But that was not what happened. What did occur was that just before the end of August Sir Henry Coombs was asked to visit the senior ranking civil servant of the Foreign Office in King Charles Street.
As Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Reginald Parfitt was not only a colleague of the chief of SIS but one of the so-called Five Wise Men who, with his opposite numbers in Treasury, Defense, Cabinet Office, and Home Office, would offer their recommendation to the Prime Minister for the chiefs successor. Both men went back a long way, both had a friendly relationship, and both were acutely aware that they ruled over quite different constituencies.
“This damn document your chaps brought out of Russia last month,” said Parfitt.
“The Black Manifesto.”
“Yes. Good title. Your idea, Henry?”
“My station chief in Moscow. Seemed pretty apposite.”
“Absolutely. Black is the word. Well, we’ve shared it with the Americans, but no one else. And it’s been as high as it can go. Our own Lord and Master”—he meant the British Foreign Secretary—“saw it before he went off to the pleasures of Tuscany for his holidays. So has the American Secretary of State. Needless to say, the revulsion has been universal.”
“Are we going to react, Reggie?”
“React. Ah, yes, well now, there’s the problem. Governments react officially to governments, not foreign opposition politicians. Officially, this document”—he tapped the Foreign Office copy of the manifesto on his blotter—“almost certainly does not exist, despite the fact we both know it does.
“Officially, we are hardly in possession of it, seeing as it was undoubtedly stolen. I’m afraid the received wisdom is that officially there is nothing either government can do.”
“That’s officially,” murmured Henry Coombs. “But our government, in its no doubt infinite wisdom, employs my Service precisely in order to be able to act, should occasion require, unofficially.”
“To be sure, Henry, to be sure. And no doubt you are referring to some form of covert action.”
As he spoke the last two words Sir Reginald’s expression indicated that some fool must have opened a window to admit the odor from a gasworks.
“Evil maniacs have been destabilized before, Reggie. Very quietly. It’s what we do, you know.”
“But rarely with success, Henry. And that’s the problem. All our political masters on both sides of the Atlantic seem to be seized of the notion that however covert something appears to be at the time, it always seems to leak out later. To their great discomfort.
“Our American friends have their endless succession of ‘gates’ to keep them awake at night. Watergate, Irangate, Iraqgate. And our own people recall all those leaks, followed by commissions of inquiry and their damning reports. Backhanders in Parliament, arms to Iraq. ... You catch my drift, Henry?”
“You mean, they haven’t the balls.”
“Crude but accurate as ever. You always did have a talent for the delicate phrase. I don’t think either government will dream of extending trade or aid credits to this man, should he or when he comes to power. But that’s it. As for an active measure, the answer is no.”
The Permanent Under-Secretary escorted Coombs to the door. His twinkling blue eyes met those of the spy chief without a hint of humor.
“And Henry, that really does mean no.”
As his chauffeur-driven car swept him back down the quays of the drowsy River Thames toward Vauxhall Cross, Sir Henry Coombs had no choice but to accept the reality of the intergovernmental decision. Once, handshakes had been enough and discretion was both presumed and maintained. For the past decade, with official leaks one of the few growth industries, only signatures were sufficient. And they had a habit of coming back to haunt the signer. No one in London or Washington was prepared to put his signature attributably to an order to its covert services for an “active measure” to prevent the onward march of Igor Alexeivich Komarov.
Vladimir, July 1989
THE American academic Dr. Philip Peters had already entered the USSR once, ostensibly to indulge his harmless passion for the study of Oriental art and old Russian antiquities. Nothing had happened, not an eyebrow had been raised.
Twelve months later even more tourists were pouring into Moscow and the controls were even more relaxed. The question before Monk was whether to use Dr. Peters again. He decided he would.
The letter from Professor Blinov was quite clear. He had secured a rich harvest covering all the scientific questions to which the United States wanted answers. This list had been prepared after intensive discussions with the highest levels of the American research establishment even before Monk had confronted the professor in his room at the San Jose Fairmont and Ivan Blinov had taken it with him. Now he was prepared to deliver. His problem was, it would be hard for him to get to Moscow. And suspicious.
But because Gorki was another city stuffed with scientific institutions, and only ninety minutes by train from Arzamas-16, he could get there. After personal protests, the KGB had lifted his habitual tail whenever he left the nuclear research zone. After all, he reasoned, he had been to California. Why not Gorki? In this he was supported by the political commissar. Without surveillance, he could take a further train to the cathedral city of Vladimir. But that was it. He would have to be home by nightfall. He named July 19 as the day and the rendezvous as the crypt of the Cathedral of the Assumption at noon.
Monk studied the city of Vladimir for two weeks. It was a medieval city famed for two magnificent cathedrals, rich in the paintings of Rublev, the fifteenth-century iconist. The bigger was the Assumption, the smaller the San Demetrius.
Langley’s research department could find no tourist group heading anywhere near Vladimir on the given date. To go as a single tourist would be risky; there was protection in groups. Finally they came up with a party of enthusiasts of Old Russian ecclesiastical architecture engaging in a visit to Moscow in mid-July with a coach trip to the fabulous monastery of Zagorsk on the nineteenth. Dr. Peters joined it.
With his hair the habitual mass of tight gray curls and his guidebook to his nose, Dr. Peters toured the superb cathedrals of the Kremlin for three days. At the end of the third their Intourist guide told them to be in the lobby of their hotel at 7:30 the following morning to board the coach for Zagorsk.
At 7:15 A.M. Dr. Peters sent a note to say he had suffered a violent stomach upset and preferred to remain in bed with his medication. At 8:00 A.M. he quietly left the Metropol and walked to the Kazan Station where he boarded a train for Vladimir. Just before 11:00 A.M. he descended at the cathedral city.
As he expected from his research, there were many parties of tourists already there, for Vladimir contained no state secrets and surveillance of tourists was almost nonexistent. He bought a city guide and wandered around the Cathedral of San Demetrius admiring its walls with its 1,300 bas-reliefs of beasts, birds, flowers, griffins, saints, and prophets. At ten minutes to twelve he wandered the three hundred meters to the Cathedral of the Assumption, and, unchallenged, went down to the two vaults beneath the choir gallery and the altar. He was admiring the Rublev icons when there was a cough at his shoulder. If he has been followed, I’m dead, he thought.
“Hello, Professor, how are you?” he said calmly, not taking his eyes off the glowing paintings.
“I am well, but nervous,” said Blinov.
“Aren’t we all?”
“I have something for you.”
“And I have something for you. A long letter from Zhenya. Another from little Ivan, with some drawings he did at school. By the way, he must have inherited your brains. His math teacher says he is way ahead of his class.”
Frightened though he was, with sweat beading his forehead, the scientist beamed with pleasure.
“Follow me slowly,” said Monk, “and keep looking at the icons.”
He moved away, but in a manner so as to be able to observe the entire vault. A group of French tourists left, and they were alone. He gave the pro
fessor the package of letters he had brought from America, and a second list of tasks prepared by the U.S. nuclear physicists. It went inside Blinov’s jacket pocket. What he had for Monk was much bulkier—a one-inch-thick sheaf of documents he had copied in Arzamas-16.
Monk did not like it, but there was nothing for it but to stuff the lot down his shirt and work the sheaf around to the back. He shook hands and smiled.
“Courage, Ivan Yevdokimovich, not long now. One more year.”
The two men parted, Blinov to return to Gorki and thence back to his gilded cage, Monk to catch the return train to Moscow. He was back in bed, his consignment deposited with the U.S. Embassy, before the coach returned from Zagorsk. Everyone was very sympathetic and told him he had missed the treat of a lifetime.
On July 20, the group flew out of Moscow for New York over the Pole. That same night another jet flew into Kennedy Airport but this one came from Rome. It bore Aldrich Ames, returning after three years in Italy to resume spying for the KGB in Langley. He was already richer by two million dollars.
Before leaving Rome he had memorized and burned a nine-page letter from Moscow. Primary among its list of assignments was to discover any more agents being run by the CIA inside the USSR, with an emphasis on any KGB, GRU, senior civil servants, or scientists. There was a postscript. Concentrate on the man we know as Jason Monk.
CHAPTER 9
AUGUST IS NOT A GOOD MONTH FOR THE GENTLEMEN’S clubs of St. James’s, Piccadilly, and Pall Mall. It is the month of vacations, when most of the staff wish to be away with their families and half the members are at their places in the country or abroad.
Many clubs close and those members who stay on in the capital for whatever reason find they have to make do with strange surroundings; a patchwork quilt of bilateral treaties enables members of the closed clubs to wine and dine at the few that remain open.
But by the last day of the month White’s was open again, and it was there that Sir Henry Coombs invited to lunch a man fifteen years his senior and one of his predecessors in the post of Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service.
At seventy-four Sir Nigel Irvine had been out of harness for fifteen years. The first ten of those he had spent as “something in the City,” meaning that like others before or since he had parlayed his- experience of the world, his knowledge of the corridors of power, and his natural astuteness into a series of directorships that had enabled him to put something by for his old age.
Four years before the lunch date he had finally retired to his home near Swanage on the Isle of Purbeck in the county of Dorset, where he wrote, read, walked the wild shoreline over the English Channel, and occasionally came by train to London to see old friends. Those same friends, and some much younger ones, reckoned he was still spry and active, for his mild blue eyes hid a mind as sharp as a razor.
Those who knew him best of all were aware that the old-fashioned courtesy he demonstrated to all he met dissimulated a steely will that could on occasion turn to utter ruthlessness. Henry Coombs, despite the age gap, knew him pretty well.
They both came from the tradition of Russia specialists. After Irvine’s retirement the chieftaincy of SIS had fallen to two Orientalists and an Arabist in turn before Henry Coombs marked a return to one of those who had cut his teeth in the struggle against the Soviet Union. When Nigel Irvine had been the chief, Coombs had proved himself a brilliant operator in Berlin, pitting his cunning against the KGB’s East German network and the East Germans’ own spymaster Marcus Wolf.
Irvine was content to let the conversation remain at the level of small talk in the crowded downstairs bar, but he would have been less than human not to wonder why his former protégé had asked him to make the train journey from Dorset to a steamy London for a single lunch. It was not until they had adjourned upstairs to a window table overlooking St. James’s Street that Coombs mentioned the purpose of his invitation.
“Something happening in Russia,” he said.
“Rather a lot, and all of it bad, from what the newspapers tell me,” said Irvine. Coombs smiled. He knew his old chief had sources far better than the morning papers.
“I won’t go into it in depth,” he said. “Not here, not now. Just the outline.”
“Of course,” said Irvine.
Coombs gave him a sketchy outline of the events of the past six weeks, in Moscow and in London. Notably in London.
“They’re not going to do anything about it and that’s final,” he said. “Events must take their course, lamentable though they may be. That, at any rate, is how our esteemed Foreign Secretary put it to me a couple of days ago.”
“I fear you much overestimate me if you think I can do anything to put some dynamism into the mandarins of King Charles Street,” said Sir Nigel. “I’m old and retired. As the poets put it, all races run, all passion spent.”
“I have two documents I’d like you to have a look at,” said Coombs. “One is the full report of everything that happened, so far as we can discern it, from the moment a brave if stupid old man stole a file from the desk of Komarov’s personal secretary. You can judge for yourself whether our decision that the Black Manifesto is genuine is one with which you can agree.”
“And the other?”
“The manifesto itself.”
“Thank you for the confidence. What am I supposed to do with them?”
“Take them home, read them both, see what you think.”
As the empty bowls of rice pudding laced with jam were taken away, Sir Henry Coombs ordered coffee and two glasses of the club’s vintage port, a particularly fine Fonseca.
“And even if I agree with all you say, the dreadfulness of the manifesto and the probability it is true, what then?”
“I was wondering, Nigel ... those people I believe you are going to see in America next week …”
“Dear me, Henry, even you are not supposed to know about that.”
Coombs shrugged dismissively, but privately he was glad his hunch had worked. The Council would be meeting and Irvine would be part of it.
“In the time-honored phrase, my spies are everywhere.”
“Then I’m heartened things haven’t changed too much since my day,” said Irvine. “All right, supposing I am meeting some people in America. What about it?”
“I leave it to you. Your judgment. If you think the documents should be thrown away, please burn them both to small ashes. If you think they should cross the Atlantic, your choice.”
“Dear me, how very intriguing.”
Coombs produced a flat sealed package from his briefcase and handed it over. Irvine placed it in his own, along with the purchases he had just made at John Lewis, some needlepoint canvases for Lady Irvine who liked to stitch cushion covers on winter evenings.
They parted in the lobby and Sir Nigel Irvine took a taxi to the station to catch his train back to Dorset.
Langley, September 1989
WHEN Aldrich Ames moved back to Washington, his nine-year career as a spy for the KGB still had an amazing four and a half years yet to run. Rolling in money, he began his new life by buying a half-million-dollar house for cash and tooling into the parking lot in a brand-new Jaguar. All this on a $50,000-a-year salary. No one noticed anything odd.
Because he had been running the Soviet desk at the Rome mission and despite the fact that Rome came under Western Europe, Ames himself had remained part of the crucial SE Division. From the KGB’s point of view it was vital that he remain where with the right access he might once again look at the 301 files. But here he had a major problem. Milton Bearden had also just returned to Langley, having supervised the covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The first thing he did as new head of the SE Division was try to get rid of Ames. However, in this, like others before him, he was frustrated.
Ken Mulgrew, the quintessential bureaucrat, had risen through the non-operational side of the hierarchy to a post that put him in charge of personnel. As such, he was highly influential in staff allocations
and postings. He and Ames quickly resumed their boozy friendship, with Ames able now to afford nothing but the best. It was Mulgrew who frustrated Bearden by keeping Ames inside the SE Division.
In the interim, the CIA had computerized masses of its most covert files, confiding its innermost secrets to the most insecure tool ever invented by man. In Rome Ames had made a point of educating himself to become computer literate. All he needed were the access codes to be able to tap into the 301 files without even leaving his desk. No more plastic shopping bags full of paperwork would ever be necessary. Nor would it ever be required of him to draw and sign for the most secret files.
The first slot Mulgrew managed to fix for his pal was that of European chief of the Soviet Division’s External Operations Group. But External Ops only handled Soviet assets who were outside the USSR or the Soviet Bloc. These assets did not include Lysander, the Spartan fighter who was in East Berlin running the KGB’s Directorate K; Orion, the hunter, inside the Soviet Defense Ministry in Moscow. Delphi the oracle was in the highest reaches of Moscow’s Foreign Ministry, and the fourth, the one who wanted to fly the Atlantic, code-named Pegasus, was in a sealed nuclear research facility between Moscow and the Urals. When Ames used his position rapidly to check on Jason Monk, who now outranked him as a GS-15 while Ames was still stuck at GS-14, nothing came up. But the absence of any reference to Monk in External Ops did tell him one thing: anybody run by Monk was inside the USSR. Scuttlebutt and Mulgrew told him the rest.
The word around the office was that Jason Monk was the best, the last great hope in a division ruined by Ames’s earlier treachery. The word also was that he was a loner, a maverick, who worked in his own way, took his own risks, and would long ago have been elbowed except for one thing: he got results in an organization that was steadily getting fewer and fewer.
Like any paper pusher, Mulgrew resented Monk. He resented his independence, his refusal to file forms in triplicate, and most of all his seeming immunity to the complaints of people like Mulgrew. Ames played upon this resentment. Of the two of them, Ames had the better head for drink. It was he who could keep thinking despite the fumes of alcohol, while Mulgrew became boastful and loose tongued.
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