Free Disorderly Elements by Bob Cook Page A

Grünbaum. Beside it was a photocopy of a page from Owen’s desk-pad. It contained a string of handwritten notes which Owen had taken down when Wyman related his findings. There was a series of dates and cryptic remarks: “Grünbaum 5/5, but Neumann 1/1, Reichenbach 18/12, Gödel 2l/l0—technically impossible”; “Fix emergency appt with Min.”; “W. to establish full circs of G.’s death”.
    Mrs Hobbes had also photocopied the extract from the Compendium of Anglo/US Intelligence Systems which Wyman had taken with him to the meeting. Presumably, Mrs Hobbes had decided that this was enough for Bulgakov to establish what was going on.
    Bulgakov lit a cigarette and reread the documents. He began to wonder if he should not report all this back to Moscow Centre. Most of his colleagues would have been expected automatically to pass this sort of information back to Dzerzhinsky Square, where their superiors would process it and decide what was to be done. It was only because Bulgakov was an especially trusted operative that he could even contemplate handling all this on his own.
    Indeed, the KGB is famous for allowing its employees almost no personal initiative in matters outside the USSR. It has frequently been described as a dinosaur. Although it is by far the world’s largest intelligence organization, its rigidity of structure and procedure invariably leads to bureaucratic clumsiness and delays which do not impede the agencies of lesser nations.
    The KGB hierarchy is vast and complex. At the top of the tree sit the Chairman and his deputies. Below these gentlemen are the four Chief Directorates, which in turn control a large number of subsidiary departments. The First Chief Directorate, Bulgakov’s employer, is responsible for all foreign operations. The others deal with internal security, political, religious and ethnic dissent, and the control of all the border guards in the Soviet Union.
    Below the Chief Directorates are nine ordinary Directorates. These handle the armed forces, surveillance, communications intelligence, political bodyguards, technical support for the rest of the KGB, research, administration, service and personnel.
    Finally, there are six Departments which deal with special investigations, collation of operational experience, state com munications, “physical security”, registry and archives, and finance.
    The headquarters of this colossal organization are in a seven-storey, ochre-coloured rococo building at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square in Moscow, which before 1917 housed the All-Russian Insurance Company. Behind it sits the infamous Lubyanka prison.
    A nine-storey extension was added to the building during the Second World War, but even that proved too small to meet the needs of the KGB. Further buildings went up elsewhere in Moscow to house the organization’s ever-growing staff. There is now an extra block on the Kutuzovsky Prospekt, as well as an enormous administration building on the Machovaya Ulitza, and an even bigger half-moon-shaped building just off the Moscow Ring Road.
    It was in these buildings that Bulgakov had received his basic training as a KGB officer, before he was sent out of Russia as a captain in the First Directorate. He disliked having dealings with Moscow Centre, since he resented any infringement of his personal autonomy. He knew that if he reported the present situation to Moscow, his superiors would infer his inability to handle it. Bulgakov’s record in Europe was spotless and he wished to keep it that way. He therefore resolved to tell Moscow nothing for the time being.
    He studied the extract from the Compendium . This document clearly implied that Grünbaum was in an F-network. The other names on Owen’s notepad must have belonged to other members of this network. So why had Owen added the words “Technically impossible” to this list of names?
    The number “5/5” after Grünbaum’s name gave