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by Frederick Forsyth

  The neo-Communists of the Socialist Union and the reformists of the Democratic Alliance for once found themselves in agreement. Both were trailing in the polls and needed all the time they could get to restore their positions. Put another way, neither was ready for an early election.

  The debate, or shouting match, raged until sundown when an exhausted and hoarse Speaker finally decreed that enough voices had been heard for a vote to be called. The left wing and the centrists voted together to defeat the ultra-right, and the motion was carried. The June 2000 presidential elections were rescheduled for January 16, 2000.

  Within an hour the outcome of the vote was carried across the nation by the national TV newscast Vremlya as its lead item. Embassies throughout the capital worked late and lights burned as coded cables from ambassadors to their home governments flooded out.

  It was because the British Embassy was also still fully staffed that Gracie Fields was at his desk when the call from Inspector Novikov came through.

  Yalta, September 1986

  THE day was hot and there was no air-conditioning in the taxi that rattled along the coastal highway northeastward out of Yalta. The American wound down the window to let the cooler air from the Black Sea blow over him. Leaning to one side he was also able to see in the rearview mirror above the driver’s head. No car from the local Cheka seemed to be following.

  The long cruise from Marseilles via Naples, Malta, and Istanbul had been tiresome but tolerable. Monk had played his part in a manner that aroused no suspicion. With gray hair, tinted glasses, and elaborate courtesy he was just another academic retiree taking a summer vacation cruise.

  His fellow Americans on board had accepted that he shared their sincere belief that the only hope for world peace was for the peoples of the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to get to know one another better. One of them, a spinster teacher from Connecticut, was much taken with the exquisitely mannered Texan who held out her chair and tipped his low-crowned Stetson whenever they met on deck.

  At Varna in Bulgaria he had not gone ashore, pleading a touch of the sun. But at all the other ports of call he had accompanied the tourists of five Western nationalities to ruins, ruins, and more ruins.

  At Yalta he stepped down for the first time in his life onto the soil of Russia. Exhaustively prepared and briefed as he was, it was easier than he had thought. For one thing, although the Armenia was the only cruise liner in port, there were a dozen other cargo freighters from outside the USSR, and their crews had no trouble wandering ashore.

  The tourists of the cruise ship, cooped aboard since Varna, went down the gangway like a flock of birds, and two Russian immigration officials at the bottom gave their passports a cursory glance and nodded them through. Professor Kelson attracted several looks because of the way he was dressed, but they were approving and friendly glances.

  Rather than try to appear inconspicuous, Monk chose to go the other way, the hide-in-plain-sight routine. He wore a cream shirt with string tie, held by a silver clasp; a tan suit of lightweight pants and jacket, and his Stetson, along with cowboy boots.

  “My oh my, Professor, you do look smart,” gushed the schoolteacher. “Are you coming with us up the chairlift to the mountaintop?”

  “No, ma’am,” said Monk, “I guess I’ll just stroll along the docks and maybe get me a coffee.”

  The Intourist guides took their parties off in different directions and left him alone. He walked instead out of the harbor, past the Sea Terminal building and into the town. A number of people glanced at him, but most grinned. A small boy stopped, threw his hands to his side, and did a double fast-draw with imaginary Colt .45s. Monk ruffled his hair.

  He had learned that entertainment in the Crimea was rather unvaried. The television was dull as dishwater, and the big treat was the movies. The favorite by miles were the cowboy films permitted by the regime, and here was a real cowboy. Even a militiaman, sleepy in the heat, stared, but when Monk tipped his hat he grinned and threw up a salute. After an hour and a coffee in an open-fronted café, he became convinced he was not being followed, took a taxi from a rank of several, and asked for the Botanical Gardens. With his guidebook, map, and fractured Russian he was so obviously a tourist off one of the ships that the driver nodded and set off. Besides, thousands visited the famous gardens of Yalta.

  Monk dismounted in front of the main gate and paid off the taxi driver. He paid in rubles, but added a five-dollar tip and a wink. The driver grinned, nodded, and left.

  There was a big crowd in front of the turnstiles, mainly Russian children with their teachers on an educational excursion. Monk waited in line, keeping an eye open for men in shiny suits. There were none. He paid his entrance fee, went through the barrier, and spotted the ice cream booth. Buying a large vanilla cone, he found a secluded park bench, sat down, and started to lick.

  A few minutes later a man sat at the other end of the bench, studying a map of the vast gardens. Behind the map, no one could see his lips move. Monk’s lips were moving because he was licking an ice cream.

  “So, my friend, how are you?” asked Pyotr Solomin.

  “The better for seeing you, old pal,” muttered Monk. “Tell me, are we under surveillance?”

  “No. I have been here for an hour. You were not followed. Nor I.”

  “My people are very happy with you, Peter. The details you provide will help shorten the Cold War.”

  “I just want to bring the bastards down,” said the Siberian. “Your ice cream is melting. Throw it away, I’ll get two more.”

  Monk threw his dripping stub into the trash can nearby. Solomin strolled over to the booth and bought two cones. When he came back the gesture enabled him to sit closer.

  “I have something for you. Film. Inside the cover of my map. I will leave it on the bench.”

  “Thank you. Why not transmit in Moscow? My people were a bit suspicious,” said Monk.

  “Because there is more, but it must be spoken.”

  He began to describe what was happening that summer of 1986 inside the Politburo and the Defense Ministry in Moscow. Monk kept a straight face to prevent himself giving a long, low whistle. Solomin talked for half an hour.

  “Is this true, Peter? It is really happening at last?”

  “As true as I sit here. I have heard the defense minister himself confirm it.”

  “It will change many things,” said Monk. “Thank you, old hunter. But I must go.”

  As strangers on a park bench who have talked to each other, Monk held out his hand. Solomin stared in fascination.

  “What is that?”

  It was a ring. Monk did not usually wear rings, but it went with the persona of a Texan. A Navajo ring of turquoise and raw silver of the sort worn all over Texas and New Mexico. He could see that the Udegey tribesman from the Primorskiy Krai loved it. On a gesture Monk slipped it from his hand and gave it to the Siberian.

  “For me?” asked Solomin.

  He had never asked for money and Monk had guessed he would give offense if he offered it. From the Siberian’s expression the ring was more than recompense, a hundred dollars worth of turquoise and silver hacked from the hills of New Mexico and crafted by Ute or Navajo silversmiths.

  Aware that an embrace was impossible in public, Monk turned to go. He looked back. Peter Solomin had slipped the ring onto the small finger of his left hand and was admiring it. It was the last image Monk had of the hunter from the east.

  The Armenia sailed into Odessa and discharged its human cargo. Customs examined every suitcase but they were only looking for anti-Soviet printed material. Monk had been told they never did a body search of a foreign tourist unless the KGB was in charge, and that would be for a very special reason.

  Monk had his rows of tiny transparencies between two layers of plaster tape adhering to one buttock With the other Americans Monk closed his suitcase and all were hustled by the Intourist guide through the formalities and onto the Moscow train.

&nbs
p; In the capital the next day Monk dropped off his consignment at the embassy, whence it would come home to Langley in the diplomatic bag, and flew back to the States. He had a very long report to write.

  CHAPTER 7

  “GOOD EVENING, BRITISH EMBASSY,” SAID THE OPERATOR on Sofiskaya Quay.

  “Schto?” said a bewildered voice at the other end of the line.

  “Dobri vecher, Angliyskoye Posolstvo,” the operator repeated in Russian.

  “I want the Bolshoi Theatre ticket office,” said the voice.

  “I’m afraid you have the wrong number, caller,” the operator said, and hung up.

  The listeners at the bank of monitors in the headquarters of FAPSI, the Russian electronic eavesdropping agency, heard the call and logged it, but otherwise thought no more of it. Wrong numbers were two a penny.

  Inside the embassy the operator ignored the flashing lights of two more incoming calls, consulted a small notebook, and dialed an internal number.

  “Mr. Fields?”

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  “Switchboard here. Someone just called asking for the Bolshoi Theatre ticket office.”

  “Right, thank you.”

  Gracie Fields rang Jock Macdonald. Internal extensions were regularly swept by the man from the Security Service and were deemed secure.

  “My friend from Moscow’s finest just called,” he said. “He used the emergency code. He needs a callback.”

  “Keep me posted,” said the Head of Station. Fields checked his watch. One hour between calls and five minutes gone. At a public phone in the lobby of a bank two blocks from the militia building, Inspector Novikov also checked his watch and decided to take a coffee to fill the intervening fifty minutes. Then he would report to another public phone a block further down and wait.

  Fields left the embassy ten minutes later and drove slowly to the Kosmos Hotel on Mira Prospekt. Built in 1979, modern by Moscow standards, the Kosmos has a row of public phone booths close to the lobby.

  An hour after the call came to the embassy he checked a notepad from his jacket pocket and dialed. Public booth-to-booth calls are a nightmare for counterintelligence organizations and virtually uncheckable because of the sheer numbers of them.

  “Boris?” Novikov was not called Boris. His given name was Yevgeni, but when he heard “Boris” he knew it was Fields on the line.

  “Yes. That drawing you gave me. Something has come up. I think we should meet.”

  “All right. Join me for dinner at the Rossiya.”

  Neither man had any intention of going to the vast Rossiya Hotel. The reference was to a bar called the Carousel halfway up Tverskaya Street. It was cool and dark enough to be discreet. Again the time lapse was one hour.

  ¯

  LIKE many of the larger British embassies, the Moscow legation contains on its staff a member of the British internal security service known as M15. This is the sister service of the foreign intelligence-gathering Secret Intelligence Service, wrongly but popularly called MI6.

  The task of the MI5 man is not to gather information about the host country, but to guarantee the security of the embassy, its various outstations, and its staff.

  The staff do not regard themselves as prisoners and in Moscow during the summer frequent a pretty bathing spot outside the city where the River Moskva curves in a manner that exposes a small sandy beach. For diplomatic staff this is a favored picnicking and bathing spot.

  Before he was elevated to the rank of inspector and transferred to Homicide, Yevgeni Novikov had been the officer in charge of that country district, including the resort area known as Serebryani Bor, or Silver Woods.

  It was here he had got to know the then British security service officer, who introduced him to the newly arrived Gracie Fields.

  Fields cultivated the young policeman and eventually suggested that a small monthly retainer in hard currency could make life easier for a man on a fixed salary in inflationary times. Inspector Novikov became a source, low-level it was true, but occasionally useful. During this week the homicide detective was going to repay all the effort.

  “We have a body,” he told Fields as they sat in the gloom of the Carousel and sipped chilled beer. “I’m pretty sure it’s the man in the drawing you gave me. Old, steel teeth, you know. …”

  He narrated the events as he had learned them from his colleague Volsky on the John Doe desk.

  “Nearly three weeks, that’s a long time to be dead in this weather. The face must be ghastly,” said Fields. “It might not be the same man.”

  “He was only in the forest for a week. Then nine days in a cold box. He should be recognizable.”

  “I’ll need a photograph, Boris. Can you get one?”

  “I don’t know. They’re all with Volsky. Do you know of a man called Inspector Chernov?”

  “Yes, he’s been around to the embassy. I gave him one of the drawings too.”

  “I know,” said Novikov. “Now they’re all over the place. Anyway, he’ll be back. Volsky will have told him by now. He’ll have a real photograph of the corpse’s face.”

  “For himself, not for us.”

  “It could be difficult.”

  “Well try, Boris, try. You’re in Homicide, aren’t you? Say you want to show it around some gangland contacts. Make any excuse. This is a homicide now. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Solve murders?”

  “Supposed to,” admitted Novikov gloomily. He wondered if the Englishman knew the cleanup rate for gang killings was three percent.

  “There’ll be a bonus in it for you,” said Fields. “When our staff are attacked we are not ungenerous.”

  “All right,” said Novikov. “I’ll try and get one.”

  As it happened he did not need to bother. The mystery man file came to Homicide of its own accord and two days later he was able to abstract one of the sheaf of photos of the face taken out in the woods by the Minsk Highway.

  Langley, November 1986

  CAREY Jordan was in an exceptionally good mood. Such moods were brief in late 1986 because the Iran-Contra scandal was raging through Washington, and Jordan more than most others knew how deeply the CIA had been involved.

  But he had just been summoned to the office of the director, William Casey, to receive the warmest plaudits. The cause of such unaccustomed benignity from the old director was the reception in the highest quarters of the news brought back from Yalta by Jason Monk.

  In the very early eighties, the USSR instituted a series of highly aggressive policies against the West, its last desperate attempt to break the will of the NATO alliance by intimidation. Ronald Reagan was in the White House at the time and Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street. The two Western leaders decided they would not be browbeaten by threats.

  President Andropov died, Chernenko came and went, Gorbachev came to power, but still the war of wills and industrial power went on.

  Mikhail Gorbachev had become General Secretary of the party in March 1985. He was a dedicated Communist born and raised. The difference was that unlike his predecessors he was pragmatic and refused to accept the lies that they had swallowed. He insisted on knowing the real facts and figures of Soviet industry and the economy. When he saw them he was traumatized.

  By the summer of 1986, deep in the heart of the Kremlin and the Defense Ministry, it was becoming clear that the military-industrial complex and the weapons procurement program were absorbing sixty percent of Soviet gross domestic product, an unsustainable figure. The people were at last becoming restive with their privations.

  That summer a major examination was undertaken to see how long the Soviet Union could keep up the pace. The picture in the report could not have been blacker. Industrially, the capitalist West was outperforming the Russian dinosaur at every level. It was this report that Solomin brought on microfilm to the park bench at Yalta.

  What it said, and what Solomin confirmed verbally, was that if the West could hang on for two more years, the Soviet economy would come apart at the seams,
and the Kremlin would have to concede and dismantle. As in a game of poker, the Siberian had just shown the West the Kremlin’s entire hand.

  The news went right into the White House and across the Atlantic to Mrs. Thatcher. Both leaders, beset by internal hostility and doubt, took heart. Bill Casey was congratulated by the Oval Office and passed the plaudits on to Carey Jordan. He summoned Jason Monk to share his congratulations. At the end of their talk Jordan brought up a topic he had raised before.

  “I have a real problem with those damn files of yours, Jason. You can’t just leave them sitting in your safe. If anything happened to you, we wouldn’t know where to begin to handle these two assets, Lysander and Orion. You have to log them with the others.”

  It had been over a year since the first treachery of Aldrich Ames, and six months since the disaster of the missing agents had become apparent. The culprit was by then in Rome. Technically the mole hunt still plodded on, but the urgency had gone out of it.

  “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” pleaded Monk. “These guys are putting their lives on the line. They know me and I know them. We trust each other. Let it be.”

  Jordan had known before of the strange bond that could be forged between asset and handler. It was a relationship the agency officially frowned on for two reasons. The agent runner might have to be moved to a different post, or might retire or die. A too-personal relationship could mean the asset deep in the heart of Russia might decide he could not or would not go on with a new handler. Second, if anything happened to the asset, the agency man could become too depressed to retain his usefulness. In a long career an asset might have several handlers. Monk’s one-on-one bond with his two agents worried Jordan. It was ... irregular.

  On the other hand, Monk was irregular, one of a kind. If Jordan had but known it, which he did not, Monk made a point of ensuring that each asset inside Moscow (Turkin had left Madrid and was back home, producing amazing material from the very heart of K Directorate of the FCD) received long personal letters from him, along with the usual tasking lists.