A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [92]
‘I see.’
In the kitchen I hear Katharine take down mugs from a cupboard.
‘There’s also a problem which is unique to your situation. We share a lot of intelligence with your government and a lot of the codes and ciphers we use are identical to those employed by Five and SIS. We start using them and they’d be on to us right away. So we can’t encrypt text or scramble conversations. I wouldn’t wanna scare you. You just have to be smart. We can go over all this in much finer detail when we’re a lot less pumped up. For now, all I would emphasize to you is this: keep it simple. Go home with that thought. Don’t ever try to do too much, especially at first. Just make everything look as natural as possible.’
‘That’s it?’
Fortner laughs.
‘That’s it. If you don’t make a big deal about it, no one else will. Years gone by we might have asked you to take a couple of weeks’ vacation so that we could get you off to a safe house back home and give you some basic training in equipment and communications. But in your case none of that will be necessary. This is just a small operation. Like I said, we’re just gonna keep things real simple. That’s the mistake a lot of people make. They try to make things too complicated for themselves, start feeling like the whole world is watching them when in fact the whole world doesn’t have a goddam clue what’s going on. You’re just plain old Alec Milius to Abnex and it’ll stay that way so long as you don’t do anything that’s gonna arouse anyone’s suspicion. Don’t go looking for extra information that wouldn’t ordinarily cross your desk. Keep it real simple. We’ll get into isolated dead-drops, surveillance exercises and audio penetrations only when it’s absolutely necessary. Otherwise, it doesn’t need to get complicated.’
‘What sort of information do you want? Memos, financial reports, business plans…?’
‘That kinda thing, yes,’ he says, though his expression hints at greater prizes. ‘Get us everything you safely can. Even information about your operation which you might consider to be of no interest to us. Don’t make any judgement on the validity of documentation on our behalf. Are we clear?’
‘Sure.’
Katharine comes back in with the tray of coffee. She distributes the mugs quietly, settles back down on the sofa and says:
‘Did you say anything about Caspian exploration, Fort? Did you mention 5F371?’
Fortner does very well here. She has made a bad mistake but he betrays no sign of it.
‘How do you know about that?’ I ask. ‘How do you know about 5F371?’
And he says, very coolly:
‘It’s common knowledge, right? Look, we’ll get to that some other time. Later. No need to talk about specifics at the present time.’
‘All we need for you now is a codename,’ Katharine says, also recovering well.
‘A what?’
‘A codename?’
‘Yes,’ says Fortner, sipping his coffee and putting the mug down on the table. ‘Kathy came up with JUSTIFY. How do you feel about that?’
I like it.
‘JUSTIFY?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sounds fine to me. Why do I need one?’
‘In the unlikely event that there’s any kind of an emergency, that’s the name you would use to contact us. We call it a cryptonym. It’s also how you’ll be known to our case officer at the Agency.’
‘I see.’
‘So are we clear?’ he asks, rubbing his hands together with a broad smile. ‘Is this thing underway?’
‘Oh yes,’ I reply. ‘I’m clear. Absolutely.’
This thing is definitely underway.
21
Being Rick
When Aldrich Ames made the decision to become an agent for the KGB, he did it swiftly and without moral compunction: his treachery was motivated singularly by greed. He walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington on a sunlit mid-eighties afternoon, presented himself to the nearest intelligence operative and offered up his services in exchange for large sums of money. The Russians couldn’t believe their luck.
Treason is rarely explained by ideology. Nobody really knows why Blunt crossed over: he only got into Marxism as a way of understanding paintings. The others - Burgess, Maclean, Philby - were