But that was long ago, before the relentless march of technology had taken all the intellectual challenge out of codebreaking and pretty much rendered talents like his obsolete. Nowadays it was all just a war between computers: one to weave the incredibly complex code, another to attack its defences, and the winner was simply whoever had the most powerful machine. With alarming rapidity, the human factor was being almost completely removed from the equation. After just a few years in the job, Yuris special skills had become increasingly redundant. Then came the Amsterdam posting, and the long, slow decline. Frustration grew to bitterness; bitterness to hatred: against his employers back home, and the whole damn government.
During this unhappy period he hooked back up with an old friend from school and began regular contact with him on social media. Yuri Petrov and Grisha Solokov had known each other since the age of seven, and had the usual on-off friendship until their teens, when theyd become best buddies for a while until Yuri drifted off to university in St Petersburg to study IT and Grisha went to work for his father, who owned a radio repair shop.
During the years the two friends had been out of touch, Grisha had discovered the wonderful world of conspiracy theories and become deeply immersed. The repair shop long gone, he now operated his own internet radio station from a hidden trailer at a remote farm many miles from Moscow. He lived alone with only a dog, an assortment of feral cats and a few goats and chickens for company, and spent most of every night in the trailer streaming his rants about everything from illegal government surveillance operations to chemtrails to the Illuminati plot to enslave the human race to the covert deportation camps that really existed, according to him, on Mars.
Needless to say, in their Facebook chats Yuri had never divulged to his friend what he did for a living, for that would have instantly branded him as the enemy. Grisha had his own secrets, too. Because his show frequently attacked what he considered to be the corrupt dark underbelly of the Russian state and its president in particular, he kept his location extremely hush-hush so as to elude the government assassins who he believed were intent on silencing him.
In short, Grisha was slightly nuts.
Looking back, Yuri couldnt pinpoint the moment hed started getting drawn into Grishas ideology. To begin with, hed been dismissively sceptical of the whole thing, and almost stopped with the social media contact. The stuff his friend came out with was often more than Yuri could stomach, like his conviction that lizard-like alien beings capable of taking on human form really do run the planet, and that various celebrities as well as members of the British royal family were among these evil creatures hellbent on the total domination of humanity. But the more hed listened to Grishas show, the more compelling Yuri started finding its less wacky theories of conspiracy and corruption at the heart of the global establishment. After all, Yuri was privy to facts and secrets that were kept from ordinary folks, and so it wasnt hard for him to imagine that all kinds of levels of secrecy existed above him. Gradually, tiny doubts about his own government, and the state of the world generally, percolated through his head and wouldnt go away, feeding his increasing sense of restlessness that he was a pawn working for dark powers.
Maybe it was just an expression of his dissatisfaction with his own job, he told himself. Yet the same creeping paranoia that fuelled Grishas radio show started haunting Yuri as he cycled the streets of Amsterdam. He became certain he was being watched and followed, his phone tapped, perhaps even his thoughts somehow monitored. A reasonably devout Catholic since his teens, he turned to God for moral support. When an answer to his fervent prayers failed to materialise, Yuri found solace in the sins of drink and marijuana, having developed a taste for both.
What made it so much worse was that he could never tell Eloise a word about his secret life, let alone the anxieties that plagued him. As a result he ended up barely speaking to her at all, with the inevitable consequence that she felt very neglected by him. When the marriage eventually fell apart, Yuri blamed the Russian intelligence services even more bitterly for his woes and took it as proof of their pernicious influence over society. Shortly after Eloise left him and took Valentina away to live in France, Yuri returned to Moscow, handed in his resignation and found alternative employment fixing computer bugs for private cash-paying customers. He managed to persuade Eloise to let Valentina, now ten, travel to Russia for visits. Eloise was difficult about it and barely spoke to him on the phone.
Yuris preoccupation with all things conspiracy-related had by then grown even more pervasive. Even if he wasnt yet prepared to believe that shape-shifting alien lizards govern the planet, as a parent he was angry that his child would grow up as a drone of the globalist Deep State. He felt he needed to do something to make people wake up to the realisation that everything they thought they knew about the world was a lie. The media they trusted was simply an instrument for propaganda; the leaders they voted for in fact controlled nothing; the real rulers were hidden in the shadows and the whole concept of democracy was a carefully concocted myth.
He and Grisha now communicated daily on prepaid phones bought for cash and theoretically untraceable to them. On Grishas advice, as an extra precaution Yuri followed his friends practice of replacing his burner every couple of weeks. As a means of living as much off the grid as possible in an urban environment, he also moved to a dingy hole of an apartment that he paid for in cash, utility bills all in the name of a former tenant.
He and Grisha started meeting in person. The first reunion took place at a bar in a small town eighty kilometres from Moscow. Later, as a sign of his growing trust, Grisha let Yuri in on the secret of his farms location, way out in the remote countryside. Never had Yuri mentioned his past as a spook for Russian intelligence. That was history now, anyway.
Over the next couple of years, Yuri visited the farm often. The two friends would spend days and nights in Grishas chaotic home drinking vodka and talking conspiracies. It was more than a hobby or belief system for Grisha, it was a total lifestyle. Yuri felt the infectious lure of that world. He was becoming seriously addicted.
Its all building to a head, dont you see? Grisha had kept insisting during their most recent late-night session. Its coming. Just you wait. Somethings going to happen thatll prove everything weve been saying. Something thatll show the world what these bastards have really been up to all along. Nobody will be laughing at us then.
Something?
Something huge, my man.
Yuri believed it too, even if neither of them knew what that something could be.
Then, one sunny day in June two years after hed left Amsterdam, Grishas prediction came terrifyingly true, in a way neither of them could have imagined.
Chapter 2
For a dedicated conspiracy buff tainted by more than a whiff of paranoia, nothing could be more alarming than happening to be walking down the street minding your own business when a mysterious black car full of mysterious men suddenly appears from nowhere and pulls up beside you.
Yuri believed it too, even if neither of them knew what that something could be.
Then, one sunny day in June two years after hed left Amsterdam, Grishas prediction came terrifyingly true, in a way neither of them could have imagined.
Chapter 2
For a dedicated conspiracy buff tainted by more than a whiff of paranoia, nothing could be more alarming than happening to be walking down the street minding your own business when a mysterious black car full of mysterious men suddenly appears from nowhere and pulls up beside you.
That was exactly what happened to Yuri Petrov one day that summer as he strolled aimlessly about the streets of Moscow. He instantly knew the black Mercedes was an Intelligence Services car. Gripped by panic, he was ready to bolt as the back doors opened and two men, very obviously government agents, climbed out and walked calmly towards him.
Hed never seen either of them before. But they seemed to recognise him, even with the hair and the beard. Yuri hadnt been paying so much attention to personal neatness of late.
Hello, Yuri, one of them said.
The other motioned towards the cars open door. Lets go for a drive, shall we?
Powerless to refuse, Yuri climbed into the back seat. The two men sat flanking him as the Mercedes sped off. Whats this about? he kept repeating. Who are you people? What do you want with me?
Youll find out soon enough. Shut up and enjoy the ride.
Twenty minutes later, the Mercedes arrived at a lugubrious government building Yuri had never visited before. They passed through two armed security checkpoints, then whooshed down a ramp into a subterranean car park from where Yuris escorts ushered him up several floors in a lift. They stepped out into a corridor that was devoid of any windows or furniture and painted institutional grey. Yuri was so nervous he could hardly control the shaking in his knees as they led him up the corridor. After two years of the Grisha Solokov academy, it seemed to Yuri like the dystopian nightmare coming true.
Yuri had no idea of what he was about to step into.
The agents stopped outside an unmarked door. Go in, one said to Yuri.
Yuri did as he was told. He found himself in an office, not a cosy one. The walls and steel filing cabinets and ancient iron radiators and exposed pipes were all painted the same grey as the corridor. There was no carpet and only one window, through whose dusty glass little sunlight was able to penetrate. In front of the window was a large, plain desk, which was completely bare except for a telephone and a slim cardboard folder that lay closed on the desktop.
Behind the desk sat a man whom Yuri, unlike the men who had brought him here, did in fact recognise. It was his former chief, the man who had first interviewed and employed him in the service, Antonin Bezukhov.
The chief was a large, heavyset figure in a dark suit. His white hair was buzzed military-short and his face appeared to have been chiselled from a lump of granite. He had to be in his mid-seventies, but if anything he looked more severe and intimidating than Yuri remembered, which was saying something. This was a man rumoured to have personally executed several CIA operatives, back in the glory days of the Cold War. As far as Bezukhov was concerned, the old regime had never ended.
Bezukhov invited him to sit, and offered him a ghost of a smile. Youre a hard man to find, Yuri. We obviously trained you too well. Whereve you been hiding yourself these days?
Yuri swallowed. Why am I here? What do you want from me?
We need you to come back and work for us, one more time, said Bezukhov.
But Im retired, Yuri protested. Out, gone, done with the whole thing. I dont want anything more to do with any of it.
Consider this your heroic comeback, the chief said, faintly amused. Come on, Yuri, dont you know that once youre in the club, wed never really let you go? Thats how the game is played, my friend. And now we have another job for you.
Yuri could find nothing to say. Bezukhov reached a thick arm across the desk, and a brawny paw of a hand slid the solitary card folder over its surface towards Yuri. Open it.
Again, Yuri did as he was told. Inside the card folder was a transparent plastic sleeve, and inside that a single oblong slip of paper. It was heavily aged, as if it had spent many years exposed to the elements. And creased, as though it had been folded up very small throughout that time. Long ago, someone had written four lines of text on the paper, using black ink that had faded somewhat but was still clearly legible. The writing wasnt in Russian. It used the letters of the English alphabet, though the language wasnt English either.
Its a cipher, Yuri said. An old one, too, dating back a good few decades. Seeing it, he couldnt pretend not to feel a slight stirring of curiosity.
Good to see you havent lost your powers of observation, Agent Petrov.
Please dont call me that.
This cipher is the reason I called you in, the chief said. Youre going to decode it for us. Just like old times.
Yuri studied the cipher more closely. Right away, he could tell it was like no other code hed come across before. Even back in the pre-cybertechnology dark ages, cryptology had reached a level that was far from crude. Its not going to be easy.
Why do you think we selected you for the task? the chief said. Some people havent forgotten you used to have a way with these things, back in the old days before these fucking computers took over. He spat out the expletive with surprising bitterness.
As Yuri went on peering at the encrypted text, the chief recomposed himself and explained, The cipher was discovered two weeks ago by a crew of workmen who were demolishing a block of old post-war houses in Novogireyevo District. Coming across an envelope that had been crammed into a crack in a wall, they opened it, saw it was something peculiar and handed it in to the police. Thank God for patriotism, heh?
Yuri asked, What was it doing there?
Bezukhov smiled, aware that Yuri was being drawn in despite himself. We believe that it was concealed there in February 1957 by a British spy working as part of a network. His cover ID was Pyotr Kozlov, real name Leonard Ingram, a British Army captain recruited to SIS after the war. He and a couple of others were inserted into the Soviet Union that January, as part of a special operation you dont need to know about. Lets just say they were stealing secrets. That was before the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart was put up, and these shits could creep in and out almost as they pleased. This was all long, long before Yuris time, but he knew the chief was talking about the Berlin Wall.
Bezukhov levered himself from his chair and went to gaze out of the dusty window. With his back to Yuri he went on, Of course, our boys were onto them the moment they stepped on Russian soil. And we had our suspicions about what they were up to. The cipher is obviously a set of instructions of some kind, which would indicate the nature of the secrets they stole, and their whereabouts. Ingram was on his way to pass those instructions to one of his fellow spies when the KGB jumped the gun and nabbed him too soon. If theyd allowed the meeting to take place, they could have captured both of them together as well as the information they were sharing. Bezukhov turned away from the window with a sigh. Mistakes happen. Anyway, when he knew they were closing in on him, Ingram managed to hide what he was carrying, presumably intending to return there if by some miracle he escaped.