If there was anything more needed to tip him over the edge, it was Yemen.
“Back home our people huddle in tiny apartments, but the nachalstvo live in mansions. They treat themselves like princes on our money. My wife cannot get a good hair dryer or shoes that do not fall apart, yet billions are wasted on crazy foreign missions to impress ... who? These people?”
“Things are changing,” said Monk helpfully. The Siberian shook his head.
Gorbachev had been in power since March, but the reforms he unwillingly, and in most cases unwittingly, introduced did not begin to bite until late 1987. Moreover, Solomin had not seen his native land for two years.
“Not changing. Those shits at the top ... I tell you, Esteban, since I moved to Moscow I have seen waste and profligacy you would not believe.”
“But the new man, Gorbachev, maybe he will change things,” said Monk. “I am not so pessimistic. One day the Russian people will be free of this dictatorship. They will have votes, real votes. Not so long now …”
“Too long. Not fast enough.”
Monk took a deep breath. A cold pitch is a dangerous ploy. In a Western democracy a loyal Soviet officer receiving a pitch can complain to his ambassador. It can lead to a diplomatic incident. In an obscure tyranny it can lead to a long and lonely death. Without any warning, Monk dropped into flawless Russian.
“You could help it change, my friend. Together, we could help it all to change. The way you want it to be.”
Solomin stared at him intently for a good thirty seconds. Monk stared back. Finally the Russian said in his own language:
“Who the hell are you?”
“I think you know that already, Pyotr Vasilyevitch. The question now is whether you will betray me, knowing what these people will do to me before I die. And then live with yourself.”
Solomin continued to stare at him. Then he said:
“I wouldn’t betray my worst enemy to these monkeys. But you have a hell of a nerve. What you ask is crazy. Madness. I should tell you to go fuck yourself.”
“Perhaps you should. And I would go. Fast, for my own sake. But to sit on your thumbs—to watch, hate and do nothing. Is that not also crazy?”
The Russian rose, his beer undrunk.
“I must think,” he said.
“Tomorrow night,” said Monk still in Russian. “Here. You come alone, we talk. You come with guards, I am dead. You do not come, I leave on the next plane.”
Major Solomin stalked out.
All Standard Operating Procedures would have told Monk to get out of Yemen, and fast. He had not had a total rebuff, but he had not made a score either. A man with his mind in turmoil can change that mind, and the cellars of the Yemeni secret police are fearsome places.
Monk waited twenty-four hours. The major returned, alone. It took two days more. Concealed in his toiletries Monk had brought the basics for a communications package: the secret inks, the safe addresses, the harmless phrases that contained their hidden meanings. There was not much Solomin could divulge from Yemen, but in a year he would be back in Moscow. If he still wished, he could communicate.
When they parted, their handshake lasted several seconds.
“Good luck, my friend,” said Monk.
“Good hunting, as we say back home,” replied the Siberian.
In case they might be seen leaving the Rock together, Monk sat on. His new recruit would need a code name. Far above, the stars glittered with that amazing brightness only seen in the tropics.
Among them Monk picked out the belt of the Great Hunter. Agent GT Orion was born.
¯
ON the second of August Boris Kuznetsov received a personal letter from the British journalist Mark Jefferson. It was on the letterhead of the Daily Telegraph in London, and although faxed to the newspaper’s Moscow bureau, it had been hand-delivered at the headquarters of the UPF Party.
Jefferson made plain his personal admiration of the stance taken by Igor Komarov against, chaos, corruption, and crime, and his own study of the party leader’s speeches over recent months.
With the recent death of the Russian president, he went on, the whole question of the future of the world’s largest country was once again a matter of focal interest. He personally wished to visit Moscow in the first half of August. For the sake of tact, he would no doubt have to interview both the candidates for the future presidency of the left and the center. This however would only be a matter of form.
Clearly the outer world’s only real interest would be in the foregone victor of that contest, Igor Komarov. He, Jefferson, would be deeply grateful if Kuznetsov could see his way clear to recommending that Mr. Komarov receive him. He could promise a major, center-page spread in the Daily Telegraph, with certain syndication across Europe and North America.
Although Kuznetsov, whose father had been a diplomat with the United Nations for years and had used his position to see his son graduate from Cornell, knew the United States better than Europe, he certainly knew London.
He also knew that much of the American press tended to be liberal and had been generally hostile to his employer on the occasions when interviews had been granted. The last had been a year ago, and the questioning had been adversarial. Komarov had forbidden further exposures to the American press.
But London was different. Several major newspapers and two national magazines were firmly conservative, though not as far to the right as Igor Komarov in his public pronouncements.
I would recommend that an exception be made for Mark Jefferson, Mr. President,” he told Igor Komarov at their weekly meeting the next day.
“Who is this man?” asked Komarov, who disliked all journalists, Russian included. They asked questions he saw no reason he should answer.
“I have prepared a file on him here, Mr. President,” said Kuznetsov, handing over a slim folder. “As you will see, he supports the restoration of capital punishment for murder in his own country. Also vigorous opposition to Britain’s membership in the collapsing European Union. A staunch conservative. The last time he mentioned yourself, it was to say you were the sort of Russian leader London should support and do business with.”
Komarov grunted, and then agreed. His reply went to the Telegraph’s Moscow office by courier the same day. It said Mr. Jefferson should be in Moscow for the interview on August 9.
Yemen, January 1986
NEITHER Solomin nor Monk could have predicted that the major’s tour in Aden would end nine months prematurely. But on January 13 a violent civil war broke out between two rival factions within the governing caucus. So fierce was the fighting that the decision was made to evacuate all foreign nationals, Russians included. This took place over six days, starting January 15. Peter Solomin was among those who took to the boats.
The airport was being raked with fire, so the sea was the only way out. By a fluke the British royal yacht Britannia had just emerged from the southern end of the Red Sea, heading for Australia to prepare for Queen Elizabeth to tour.
On a message from the British Embassy in Aden, the Admiralty in London was alerted and consulted the queen’s private secretary. He checked with the monarch and Queen Elizabeth ordered that the Britannia should do all it could to help.
Two days later Major Solomin, with a group of other Russian officers, made a dash from cover to the sea at Abyan Beach where the gigs from Britannia were rolling in the surf. British sailors hauled them out of the waist-deep water and within an hour the bemused Russians were spreading their borrowed bedrolls along the cleared floor of the queen’s private sitting room.
On her first mission Britannia filled up with 431 refugees, and on subsequent runs to the beach finally pulled 1,068 people from fifty-five nations off the sand. Between evacuations, she ran across to Djibouti on the Horn of Africa to discharge her human cargo. Solomin and his fellow Russians were flown home via Damascus to Moscow.
What no one knew then was that if Solomin still entertained any doubts about what he was going to do, th
e balance was tipped by the contrast between the easy camaraderie of the British, French, and Italians with the Royal Navy sailors and the bleak paranoia of the debriefings in Moscow.
All the CIA knew was that a man they thought one of their own had recruited three months earlier had disappeared back into the all-consuming maw of the USSR. Either he would communicate or he would not.
Throughout that winter the Soviet Division’s operational arm literally disintegrated piece by piece. One by one the Russian assets working for the CIA on foreign stations were quietly recalled on a variety of plausible excuses: your mother is ill, your son is doing badly at college and needs his father, there is a promotions board being convened. One by one they fell for the ruse and returned to the USSR. On arrival they were at once arrested and taken to Colonel Grishin’s new base, an entire wing partitioned off from the rest of the grim fortress of Lefortovo jail. Langley knew nothing of the arrests simply that the men were disappearing one by one.
As for those stationed inside the USSR, they simply ceased to give routine “signs of life.”
Inside the USSR there was no question of giving a man a call at the office to say “Let’s have coffee.” All phones were tapped, all diplomats tailed. Foreigners, by their dress alone, stood out a mile. Contacts had to be extremely delicate and were usually rare.
When made, they were usually by dead drop. This very basic ruse sounds crude but still works. Aldrich Ames used drops right up to the end. The drop is simply a small receptacle or hiding place somewhere—a hollow drain pipe, a culvert, a hole in a tree.
The agent can put a letter or consignment of microfilm in the drop, then alert his employers that he has done so by a chalk mark on a wall or lamppost. The position of the mark means: Drop so-and-so has something in it for you. An embassy car, cruising by, even with native counterintelligence coming up behind, can spot the chalk mark through the windows and drive on.
Later, an undeclared Officer will try to slip his surveillance and recover the package, possibly leaving money in its place. Or further instructions. Then he will snake a chalk mark somewhere. The asset driving by will spot it and know his delivery has been received but something awaits him. By dead of night, he will recover the consignment.
In this manner a spy can stay in touch with a spymaster for months, even years, without a face-to-face meet.
If the spy is way outside the capital where the diplomats cannot go, or even in the city but has nothing to deposit, the rule is that he will give a sign of life at regular intervals. In the capital, where the diplomats can cruise by, these may be more chalk marks, which by their shape and location mean: I’m fine but I have nothing for you. Or: I am worried, I think I am under surveillance.
Where distance prevents these secret messages, and the provinces in the USSR were always out of bounds to U.S. diplomats, small ads in the main newspapers are a favorite for a sign of life. “Boris has charming Labrador puppy for sale. Ring ...” might innocently appear among all the others. Inside the embassy, the controlling agents scan them. The wording is all. Labrador might mean “I’m fine” while spaniel could mean “I’m in trouble.” “Charming” might say “I’ll be in Moscow next week and will service the usual drop.” “Delightful” could mean “I can’t make Moscow for at least another month.”
The point is, the sign of life messages must happen. When they stop, there could be a problem. Maybe a heart attack or a highway crash and the asset is in the hospital. When they all stop, there is a very major problem.
That was what happened through the fall and winter of 1985 into 1986. They all stopped. Gordievsky made his desperate “I’m in deep trouble” call and was pulled out by the British. Major Bokhan in Athens smelled a rat and made a run for safety in the United States. The other twelve just vaporized.
Each individual control officer at Langley or abroad would know about his own missing asset and would report back. But Carey Jordan and the head of SE Division had the overview. They knew there was something badly wrong.
Ironically it was the very weirdness of what the KGB was doing that saved Ames. The CIA calculated that no one would dream of carrying out such a blitz of agents so quickly if the betrayer were still in the heart of Langley. Thus they were able to persuade themselves of what they wanted to believe anyway: they, the elite of the elite, could not be entertaining a traitor in their midst. Nevertheless, a frantic search had to be made, and it was, but elsewhere.
The first suspect was Edward Lee Howard, the linchpin of an earlier fiasco, by then safely tucked away in Moscow. Howard had been a CIA man, working in the SE Division and being briefed to take a posting to the Moscow embassy. He was even told operational details. Just before his posting it was discovered his finances were crooked and he took drugs.
Forgetting the golden rule of Machiavelli, the CIA fired him but left him running around for two years. Finally the CIA told the FBI, which hit the roof, put Howard under their own surveillance, then screwed up. They lost him, but he had seen them. Within two days, in September 1985, Howard was with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, which passed him via Havana to Moscow.
A check revealed Howard could have betrayed three of the missing agents, maybe even six. In fact he did betray the only three he knew about, but they had already been given away by Ames the previous June. All three were double betrayed.
Another lead came from the Russians themselves. Desperate to protect their mole, the KGB was mounting a huge diversion and disinformation campaign; anything to turn the CIA in the wrong direction. They succeeded. An apparently genuine leak in East Berlin revealed that some codes had been broken and signal traffic intercepted.
The codes were used by a major CIA covert transmitter at Warrenton, Virginia. For a year Warrenton and its staff were gone through with a fine-tooth comb. Nothing, no hint of a code break. If there had been a code break, the KGB would clearly have learned of yet other things, but on these they had taken no action. Therefore, the codes were intact.
The third seed the KGB sedulously planted was that they had done some brilliant detective work. This was met by amazing complacency at Langley where one report suggested that “every operation has within it the seeds of its own destruction.” In other words, fourteen agents had all suddenly decided to behave like idiots.
Some in Langley did not fall for the complacency. One was Carey Jordan, another was Gus Hathaway. At a lower level, learning through the internal grapevine of the problems tearing his division apart, was Jason Monk.
A check was made of the 301 files where all the details were stored. The findings were horrific. In all, 198 people had access to the 301 files. It was a terrifying figure. If you are deep inside the USSR with your life on the line, the last thing you need is for 198 complete strangers to have access to your file.
CHAPTER 6
PROFESSOR KUZMIN SCRUBBED UP IN THE EXAMINATION room of the mortuary below the Second Medical Institute, facing with little pleasure his third postmortem of the day.
“Who’s next?” he called to his assistant as he dried off with an inadequate paper towel.
“Number one-five-eight,” said his helper.
“Details.”
“White Caucasian male, late middle age. Cause of death unknown, identity unknown.”
Kuzmin groaned. Why do I bother, he asked himself. Another tramp, another. hobo, another derelict whose bits, when he had finished, would perhaps assist the medical students in the academy three floors up to understand what protracted abuse could do to human organs, whose skeleton might even end up in an anatomy class.
Moscow, like any major city, produced its nightly, weekly, and monthly harvest of cadavers but fortunately only a minority required a postmortem or the professor and all his colleagues in forensic pathology would have ceased to cope.
The majority in any city are the “natural causes,” all those who die at home or in the hospital of old age or any one of a hundred terminal and predicted causes. The infirmaries and the local doctors could
sign the certificates for those.
Then came the “natural causes, unforeseen,” usually fatal heart attacks, and again the hospitals to which the unfortunates were taken could cope with the basic, and usually very basic, bureaucratic formalities.
After these unfortunates came the accidents: domestic, industrial, and automobile. Moscow had two more categories that had grown massively over the years: freezing to death (in winter) and suicides. The numbers ran into thousands.
Bodies recovered from the river, identified or not, went into three categories. Fully clothed, no alcohol in the system: suicide; clothed, hugely drunk: accident; swim shorts: accidentally drowned while swimming.
Then came the homicides. These went to the police, detective branch, which turned to Professor Kuzmin. Even these postmortems were usually a formality. The great majority, as in all cities, were the “domestics.” Eighty percent happened inside the home or the perpetrator was a family member. The police usually had them within hours, and the postmortem simply confirmed what was already known—Ivan had stabbed his wife—and helped the courts bring in a quick verdict.
After these came the bar brawls and gangland killings; in the latter case he knew the police conviction rate was a miserable three percent. Cause of death, however, was no problem; a bullet in the brain is a bullet in the brain. Whether the investigators ever found the hitman (probably not) was not the professor’s problem.
In all the above, thousands and thousands a year, one thing was certain. The authorities knew who the dead man was. Occasionally they had a John Doe. Cadaver 158 was a John Doe. Professor Kuzmin drew on his gauze mask, flexed his fingers inside the rubber gloves, and approached with a flicker of interest as his assistant drew back the sheet.
Ah, he thought, odd. Even interesting. The stench that would have caused a layman to gag at once left him unmoved. He was used to it. Scalpel in hand he circled the long table, staring at the damaged corpse. Very odd.