Marchbanks opened the cabinet door and contemplated his repertoire. Macdonald was a Scot and took the brew of his ancestors neat. The divisional head poured a double tot of the Macallan, with no ice, and handed it over.
“Knew you were coming of course, but not why. Tell me.”
Macdonald narrated his story from the beginning.
“It must be a hoax, of course,” said Marchbanks at last.
“On the face of it, yes,” agreed Macdonald. “But it must be the most unsubtle bloody hoax I’ve ever heard of. Who’s the hoaxer?”
“Komarov’s political enemies, one supposes.”
“He’s got enough of them,” said Macdonald. “But what a way to present it. Damn well asking for it to be thrown away unread. It was only a fluke young Gray found it.”
“Well, the next step is to read it. You’ve read it, I suppose?”
“All last night. As a political manifesto, it’s ... unpleasant.”
“In Russian, of course?”
“Yes.”
“Mmmm. I suspect my Russian won’t be up to it. We’ll need a translation.”
“I’d prefer to do that myself,” said Macdonald. “Just in case it’s not a hoax. You’ll see why when you read it.”
“All right, Jock. Your call. What do you want?”
“Club first. Bath, shave, dinner, and a sleep. Then come back here about midnight and work on it till opening hours. See you again then.”
Marchbanks nodded.
“All right. You’d better borrow this office. I’ll notify Security.”
By the time Jeffrey Marchbanks returned to his office just before ten the following morning, it was to find Jock Macdonald full-length on his sofa with his shoes and jacket off and tie loosened. The black file was on his desk with a pile of unbound white sheets beside it.
“That’s it,” he said. “In the language of Shakespeare. By the way, the disk is still in the machine but it should be got out and logged safely.”
Marchbanks nodded, ordered coffee, pulled on his glasses, and began to read. He looked up after a while.
“The man’s mad, of course.”
“If it is Komarov writing, then yes. Or very bad. Or both. Either way, potentially dangerous. Read on.”
Marchbanks did so. When he had finished he puffed out his cheeks and exhaled.
“It has to be a hoax. No one who meant it would ever write it down.”
“Unless he thought it was confined to his own inner core of fellow fanatics,” suggested Macdonald.
“Stolen then?”
“Possibly. Forged, possibly. But who was the tramp, and how did he get hold of it? We don’t know.”
Marchbanks pondered. He knew that if the manifesto was a forgery and a hoax, there would be nothing but grief for the SIS if they took it seriously. If it turned out to be genuine, there would be even more grief if they did not.
“I think,” he said at length, “I want to run this past the Controller, maybe even the Chief.”
The Controller, Eastern Hemisphere, David Brownlow, saw them at twelve and the Chief offered the three of them lunch in his paneled top-floor dining room with its panoramic views of the Thames and Vauxhall Bridge at 1:15.
Sir Henry Coombs was just short of sixty and in his final year as chief of the SIS. Like his predecessors he had come up through the ranks and honed his skills in the Cold War that had ended a decade earlier. Unlike the CIA, whose directors were political appointments and not always skillful ones, the SIS for thirty years had persuaded prime ministers to give them a chief who had been through the mill.
And it worked. After 1985 three successive directors of the CIA had admitted they were told hardly anything of the true awfulness of the Ames affair until they read the newspapers. Henry Coombs had the trust of his subordinates and knew all the details he needed to know. And they knew that he knew.
He read the file while sipping his vichyssoise. But he read fast and he took it all in.
“This must be very tiresome for you, Jock, but tell it again.”
He listened attentively, asking two brief questions, then nodded.
“Your views, Jeffrey?”
After the Head of Russia Division, he asked Brownlow, the Controller East. Both said much the same. Is it true? We need to know.
“What intrigues me,” said Brownlow, “is simply this: If all this is Komarov’s true political agenda, why did he write it down? We all know even the most top-secret documents can be stolen.”
Sir Henry Coombs’s deceptively mild eyes turned to his Moscow Head of Station.
“Any ideas, Jock?”
Macdonald shrugged.
“Why does anyone write down their innermost thoughts and plans? Why do people confess the unconfessable to their private diaries? Why do people keep impossibly intimate journals? Why do major services like ours store hypersensitive, material? Perhaps it was intended as a very private briefing document for his own inner circle, or just as therapy for himself. Or perhaps it is a forgery designed to damage the man. I don’t know.”
“Ah, there you have it,” said Sir Henry. “We don’t know. But, having read it, I think we agree we must know. So many questions. How the hell did this come to be written? Is it really the work of Igor Komarov? Is this appalling torrent of madness what he intends to fulfill if, or more likely, when he comes to power? If so, how was it stolen, who stole it, and why throw it at us? Or is it all a farrago of lies?”
He stirred his coffee and stared at the documents, both the original and Macdonald’s copy, with profound distaste.
“Sorry, Jock, but we’ve got to have those answers. I can’t take this up the river until we do. Possibly not then. It’s back to Moscow, Jock. I don’t know how you are going to do it; that’s your business. But we need to know.”
The Chief of the SIS, like all his predecessors, had two tasks. One was professional, to run the best covert intelligence service for the nation that he could. The other was political, to liaise with the Joint Intelligence Committee, the mandarins of the SIS’s principal customers, the Foreign Office, who were not always easy, to fight for budget with the Cabinet Office, and to cultivate friends among the politicians who made up the government. It was a multifaceted task and not for the squeamish or the foolish. The last thing he needed was to produce some harum-scarum story of a tramp throwing into the car of an extremely junior diplomat some file that now had footprints on it and described a program of deranged cruelty that might or might not be genuine. He would be shot down in flames and he knew it.
“I’ll fly back this afternoon, Chief.”
“Nonsense, Jock, you’ve had two miserable nights in a row. Take in a show, get eight hours in a bed. Grab tomorrow’s first schedule back to the land of the Cossacks.” He glanced at his watch. “And now, if you’ll excuse me ...”
The three filed out. Macdonald never made the theater or the eight hours in bed. There was a message in Marchbanks’s office, fresh from the cipher room. Celia Stone’s apartment had been raided and torn apart. She had come home from dinner and disturbed two masked men who clubbed her with a chair leg. She was in the hospital but not in danger.
Silently Marchbanks handed the slip to Macdonald who read it also.
“Oh shit,” he said.
Washington, July 1985
THE tip, when it came, was as so often in the world of espionage oblique, third-hand, and possibly a complete waste of time.
An American volunteer, working with a UNICEF aid program in the unlovely Marxist-Leninist republic of South Yemen, was back in New York on furlough and had dinner with a former classmate who was with the FBI.
Discussing the enormous Soviet military aid program being offered to South Yemen by Moscow, the United Nations worker described an evening at the bar of the Rock Hotel in Aden when he had fallen into conversation with a Russian army major.
Like most of the Russians there, the man spoke virtually no Arabic, but communicated with the Yemenis, citizens of a former Briti
sh colony until 1976, in English. The American, aware of the unpopularity of the United States in South Yemen, customarily told people he was Swiss. He told the Russian this.
The Russian, becoming increasingly more drunk and out of earshot of any of his fellow countrymen, launched into a violent denunciation of the leadership of his own country. He accused them of massive corruption, criminal waste, and not giving a damn about their own people in their efforts to subsidize the Third World.
Having delivered himself of his dinner-table anecdote, the aid worker would have passed out of the story, if the FBI man had not mentioned the matter to a friend in the CIA’s New York office.
The CIA man, having consulted his bureau chief, set up a second dinner with the aid worker at which the wine flowed copiously. To be provocative, the CIA man lamented how the Russians were making great strides in cementing friendships with the nations of the Third World, especially in the Middle East.
Eager to show off his superior knowledge, the UNICEF worker broke in that this was simply not so; he had personal knowledge that the Russians tended to loathe the Arabs and to become quickly exasperated at their inability to master simple technology and their ability to break or crash anything they were given to play with.
“I mean, take where I just came back from ...” he said.
By the end of the meal the CIA man had a picture of a huge military advisory group whose members were at their wits’ end with frustration and could see no point in their presence in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. He also had a description of a seriously fed-up major: tall, muscular, rather Oriental face. And a name: Solomin.
The report went back to Langley, where it came to the desk of the head of SE Division who discussed it with Carey Jordan.
“It may be nothing and it may be dangerous,” said the DDO to Jason Monk three days later. “But do you think you could get into South Yemen and have a talk with this Major Solomin?”
Monk consulted lengthily with the backroom experts on the Middle East and soon realized South Yemen was a tough nut. The United States was in deep disfavor with the Communist government there, which was being ardently courted by Moscow. Despite that, there was a surprisingly large foreign community, apart from the Russians. This included the United Nations, with three operations: FAO was helping with agriculture, UNICEF with the street children, and WHO with health projects.
However well one speaks a foreign language, it is a daunting prospect to pose as a member of that nation and then run into the real article. Monk decided to avoid pretending to be British because the Brits would spot the difference in two minutes. The same with the French.
But the United States was the principal paymaster of the United Nations and had influence, overt and covert, in a number of the agencies. Research revealed there was no Spaniard in the Food and Agriculture Organization mission to Aden. A new persona was created and it was quietly agreed that Monk would travel to Aden in October on a one-month visa as a visiting inspector from FAO headquarters in Rome to check on progress. He would be, according to his papers, Esteban Martinez Llorca. In Madrid, the still-grateful Spanish government provided genuine paperwork.
¯
JOCK Macdonald arrived in Moscow too late to visit Celia Stone in the hospital but was there the next morning. The Assistant Press Attaché was bandaged and woozy, but able to talk. She had gone home at the normal hour, she had noticed no one following. But then, she was not trained for that.
After three hours in her flat, she had gone out for dinner with a girlfriend from the Canadian Embassy. She had returned about 11:30. The thieves must have heard her key in the lock because all was quiet when she entered. She put on the light in the foyer and noticed the door to the living room was open and the room was dark. That was odd, because she had left a lamp on. The living room windows faced the central courtyard, and the light behind the curtains would indicate someone was at home. She thought the bulb must have blown.
She reached the door of the room and two figures came at her out of the darkness. One swung something and hit her on the side of the head. As she went down she half-heard, half-felt two men jumping over her and heading for the front door. She passed out. When she came to—she did not know how much later—she crawled to her telephone and rang a neighbor. Then she fainted again and woke up in the hospital. There was nothing more she could tell.
Macdonald went to the flat. The Ambassador had protested to the Foreign Ministry, which had hit the roof and complained to Interior. They had ordered the Moscow Prosecutor’s office to send their best investigator. A full report would be on its way as soon as possible. In Moscow that meant: Don’t hold your breath.
The message to London had been wrong in one respect. Celia Stone had not been hit by a chair leg, but by a small china figurine. It had shattered. Had it been metal she could have been dead.
There were Russian detectives in the flat and they happily answered the British diplomat’s questions. The two militiamen stationed at the entry to the courtyard had admitted no Russian car, so the men must have come on foot. The militiamen had seen no one pass them. They would say that anyway, thought Macdonald.
The door had not been forced so it must have been picked unless the burglars had had a key, which was unlikely. They were probably looking for hard currency in these difficult times. It was very regrettable. Macdonald nodded.
Privately he thought the intruders might have been from the Black Guards, but more likely it was a contract job by the local underworld. Or ex-KGB hirelings—there were enough about. Moscow burglars hardly ever touched diplomatic residences; too much fall-out. Cars on the open street were fair game, but not guarded apartments. The search had been thorough and professional, but nothing had been taken, not even some costume jewelry in the bedroom. A pro job and for a single item, not found. Macdonald feared the worst.
Back at the embassy he had an idea, rang the Prosecutor’s office, and asked if the detective assigned to the case would be kind enough to call on him. Inspector Chernov came to visit at three P.M.
“I may be able to help you,” said Macdonald.
The detective raised an eyebrow.
“I would be most grateful,” he said.
“Our young lady, Miss Stone, was feeling better this morning. Much better.”
“Deeply gratified,” said the inspector.
“So much so that she was able to give a reasonable description of one of her attackers. She saw him in the light coming from the hall just before the blow struck.”
“Her first statement indicated she saw neither of them,” said Chernov.
“Memory sometimes returns in cases like these. You saw her yesterday afternoon, Inspector?”
“Yes, at four P.M. She was awake.”
“But still dizzy, I expect. This morning she was in a clearer state of mind. Now, one of the wives of our staff here is something of an artist. With Miss Stone’s help she was able to create a picture.”
He handed over his desk a portrait in charcoal and crayon. The inspector’s face lit up.
“This is extraordinarily useful,” he said. “I will circulate it among the Burglary Squad. A man of this age must have a record.” He rose to go. Macdonald arose.
“Just pleased to be helpful,” he said. They shook hands and the detective left.
During the lunch hour both Celia Stone and the artist had been briefed on the new story. Neither understood why, but agreed to confirm it if Inspector Chernov ever interviewed them. In fact he never did.
Nor did his burglary teams, scattered across Moscow, recognize the face. But they put it on the walls of their squad rooms anyway.
Moscow, July 1985
IN the wake of the windfall harvest just arrived from Aldrich Ames, the KGB did something quite extraordinary.
It is an unbreakable rule in the Great Game that if an agency suddenly acquires a priceless asset deep in the heart of the enemy, that asset must be protected. Thus, when the asset reveals a host of turncoats, the
newly enlightened agency will pick up those turncoats very slowly and carefully, in each case creating a seemingly different reason for his capture.
Only when their asset has escaped from danger and is safely behind the lines may the agents he has betrayed be picked up all at once. To do otherwise would be the equivalent of taking a full-page advertisement in The New York Times to say: “We have just acquired a major mole right inside your outfit, and look what he has given us.”
As Ames was still very much at the heart of the CIA, with many years of good service to come, the First Chief Directorate would have liked to abide by the rules and pick up the fourteen blown turncoats slowly and carefully. In this they were completely overruled, against their almost tearful protests, by Mikhail Gorbachev.
Sorting through the harvest from Washington, the Kolokol Group realized that some of the descriptions were immediately identifiable while others would need careful checking to track down. Of the immediates, some were still posted abroad and would have to be carefully lured back home in a manner so skillful they would not smell a rat. It might take months.
One of the fourteen was actually a longtime agent of the British. The Americans never knew his name, but as London had given Langley his product, the CIA knew a bit about him and could deduce a bit more. He was actually a colonel of the KGB who had been recruited in Denmark in the early seventies and had been a British asset for twelve years. Already under some suspicion, he had nevertheless returned to Moscow from his post as Rezident at the Soviet Embassy in London for one last visit. Ames’s betrayal simply confirmed the Russian suspicions.
But Colonel Oleg Gordievsky was lucky. Seeing by July that he was under total surveillance, with the net closing and arrest imminent, he used a prearranged distress signal. The British SIS mounted a very fast extraction operation, plucked the wiry colonel off the street while he was jogging, and smuggled him out to Finland. He survived, later to be debriefed in a CIA safe house by Aldrich Ames.
¯
JEFFREY Marchbanks thought there might be a way he could help his colleague in Moscow in his search for the authenticity, or lack of it, of the Black Manifesto.