The Geneva Trap

Chapter 32

‘Your favourite Englishman has just rung, Andy. He’s coming over.’

‘Oh, hell. What does he want?’ growled Andy Bokus. It was a wet, windy Thursday morning. Just the kind of day that made him resent all the more being stuck in London for another year.

‘Said it’s urgent,’ Bokus’s assistant replied. ‘I think it’s about those traces you sent to Langley. The guys on secondment to the MOD. And he’s bringing Liz Carlyle.’

‘Oh, make my day, why don’t you? Her I can stand – just. But not when she hunts with Geoffrey Fane.’

‘Well, they’re on their way. I’ve put the files down in the Bubble.’

He’d already told Liz Carlyle on the phone that Langley had chased up the vetting and found nothing out of the ordinary. They’d also been looking closely at their end of the Clarity programme, but without more information about what they were looking for, they hadn’t unearthed anything suspicious. So what was this new flap about? Maybe the Brits had discovered something else.

Twenty minutes later, with the courtesies over (which always took time with Geoffrey Fane), they repaired to the Bubble in the basement of the Embassy. Bokus sat down across the table from Liz Carlyle, with Fane at the end. Carlyle had said nothing during the initial banter between the two men, and Bokus thought she looked tired, which also made her look younger and more vulnerable. He might have found her attractive if she hadn’t been such a pain in the ass.

‘Well, what can I do for you two this time?’ he asked.

Carlyle replied, ‘It’s about the Clarity programme and my Russian source Bravado.’

‘I’ve had the vetting checked like you asked,’ Bokus cut in, ‘and Langley are happy with it. I’ve got the files here; you’re welcome to look at them. There was a high-level briefing for the Joint Chiefs of Staff last week about the progress of the Clarity programme. It’s going pretty well – there’s been the odd technical hitch but I suppose that’s not surprising with an experimental system. Your information got a mention too, and believe me, it was taken very seriously. But without more detail there’s not much that can be done at our end, since your source said the mole was in the British MOD. Can’t he be more specific?’

Bokus saw Fane give a small sigh and the Carlyle woman was looking uncomfortable as she shook her head. It looked like their source must have dried up.

‘Has something happened to Bravado then?’ he demanded.

Fane pursed his lips. ‘You could say that.’

Carlyle said, ‘It seems that he’s gone back to Moscow. But not voluntarily.’

‘So he’s blown.’ This was not a question.

‘Seemingly,’ said Fane. ‘But it doesn’t alter the situation. If the mole is working for another country, then I can’t see the Russians tipping them off, even if they know that Bravado has told us about it.’

‘They’ll know all right, if they’ve uncovered him. I wouldn’t give Bravado any chance of keeping schtum where he’ll be now.’

Liz frowned and shook her head, as if to get rid of an unpleasant thought.

‘Anyway, you know my views,’ went on Bokus. ‘If anyone’s planted a mole in the MOD, it’ll be the Russians themselves; I never did buy this third-country story. It probably just means the mole’s an illegal – with third-country documents.’

‘That’s possible,’ Carlyle conceded. ‘But it seems unlikely. I was the one who talked to Bravado, and I was convinced. He only learned about this mole by accident.’

‘That’s what he told you,’ said Bokus caustically.

The woman looked unruffled. ‘If you’re suggesting that Bravado wasn’t telling the truth – that he was part of some disinformation plot – I think you’re wrong. Why on earth would the Russians do that? Why alert us to the existence of a mole in the MOD if they’ve really got one in place? It makes no sense.’

She was right of course and Bokus didn’t have an answer. But he wasn’t big on retractions.

‘So what do you want me to do?’ he finally asked. Meeting with the Brits, Bokus always felt he had to have everything spelled out. They had called the meeting; they presumably wanted something from him; yet here he was, having to tease it out of them. No wonder the Empire had gone down the tubes – their colonial subjects had probably had enough of English ambiguity.

Liz said, ‘We’re focusing on the list of foreign nationals seconded to the MOD…’

Bokus interrupted, ‘I told you, I’ve checked with Langley and they said all the ones who’ve been in the States were thoroughly vetted.’ He lifted a hand and let his palm come down hard on the folders on the table. ‘Have a look if you want.’ He turned to Fane, who was watching them spar with amusement.

Liz said, ‘Hang on, Andy. Let me bring you up to date first with our investigation. Thanks to the Swiss, we are pretty confident that the source of Bravado’s information was a guy named Anatole Kubiak, the Head of Security in the Russian Mission in Geneva. He’s SVR of course. We know a bit about Kubiak already and he’s not a very pleasant type, as Geoffrey can explain.’

Fane, who’d been lounging back with his long legs crossed, sat up and leaned forward.

‘It turns out that we have quite a file on our friend Kubiak,’ he began. ‘We first came across him in Delhi in the mid-1980s. He was working the Scientific and Technical area, getting alongside Western businessmen for what he could pick up and who he could recruit. He was quite young then, in his late twenties, and it was his first posting abroad. He seemed to be on a very loose rein and we wondered whether he had some protection – a father in a high position or something. He spent a lot of time drinking in private clubs with his Western contacts – drinking far too much. Because of his behaviour, our Station spotted him as a possible recruit. We had a couple of trusted business contacts get to know him, and they reported that he was very loose-tongued – especially for those days. He was quite prepared to criticise the Communist system and praise the West, and our contacts didn’t think it was a come-on to win their confidence – they thought he meant it. It was as though he was asking to be recruited.

‘But there was something else too. He frequented a brothel, the same one each time. It specialised in girls – and I mean girls, twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, tiny little things. We thought this made him pretty vulnerable, so we put one of our young officers alongside him to line him up for a recruitment pitch. We’d worked out quite a good scenario; it was going to be a combination of ideology and his own compromising behaviour. But just as we were ready to go with it, Kubiak was suddenly posted – he left Delhi almost overnight and soon reappeared in Poland. We couldn’t get at him there in those days, and he didn’t come out again, so we lost interest.’ Fane looked at Bokus. ‘I’d be very surprised if your Station in India hadn’t noticed him too, Andy. It’s worth getting Langley to do a trace.’

Bokus grunted. ‘We had a big Station in Delhi in those days,’ he said. ‘Sounds like they wouldn’t have missed that guy unless they were asleep.’

‘Maybe you kept up the pursuit longer than Geoffrey’s colleagues,’ said Liz. ‘It would be interesting to know, because there is definitely something strange about the man.’ She explained that the Swiss had discovered that Kubiak was making regular trips to Marseilles, and had visited a particular office block there. ‘One of the firms in that building is a South Korean hi-tech consultancy which no one seems to know much about. It may just be coincidence, but I think we should look at the South Korean working in the MOD.’ Seeing a sceptical look on Bokus’s face, she said, ‘I know it sounds like a long shot, but we have nothing else to go on.’

‘That guy’s as clean as a whistle. I told you,’ said Bokus, scrabbling through his files and producing one. ‘Park Woo-jin. Thirty-one years old, a programmer in object-oriented languages. Whatever that means,’ he said with a grimace at Liz.

He returned to the dossier. ‘He’s been vetted very thoroughly by us. Born in a suburb of Seoul. Father was a clerk in an insurance company, mother a kindergarten teacher – though I’m not sure how you say “kindergarten” in Korean. Park was spotted when he was just twelve, for his mathematical aptitude. He won a scholarship to Seoul University when he was sixteen years old, and studied high-level math before switching to computer science for his Master’s degree. During his National Service, he was moved into software development for their anti-missile systems. After that he joined Korean Intelligence, though his work remained military rather than intelligence-oriented. Unmarried, no known hobbies except for an addiction to computer video games – surprise, surprise.’ He closed the file. ‘Sounds like your average geek, only a Far Eastern variety. He worked for six months in the Pentagon – and, believe me, you don’t get through the outer corridor there until they’ve turned you inside out.’

He looked at Liz. ‘Anyway, how do you know this Kubiak guy is visiting the Korean firm? You said there were others in the building. He might be visiting one of them.’

‘It is possible, Elizabeth,’ said Geoffrey, stirring himself again. ‘Don’t forget that, according to the French, one of the companies there is trafficking women. In Delhi Kubiak was very fond of whores; no reason to think that’s changed.’

‘There you are,’ said Bokus, leaping in. ‘I’ll bet it’s nothing to do with the Koreans. There are Koreans all over Europe. They’re big traders.’

Liz shook her head. ‘I still think Langley should have another look at Park Woo-jin.’

Bokus was annoyed by her insistence. He was sure she’d got the wrong end of the stick, and he strongly suspected that Geoffrey Fane thought so too. But he wasn’t going to argue, not at this stage anyway. There was just the smallest chance she might be right, so he gave her his warmest phoney smile. ‘I’ll get on to Langley right away. Anything else I can do for you?’ he asked.

‘Not for now,’ replied Liz Carlyle, with a smile he felt was equally bogus.

When they’d gone, Bokus went back to his office on the fourth floor. Looking out of the window he could see Fane down in the square, striding ahead of Carlyle, waving his umbrella to hail a taxi. Bokus turned around when his assistant came in.

‘Did it go well, Andy?’

‘No,’ he said, and started to reach for the phone on his desk, which was his secure direct line to Langley. Then he had another thought. ‘Hang on a sec. Get me the Korean Embassy, will ya? And after that, I’ll want to speak with our Paris Chief.’