Derek Lambert - The Red Dove

A: I think the driver was an intelligence officer from the United States Embassy.

Q: Think?

A: Know.

Q: Why did you meet him?

A: I didn’t. I realised a car was following me so I told the cab driver to stop.

Q: What did he want?

A: He wanted to know what the hell I was playing at. The CIA has kept tabs on me ever since I went sick, I guess. Suddenly I book a passage to Moscow. They want to know why.

Q: Did they question you in the United States?

A: Sure they did. I told them I was taking a vacation. They seem to think that was okay. As far as they knew I was no longer a threat to security – any information I might have had was years out of date.

Q: So they didn’t know that you had gained access to secret material?

A: I figure the fact that I’m here speaks for itself.

Another splice in the tape. Drabkin’s voice: ‘The question about the white car was vital. If Massey had been trained to deceive a polygraph then he would have been able to control his reactions to such a question because he would have been taught to anticipate shock tactics. Again his reactions were extreme.’

Vlasov leaned across his desk and pressed the STOP button. ‘What about that white Lada, Peslyak?’

Peslyak consulted a blue notebook. ‘According to the operative from the Executive Action Department who was working a two-man surveillance they traced the number to the Lada export outlet, Avtoexport, at 14 Volkhonka. It was a demonstration model on loan to a Dutchman whose company was said to be considering a big order.’

‘And he hasn’t been seen or heard of since?’

‘Correct. The Lada was abandoned outside Avtoexport that night.’

‘The surveillance team did well to get the registration,’ Vlasov said, realising that he was defending Department V and, indirectly, his own judgement.

‘It wasn’t difficult,’ Peslyak replied. ‘The second half of the team was driving Massey’s taxi.’

Vlasov grunted and pushed the ON button.

In a dimly lit but comfortably furnished room in the same building, close to the interior entrance to Lubyanka Prison, Robert Massey listened to a duplicate of the same tape. With him was his interrogator, Yaroslav Drabkin, a small bespectacled man with a fringe of black hair across his studious brow. They sat on leather armchairs, their manner appreciative as though, Massey thought, they were listening to a ball game. But he guessed that he was participating in an extension of the interrogation; that even now Drabkin was observing him.

Thank God for the instruction in defeating the lie detector at Langley. His tutor had looked a little like Drabkin; he, too, had conducted a long love affair with his polygraph and didn’t enjoy teaching anyone how to deceive it.

First priority: anticipation. If you had anticipated the questions and prepared the answers, got them word perfect, then the needles on the dials wouldn’t flicker LIES. If the interrogator was worth his salt, the tutor had said, he would try to shock – ‘throw in a couple of hand grenades into the Q and A.’ That was fine, because Massey’s reaction would make him appear all the more genuine. Massey might even find himself indulging in some low key lying; that too would be fine… The white Lada! The other trick was to concentrate on some inanimate object during the questioning, a picture maybe. Massey had concentrated on a painting of Lenin.

Q: How did you get access to classified material?

A: Through a contact at Vandenberg Air Force Base, the headquarters for the US military shuttle operations.

Q: Did he contact you?

A: I contacted him when I found out about the drugs.

Q: Where?

A: At Shelter Island, San Diego. He was on vacation.

Q: What does he do at Vandenberg?

A: Computers. He’s into computers like you’re into polygraphs…

Drabkin’s dark eyes regarded Massey across the room. Unsmiling. He lit a parchment-coloured cigarette and blew a jet of smoke into a shaft of sunlight.

Q: What is this man’s name?

A: Vogel.

Q: Why did you choose Vogel?

A: Because I knew him when I was an astronaut. I knew his strengths… which some people might interpret as weaknesses. As far as I know he only confided in me.

Q: What were those strengths… or weaknesses?

A: Like Fuchs, Nunn-May and Pontecorvo before him he believed that weapons of mass destruction should be shared. That the balance of power would save the world. They were concerned with atomic weapons: Vogel was concerned with military aggression from space – the logical progression from the nuclear weaponry that those idealists – or traitors, according to your view – sought to spread evenly among the super powers.

Q: He believed all this when you were still a cosmonaut?

A: Sure he believed it. But he was more of an idealist than a man of action. In any case in those days the United States wasn’t that much ahead of the Soviet Union in military application in space.

A long pause.

Q: And they are now?

A: Light years ahead.

Peslyak pulled at his fleshy nose. Vlasov pressed the REWIND button. The tape gave a clattering whine.

Q: He believed all this…

Vlasov speeded up the tape.

Q:… are now?

A: Light years ahead.

Vlasov switched off the recorder and asked Peslyak: ‘Do you believe that?’

‘That’s up to the First Chief Directorate.’

‘I asked you.’

Peslyak shrugged. ‘Of course not.’ He smoothed his crumpled suit. ‘What has Massey got to offer?’

‘A lot,’ Vlasov said, ‘if he’s telling the truth.’ He restarted the recorder.

Q: You seem very sure of this.

A: Vogel is.

Q: What exactly is Vogel’s job?

A: Director of communications at Vandenberg.

Q: The microfilm that you gave us, did that originate from him?

A: It did. It contains details of the latest Elint satellites.

Q: Elint?

A: Electronic Intelligence, known as ferrets in the States. Your people at Tyuratam, or wherever, know all about them. They orbit 400 miles up and photograph other satellites.

Q: And is that all you have to offer?

A: All?

Q: We understood you had something a little more ambitious in mind.

A: Ambitious – the understatement of the decade.

Q: Could you elaborate, Comrade Massey?

A: Okay. I brought the microfilm as an act of good faith. I also brought you the means to control space and therefore the globe.

Peslyak spread his hands incredulously. ‘He is crazy.’

Vlasov held up a hand. ‘Listen.’

Q: (an uncharacteristic note of excitement in the interrogator’s voice)… explain yourself, Comrade Massey.

A: It’s quite simple. Computers are the most sophisticated pieces of machinery Man has invented: they are also the most vulnerable. If you know the codes it’s relatively easy to penetrate their brains.

Q: If you know the codes… and all the other security checks. The terminal identification number, for instance – that must change every day.

A: So you’re into computers as well as polygraphs.

Q: (another uncharacteristic note, irritation) Even a street sweeper would appreciate such difficulties.

A: Like I said, not so difficult. Staggeringly easy, in fact. If you know the codes.

Q: You do?

A: I don’t, Vogel does.

Drabkin said: ‘I think we’ve listened to ourselves long enough, don’t you?’

‘I was enjoying it,’ Massey said.

Drabkin stopped the tape. He switched on the electric light and offered his pack of cigarettes; Massey refused. He put on a pair of steel-framed spectacles and went to a cupboard in the corner of the room. ‘Drink?’ taking a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and mineral water from a shelf piled with polygraph spares.