Free Manhunt by James Barrington

interpretation of this – and I have to say we concur
– is that this sheet of paper lists files that the SVR has received from somebody within SIS, and what they paid for them.’
    ‘Or perhaps files that the SVR wants from SIS, and what they’d be prepared to pay for them?’ one of the other men suggested.
    ‘No.’ Moore shook his head. ‘The Russian clerk said these files had already been obtained.’
    There was an appalled silence.
    ‘You can all appreciate what this means,’ Holbeche declared. ‘Someone with access to SIS files – and that probably means somebody here in this building – has been
selling our secrets to the SVR. What we have to find out urgently is who.’
    ‘And how do we do that?’ Stanway asked. ‘Call in The Box?’
    ‘The Box’ and ‘Box 500’ were slang terms for the Security Service, MI5, and were derived from its original postal address of PO Box 500, London.
    ‘We hope that won’t be necessary.’ Moore shook his head. ‘We’re hoping that the Russian clerk himself might be able to help us out.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘Before he ran off into the Moscow afternoon, he’d talked to the SIS duty officer for about ten minutes. The clerk explained to him that he had a number of other papers, similar to
the one bearing the file names, and further information about the individual who had supplied the SVR with those files. Based on what he heard, the duty officer believed the source of the leak
could probably be identified from those papers.’
    ‘As the clerk has completely vanished, I don’t see how that can help,’ Stanway said.
    ‘It helps,’ Moore replied, ‘because the clerk has now reappeared, in Vienna, along with the rest of the papers.’
    Sluzhba Vneshney Razvyedki Rossi Headquarters, Yasenevo, Tëplyystan, Moscow
    Raya had always been conscientious in performing her duties, and invariably carried out to the letter all the procedures Abramov had specified for the security checks. One
of her tasks was to inspect the access record, since the last full security check, of any files bearing a classification of Top Secret or above.
    She looked forward to this task because, as well as inspecting a file’s access history, it also gave her – as the network manager in all but name – the absolute right to look
at the contents of any file contained in the database. On every security check she’d carried out since she’d arrived at Yasenevo, what she’d done was not merely to inspect the
contents of these files, but also to make copies of them within another hidden directory she’d created. She also selected a handful of highly classified files every day, and stored copies of
these, too, in the same hidden directory. Most of these files were encrypted but that didn’t matter because, as network manager, she also had access to the encryption and decryption
routines.
    But, despite this unrivalled access, the number of highly classified files was so great that she had never managed to find a real ‘gem’, though she believed that the Gospodin material, and now the new and rapidly filling Zakoulok directory, would prove of crucial importance later. This was not because of what the files themselves contained, but because of what
they could prove about the person who had sourced them.
    During this latest check, she’d decided to carry out a database-wide search for any files containing English words. This produced a huge listing, and included even material dating back to
the glorious days of what were known as ‘The Apostles’ – those ideological traitors whose names were still revered in the corridors of the SVR: George Blake, Anthony Blunt,
Anthony Burgess, John Cairncross, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby.
    The damage they had done to the British intelligence services had been quite literally incalculable, and the lack of trust engendered by their activities between Britain and America was almost
as damaging. While The Apostles were operational, almost no