A Covenant of Spies

Chapter Two

Chapter TwoMay 1982, Prague

“If every description I read in service files matched the complexity of the ones ascribed to Jana Kava and her brother, Dalek, then I would have had far more free days spent enjoying the pleasures of life than I have been able to. Despite the obvious lack of complications written on the two sheets of paper inside the thin yellowish-brown coloured file, more were hidden from view than I first appreciated.”

File coded FlyHi One: First Write 01/05/1981. Updated 01/03/1982.

Starts: Jana Kava, thirty years of age, (DOB 09/08/1951) plain appearance with greying-black hair and hazel eyes. She is old for her age. The subject has high cheekbones, with a sallow complexion to a chubby, heart-shaped face. She has no distinguishing facial features. Comely build, efficient, and reliable in both categories of work.

Her mother was born in Czechoslovakia of German parents and executed 16/07/1963. Tereza (the mother, aged 43) was killed for what was labelled subversive activities almost twelve years after the subject's birth and her father, General Anotoly Vladislav Kava, one-time head of the StB, State Security in Czechoslovakia, disappeared the same day in 1964 as the Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev visited the site of the updated Warsaw Pact fighter aircraft and trainer, the Aero L-29 Delfín. NATO calls it The Maya. Although retired from the StB, the general was de facto in charge of security at various military sites, including this one. He was also a highly decorated war veteran.

The aircraft is manufactured in a factory on the periphery of the city of Prague, where the retired general also held a post as the Communist Party advisor before his disappearance. That was the ninth of January 1964.

Mysteriously, Khrushchev was not seen in public again in Czechoslovakia until boarding a plane for the flight back to Moscow on the eleventh of January. He was on crutches with his left ankle heavily plastered. According to the official Communist agenda, there were three other appearances scheduled during the week after showing his face at the Aero Vodochody factory. The First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had approximately nine months left in power before being replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. All probably just a coincidence, but worth noting.

Personal Life: Jana serves on the central policy committee of the chairman of the Communist Party and at one time the Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia, Jozef Lenárt. She speaks several languages fluently which she possibly practices when in bed with Lenárt. They are discreet in their relationship, but not enough to avoid our notice. He is married and has two children who are both at university in Moscow.

Home bird. She resides in the same house as that of her parents before they died. She is aware of her brother's (Dalek) growing affiliations to the banned anti-Communist movement, Solidarity, started in Poland in 1980. But, and this is vital—neither Jozef Lenárt, nor any other member of the central policy committee know of Dalek's affiliation, or her deception. …That's how things stand at present. It could be a lever.

Jana Kava is our primary target. However, her brother, Dalek, DOB 19/06/49, is also of interest to us. He holds dual nationality, Russian and Czechoslovakian, and speaks both languages fluently, as well as English and German. His political leanings are the same as his sister's, towards the centre-left; however, according to our placement, he shows significant disillusionment with his Communist Party teachings and we are of the opinion he is now accessible.

File coded FlyHiTwo: First Write 01/05/1981. Updated 01/03/1982.

Starts: Personal Life: Heavily built, but surprisingly deft and agile for his size and slight disability: six foot three inches and sixteen stone, plus a bit. Studied judo, achieving a blue belt before other things took his interest. Black hair, black eyes with a permanent sad expression, which is probably caused by his addiction to alcohol. His face carries no distinguishing marks, is unremarkable and of a dull pale colour. He walks with a limp for no medical reason that we could find, nor do we know of any other cause.

We have no information of his formative years, other than like his sister, he was raised in the family home at number 34 Sámova, Praha 10. It's a beautifully appointed three-storey home on the banks of the River Vitava befitting the offices his father once held. Subject no longer resides at that address. There is no criminal activity recorded against his name. Although he was only fifteen years old when Khrushchev visited, we do know he made quite a noise at the Aero Vodochody factory the next day following his father's, the general's, non-appearance at home. He was called to appear before the local commissar committee of junior party officials to explain his behaviour. He offered no defence and was severely reprimanded, having his junior party membership suspended for three months; however, after an intervention on his behalf by his senior chemical tutor at the Prague pre-University school he attended, that punishment was rescinded and nothing was recorded against his name. We have reason to believe it was Dalek who discovered his father's body. That was on the morning of the twelfth of January, the day after Khrushchev left the country and the committee was convened that evening. The official reason given for the lapse of time between the general's disappearance and discovery, was that he'd died from a heart attack in a part of the complex seldom used by anyone.

Dalek was educated to a higher level than normal. He left the Czechoslovakian university at the age of twenty-one with the equivalent of five first-class honours degrees. One was in chemical analysis. He has occupied the same employment position since leaving the country's education system—Premier Analyst at Bok's Chemicals, Prague. A very prestigious position. He is overall second in charge at the chemical plant and considered to be one of the rising stars in the fledgling Czech scientific industry. We would like that ascendency to be accelerated and we want to know the progression boundaries in the development of your core subject: fuel from waste products.

Sexual orientation: What intelligence we do have on this aspect comes from a source no longer available to us. It suggests both subjects are of a heterosexual persuasion. However, caution must be used with this information as we have no evidence on the ground available to substantiate or repudiate what is in the file.

To Sum Up: We want Jana's signature on our books by close of play. Time is not of essence. Extend your stay at your discretion. What we do want is her alliance detached from her brother. Security is our utmost concern. If, in achieving the compliance of FlyHi One, FlyHi Two signature can also be scribbled in our ledger, then that's an acceptable bonus, but on no account can he be offered the same signing-on fee as his sister. You must make him earn whatever bonus you see fit—within reason. Jana gets premier-class remuneration and five-star handling all the way. One other thing: discretion is of the utmost importance, Douglas. No going off script.

* * *

“That roughly covered the extent of my briefing two days before I departed for Prague, from a Miles Faversham who told me he was the file's compiler and deputy head of the Soviet Satellite desk at Century House. For reasons I'll get to, I couldn't see him on the ground in Prague, so I assumed he'd come by the file information by way of an undisclosed third party. When I left Faversham, my thoughts were centred on the difficulty of the operation. To get one of them to turn against their country was going to be hard enough, but to get two, well, I'll be honest, I doubted I'd be able to do it.

“I hadn't been trained in the persuasive arts. My limited experience at that time was more theoretical than practice. I had no knowledge of operational stuff before I was with Jack Price in New York. That operation was successful as far as Jack was concerned, but it did involve Dickie and Fraser flying out to New York where I'd killed someone and had been previously shot. They got Jack, me and another guy named Job home. Later, after Jack had passed away, I was in on a snatch assignment in Hamburg, which involved the death of an opposing agent in a messy firefight. Then came the other 'look and listen one' in Moscow where I had nothing to do. So I wasn't James Bond by a long way!

“For the job, London gave me a substantial budget to use, but as I say, I wasn't trained to talk people into swapping sides in the Cold War. I wasn't nervous in the sense of not being able to do it, but I was nervous about doing it wrong. I told myself that everyone started somewhere and this was to be my somewhere. Beaulieu was a great institution for teaching trade-craft and being able to look after yourself well enough, so I wasn't frightened by the thought of going, but I can't say I had no reservations.

“The only reason I could think of why they'd picked me for the job was my chemical industrial experience. If Dalek Kava had made such a loud commotion within the higher echelons of the Communist Party when only fifteen, then without question his name was high up on the StB's list and the Russians would have as much interest in him as them. From what I'd read of Czechoslovakia, it wouldn't be a surprise if the StB had Dalek under permanent observation; however, this was my assignment and before I left for Prague I decided to play it as it developed and if need be: ignore Faversham's instructions of getting them both.

“That wasn't my only concern. The briefing I'd been given on the exposé of Jana's affair with a leading politician was too abridged for my liking. For example, why wasn't Jozef Lenárt already 'on our books' and thereby making Jana Kava superfluous to our needs? Also, who was it who found this information and how was it all verified? I asked those question, but got the standard answer to do with pay grades and mine being below what was required. I'm not telling you any of this with the benefit of hindsight, but other things bothered me. Like the fact that Jana, although listed first and made to appear the main target to turn, would in fact be compromised irreparably by her brother's defection. If I turned him then, his sister stood no chance of escaping anyone's radar and would need no inducement to jump ship.

“Dalek held opposing views to his superiors in both the idealistic claims of Sovietism and, as I discovered more as time went on when I was out there, the functionality of Czechoslovakian industrial practices. He was an outspoken individual, owing his freedom more to his father's reputation and his sister's influence than to his own circumspection. On the paper records at the MI6 archives held on five floors of 140 Gower Street, and mysteriously not included in Faversham's briefing notes, Dalek Kava was named as a possible American StB plant. Which could explain why he was still at large. But in other files I looked in, the CIA was said to have no presence in Czechoslovakia. The Director General heading up the seventh floor at Century House Soviet Satellite counter-intelligence would surely not have withheld this information from Faversham's desk, so why would Faversham not show Dalek's status to me? The only answer I came up with was that he and his boss wanted someone flushed out and I would be ham-fisted enough to do it without making it look deliberate. Without asking, I decided to send a gun to the British Embassy in Prague by the diplomatic bag.

“Despite my misgivings with the overall evaluation, I was not going to turn down the opportunity this assignment presented and as you are well aware by now, I've never been shy in putting forward my own spin on things. Especially when it comes to following my heart rather than connecting it to whatever should be inside my brain when it mattered. That particular trait of mine was in some ways my undeniable moral undoing, but also it created a distinct success for the service, or so I thought.”