwards to fly his model planes. But today was a Saturday, and no one would miss him. He had made a loose arrangement to meet a couple of colleagues in the pub in the evening, but otherwise his diary was free, as it was most of the time.

The Russians wanted him to do exactly what he had done for Marchant: delay High Wycombe’s real-time Recognised Air Picture feed. He had already told them that it would be hard to repeat the trick, but the Ministry of Defence’s IT experts, many of whom he knew, had yet to trace the source or cause of the Link 1 breach.

Of more concern to Myers was what Marchant and Fielding would want him to do. Marchant was clearly party to the planned second violation of UK airspace. Would he want Myers to help him, or to stop him? His instinct told him to let the Russians run with it, whatever they were planning.

Nursing a hangover, he logged in to his GCHQ account and prepared once again to tamper with the Tactical Data Links that were meant to keep the skies above Britain safe.

‘All I need is a start time,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘I can’t delay the RAP for long. A few minutes at most.’

‘This time we need a little longer,’ Grushko said.