Every time this had happened, he had gone through the same feelings. Elation in placing his advert. Anticipation while waiting for a reply. Disappointment that, yet again, nothing had happened. Each time the disappointment was more numbing, the possibility of ever doing anything more remote.
This time he had been so disappointed that he had not bothered to repeat his message on 25th October, 2013. Yet that was the time when they finally reacted.
18. Risk Analysis
Richard remembered, sometime in the mid-eighties, walking up and down the rows of gravestones looking for his father’s headstone one sunny day in the hills near Milngavie. His dad had died suddenly, of a heart attack. Richard was on holiday in France when it happened. No one had managed to contact him, and the funeral had to go ahead without him. He flew up from London as soon as he could and found the stone where he laid flowers a few years previously. Now both his parents’ names were inscribed.
There was something funny about how death always seemed to take you by surprise. Death was inevitable, but every time it happened it was shocking.
His father had been the last living link to Uncle Bobby, the first real socialist he’d ever heard of.
They were all socialists, of a sort, of course, everyone on that side of the family. Family, friends, neighbours. Almost everyone in and around Glasgow was. The industrialised Central Belt of Scotland, blackened and scarred by heavy industry, had fought back to produce people who wanted to create a cleaner, brighter future – Keir Hardie, Manny Shinwell, Uncle Bobby.
They had all hoped that socialism would be the answer, apart from his dad that is, but their efforts had been absorbed by democracy or deflected by the establishment or blocked by the law. Actually, Richard never knew if his father was a socialist or not. Richard assumed he wasn’t, somehow. He seemed very sceptical of socialism. He was also ambitious. He had got a better job and taken the family down south for a few years until they returned to Glasgow after Richard’s maternal grandmother died.
Stories of Uncle Bobby – in fact his Great Uncle Bobby – were legendary in the family. But Uncle Bobby, for all his good intentions, had ended up dying in prison. An unknown failure.
Richard didn’t want to fail. He wanted to avenge the memory out of principle.
Over the next two days he went through the software instructions again and again. He had to be sure this was for real and could be done. He wondered why he had been so slow to realise Mitchell was telling him to wake up. His failure to react must have made Mitchell uncertain of his intentions, which would explain why he had not gone straight on to give him the operational instructions. Unless he had done that too, and those instructions had been waiting in his drawer ever since Helsinki. That might explain why, this time, he had not disguised the word “Zima” in any way that made the message ambiguous.
Richard felt such a fool for not reacting immediately – when Mitchell might have helped or given him more information. Now, whatever he had to do, he would have to do by himself, totally alone.
For some reason he couldn’t control his doubts. He didn’t like the idea of doing this with no help and no clear instructions. Furthermore, such a lot had changed since this whole idea started, back in the seventies. Technology, politics, everything. Would this operation still be relevant? Was deploying this piece of software his only task? What would it achieve? Would it be something destructive enough? Would it be worth the risk?
19. An Unexpected Visitor
The doorbell rang. It was a loud shrill ring that made Richard jump. Not now! Why would the bell ring now? In three years of staying at the apartment in Glentworth Street, he had never heard the doorbell ring. He had never had a visitor. Why on earth was someone ringing the doorbell right now, at the very moment Operation Zima was initiated?
He hesitated, wondering if he should answer or not. The memory stick, the instructions spread out all over his desk, his home computer, switched on and still showing the PDF of the Chennai team’s covering letter. It was all evidence and all incriminating. With trembling hands, he grappled to clear it all away.
The doorbell insisted on ringing. The fact it kept ringing was all the more suspicious and worrying. Had he been set up? Were the police already there to question him? Or, if not the police, who?
He felt his heart thumping. His mind was racing. What really happened to Mitchell? He didn’t seem to be the suicide type. Perhaps he was pushed under the train? This person ringing the bell…?
For Christ’s sake, get a grip!
It took him a minute or two, but everything was tidied away at last. The bell was still ringing every now and then, but Richard still didn’t want to answer. He wanted to get away from the flat, but there wasn’t a practical exit apart from the front door. He could sneak out the kitchen window onto the emergency exit. He considered that for a moment. What if he just didn’t answer?
The damned bell shrieked at him again. Finally he gave up. He decided it would be better to see who it was. Anyone that persistent would keep trying, and it would better to meet them at the front door rather than clambering down the fire exit. He pressed the intercom. “Who is it?”
“Zima.”
The reply startled Richard. This was not on! No one knew; no one should know!
“Mister Zima? I don’t know you. You have the wrong apartment.”
“No, Mr Slater, I am not Mr Zima. I am Mr Weber. I need to talk to you about Zima.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Please, Mr Slater, I do not wish to intrude. Meet me in five minutes in the café on the corner of Melcome Street and Baker Street.”
Richard felt a wave of relief and gratitude sweep over him. At least the stranger was not trying to get into the flat.
“OK. In five minutes. I think there is some mistake though. I don’t know you.”
“You will remember me again when we meet one day, though we have not met.”
Those words! Those words were quite exact – exactly like the second cipher Richard was supposed to remember. But Richard already knew there was something wrong. The ciphers were supposed to be delivered in order: Identification; Instructions; then possibly Discuss or Suspend, Resume or Abort. He was relieved he did not have to invite the stranger into the apartment, but still it meant he had to go out, leaving all the stuff he had just acquired inside the apartment. What if the person ringing the bell was trying to lure him outside so someone else could search the flat?
The memory stick was still lying on the desk! He snatched it up and dashed around in an almost comical hurry, trying to think of a good hiding place. What about inside the coffee jar? That would have to do. He poked it down into the middle of a half-full jar of instant coffee. The paperwork went into the middle of a pile of other paperwork and then he headed out to the café.
20. Weber
“Klaus Weber.”
“Richard Slater. Pleased to meet you.”
Weber took a sip of his coffee before replying, as though he needed the time to consider his response.
“Well, I’m glad that you say you’re pleased. Though I don’t believe you. In fact, neither of us believes anything about the other. So, how are we going to do this when neither of us are to be trusted?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Of course not. But we have some mutual friends. Do you remember Stuart Douglas?”
Richard wished he had learnt how to play poker, or at least how to keep a poker face when required. He had no idea if his face had given away any clues, but he did indeed remember Stuart Douglas.
Back in the day, they had spent many hours arguing about dialectical materialism and stuff like that.
“I know him pretty well. I imagine he’ll be retiring