At the end of April, the Director of Central Intelligence had a meeting in the White House with the President. Nothing unusual in that; they met extremely regularly, either with others in the National Security Council or in private. But on this occasion the President was unusually flattering about the CIA. The gratitude that a number of agencies and departments had directed toward the Agency as a result of information stemming from the Ranch in southern Virginia had reached as high as the Oval Office.
The DCI was a hard man whose career went back to the days of the OSS in the Second World War, and he was a devoted colleague of Ronald Reagan. He was also a fair man and saw no reason to withhold the general praise from the Head of Special Projects responsible for bringing in Colonel Orlov. When he returned to Langley, he summoned Calvin Bailey.
Bailey found the Director at the picture windows that occupy almost one side of the DCI’s office on top of the CIA headquarters building. He was staring out toward the valley, where the wash of green trees in spring leaf had finally obscured the winter view of the Potomac River. When Bailey entered, he turned with an expansive smile.
“What can I say? Congratulations are in order, Cal. The Navy Department loves it, says keep it coming. The Mexicans are delighted; they just wrapped up a network of seventeen agents, cameras, communication radios, the works.”
“Thank you,” said Calvin Bailey carefully. He was known as a cautious man, not given to overt displays of human warmth.
“Fact is,” said the DCI, “we all know Frank Wright is retiring at the end of the year. I’m going to need a new DDO. Maybe, Calvin, just maybe I think I know who it ought to be.”
Bailey’s morose shrouded gaze flashed into a rare smile. In the CIA the Director himself is always a political appointment and has been for three decades. Under him come the two main divisions of the Agency: Operations, headed by the Deputy Director Ops (DDO), and Intelligence (analysis), headed by the Deputy Director Intel (DDI). These two posts are the highest to which a professional can reasonably aspire. The DDO is in charge of the entire information gathering side of the Agency, while the DDI is in charge of analyzing the raw information into presentable and usable intelligence.
Having delivered his bouquet, the DCI turned to more mundane matters. “Look, it’s about the Brits. As you know, Margaret Thatcher was over.”
Calvin Bailey nodded. The close friendship between the British Prime Minister and the U.S. President was known to all.
“She brought with her Sir Christopher. ...” The DCI mentioned the name of the then chief of the British SIS. “We had several good sessions. He gave us some really good product. We owe them, Cal. Just a favor. I’d like to clean the slate. They have two beefs. They say they’re very grateful for all the Minstrel product we’ve been sending over, but they point out that as regards Soviet agents being run in England, so far it’s useful material but all code-names. Can Minstrel recall any actual names, or offices held—something to identify a hostile agent in their own pond?”
Bailey thought it over.
“He’s been asked before,” he said. “We’ve sent the Brits everything that remotely concerns them. I’ll ask him again, have Joe Roth see if he can remember a real name. Okay.”
“Fine, fine,” said the DCI. “One last thing. They keep asking for access. Over there. This time around, I’m prepared to indulge them. I think we can go that far.”
“I’d prefer to keep him over here. He’s safe here.”
“We can keep him safe over there. Look, we can put him on an American air base. Upper Heyford, Lakenheath, Alconbury. Whatever. They can see him, talk to him under supervision, then we bring him back.”
“I don’t like it,” said Bailey.
“Cal—” there was a hint of steel in the DCI’s voice—“I’ve agreed to it. Just see to it.”
Calvin Bailey drove down to the Ranch for a personal talk with Joe Roth. They talked in Roth’s suite of rooms above the central portico of the Ranch house. Bailey found his subordinate tired and drawn. Debriefing a defector is a tiring business, involving long hours with the defector followed by long nights spent working through the next day’s line of questioning. Relaxing is not usually on the menu, and when, as often happens, the defector has established a personal relationship with his chief debriefing officer, it is not easy to give that officer time off and replace him with a substitute.
“Washington is pleased,” Bailey told him. “More than pleased—delighted. Everything he says checks out. Soviet Army, Navy, and Air Force deployments, confirmed by other sources of satellite coverage. Weapons levels, readiness states, the Afghan mess—Pentagon loves it all. You’ve done well, Joe. Very well.”
“There’s still a long way to go,” said Roth. “Lots more still to come. There must be. The man’s an encyclopedia. Phenomenal memory. Sometimes stuck for a detail, but usually recalls it sooner or later. But ...”
“But what? Look, Joe, he’s pulling apart years of patient KGB work in Central and South America. Our friends down there are closing down network after network. It’s okay. I know you’re tired. Just keep at it.”
He went on to tell Roth of the hint the DCI had given him about the forthcoming vacancy as Deputy Director Operations. He was not usually a confiding man, but he saw no reason not to give his subordinate the same kind of boost the DCI had given him.
“If it goes through, Joe, there’ll be a second vacancy, head of Special Projects. My recommendation will count for a lot. It’ll be for you, Joe. I wanted you to know that.”
Roth was grateful but not ecstatic. He seemed more than tired. There was something else on his mind.
“Is he causing problems?” asked Bailey. “Has he got everything he wants? Does he need female company? Do you? It’s isolated down here. It’s been a month. These things can be arranged.”
He knew Roth was divorced and single. The Agency has a legendary divorce rate. As they say at Langley, it comes with the territory.
“No, I’ve offered him that. He just shook his head. We work out together. It helps. Run through the woods until we can hardly stand. I’ve never been in such good shape. He’s older, but he’s fitter. That’s one of the things that worries me, Calvin. He’s got no flaws, no weaknesses. If he got drunk, screwed around, got maudlin for thinking about his homeland, lost his temper—”
“You’ve tried to provoke him?” asked Bailey. Provoking a defector into a rage, an outburst of pent-up emotions, can sometimes work as a release, a therapy. According to the in-house psychiatrists, anyway.
“Yes. I’ve taunted him with being a rat, a turncoat. Nothing. He just ran me into the ground and laughed at me. Then he got on with what he calls “the job.” Blowing away KGB assets worldwide. He’s a total pro.”
“That’s why he’s the best we’ve ever had, Joe. Don’t knock it. Be grateful.”
“Calvin, that’s not the main reason he bugs me. As a guy, I like him. I even respect him. I never thought I would respect a defector. But there’s something else. He’s holding something back.”
Calvin Bailey went very quiet and very still. “The polygraph tests don’t say so.”
“No, they don’t. That’s why I can’t be sure I’m right. I just feel it. There’s something he’s not saying.”
Bailey leaned across and stared hard into Roth’s face. An awful lot hung on the question he was about to ask.
“Joe, could there be any chance, in your considered view, that despite all the tests, he might still be a phony, a KGB plant?”
Roth sighed. What had been troubling him had finally come out.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t know. For me, there’s a ten-percent area of doubt. A gut feeling that he’s holding something back. And I can’t work out, if I’m right, why.”
“Then find out, Joe. Find out,” said Calvin Bailey. He did not need to point out that if there was anything phony about Colonel Pyotr Orlov, two careers in the CIA were likely to go straight into the trash can. He rose.
r />
“Personally I think it’s nonsense, Joe. But do what you have to do.”
Roth found Orlov in his living room, lying on a settee, listening to his favorite music. Despite the fact that he was virtually a prisoner, the Ranch was equipped like a well-appointed country club. Apart from his daily runs in the forest, always flanked by four of the young athletes from Quantico, he had access to the gymnasium, the sauna and pool, an excellent chef, and a well-stocked bar that he used sparingly.
Soon after arriving, he had admitted to a taste for the ballad singers of the sixties and early seventies. Now, whenever he visited the Russian, Roth was accustomed to hearing Simon and Garfunkel, the Seekers, or the slow honeyed tones of Elvis Presley coming from the tape deck.
That evening when he walked in, the clear childlike voice of Mary Hopkin was filling the room. It was her one famous song. Orlov jackknifed himself off the settee with a grin of pleasure. He gestured at the tape deck.
“You like it? Listen.”
Roth listened. “ ‘Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end. ...’ ”
“Yeah, it’s nice,” said Roth, who preferred traditional and mainstream jazz.
“You know what it is?”
“That British girl, isn’t it?” said Roth.
“No, no—not the singer, the tune. You think it is British tune, yes? From the Beatles, perhaps.”
“Guess so,” said Roth, now also smiling.
“Wrong,” said Orlov triumphantly. “It is old Russian song. Dorogoy dlinnoyu da nochkoy lunayu. ‘By a long road on a moonlit night.’ You didn’t know that?”
“No, I certainly didn’t.”
The jaunty little tune ran to its end, and Orlov switched off the tape.
“You want we should talk some more?” asked Orlov.
“No,” said Roth. “I just stopped by to see if you were okay. I’m going to turn in. It’s been a long day. By the way, we are going back to England soon. Let the Limeys have a chance to talk to you for a little while. All right by you?”
Orlov frowned. “My deal was to come here. Only here.”
“It’s okay, Peter. We’ll be staying for a short while on an American Air Force base. To all intents and purposes, still in America. I’ll be there to protect you from the big bad Brits.”
Orlov did not smile at the joke.
Roth became serious. “Peter, is there a reason you don’t want to go back to England? Something I should know?”
Orlov shrugged. “Nothing specific, Joe. Just gut feeling. The farther I am away from the USSR, the safer I feel.”
“Nothing will happen to you in England. I give you my word. You going to turn in now?”
“I stay up for a while. Read, play music,” said the Russian.
In fact, the light burned in Orlov’s room until half-past one in the morning. When the KGB assassination team struck, it was a few minutes before three.
Orlov was told later that they had silenced two guards on the perimeter with powerful crossbows, traversed the lawn at the rear of the house undetected, and entered the house via the kitchens.
On the upper floor, the first Roth or Orlov heard was a burst of submachine-gun fire from the lower hall, followed by the rapid pounding of feet up the stairs. Orlov awoke like a cat, came out of his bed, and was across the living room in no more than three seconds. He opened the door to the landing and caught a brief glimpse of the night duty guard from Quantico swerving off the landing and down the main stairs. A figure in a black cat-suit and ski mask, halfway up the stairs, loosed a brief burst. The American took the blast in the chest. He sagged against the banister, his front a wash of blood. Orlov slammed his door and turned back toward the bedroom.
He knew his windows would not open; there was no escape that way. Nor was he armed. He entered the bedroom as the man in black ran through the door from the corridor, followed by an American. The last thing Orlov saw before he slammed his bedroom door shut was the KGB assassin turn and blast the American behind him. The killing gave Orlov time to throw the lock.
But it was only a respite. Seconds later, the lock was blasted away and the door kicked open. By the dim light shining in from the corridor beyond the living room, Orlov saw the KGB man throw down his empty machine-pistol and pull a Makarov 9mm automatic from his belt. He could not see the face behind the mask, but he understood the Russian word and the contempt with which it was uttered.
The figure in black gripped the Makarov two-handed, pointed it straight at Orlov’s face, and hissed, “Predatel!” Traitor.
There was a cut-glass ashtray on the bedside table. Orlov had never used it, since unlike most Russians, he did not smoke. But it was still there. In a last gesture of defiance, he swept it off the table and sent it spinning toward the Russian killer’s face. As he did so he yelled back, “Padla!” Scum.
The man in black side-stepped the heavy glassware that was scything toward his face. It cost him a fraction of a second. In that time the Quantico security-team leader stepped into the living room and fired twice with his heavy Colt .44 Magnum at the black-suited back in the bedroom doorway. The Russian was thrown forward as the front of his chest exploded in a welter of blood that sprayed the sheets and the coverlet on the bed. Orlov stepped forward to kick the Makarov from the falling man’s hand, but there was no need. No one stops two Magnum shells and keeps fighting.
Kroll, the man who had fired, crossed the sitting room to the bedroom door. He was white with rage and panting.
“You okay?” he snapped. Orlov nodded. “Someone fucked up,” said the American. “There were two of them. Two of my men are down, maybe more outside.”
A shaken Joe Roth came in, still in pajamas.
“Jesus, Peter, I’m sorry. We have to get out of here. Now. Fast.”
“Where do we go?” asked Orlov. “I thought you said this was a safe house.” He was pale but calm.
“Yeah, well, apparently not safe enough. Not anymore. We’ll try and find out why later. Get dressed. Pack your things. Kroll, stay with him.”
There was an army base only twenty miles from the Ranch. Langley fixed things with the army commander. Within two hours Roth, Orlov, and the remainder of the Quantico team had taken an entire floor of the bachelors’ quarters building. Military police ringed the block. Roth would not even drive there by road; they went by helicopter, setting down right on the lawn by the Officers’ Club and waking everyone up.
It was only temporary housing. Before nightfall, they had moved on to another CIA safe house, in Kentucky and much better protected.
While the Roth/Orlov group was in the army base, Calvin Bailey returned to the Ranch. He wanted a full report. He had already spoken to Roth by phone to hear his version of events. He listened to Kroll first, but the man whose evidence he really wanted was the Russian in the black ski mask who had confronted Orlov at point-blank range.
The young officer of the Green Berets was nursing a bruised wrist where Orlov had kicked the gun from his hand as he fell. The special-effects blood had long been wiped off him, and he had changed out of the black jumpsuit with the two holes in the front and removed the harness containing the tiny charges and sacs of realistic blood that had burst all over the bed.
“Verdict?” asked Bailey.
“He’s for real,” said the Russian-speaking officer. “Either that, or he doesn’t care whether he lives or dies. That I doubt. Most men do.”
“He didn’t suspect you?” asked Bailey.
“No, sir. I saw it right in his eyes. He believed he was going to die. He just went right on fighting. Quite a guy.”
“Any other choices?” asked Bailey.
The officer shrugged. “Only one. If he’s a phony and thought he was being liquidated by his own side, he ought to have yelled something to that effect. Assuming he cares about living, that would make him about the bravest guy I ever met.”
“I think,” Bailey said to Roth by telephone later, “that we have our answer. He’s okay, and tha
t’s official. Try and get him to recall a name—for the Brits. You’re flying over next Tuesday, military executive jet, to Alconbury.”
Roth spent two days with Orlov at their new home, going back over the sparse details the Russian had already provided from his days in the Illegals Directorate concerning Soviet agents planted in Britain. As he had specialized in Central and South America, Britain had not been his primary concern. But he racked his memory all the same. All he could recall were code-names. Then at the end of the second day, something came back to him.
A civil servant in the Ministry of Defense in Whitehall. But the money was always paid into the man’s account at the Midland Bank in Croydon High Street.
“It’s not a lot,” said the man from the Security Service, MI-5, when he was given the news. He was sitting in the office of Timothy Edwards at the headquarters of his sister service, the SIS. “He might have moved long since. Might have banked under a false name. But we’ll try.”
He went back to Curzon Street in Mayfair and set the wheels in motion. British banks do not have the right of absolute confidentiality, but they decline to hand out details of private accounts to just anybody. One institution that always secures their cooperation, by law, is the Inland Revenue.
The Inland Revenue agreed to cooperate, and the manager of the Midland in Croydon High Street, an outer suburb of south London, was interviewed in confidence. He was new to the job, but his computer was not.
A Security Service man sitting with the real Inland Revenue inspector took over. He had a list of every civil servant employed by the Ministry of Defense and its many out-stations over the past decade. Surprisingly, the chase was very quick. Only one MOD civil servant banked at the Midland in Croydon High Street. The records of the accounts were sent for. The man had two, and still lived locally. He had a checking account and a higher-rate savings account.
Over the years a total of £20,000 had been paid into his deposit account, always by him and always in cash and fairly regularly. His name was Anthony Milton-Rice.