The translator, p.16
The Translator, page 16
“This is Varlamov speaking, or, rather, writing,” said Clive. “And I quote: ‘For the moment, we must concentrate all our energies and resources on Plan A. Once it is completed successfully, we can discuss the other matter.’”
“It could be something to do with Ukraine,” said Martindale.
“It could be anything,” said the ambassador.
“The word plan in Russian also means ‘operation’,” said Clive. “For example, ‘Operation Barbarossa’ is Plan Barbarossa. ‘Plan A’ could be some sort of military operation.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Hyde. “Maybe your friend can find out?”
“I hope so,” said Clive. “I really hope so.” He remembered the confidence in Marina’s voice when she had told him, “They’re not as clever as they think…”
Hyde stared at Clive for what seemed like an eternity, and it made Clive uncomfortable. When would Hyde speak? When would he come to some sort of decision?
“A lot is riding on this,” Hyde said eventually. “Not just for us, but for her. Mrs Volina has given us her terms. That’s all well and good. But… and I’m sure she knows this… Mrs Volina is on probation. The general’s emails… They’re a start. A good start. But if she can give us meaningful intelligence on Plan A… Well, that would put her on a much surer footing. Will you pass this on?”
Marina was five minutes early for her two-thirty appointment at the Aphrodite beauty salon on Petrovka. It took two hours and twenty minutes to colour her hair a rich brown with reddish lowlights and cut it into a sleek bob with a fringe. Feeling presentable, she tanked herself up with a double espresso and walked a few metres down to Dior, where the dress in the window had caught her eye.
An hour later, she walked out with two new work suits, two cocktail dresses, a midnight-blue trouser suit, a white-and-navy polka-dot blouse with a floppy bow, and a long black one-shoulder dress, on sale. The sums involved were, to Marina’s mind, stratospheric. She paid for everything with her new black credit card. No limit.
By this time, the Dior manageress was all over Marina, telling her how elegant and beautiful she was and reminding her that she must not forget about shoes. A dress without the right shoes was, said the manageress, no dress at all, but a bird with a broken wing. Right next door was Jimmy Choo, where Madame could get a discount. So Marina went next door and bought one pair of shoes at a price that made her feel sick. She then took a taxi home, buried under her packages, and paused on the landing, where Oxana was sitting in her swivel chair next to her narrow bed. For once, Marina pressed the button for the lift, while Oxana looked on in amazement before demanding to know what on earth had come over her. Why the new haircut? The new clothes? Why so many shopping bags, when she always said she hated shopping? As the lift doors swallowed her up, Marina blew Oxana a kiss.
Marina slept for an hour, then dragged herself out of bed and thanked her lucky stars that she was only on duty for the drinks before dinner. Serov didn’t need her at the dinner for the ex-chancellor; he spoke fluent German from all his years in Dresden.
And there was a text from Clive. Formal. Official. She read it with a sigh and thought, if only she could be back in Peredelkino with Clive holding her tightly, giving her the illusion that life was beautiful and that she was safe.
Marina put on her new black dress that left one shoulder bare; she hardy recognized herself. Usually these formal dinners in the Kremlin filled her with dread. But not this one. She had a new dress and a new challenge. A week ago, at 11.27, General Varlamov had sent an email to Foreign Minister Kirsanov in which he had mentioned a Plan A.
A for what?
· · ·
Inside the Palace of Facets, they all made such a fuss. How many times that evening did Marina hear, “Good heavens, is it Marina? I didn’t recognize you.” It all started with President Serov, who summoned her over and showered her with compliments. “Now that is an improvement…” he said. “New hair, new dress… I like you in black… very smart indeed… You could pass for a Parisienne… You look most attractive, my dear… and you know what?” Then the president leant forward and whispered, “We’ll have you married in no time.”
“I have no wish to be married,” Marina replied, but the president wasn’t listening, and moments later he insisted on a photograph with Marina and his guest of honour, the ex-chancellor of Germany. Marina was then assigned to take care of the German VIP. Soon, however, she found herself guide to most of the German delegation as they toured the gilded seventeenth-century chamber with its wall-to-wall frescoes, while the president looked on approvingly. Several people commented that the newly restored chamber looked magnificent. It should, thought Marina, at a cost of nine million dollars, half of which was pocketed. Marina, who had done her homework while her hair was being dyed, pointed out the intricate marquetry of the floor in seven different woods. Eventually, the Germans melted away, and General Varlamov, who had been prowling around the edge of the room, moved in.
“So, you took my advice after all,” Varlamov said, looking Marina up and down. “With, if I may say so, very satisfactory results.”
“You’re most kind,” Marina replied. The general seemed pleased with himself, and Marina wondered why – until she noticed his new suit. Italian, she thought. When she saw a flash of red silk lining inside the jacket, she told Varlamov it reminded her of a bird of paradise.
“Bird of paradise? I like that,” he said, pushing back his shoulders. The general took another glass of champagne from a passing tray and was handing it to Marina when the Russian national anthem sang out from his pocket. He took the call.
“Thank you,” he said. Then he looked at Marina and smiled. “Yegorov is dead… That is good news. A toast, I think.” Varlamov raised his glass. “To one less traitor in the world.”
Marina had never toasted a man’s death before. The champagne stuck in her throat, but she swallowed and forced herself to smile.
“His book about our president was pure slander,” said Varlamov. “Of course, the West loved it. It was top of the Amazon best-seller list for weeks. Yegorov describes me as the power behind the throne, compares me to Talleyrand… He even calls me shit in a silk stocking.”
“That’s quite a compliment,” Marina said, keeping her voice detached.
“Is it? That’s what my wife said. But I don’t think it’s a compliment at all. Not at all. How’s the Englishman?”
“You’ll be pleased to hear that I’m running with him tomorrow. He sent me a text saying that now the trade talks have collapsed, he’s got time on his hands. We’re meeting for a drink this evening to plan our route. I think we’ll do Frunzenskaya. Ten, maybe fifteen kilometres, starting at seven a.m. And, by the way, I know the protocol. From now on, you’ll have a full report every time we meet.”
“So it was his initiative,” Varlamov mused. “That’s interesting… Maybe there’s more than meets the eye… What do you think?”
“I’m running with him, Grigory Mikhailovich, not recruiting him.”
“Why not do both? Think outside of the box, Marina Andreyevna.”
Marina excused herself, reminding the general that she was on duty and the president had asked her to check the seating plan. As she crossed the room, a hand shot out and took her by the arm.
“Well, I never! What have you done…” Viktor Romanovsky gushed. “Let me take a long look at you! I can hardly believe my eyes. What a figure inside that elegant gown… My goodness me…”
“I was really hoping I’d see you here,” Marina said, pressing his arm. “It makes such a difference to have a friend at these dos.”
“I want to be more than a friend. Much, much more,” the deputy prime minister whispered. Marina forced herself to smile, bracing herself for a stream of unwanted compliments. Much of the world had moved on, she thought, but not Russia, where men still thought of themselves as superior to women, where women could only advance in life with permission from men. Would Russia or Russian men ever change? She left the question hanging in her mind as she turned to Romanovsky and said, “Did you know that General Varlamov thinks highly of you?”
“He does?” said Romanovsky, vaguely looking around for the general. “You surprise me.”
“Honestly… I often hear him singing your praises… Just thought I’d pass it on… Of course, you two must be seeing a great deal of each other these days… I mean, we live in exciting times.”
Romanovsky eyed Marina cautiously.
“It’s all very secret, you know.”
“I know it’s secret, but… Well, it’s safe between us. I find the name intriguing. Who thought it up?”
“Our foreign minister,” said Romanovsky, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Kirsanov likes to show off. He went to the classical gymnasium. Spent years studying Latin and Greek and, as a result, has a thing about Greek gods. I don’t know… Something about the underworld appealed to him. I suppose it’s logical when you think about it.”
“Ayid…” Marina murmured with her sweetest smile. It was Russian for Hades.
“Shhh!” said Romanovsky. “You’ll get me into terrible trouble… If they think for one moment I’ve been indiscreet… Even though it’s only you… Now, when are we having our dinner? My private secretary will be calling you first thing tomorrow, and she won’t take no for an answer.”
A gong announced that dinner was served. Marina sent Clive a text, collected her coat and left.
They met in the bar of the Metropol, chose a table next to the pianist, who was playing ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’.
“Nice dress,” Clive said as he helped Marina off with her coat and felt her skin tense at his touch.
“I’ve come from work… a reception,” she said.
They ordered cocktails, surrounded by the lush notes of Cole Porter, and then, in clear voices and well within earshot of the man drinking alone at the bar, they talked about running.
“If you’re late, I can’t wait,” Marina said, pulling out her phone. “Seven o’clock, sharp. At the foot of the stone steps, which you get to from the bridge. Here, I’ll show you on the map.”
Marina tapped on Yandex Maps and typed in “A = Ayid. Source = DPM Rom” without hitting “Find”. She gave Clive just enough time to read the five words before she cleared the search bar. Then she typed in “Frunzenskaya”, and, as she and Clive studied the map, she thought that Vanya would be proud of her.
· · ·
An hour later, Clive found himself back in the hermetically sealed safe room, where the walls seemed whiter and the air stuffier.
“So,” he began, and then wondered why everything these days has to start with “So…”. “So… The ‘A’ in ‘Plan A’ is for Ayid. Which means Hades. Plan A is Operation Hades.”
“And Volina’s source is…?” said Martindale.
“Romanovsky. The deputy prime minister.”
The ambassador looked impressed.
“Hades!” scoffed Martindale. “Ludicrous. I mean what on earth does it conjure?”
“Hell? The depths?” said Clive. “Marina doesn’t know. But she’ll find out.”
“The depths,” said Hyde. “The depths of the Atlantic Ocean, where you’ll find the fibre-optic cables that carry ninety-seven per cent of internet traffic between Europe and the US.”
Hyde took a sip of whisky and looked around the table.
“Cut those cables, and we’re in darkness. Good name, Hades. God of the dead. King of the underworld. In Greek, it means ‘the invisible one’. He’s a ruthless god. And hard to detect.”
“How long have you known?” asked the ambassador.
“It’s just a guess,” said Hyde. “But it fits. The microsatellites. The new belligerent stance. This latest assassination, which is, I think, a smokescreen, a diversion from what’s happening elsewhere. And now we have an invisible enemy…” Here Hyde paused. “It’s the Russian submarines that bother me the most. And the stealth drones that hide in their bellies.”
Hyde was quick to explain that he was not talking about the drone nuclear submarine codenamed Status-6, about which Serov had boasted on Russian television, claiming that it had scoured the US coast undetected in order to test American defences. No, Hyde was talking about a new invention, an underwater drone, unmanned and designed specifically to gather intelligence. “Rather like an unmanned spacecraft on the moon,” Hyde explained, “this new submarine can ‘do things’.”
“What sort of things?” said Clive.
“I’m coming to that,” said Hyde. “In recent months, a Russian submarine and two, possibly three, ‘baby’ underwater drones have been annoying the hell out of the Royal Navy by skirting our southern coast – Cornwall, in particular – and just steering clear of our coastal waters, which, in case anyone had forgotten, extend twelve nautical miles from the low-water mark of any coastal state, as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. These pesky underwater drones are very hard to detect, especially if you have a navy as depleted as ours.”
“Do we have any idea why these underwater drones are snooping off the coast of Cornwall?” said Clive.
“I do have an idea. So does Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, and so does the PM. In a word, reconnaissance. Which brings me back to your question, Franklin. You asked what these drones can do. They are highly sophisticated robots. They can plant themselves on the seabed and cut cables.” Hyde let this last remark hang in the air. “Not any old cables,” he continued, “but the fibre-optic cables which carry the data for most of the world’s emails, text messages and phone calls. The traffic under the Atlantic, in particular, is huge and conveyed through eight super cables. Policy Exchange has just published a report on all this with a foreword written by an old friend of mine, an ex-NATO supreme allied commander, who says these fibre-optic cables – or ‘pipes’, as he calls them – are, and I quote, ‘the backbone of the world’s economy’.”
Hyde poured himself a glass of water. The air in the room was dry.
“Let me give you a little background,” he continued. “As I mentioned just now – but believe me, it bears repeating – ninety-seven per cent of global communications is transmitted via these underwater cables. Each fibre has the capacity to transmit as much as four hundred gigabytes of data per second. That’s a lot of data. And the speed is breathtaking. Here’s a statistic I particularly like: one cable containing eight fibre-optic strands could transfer the entire contents of the Bodleian Library across the Atlantic in forty minutes. Quite a thought, don’t you think?”
“Terrifying,” said Luke Marden, who found this sort of data deeply depressing.
“Only last week,” Hyde continued in the same even tone, “the chief of the defence staff gave the PM a briefing, a sort of risk assessment. He said that cutting the fibre-optic cables under the Atlantic would hit the UK and the whole Western economy ‘immediately and potentially catastrophically’. His words, not mine.”
There was a heavy silence in the safe room. Hyde’s grim assessment held that the ninety-four microsatellites were Russia’s insurance policy, to keep its own communications up and running while the UK and much of Western Europe crashed.
“And before you even bother to ask,” Hyde added, “we in the UK don’t even begin to have our own satellite capacity.”
“So how do we defend ourselves?” said Clive.
“With difficulty. The Royal Navy has been talking about an ocean surveillance ship, but it’s still on the drawing board. Meanwhile, Russia has a modern submarine fleet. We don’t. We can’t possibly patrol all our coastline. They can slip in and out, and there’s nothing we can do. If they have an operation in place to cut the cables, we won’t be able to stop them, unless… unless we know when and where…”
Clive was struck by the gravity, not just in Hyde’s voice but in his face. The special adviser on Russia stood there unsmiling, grim, his features set in stone. Clive had never been party to a discussion of national security at this level, but he understood that this was his world, after all, and this meeting, in the stuffy confines of the safe room, was a call to duty. He had to play his part.
“If I could come in here…” said the ambassador, who was on his feet and pacing about the room. “Relations between Russia and the UK are worsening by the hour. The PM gets back to London this Friday, in time to make a statement to the House of Commons. This murder of Sergei Yegorov… It is… How did she put it? The last straw.” The ambassador was looking at Martin Hyde.
“The PM is furious,” Hyde confirmed. “There’ll be expulsions.”
“Thank bloody God,” said Martindale, getting to his feet and heading to the sideboard for a drink. “And, with a bit of luck, the Russians will retaliate, and we’ll all be sent home… The usual tit for tat… And I won’t shed a tear.”
“Well, you should,” said Hyde. “For us, this is the worst possible news, don’t you see? The assassination is a diversion, a sideshow, but the expulsions are a more serious matter.” He gave Martindale his sternest look. “It leaves Volina exposed. Clive too… We won’t be here to give them the usual support or back-up. They’ll be largely on their own, face to face with Operation Hades, god of the underworld… home of departed souls… a dark, dark place… It’s the sort of place we’ll find ourselves in if those fibre-optic cables under the Atlantic are cut. Of course, I’m assuming this is what Operation Hades is about… It’s just possible that I’m barking up the wrong tree, but I don’t think so. Anyway, this is where Marina Volina comes in. We need all the details from her… Chapter and verse.”
“You know her terms,” Clive said, keeping his voice flat, disengaged. “She’s waiting to hear back from you.”
Hyde studied Clive for a moment, not unsympathetically, and then asked him, politely, to leave the safe room and wait outside. Ten minutes later Clive was back.
“Right,” said Hyde. “We accept Volina’s terms. Over and above. For one day’s worth of emails from General Varlamov, she’s asked for five thousand dollars. The money will be in her account immediately. For the other twenty-three thousand emails, she’s asked for three hundred thousand dollars. Agreed. We’ll pay in daily instalments of fifty thousand, starting first thing tomorrow. As for getting out of Russia and starting a new life, that depends on what Volina can tell us about Operation Hades. If she’s instrumental in preventing this attack, then she’s out and we’ll give her two million. Dollars, that is.”
