The Sixth Directorate

by Joseph Hone

  They were all there when Andropov arrived, the heads of the five Chief Directorates, some already seated at a table in the main room, two others who had been talking by the window quickly joining them: the old man Alexander Sakharovsky, Chief of the KGB’s foreign intelligence operation, the First Directorate; Alexei Flitlianov, the youngest of them, a bachelor of 49, head of the Second Directorate responsible for all security matters within the State; Vassily Chechulian, Third Directorate, counter-espionage, a muscular, hearty man; Grigori Rahv, impeccably dressed, the cartoon image of a capitalist banker, in charge of the KGB’s scientific arm – electronics, communications, laboratories; and the Chief of the Fifth Directorate – Management, Personnel and Finance – Viktor Savitsky, an anonymous figure, member of the party’s Central Committee, an accountant by early profession – whose only noticeable characteristic was that he still took immense pains to look and behave like one.

  Andropov bowed quickly round the table, exchanged brief and formal greetings and then sat down. He lifted both hands to his face, shaped them as for prayer, brought them to either side of his nose and rubbed it for a second. Then, closing his eyes, he clasped his fingers beneath his chin and was quite silent. Finally, as though he had completed grace before a meal, he spoke.

  ‘I take it we have no further news.’ He didn’t bother to look round for confirmation, but instead let another silence grow on the air, allowing it unnecessary age, so that it became a herald of mysterious change. Then he continued suddenly and brightly: ‘Very well then. Since we’ve got nowhere with the facts, let’s try using our imagination. Put ourselves in the position of this group – or more precisely let one of us do that. There are five of you here. We will create a Sixth Directorate and thus try and establish its composition and purposes – and a head of that Directorate. And we’ll put him sitting in that chair – a man that has come here, just as each of you has, to discuss the problems of his section. Alexei, you start it off. You’re transferred from the Second to the Sixth Directorate as of now. Let me start by asking you a few questions. First of all, some background. What are your objectives?’

  Alexei Flitlianov smiled and moved easily in his seat. He was a compact, intelligent-faced man, like an energetic academic, full but prematurely greying hair sweeping sideways across his head into white tufts above his ears, and front teeth just slightly out of true: his eyes were dark and set well back in his skull and in the winter pallor of his face they glittered, like candles inside a Hallowe’en turnip: an awkward face with several bad lapses in the design, but for all that – as so often in such cases – attractive in a way not immediately decipherable.

  ‘I’m honoured.’ Flitlianov’s smile ended and he leant forward earnestly, shoulders hunched, concentrating on a spot somewhere in the middle of the table. ‘Objectives. Well, to begin with, control of the KGB.’

  ‘You want my job.’

  ‘Yes. But not for reasons of mere power play. The motives are political.’

  ‘Do they originate from the Politburo, the Central Committee or the Army?’

  ‘No. My origins lie entirely within the KGB.’

  ‘Do you have contacts, support in government or the Army?’

  ‘Yes, I think I must have, after so long. Let’s say I have my men marked outside. I know who to approach when the moment is ripe.’

  ‘And these political objectives – they are towards “Open Socialism”, democratic alternatives?’

  ‘Yes. The provenance here would be Trotsky, Luxemburg, Dubcek – among others. Particularly Dubcek, I should say; “The Prague Spring”, that would be the line. Marxist, certainly, but without a dictatorial, monolithic structure.’ Flitlianov emerged briefly from his role and looked round the table: ‘In fact we know the nature of these inappropriate objectives very well indeed: we have successfully inhibited them for many years, within the Union and more particularly outside it.’

  ‘The counter-revolution then? At last …’ Andropov smiled.

  ‘Not in any overtly violent terms. A bloodless coup. It would depend on timing – on choosing the right moment to support and promote a group of people in the Central Committee and one or two others in the Politburo.’

  ‘The new leaders?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you must have the support, I think, of one or two of these political figures already. You would surely not have gone ahead for so long on your scheme without it.’

  ‘Yes, I must have such support. Thus there must be a political arm to this Sixth Directorate. It would have been quite unrealistic of me to have continued such a scheme without that.’

  ‘What would the “right moment” be in all this? What would induce you to move? What are you waiting for?’

  ‘Some moment of crucial dissent within the Central Committee or the Politburo.’

  ‘What might give rise to that?’

  ‘China, perhaps? If the proposed escalation of the present border war goes through, for example; if the Kosygin faction bows under current Army pressure, the Politburo could easily divide itself. As you know there is strong political opposition to any escalation. And that could be the moment for this Sixth Directorate to move. That’s one scenario. There are others.’

  Andropov said nothing, thinking for half a minute. His expression, with that of the others round the table, had become more than serious, it was numb. ‘Could any of this really be so?’ they all seemed to be asking, ‘Have we taken this charade too far?’

  ‘Aren’t we taking this game a little too far?’ Vassily Chechulian said. ‘It seems to me we are presupposing something too clever by half.’ He turned to Flitlianov. ‘Much as I acknowledge and admire your skills, Alexei, I doubt if even you could pull such a scheme off. The profile you’re drawing here, the head of this Sixth Directorate – he must be either a fool or a superman: the vast hazards you’ve contrived for him in your projections could make him no less than one or the other. There’s too much – far too much – that could go wrong. I may believe in the existence of some sort of “Directorate” as you’ve outlined it, but I don’t believe for a second that it has a chance of ever getting to the starting gate. Principally because your own Directorate, Alexei – the real Second Directorate – would find out about it long before that. Your internal security hasn’t been exactly lax recently, Alexei. You’ve clearly marked out and curtailed every other dissident movement. Why should you fail with this one?’

  No one spoke. Then Flitlianov said slowly and good-naturedly: ‘Those are all fair points, Vassily. I agree with you. I hope I do get this group. I’m sure I will. But for the moment I haven’t.’

  Andropov nodded in agreement. ‘That’s why we’re making these projections, Vassily, to give us something to aim at. And we should always allow for the most unlikely targets.’

  Grigori Rahv, the engineer, had been anxious to prove his worth for some time. Now he leant forward, settling the folds of his fine new suit. ‘I tend to agree with Vassily. I think we may be getting off the track. The centre of this clandestine operation may not be in the KGB – or in the Politburo. Let’s take a look at some likely targets.’ He turned to Andropov. ‘This typewritten newsletter that’s been causing so much trouble recently, the Chronicle of Current Events – surely someone connected with that is the man we want, someone you’ve not caught up with yet – head of an outside group that has contacts, merely, inside the KGB – the voices our man in London heard being some of them, or all of them. Shouldn’t we simply intensify our crackdown on these dissident movements, this newsletter?’

  Andropov sighed quietly. But Alexei was brightly placatory. ‘I think you might be right, Grigori. But I have had no authorisation to raise the pressure on these dissident movements. My directive’ – he looked at Andropov – ‘has been to handle them very carefully during the current rapprochement with the US.’

  ‘Surely that can now be changed – if the security of the State is at risk – as I assume it is?’ Rahv asked quickly.

  ‘Yes
, Grigori,’ Andropov replied. ‘That can be changed. We’re hoping to start just such a crackdown as you suggest. It’s with the Politburo now, waiting their final assent. Suslov will get that for us. Unfortunately I can’t agree that the centre of this group lies outside the KGB, in any dissident intellectual movement. The reason is simple: this clandestine group is obviously one of long standing, well entrenched, extremely carefully organised and run: it has all the marks, in fact, of a bona fide KGB operation. Now, no outside organisation could have successfully maintained such an operation for so long – they would have been discovered long ago. Yet as part of the KGB they could remain undetectable – as they have done. Our man has chosen well: he has chosen to infiltrate the KGB because we alone can offer him the unique lever which could bring about this political change. Tacitly, we hold the political direction of the country in our hands. Our man is in this organisation quite simply because he knows where the reins are. The actual power for political change behind the Chronicle of Current Events – for all that it may worry us in other ways – wouldn’t light a torch bulb. No, we have to imagine a man who is among us. Let’s continue with our profile of him. Right, Alexei, you want my job. You’re capable of doing it?’

  ‘Yes. I must assume so.’

  ‘At the moment therefore you hold some considerably senior rank?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Andropov was much encouraged. ‘Good.’ He turned, looking round the table. ‘We are beginning to see something now, a senior man, bringing outsiders into the KGB – a careful difficult job, time-consuming. So I think we can assume – if they have men in London – that this directorate started some time ago: ten, more like twenty years ago. Or even before that. During the war perhaps. And this may give us the reasons which started it. We’re somewhere in the early forties or late thirties. We’re at the end of the Moscow trials, gentlemen; the Stalin–Hitler pact. Those events could well encourage dissension in the mind of some young NKVD recruit of the time. So what do we see? A dissenter, therefore an intellectual in his student days during the late thirties; good army career, almost certainly as an intelligence officer, joined us sometime between 1945 and 1950 – at the very latest. Well, we shall have the files on all such recruits – Savitsky? Will you make a note?’

  The head of Management, Personnel and Finance nodded. ‘I had already thought along such lines, sir. The files reflecting such a profile are ready.’

  Andropov made no acknowledgment of this initiative, continuing instead his enthusiastic chase with Flitlianov: ‘Now how many people do you have with you in your Sixth Directorate, Alexei?’

  ‘Well, if I’ve been recruiting for, say, twenty years – but having to be extremely careful over who I choose – I’d say I’d picked up someone about once a month. Say – around two hundred people now.’

  ‘What sort of people, Alexei? What jobs are you placing them in? Which Directorate would it be most to your advantage to control – when the “moment” came?’

  ‘Obviously my own, the Second Directorate – internal security throughout the Union, on the spot, ready – as you say – for the “moment”.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Andropov thought once more. ‘Except they’d lack mobility in the Second Directorate and be highly exposed to any investigation. And I don’t think you’d keep all your eggs in one basket, Alexei. You’d have some of your men overseas I think – as an alternative group, men who could start the whole thing again. That would be the normal procedure, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. The group would be in the usual cell form, each one self-contained, with complete cut-outs between them – no links, each one headed by a deputy.’

  ‘You’d use the block cut-out. You’d know each of your deputies–’

  ‘No. I’d use the other process: the chain cut-out. I would know my first deputy; he would have recruited the next and so on. And each deputy would have recruited his own staff. Thus I would know, by name, only a very small proportion of the entire group: this would give us a chance to regroup in the event of myself or any deputy being caught.’

  ‘That first deputy is an important figure then, isn’t he, Alexei? If we took you – we’d have to be sure we could get him too. If he went to ground properly we’d be no further on at all in the affair. We’d have to be certain that he never had any warning that you’d been cracked for example, or that we were on to you.’

  ‘Yes. That first deputy would have to have his ear very much to the ground, ready to bury himself the moment anything started to give at the top. Ideally he would have direct access to all top policy movement in the KGB – to this committee here in fact.’

  Flitlianov had at last voiced something which had gradually been forming in the minds of all present at the table. Vassily Chechulian was the first to speak – a harshness, almost an anger in his normally easy voice. ‘Look, what have we imagined? A very senior man in the Second Directorate, stationed in Moscow, ex-army intelligence officer, joined us immediately after the war, a particularly able man, an intellectual among other things – and quite a young man, in his late forties now perhaps. Well it must be clear to all of us here – and most of all to you, Alexei – that this background is very similar to your own.’ Vassily Chechulian turned to Andropov. ‘I’m curious to know why the Chief of the Second Directorate – in response to your queries – has almost exactly described himself in this role of counter-revolutionary. What are we meant to deduce from this?’

  Chechulian lit a cigarette, the first man at the meeting to do so. Tilting his head, he blew a stream of smoke almost straight upwards where the burnt tobacco formed a small wispy cloud under the soundproofing membrane. There was a sudden smell of life in the arid room.

  ‘Ask him yourself, Vassily.’ Yuri Andropov said. ‘We’re all supposed to be asking questions here.’

  ‘Well, Alexei – what are you condemning yourself out of your own mouth for?’

  ‘Not at all, Vassily. I was asked to imagine myself as head of this mysterious Sixth Directorate. That’s how I would have gone about organising it. You would have done it differently I’m sure – yet not, I think, so very differently. There are constants in the formation of any clandestine group. You formed just such a group yourself in West Germany just after the war. We know that. I might also add that the background I’ve given this man could, at a stretch, fit you as well as me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m no intellectual, Alexei. You have a degree. You were even a professor once, as your cover overseas. Besides, I’m older than you.’

  ‘Yes, but the rest stands, or near enough. Indeed your counter-espionage directorate might be the expected place to look for this sort of conspiracy. Your Third Directorate – necessarily of course – is the most secretive part of our organisation. By comparison my Second Directorate is an open book, and I’m hardly more than a traffic policeman.’

  Flitlianov smiled briefly. Chechulian said nothing. Andropov broke the moment’s unease that had suddenly sprung up.

  ‘Gentlemen, I didn’t come here – nor I hope did any of you – to conduct a purge. That was not the purpose of my questions to Alexei. I wanted a picture of the type of man we’re after. And I think Alexei has given us that. I think probably, too, the man is in Alexei’s Directorate. But that, as we’ve shown, is to be expected. His is by far the largest, more than 20,000 fully established staff, at least two hundred of whom occupy senior rank and some of these must share some or all of the characteristics we’ve established. We’ll go through all these men very carefully now, take them apart. And I’d like each of you to do the same within your own Directorates. We have a rough picture, a profile. It may be the wrong one, but for the moment we’ve nothing else to go on. Let’s see if we can find the body that fits it.’ He looked round at the five men. ‘And kill that body quickly.’

  Andropov paused, consulting some notes in front of him. The others relaxed. Chechulian poured himself a glass of mineral water from a bottle in front of him, tasted some of it and then puckered his lips. He l
ooked at the contents of the glass sadly and pushed it away. Andropov had found his place. ‘Gentlemen, our second consideration this evening, normally our first: next year’s budget. As you know our allocations are to be cut – by up to 18% over three years, starting January 1972. We must continue to mark out areas of economy. However, we may be able to limit this to one area and Grigori Rahv will brief you on this in a moment. In outline, what it amounts to is this: I believe we may be able to make substantial reductions in our scientific budget, particularly in the area of communications and in future capital development in that field. You’ll remember our discussion at the last meeting: since then we’ve established beyond doubt that the British have now successfully developed their new code transmission system and will shortly be introducing it into all their diplomatic and intelligence traffic: as far as we can tell it’s a form of electronic one-time pad. There’s no doubt that if we can obtain the precise technical data on how this system operates – which we can only do at source, on site – this information alone should enable us to reduce our expenditure by the required 18% over three years. Grigori, would you give us the present position in more detail?’

  Grigori Rahv broached these electronic mysteries very carefully and clearly, like a teacher among witless, rascally children. Chechulian hunched his great farmer’s shoulders and let his head sink oft his chest. Andropov removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. Flitlianov closed his eyes. Sakharovsky studied the label on the mineral-water bottle in front of him, massaging his old hands. Savitsky remained obviously alert: a saving of 18% over three years would bring more credit to him than to anyone else in the room.