Timothy Edwards listened carefully. McCready’s narration and evaluation lasted thirty minutes. When he had finished, Edwards asked calmly, “And you are quite certain you believe Keepsake?”
McCready had expected this question. Keepsake had worked for the British for four years since he had first approached an SIS officer in Denmark and offered his services as an “agent-in-place,” but this was a world of shadows and suspicions. There was always the possibility, however remote, that Keepsake might be a “double,” his true loyalties still with Moscow. It was precisely the accusation he now made of Orlov.
“It’s been four years,” said McCready. “For four years Keepsake’s product has been tested against every known criterion. It’s pure.”
“Yes, of course,” said Edwards smoothly. “Unfortunately, if one word of this leaked to our Cousins, they would say exactly the opposite—that our man was lying and theirs was for real. The word is, Langley is deeply enamored of this Orlov.”
“I don’t think they should be told about Keepsake,” retorted McCready. He was very protective of the Russian in the embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens. “Besides, Keepsake feels his time may be coming to an end. He has an instinct that suspicions are growing in Moscow that they have a leak somewhere. If they become convinced, it will only be a matter of time before they home in on their London Station. When Keepsake finally comes in from the cold, we can come clean with the Cousins. For the moment, it could be very dangerous to widen the circle who know.”
Edwards made his decision.
“Sam, I agree. But I’m going to see the Chief on this one. He’s up at the Cabinet Office this morning. I’ll catch him later. Stay in touch.”
During the lunch hour, which Edwards spent eating a sparse meal with the Chief in Sir Christopher’s top-floor suite of offices, a military version of the Grumman Gulf stream III landed at the USAF base at Alconbury, situated just north of the market town of Huntingdon in the county of Cambridgeshire. It had taken off at midnight from the Air National Guard base in Trenton, New Jersey, its passengers having arrived from Kentucky and boarded under the cover of darkness and away from the air-base buildings.
In picking Alconbury, Calvin Bailey had chosen well. The base was the home of the 527 “Aggressor” Squadron of the USAF, whose pilots fly F-5 fighters with a very specific role. They are called the Aggressors because the F-5 has a configuration similar to the Russian MIG-29 and the Aggressors play the role of attacking Soviet fighters in midair combat practice with their fellow American and British jet-jockeys. They themselves study and are adept at all the Soviet air-battle tactics, and they so sink themselves into their role that they constantly talk Russian to each other when aloft. Their guns and rockets may be so adapted as to score only electronic hits and misses, but the rest—insignia, flight suits, maneuvers, and jargon—is all pure Russian.
When Roth, Orlov, Kroll, and the rest descended from the Grumman, they were outfitted in the flight suits of the Aggressor Squadron. They passed through unnoticed and were soon ensconced in a single-story building, set aside from the rest, and equipped with living quarters and kitchen, conference rooms, and one electronically bugged room for the debriefing of Colonel Orlov. Roth had a talk with the base commander, and the British team was cleared to be allowed onto the base the following morning. Then somewhat jet-lagged, the American party turned in to get some sleep.
McCready’s phone rang at three P.M. and Edwards asked to see him again.
“Proposals accepted and agreed,” said Edwards. “We back our judgment that Keepsake is telling the truth and that the Americans have themselves a disinformation agent. That said, the problem is that whatever Orlov is here for, we don’t know yet. It seems that for the moment he is producing good product, which makes it unlikely our Cousins would believe us—the more so as the Chief agrees that we cannot reveal the existence, let alone the identity, of Keepsake. So how do you suggest we handle it?”
“Let me have him,” said McCready. “We have right of access. We can ask questions. Joe Roth is in charge, and I know Joe. He’s no fool. Maybe I can push Orlov, push him hard, before Roth cries ‘Enough.’ Sow some seeds of doubt. Get the Cousins to begin to contemplate the notion that he may not be all he seems.”
“All right,” said Edwards. “You take it.”
He made it sound like his own decision, his own act of magnanimity. The reality of his lunch with the Chief, who would be retiring at the end of the year, had been quite different. The ambitious Assistant Chief, who prided himself on his excellent personal relationship with the CIA, had in mind that one day Langley’s approval of him could be a useful aid to his appointment as Chief.
During the lunch, Edwards had proposed a far less skilled but less abrasive debriefer than Sam McCready to handle the matter of Keepsake’s embarrassing denunciation of the CIA’s new treasure. He had been overruled. Sir Christopher, a former colleague in the field, had insisted that the Deceiver whom he had himself appointed be in charge of handling Orlov.
McCready set off for Alconbury by car early the following morning. Denis Gaunt drove. Edwards had cleared McCready’s request that Gaunt sit in on the interrogation of the Russian. In the back of the car sat a woman from MI-5. The Security Service had asked urgently that they too have someone at the meetings with the Russian, since a specific line of questioning would cover the area of Soviet agents working in and against Britain. Alice Daltry was in her early thirties, pretty, and very bright. She still seemed rather overawed by McCready. In their tight, closed world, despite the need-to-know principle, word had leaked of the previous year’s Pankratin affair.
The car also contained a secure telephone. Looking like an ordinary car phone but larger, it could be switched to encrypted mode to communicate with London. There might well be points emerging from the talk with Orlov that would need to be checked with London.
For much of the journey McCready sat silently, staring through the windshield at the unfolding countryside in the early morning, marveling again at the beauty of England in the spring.
He ran his mind back over what Keepsake had told him. In London, according to the Russian, he had been marginally associated years earlier with the first preparatory stages for a deception operation of which Orlov could only be the final fruition. It had been code-named Project Potemkin.
An ironic title, thought McCready, a hint of KGB gallows humor. It almost certainly had been named not after the battleship Potemkin—nor even after Marshal Potemkin, whose name had been bestowed on the battleship—but after the Potemkin Villages.
Years ago, the Empress Catherine the Great, as ruthless a dictator as long-suffering Russia had ever endured, visited the newly conquered Crimea. Fearful of letting her see the shivering, huddled masses in their freezing shacks, her chief minister, Potemkin, had sent carpenters, plasterers, and painters ahead of her route to construct and paint handsome facades of clean, sturdy cottages with smiling, waving peasants in the windows. The shortsighted old queen was delighted by the picture of rural bliss and returned to her palace. Later, laborers dismantled the facades to reveal again the miserable shantytowns behind them. These deceptions were called Potemkin Villages.
“The target is the CIA,” Keepsake had said. He did not know who the exact victim would be or how the sting would be accomplished. The project was not then being handled directly by his department, which had been asked only for peripheral assistance.
“But this has to be Potemkin coming into operation at last,” he had said. “The proof will be in two parts. No information provided by Orlov will ever actually produce massive and irreversible damage to Soviet interests. Second, you will see an enormous loss of morale taking place inside the CIA.”
At the moment, the latter was certainly not the case, mused McCready. Recovering from the undoubted embarrassment of the Urchenko affair, his American friends were riding high, largely due to their newfound asset. He determined to concentrate on the other area.
At the main gate of the air base, McCready offered an identification card (not in his real name) and asked for Joe Roth on a certain phone extension. Minutes later, Roth appeared in an Air Force jeep.
“Sam, good to see you again.”
“Nice to see you back, Joe. That was quite a vacation you took.”
“Hey, I’m sorry. I was given no choice, no chance to explain. It was a question of take the guy and run, or throw him back.”
“That’s okay,” said McCready easily. “All has been explained. All is smoothed over. Let me present my two colleagues.”
Roth reached into the car and shook hands with Gaunt and Daltry. He was relaxed and effusive. He foresaw no problems and was glad the Brits would be sharing in the goodies. He cleared the whole party with the Guard Commander, and they drove in line across the base to the isolated block where the CIA team was housed.
Like many service buildings, it was no architectural gem, but it was functional. A single corridor divided its entire length, from which doors led off to sleeping rooms, an eating room, kitchens, toilets, and conference rooms. A dozen Air Force police ringed the building, guns visible.
McCready glanced around before entering. He noted that while he and his two colleagues had excited no attention, many of the USAF personnel passing by stared curiously at the circle of armed guards.
“All they’ve managed to do,” he muttered to Gaunt, “is identify the bloody place to any KGB team with a set of binoculars.”
Roth led them to a room in the center of the block. Its windows were closed and shuttered; the only illumination was electric. Easy chairs formed a comfortable group around a coffee table in the center of the room; straight chairs and tables ringed the walls, for the note-takers.
Roth genially gestured to the British party to take the easy chairs and ordered some coffee.
“I’ll go get Minstrel,” he said, “unless you guys want to shoot the breeze first.”
McCready shook his head. “Might as well get on with it, Joe.”
When Roth was out, McCready nodded to Gaunt and Daltry to take chairs by the wall. The message was: Watch and listen, miss nothing. Joe Roth had left the door open. From down the corridor, McCready heard the haunting melody of “Bridge over Troubled Waters.” The sound stopped as someone switched off the tape deck. Then Roth was back. He ushered into the room a chunky, tough-looking man in running shoes, slacks, and a polo sweater.
“Sam, let me present Colonel Pyotr Orlov. Peter, this is Sam McCready.”
The Russian stared at McCready with expressionless eyes. He had heard of him. Most high-ranking officers of the KGB had by then heard of Sam McCready. But he gave no sign. McCready crossed the central carpet, his hand outstretched.
“My dear Colonel Orlov. I am delighted to meet you,” he said with a warm smile.
Coffee was served, and they seated themselves, McCready facing Orlov, Roth to one side. On a side table a tape machine started to turn. There were no microphones on the coffee table. They would have been a distraction. As it was, the tape machine would miss nothing.
McCready began gently, flatteringly, and kept it up for the first hour. Orlov’s answers came fluently and easily. But after the first hour McCready became more and more perplexed, or so it seemed.
“It’s all very fine, wonderful stuff,” he said. “I just have this tiny problem—well, I’m sure we all do. Everything you have given us is code-names. We have Agent Wildfowl somewhere in the Foreign Office; Agent Kestrel, who may be a serving officer in the Navy or a civilian working for the Navy. My problem, you see, Colonel, is that nothing could actually lead to a detection or an arrest.”
“Mr. McCready, as I have explained many times, here and in America, my period in the Illegals Directorate was over four years ago, and I specialized in Central and South America. I did not have access to the files of agents in Western Europe, Britain, or America. These were heavily protected, as I am sure they are here.”
“Yes, of course, silly of me,” said McCready. “But I was thinking more of your time in Planning. As we understand it, that entails preparing cover stories, ‘legends’ for people about to be infiltrated or just recruited. Also, systems for making contact, passing information—paying off agents. It involves the banks they use, the sums paid, the periods payments are made, the running costs. All this you seem to have—forgotten.”
“My time in Planning was even before my time in Illegals Directorate,” retorted Orlov. “Eight years ago. Bank accounts are in eight-figure numbers, it is impossible to recall them all.”
There was an edge to his voice. He was getting annoyed. Roth had begun to frown.
“Or even one number,” mused McCready as if thinking aloud, “or even one bank.”
“Sam.” Roth leaned forward urgently. “What are you driving at?”
“I am simply trying to establish whether anything Colonel Orlov has given you or us over the past six weeks will really do massive and irreversible damage to Soviet interests.”
“What are you talking about?” It was Orlov, on his feet, plainly angry. “I have given hour after hour of details of Soviet military planning, deployments, weapons levels, readiness states, personalities. Details of the Afghan affair. Networks in Central and South America that have now been dismantled. Now you treat me like ... like a criminal.”
Roth was on his feet, too.
“Sam, could I have a word with you? Privately. Outside.”
He made for the door. Orlov sat down again and stared disconsolately at the floor. McCready rose and followed Roth. Daltry and Gaunt remained at their tables, fixated. The young CIA man by the tape machine turned it off. Roth did not stop walking until he had reached the open grassland outside the building. Then he turned to McCready.
“Sam, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
McCready shrugged. “I’m trying to establish Orlov’s bona fides,” he said. “That’s what I’m here for.”
“Let’s get this absolutely straight,” said Roth tightly. “You are not, as in ‘not,’ here to establish Minstrel’s bona fides. That has already been done. By us. Over and over again. We are satisfied that he is genuine, doing his best to recall what he can. You are here, as a concession from the DCI, to share in Minstrel’s product. That’s all.”
McCready stared dreamily at the waving fields of young wheat beyond the perimeter fence.
“And what do you think that product is really worth, Joe?”
“A lot. Just what he said: Soviet military deployments, postings, weapons levels, plans—”
“Which can all be changed,” murmured Sam, “quite quickly and easily. Provided they know what he’s telling you.”
“And Afghanistan,” said Roth.
McCready was silent. He could not tell his CIA colleague what Keepsake had told him in the café twenty-four hours earlier, but he could hear in his mind’s ear the murmuring voice from beside him.
“Sam, this new man in Moscow, Gorbachev. You know little about him, as yet. But I know him. When he was here to visit Mrs. Thatcher, before he became General Secretary, when he was just a Politburo member, I handled his security arrangements. We talked. He is unusual, very open, very frank. This perestroika he talks about, this glasnost. You know what these will mean, my friend? In two years, by 1988, maybe 1989, all these military details won’t matter anymore. He is not going to attack across the Central German Plain. He is really going to try and restructure the whole Soviet economy and society. He will fail, of course, but he will try. He will pull out of Afghanistan, pull back from Europe. All that this Orlov is telling the Americans will be for the archives in two years. But the Big Lie, when it comes—that will be important. For a decade, my friend. Wait for the Big Lie. The rest is calculated minor sacrifice by the KGB. They play good chess, my former colleagues.”
“And the networks of agents in South America,” said Roth. “Dammit—Mexico, Chile, and Peru are delighted. They’ve rolled up scores of Soviet agents.”
“All locally recruited help,” said McCready. “Not an ethnic Russian among them. Tired, clapped-out networks, greedy agents, low-level informants. Disposable.”
Roth was staring at him hard.
“My God,” he breathed, “you think he’s phony, don’t you? You think he’s a double. Where did you get that, Sam? Do you have a source, an asset, that we don’t know about?”
“Nope,” said McCready flatly. He did not like to lie to Roth, but orders were orders. In fact, the CIA always received Keepsake’s product, but disguised and attributed to seven different sources.
“I just want to push him hard. I think he’s holding something back. You’re no fool, Joe. I believe that in your deepest heart, you have the same impression.”
That shaft went home. In his secret heart, that was exactly what Roth still thought. He nodded.
“All right. We’ll ride him hard. He hasn’t come here for a vacation, after all. And he’s tough. Let’s go back.”
They resumed at a quarter to twelve. McCready returned to the question of Soviet agents in Britain.
“One I have already given you,” said Orlov. “If you can detect him. The man they called Agent Juno. The one who banked in Croydon, at the Midland.”
“We have traced him,” said McCready evenly. “His name is, or rather was, Anthony Milton-Rice.”
“So there you are,” said Orlov.
“What do you mean, was?” queried Roth.
“He’s dead.”
“I didn’t know,” said Orlov. “It has been several years.”
“That’s another of my problems,” said McCready sadly. “He didn’t die several years ago. He died yesterday morning. Murdered, liquidated, just an hour before we could get the surveillance team around him.”
There was a stunned silence. Then Roth was on his feet again, absolutely outraged. They were back outside the building again in two minutes.
“What the fuck do you think you’re playing at, Sam?” he shouted. “You could have told me.”
“I wanted to see Orlov’s reaction,” said Sam bluntly. “I thought if I told you, you might break the news yourself. Did you see his reaction?”
“No, I was watching you.”
“There wasn’t one,” said McCready. “I would have thought he’d be pretty stunned. Worried, even. Bearing in mind the implications.”
“He’s got nerves of steel,” said Roth. “He’s a total pro. If he doesn’t want to show anything, he doesn’t. Is it true, by the way? Is the man dead? Or was it a ploy?”
“Oh, he’s dead all right, Joe. Knifed by one of a gang of teenagers on his way to work. We call it ‘steaming’; you call it ‘wilding.’ Which gives us a problem, doesn’t it?”
“It could have leaked at the British end.”
McCready shook his head. “No time. It took time to set up a killing like that. We only had the man’s real identity the night before last, after twenty-four hours of detective work. They got him yesterday morning. No time. Tell me, what happens to Minstrel’s product?”
“First to Calvin Bailey, direct, by hand. Then the analysts. Then the customers.”
“When did Orlov produce the product about the spy in our Defense Ministry?”
Roth told him.
“Five days,” mused McCready. “Before it reached us. Time enough. ...”
“Now just hang in there a minute,” protested Roth.
“Which gives us three choices,” McCready continued. “Either it was a remarkable coincidence, and in our job we can’t afford to believe too many of them. Or someone between you and the teletype operator leaked. Or it was set up in advance. I mean, the killing was prepared for a specific hour on a specific day. A certain number of hours before that time, Orlov had a rush of memory. Before the good guys could get their act together, the denounced agent was dead.”
“I don’t believe we have a leak in the Agency,” said Roth tightly. “And I don’t believe Orlov is a phony.”
“Then why isn’t he coming clean? Let’s go back to him,” suggested Sam gently.
When they returned, Orlov was subdued. The news that the British spy he had denounced had been so conveniently liquidated had evidently shaken him. In a change of tone, McCready spoke very gently.
“Colonel Orlov, you are a stranger in a strange land. You have anxieties about your future. So you wish to keep certain things back, for insurance. We understand that. I would do the same if I were in Moscow. We all need insurance. But Joe here informs me that your standing with the Agency is now so high, you need no more insurance. Now, are there any other real names you can offer us?”
There was utter silence in the room. Slowly, Orlov nodded. There was a general exhalation of breath.
“Peter,” said Roth coaxingly, “this really is the time to bring them out.”
“Remyants,” said Pyotr Orlov, “Gennadi Remyants.”
Roth’s exasperation was almost visible. “We know about Remyants,” he said. He looked up at McCready. “Washington-based representative of Aeroflot. That’s his cover. The FBI picked him up and turned him two years ago. Been working for us ever since.”
“No,” said Orlov and raised his gaze. “You are wrong. Remyants is not a double. His exposure was arranged by Moscow. His pickup was deliberate. His turning was phony. Everything he provides has been carefully doctored by Moscow. It will cost America millions to repair the damage one day. Remyants is a KGB major of the Illegals Directorate. He runs four separate Soviet networks in mainland U.S.A. and knows all the identities.”
Roth whistled. “If that is true, then it is real pay dirt. If it is true.”
“Only one way to find out,” suggested McCready. “Pick Remyants up, fill him full of Pentothal, and see what falls out. And I do believe it is the lunch hour.”
“That’s two good ideas in ten seconds,” admitted Roth. “Guys, I have to go down to London to talk with Langley. Let’s take a break for twenty-four hours.”
* * *
Joe Roth got his link direct to Calvin Bailey at eight P.M. London time, three o’clock in Washington. Roth was buried deep in the cipher room below the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square; Bailey was in his office in Langley. They were speaking in clear voices, their tones slightly tinny because of the encrypting cipher technology through which both voices had to pass to cross the Atlantic with security.
“I spent the morning with the Brits up at Alconbury,” said Roth. “Their first meet with Minstrel.”
“How did it go?”
“Badly.”
“You’re joking. Ungrateful bastards. What went wrong?”
“Calvin, the debriefer was Sam McCready. He’s not anti-American, and he’s no fool. He believes Minstrel is a phony, a plant.”
“Well, bullshit to that. Did you tell him how many tests Minstrel has passed? That we are satisfied he’s okay?”
“Yes, in detail. He sticks with his view.”
“He produce any hard evidence for this fantasy?”
“No. Said it was the result of the British analysis of Minstrel’s product.”
“Jesus, that’s crazy. Minstrel’s product over a mere six weeks has been great. What’s McCready’s beef?”
“We covered three areas. On Minstrel’s military product, he said Moscow could change it all, as long as they knew what Minstrel was telling us, which they would if they had sent him.”
“Crap. Go on.”
“On Afghanistan he was silent. But I know Sam. It was as if he knew something I didn’t but wouldn’t say what it was. All I could get out of him was a ‘suppose.’ He hinted the Brits thought Moscow might pull out of Afghanistan quite soon. That all Minstrel’s stuff on Afghanistan would be for the archives if that happened. Do we have any such analysis?”
“Joe, we have no evidence the Russkies intend to pull out of Kabul, soon or ever. What else didn’t satisfy Mr. McCready?”
“He said he thought the Soviet networks rolled up in Central and South America were tired networks—clapped-out was the word he used—and all locally recruited help with not an ethnic Russian among them.”
“Look, Joe, Minstrel has blown away a dozen networks run by Moscow in four countries down there. Sure the agents were locally recruited. They’ve been interrogated—not very pleasantly, I’ll admit. Naturally, they were all run out of the Soviet embassies. A dozen Russian diplomats are being sent home in disgrace. He’s smashed up years of KGB work down there. McCready’s talking crap.”
“He did have one point. All Minstrel has given the Brits concerning Soviet agents over here are code-names. Nothing to identify a single Russian asset here. Except one, and he’s dead. You heard about that?”
“Sure. Rotten luck. A miserable coincidence.”
“Sam thinks it’s no coincidence. Thinks either Minstrel knew it was slated for a certain day and released his identification too late for the Brits to get their man, or we have a leak.”
“Bullshit to both.”
“He favors the first option. Thinks Minstrel works for Moscow Center.”
“Mr. Sam Smartass McCready offer you any hard evidence for this?”
“No. I asked him specifically if he had an asset inside Moscow who had denounced Minstrel. He denied it. Said it was just his people’s analysis of the product.”
There was silence for a while, as if Bailey were deep in thought. Which he was. Then: “Did you believe his denial?”
“Frankly, no. I think he was lying. I suspect they’re running someone we know nothing about.”
“Then why don’t the Brits come clean?”
“I don’t know, Calvin. If they have an asset who has denounced Minstrel, they’re denying it.”
“Okay, listen, Joe, You tell Sam McCready from me, he has to put up or shut up. We have a major success in Minstrel, and I’m not about to let a sniping campaign out of Century House wreck it all. Not without hard evidence, and I mean really hard. Understood, Joe?”
“Loud and clear.”
“One other thing: Even if they have been tipped off that Orlov is phony, that would be standard Moscow Center practice. Moscow lost him, we got him, the Brits’ noses were put out of joint. Of course Moscow would leak to the Brits that our triumph was hollow and useless. And the Brits would be susceptible to that scam because of their annoyance at not getting Minstrel to themselves. So far as I am concerned, the British tip-off is disinformation. If they have a man, it’s their man who is lying. Ours is on the level.”
“Right, Calvin. If it arises again, can I tell Sam that?”
“Absolutely. That is Langley’s official view, and we’ll defend it.”
Neither man bothered to recall that by now the vindication of Orlov was linked to both their rising careers.
“Sam had one success,” said Joe Roth. “He came at Minstrel hard and strong—I had to pull him out of there twice—but he got Minstrel to come up with a new name. Gennadi Remyants.”
“We run Remyants,” retorted Bailey. “I’ve had his product coming across my desk for two years.”
Roth went on to reveal what Orlov had said about Remyants’s true loyalties to Moscow and McCready’s suggestion that the simple way to clear the whole thing up would be to pick up Remyants and break him.
Bailey was silent. Finally he said, “Maybe. We’ll think it over. I’ll talk to the DDO and the Bureau. If we decide to go with that one, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, keep McCready away from Minstrel. Give them both a break.”
Joe Roth invited McCready to join him for breakfast the following morning at Roth’s apartment, an invitation McCready accepted.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Roth. “I know there are some fine hotels nearby, and Uncle Sam can afford breakfast for two, but I make a pretty mean breakfast myself. Juice, eggs over easy, waffles, coffee suit you?”
McCready laughed down the phone. “Juice and coffee will do fine.”
When he arrived, Roth was in the kitchen, an apron over his shirt, proudly demonstrating his talent with ham and eggs. McCready weakened and took some.
“Sam, I wish you’d revise your opinion about Minstrel,” said Roth over the coffee. “I spoke with Langley last night.”
“Calvin?”
“Yep.”
“His reaction?”
“He was saddened by your attitude.”
“Saddened, my butt,” said McCready. “I’ll bet he used some nice old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon language about me.”
“Okay, he did. Not pleased. Figures we gave you a generous break on Minstrel. I have a message. Langley’s view is this: We got Minstrel. Moscow is mad as hell. Moscow tries to discredit Minstrel by feeding London a skillful line on how Minstrel is really a Moscow plant. That’s Langley’s view. Sorry, Sam, but on this one you’re wrong. Orlov is telling the truth.”
“Joe, we’re not complete fools over here. We are not going to fall for some Johnny-come-lately piece of disinformation like that, if we had some information, the source of which we could not divulge—which we do not—it would have to predate Orlov’s defection.”
Roth put down his coffee cup and stared at McCready open-mouthed. The distorted language had not fooled him for a minute.
“Jesus, Sam, you do have an asset somewhere in Moscow. For Christ’s sake, come clean!”
“Can’t,” said Sam. “And we don’t, anyway. Have someone in Moscow we haven’t told you about.”
Strictly speaking, he was not even lying.
“Then I’m sorry, Sam, but Orlov stays. He’s good. Our view is that your man—the one who doesn’t exist—is lying. It’s you, not us, who’s been taken for an awful ride. And that’s official. Orlov has passed three polygraph tests, for God’s sake. That’s proof enough.”
For answer, McCready produced a slip of paper from his breast pocket and laid it in front of Roth. It read:
We discovered that there were some East Europeans who could defeat the polygraph at any time. Americans are not very good at it because we are raised to tell the truth, and when we lie, it is easy to tell we are lying. But we find a lot of Europeans ... can handle the polygraph without a blip. ... There is an occasional Individual who lives in that part of the world who has spent his life lying about one thing or another and therefore becomes so good at it that he can pass the polygraph test.”
Roth snorted and tossed the paper back. “Some half-assed academic with no experience of Langley,” he said.
“Actually,” said McCready mildly, “it was said by Richard Helms two years ago.”
Richard Helms had been a legendary Director of Central Intelligence. Roth looked shaken. McCready rose.
“Joe, one thing Moscow has always longed for is to have the Brits and the Yanks fighting like Kilkenny cats. That’s exactly what we’re heading for, and Orlov’s only been in the country forty-eight hours. Think about it.”
In Washington, the DCI and the FBI had agreed that to see if there was truth in Orlov’s statement about Remyants, the only way to prove it was to pick him up. The planning took place through the day that Roth and McCready had their breakfast, and the arrest was fixed for the same evening, when Remyants left the Aeroflot office in downtown Washington, about five P.M. local time, long after dark in London.
The Russian emerged from the building a little after five and walked down the street, then cut across a pedestrian mall to where he had left his car.
The Aeroflot offices had been under surveillance, and Remyants was unaware of the six FBI agents, all armed, who moved in behind him as he crossed the mall. The agents intended to make the arrest as the Russian got into his car. It would be done quickly and discreetly. No one would notice.
The mall contained a series of paths between ragged and litter-strewn lawns, and various benches that had been intended for the good citizens of Washington to sit on while taking the sun or eating their brown-bag lunches. The city fathers could not have known that the small park would become a meeting place for drug pushers and their customers to score. On one of the benches, as Remyants crossed the mall toward the parking lot, a black man and a Cuban were negotiating a deal. Each dealer had backup men close by.
The fight was triggered by a scream of rage from the Cuban, who rose and pulled a knife. One of the black man’s bodyguards drew a handgun and shot him down. At least eight others from the two gangs pulled weapons and fired at their opponents. The few noninvolved civilians nearby screamed and scattered. The FBI agents, stunned for a second by the suddenness of it all, reacted with their Quantico training, dropped, rolled, and drew their guns.
Remyants took a single soft-nosed bullet in the back of the head and toppled forward. His killer was shot at once by an FBI agent. The two gangs—the blacks and the Cubans—scattered in different directions. The whole firefight took seven seconds and left two men dead, one Cuban and the Russian killed in the crossfire.
The American way of doing things is very technology-dependent, and it is sometimes criticized for this; but no one can deny the results when the technology is working at peak.
The two dead men were removed to the nearest morgue, where the FBI took control. The handgun used by the Cuban went for forensic analysis but offered no clues. It was an untraceable Czech Star, probably imported from Central or South America. The Cuban’s fingerprints gave better harvest. He was identified as Gonzalo Appio, and he was already on file with the FBI. Cross-checking by computer speedily revealed that he was also known to the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Metro-Dade Police Department covering Miami.
He was known as a drug dealer and contract hit man. Earlier in his miserable life he had been one of the Marielitos, those Cubans so generously “liberated” by Castro when he dispatched from the port of Mariel to Florida every criminal, psychopath, pederast, and low-life clogging up his prisons and asylums, and America was duped into taking them.
The only thing not proved about Appio, though suspected by the FBI, was that he was really a gunman for the DGI, Cuba’s KGB-dominated secret police. The evidence was based on Appio’s believed involvement in the slaying of two prominent and effective anti-Castro broadcasters who were working out of Miami.
The FBI passed the file to Langley, where it caused deep concern. It was the DDO, Frank Wright, who went over Bailey’s head and spoke to Joe Roth in London.
“We need to know, Joe. Now, fast. If there is any substance to the British reservations about Minstrel, we need to know. Gloves off, Joe. Lie-detector, the works. Get up there, Joe, and find out why things keep going wrong.”
Before he left for Alconbury, Roth saw Sam McCready again. It was not a happy meeting. He was bitter and angry.
“Sam, if you know something, really know something, you have got to come clean with me. I’m holding you responsible if we have made a bad mistake here, because you won’t level with us. We’ve leveled with you. Now come clean—what have you got?”
McCready stared at his friend blank-faced. He had played too much poker to give away anything that he did not want to. He was in a dilemma. Privately, he would have liked to tell Joe Roth about Keepsake, given him the hard evidence he needed to lose his faith in Orlov. But Keepsake was walking a very tight wire indeed, and strand by strand that wire was soon going to be cut away by Soviet counterintelligence, as soon as they got the bit between their teeth, convinced they had a leak somewhere in Western Europe. He could not, dare not, blow away Keepsake’s existence, let alone his rank and position.
“You have a problem, Joe,” he said. “Don’t blame me for it. I’ve gone as far as I can go. I think we both agree Milton-Rice might have been a coincidence, but not both.”
“There could have been a leak over here,” said Roth, and regretted it.
“No way,” said McCready calmly. “We’d have to have known time and place for the hit in Washington. We didn’t. It’s either Orlov setting them up by prearrangement, or it’s on your side. You know what I think; it’s Orlov. By the by, how many on your side have access to the Orlov product?”
“Sixteen,” said Roth.
“Jesus. You could have taken an ad in the New York Times.”
“Me, two assistants, tape-deck operators, analysts—it mounts up. The FBI knew about the Remyants pickup, but not Milton-Rice. Sixteen would have known about both—in time. I’m afraid we have a loose nut—probably low level, a clerk, cryptographer, secretary.”
“And I think you have a phony defector.”
“Whatever, I’m going to find out.”
“Can I come?” asked Sam.
“Sorry, buddy, not this time. This is CIA business now. In-house. See you, Sam.”
Colonel Pyotr Orlov noticed the change in the people around him as soon as Roth arrived back at Alconbury. Within minutes, the jocular familiarity had vanished. The CIA staff within the building became withdrawn and formal. Orlov waited patiently.
When Roth took his place opposite him in the debriefing room, two aides wheeled in a machine on a trolley. Orlov glanced at it. He had seen it before. The polygraph. His eyes went back to Roth.
“Something wrong, Joe?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, Peter, something very wrong.”
In a few brief sentences Roth informed the Russian of the fiasco in Washington. Something flickered in Orlov’s eyes. Fear? Guilt? The machine would find out.
Orlov made no protest as the technicians fitted the disks to his chest, wrists, and forehead. Roth did not operate the machine—there was a technician for that—but he knew the questions he wanted to ask.
The polygraph looks and performs something like an electrocardiograph found in any hospital. It records heart rate, pulse, sweating—any symptom normally produced by someone telling lies while under pressure, and the mental pressure is exercised simply by the experience of being tested.
Roth began as always with simple questions designed to establish a response norm. The fine pen drifted lazily over the rolling paper in gentle rises and falls. Three times Orlov had been so tested, and three times he had produced no noticeable symptoms as of a man lying. Roth asked him about his background, his years in the KGB, his defection—the information he had given so far.
Then he went for the hard ones. “Are you a double agent working for the KGB?”
“No.”
The pen kept drifting slowly up and down.
“Is the information you have given so far truthful?”
“Yes.”
“Is there any last vital information you have not given us?”
Orlov was silent. Then he gripped the arms of his chair. “No.”
The fine pen swerved violently up and down several times before settling. Roth glanced at the operator and got a nod of confirmation. He rose, crossed to the machine, glanced at the paper, and told the operator to switch it off.
“I’m sorry, Peter, but that was a lie.”
There was silence in the room. Five people gazed at the Russian, who was looking at the floor. Finally, he raised his eyes.
“Joe, my friend, can I speak to you? Alone? Really alone? No microphones—just you and me?”
It was against the rules, and a risk. Roth thought it over. Why? What did this enigmatic man who had failed the lie-detector test for the first time want to say that even security-cleared staff were not to hear? He nodded abruptly.
When they were alone, all the technology disconnected, he said, “Well?”
The Russian gave a long, slow sigh.
“Joe, did you ever wonder at the manner of my defection? The speed? Not giving you a chance to check with Washington?”
“Yes, I did. I asked you about it. Frankly, I was never completely satisfied with the explanations. Why did you defect that way?”
“Because I didn’t want to end like Volkov.”
Roth sat as if he had been punched in the belly. Everyone in the “business” knew of the disastrous Volkov case. In early September 1945, Konstantin Volkov, apparently Soviet Vice-Consul in Istanbul, Turkey, turned up at the British Consulate-General and told an astonished official that he was really the deputy head of the KGB in Turkey and wanted to defect. He offered to blow away 314 Soviet agents in Turkey and 250 in Britain. Most vital of all, he said, there were two British diplomats in the Foreign Office working for Russia and another man high in the British Secret Intelligence Service.
The news was sent to London while Volkov returned to his consulate. In London the matter was given to the head of the Russian Section. This agent took the necessary steps and flew out to Istanbul. The last that was seen of Volkov was a heavily bandaged figure being hustled aboard a Soviet transport plane bound for Moscow, where he died after hideous torture in the Lubyanka. The British Head of the Russian Section had arrived too late—not surprisingly, for he had informed Moscow from his London base. His name was Kim Philby, the very Soviet spy whom Volkov’s evidence would have exposed.
“What exactly are you saying to me, Peter?”
“I had to come over the way I came because I knew I could trust you. You were not high enough.”
“Not high enough for what?”
“Not high enough to be him.”
“I’m not following you, Peter,” said Roth, though he was.
The Russian spoke slowly and clearly, as if liberating himself from a long-held burden.
“For seventeen years the KGB has had a man inside the CIA. I believe that by now he has risen very high.”