by John Gardner
The Chairman took two paces towards the window, standing to look down into the square on Marx Prospekt. Yes, he thought, it was right that Jacob Vascovsky should do the job. For a man of Vascovsky’s rank and experience, it had been a terrible failure—to lure one of the British Service’s most senior officers into East Berlin; trap him, and then, after only a few days, let the man slip through the net. In the bad old days, in the times of terror—and under a chief like Beria—Jacob Vascovsky would have been recalled, and shot out of hand. The Chairman hoped they were more sensible now. If they had not brought Vascovsky back to a lengthy, friendly, interrogation, the truth might never have emerged. Now they had trawled his mind and gleaned facts. The few days which the General had spent with the man Kruger, proved to have brought forth a vital, and disturbing, piece of information. Instead of a bullet, or even a reprimand, the carrot of promotion had been offered. From Colonel-General to full General in one move.
Who better than Vascovsky to go in, now, to find the original source of Kruger’s knowledge. The General was unlikely to talk, as it would only spread his own failure to a wider audience. Before Vascovsky left to start his crucial work, then, the Chairman had a duty to place the officer under a discipline of silence. Just to make certain. He turned again, glancing around the room, with its high ceiling, and walls, changed from the familiar green—which abounds through the rest of the building—to fine, sturdy, mahogany panelling.
For a second, the burden of power, and its attendant responsibilities, tripped across his mind—for the Chairman of the KGB, Member of the Politburo, and Central Committee of the Communist Party, is, arguably, the most important and powerful man in Russia—next, of course, to the Premier of the USSR and First Secretary of the Party.
The Premier was aware of the facts concerning Vascovsky. The case had, naturally, been discussed with the Chairman’s deputies, and the Politburo; though the files remained heavily restricted. The final, and worrying, facts—together with the decision—had been withheld from the deputies; but the seventeen members of the Politburo, who were conversant with everything, had unanimously agreed to the KGB Chairman’s recommendation.
Now, seated at his desk, with its battery of telephones—including the famous Kremlevka and Vertushka phones, linking him directly with the Kremlin and Politburo members respectively—the Chairman pressed the small button to summon his adjutant. General Vascovsky was already waiting, he was informed. Also two senior First Directorate officers were standing by, to take Vascovsky to the First Chief Directorate headquarters: the true Moscow Centre.
The Chairman nodded, signifying he would interview the General immediately.
Vascovsky had not seen his chief for almost two years. Now, as he entered the office, he quickly reflected on the manner in which the Chairman had aged. He had always thought the man looked more like an academic than an Intelligence officer; but, in two years, this mien was even more apparent—the large head and broad shoulders further stooped; hair greyer; and demeanour increasingly reflective.
“Jacob, my old friend.” The Chairman rose to greet Vascovsky—telling him to sit down, that it was good to see him again, asking after his wife.
“There was a moment,” Vascovsky said, once the two men were settled, “when I thought your greeting might be more harsh than this.”
The Chairman laughed: dry, without real mirth. Every man was entitled to one mistake. As long as he was not discovered in the million others he might make. “For your error you got promotion, anyway.”
Vascovsky spread his hands, palms upwards. “I am a lucky man.” The gesture had a French, rather than Russian flavour. Many remarked on the fact that Jacob Vascovsky always seemed more Gallic than Russian—a happy accident of birth which had been well used during his career. “I have no doubt as to the pure chance which led Kruger to give me a couple of interesting exhibits during the few days I had him.”
The two nuggets Vascovsky had procured from the agent known as Big Herbie Kruger concerned secret facts about proposed operations coded Hallet and Birdseed, respectively. Kruger had known about them when there was no way in which he could have known—or, at least, should have known.
The Chairman asked if Vascovsky had been fully briefed on the importance of those pieces of information.
“Thoroughly. But would you expect anything else, Comrade Chairman? The briefing officer must have got it direct from yourself.”
The Chairman said it was not quite like that. The two aborted operations—concerning the American officer, Hallet, and the one with the Birdseed cryptonym—were known to three other people as well as himself. “But they are completely clean,” he added. “Even in this world of ours, in which trust is not an easy commodity to come by, these, my personal staff, are an exception. Anyway, each one works in a vacuum. Not one alone would ever have known the full significance of either Hallet or Birdseed. No, my friend, the matter boils down to a betrayal, leading directly to the First Directorate’s Standing Committee on Forward Planning; and that is very worrying. Let me check you out. Tell me what you know of the Standing Committee.”
Vascovsky was well-informed. Lucidly, and with that economy of words associated with a military background, he specified that the First Directorate’s Standing Committee met regularly on the last Wednesday of each month; that their duties concerned the discussion of possible operations; changes in field structure; procedure; new activities; techniques. An average of three possible ideas were put forward each month—many of them concerning detailed proposals for operations. These ideas were formulated directly to the Chairman. No second or third party was admitted. The Chairman, alone, sifted the possibilities. Those which he thought positive, or productive, were passed on to the Politburo for discussion.
“It is just before that stage when I would, perhaps, consult one of my staff. As it happens, the proposals for Hallet, and the operation called Birdseed, were discussed—with two different people. So, only myself, and the members of the Standing Committee, ever knew the full story regarding both of these cases.” The Chairman put his hands flat on the desk, as though this was a gesture of some significance. “It’s me who you have to thank for getting you off the hook, Jacob. Nobody else analysing your interrogations with Kruger, in East Berlin, could make head or tail out of Hallet or Birdseed. Those particular transcripts were sent to me as a last possibility. You can most surely rule out the two officers of my staff, as I have said. So, it’s either me, or a member of the Standing Committee.”
“Which is the reason for concern.” Vascovsky’s mouth tightened.
“The Standing Committee consists of…?” The Chairman waited for the answer. Vascovsky reeled off the members quickly. They were four senior officers of the First Chief Directorate. The Departmental Heads of Directorate S; Directorate T; Special Service I, and Department V.
Four of the most dependable people in the Service. Each one a long-time Party member, with an unblemished record. All were over sixty years of age—two had passed their seventieth birthdays. Four men with spectacular personal histories, and incredible experience.
“You can see why I’m relying on you, Jacob.” The Chairman’s worry showed in the way he looked, spoke and moved. “At best, one of these men has merely been garrulous; talked out of turn, not obeyed the rule of silence demanded of him. This is distinctly probable. They are getting on in years. Yet… Yet…”
“Yet they are all lively and active officers: alert, trained in the hard school.” Vascovsky put the Chairman’s thoughts into words.
“Yes.” Flat. A long pause. Then—“Jacob, I pray this is only a small slip of the tongue, by one of them—to a wife, or trusted friend. If not, you realise what it means?”
Vascovsky said he recognised the most sinister implications all too clearly. If it was not a piece of loose talk, then it had to be professional. Given the ages, and length of service, of the people involved, this meant a distinct likelihood of one of them being nothing less than a long-term penetration
agent. How long neither man would wish to guess.
“You’re to be taken to the Standing Committee’s meeting this morning.” The Chairman spread himself in his chair, lifting his chin, pushing back his head, as though to exercise the muscles in the rear of his neck. Vascovsky recognised it as a tension-relief exercise. “I’ve given written authority, and made out the order. You are to be my representative on the Standing Committee: a new procedure, which goes into operation as from today. It’s good enough cover, and will give you the opportunity to keep in touch with all four of them. I’ve also made sure their personal dossiers are at your disposal. Detective work, Jacob. A crossword puzzle with one clue: otherwise just the black and white squares. You will supply the other clues, and their answers.”
“I can think of one answer to the first clue. Nightmare.” The General was not being facetious.
The Chairman made a slight affirmative gesture. The twirl of a hand. If it was that bad, the essential move was to hunt down the offender; then clean him out. Another point had to be taken into consideration. If proof was brought against a member of the Standing Committee, it would be necessary to shroud the scandal. “I don’t mean to sweep under the carpet. Maybe the British Service—if it is them—will wish to make some capital out of it. On the other hand, all parties could well desire a cloak of silence. No scandals. Nothing against people like ourselves, Comrade General.” He gave Vascovsky a look: blatant and undisguised. Let us make sure we save our own faces, and our own skins, the Chairman was saying.
Aloud he continued—“To this end I must put you, Jacob, under the strictest discipline of silence. Do you accept this?”
“Naturally. As an officer of the Committee for State Security, I accept this discipline.”
“Good. Before you leave, one more question. I understand you are still assigned to the Kruger business. Have you any information? Taken any action?”
Vascovsky chuckled. “A small campaign of mental terror. I’m fairly certain his people have put him under most rigid control. Maybe they’ll dismiss him altogether. I’ll know in a day or so. Whichever way it goes, I do not give up. He was a broken man; even though he got away. It is possible that I might yet reclaim him. Whatever happens, he will be forced to live a restricted life. If I know that man, this can only compound his frustrations. There are still levers we can use.”
“You have a most personal vendetta with Kruger.” A statement of fact.
Vascovsky did not hesitate. “Naturally. It would be strange if this were not so. I fought him in the dark during the coldest days of the Cold War. I lost him. Then I found him again and caught him, only to let him slip away. Yes, some of it is personal.”
The Chairman rose. “Don’t allow it to become too personal, Jacob. In our business we are like whores; we should not get personally involved with our clients. Keep your desires to nail him under some restraint.” He leaned forward, pressing the bell to summon his adjutant. “Now, go and solve this other riddle for me. If we have a cancer in the Standing Committee, gouge him out. But use a pain-killer. Before we take him to the terminal ward we need him whole and well for a time. His memory is important to us.”
Jacob Vascovsky smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ll cut him out and he won’t feel a thing.”
At about the same time as this conversation took place, Stentor was being fussed over by his wife, in their relatively luxurious apartment, on the third floor of a building reserved for high-ranking Party officials, in Kutuzovsky Prospekt. The sun may well be shining, Stentor’s wife was telling him, but this did not mean he could go without his best winter coat—the one with the lynx collar.
Stentor would have preferred to wear the other—the one cut in a military style. But he did not argue. Long ago, Stentor had learned the futility of arguing with women—be they wives, mistresses, friends, or colleagues. Besides, the doorbell had rung: two long rings and a short, which meant the bodyguard was waiting, and the car stood ready downstairs.
He allowed himself to be helped into the coat with the fur collar, put on his hat, glanced in the mirror, picked up his copies of the morning papers, and gave his wife a resounding kiss on both cheeks.
The bodyguard was the new, young man. Tall, bronzed and alert, he greeted the Comrade General good morning. Stentor smiled, and walked down the passage to the elevator. He did not, of course, think of himself as Stentor. He lived under the name by which all had known him since he was fourteen years old. Stentor was the cryptonym with which the British Secret Intelligence Service had invested him, many many years ago.
In the foyer, the usual two dark-haired day guards were on duty. Stentor smiled at them also. They did not smile back, but came to attention—showing respect for a hero of the Soviet Union. It was a cross one had to bear, Stentor thought: this business of being guarded twenty-four hours a day. The building had plainclothes guards, who undoubtedly timed your exits and entrances, passing them on to some unknown scrutineer, who kept account against the day of judgment, if it ever came. Days of wrath and doom were more likely to strike a high-ranking political, or military, figure, than the ordinary citizen. But then, the ordinary citizen came in for his fair share of judgments at all levels, Stentor reflected, so that might even the odds a shade.
But, whenever he went out on official business there was at least one bodyguard and the driver. In his other little secret world, Stentor found the lack of privacy restricting; yet he managed by accepting it as a challenge.
The bodyguard opened the rear door of the black Volga, allowed Stentor to make himself comfortable, then joined the driver in front.
The Volga pulled away, and Stentor settled back, opening the daily document case which had been picked up earlier from the Centre. More papers than usual this morning. The monthly Standing Committee meeting day often produced a load of documents. Stentor began to go through the daily Intelligence digest.
So, they had taken Svobodny, the poet, at last. Old M. I. Svobodny, well-known poet and pederast. It would have been around four-thirty in the morning—that was the traditional time for swoops like this: had been for centuries. In ancient Rome, Caligula probably sent his Praetorian Guard out at dawn to collect victims for the treason trials. The Gestapo certainly took people in the early hours, as did most modern secret police.
The cars, either noisy with slamming doors, or creeping, silent, around the block. Then the sudden rush of feet; the pounding on the door; all exits blocked. Bleary eyes, crying children—frightened from their sleep—the white-faced woman, waiting a few paces behind the man who opened the door.
At one time, when police came calling in the early hours, mothers would calm their babes by saying they were only the men who had come to catch mice—because mice appeared from their holes at night. The Mice Men Cometh.
Even Stentor had taken part in those kind of arrests; just as he had known many people who lived in terror of them. Stalin’s orders were often obeyed like that. Stentor had obeyed them himself.
Well, this morning, at around four-thirty, they had come for Maxim Ivanovitch Svobodny, in his little apartment, lined with books from floor to ceiling, near Sokolniki Park. Maxim Ivanovitch was probably waiting for them, his suitcase packed. He must have been expecting arrest for days.
As Stentor read the short report, he smiled. Then his smile changed to a chuckle. Svobodny, in English, meant Free. For a moment the chuckle turned into a full-blown laugh, so loud that Stentor’s bodyguard turned to ask if the Comrade General was all right. Yes, the Comrade General was fine. He simply had a strange and twisted sense of humour. The kind of humour that comes only with age, and a full life—a life lived near to the knife-edge of disaster.
Outside, the sun shone, so bright that the driver had to wear glasses. Traffic was normal and they drove fast, out on to the Moscow Circumferential Highway—out to the KGB’s First Directorate Headquarters. The First Chief Directorate’s Headquarters does not lie, as so many imagine, within the charming and enlarged greystone building on Dzerzhins
ky Square. The true Heart of Moscow Centre, in fact, beats some twenty kilometres from the city.
Stentor’s black Volga covered the distance in half-an-hour, leaving the highway at the Yasenevo exit. There, a sign reads, SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH CENTRE. FORBIDDEN.
As far as members of the First Chief Directorate are concerned, the real Centre is only a few metres further on: hidden behind a thick green hedge of trees. Stentor’s car was not forbidden.
The site itself stands in around three hundred acres, completely surrounded by a high wire cyclone fence. The car stopped at the main entrance. Passes and documents were examined, by uniformed KGB men, and exchanged for laminated plastic badges, each bearing a photograph of the wearer, together with rank and essential descriptive details. These badges were hung around the neck by thin chains. Stentor, his driver, and the bodyguard, donned them with an almost religious gravity. The General had once remarked that they should kiss them first—as the priest kisses the stole before draping it around his neck. The flippancy was greeted with much hilarity by his driver and bodyguard. Priests were out of season at the time.
The car then moved on to the second checkpoint—a ten-foot-high concrete wall. Here Stentor and the bodyguard left the car, walking past the metal barriers, while the driver turned in the direction of the parking lot. The area between the cyclone fence and concrete wall holds facilities for 1500 vehicles, together with maintenance garages, and, on the outside, a running track. The wall—cornered by observation towers, and topped by electrified wire—leads to the heart of the complex. Contained within this inner area is a gymnasium, swimming pool, and the big, five-storey Y-shaped building in which the major part of the First Chief Directorate’s business is carried out.
Building A is the downward stroke of the Y; B and C being, respectively, the left and right angles. Stentor’s office, as one of the senior departmental chiefs, was in building B. But, this morning, his first appointment—in fact the only appointment of the day—was in building A: Conference Room 110, a secure, ‘silent’, office; one of the many strong rooms, as they called them in the Yasenevo Complex. In the strong rooms it was impossible to filch conversations. Here, in Room 110, the First Chief Directorate’s Standing Committee for Forward Planning held its monthly meeting.
